GA 085 | How to Incorporate Practice with Mike Wroblewski

You're listening to episode 85 with Mike Wrobleski.

Welcome to the Gemba Academy Podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Pereira.

Hey there. This is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy Podcast. As always, thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma and Gemba Academy live videos over at GembaCademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, I just mentioned Gemba Academy Live since I'm especially pumped up for that part of the video series that we share with our customers. Gemba Academy Live is where we go in. We visit companies and spend a day or two with them and have them share their lean thinking stories with us. We've been to companies like FastCap, Lear, who makes seats for automotive industry. We've been to Menlo Innovations, and most recently we just visited with the folks over at Zingerman's Mail Order. Now they are in Ann Arbor, Michigan and they're right next to Menlo Innovations, in fact. And that's how I was introduced to Zingerman's was through Richard Sheridan and the Menlo team. They introduced me to Tom Root and his team and Tom and his and his team are doing a fantastic job applying Lean to the mail order business. So it's a very, very high mix process and they've done some incredible work. Something that they're doing that I'm not sure I've seen quite done like this is their, their approach to Heijunka or level loading or production leveling. There's many terms for it, but they basically have a pretty sophisticated way of taking all their orders and in leveling them before they are put onto the shop floor. And so we spent, oh, quite some time on board really going through how they do that. So if you've ever wanted to know how a highly complex mail order style business levels production, you're going to want to check out this episode. So we just got back this week. Greg and the guys are busy editing that footage and we hope to release that here in the coming weeks. So if you're a game by Academy customer, look out for that episode because it's going to be pretty fantastic. Now today I'm excited to welcome Mike Wrobleski back to the show. Now, we've. A few episodes ago, we had Mike on, and it was actually, actually a. The audio version of a talk Mike did at a recent conference. And what we had today is a traditional sit down interview that I did with Mike at that same conference. So we go through a lot of different stories and topics and. And Mike always just has a fantastic way of sharing the stories he has from the road. He's a. He's a fantastic Lean consultant who's literally traveled the world. He told me some stories of, gosh, he was in Saudi Arabia recently and teaching Lean to some interesting groups. All good stuff, of course, but Mike's just a fantastic guy. One of my favorite Lean thinkers out there. I do want to take this opportunity, though. Mike, if you're listening as I talk to you at the conference, I really hope to see you blogging again. Mike was one of my favorite bloggers. He's got such a gift on the keyboard with sharing his stories, and he's kind of fallen away from blogging. He's super busy and he's always traveling. But, Mike, I beg you, please. One article a month. How about that? And if you want a guest blog on Gemba Academy, even better. Okay. But the show notes for this episode, which are gonna have links to everything Mike and I talk about, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 85, which will be at the very top of the page with Mike Robleski. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show.

All right, so we are back here in beautiful Jacksonville, Florida, at the summit for Lean Leadership. And I'm with my main man, Mike Robleski.

Yes. Ron, nice to see you again. It's been a while.

Nice to see you. I know it's been too long, man.

Too long.

Globe trotting around the world, a lot of work.

A lot of people want to know about Lean around the world, helping them.

That's a good thing.

Yes, it is.

It's a good thing. All right, well, we are going to share your whole talk from yesterday, which was amazing. And then also the talks that you do. Are you going to do one one this on Thursday or Friday?

I believe it's Thursday. Yes.

Yeah. So we'll have both those in video format, so everybody can check those out. But what we're going to do here is just kind of walk through just some more general Lean discussion, turn this into a podcast, and we'll also have it in video. But for those that don't know who you are, Mike. Let's just start there. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you first came to learn about continuous improvement and then what you're up to these days.

Ok. With the Kaizen Institute, I'm the regional director, so I'm helping both the United States and companies, both United States and worldwide, in the lean leadership. I'm trying to develop lean then I also help our business units within the Kaizen Institute how to become better consultants going forward. So I started lean in 1985 when Shigo Shingo first taught me the SMED system as a young engineer right out of college. And then from there I was a practitioner up until about five years ago when I started consulting.

And yeah, I always love your story of started your career or I don't know if you started it, but one of the stops was making hospital beds.

