GA 116 | How to Use Storytelling with Jacob Stoller

You're listening to episode 116 with Jacob Stoller. 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 in 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 then, today, I'm excited to welcome Jacob Staller back to the show. Now, Jacob first came onto the podcast back in November of 2014 on episode 33, and we were actually discussing Jacob's book, the Lean CEO. In fact, the book hadn't even been published when we recorded it Episode so I think it was maybe one of the first podcasts where Jacob got to talk about the book. So that was pretty cool. Since then, we've met up with Jacob at some conferences and we've done some other interviews and so forth. But it's a fantastic guy. He's got a really interesting background. He's going to say he's not your traditional lean thinker who came up through industry and so forth. He's got kind of a sales and marketing background, but he got into the lean world by kind of interviewing all these CEOs who are really successful in lean organizations and really understanding kind of the human side of lean. And that's where his true passion lies. And so what we're going to talk about today is what Jacob kind of refers to as lean storytelling. And it's really a topic that's near and dear to my heart because, you know, as you've heard me say in previous kind of talks that I've given and so forth, that Lean, in my opinion, is truly about people. The tools are really important and you need to know the tools. But ultimately it comes down to people and getting people on board and getting people working together, believing in each other and so forth. And storytelling, authentic storytelling. And we're going to talk about bad storytelling as well during the episode, because you could use it for bad, but when it's used for good storytelling and sharing, I don't know, really, success stories can be extremely powerful. In fact, there's lots of brain science and neuroscience that backs up this, and Jacob's going to kind of talk about that. So I could talk all day on this intro, but I really want Jacob to kind of lay it all out. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 116. Again, that's gembapodcast.com and look for episode 116. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Jacob, well, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Well, it's terrific, Ron, and thanks for having me again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I looked it up before we started this that. Well, we've seen each other since the first podcast, but the first podcast he did with us was episode 33 back in November 2014, before the Lean CEO even came out. We were talking about it, but the book hadn't even come out yet. So that was a long time ago. And we saw each other, I think, at a conference and we sat down and did some stuff. But great to have you back on.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What episode are we up to now, Ron?

Oh, goodness, we're in the hundreds now. So this one will be in 100 something teens or something. I don't know the exact number because we got a few queued up, but, yeah, we're well over a hundred now. Yeah, good stuff, good stuff.

So.

Well, Jacob, just in case people didn't listen to episode 33, tell us a little bit about your background and maybe how you first came to learn about continuous improvement.

Well, I actually came into Lean probably in a slightly different way. Other people do, because I was originally in the IT sector and did a lot of work there in sales and marketing, and then eventually became a sort of a journalist slash consultant. You know, sort of went back and forth between doing workshops with people and a lot of writing and storytelling of various kinds. So Lean, really, I discovered it by accident and, I don't know, 2009 or something like that, and was very, very excited about it. I found that Lean had, I'm going to keep saying stories here, much better stories to tell than we were able to tell about it. I mean, these involved people, they involved change to organizations. So I was very excited about the Lean community and the people in it and the dedication and the sincerity, et cetera, et cetera. So I wound up doing a lot of work with Lean companies, you know, writing, helping them tell stories, etc. Etc. So I've really enjoyed it. And I think what people perhaps know me most for at this Point is writing the lean CEO and really, that turned into really a different thing than I expected. Really. The stories of 28 CEOs and how they are, how they brought lean thinking to their entire organizations.

Yes.

And so I really kind of discovered the importance because they were all different. They were all very different kinds of people. And you really had to listen to everything they said to really understand it. So it kind of reinforced for me the whole importance of stories.

Yeah, well, I love stories. As you know, we were talking before we started recording of keynote I recently gave. And I love just telling stories because it's just one of my favorite keynote presenters of all time is Simon Sinek. You know, and he's just constantly pulling you in with, you know, awesome, relevant stories, and it's just. It's so powerful. So really, really excited for this, for this episode. So. But as you know, you know the drill, Jacob. We like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing an inspiring quote. So I'm curious, do you have something?

