GA 109 | How to Leverage Toyota Kata with Brandon Brown

You're listening to episode 109 with Brandon Brown.

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 of your day in your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean In Six Sigma training videos over at GembaCademy.com, we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today, I'm excited to welcome Brandon Brown to the show. Now, Brandon is the owner of continuous coaching commitment, LLC, in addition to being an associate for the W3 group. And while Brandon has a strong lean thinking background, he's been particularly focused on leading Toyota Kata workshops across the world and in many different industries. And as you'll hear, Brandon also has a strong TWI background and has found many ways for Toyota Kata and TWI to complement one another. Now, Brandon is also going to be presenting at the upcoming TWI and Lean HR Summit, which is being held in San Antonio, Texas, May 12th and 13th. Now, I'll also be at the summit as one of four keynote speakers, which is going to be extremely fun. So if you're interested in TWI or how Lean applies to hr, I definitely encourage you to come on down to Texas and hang out with us for a few days. And if you are planning to attend, we can save you 10% on the price of admission. Just go to gembapodcast.com twi where you'll see the coupon code to use to save 10%. Again, that's GembaPodcast.com TWI okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Brandon, well, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

I'm actually at the South Carolina Business Manufacturing Expo. Joint effort between association for Manufacturing Excellence. Recently did a cut a workshop just yesterday.

Nice.

And while the conference is going on, so we had good attendance and a really good, really good group.

Very good, very good. All right, well, Brandon, let's go ahead and start with you giving us a little. Tell us a little bit about your background and maybe how you first came to learn about continuous improvement.

Okay. Been involved with continuous improvement for probably 20 years or more. Had a first introduction in the late 90s with the TBM Institute with a Lean Sigma Kaizen type training and led several Kaizen events early on in my career. Progressed then into engineering management within that company that I was working for. Switched companies and had an opportunity to go through a training program preparing industrial engineers manufacturing managers to become general managers of operations with a company. I started a plant in Jasper, Alabama in 2006 and then another one in Mount Airy, North Carolina in 2010. So at that point I was a regional operations manager for three plants and decided to make the switch to more consulting and have a little bit more variety in helping wider range of manufacturers and different industries.

Okay.

At that time when I went into that, I joined with the NIST MEP Manufacturing Extension Partnership with the Arkansas Manufacturing Solutions Group in my home state and got the opportunity then to work with various manufacturers within the state and actually develop our own Toyota Kata workshops and what we call boot camps at that time working with several clients within the state.

Okay, so I guess you're a big Big Hogs fan then.

Yeah, born and bred Razorback Red. I'm usually rooting for anybody that's playing Texas as well.

Oh, is that it? Okay. I'm an Ohio State guy. I live in Texas now, but I'm from Ohio.

So, you know, you can root with me then.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, I don't care about Texas.

Ye.

All right. Well Brandon, as you know, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation that possibly inspires them. So do you have one?

Yeah, I have a tagline that's on my business cards. It's at the bottom of my emails beyond my website as well. And I'm not actually sure where I picked this up. I've actually googled and searched for the actual author of this quote. I believe it's used several times by John Maxwell, but I can't find an exact documentation so I've kind of adopted it as my own, so to speak. So I like to say that if you focus on the people, the numbers will come. If you focus on the numbers, the people will go. I think that goes right along with respect for people in the entire Toyota production system and as well as TWI and COD and all the things we're doing in the lean world is that many times we don't have the respect for people and focusing on the people. We just focus on the numbers and the outcomes. And people get discouraged when they are constantly being managed by results rather than managed by means. Which is tell me how you're going to solve the Problem help me understand how we can overcome these obstacles. And I believe that's what that quote means to me.

Love it. Love it. All right, well, let's jump right into it. So how long have you been practicing and coaching using Nakata methodology?