Right. Made hospital beds.

And then later across the street you made caskets.

Yes, yes. At that time, hospital beds from Hill Rom and Batesville Casket. They're owned by the Hillenbrand family, so they were sister companies for years and years until they split the stock. And they both were very good on going through the lean journey. So a lot of my knowledge came from the many Japanese consultants they brought in and taught us. And we experimented and we had full support from the board on down to try to learn lean going forward. And to this day, they're still practicing lean, trying to improve the process. So, yes, it was pretty interesting. And we always joked at Hill Rom that if our product didn't work for you, you can go across the street. And we had a product at the caskets that might help you. And people at the Baseville casket did not have the sense of humor.

Was it funny? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, Mike, as you know, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation. And you being a Packers fan, something tells me it's going to have something to do with some legend or something.

Yeah, absolutely. Green Bay Packers. Lifelong fan of Green Bay, but Vince Lombardi is probably one of the most epic coaches that have been in football at Green Bay. So he has a lot of great quotes. But one of my most favorite one is excellence is the mastery of fundamentals. So when you think about that, he was talking about football and blocking and tackling and just running play plays. And if we equate that to the lean world, it's how are we at just mastering fundamentals? Like, can we simply follow standard work? That's our plays here in business. So are we Good at developing plays or standard work? Are we good at executing them? Are we good at looking at each time a PDCA of improving that and the process of having leadership, Are we good at that? Leadership fundamentals, but working on just basic fundamentals and those development of the skills is really where we can see nice progression to become a world class team like Green Bay.

Yes. Oh, gosh, Okay. I knew you had to slip that and I know you're four and. Oh, right now, right?

Well, right now we are. But hopefully when our fans see this at the end of the super bowl, we'll be toasting our Super Bowl 50.

Fair enough. You have a good team. No question about that.

So.

All right. Well, yesterday during your talk you mentioned the importance of practice.

Yes.

Talk about that.

Well, we equate it again to the football analogy is that many even great players like Aaron Rodgers, but all great players, they all practice their skills even though that they're at the premium height of their career. And I started thinking about, well, do we not practice in business? And if you think about it, we don't have practice time. We have game time every time we go to work, but we don't ever practice our skills. And I think reading books and going to seminars and workshops are great. Watching videos and watching videos online. Yeah, absolutely. Those are great places to gather information. But you really don't learn a skill unless you actually practice. Exactly. Okay. It's like swimming. We have a course on swimming. We go out to the beach and learn to swim. But we don't learn to swim unless we go out into the water. Okay, just talking about it and watching videos and reading books aren't going to give it to you.

Exactly.

You got to have that skill by doing it. And what I see is I don't see many leaders willing to take years to practice.

So give me an example though of how leader can practice.

Oh, there could be many. One is communication. Practicing communication. It could be as simple as a start up meeting or our shift change meeting. How can I run that meeting better and can I practice communicating that? So let's have mock meetings and practice this. One of the better ones are when you have things like I have a really critical conversation. Suppose you were my employee and I needed to confront you with an issue. And I'm not good at confronting and having meetings that deal with something that could be controversial or a conflict. So maybe I'll go over here and then I'll find a co worker or my boss to come over or go to HR to help me and say hey, I've got this conversation that I need to have over here with one of my employees and I don't really know how to do that. Well, I think I know what to say, but let's practice that. So I would practice this over here with my boss or one of someone from HR and then practice my speech or how my delivery is going to be and then they can give me feedback of how that was received to them because words don't necessarily look good on paper, but when you deliver them, it means something different and we want this to be successful. So I practice a skill of conflict resolution or meeting, and then I have the meeting with you. I don't just come have the meeting with you.

Got it.

Things like that we could practice.

Why don't we practice?

