GA 123 | How to Reflect on Your Lean Journey with Phil Roether

You're listening to episode 123 with Phil Rother.

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 Perera.

Hey there. This is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy, and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy podcast. As always, thank you so much for taking time 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'm excited to welcome Phil Rother to the show. Now, I had a great chat with Phil. We really got into his journey. Now, Phil is retired from industry at this point, and he spends a lot of time volunteering for the AME organization, which he'll tell you all about. But he had quite the career. He had various roles, including executive leadership roles at several companies. And so what Phil's gonna kind of talk about is how he first was exposed to Lean, how they got started, talking about whether or not they had senior leadership support, and if they did, was it, you know, all the support they needed. So many of the questions that we all have as we kind of take off on our own Lean journeys. And so Phil has a great kind of demeanor and just a super friendly guy, and I just really enjoy talking with him. Now, show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 123. Again, that's gembapodcast.com and look for episode 123. And on that show notes page is links to our AME page, where if you are interested in going to the AME conference coming up, you can save 10%. So just go to GembaPodcast.com and look for episode 123. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Phil, well, thanks so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

From North Texas. I'm up on Lake Texoma, the Oklahoma border.

All right, well, not too far from where we're at here in Keller. So looks like it's going to be another cool day here in Texas.

So.

Yes, the blast furnace. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, all right, well, Phil, we're going to really kind of dig into your Lean journey and maybe what prompted you to start. But before that before we get before lean, if you will, maybe just kind of tell everybody a little bit about your professional background and then maybe what you're up to these days.

Well, Ron, I came out of college and I went to work for a company called Texas Instruments back in the late 60s. I thought that I knew a lot. And as I went to work, I discovered I didn't know anything and got a real training by people that were on the shop floor and so forth. And it soon became, as an engineer, I had degrees in both mechanical and electrical engineering that I started developing a passion for. How do you get things made? And so that's where I came from. I later joined the Raytheon Company and served as a vice president within their organization.

Nice. Nice. All right. And I understand you're affiliated closely with ame. What's going on with AME these days?

Oh, gee, AME is. You know, Ron, I got to tell you, AME probably had more to do with the success I had within industry than any other single thing I was ever associated with. And so today I try to give back to that organization. I am a volunteer within the organization, and I'm heading up a program called the Largest Large Groups for their International conference.

So that means, like, if a company sends 100 people, then you're going to kind of look after them, is that right?

Yes. What happened is, a number of years ago, AME noticed at their international conference that some of the companies were beginning to send large numbers of people. And so they inquired about what's going on here, and they indicated says, you know, we're not moving as fast as we'd like to. And what we've discovered is we send more people to the conference, then we get more value out of it. In fact, we don't get a one for one value. We get a multiplier effect. That led Ame then to say, we need to really think about how we could really help these organizations. And this year at the conference, we already have 14 of groups of over 25 people coming. Organizations sending over 25. We have one that's sending almost 100.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I can't wait. Can't wait. Gonna be here before, you know?

Absolutely.

All right. Well, Phil, as you know, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation or two or three or four sometimes that possibly inspires him. So I know you're a big quote guy, so do you have one or two that you'd like to share?

Well, you know what makes a quote so memorable? Is the fact that they have so much truth in them. And sometimes we don't act as though that, but it just strikes home. It's so logical. It's not something that tends to be, I guess, academic or that sort of thing. It tends to be just something that strikes the heart. And one that I can think of off the top of my head that I think most everybody's heard but still has so much truth. There's one given by President Truman when he said, you can accomplish anything in life provided you don't mind who gets the credit. And that's so true. But one that I guess that has stuck with me and is known by very few people. In fact, I suspect if we went out and interviewed a thousand people, we probably couldn't find anybody that knew this quote. And it occurred back in the mid-1960s and it was by the, at that time, the chairman of Texas Instruments, he was also a founder, his name was Pat Haggerty. And he said, and I won't get the quote exactly right, but basically he said there's no greater waste in industry than that of willing employees being prevented by insensitive leadership from applying the energies and ambitions in the interest of the organizations for which they work. And you know, when I think back that in the 1960s, before there seemed to be this thing about culture and businesses and so forth, how far he was in advance relative to the times.