Been practicing Kata since my first experience was at a kata event put on by the W3 group. Mike Rother was there as a speaker, it was a blood donation center in Texas. And I got to hear him speak, read the book, et cetera, and really became inspired about the daily activity of the Kata process, the improvement Kata and both the Coaching kata. So that was about mid to late 2011. It was put on by the W3 group and conducted by Beth Carrington. Since that time, my work for AMS up until about 2014 was we had the opportunity with the La Z Boy of Arkansas location as well as the La Z Boy of Tennessee location to take the Buzz Electronics 101 simulation that the MEP system uses to teach the basics of Lean. And we modified that into a one day workshop centered around kata and establishing the direction, grasping the current condition, establishing the next target condition, and then PDCA ing toward the target condition using the Coaching Kata. And so we use that simulation as a basis. And then we would do a three day, as we call boot camp at that time, or sometimes we call them skill camps where we then make it real and make it live at the location. We pick an area that we're going to conduct an improvement kata and we do the same series of steps, the four steps of the improvement Kata and begin the Coaching Kata by the end of that fourth day. And then we have follow up activities where we come back and we help with resetting of the target condition at the time it's to reset that as well as provide master coaching. So I did that for about two years and then had the opportunity to also branch out and join the W3 group as an associate and work with a lot of other manufacturers both outside of Arkansas as well as in Europe and Canada. And so for about four years I've been focusing most of my efforts on the deployment of Toyota Kata with manufacturers ranging from baby wipe manufacturers to aerospace composite structures to most recently within the healthcare industry with Baptist Memorial Healthcare.

Well, I want to, I want to dig into in particular your healthcare experience here a little later in the show. But just in case some folks listening aren't familiar with Toyota Kata, why don't we just start with you giving us just an elevator pitch or a high level overview of what it's all about?

Well, as I mentioned the four steps to the improvement Kata directly from Mike's book really are the understanding of direction. Where are you wanting to go? What's your challenge? And I really think that that mirrors very well and has similar thinkings with the TWI job instruction and job relations. For example, understanding the direction is step one of the jr. Get all the facts, understand what the situation is. So once we understand the direction and the challenge, the next step in JR obviously is weigh and decide. It has similar roots to where KATA comes from. We grasp the current condition and we establish a target condition, decide where we're going in the short term. Third step of JR is take action. That's where the PDCA steps, identifying the one obstacle you're going to work on and doing the P and the D, the plan and the DO of Toyota Kata's cycle of pdca and then fourth step of jr, check the results. That's obviously the C and the A, the check and the act of the pdca and the cycle just repeats itself. So that's. The basic principles I think are that are comparisons about Toyota Kata as well as with TWI at the core of what I believe. There's three main points that I think that are unique about KATA as it pertains to the entire realm of the Lean deployment, lean implementation as well as the Lean tools. And the first one I would say is that I think that most people in the Lean community would say that we've been for the most part maybe marginally successful at sustainment with Lean using the Kaizen continuous improvement type episodic lean trainings, which tend to generate action item lists. And CI engineers quickly become overwhelmed with action item lists from Kaizen 1 to Kaizen 2 to Kaizen 3. Whereas the kata methodology really focuses on daily continuous improvement, making small steps of improvement each and every day without generating long lists. Now, that's not to say I'm not a fan of Kaizen. I've conducted four Kaizen events this year, did six last year, and I think they're a very valuable tool within Lean at making rapid improvements. My opinion is that once you finish the Kaizen event of three to five days, you start KATA at that process, you have a new current condition and an overall challenge that you're trying to reach with that particular event. And you start in the direction of continually daily improving and knocking out those obstacles. So I think the two partner very well together. Yes, I think one without the other has made us marginally successful. And I think most of the statistics and most of the company testimonies I've read have explained that.

Yeah, you know, like. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because I think about my friend Paul akers over at FastCap and you know what, they do more of a, you know, his, I guess, brand, if you will, his two second lean. But you know, it's very Kata ish in that they're just constantly seeking out ways to make things better each and every day. And matter of fact, they don't really run many events, if any so far as like three, five day kind of action blitzes or whatever you want to call them. But you know, the culture there is like nothing I've ever seen. It just, you know, young people walking around counting steps and how can I reduce the time it takes to get from here to there? And it's just pretty powerful when you see people really grasp the concept of improvement to that level.

Exactly. And I think at the one of the core concepts within kata, and we're within any type of daily continuous improvement, whether you call it kata, whether it's any other daily continuous improvement program, is what we're about is we're trying to drive culture in a positive or an improved situation. Well, neuroscience has been telling us for years, for decades, that if we want to change an organization's culture or an overall group's attitude, we must first focus on good behaviors and replacing poor behaviors with those good behaviors that we want to reinforce. If we take a step back from that. How do you change behaviors? Well, neuroscience again tells us that if you change your habits and produce good habits on a daily repetitive basis in a practice type environment, that you'll start to drive good habits in a positive direction and the bad habits will start to fade away. So the habits drive the behaviors which end up driving the culture. Yes. And so I think that's at the core of what makes KATA unique in its methodology.

Yes.

As it pertains to problem solving. Yes.