Yeah, I do. And this is from Rosabeth Moss Kanter at Harvard Business School. And she said sometimes strategic change just means taking something from the periphery, an anomaly, a demonstration, a small innovation, and redefining it as central. Now, I absolutely love that.

Was it mean to you?

Well, you know, it's taking something, a piece of something that's happening in the organization and in the lean world. It might be the result of a kaizen and showing that this reflects why we're here. Right. This reflects the purpose of our organization. You know, maybe you have a healthcare story where a patient was really helped because of an improvement and being able to tell that story that shows the whole purpose of what you're doing, you know, so it's that kind of thing. As a matter of fact, she goes on to say, I'll just give it another part of that quote. Motivate change by creating a new narrative showing how success will be achieved and why the elements are in place to get there. So to me, that's what storytelling is all about. You know, it's just grabbing that. That something that something that happened and being able to make that express that in a way that that shows really the whole purpose of our organization.

Yes. Love it. All right, well, let's just jump right in to storytelling. I guess that's the them today. How did you get into it?

Well, it really, it was through, I guess initially through the sales and marketing kind of background, I learned all about communications and how do we express things. And then, you know, as a journalist, really writing a lot of stories for magazines and then for corporations writing research reports, I really looked at very, very different ways of expressing information to people. And one of the things that I really worked hard on was interviewing people and getting people to tell me their stories. And I found that the old school, I guess, if you will, or sort of formalized way of asking questions that are sort of very, very specific. Who, what, why, where, when, that kind of thing really didn't get the kinds of stories out that I thought were most important. I found that asking open ended questions, allowing people to explain things in their own way really was how I got sort of the human side of stories and really got the context. So I really got very, very interested in that over time. And in some ways it wasn't easy. I always thought of myself as kind of a rational person who liked things to be all in nice little cubbyholes and everything nice and neat. But it really kind of evolved into the importance of stories with all their complexities and all the human elements.

Now the skeptic may be listening to this saying, well, yeah, but stor, you know, sometimes can have a bad connotation like, you know, you might tell a child, quit telling stories. You know, So I guess how do you make sure that stories don't, I don't know, how do I say it? Take a turn for the bad, you know what I'm saying?

You know, that's a great question. And I think one of the things I worry about even more, Ron, is that stories can be used to kind of convince people of things that really are not true. So yeah, I mean, it's a tool. It's a tool. It can be misused. Absolutely, it can be misused. But I think that we need more storytelling in something like lean, where I think what we're doing really is for the good, I think. But it is good or bad, it is a power. It's like the force, right? We're going to use the dark side of the force or the good side of the force.

Sure, sure, sure. But it's all the. So why do you think we need this in a lean world?

Well, I found really, and this is similar to what my experience was with it, is that we tend to in the lean world preach to the choir, right? And you have a community, you have terminology, you have language and you say, okay, well we talk in lean terms. So example of what you'll see is that you'll go to a lean report out, right? And somebody will get up with all their metrics, right? So they'll talk about reduced lead time, they'll talk about how they've reduced wait times or a number of things like that, and then they'll tell you how they did it. But often those kinds of things don't persuade hearts and minds. See, the thing about Lean is that you're really asking people to change in a way they never have before. And I actually, I love the. You know, in Kaizen culture, which your cohort John Miller wrote along with Mike Rublevsky and Jamie Fuerte, they use this pyramid, which was created by Edgar Schein, Right. And they show that culture, it's got three levels. Right on the top you have the artifact, and that's all the things you see the andons and stuff like that. And then in between, you have the processes that support those, but at the very foundation, you have the beliefs that support all this. Right. And so to get Lean culture instilled in an organization, you got to change people's beliefs, you got to change the way they think. And you don't do that by showing people statistics. I think the thing is, if you look at it from the brain standpoint, change is a right. Brain activity. Right. We don't change by looking at a bunch of numbers. It takes that kind of leap, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, one of my favorite stories, true story, and I've shared this in previous episodes in a talk I gave, and it was of a gentleman who. It was during a report out at the end of the week of a Kaizen event, and this man basically stood up. He was really negative at the beginning of the week, and he had been at this company for a long, long time and wasn't happy to be there. But by involving him and letting him come up with his own ideas and implement them and so forth, the man literally, he literally wept in the report out and he said that no one has ever listened to me like this team listened to me in 30 years or whatever that he worked at his company. And it was like, whoa, man. I mean, to talk about moving a room and then being able to then tell other people that story can really, you know, like you said, get at their heart because that's. It's truly about people. Right?

