GA 119 | How to Handle Skepticism with Brian Rotsaert

You're listening to episode 119 with Brian Rotsart. 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, this is. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembaacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now I want to give a couple Gemba Academy updates. So as you may have heard or seen in our newsletter, if you're a subscriber, we have recently announced the release of Gemba Academy Espanol. So we've started with our 5s workplace productivity course. And you'll meet Anna Cruz. She's recently joined Gemba Academy and she's kind of starring in these videos. And we've got a whole plan put together for how we're going to basically duplicate our entire School of Lean content library into Spanish. And when I say into Spanish, I mean everything is in Spanish. Obviously the spoken word is in Spanish, but even all of the graphics, any kind of spreadsheet that's shown, it's all being translated. All of our quizzes, all of our overview documents, everything is being done in Spanish. So we've started with 5s and we're working on a schedule. The seven deadly waste is going to definitely come early here in the journey. The Kaizen Way will be up there. We've had a request for the Culture of Kaizen from one of our existing customers with Spanish speakers. So if you are a Gemba Academy customer and you have Spanish speaking folks, definitely reach out to us and let us know what you think, how we can best serve you because that feedback is really, really important. Also, as I've mentioned on previous few episodes, we are excited to be part of the AME conference again coming up in October in Dallas, Texas. So we are going to be there again as an exhibitor, but we're also going to be doing a really awesome free cocktail party on the Tuesday night of the conference. Last year we had about, I don't know, about 150, 200 people. We're thinking about 3, 400 people this year will probably show up. We've got a great location Maybe even have a little music playing in the background and so forth. But it's free drinks, free snacks, and just great networking. No sales pitch or anything like that. We just want people to come and hang out and talk with one another. So if you want to learn more about that conference and to be able to save 10% on the price of admission, go to gembaacademy.com Ame again gembacademy.com and go to gembacademy.com Ame now today I'm excited to welcome Brian Rotsart to the show. Now, I've known Brian for several years and he's a fantastic lean thinker who lives in Ohio. So go Bucs. And what Brian and I chat about today is really his journey with continuous improvement. Brian is now a consultant. So he's doing a lot of coaching, a lot of mentoring. He's seen a lot of success and he's seen a lot of mistakes. And so those are the kind of things that we explore in this particular episode. Brian has a really great personality and I just really enjoy talking with him. The show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 119. Again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 119. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Brian, well, thanks for taking time to visit with us. Where are you calling in from, Ron?

I'm calling in from good old Cleveland, Ohio.

All right, all right. Home of almost home of the Buckeyes. Lots of Buckeyes up there. So it's a good place in the country to be.

Yes, that's very, very comforting in a way.

Yes, right, right. Yes, exactly. All right, well, Brian, thanks for coming on. Let's go ahead and get started with maybe you telling us a little bit about your background and maybe how you first came to learn about continuous improvement.

Okay. Well, I cut my teeth originally in logistics, trucking, transportation, and boy, there was just an awful lot of firefighting back in those days. And a company I was with at the time adopted at one point Lean Six Sigma. And they described it as a fact based, data driven way to run your business and operate. And I thought, wow, what a great way to go about doing so because I hated rework and I really got really tired of the firefighting. Heroic effort feels good only for a little while, but as a way of life to satisfy your customer. I just had an inkling that there had to be a better way. So my hairs on the back of my neck kind of stood up when they were introducing this concept. And I was like, wow, I've always wanted a better way. And it's really wet my appetite.

Nice, nice. So what are you up to these days, Brian?

These days I'm working for Evoke Research and Consulting. We do Lean and Six Sigma process improvement methodology, consulting and training.

Okay.

And I'm stationed here at the NASA Glenn Research center up here in Cleveland, Ohio.

Nice, nice. That's got to be pretty fun. NASA. It's pretty cool.

Absolutely. It's a fantastic place to work with an environment and working with some very brilliant minds. Some of the projects and insights that it's really. It's fascinating and it's really humbling at the same time.

I guess a psipoc doesn't intimidate some NASA scientist or whatever, right?

No, no, it doesn't.

Very good. All right, well, Brian, as you know, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quot that possibly inspires them. So do you have one.

Ronnie? I'll share with you. I picked up this quote, it's actually two quotes when I first went to black belt training back in about 1997.