All right. Well, let's talk a little bit about how you're using Toyota Kata to deploy JR and JI in a healthcare environment.

Okay. That's exactly what I'll be speaking on here in a few weeks at the twi, Lean and HR Summit. I've been working since January with Baptist Memorial Healthcare. They're the largest healthcare organization in the Tri State area of Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi. Eighteen hospitals, 160 clinics, about 15,000 employees. So it's been about two or three of the hospitals that I've been working with in that network as well as some work within their HR groups. And that particular organization has system wide 35 certified JR trainers training the trainers as well as six certified JR train the trainers. So the question then comes into how do we deploy or how do we implement JI and jr? And what we have been practicing with, and we're just getting started over the last month or so is using the KATA methodology of setting a challenge and doing the next step of grasping the current condition, establishing a two week target condition. Where do you want to be with JR and JI and then what obstacles are keeping you from getting there so that there's daily PDCA actions that are being taken place That's a little bit different than maybe some of the traditional JI and JR deployments. I know that when I was job instruction certified we used the job instruction type training timetable. It's a great tool, great tool to be used for progressing and getting job instruction breakdowns written, getting people through training, getting them practicing it and using has a sort of a project management type approach. And my experience with organizations is that sometimes there's some struggles with staying focused on a day by day basis on that timetable. Sometimes it kind of fades away, we get back on it, we do these event based type trainings and then maybe it slips a little bit. It differs by organization to organization. I'm sure there are many organizations that use the training timetable to exactly as it's intended to be used and are very successful with it with applying KATA to that. We're looking inside of JR at various different challenges that we've set. And one particular a couple of prediction areas that Job Relations is focused around is solving those people problems at the source or at the lowest level where they're occurring. So challenge categories such as written warnings and involuntary terminations, every organization wants to reduce those and use a job relations method to solve those. So we've set challenges around where we want those particular numbers to be at the end of a one year time frame. And we have the groups that meet and use the five questions within Toyota Kata to define what are our process characteristics that are describing our current condition? What are our process metrics? How do we measure, for instance, how many people have we trained, how many people do we need to train and to what level? Are they using the four step method or are problems continuing to escalate to higher and higher levels within human resources and not being handled at that very basic frontline area? So it's not to say that we don't have a training timetable, but in these particular situations we're using CADA to take a step by step, day by day, approach of continually progressing through pointed, structured, purpose driven activities in the areas where we are experiencing some of the, some of the higher numbers in regards to those categories that I'm talking about. Rather than just marching through and having a list of employees and saying is this person JR trained, yes or no? And when on the timetable will they be trained? We're focusing it on specific areas to PDCA our way through, making the most impact as early as possible.

Got it, Got it. All right. Well, one question that I have for you, Brandon, is let's say there's someone listening right now who wants to kind of get started exploring kata or twi. Either one of them or both of them. Aside from the obvious, which is come visit with us in San Antonio at the summit. How can they get started? What advice do you have for them? Should they literally just read Mike's book? What do you think?

I think reading the book is an excellent start as well. Mike has a homepage. His University of Michigan homepage is very detailed with materials. He has a guidebook there with several sections on covering the topics that I just talked about of the four steps of the improvement kata and coaching kata. He also has some practice guidelines and there's also some slideshares out there on how to deploy kata. And various of us, as we call ourselves, sometimes we share within SlideShare a lot of the learnings that we've had. So we can go online and search those slideshares. You can follow Mike's YouTube page. There's a lot of videos posted there. Myself, Beth Carrington, others within the kata community, I have YouTube channels with various videos really to get an understanding. And all those things I just spoke about are awareness levels. You get awareness and knowledge level. You don't truly understand and apply the COD until you're actually applying it to an area and you set a challenge and you're doing the daily coaching cycles toward that short term target condition. We like to say that the challenge is the elephant. The target condition is maybe the back leg of the elephant. So we're going to eat it one bite at a time, right? We do rapid PDCAs within Kata, which means we're going to chew really fast at doing that. So a one day awareness workshop or a three day type of a skill camp or boot camp that's offered by many different groups is another good way to get hands on experiential experience. There's also just taking that guidebook and maybe taking that workshop that you may have attended and just get started. Pick an area, like I said, set the challenge. Establish where you're at as far as grasping your current condition. Set a short term 1 week to 2 week target condition and use the materials that Mike has for free online, which is the five question card, and all the coaching materials that go along with it and get to practicing it and you find out how well you're able to overcome obstacles and being able to progress toward a target condition, which is that one small section of the challenge. So I think just getting involved with daily practice past the awareness level is where it really starts. Rubber meets the road.

