GA 115 | Mastering Puppets with Filipe Marques

You're listening to episode 115 with Felipe Marquez. 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, 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 training videos over at Gembacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today I have a pretty fun show to share with you. So I just got done recording an episode with a gentleman named Felipe Marquez or Philippe. I wasn't quite sure if I was saying it right and he said either one works towards the end of the show. But Phil Felipe is in Portugal and I was introduced to him by our mutual friend Paul Akers. So, Paul, thanks again for making a great connection. So Felipe is going to definitely blow you away with his energy and his passion. In particular. We talk about some pretty fun stories and he shares some things that I have literally never heard before. For example, we're going to start talking about their 5s, or they call it 3s program. And I thought, ah, this will be your typical, oh yeah, we get together and we clean and shine and so forth. But it wasn't. It was something totally different. It was a unique application of 3Ds that I have never heard before. That was really cool. And then he totally blew me away when he tied in Metallica and Lean. And that's all I'm going to say at this point. So you're going to have to listen to the whole show to hear that. But it was a super fun episode to record and I can't wait for you to hear it. Show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 115 and there's going to be some pretty cool links. Felipe's got a really nice YouTube channel and he's also done an audio book in Portuguese. So for anybody that speaks Portuguese, he's done an audiobook of Paul Aker's two second Lean book that is available as well. So we're gonna link to all that in the show notes. So be sure to go check out GembaPodcast.com and look for episode 115. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right. Felipe, how are you?

I'm doing great. And you, Ron?

Great, great. Thank you. So where are you calling in from?

So I'm calling from Portugal. I live next to Porto in the north of the country. So it's a beautiful Friday afternoon with lots of sun, lots of blue skies. So perfect day here in Portugal.

Beautiful. What's on for the weekend in Portugal?

So this weekend I'll probably go to the beach. I have two young boys. We'll go to the beach. They love swimming. I have some improvements to make at home, so I'm planning to have a small garden so I can have broccoli, fresh broccoli, spinach. So it will be a project for this weekend.

Nice. Sounds like a great weekend. All right, well, thanks again for coming on. I know it's. I know you're really busy, so I really appreciate you carving out some time. So why don't we just get started with you telling us a little bit about your background, Felipe, and maybe how you first came learn how you first came to learn about continuous improvement.

Okay. So I learned about Lean. It was probably eight years ago in a company where I was working for. And then I joined my father's company. I'm second generation in business. We have a company that's called Toure. We manufacture granite and ceramic countertops. So I joined the company late 2008, just before the crisis hit us hard here in Portugal. And so I joined the company and in 2010 we actually had some people coming in, consultants that helped us implementing Lean for the first time. It was the classical approach with the value stream mapping because we struggled every day, every time firefighting. And it was our first attempt to get control of the situation. But it actually didn't work as well as we expected. It was good, but it was not good enough in terms of people buying. And then late 2014, I don't know why, I was googling for stand up desks and I see this video of this crazy guy with a stand up desk. And the guy, it's Paul Akers.

Yes.

I said, wow, what an amazing video. He's an amazing communicator, Paul. So I was hooked. I still didn't know about 2 second lean. But eventually I found out it was in September, actually 2014, and by the end of the year I was completely in. I was completely 1000% convinced that that was the way for me, for my company. So that's our found, Paul.

Very good. Well, I mentioned on the intro you haven't heard that yet, but we, I guess, met virtually, if you will, because of Paul. Yeah, I think Paul maybe played one of your videos or something, and it blew me away. So thank you, Paul, again, for introducing us.

So, yeah, thanks, Paul.

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

Okay, I have several quotations that I really love. Yeah. But I will start by one that I read in one of my good friends. It's a good friend of mine. His name is David Long, and he wrote a book called Built to Live. Great book. Actually, I went to visit him in North Carolina last week. I had an amazing week with David. And so what he has in the book is not from him, but it's from Abraham Lincoln. And it says, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening my axe. Abraham Lincoln said that?

What does that mean to you?

For me, it can be interpreted in many different ways, but for me, the first thing is a statement of courage. And to do lean the way I do it, and many people I know that to lean as I do, somewhere along the way, you have to have the courage to do the important things because we have the urgent things pulling at us every single second. And it's true. If you want to accomplish something relevant in life, you have to, like Abraham Lincoln said, if you have six hours to chop down the tree, he will spend or I will spend the first four sharpening my axe. And our most important axe are the people. So everything I do every day, the most important thing I do every day is sharpening my people. That's why we grow people every day. So that's the basis of a strong wind culture.

Great, great. Do you have another one that you'd like to share? I know you have many.