You're dating yourself? You're dating yourself here?

Yeah, getting older by the day. But I was at a meeting room at a hotel in Pennsylvania and I found myself wandering into the bookshop there, or the gift store rather, on a break, and I saw these little kind of wallet sized cards by the register. I picked them up, started looking at them, and the first one is from a guy named John Ruskin. He's like a Victorian era artist and philosopher type person. But his quote said that quality is never an accident. It's always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent direction. And it represents a wise alternative. And I thought, wow, that's pretty impactful. But I couldn't walk away just yet because right next to it was another one from a guy named Johann Wolfgang Von Guthrie. I guess he was. I had to look this up to make sure I got this right, but he was an 18th century German statesman. But anyway, he said if we take people as we find them, we may make them worse. But if we treat them as though they are what they should be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. And I thought that was just a very great way to great attitude, mindset, to kind of lift people up as you empower them and teach them and help them solve a lot of their problems.

I love that. Very good. All right, well, Brian, we've Known each other for several years and I've gotten to, I've really enjoyed hearing about your journey, but I want to kind of, just for the benefit of our audience here, have you maybe kind of go back a little bit into your personal journey with Lean and Six Sigma? And I'm curious if maybe there was like a defining moment where everything kind of just came together for you? Was there?

Wow. Yes, there was. Ron, I'll share with you. We're on a project where we were. There's a process improvement to a manufacturing line. Okay. It was packaging material and the backdrop is that it was a very stodgy workforce, if you will, a union environment, very, very set in their ways, just very kind of old schoolish. And we knew what we were up against in the sense that the bad rap that continuous improvement sometimes gets in that, oh, they're just out to cut heads and save money and make more profit. They don't care about us, you know, worker B types, the folks that run the tow motor and get their hands dirty and really add value to the customer. But we went through the entire demand process, okay, and got their participation rather than begrudgingly. And you could see the skepticism begin to melt away as time went on throughout the project. But in the end result was when we did streamline the process to take out a body and increase throughput and productivity, however, that person was reutilized, repurposed in another area in the warehouse. That brought about a cross training effort and really alleviated some pressure in other areas of the warehouse. Everything was running smoothly. But the beautiful part of it was that we were able to walk the walk and talk the talk and really demonstrate to a very skeptical workforce what Lean really is about. It's not about cutting off people, it's about embracing the concepts of Lean, making it work for everybody and that respect for people aspect of Lean as a foundation. I think the defining moment there was when that was really demonstrated throughout the course of the project. And despite what some of these folks thought in their worst fears, is it going to be me that gets let go? The exact opposite happened. And there was great success with the project.

So I want you to, if you can, go back to the Monday morning of that first project, if you will, and everyone's kind of coming together and I'm guessing there were some folks in the back of the room with their arms crossed and a scowl on their face.

Exactly.

Talk about that moment. Like, how do you handle that? You know, even today if you go into a client or something and maybe someone's not super pumped up to be there. How do you handle that as a facilitator?

Well, sometimes you have to draw it out of people. You know, you might say, ken, what do you think? Rebecca, what do you think? Something like that. But I've learned too, that when you do more listening than talking, you know, that sends a great message to the people that you're really interested in what they have to say. And the art of listening is something that, well, I'm always in need of that. But if you can work on that and develop that, that goes a long way to helping thaw the ice and get people's buy in and involvement.

So you mentioned on this first story of these folks kind of transforming and coming along, you mentioned that their skeptics skepticism started to go away. When was that and why do you think, you know, it did go away?

Okay, well, one of the reasons is because we kept them involved with, with the measures. Okay. One of the, one of the things I've always appreciated about, about the metrics and the measures associated with, with an improvement project, they kind of help dissolve the emotion, they diffuse things. So, you know, again, that puts the focus more properly on the process and never on the people. And then they begin to, when you share it with them and they begin to study it and look at it and they start to ask some good questions or they start to provide more insight or they, you know, they get curious themselves. Why is that? Okay. So we just keep getting closer to the ultimate solution or to identifying a root cause or something. And, you know, I've always had the philosophy, Ron, that people tend to support what they help create. So if you involve them in, I mean, really involve them in a process improvement, that's also how you get their support.

Yeah, yeah, let them do it.