Wow, that's pretty powerful. Can you maybe just repeat it one more time? Because it was a mouthful and it's pretty deep.

Yeah, right. He said that there's probably no greater waste in industry than that of willing employees prevented by insensitive leadership from applying their energies and ambitions in the interest of the companies for which they work.

You know what strikes me about that is just two words. Willing for the willing employees and then insensitive. That's insensitive. That's a really interesting word. Kind of talking about bad leadership. I'm not sure I've ever heard it put like that. Insensitive. What do you think he meant by insensitive?

Well, you know, it was a top down culture. It was that the leadership at that point in time viewed themselves as being in charge. We'll tell you what to do. You check your, check your head at the door and just do what I tell you. And so they didn't, they weren't listeners, they wouldn't listen to the, to the, to the employees. And so as a result, these same people would go home and they would run PTA meetings, they would have businesses on the side, but yet they weren't allowed to take that same enthusiasm and apply it for their businesses.

Yeah, just check your brain at the door. Right. And do what we say.

Right? Yeah.

All right, Very good. All right, Phil, let's kind of jump into your. Your lean journey. We know about your background and, and kind of where you've worked, but how did you first get started with lean?

Well, it didn't get started with lean. If you remember, back in the, back in the 80s, America, or North America in general, was under siege basically by the Japanese over a thing called quality. I was in the defense electronics industry at the time, and quite frankly, Ron, there wasn't a lot of pressure on people in the defense electronics industry back in the 80s. We were in basically an arms race. Life was good for the defense industry, but one of the things that the company I worked for promoted and encouraged in its leadership was that they continually be learning. And as a result, we had access to and was able to attend many sessions. And so I got involved in basically the quality journey. And you know, that then kind of started leading to. If you eliminate the waste of rework and repairs and that sort of thing, you know, then that has a beneficial benefit. But that's how it really began.

Why did you start, though? I mean, it sounds like times were good and you. There wasn't a burning platform. What made. You were just interested in learning or.

Well, I was interested in learning. It was actually encouraged by our leadership.

That's good.

Spend time in learning. So it was. But it, but there was. But like you said, when I look back on it, it's a wonder that we did because usually you. You move because there's a real driver and there wasn't a business driver. Really. Yeah.

I mean, Japan had been, you know, blown up almost literally. Right. And they had to rebuild. Right. So that was their burning platform. And. Yeah, so that's. That's really good, I guess, and great leadership, really, for when times are good, to keep, keep, keep, keep learning. So. So, I mean, so I guess. I guess my next question, I kind of answered it myself, was did you have senior leadership support and involvement?

It sounds like you did, yes and no.

Okay.

Did we have support? Absolutely, we had support. They supported us. One of the things within the organization is that there was quite a bit of autonomy given to leadership. Leadership didn't have to ask, may I, for everything that it did. So people were able to do things differently from one area to another. There wasn't a lot of standardization from a leadership standpoint. And so then senior leadership then looked for those areas that blossomed and had great performance. And so that got their attention. And so then it would start using that as the way to help others learn from those successes. I guess where we didn't have it is we didn't have much involvement. There's a difference between support and involvement. And our leadership really wasn't involved in it. They only got involved in it once they started seeing some great results.

And then what did they do? Did they want to just take the credit?

One thing. Well, recognize what I said before is that there was sort of a tops down mentality. So if they saw great results from one area, then they started telling all the other areas that they needed to go understand why they were getting great results over here and to get on board. So it became one of those things.

What do you wish they would have done in hindsight?

Well, when you start telling people that they have to go do things, you create resistance. I think that they could have been more effective at that point in time by allowing them to get up and talk about the story and about the successes they had without. It gets back to the Truman quote, you know, let the others feel like that they have some ownership in what they're doing. So that's what I really would today. That would be the thing I think would be more likely to happen.