I have one from William James in the end of the 19th century. And he said the deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated. So it's not saying that is the need to be appreciated is the craving to be appreciated. And many of the things that we found in lean and in 2 second lean are precisely fulfilling this very strong craving. That's why the videos are so powerful. That's why the morning meeting is so powerful. That's why the buy in is so powerful, because we are exactly doing that. We are fulfilling that need.

Ah, fantastic. All right, well, let's jump right in. I want to really kind of dive into Your. Your lean culture. So let's start with. You mentioned the morning meeting. Let's start there. Tell us about your morning meeting.

Okay, so everything we try to do, because I read many books and for me the goal of reading a good book is to bring something new, some improvement to your life, to take action. Not just only to read, but to take action. So we have several routines that we do in day that are in place so we can attend a specific goal. So the daily morning meeting we have, it's the first thing we have in the morning when we get to the company at 8am and in the morning meeting we are training our people to sea waste. And we have a very deliberate process to accomplish that. So we are making videos every day. Every day we show three to five videos of our own improvements. We have a team of 30 people. And while we see the videos, we are discussing with those examples the types of wastes that we have either eliminated or reduced. Okay. And as a side effect by showing videos, we are providing recognition to our people, we are celebrating their creativity, we are exchanging ideas. So it's a very. People love coming to work in the morning because every day there are something, there is something that is different and we are learning every day. So it's very important to start the day with this morning meeting.

How long does it take?

We have a 30 minute morning meeting.

So do different people lead it similar the way Paul does it or.

So far I started leaving it and since five months that I have two other people leaving it with me. And we are in the process of. I am establishing a new process to grow, to have a focus on developing lean leaders in my company. So the idea will be in the next month to start having more people leading the morning meeting. And we will standardize more the morning meetings so it's easier for more people to be able to leave the meeting successfully.

Yes, Got it, got it. So what about. I understand that you guys practice what you would refer to as 3s. Many people are familiar with 5s, but the first 3s talk about that, talk about your 3s program.

So the 3s', ing, the goal for the 3s'ing is a continuous improvement of our workplace. We want a place that is fresh, that is all organized and where we feel good. So basically we have something that is very useful right in the center of our morning meeting. On the floor we have a big question mark, a square with a big question mark inside. So this is our 3s?spot. And how does it work? So basically there are always things that we found that we find around the company in a shelf or against the wall. And nobody really knows what it's there for. It doesn't belong to them. They don't know who it belongs to. So it tends to be forgotten and cluttering our workplace. So every time we find a thing that we don't know where it belongs or if it has an owner or not, we bring it during the day to our 3s? Spot. Okay, so the next day, when we have the morning meeting, if there's something in this square with a question mark, we have everybody in the morning meeting. So it's a perfect moment to decide what we do with that. So we'll either get it a place, if it's needed, we'll either send it to our junk area, or we just send it to the trash or recycling. So it's very useful. And it's a process. It's a process that allows us to drain all the clutter that is typically spread all across the company and have a clear process delivered process to find the solution for that. So it works really well. I have actually some videos about that in our YouTube channel. And we have only 10 minutes. So from 8:30 to 8:40, we have 10 minutes of 3s ing. Because I think there is like a mental connection. If we have clutter in our workplace, we will have clutter in our mind and in our motivation. So it's very important to have at least 10 minutes a day where we are just cleaning, organizing, sorting. So that's very important because if we don't have that.

Yes, Well, I want to clarify, to make sure I understand. So the question mark on the floor, is that part of this 3S or is that part of your morning meeting? And then you also do say, 10, 20 minutes of traditional 3s cleaning, straightening, sorting.

Okay, so the question mark on the floor, it's like a connection between our three S' ing and our morning meeting. Okay, during the morning meeting, we discuss. We make some three essing as we decide what's in that area. Okay, that question mark. Then we have 10 minutes after the morning meeting where we are all in our workplaces, all across the company, where we are cleaning, sorting, and organizing.

Yes. Hey, give me an example. Give me the example of some of the things that have been put on the question mark in the last week or two.

All the crap you can imagine. So we have either like all the standard operating procedures, old binders, we might have some glues that are not used anymore. We might have some samples, some CV from software. Anything that you can find inside the company that is no longer in use or is out of place. So that's the kind of thing you will find in the question mark. Free EssencePot.

Now, is there something new every day or sometimes it's empty.

Sometimes it's empty. But we've been doing it for almost a year and almost every single day there is something there. Don't ask me, where does it come from?

That's great. I love that. I've never heard anybody do something like that. It's very innovative. I really like that.

It works really well. So if people make me use of us.

I'm looking around our studio here at Gemba Academy, I'm like, maybe we should put a question mark on the floor somewhere.

