GA 113 | How to Utilize the Power Score with Jonathan Sands

You're listening to episode 113 with Jonathan Sands.

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. Welcome for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching Irelean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembacademy.com, we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today, I'm excited to welcome my friend Jonathan Sands to the show. Now, Jonathan, as he'll explain, works for a company called Dayton Superior, and Jonathan's going to kind of explain what they do, but they're really been on the lean journey for many years, and they've recently implemented something called the Power Score, and it's based off of a book called the Power. So it's basically another way of applying Hoshin thinking. Hoshin Kanmari Hoshin planning, whatever you want to call it, policy deployment. But it's a really unique way and a fascinating way of ensuring that your organization is aligned and all your priorities are straight, the right people are working on the right things, and your relationships are strong and so forth. So Jonathan's going to kind of get into what they're doing, how they're using it, and some of the benefits that they've seen. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 113. Again, that's gembapodcast.com and look for episode 113. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Jonael. Well, thanks so much for taking time to visit with us. Where are they calling in from today?

Hey, Ron, thanks so much for having me. Yes, I'm just up in the Lehigh Valley, just north of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Okay.

All right. How's the weather today? Nice.

Yes, it's nice. Finally. I think we've had a long stint of rain, and it's good to have some sunny weather for a change.

Yeah, I spoke to my mom. She's in Ohio yesterday, and she said that they're finally having some nice weather, so that's good. So. All right, well, Jonathan, let's go ahead and just kind of get started with you maybe sharing A little bit about your background and how you first came to learn about continuous improvement and what you're up to these days.

Sure, absolutely. So, you know, accent a little bit of a giveaway from New Jersey originally.

Yeah.

So born and raised in the uk, worked for the Institute of Physics. And one of the things with a lot of the research companies in the UK was they used to take forever to do things. And I actually became very frustrated with this and I think I kind of accidentally learnt continuous improvement out of frustration. Back in the 80s and 90s I had a knack of translating PhD speak from research into production. So that kind of was the start of establishing standards. But also at the same time I was noticing with these large labs that we were working in, the equipment was all over the place, there was no flow, everything was disconnected. And so I kind of started rearranging things, putting steps next to one another and kind of inadvertently was doing improvement of a process, kind of eliminating waste, which didn't really know about at the time, but it just seemed to make sense. And I think that was my first real exposure to just how powerful this could be. Taking six hour process down to 15 minutes. So it was very, very impactful for me. Early, early on, yes. That got me into quality and I started getting to know all the aspects of ISO 9001 back in the day, BS 5750 and working on all those standards, all the things I'd learned working through a few advanced materials companies. I became operations manager for one. That's what kind of linked me into the US And I took a leap of faith to come over to New Hampshire in 1998, worked as a quality manager at a facility to look. To try and dress up the facility and sell it. Sold it to a British company, funnily enough. Kind of run away from the Brits to be bought by the Brits.

Yeah.

And they really liked what we were doing and kind of asked me to do the same at another facility in Pennsylvania that then got me my Six Sigma black belt. And I spoke to a prior colleague of yours about I didn't really see it as Six Sigma, I saw it as Sick Sigma.

Okay.

It became a sickness. It was kind of this infatuation of everybody's got to become black belts, everybody's got to become green belts. And so I kind of broke out of that mold a little bit because I saw it as being kind of a self serving projects for the black belts and not for the customer or the organization.

Yes.

So started sharing a lot of what we were doing across the organization. And that got me some visibility in the company. And I was put forward for operational excellence manager, and we started to measure the organization, look at operational excellence across the whole organization. And that eventually got me to where I am today with Dayton Superior, Director of operational excellence, about 30 facilities nationwide, some in South America and China. And, yeah, looking to apply operational excellence across the organization, have a little bit of fun and enjoy enjoying our journey.

Yeah. Now tell us a little bit about Dayton Superior.

Sure. So Dayton Superior is construction engineering company. Do a lot of the forming and materials and manufacturing of components and accessories for cement, concrete industry, construction engineering companies. So bridges, if you're in the New Jersey area, the Tappan Zee Bridge is a famous bridge. You know about that. That's one of our projects. Even being involved with the Freedom Tower, the Panama Canal, some large construction engineering projects across the country.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, we're going to get a lot more into your journey at your company here in a bit, but before we do that, Jonathan, we'd like to start with our guests sharing a quotation or two that possibly inspires them. So do you have one?