Yeah. I remember back early in my lean career, I was facilitating a Kaizen event at a. At a factory in Sulphur Springs, Texas. And. And we had a great team put together. We did a little bit of training, just traditional Kaizen event. And we moved out to the floor to begin to do some 5s. And it was some pretty grimy mess in one particular work area and workstation. And it was going to require some, some elbow grease and getting on your hands and knees and that sort of thing. And all of a sudden we look up and there was a vice president of this company. And this vice president was in ratty jeans and a T shirt and said, what can I do? And I was like, well, I didn't know what to say. And he really meant it. And this gentleman got on his hands, his knees, and he scrubbed grease and everything else with the rest of us. And I'll tell you what, you talk about a work crew motivated and inspired that was like nothing they had ever seen. And it just blew me away. And I'll never forget that the rest of my life. So that's involvement, right? Not that you have to go out and facilitate a Kaizen event, but be involved Right. Get out there and be one of the folks.

Absolutely. It's walking the talk.

Yeah. Yeah. So in those early days and what kind of knowledge sources did you use to kind of guide you, and then maybe what did you do to sustain that journey?

As I discussed a few minutes ago, the encouragement that we received, you know, I was not a senior leader at that point in time, but the encouragement that we received within the organization to always be learning served us well. And so I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of, quote, experts at the time. For instance, I attended a seminar by Deming. Three or four days with him. I was with Shigeo. I spent a day with Shigeo Shingo in Boston. I attended the Crosby and Philip Crosby had these quality sessions. And then I had Dr. Juran and others, Michael Hammer on re engineering. So, you know, I had a lot. But they didn't sustain it. You know, they could plant the seed. They could get you fired up for a day or two. But what sustained it, quite frankly, was when I got involved with ame. And the reason for that is when you get involved with an organization such as ame, it's not a one and done thing. It's a matter of that you get to know people, personal people. These are people who are doing the same thing you're doing, that have the same issues that you have, and you're able to collaborate and develop. Quite frankly, I have developed lifelong relationships of people that today we can still get together and tell war stories. We love seeing each other every year when we get back at the international conference. Yeah.

Tell me a story about Deming. Like just something that you remember about your time with him.

Well, I guess the issue when Deming talked about that, the way that we evaluate people and how absurd it is that we really don't. We really don't know if what they did was the cause or not of great performance. And so when we give performance reviews, in effect, that they're not really based upon real data, they're based upon some results, but they're not based upon cause and effect. And it really got me to thinking about the truth of that. Sometimes people just happen to fall into a good situation and they get all this credit, and the next day it may not go their way. And so it wasn't necessarily what they did. It just happened to do the circumstances. So it's truly understandable the process. And he used the situation where he had the black beans and white beans. I guess it was that sort of thing. But, you know, that probably was one of the greatest learnings that I had from Demi. Of course, he had his 14 points, and they really were based upon people.

But what about Mr. Shingo? What do you remember about him?

You know, one of the interesting story about Shingo, he. This really has nothing to do with the subject, but it was. It just caught me so strange. He talked about that. Most people don't know that Shingo had brain surgery. And he. And they had to cut a hole in the top of his head and he ended up with a plate in there. And he told me, he says, you know, he says, the reason I'm smarter today is because when they put the hole in there, it allowed more oxygen to get to my brain.

Oh, that's so awesome. Was he like an intense kind of Japanese man, kind of yelling, spitting in your face, or what was his demeanor like?

No, he. He wasn't at all. He was. He. He was more of a. He would. He was more of a kind of a homespun type individual. He would talk about this. It was very matter of fact. You know, this is. This is what's. This is what's true and so forth. And he. And he would talk about how he had told a lot of stories. Tell stories about when he was walking through a factory and he had the single minute exchange die and things of that nature. He was not a real aggressive in your face sort of individual at all.

Interesting, interesting. All right, so thinking back on your continuous improvement career, how many years would you say you practiced continuous improvement? And I know you're still practicing, but how many years have you been at it, approximately?

I would say probably since the mid-80s.

Okay, so quite a while.

Quite a while.

Can you think of a time when an idea or a plan or an experiment failed? And if so, what did you learn from it?