That's wonderful, Ron. Yeah, yeah, that's. That is exactly what needs to happen.

So let's talk a little bit more about stories and inspiring people. What is it you think? Is it just. Is it an emotional thing? Is that neuro neuroscience or what's going on?

Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. I mean, I think, in short, it's about having a story, telling a story that lights up more parts of the brain.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's fascinating. Now, in the last decade or so, you know, they've started doing these Emris, where they look at the brain and they see you can experience an emotion. And they can actually watch on this scanner, they can watch parts of the brain lighting up as a response to that. So they've done all kinds of experiments now. They're doing them all the time. But what they found out is that when you actually. When you give somebody a bunch of figures and numbers, it lights up a very specific part of the brain, and it's called the inferior temporal gyrus.

Got that. Doesn't sound good.

Got that. Yeah. Okay. It's a very specific part of the brain. So. But if you tell stories, they can see right on the scanner that all these other parts of the brain are lighting up. You know, so you got all this cortex activity throughout the brain. You've got dopamine. You know, that's what makes you feel great. I mean, you know, when you see a really moving. Hear a moving story or see a great movie. Right. You get emotion, right?

Yeah.

So. So that happens as a result of the context of the story. But it goes further than that. I mean, there's things. Something called mirroring, where you will take what you're hearing and you'll couple that an experience that you've already had. Right. So you actually identify with that, and you can actually, you know, you can actually see that happening. There's something called neural coupling, where if someone's talking to you, you can actually get in the same frame of mind as the presenter. And so, you know, when you say Ron, I'm talking. We're on the same wavelength. That actually can be literally true. Right. So stories have just enormous power to stimulate the brain, and that's why I think it's so effective.

So do you have any examples of, like, maybe Lean related stories?

Yeah, yeah, I would like to tell a story, and it's really a story within a story, because it's a story told by Bob Chapman. And I think a lot of people know Bob.

Barry Wehmiller.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The CEO of Barry Wehmiller.

Yes.