Yes. I think it's one that many of us have heard before in the continuous improvement world. But it's just such a foundational one for me, you know, and it's Taiichi Ono's. You know, where there is no standard, there can be no Kaizen, and just really just hits home so poignantly for me. It's just so true. Can't improve unless we've really established what the baseline or the actual current standard is.

Yeah, yeah.

The other one that really comes to mind for me is one, as a mentor leader once told me, you know, trust the process of improvement and don't let perfection slow you down. You know, too often in my early days in my career, I was looking. Everybody's looking for perfection, and that kind of gets in the way of progress. Too often people are afraid of putting ideas forward until they're perfect. And, you know, true leaders recognize that, you know, the directional idea is correct, but don't let that perfection get in the way. So that was another one. Trust the process and you'll move forward.

Yes.

Love it.

All right. Well, as you know, Jonathan, we've spoken a lot offline about something that you guys are doing there at Dayton Superior called the powerscore. And I guess I first came to learn about it. You are part of a roundtable with a couple other Gembe Academy customers and Steve Cain, who kind of moderates those for Gembe Academy told me about it and said, gosh, you gotta have Jonathan on to talk about that. So I looked into it a little bit, and I'm so happy that you've agreed. Agreed to come on and talk about it. So let's kind of just start at the start, as they say, and tell us what is the PowerScore?

Sure. Quite curious, you know, PowerScore. So I think in the simplest phrase, it's a methodology of measuring quantitatively the effectiveness of leadership teams. It is a form of Hoshin planning, but to a performance score. So what it does is it breaks it down into three elements. P being the priorities, the W being the who, and the R being the relationships. And you multiply those together to get a score. Almost like the RPN in fmea.

Yes. Yes.

So that being said, it's always dangerous when a CEO reads a new book.

Yeah.

Whatever he's reading becomes the new. The new fab. We had gone through a process. If I give you a little bit of background on Dayton Superior's people development.

Okay.

We had gone through a process of top grading. And for those listeners that don't know what top grading is, that's a methodology of hiring and developing people within your organization and getting the best of the best, what they call a players. This came from Jack Welch's GE days. Yeah.

80 20.

Yeah, yeah. The old 8020 rule, where he was looking to have the best people in the organization performing at the highest level. So we employed top grading three years ago as a process to bring in the best of what we could do. If you think about the cost of a MIS hire and the waste of a MIS hire, it can be devastating to some organizations. So that was the foundation then from that powerschool developed as kind of the next phase. And that is how aligned are our teams? How well are we measuring what we're working on? If you think about alignment to the CEO as being the perfect alignment, what the CEO has requested for his goals for this year and for the next three years, we want to be working on the things that most. That impact those things the most. So this power score does that. It looks at. Okay, how often are you talking about your priorities? How often are you communicating the priorities to your organization, to your team? Are you doing it on a daily basis? Are you doing it on a weekly basis? You're doing it monthly, quarterly? What might that look like? Does everybody know what the priorities are? So it goes through a series of questions to kind of score yourself. And you can score yourself from 1 to 10 in each of Those categories.

So now is that like something that you do on a monthly basis? A weekly basis? Daily basis. How does that work?

Well, I think initially we started off with okay, gut feel. How does this start? Everybody had to read the book. Everybody was given the book to read. And then we had an off site meeting to talk about top grading and power score. And we ranked ourselves and generally everybody ranked themselves pretty high because everybody felt good. But then when we started digging into it, we realized that no, actually this isn't quite as high as we really think. And as you get into this, you realize that my team, for example, we look at this on a weekly basis. How are our priorities? How's our power score? Are we performing to the highest level of performance? Full power if you like, on a weekly basis.

Now, how many questions are in the priorities section of the assessment?

Each section has 10 questions.

Okay.

I actually have a series of questions but they have 10 scale scores.

Can you give me an example? You don't need to list them all off, but an example question. I'm curious because I've never personally seen it.

A low scoring may be that we thought a little bit about our priorities but not sure that we're given the right ones. And there's no real consensus on what our priorities should really be. That would be a low score.

Got it.

A high score one would be we've clarified our priorities. We know that they're the right ones and we're in the process of linking them to everybody's roles and goals. So that would be the kind of two ends of the spectrum perhaps for priorities.

Now you said that your department or your group is using this. How many people does that entail?