Well, I think probably the reason that we don't practice and this is just my practice and based on years of experience there, is that we tend to have a sense of overconfidence. I think overconfidence by management and leaders is that we have to be tough. I mean, my dad's a Marine Corps officer and retired, but still a Marine Corps officer. And he's tough. Right. He will not admit that we're weak or that we don't know something. And we're paid professionals and we're supposed to know these things. We don't want to admit the weakness that we don't understand or know. So we just go in there and make the best of it. So I think that that ego, that overconfidence doesn't allow us, you know, ask for help, you know, try it, practice it. And I think that practicing would allow us to become better because we can learn from that and then our skills will be developed.

Yeah. And something else that you said in your talk yesterday that really struck me was you had an awesome slide with some zombie looking.

Oh yeah, that's a new one I just put in.

Tell a story about that because that.

Was also really good. Of course, I'm making a play off the fact that I'm teasing management and the fact that they don't do Gemba walks.

Well, and what is a gimba walk in case someone doesn't know?

Okay, a gimbal walk. Alright, first of all, gemba is a Japanese word meaning the actual place or where work happens. So when we say a gimba walk, we're asking leaders to leave their office and go to work. Go to work, go to where the work is being done on the line or in the office where that work is being done, and go to see, go to learn, go to look, go see what the problems are. And there's a certain way to do that. Well, and then when we read, oh, yes, I'm a leader, I'm supposed to do Gimba walk. All right, I'm going out to the shop floor, Check. I've done that. And we don't realize that we're doing it wrong. So things I see, we do wrong, we go down and we walk around the shop floor and say, hey, how you doing? How are the packers this weekend?

All right.

Which I think is cool that you talk about things to be personal, but you're not really accomplishing what you want to accomplish.

It stops there.

It stops.

Yeah.

That's where it ends.

That's where it ends. Exactly.

And then you.

You think, you know, if you talk to four or five people, you think you've done a Gimba walk, and that's not right.

Right.

Or you go through. And how I teased it in there is that I've seen many companies do. This is where they come up with these great com cell boards, and they have them sprinkled out throughout the plant with all their, this is my cost, this is my delivery, this quality, maybe this is my safety and continuous improvement projects that I'm working on. And they make a tour all the way through the plant in Gimba of all the boards. So they go from board to this board to this board. And then after they're done, they think they've toured the plant and they never really turned around and looked at the real work at the Gimba and talked with the people. It's just board to board. And when I experienced that, I go, wow, that's just like a mindless activity. And it reminded me of Walking Dead, the Zombies, which is a popular show, that they are stuck in this mindless routine, thinking that's what they're supposed to do. And I think we need to change that. I think we need to really show that you have value in a good gimbal walk.

So you've been traveling all over the world. Literally, what's going on out there in the broad world with regards to lean?

Yeah. I've actually had some great opportunities in the last year. I've been to India, I've been to Singapore. I've been to Australia, have also been to Saudi Arabia just recently, then regular trips to Europe. I've been to Germany and to the Netherlands. So I've got to see a lot of different cultures and their application. The good thing that I've seen is that many Many people worldwide are interested in lean leadership and developing lean. So that's a good sign. I think a lot of people are still underdeveloped as to what that means and what my role is, what do I need to do to be successful. So I'm trying to help companies. So from the mistakes that I've made in my career and the mistakes I've learned along the way of how to do things better, trying to share that with them so that they could start off a little bit better and learn from those mistakes and go forward.

You know, something you and I were talking about yesterday during a Q and A session, one of the participants was asking some folks, you know, the struggle, constant struggle of tools versus, you know, leadership or culture and whatnot. And we were talking about that. What's your take on that?

I think relatively the new topic right now, at least that's been the hot one, is this culture away from the tools. Everybody seems to understand that it's not tools based, it's the culture that makes you really good and lean. But I think a lot of people don't understand what that means or if they understand, they don't know how they can affect it.

Yes.

Okay. So of course I wrote Creating Kaizen Culture with two great other co authors and our book is just the beginning to help develop that topic and to say what can we do to understand what culture is and what sustaining it is. Most people make the mistake that sustaining means to protect or guard or I've got something, I'm trying to protect it. Where actually culture is more like you're trying to nurture it, you're trying to grow it. So you've got this culture of lean, of trying to improve the process. We're trying to develop and grow and nurture, develop people through the process. And in that we don't realize that we, us as leaders, each one of us, regardless if we're the president or if we're a mid level manager, we can set an example and we can show people this is how it means to be a lean leader.