And he tells his story, but he tells a backstory as well. Really? The backstory is that Bob started Barry Whalemo. Not really started it. He actually inherited a machine shop from his father, but actually built it up into a multinational company which has got. I think it's about $2 billion company right now, but he built it up by acquiring companies that were distressed, companies that nobody wanted. And he turned companies around, he was very successful. But mid career he started to get concerned that these, the atmosphere in his companies was not the same as the atmosphere that he wanted to create at home for his kids. And it started to trouble him. So at a certain point he got his executive team together and they created a set of principles for running the company and called them the guiding principles of leadership. But Bob was aware of a couple of problems. I mean, first of all, he knew he wasn't alone. He knew that the vast majority of employees in America are not happy where they're working. And the stat he cites is a Gallup poll that said I think 80 something percent of people feel that their company doesn't care for them. So he knew this was a big, big problem. He also knew that a lot of companies out there had nice little principles and ethics codes, including Enron, by the way, a great code of ethics. So he said, we got to do better than just do a code of ethics. But they began working on it and then, and somewhere in that process, by chance, they acquired a company called Mark Rip Ward United, which had a very good Lean program, which was headed by Jerry Solomon, who I think a lot of other people, a lot of people know Jerry as well, and he's written a couple of books, et cetera, et cetera. But when Jerry and Bob got together for the first time, Jerry said, bob, if you're really serious about these guiding principles of leadership, we have a perfect match between that and Lean. Because, you see, Lean often runs into trouble, usually fails because people, the leaders don't get the people part. And so if we combine your people thing with Lean, we could have a fantastic combination. And Lean, by the way, would be a great delivery mechanism to make these guiding principles of leadership really, really happen in a way. Well, you know, Bob was skeptical because he had heard that Lean is used just to cut costs, right? And you know, you can't blame him for thinking that, you know, given a lot of people doing with Lean, right? So he was very, very skeptical. He got convinced to try this thing. So they did a pilot and then three months later they went to see a report out in a factory in Wisconsin. And this is really where Bob, the story that Bob tells begins. But so Bob and Jerry walk into this room, conference room, and there are people, there's some consultants up there with their PowerPoints presenting the lean results. And they presented fairly typical kind of stuff. They had their Lead time improved or they had reduced inventory or whatever they had done. So they start presenting these numerical results. And Bob had very interesting reactions. After a few minutes, he got up and left the room and some people came up to him and said, bob, what's wrong? And Bob said, this does not have to do with people. He said, this is all about numbers. We are not going to do that in this company. He was just absolutely livid. Well, it turned out that the next morning there was another presentation, but this was a slightly different scenario because they had all the presidents coming in the following morning for a big group meeting. And the first item on the agenda was another presentation, but this was by some employees who were actually on the shop floor presenting some lean results. And they didn't have slides or anything. They weren't prepared. And it was a guy named Steve who got up and started presenting. So Steve started out and you can imagine what it's like, right? 7:00 in the morning, all these around. These guys don't really are not used to presenting in front of people. So Steve starts to talk about, okay, well, we reduced the lead time, and it was the same kind of results that they'd heard the day before. So Bob listened patiently for a few minutes and then he says, and he told me, by the way, he says, I don't know where this came from. But he interrupted Steve and he said, steve, how has this changed your life? And so you can imagine the silence, right? Wow. Yes. Imagine a big silence. And Steve just sort of blurted out, my wife is talking to me more. Wow. Another silence. And so Bob says, steve, help me. I don't understand. And Stephen proceeded to tell what Bob described as one of the most moving stories he'd ever heard. He said, well, you know how it is. You come into work in the morning and you punch in your time clock and they tell you what to do, but, you know, they don't give you all the things you need to do it, but you sort of figure it out, you know, and, and throughout the day you get, you get 10 things right, but no one says a word. And then you get one thing wrong and they jump all over you. And then they, they complain about your salary and they complain about your benefits. And, you know, when I went home at the end of the day, I wasn't feeling that good about myself, and I think I was wearing that feeling, and I think it was affecting my marriage. And then Steve went on, he said, but with this new program, you know, I'm part of something. People ask my Opinion. And when I give my opinion, they actually. They do what I say. And when I ask questions, I get answers. And then when, at the end of it all, I get to see the results that we've achieved and says, you know, when I go home, I'm feeling much better about myself, and I think I'm nicer to my wife, and she's talking to me.

Wow.

And at that point, Bob turned to Jerry Solomon, who's sitting next to him, said, jerry, we have a new metric for lean reduction of the divorce rate in America.

And I don't think he was probably even joking, was he?

I think he meant it.

Yeah.

You know, Bob was very sincere about it, but look at that story compared to just saying, well, that these great Lean results. I was so excited that we decided to bring Lean into our program. You know, I mean, this is just on a whole different level. Right, right.

You know, but I think what triggered that, though, was having someone like Bob, I don't know, like you said, had the foresight or, I don't know, the spirit moved him or whatever it was, you know, to come up. How did that make you feel? How is this impacting you? You know, because if he wouldn't have asked that, Lord only knows. They may have never done Lean or any. Any type of improvement.

Absolutely. I love it. I love the fact that he said, I don't even know where this came from. Yeah. Sort of popped into his head. But, you know, he tells that story again and again, and I think Simon Sinek tells that story, too.

He does, he does. He's a huge. He's a huge Bob Chapman fan. So. Yeah. So I. You know, let's say people get it and they understand that telling a good story can be very, very impactful.