All right. Absolutely.

All right.

The empowerment to the level of the gemba, and then to let your actions match your words, that's just a powerful way to go about implementing and getting the change that you're hoping for.

Yeah, very good. So I know you coach a lot of people, a lot of black belts, green belts, and so forth, and just lean practitioners. What kind of advice do you have or coaching tips do you give folks who are just getting started with their journey?

I always tell people, don't be afraid to make a mistake. Okay. You know, when you're learning lean six, like anything new, there's a little bit of trepidation. Sometimes you have to get those butterflies in the stomach. But if you got that nervous kind of excited feeling, that's Often a signal you're actually on to doing something good. When you can push yourself outside your comfort zone, that's a sign that you're in growth mode and you're going to learn and you're getting ready to take that step towards something new, something better. And what I tell black belts especially is to in a lean and Six Sigma environment, boy, to have what I call a bias for action. That's kind of a trademark characteristic of some of the better black belts that I've seen is to just be really forward thinking with change and be persistent in your pursuits because change by, as you know, is, it's definitely not easy, especially in government cultures and a lot of private practice as well.

So I have a fastball for you now. I've given you some softballs. I got a fastball. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

So one of the, I guess and I'm, as you know, we've known each other for years. I'm a huge believer in both Lean and Six Sigma and I know both and I love both and I'm better because I know both. But if I would say if there's one criticism on more of the Six Sigma side is that even when I was kind of coming up through the ranks and was lucky enough to be kind of selected, if you will, to go through some training, but it can be seen as kind of an elitist mentality where a few people get chosen to go through the training and then everyone else is left to watch these up and comers go through this two year program or whatever it might be. And I think that's been some of the challenges with more of a traditional Six Sigma approach without any lean thinking kind of principles behind it. I'm curious, like from your perspective, how do we overcome that or how do we make sure that continuous improvement isn't an elitist environment? Do you know what I'm saying?

Well, I think that when one great way to get that feeling of being more earthy to the everyday worker is to incorporate that the lean learnings and the lean lingo and some degree of education as to maybe some of the tools that one might see visually like a control chart, for example. But when you work that into your daily huddle meetings and you bring it down to. Down to all levels. Yeah, if it's on the shop floor, if it's visible, if you're talking about it in the huddle meetings, I think to me that doesn't sound elitist at all. That sounds.

No, I guess what I'm getting at is when you mentioned shop floor associates or something, if they're never allowed to, or never encouraged to learn or to learn how to create their own control chart. Right. Instead of the black belt coming around and doing all the control charts and saying, hey, Mr. Or Mrs. Operator, this is a control chart, log in on it. Or that's. I guess what I'm getting at is, and I think you've covered it already a little bit, is involving the people and making sure that it's not just a bunch of, you know, hotshot black belts running around solving all the problems. Instead it's bringing everybody in to the fold. Like, like your first story, you know, where you involve the people doing the work. So, so I didn't mean to trip you up or anything like that, but it's, it's, you know, it is something, it's something that we're passionate about. Again, the academy is why we have site based licenses, because we want everyone to be able to access the material, not just, you know, five, you know, hotshot up and comers who are going to become vice presidents one day.

Right, right, Yep, absolutely.

Yeah. So. Well, you mentioned mistakes earlier and how people can learn from them. But I'm curious, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you've seen people make and then maybe what did they learn from them?

A lot of times I've seen people try to kind of leapfrog the methodology a little bit in, in the sense that they want to kind of go straight to the solution before analyzing the data and even obtaining the correct data. A lot of times data collection can be a lot easier said than done.

Sure.

It's oftentimes not just handed to you. You have to go out and get it or create it. And that's the hard, the temptation to work off of gut feel or anecdotal. Anecdotal data can really sometimes come back to haunt you and your ultimate solution doesn't necessarily bear out.

Yeah.

The need for data. Data is your friend. That's why I tell people you're going to want to be able to hang your hat on it and be willing to, to do what it takes rather and go out there and if you can't obtain it, sometimes you gotta create it. And with some creative insights you can actually do that. You might have to walk the Gemba a few times with a checklist and a stopwatch or something like that, but most data is out there. But getting it in house and onto a spreadsheet where it can become meaningful information, it's oftentimes a Stumbling block for people, but it's so important, it's a big mistake to avoid, is to allow yourself to proceed without the data. That's really going to help you.