I have a team of four. We have weekly updates via Skype and we will discuss they include as part of their update the PowerScore. It's always on our radar and we ensure our team has very clear goals. For example, downtime improvement for the organization from X to. Yeah. And they know which facilities affect that score and how they are going to affect that overall downtime improvement.

Okay, so that was P priority. What's the W again?

So W is the who. Okay, so this is looking at who do we have on our team? Who do we have in our organization? Again, some of the. Again 1 to 10 scale I mentioned about top grading. So a players come into this. So a low score would be that we have less than 10% A players. Almost nobody here is in the right job and several people may actually be toxic to our culture. And then the high end of the Scale would be that we've got 100% A players and everybody here is in the right job, the right role and everybody positively contributes to our culture. So there's a breakdown in between of different levels.

Let me ask you a few questions on this because, you know, there's been a lot of really hardcore kind of lean thinkers who have kind of critical of the whole 80, 20 concept thinking that oh, if they don't like them, just fire them. Right. Instead of trying to develop them. So how do you balance that?

Right. And it's a very important part. And certainly there's the recognition that perhaps in the past some people may have been promoted into roles where they are just way over their head. And I think it's important to recognize some of that and have somebody moved into a position where a, they can perform to their absolute best ability and be more comfortable with it, more confident and actually have a high appreciation and like of their job in a different role. Doesn't necessarily mean that they leave the organization, but it certainly means that we understand that impact of a person's role and their contribution.

Yeah. Love it, Love it. So, okay, so that's w the R.

So the R is relationships. So that is, you know, how, how everybody is communicating with each other and how the team sees their relationships A internally and B externally to, you know, other departments kind of breaking down the silos, if you like. In fact, the first one is mentioned. This place is like the Lord of the flies. Total uncoordinated chaos is kind of the lowest end. And then the highest end would be things like clockwork here and internally and our external customers and partnership, senior leadership walks the talk. So it's really kind of understanding a confrontation, accountability and performance. Really, it's looking at those, those three key things now.

So you guys obviously in your group have a really consistent way of going about it. Do you benchmark your PowerScore with other Dayton Superior kind of groups or organizations?

Absolutely. So we actually recently did an all employee survey of our power score so that we could understand across the organization a how do our teams see themselves and also how do we see Dayton superior as a whole? So yes, we have actually just completed that very task.

Yeah. And I don't want you to share any kind of confidentiality. Was there any kind of surprises when you did that?

Well, I think it's a case of looking at the outliers. Where are the areas that have the most opportunity are probably the ones with the highest variation. Some people think it's a very high score and some people Think it's a very low score. I think that probably is the most opportunity. As with any organization, communication is just huge. Actually that was nearly one of the things I was going to mention is really listening and understanding people is more than just listening. It's active listening. Level three listening is the non verbals as well as the verbals. I think that we're getting clearer and clearer with our priorities across the organization through our leadership teams. And now it's kind of building through the who's and the relationships to get a higher score.

Yes, yes. So I want to kind of go back to the beginning of you guys rolling this out. I'm curious, what problems or problem were you trying to solve by implementing this?

Well, Dayton's appearance is going through rapid change. If you were in the company three years ago, it was completely different than it is today. And you know there's massive improvements across the organization. I just mentioned one just to give the audience some idea of the level of change. We've had a 70 plus percent reduction in our recordable injuries.

Wow, 70%.

70% in three years.

That's huge.

We've got really massive change across the organization on time deliveries at record levels. Obviously the business is also doing very well in itself as well. But what tends to happen as you're going through a lot of change is that people start to migrate priorities into what they see are their baby projects or the kind of soup of the day, problem of the day and could lose focus on the real strategic direction of the business and the absolute key levers to make change in the organization. And so I think this was more of, you know, hey, we've, we've gone through a lot of change and are going through change. How do we ensure that we continue that, that momentum that we have and the alignment with, with our true customer business needs. And this, this was a great way of kind of combining all of that together into one one element.

Now is this PowerScore? I guess it's industry agnostic. I would say it doesn't really matter. You guys are kind of in the manufacturing segment but if you work in an office environment or a hospital or something like that, sounds like this could still be applicable. Is that right?

I think it's completely applicable. I think any organization knows, any good organization will know what their objectives and goals should be. How are we performing to that? How does our team see that? How often are we talking about that? Do we have the right people on our team to help us with that? I think that's another part of this is the who is depending upon the timing of the business or the project timeline, it might be that we need to bring in skill or move skill into certain parts of the business and it gives us the ability to see that and be able to manage that. I think it is totally agnostic to any type of business. We have customer service and engineering and we have research. We have all those different areas of the business that this could help with.