You know, one comes to mind and it. And the reason this just all of a sudden surfaced is because it had such a profound impact on how I performed after that day. And fortunately, this occurred fairly early in my career. I had just come out of school and I knew that. I knew more than anybody else. You know, I just got my master's degree and so forth, and. And I saw an area within the manufacturing area in which we were shipping things between sites and they were wrapping them up in paper, and then they were unwrapping them, and then they were wrapping them back and that sort of stuff. And I said, what we need is we need a container that will protect blemishes. And that sort of thing were very important. So I said, we Need a container that will protect these. But this is crazy. Taking them out, unwrapping them, looking at them, doing things with them, putting them back in the wrapping. So just causing us a lot of cost. It doesn't need to be. And delay. And so I designed. I got out my little design board and I designed a container and I had it manufactured. And I sent it down to the fabrication facilities where these things were originally coming from and told them, this is how you go use this container, and so on and so forth. And it wasn't very long after that. See, I didn't engage anybody else in the solution here. I didn't engage the people that were really being impacted. And it wasn't very long that they said, well, your container is nice, but it won't fit through the aisles, and it won't. And they started coming up with all of the reasons that this container wasn't any good. I could have avoided that and I could have gained ownership. First place, this was being imposed on them. Secondly, it didn't take into consideration all of the logistical issues. So the result was all of those containers got trashed. We redesigned the containers with their input that they now owned, and they worked beautifully, much better than the one I designed. And so the lesson learned was that take advantage of the expertise that you have and take advantage of getting other people to have ownership in the process.

Yeah, yeah. What was your reaction when you just. When you finally realized, oh, no, this isn't going to work? Like, what did you. What were you feeling?

Well, my ego was bruised, for one.

Yeah.

But it. But. But on the other hand, I first. My first reaction was is that they just don't understand, you know, my first reaction. So I actually made a trip to the other facility and I went down. I'm going to show them how to go do this. And ended up. They showed me.

Yeah.

So. Wow. So how old were you, D.J.

Back then?

Oh, gee, I was. I was probably out of college only a year or two, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So young buck.

So I'd still be in my 20s.

Yeah.

So it was. But. But it was a lifelong experience. It's something that changed, truly changed my life.

Yeah. I love it. So what are you most proud of as it relates to your. Your lean journey?

Oh, I don't know. You know, there's so many things, I guess, but I'm probably the proudest of how through my lean journey, so many other. I've been able to interface with so many other people and improve their lives as well as the performance of the Organization. I had a situation during my lean journey in which we just. This is back when teaming was becoming in vogue, if you will. This is back in the probably late 80s and I had made the decision that we were going to convert a manufacturing facility. We had about. In this facility we had 14 assembly production supervisors and I don't know, a couple hundred people, I guess, but assemblers. And so I decided, you know, that we're not. We're just going to go to self directed work teams, self managed work teams, those sort of things. And I said, I called together all of the supervisors and I told them basically, this is where we're going. And I captured a phrase that I got from what was once the CEO of Hallmark Cards. And I used that phrase. The phrase was, this is where we're going and whatever it is, and said, we will carry the wounded, but we'll shoot the stragglers. In effect, there's not a dispute about what we're going to go do. But those of you that give your all and you maybe get wounded in the process, we're going to make sure we take care of you. If you're opposed to it and you're going to try to sabotage it, then there's not going to be a place. So I asked these 14 supervisors, I said, is there anybody here that doesn't believe in what we're going to do? I said, that's perfectly okay. And I said, I want everybody to know, all 14 of you to know that while many of you jobs are going away here, I will assure you you will still have a job. Now, if you don't believe in what we're doing, I said, here's all I'm asking of you. I'm asking you to fake it until I can find you another job. I said, it won't be within this organization, but I said, I will help you find a job. And sure enough, I had one gentleman came to me and he was a second shift supervisor. And he said, phil, he says, I just don't believe in what we're doing. He says, I don't believe it's the right thing to do. And his name is Roosevelt. And I said, roosevelt, can you fake it until I find you another job? And he says, yes, sir, I can do that. And I said, okay. And I found him another job and another company and he was a good employee. It's just that he didn't believe in the philosophy. So, you know, that really gets into what kind of relationship that you have with people and treating them right. I didn't want anybody to, to lose their job over it. On the other hand, we felt that, you know, I made a mistake in doing this and that I overcompensated. We took the 14 down to one facilitator and one facilitator just quite literally couldn't facilitate that many teams. And so I had to bring in a second facilitator.