Yeah. You've heard me say this before. When we coach our black belts going through our program, we say there's three things that you really need to have a decent certification project. At a minimum, you got to have a problem that you've broken down sufficiently. Number two, you shouldn't know the answer necessarily. You might have ideas, but this shouldn't be a slam dunk. And number three, you gotta be able to quantify that data or that problem with data, preferably daily or weekly data. Right. And. And it's the third one. Right. Getting that data to quantify the problem. Sometimes they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean? We know it's a problem. How bad of a problem? It's really bad. How bad? Really bad. Come to find out, they really don't know how bad it is. They just know their customers are yelling at them every day. Right.

So one of the great things about data Ron, that I like is like, even to myself, it's very humbling. And I love that. I love to be humbled. And because I always tells me something, I. I just learned something I didn't really know, I got humble. Okay, now I know. Yep. But the old gut feel, we all have that to some degree. When the data comes in, I always. It always makes me smile, actually, that, you know what, this situation, this process, performance, it wasn't quite what I thought it was. Or maybe it could be better, could it be worse? But the point is, I wasn't all that accurate myself, but I appreciate the data and that the data is going to lead us to address the root cause. Yeah.

Love it. Got it. All right, well, Brian, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. The first one is we lean thinkers spend a lot of time talking about those two pillars, continuous improvement, which is the tools, the things that we do. And then the second pillar being respect for people. And we touched on it a little bit earlier. But I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

You know, I've heard people answer that question many different ways, and I really like a lot of what they've had to say. For me personally, I think respect for people means talking about, thinking about behaving, you know, the same in front of a person as you're talking to them, let's say on the, on the shop floor or in a team meeting. As you would. As you would outside. It means being that humble person, realizing that there's a lot that you don't know, and seeing people as valuable and believing in the notion that everybody truly wants to do a good job of what they do. No one's here to gum up the works or put a monkey wrench in this or that, that people are really, for the most part, possibly trapped in a bad process or kind of stuck there.

Yep.

So not only that, but there's a certain consistency, maybe conjoined with sincerity in the way you both speak and listen to people. Hmm.

I like that. I like that. Brian, what's the best advice you've ever received?

It goes back to my. One of my coaches from my wrestling days in high school, maybe. He told me that practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Only perfect. Practice makes perfect.

Say it. Say it again.

I love it. Okay. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect. Practice makes perfect. And that was so valuable to me because when I heard that and it. And it sunk in, I'm like, you know, wow, what. What an attitude adjustment it gave me. And I realized that, hey, if I want to be good at what I do, if I want my, you know, my. Be it my life, or if you're playing a. Involved in athletics or just your performance on the job, or even if you're a job owner and you're interested in operational excellence, you're not going to achieve excellence by going out and doing things half heartedly or not consistently or anything other than the way they should be done. Years later, I was able to kind of tie that in with the whole Lean and Six Sigma methodologies and the pursuit of perfection in our operations. It was really just something that kind of set me on a little bit of a different course in life when I first heard it.

You were a pretty good high school wrestler back in the day, weren't you, Brian?

There were guys who were a lot better than I was.

But what high school did you go to?

I went to St. Edward High School in Cleveland, Ohio. Great wrestling program. And they really whet my appetite for excellence. And, Ron, if I may kind of tip my hat to you, earlier this morning, I listened to actually your most recent podcast, Pursuit of Excellence.

Yes.

And I'm like, oh, my goodness, what a wonderful podcast. I recommend everybody listen to it. You really kind of set the bar, raised it up a little bit. But I was appreciating it greatly because it seems there's a little. I don't know if it's like the evolution of things that we tend to focus on. But, you know, there was pursuit of lean, pursuit of six Sigma, continuous improvement. But then there's this concept of operational excellence that. That just seems to transcend so much. And you touched a lot on the human side, and I couldn't agree more. And so really wonderful stuff.

Well, thank you. Thank you. Very kind. Now. And your kids are wrestling as well, right?

Two of them are.

Kind of like in hot. In Canada, the kids learn how to skate before they walk. They learn how to wrestle in Ohio and Iowa, I guess. C4. Love it. All right. Hey, so do you have a personal productivity habit others might benefit from?