I love it. Yeah. And you know why? I think one of the slogans, if you can say, like, is everything in its place and everything has a place. So we just created a place for the things that don't have a place.

Yeah.

So that's the question mark spot.

Yes.

So if you have a doubt, we put it there.

Great, great, great. All right. What about problem solving? How do you guys go about problem solving?

We are struggling and we are improving little by little in problem solving. So we have, after the 10 minute 3s ing, we have 20 minutes of improvements and problem solving. So from 8:40 to 9:00am we are making improvements and problem solving. Most of the problems are identified during our morning meeting that just ended at 8:30. If we have a problem from the day before that happened, we are discussing it briefly in our morning meeting and if it is relevant enough, we decide who will take care of it. And just after the meeting and after the 10 minute tries ing, people will gather and we'll discuss and will observe and we'll try to figure out the cause of the problems that we have been having. So in terms of techniques we use, I think one month ago or two months ago, we were so lost with a specific problem in our soil area that I actually sent a message to Paul asking him for help. And he gave me like very basic notions about problem solving. So he told me, Philip, what were the last changes that that happened in the machine? We should start there. And we just saw the obvious thing that we just have changed our supplier for the blades and the problem began with a new blade. But we eventually decided that to allow us to be more efficient solving problems in the machines we are now having, like we are writing down every time there is a change in this machine, we are making like a black box Like a log of the latest relevant events in the machine. So every time there is something that goes out of control, we have a place to start looking for the problem.

Great. Well, I'm going to send you some information on Toyota's practical problem solving. We have a course on that. So I'm going to send you some information, Felipe. Maybe it'll help you as well.

That will be great. Because we are really beginners in problem solving. We struggle, try to improve. That will be a great thing. Thanks.

All right, so I guess I understand you guys also do a book club of some sort. Tell me about that.

Yeah, so that's something that was suggested to me by David Long, the author of Build 2 Live. Actually, last week I had the chance to witness their own book club meeting. So they are in his company, they are having a meeting, one hour meeting a week where they discuss the chapter of the book they are currently reading in a team. In my company, I took this concept and I just made slight changes. So instead of having one hour a week where all the team gathers to discuss the book we are reading, we are having 15 minutes each day, just after the problem solving and improvements, that is from 9am to 9:15am we are having a moment to read the book. We are reading it right now in the company. And on Fridays we discuss our ideas as a team. So the goal here is to grow our people. And the book we are reading is not related with our technical business. We are reading a book that's called how to Win Friends and Influence People.

Oh, yes, definitely.

From Dale Carnegie.

Yes, yes, Great book.

So people can use actually that information and that knowledge to apply it in their personal lives, with their friends, with their family. So we want to grow people to the next level, not just in terms, professionally, in all the broader sense, in their lives. So every day they have 15 minutes they are reading. And on Fridays, in those 15 minutes, they are sharing, telling stories. And the bond between the people is getting stronger. They are getting to know their personal stories. So it's really a very helpful team to build, a very helpful tool to help us build a very strong and cohesive team.

Well, you know, that book is really an important book to me. Actually, my father, he's passed away, but he was passionate about that book and he actually gave me copy of this book many years ago. And when he passed away, actually I read it again and I actually did a whole episode, a podcast. It's episode 17 gembapodcast.com 17 if anybody wants to go listen to it. And where I Kind of review the whole book. Like, I literally went through every chapter of the book and just kind of talked about some of the key principles because I think it is one of the best, most powerful books ever written.

Yeah, it's a gold mine.

Yes, it is. I'm so glad you're reading that. Fantastic. All right, so last question I have for this section, Felipe, is I understand that you might be a closet Metallica fan of some sort. Maybe something with Master of Puppets or something. So what's going on with Metallica and Lean?

Yeah, so I found myself in the intersection of Metallica and Lynn because I.

Noticed you can teach Paul about this, because I'm sure he doesn't listen to Metallica. So now this is a lesson for Paul.

It will be an improvement for Paul. Start listening to Metallica, Paul. But what I realized, we've been doing two second lean since January last year, 2015. And I realized that before we had Lean, we had lots of conflicts between the people. So you're just like any regular, normal company. And people kept fighting and not a very good environment in the team. And I realized the more we did Lin and two second Lin successfully, the less and less we had in terms of conflicts between the people. And because there is actually this Master of Puppets song from Metallica, and I'm just reading the lyrics. Master of puppets and pulling your strings Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams Blinded by me, you can't see a thing Just call my name Cause I'll hear you scream. So if you change Master of Puppets by the concept of waste. Waste is doing just that to your people and to your company. It's pulling the strings. And when you don't have a process of daily control, continuous improvement, daily, continuous elimination of waste, people, instead of fighting waste, they don't do it. So the problem stays there, the frustration grows stronger, and eventually people can't take it anymore and start finding someone to point the finger, trying to find out who's the guilty one. So they are blinded by the waste. And so I think it's perfect. It's like a perfect analogy between what waste is and this song, Master of Puppets from Metallica.