Yes.

So every day we have that opportunity.

You know, and I'll be a little bit of a heretic maybe, but I do get a little bit worn out when it almost seems like continuous improvements always like some extreme, you know, it's like now it's culture, endless leadership. And of course it's important, right? I mean, sure. But it's almost like if you talk about tools, you're like bad, you know, so it's like, you know, yesterday I wanted to Say, you know what the way the question was asked was, you know, we're struggling with, you know, focusing on tools. I'm like, you know, what good the guy's using the tool. At least they're trying, they're doing something. So I wanna. I just think sometimes we get a little carried away, like thinking that tools.

Are bad and it's all about culture.

No, someone just said, typical bashing Lean conference, you know, bashing Six Sigma, you know, I mean, we've heard it a million times, you know, and it's. It's nonsense. I mean, the people bash because they don't know. Right. And so.

Yeah, but as you know, as a practitioner and knowing about this lean, it's both. It's together. It's how you blend it together. Because tools will give you the methods to get you the results. The culture is the foundation that allow you to sustain it. So when people talk about this, the culture, they're talking about the sustaining portion of getting the lean. You still have to have the tools, you still have to go out the stopwatch. You still have to go out there.

And you got to know what internal, external elements are.

You have to know what a Yamazumi is and do line balancing. You're going to have to know what waste is and what you can do to eliminate that. You still have to do those tactical things and the strategic approach. Approach of where should I. Kaizen.

Yeah.

And then actually go out and get your hands dirty in Kaizen and do this daily.

Yes.

You still have to do that. Yes. That gets you results.

Exactly.

All right.

What about senior leaders? Like, what do you think their role is, you know, in this whole Lean transformation?

Well, I see more and more senior leaders that are more engaged. They're not as engaged as I think they should be, but they're more engaged knowing that they really need to make this successful and develop it. So they're having a more active approach in understanding what it is. There's still elements that I see, like, if I was a CEO, I would say, hey, Ron, you're my now CI manager, Go forth and lean within my company, Report back to me. But there is no I need as a CEO or president or plant manager that I need to know lean, that I need to help teach it. Now, we have some great CEOs out there that really are passionate about lean, that are active Kaizen, people that are practicing this in their daily life, but we have so many more that are not. And it's more of a checklist. We're doing lean. We're supposed to do Lean, but I'm just monitoring it. I'm not really involved in it. We need that to change. We need people to actually practice it, and it's part of their management.

So along those lines, yesterday you and I were meeting with some of the folks here at the conference, and. And one group was telling us their story. You know, they were middle managers of a big, big company. Like big. With billions of dollars behind them.

Yeah, it's pretty big company. Yes.

And they were a strong group of continuous improvement, I would say. You know, middle management, I guess, is probably fairer way to describe them. And they were tasked with trying to, well, I guess coach their leadership, for lack of a better word. Right.

Yeah.

And they were struggling a little bit. What was your take on that conversation?

Well, I think that their experience experiencing the same struggle many, many companies or people are experiencing, because probably most of your subscribers are middle management Lean change agents, and they're stuck in the middle of how I need to lead a lean effort of trying to get results. Yet I have people above me, either my boss or the plant manager or board of directors, that really aren't engaged with the lean. So I'm sort of like, I got to teach people below me, and I have to teach people above me, and I'm in the middle. How's that going to work? And you get frustrated. So, first of all, it's not easy. It's very, very difficult to do this because you're dealing with trying to teach a lot of people. It's also very frustrating. You're going to go so far and you're going to find that there can be some successes and some really hard brick walls you're going to hit. But I looked at it this way, is that when I work on a lean effort, I. I know that I really can't change somebody else. I can just inspire and influence. So I hope that when I show how I lead that I would inspire others to be that way or influence them. I know that my leading by example of what I can do will help. Now, I know that the common thing with all presidents and CEOs is they love results. And we already know that we need to have results in lean, just like in any other aspect. So what better way to help get them engaged than to show results? So I would say with my group, with the area that I'm working on, that I treated as a model, almost. Yeah. So let me show you the showroom, the model of what the house should be. So let me show you what lean can do in a small model area. And then from that you'll get interest from others coming in, like, I want more of this and I want to learn more. So you actually get a pull from the upper management to want to understand and learn more.