Very good. Last question I have for you in this section, Phil, is I sometimes ask folks for some advice for people just getting started on the lean journey. But I want to kind of change it up a little bit for this episode. And I want you to speak to that seasoned lean thinker out there listening right now. Someone that's been at it for, I don't know, 10, 15 years. And let's say that they don't, they're not hard headed and they're willing to learn. So that's kind of their disposition. But speak to that person about some advice for how they could continue their journey.

Well, the first advice that I'd give is that relationships, your relationships are going to be the most important thing for continuing your journey. You're going to go back to those same relationships and you're going to have conversations about the trials that you're going through about when things aren't going well. You know, what might be some ways of looking at it? Maybe the way to think about it is it's mutual counseling. You get to take advantage of other people's experiences. Each one of us have our experiences, but we can't have the knowledge of the experiences of 50 or 100 people that we may have relationships with. So at the end of the day, it's going to be relationships that really help you sustain your journey. And that's why AME in the end became such a valuable source. To me, it was the relationships in addition to what I learned during the conferences. But it was keeping those connections open throughout 365 days a year that made a big difference.

Love it. And we've been obviously mentioning AME a lot. So folks are, are hearing this and they're interested in that conference. Going to the conference October 24th through the 28th in Dallas, our backyard, basically. Phil, they can go to gemba academy.com ame and you'll get. There's a 10% coupon code on there. We've got a great relationship with Ame. Gemba Academy doesn't make any money on that. We just love Ame and believe in the, the organization and their mission. So go to gemba academy.com amine. And check that out. So, Phil. So let's transition into the reflection section. And, you know, we spent a lot of time in Lean talking about those two pillars, right. The one pillar is continuous improvement. It's the tools, the things that we do. Right. It's a little easier to kind of put your hands on. But that other pillar is respect for people, and that can be a little bit harder to define and wrap your arms around. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

Well, it really comes down to how we relate with one another, if we're able to relate to people honestly. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the information we're going to communicate with them is something you'd like to communicate. But being able to be honest and at the same time, being compassionate is a way of showing respect. The ability to respect somebody has to do also with trust. You know, how much trust do you have in them that you have for them or they have for you that you know that you're on the same page in general and so forth. We've often heard the statement about. And it's a great statement. It's the golden rule. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Somewhere along the line, I heard somebody restate that statement, and it's always stuck with me. And it's not to treat others as you'd like them to treat you. It's treat others as they would like to be treated. And taking. Looking at it from their perspective, and to me, that really gets at the heart of respect. It's saying, this is how you like to be treated. This is what you want. And I respect that.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Oh, geez. I guess the best advice I ever received was to marry the girl that I married.

Good answer.

But I was actually in Canada at the time, and I met a gentleman, and one of the things he told me, and I was in a leadership position at the time, and one of the things that he told me, he says, you know, having enthusiasm and a spirit for what you're trying to accomplish is important. And he says, you know, spirit is contagious, and great leaders spread the virus. And I've thought about that so many times, you know, having. And the concept of. The other thing that during that conversation that came out is he said, you know, he says, great relationships can overcome poor processes, but great processes can't overcome poor relationships. And so that's probably some of the greatest advice I've received.

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

It's interesting, actually. This came about from a book that I read. It's called the Organized Executive. I think it's Stephanie Wilson or something like that wrote it years ago. And I happened to hire a woman as a secretary and she was the epitome of instilling this in me. And it's really very simple. But what it amounts to is that when I receive mail or inputs, I immediately sort through it and I put it into four categories. The first thing I look at something is why is it I can't trash this, just get it out of my life, get rid of it. Then once I look at that, if the answer is no, I can't, well, then the question is, is this something that needs to be acted on in the near term or is it something that can be further? For instance, like reading, I'll get things that I'd like to, I don't want to deal with at the moment, but I put it in my airplane reading pile. So I'll just set it back and then beyond that, things that have got to be acted on. The first question is, is this something I need to do? Is this something somebody else needs that I can delegate? So then either delegate. I try to delegate as much as I can, and then what's left are the things that I personally need to take care of.