But what.

I mean, let's get practical. We're lean thinkers here. We need. We need a roadmap. What kind of tips can you give someone who maybe wants to start doing more storytelling? Is it about like a 3s or how does that all work?

Okay, well, you know, that's a great question about A3s, because I think A3s do give us a lot of the logic behind why we're doing things and stuff like that. But they don't give us the kind of content that you would get in a story that you just heard from Bob. Right, right.

No, they're going to tell us the lead time and the inventory.

Yeah, exactly. So Bob was quite upset by that whole A, and I'm certainly not putting down a three. I think we have to have it. It's an absolutely necessary thing to have disciplined and a standard way of documenting what we do in lean. But we're talking about something different here, which is winning hearts and minds. So we need a different system here and a different kind of a three, if you will. So the standard work, this is what I don't want to call it standard work. I guess that's overstatement. But what I've been using in my workshops is an acronym called Craven, so Stories that we crave. And it stands for certification, relevance, Authenticity, Values, and epiphany. So let's just go through the story and how it contains those elements. Okay. Certification really gets you in the door, right? I mean, business stories, you have to be. When you're telling it, somehow there has to be a sign that it's, yeah, this is valid. And, yeah, we did make money at that. So usually if you're telling a story about a lean success, you do want to make references to that. But you don't have to keep pounding people over the head with all the different reductions and things you've done. You know, it really only takes one to just show that credibility and then you can move on. And now certification is not necessarily dollars. It can be, this story was told by the CEO of a successful corporation. Okay. That gives us a certification. Or maybe this book sold a million copies. That's great certification. Right. So that can be different kinds of things. But just as long as you can show that you're compliant with some kind of agreed upon standard, it's like, show me your passport.

Right, yes. Yes. Got it.

So once you've done that, and you do that at any point in the story, just as a proof, but comes the issue of relevance. Right. And I think the mistake we make often, Lean, is that we tell stories that may not be relevant to other people. So if we're talking about, say, example, someone, he could have gone, and someone could have gone on about how we redesigned the cells and moved equipment together or whatever. Right. To reduce. Improve the lead time or whatever. So if somebody's working for an insurance company, they're not going to be too interested in moving equipment closer together. Right? Right. It's not going to make any sense to them. So I think we have to do that. But we can even take something very basic and make it more relevant. As a matter of fact, you did this yourself, really, when you gave your talk about pursuing greatness at. What was that conference you were at?

CWI conference.

Yeah. Right. Okay. So you said, for example, you gave a statistic that 70% of people are not engaged in their work. Right. And then you said, that means that if you go down the hall and you see 10 past 10 people, seven of them would rather not be there.

Yeah.

See what I mean? Yeah. So what you did with that is you made it relevant because people all of a sudden, they can look at their work situation, say, oh, yeah, they can see 10 people and say, you mean seven of those people don't want to be here.

Right.

You know, so. So that's. That's how you can do things to make it more relevant.

Yeah.

Authenticity. That's really about people, you know, and you have to think about it in terms of a listener saying, why should I trust you? Well, here's a real person, a real, living, breathing person, Steve. I mean, how many of us have been in situations where we worked really hard all day and had to jump through all these hoops and things were set up badly and we had to get around all these problems and no one even noticed? Right. So I think we can all relate to Steve. There's a bit of Steve in all of us. So the authenticity really is. You got to make it a human story that somebody can actually relate to. Right?

Yes, yes.

V for values. And I mean, what could be more of a value than family values here that Bob is bringing up? But Lean is wonderful at complying with values that we have. You know, if your value could be sustainability. Right. I mean, Lean does fantastic things with that. You know, it can blow away any company, you know, that talks about sustainability but doesn't have Lean. Right. Or, you know, patient values, healthcare, you know, looking after patient centric. You know, you want to say, we do the best for our patients. Lean hospitals can do way better. You know, so all kinds of values, connections can be made there. Finally, epiphany. And, you know, the listener always says, is this new or is this something that we already knew? And Bob really makes an effort to show how I didn't know that Lean and people centric leadership could go together. This was a discovery for me. Right. So you see, there's something new. There's an aha moment. And from that, you know, the listener has that aha moment where we say, wow, you know, people really are important in Lean.