Make your boss look good.

Yes. And make them good. Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. Fantastic.

I think that's one good technique. There's many others, but I think that's a good one.

Yeah, yeah.

Very good.

Very good.

All right.

Well, Mike, we could talk for hours on many different topics, but let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. And, you know, the first question that we have is, you know, in lean, we talk about the two pillars, kind of continuous improvement, respect for people, continuous improvements, the tools, the things we do.

Yes.

Whereas respect for people sometimes can be a little harder to define. So I'm curious, got a lot of experience. You've been around the world, seen many different cultures practicing lean.

Yeah.

What does respect for people mean to you?

Well, there's a lot of different aspects from that, but for me, it's treating people with dignity, that they all have something to come to offer to help, that they all are intelligent, they all can contribute, they all are coming to work to help make it successful. They may not have certain skills. They may not be very good at people interaction. So you're going to have some conflicts there. But I think part of us is how I can get the best out of each person. So, again, let's go back to the analogy of my favorite coach, Vince Lombardi. Vince Lombardi actually changed his management strategy to get the best out of the people that he had. So how he treated Bart Starr or Ray Nitsky or any of the other players there, he treated them differently to try to get the best out of the talent that they had in the team. And I don't know if we really try to tap the best talent out of the team. We either say that they're a superstar and they're someone that I need to get rid of and replace them. And we don't really spend our time saying, how can I draw that best talent out going forward? And I think respect for people is to recognize that they have talent and draw that out and to try to make them successful by developing their skills. I think it's disrespectful for someone not to try to develop them and train them. So I think that development for leaders is really showing respect for people.

Love it.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

I've had many good and bad Bosses and a lot of people that influenced my career. So I'm going to go with one this time that still sticks with me because I think the ones that you remember most are the ones that are on the top of your mind. I had a. Carl Langley was my first industrial engineering manager. Now, Carl wasn't the best boss, but he was really good at developing talent. That was his niche. He could pick people and develop them and they all moved up in the organization. But as an industrial engineering manager, what he taught me was that we need to be a sponge. We need to be a sponge with understanding and learning. And he was the first to really tell me that I need to absorb and learn how the line operates, how this person works, understand more about a process than anyone else in the plant. So I'm absorbing all this material and this information to become the most knowledgeable person about an area. So it's basically constantly learning, constantly trying to understand more. And then from that knowledge you can provide value and you can improve. So he basically just used that analogy of be a sponge. Go out there and learn as much as you can.

Love it. Love it. Mike, do you have a productivity habit that others might benefit from?

Productivity habit.

A personal productivity?

Well, I'm not perfect by any means. I'm still a student of lean and of course my personal life as far as how I even work, and that I still have areas to improve. Okay, so what you have to first do is recognize that you have to improve something. So some of the tricks that I've used, I'm working on one right now in a level of organization to be able to find things so that I spend less time trying to find things and I can be more effective doing things is I'm trying to make sure that when I have things organized, both in my computer and in my home or in my work area, is that I can grab something without moving something else. In other words, I can go directly to something so I can change my file structure on my computer, I want to be able to change things. I don't want to have four or five layers of folders to go through. I want to be able to get it as flat as possible so I can go directly as quick as possible. Like one click to get to something. Or on my desk, I want to be able to grab something direct versus moving something to get to something.

What about opening a drawer? Is that better?

Opening a drawer is okay, your accident, but I don't have to move a pencil to get to a stapler type deal. I want to be Able to grasp everything. So I'm thinking right now my productivity is to try to do one step grasp one step to get. That's the first thing.

Yes.

I still remember your one from many years ago. It was on your blog where you wire tied all your stuff together or you use little ties.

Velcro ties.

Velcro ties.

Velcro ties.

Yeah. It was such a simple improvement, but it was so awesome.