All right, so now we just listened to Metallica first time ever on the podcast. Fantastic. I love that analogy because it's so true, you know, that there is. There is this. This. This link between the human behavior and waste. And. And I think when people recognize that and they start attacking it, everything gets better, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And the good thing is that with two second Lean, you have a simple process to do it. It's so simple. That is striking. How powerful it is.

Yes. Love it. Very good. All right, Felipe, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. And the first question I have is, we spend a lot of time in lean talking about continuous improvement, meaning the tools, the things that we do. But we also spend a lot of time talking about respect for people. But. But sometimes that can be harder to define. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

For me, respect for people can be seen in different perspectives. One of the most important perspectives for me is that you, as a company owner or like a director or a leader, you realize the genius and creativity of your own people to solve problems. You don't have to come up with every big and perfect solution. It doesn't depend on you. It depends on them. You should motivate them to express their genius and creativity in solving problems. That's a way to show you respect them as human beings and you respect them as actually people that have a great potential to really solve the problems themselves. So that's one thing. Another way to respect people is giving them time so they can have training, giving them time to work through the improvements, to keep their workplace clean and organized. Because sometimes we say to people, okay, you should improve and you should have your things organized. But then we don't allow them. We don't give them, like, protected time space during the day so they can do it. So it's so simple. You have to give them time. You have to give them training so that they can effectively improve their workplace and have things organized and solve problems. So, yeah, one final thing that I will say, respect for people is also recognizing their accomplishments. So that's why we are showing the videos and celebrating their ideas. Giving them recognition is also a sign of respect for people. And one thing that people usually associate respect for people is respecting others. It's also respecting yourself. You're also people. You may have part of it. So respect yourself means respecting your mind, respecting your body, respecting your mind, being a continuous learner, respecting your body by doing some exercise, eating healthy. So it's all different ways of showing respect for people. Very good.

Felipe, what's the best advice you've ever received?

I'm a very fortunate human being because I'm surrounded with amazing people, and I receive so many wonderful and wise advices that it's really hard to come with. One advice that I'd like to highlight, but I'll probably give this advice that Paul Akers gave to me and it's so simple. That's why I chose this one. So the advice from Paul is making two second improvements consistently every day. So it's like the power of small improvements, these small wins. It's completely mind blowing. I would say that it doesn't seem like, wow, a very powerful device, not a big deal. But it's so powerful and it's so counterintuitive, the huge impact that making two second improvements every day, every single day will have in your life. So for me, it was a tipping point, turning point in my life when I had this advice.

And what's so powerful about the advice is a lot of times we spend time talking about, whoa, how will we sustain the improvement or sustain the gains or control the gains, when in fact you really can't ever sustain anything. It's either getting better or it's getting worse. Right?

Totally on the same page with you, Raul. You are either moving forward or you are moving backward. There is no in between.

Exactly. I love it. Now, is there anything that surprised you over this past year as you've been practicing lean?

Actually there was. So when I started Lean last year, I was 1000% convinced that it will be like a life changing event for me and for the people that surround me in the company and my family. But I never expected, I really didn't expect the huge increase that we have in our productivity in my company. I was expecting it to get better, but I never thought that small improvements could add up to something so significant. The truth is that we are having approximately the same sales we had last year at this time, but we are actually feeling that we don't have enough work. People are starting to get worried, but we are making our numbers. But it's so much easier and we do it with so much faster, with more quality that it's completely mind blowing. So it was a huge surprise for me. I didn't expect to have so huge impact with two seconding in my company.