I guess that was going to be my question on epiphany. Is the epiphany really from the perspective of the storyteller or the story receiver? Or perhaps it's both?

I think it can be both, but I think if the storyteller admits we didn't know this.

Yeah.

We didn't know we could do this. I think that's. I think it makes it so much more powerful.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So there are certification. Let me see if I got them. Right. Certification. Certification to me was kind of like, almost like maybe. I kept thinking, like, it's sort of like you're coming up with authority. Right. Like, you should listen to me. Right.

Like table stakes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Relevance. To me, it's just kind of like, know your audience a little bit, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I took a course by Nancy Duarte, you know, great, great presenter and herself. And that was one of their big things, is really understand your audience. Authenticity is about making it human.

Yep.

Values which obviously make it meaningful. Right. To the organization. And then epiphany. Did I do okay?

Got it. You got it. You're an expert now.

Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, that's really good. Crave, so that's easy to remember. Crave, so very good. So I guess to kind of wrap things up here, Jacob, I'm curious. Let's just say that there's, I don't know, maybe some lean advocates, if you will, listening right now, who want to use storytelling. What's some final advice for them?

Well, I would say, you know that. But I would start by saying, where there's smoke, there's fire. You might be saying, well, where is the passion to support stories like this? And I would say that whenever you have a Lean Success, there are. And I found this every time because I've written lots and lots of these stories, Ron. And I find that every time behind Lean Success is somebody that got really excited and did something. Because you can't do these Kaizens and make these improvements with disengaged employees. You can't do it. Right.

Or if you do, they're not going to be successful.

They're not going to work. They're not going to work. So you are going to find the inspiring things. So you look at the results and you say, let me talk to somebody. And I've done this time and time again. Let me talk to somebody who has actually participated in that Kaizen. And you get people that are excited. They say, wow, we've been talking about this stuff for years, and finally we're doing something about it, or whatever. You know, you. So I would say, really? Barry Wehmiller does this regularly. They have a communications person, and when they see a good success out of a project, they go in and they talk to those people and they get the real stories out, they interview them and they ask how did this change your life? Or just open ended questions, tell me about the experience, what happened. Write them up. You know, do any way you share Lean success, you know, supplement that. Instead of just showing the results, tell a story about how somebody, how it changed somebody when they went through this project. Because I think what you'll find is those stories very much often touch on the whole purpose of your organization.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love it, I love it. I could talk to you all day about this because it's, I've just been so passionate about explaining to people that Lean really is, is about, is about people.

It sure is.

And the tools are important. Like you said, a three is important. And because you could have, you could be all about the people and not have a clue, right, about what Lean is, then that's not going to be successful. So I think you got to have a balance, right? You've got to, you've got to understand the technical side of Lean. It's really important. But you, how you can never forget the human aspect because one without the other is just doomed to fail.

Absolutely.

Very good. Well, Jacob, any final kind of words of wisdom or parting thoughts as it relates to stories?

Well, I think we've covered it pretty well, Ron.

Yeah, I do too. I do. How can people get in touch with you or connect with you?

Well, my website is. My name jacobstoler.com Spellstoller just in case. J A C O B S T O L L E R dot com. Yes, it's where I reside. In cyberspace.

Yeah. What's your next book? When's it coming out?

Oh, gosh, I'm not sure I'm going to divulge the title, but I am working on an idea here. But I really do want to focus more on people and on engagement and all that kind of stuff.

Well, when you get going on it, I want to have you back on the show and we'll talk about it.

Wonderful, wonderful.

All right, Jacob. Well, I'm sure we'll see each other at a conference or something coming up soon and it's always great chatting with you and really enjoy today.

Great chatting with you, Ron.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast.

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