Yeah, it's kind of like a. Kind of a daily. Daily hindsight, daily reflection. I get up very early in the morning, my day starts, and I think about yesterday, today, and the next day and throughout the next week. It's very important, I think, in the busyness of life. We have six children, and they're all very young, and our household is quite busy at times. And then obviously, the challenges and demands of your work life, it's very important as a work habit, as a life habit, rather to take a little bit of time for yourself on a regular basis. Recharge your batteries, keep you fresh, keep you focused, and especially focused on what's most important in your life.

Love it. Love it. So let's say that you're going through your day or your week and you're kind of having a rotten one and you need to recharge and refocus. Do you have a kind of a routine or a process that you follow to make that happen?

Sometimes you just got to do something manual. You know, go, go. Go down the basement, give yourself a little workout, but give yourself time to think while you're doing it as well. You know, whenever I'm in the doldrums of anything, you know, not so good, you know, all I go do is visit one of my children. You know, they always have something endearing or special or.

Yeah.

Or just hilarious to tell you, or they just, you know, you want to be by your side using a toy lawnmower next to yours. It's. Yep. They always seem to step away from the moment and go down into something kind of simple and innocent. And that. That's a great way to refresh and recharge.

Work with. Work on your. Your son's single leg. Take it down or something like that. Right. You know? Exactly. Love it.

Let's get a pinning combination in there, too.

Okay. Okay. There you go. Oh, that's it? That's it. All right, all right. Hey, so last question. So you've been at this for a while, Brian, I'm curious. So is there one knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve on in order to become a better practicer of continuous improvement?

Yeah, I know myself, Ron, as a little bit of, a little bit of an introvert. Maybe I'm in the melancholic personality type, if you will, the self realization and self awareness, if you ever taken any of those profiles or whatever to learn more about yourself, the more you know about yourself that is key to helping work on wherever your shortcomings are and we all have them and we're all of sort unique and different and blessed in many ways with various talents. But the more aware you are of yourself, that's key, to know yourself first. Because without that, how do you know really what to work on and continue to challenge yourself with knowing things that are learning about things that you're not necessarily comfortable with? It's kind of like, you know, again, pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. I may be outside of my comfort zone a little bit to do this, but I thought it was just a great opportunity and I said yes, I want to do that because, you know, for my own personal development, you know, just the kind of thing that makes you a better person.

Yeah, love it. Very good. All right, well, thanks for again, Brian, for taking time out of your day to visit with us. I know you're super busy. Let's go ahead and wrap the show up with you sharing some final words of wisdom. And then why don't you tell people how they can connect with you on social media, LinkedIn, whatever it might be.

Okay, final words of wisdom. Seek out something called the paradoxical, paradoxical commandments of leadership. Okay, you can google this up. This is something I've kept with me since about 1985. Again, I'm dating myself. But these are some great things to add to your periodic review of Deming's 14 points and Gemma Academy's commandments of continuous improvement. But here we go. Number one. People are illogical, unreasonable and self centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you'll win. False friends and true enemies succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Number five. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and Frank anyway. 6. The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but only follow top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway, Number nine, People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help them anyway. And finally, give the world your best and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world your best anyway.

Very good. That was a lovely way to end this show, Ron.

I can be found@brian.rossertvoconsulting.com and also on LinkedIn.

Spell your last name, Brian.

R O T as in Tom. S as in Sam. A E R T. Okay, Brian.

Rotshart. All right. And we'll link to everything in the show. Notes. So, Brian, are you going to get to any conferences this year?

Well, I attended the lean 6sigma ISO a couple months back in Orlando. That was great. And I don't know what else is on horizon for this year, but that recent conference, asq.

Yeah. You saw the team out there. Yeah. So thanks for stopping by our booth there. That was awesome.

Yeah, it was great to see Elaine and great to see the Gembacademy presence.

Yeah, lovely. All right, well, hopefully we get to meet up soon and we can trade old wrestling war stories or something.

Sounds great.

All right, you take care, Brian.

Great. Thank you, Ryan.

Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now it's time to take a free, no strings attached, fully functional test drive of Gemba Academy's School of Lean and Six Sigma. Over at GembaCademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos free of charge@gembacademy.com.