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

Yeah, actually I started small. I have this app called Way of Life in the iPhone where I keep track of my daily habits and every time I stumble upon something really interesting, either in an audiobook or something I read, if it's really important, I bring it to my life and I start implementing that daily habit. So I have a few. I have actually 48 at this time, but I will share with you. My keystone habits would be daily reading. So I'm reading every day at least 30 minutes. I try to keep it very simple, 30 minutes, not more. But I want to do it every day. I do also some sports and stretching, 30 minutes a day. And one story I usually tell people regarding the power of personal habits, daily habits. It's the power of keeping it simple. Very simple. So I give you an example. We have Joe and you have Jake. And both of them want to have a healthier life, be in shape. So Joe gets home, sits on the couch, grabs a pizza, turns on the tv. So Joe is not going to get healthier. Game over for Joe. And then you have Jake. Jake is very committed, he's very strong in his habits. So he starts running every day, 30 minutes. The first day he does 50 push ups, the next day you'll run for 40 minutes. It will do 60 push ups and it will be pushing harder and stronger and longer. And after three months, Jake will probably get injured or you'll probably get bored, or you probably don't have enough time to continue doing like that. And we will eventually end in the same kind of couch with the same pizza, watching tv. So it will be game over for Jake too. So what I realized from lean and from 2 second lean applied to my life is that when I do 30 minutes of sport every day, I try to keep it simple. I looking to do it for the long run, doing consistently with no injuries, doing it every single day. So that's why when I say 30 minutes is not 31 minutes, not stronger, not harder. You know, Ron. So it's very important to have very simple habits, not try to do too much. Because when you try to do too much too much, the chances for you not doing it after a while increase dramatically and we don't want that to happen.

Yes, yes. Very good. All right, Felipe, so let's imagine that you're having a. You sound like a really energetic, happy guy, but let's just say you're having a bad week and things just aren't going well and you find yourself needing to recharge and maybe refocus a little bit. Do you have a process that you follow to make that happen?

Actually, I have two processes. So I have one daily process that is I keep watching videos and I keep in contact with Voxer, with all of my friends all around the world tomorrow, Paul Akers, I have many others. I have Thomas Reiner, Dolin Farmer, Brad Gaines, David Long. So I don't want to say the name of everybody. Okay. But anyway, that's one of the way I keep recharging and refocusing because I keep in contact with all of those people. And then I have this habit of every three months I go somewhere around the world and I visit a lean company or a lean friend. And it's very important so I can bring a different perspective, Work on my business and not in the business. Work on my lean culture and not in my lean culture. So it gives me a different perspective and it's really powerful because it allows me to be more motivated, more inspired, and really have this energy boost that we all need because we all have bad weeks or bad days from time to time. But what's important is to keep on doing the simple things. The simple habits, the simple improvements, the small wins. That's what will keep you moving forward.

Yes. Very good. So, last question I have for you. You've been at this for quite some time and it sounds like you've made a lot of progress, but I'm curious if there's a skill area within a lean body of knowledge that you think you need to get better at in order to become a better lean thinker.

So right now it's probably not directly related with lean, but my current focus, it's on sales and marketing because we've been increasing so much our productivity, so we need to have more sales coming in. Not just the company is completely stable, so that's not the problem. But we need to raise the challenge to our people to motivate our team so they see that companies moving in the right direction. So focusing on sales and marketing is one of my weak points. I'm going through Jack Daly's courses and all other information, so that's one thing. And in order for me to be able to do this as a manager, I'm working on building my lean leaders, my lean leadership, because I don't want to be the sole lean engine, lean energy source in my company. So I'm starting to scale to duplicate this characteristics in other people that I identify. They have the potential and the will to do it. So I will invest some time every week to work with my team leaders and make them grow to the next level.

Fantastic. You know, I've never been to Portugal, but I think if I ever come, I have to come and visit you.

Felipe, it will be a pleasure. So, yeah.

And anytime, if you ever get to Dallas Fort Worth, you definitely need to stop by and say hello because I'd love to have lunch and trade Metallica stories or something like that.

Okay. It will be a pleasure. Anytime you come to Portugal, you have a friend. So I will show you around. And if I go to the States to near you. I'll for sure give you a call.

Very, very good. So how can people connect with you, Felipe?

So they can connect through email. It's Philippe.

Oh. So am I saying your name wrong the whole time? Is it Felipe or Felipe?

That's a long story. Every time I meet new people, there's always a different accent and all the accents are good, so you can call me Felipe, Philippe.

Okay.

Anyway you like so well spell it.

Just in case people don't spell it correctly.

Okay. It's F I, L, I, P E. Okay. At T O double R E dot P R O. Like professional P R O.

Okay.

Yeah, got it.

And we'll put that in the show notes as well. Are you on LinkedIn?

I'm not.

Okay.

I think I was, but I don't use it.

Yeah, no worries, no worries. Okay, well, we'll put your information up on the show notes for people who want to connect with you. So. Well, Philippe, Felipe, I'll say it both ways. It's been a pleasure, been really fun. This is a great way to end Friday here with. With a great podcast. So thank you for taking time and. And hopefully our paths meet sometime down the in the future.

Yeah. I'm so happy to finally talk with you, Ron. I thank you very, very much. It was a wonderful time talking to you today.

All right, well, have a great weekend and we'll talk soon.

Okay, take care. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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