Now I obviously want to give the book a plug here. I know we didn't do this too just to plug a book, but what is the book?

The book is called PowerScore. Quite simply that P O W E R score. It's by Jeff Smart and Randy Street. It's available on Amazon. I'm sure we could supply a link to you guys.

Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes for sure.

Awesome.

Yeah, I haven't read it myself. I'm really curious. I'm thinking every time we do these interviews I got to focus on the interview. But I keep thinking about how could that work here at Gemba Academy. So I'm really interested to learn more myself. So with that said, what advice do you have for people to maybe interested in learning this? Read the book obviously, but do you have any other tips or suggestions?

Sure. So I think early on we started with the executive team looking at this and understanding it from executive team and having a plan how to deploy it through the organization. But then it was a very rapid deployment into the senior management level. We actually had a dedicated off site, three day meeting to go through those areas of the business and talk specifically about PowerSchool and who do we have on our teams to talk about development to people. To me that was probably the most impactful start to any one of these projects I've seen. Just that investment in time in people was just very, very profound. I would highly recommend some form of very senior management communication of the need for this. Obviously this alignment to a CEO is the ultimate, right? But it could be that it's a department head or it's a vice president that wants to run this through his team or her team and that certainly can link to their priorities through. And I think once you read the book and you start going through this alignment and the discussion of alignment of ocean planning, I mean really an alternative way looking at ocean planning, it's just exceptionally powerful.

So what's next for Dayton Superior as it relates to PowerScore?

So as I mentioned, we had just gone through doing a survey of our employees, both functionally departmental wise as well as across the whole organization. And as with any of these stages, we look at, okay, what is your plan to improve your score? So if I have a score of 400, sounds like a low score, or when you read the book, you'll understand what score is a high performing score and what score is mediocre. It's then looking at, okay, what do I need to change in my priorities and communication, my priorities to bring that score up? What do I need to do in my actions around the people and the teams and communication and relationships and kind of tackle each of those individually and have a longer term improvement plan. So we're generally looking at this every quarter to see how we're performing as a business, even though we're communicating it as a team on a weekly basis.

Now, is there. And I guess that explains it in the book. So I just need to read the book. But when you facilitate the survey, do you. Is there software that you do it with or do you do it on your own to build your own survey, or how does that work?

We just use SurveyMonkey. Just really easy, keep it simple, nothing complex. Everybody was familiar with the terms and yeah, just real easy.

Got it, got it. All right, well, very good. I'm excited to read a book myself and I'm sure I'll have a million questions for you off the podcast as well, Jonathan.

Sure.

Good stuff. All right, well, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section and this first question. Jonathan, you know, we lean thinkers spend a lot of time talking about kind of the two pillars, continuous improvement, which is the tools, the things that we do, and then respect for people. But respect for people can be a little bit harder to define. So I'm curious, what does it mean to you?

Yeah, I think for me, respect for people is to truly listen. I think that too often we're rushed in our daily activities or enduring events and teams and, you know, somebody can raise a hand and say a point and you kind of. I've seen teams always try to think of the counterpoint to the point that's being raised and not really listening and truly listening to what that person is trying to convey. And the same can be said for when you go to the Gemba. You know, I will say that there's a lot of people on the shop floor that either find it difficult to communicate because generally they're not used to doing that. And it's important for leaders and management to really spend that extra time listening to employees. If you think about ways that the point being brought to you won't work you're not truly listening because you're listening to yourself. But what are the non verbals that person, how are they truly feeling and what is the point? So the digging questions, the open ended questions to really pull more out, I think really truly listening is probably the most powerful part of respect for people. For me.

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

I think it's one that was mentioned before about trusting the process. I just think back to many projects ago. I had a mentor working with me and this guy would pace up and down the room. I mean he wore a hole in his carpet. This guy would not sit, sit down. He was the truest sense of go to the Gamba because he couldn't sit down.

Okay.

And he would always say trust the process. If ever we got stuck, he wanted us to learn through trial and error. And if we went through and it didn't come out as we expecting, he said, well, how many things could you, how many different ways could you have planned for that result? And you know, you start thinking what could be hundreds of different ways to plan for that result but you didn't really know it until you went through the process to actually get to that point. So I think trusting the process, I still use that to this day with my teams and they're probably laughing, listening to this. But don't let perfection slow you down and trust the process and you'll get to where you need to get to.