And I've actually changed since then. A couple of the items that I see still have wires on. I haven't gone wireless on everything, but the ones that still have wires, I actually now put them in little Ziploc bags so that even when the wires are loose, they don't touch each other.

We do that. Greg does that with all of our video stuff.

I love Ziploc bags. I try to compress them down in there. The problem I have now is I'm trying to now how do I not have to move one Ziploc bag to get to another bag? How can I lay it out? So I'm a big fan of trying to make sure it's all laid out and I can just grab it real quick.

Less cables.

Less cables. Yes. I'm going to wireless and a lot of things.

Exactly, exactly. So if there's ever a situation where maybe you've had a bad week or you're in a little bit of a rut and you're feeling kind of down, you need to recharge. Do you have some techniques that you do?

Yeah. I go to Gimba Academy and watch some videos and get energized. There's your plug.

Yes.

But what I try to do is sometimes I totally step away. So a lot of times we have a lot of energy that we go into teaching others. And I'm like many others. I just drain myself into doing my work. And then I just want to just not do anything for a while. So I'll decompress, but then I'll turn around and say, what can I do to improve? And I find for me, just doing simple kaizens at home and simple things to improve. Like, what's a little frustration for me if I can solve those little problems? I feel like, oh, that's one less little frustration off. And it helps me now refocus into the bigger problems. So a lot of times I like to go to little small problems, fix them, and then jump back to the big problem. So that's. Sometimes that helps refresh me.

And I think also, we're going to go to the beach after we get Done, right?

Yes. My goal in life is to be on a beach. So, yes, I think the beach is the best place to just get closer to nature and relax.

Now, I understand you're a little bit of a surfer.

Yeah, I actually used to surf a lot in high school. And of course, when I moved back to the Midwest, I did not bring my board. I stopped surfing. And as I got older, I said, well, I can't surf anymore. I had more weight on. I'm not as flexible as I used to be. And then I went to Australia last year and I said, you know, I'm going to go surfing. So I got aboard and went out and started getting.

I remember that on Facebook.

Yeah. So I jumped back on there. Wasn't as flexible as I used to be, but I get back up on the board, so that was cool. So I actually started and I'm hitting the North Carolina and Florida coast. I didn't bring my board, but I'm going to go to North Carolina this weekend and go surfing.

So.

Last question I have. So, obviously, Mike, you've been practicing lean for a long time. Had a lot of incredible teachers, including Shigeo Shingo, which is pretty awesome. But I'm curious, is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you still need to improve on in order to become a better lean thinker?

Oh, my gosh, there's so much more. A lot of times I find it's a failure if I don't connect with certain people. I'll have a small group of five or ten people. One or two people still will be very defensive. And I'm trying to learn techniques of how to get through to everybody. I think everybody should benefit from this. So, yeah, just trying to connect more with people is still a skill I'm working on.

Yeah. Love it. All right, well, Mike, appreciate it, Ron.

Thank you so much.

What's the best way for people to connect with you?

For the most part, just in contact through you or just kaizen.com?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You need to get back on gotboondoggle. I'm gonna put some pressure on you right now on the website. I want everyone to go to Got.

What is it?

Gotboondoggle. Is it still a blog spot?

It's still a blog spot.

Goodness gracious. You gotta change that. So it's got boondoggle.

Well, still dot com, I think.

Will that work?

Yeah, it.

Okay. All right, we're going to link to it. I want everyone to go to that blog and just start finding old articles, leaving comments and pressuring Mike to get back to writing.

Yeah, I want to do this. I just. When I wrote the first book, that was a big project. And then I travel, like, almost 100% of the time, and many times I don't have the energy to.

Got to sleep sometime.

Got to sleep sometime. Yes. But I will. I will start blogging an article a month. Yes. Okay. That's a good start, once you commit to me. So, see, you set the target for me. Yes. Okay. Now I need you to follow up.

Okay.

Because follow up is an important part of that. So follow up with that.

I'm putting something on my calendar. I'm not kidding you, man. All right, cool.

Where's the article, man? Yeah, please coach me on that. Yes, I will. Thanks, Ron.

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