Exactly. All right, very good, Brandon. All right, well, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. And the first question is, you know, we lean thinkers spend a lot of time talking about continuous improvement and then respect for people, with continuous improvement being a little easier to define, put your hands on to touch. But respect for people is a little bit more difficult to define. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

Respect for people means to me similar to the quote I mentioned earlier. We want to tap into people's innovation, their creativity and their problem solving skills and then actually coach them up to levels of higher and higher, more scientific problem solving. I think many times if we look at it as we are lean experts and we want to get their opinions and their ideas, but we don't necessarily get them involved in a KATA type routine, then we're not really respecting them and respecting their subject matter expertise. And so for me, respect for people is tapping into that subject matter expertise, trying things that they've always wanted to try. Maybe asking something that didn't work in the past, you know, the person might say, oh, that won't work. We tried that well within kata. I want to know why that didn't work. Give me the details and the facts and the data behind why it didn't work. Let's try something like that again. We know it's not going to work, but we want to uncover the real obstacles that are keeping us from being able to make that successful. And so there's buy in with people in this entire process to involve them and get them part of the team as process owners within the learner, first coach and second coach relationship of cata.

Got it. What's the best advice you've ever received?

I think the best advice I've received comes out of John Maxwell's 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. It's the law of connection. I went to John's training, I'm a certified teacher, coach and speaker. But that particular Law, the law of connection, as he explains it, is really in detail further into his book. Many people communicate, but few connect. I think a lot of times we have an exchange of dialogue that we think is communication, or we have an email that we sent that we think that that's following up, but we don't make that connection person to person, when we don't understand where they need a hand up or where they need help or vice versa, where that person might be able to help you understand their line of thinking. And. And again goes back to respect for people. So in that law, he says that many people, they communicate, which is simply just tossing it over the wall or sending them an email or leaving them a voicemail or having a conversation and summarizing it with an email without making that connection. And he draws the picture of like two train rail cars, they couple in order for them to move in the same direction. So that's making a connection on a personal level, how you can add value to that person, how that person can add value to you so that you can accomplish common goals. And I think that's probably the best advice that I received. Love it.

Do you have a personal productivity habit that others might benefit from?

Yes, I do. In fact, it's related to. To habit formation and positive behavior that we're trying to achieve. With kata. I've kind of my own personal daily kata, being a coach and a consultant in the. In that world of helping clients achieve their goals, whether I'm on the road or whether I'm at home, I spend quiet time in the morning for a few minutes. When I first get started to my day, I have an exercise routine that I go through. It varies day by day. Usually if I'm on the road, I'll have a Skype or go to meeting session with my kids and my wife to stay connected with them. If I'm at home, I'd follow this same routine and I'm back from the gym in time to see them off to school or sometimes take them to school.

You don't Skype when you're at home, right? With them. That's kidding.

No, no, it's actual, actual face to face.

I just messing with you.

But I try and keep that same start to the day because it's a habit for me. And many times in the, in the coaching world, when you're executive coaching or team coaching, you have a day or two or three off that it's easy to kind of get off track. Your day can kind of get away from you and you need to be doing those activities, such as following up from previous clients that you've worked with and what you just coach them on and preparing for next week's client or the future client after that. And so by keeping that same structured routine in the morning, whether I'm on the road or whether I'm at home, I can then hit the 8 o' clock hour with the same activities. Whether it's live coaching in front of a client, if I'm on the road or if it's home, I'm doing that post work and that prep work, preparing for the next client to keep me on task.

So what was your workout today if you've done it already?

My workout today, I actually have some exercise bands. So I did a short leg workout. I've got some bands where they allow me to do some box squats as well as some bands that allow me to do some lateral moves between the knees to kind of help build up the legs, calf muscles and things like that. My routine tomorrow will be, if I'm on the road to do that same set of exercise bands for arms and chest and so rotate that many times when I'm on the road. You try and stay at the most affordable hotels that you can. But a lot of these hotels vary from they have an exercise bike and maybe a treadmill to others have full free weights and machines. And so I keep those exercise bands with me. So I know regardless of the hotel amenities, I'm able to stay on my daily habit.

Love it. Love it. All right, so is there anything over this past year as you've been practicing and coaching folks that surprised you?