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

I think the just get it done. We actually have some stickers on our laptops which I don't know whether I'm allowed to say, but just get it done with the Nike symbol.

Okay.

And you know, I think that was the again a little bit of the perfection in many of us in terms of wanting it to be too perfect to move forward. And for me it's with email, with messages, with projects, it's just get it done as quick as possible. Get those things done. Don't wait, just jump straight on the phone, straight to communicate wherever you need to as quick as possible. Actually find that frees up a lot more of my time by doing that than waiting and I'll get to that point later and then your brain becomes fogged with these things to do.

Yeah, totally agree. I recently gave a talk at the TWI summit and one of the things I spoke about was kind of how to strong culture. And one of the points I made was that strong cultures and strong leaders aren't afraid to take action, and you don't get lost in analysis paralysis, which is easy to do, right?

Yeah.

All right. Hey, is there anything that surprised you over this past year or so when you've been practicing and implementing lean?

Oh, that's a good question. I think that the thing that constantly surprises me as you go through this journey is really just how powerful the ideas from people are. You have all your ideals of what you think something could look like or should look like and over engineer something and simple answers on the shop floor. One example was that we have a facility in Chicago, and there was a problem with some paint on one of the pieces of equipment that just seemed to keep dribbling. And no matter how they were changing the application method and things, it would dribble onto this one face. And so actually, the employee on the shop floor said, well, let's just use a squeegee and squeegee off that face in one go. Just, you know, they wanted to engineer different methods to try and stop that. And just a simple squeegee was the answer. And, you know, I think we can over. Over complicate things. And the ideas from people on the shop floor and the talent we have around the business is always surprises me.

Well, yeah, you grant that autonomy to people, you know, in the freedom to think. It can be extremely powerful.

Yeah. And I think that's the difference when you change your environment and culture from one of feeling threatened or fear of failure to one of supportive. And it's okay to fail because that means we're trying harder.

Yes.

It is also very powerful.

Yes. Got it. Now, is there a routine or ritual that you follow when things aren't going well and you need to recharge and refocus?

Generally, when I recognize the things I do when I'm stressed, I tend to go quiet and I tend to think a lot, and I have to get myself out of that habit. So I usually go walk the dogs or get some fresh air and just get out of the environment that I'm in. And usually if a team is struggling with something, we usually take it outside and go somewhere different, take it out of the environment we're in. That's worked several times just to think differently.

Yes. Yes. Well. So, Jonathan, you obviously have been at this for quite some time and a lot of experience, but I'm curious, is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become a stronger, lean thinker?

You know, I think the longer you spend in continuous improvement in Many industries. So, you know, I've been in all kinds of high tech industries to, you know, heavy manufacturing, forging. I think you can always improve your skills in listening and talking to people. And I think that's something that I strive to constantly work on myself and that would probably be the main thing for me. Just always challenge, challenge each other to listen. And then when you're coaching others on listening, as you're doing Gemba walks and you're walking around with people, you know, asking is there another way you could have asked that question and just challenge others actually helps you as a coach to think about things a little differently. So I like to do that. I like to constantly challenge myself with that.

Yeah, Love it. All right, very good. Well, Jonathan, I appreciate you taking time to visit with us. I know you're very busy and, and thanks for. We persevered through some technical issues we had this morning, but I'm proud that we gave it another go and took action and here we are, we're at the end. So we made it. So let's go ahead and just wrap things up with you sharing some, maybe some final words of wisdom and then tell people how they can connect with you over social media or any other form.

Sure. So the best way to connect with me would be either through LinkedIn or through my email. Jonathan Sandsayton, Superior Comm. I'm also on Twitter at Jonathan Sands. So that's be the best way to contact me through social media. Probably the last thing I'll leave you with is a statement by Peter Drucker that is that the most important part of communication is to hear what's not being said. Oh.

Love it. That's a good. I've never heard that one actually. Say it again.

Most important part of communication is to hear what is not being said.

Wow, that's pretty powerful. I love it. That's a perfect way to end. All right, well, listen, I don't know if we'll see each other before ame, but if not, I do look forward to seeing you in Texas here in a few months and we'll have a good time visiting again.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Ron. Look forward to seeing you.

All right, take care, Jonathan.

Thanks, Ron.

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