I think that one thing that surprised me, getting involved with healthcare and specifically Baptist Memorial Healthcare, which is a tremendous organization with a great culture, a great faith based culture, and they really live that day in and day out. The difference between the healthcare groups that I've been coaching and the manufacturing groups is I've really been surprised at how well the nurses, managing nurses, director of nurses, have engaged in this CADA process and being enthused and motivated to take these small bites toward their target condition and believing in themselves having some self efficacy that they can reach these challenges that seem unattainable when they're first set by the level above them. They start to see these small successes, these small wins, and it makes a difference to the patient that they're caring for, which is the most important thing, as well as the measurements for success for their particular areas. And so I don't see that as much across manufacturing. It takes a Little bit more effort sometimes for them to. To get that enthusiasm and that spark. But I feel like that within healthcare, there's a hunger and a thirst to be able to do that, as well as work outside of their areas and break down silos that have been established for years between departments and working with katas both in one department to another department and getting them to do PDCAs together that affect both of their challenges that they're in pursuit of, that just has supercharged the groups that I've been working with at continuing this kata effort.

Nice. Got it. So let's say that you're going through your week and maybe it's. Maybe things aren't going as well as you'd like them to, and you're just kind of in a rut. Do you have a routine or ritual that you follow to kind of recharge and refocus?

Yes, I do. And it happens usually at the end of the day, obviously, when you've made that realization that, hey, we're kind of stuck, or we're up against a very difficult situation, Whether it be people wise or subject matter wise. My firm belief in God and spending time with him, I'll just take a step back. Sometimes when I come in to the hotel room or even if I'm at home and spend some extra quiet time, I have some meditation music that I listen to for about 20 minutes and just try and make that commune and connection with God. And I always say the prayer that I lay out there is that he already has the solutions for this group out there. He already has a plan for the direction they need to go and the improvements they need to make. All we have to do is just stay in alignment with his will and find that path. And so just spend time asking him to show me that path. Show us that path. Give me the ears of the folks that they'll be able to hear what I'm saying and hopefully add value to them and give me the ears to be able to hear what they're saying so that we can get on some common ground and find that path that he's laid out for us to the solution.

Love it.

Love it.

All right, so, last question. So, Brandon, you've obviously been around the block for quite a while, and you've got lots of experience, lots of wisdom, lots of knowledge. But I'm curious, is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become a better practitioner of continuous improvement?

One of the things that I've been practicing within kata coaching with other lean coaching that I've done as well as Kaizen events. It goes back to a quote by Stephen Covey that most people listen with the intent to reply rather than listening with the intent to understand. So for the last year I've been working on as I'm having dialogue with someone that I'm coaching, not trying to formulate that reply or formulate that answer or get any preconceived biases toward giving him a premature reply. I've been sitting back and trying to listen and understand their situation and the details and facts and data that they're giving me and then embrace the Paul Sometimes I'll pause for 30 seconds to a minute before I reply, and many times I'll tell them before if you hear me pause or I don't answer your question for 30 seconds to a minute, it's not because I don't necessarily understand it. It's because I'm trying to formulate the interpretation from you so that we're on the same level of understanding of where you're coming from, where I'm coming from, from so that then I can reply after the pause.

Got it? Beautiful. All right, Brandon, well, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to visit with us. Let's go ahead and wrap the show up with maybe you sharing some final words of wisdom. And then why don't you tell people how they can connect with you, maybe on social media or your website or whatever it might be.

I guess finally, I would say that keep an open mind when it comes to the various latest methodologies, whether it's Toyota Kata methodology, whether it's twi, even relooking at maybe how we use Kaizen events. Keep an open mind that there's many ways to get to the same conclusion and explore and have an open mind to learning these different methods and fit that to the client or customer or within your organization in your department. Fit that to the people that you believe will give you the best results. Yes, as far as reaching out to me, I can be reached at my University of Arkansas email, which is CBB, the number 0 and the number 2 Ark.edu. also, my W3 email address is Brandon Brown at W3 Group LLC.com. you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm on social media there as well as Twitter and I'll have an upcoming website that'll be opening up here shortly in a few weeks, toyotamastercoach.com for the LLC that I'm working on.

Continuous coaching commitment and what's the W3 website again? Just a general website.

You can connect with the W3 Group at www.wthenumber3groupllc.com. Okay, very good.

All right. Well, Brandon, thanks again. I look forward to meeting you in person here and at the summit. It's going to be fun down in San Antonio. We'll hang out on the Riverwalk or something like that.

Sounds great. Looking forward to it, Ron.

All right, well, we'll take care and we'll see you soon.

Thanks for having me on. Thanks.

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