I like it. Now, I guess that can work for electronic email and also physical mail, right? Is that, is that kind of where you're getting at?

Absolutely. You know something else I learned from a supervisor of mine one time, he says, I don't ever read when I'm copied to on an email. And I said, why? He says, because if they're copying me, what all they're trying to do is for whoever they're dealing with and let them know that I know. And he says, he says, I don't spend my time reading copy to if it's important and you need to send it to me, not copy it.

Interesting, Interesting. All right, very good. I'm interested. Let's say that you, and maybe you can answer this in two ways in your current day life and also back in your corporate life when we were working down in the trenches. But let's say that you were having a week and things just weren't going well and you needed to recharge and refocus. Do you have a routine that you follow now? And maybe is it any different than what you followed back in the day when you worked in industry?

You know, I don't know that I have a single routine. First place, it depends on what's not going right, is how urgent it is that I have to deal with it. People who were in my organization would tell you that I could become very quickly. I could become, I'm going to say, dictatorial. If I was that way. They didn't, and it didn't bother them. They knew that we had hit a crisis that was extremely urgent and that we needed, you know, we needed to just line up and do whatever we need to do and that pretty soon we'd be through it and everything would be back. Because that wasn't my nature. My nature was to give people the ability to have freedom and to be able to use their expertise and so forth. So. But in general, what I do is that my routine would be to really analyze what's going wrong and try to understand it and then to reach out for help. That would be because the truth of the matter is, if things were going well, then I probably had made some good decisions. If they're not going well, maybe I didn't make such good decisions. So maybe I need some help in this. So I was never bashful of reaching out and getting assistance from others.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, it sounds like you're a lifelong learner. So last question I have for you. Is there a knowledge or a skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become a better, stronger, lean thinker?

I will never be good enough at communications. You know, at the end of the day, it's about listening, and it's about communicating and doing both. And listening is a form of communicating, but communications, I just can't emphasize it enough. We have all heard the old adage, communicate, communicate, communicate. But I will never be as good at that as I really would like to be. So it's something I'd like to be able to, and I work on it. But it's not something that's. It's something that, quite frankly, was a little bit hard for me. I'm much better at it today, I'll have to say, than I used to be. But communications is probably not to put.

You on the spot, but do you have some ideas of what you want to do? Because maybe other people out there say, yeah, I also need to get better at that. How do you do that?

Well, there's things that. There's sources that you can go to. I actually at one time went to a therapist and was having some of this conversation with a therapist. And so he was asking me, why do you think it is, Ron? Part of it is our natural temperaments. One of the things that did more for me than anything in life was I went through a session that studied temperaments and talked about the different. The four basic temperaments that people have. And having that knowledge allowed me to be much more, I guess, accepting of people who were not like me. And as a result, when I see somebody and they're one of these, doing one of these temperament things, I'm able to, if you will, forgive that all temperaments have strengths and they all have weaknesses. And I was able to then try to start understanding that this person will be very strong in some things because of their temperament. But I guess that's done a lot. So I would say first is understand your own temperament. You may be, from a temperament standpoint, a very quiet person, but that also has its strengths in understanding those things.

Yeah, so this is similar to like the tempering. Is it like one of them is like cleric or something like that? Is that right? If I remember right, I don't remember the other three, but.

But they're also melancholy sanguines and. Yeah, what's the four phonetics?

Yeah, there you go. And also my wife, you know, I think that spun off of that in recent days is the so called love languages. Right. And it kind of talks about, you know, whether you're a gift giver or you like words of affirmation. But I, I think that's so important, like you said, to understand yourself first and then to be able to understand and recognize others. That might be an interesting podcast episode down the road. Need to seek out someone who's an expert. Maybe it's you, Phil. We could get back on, talk about those temperaments because that's a pretty, pretty powerful area of study.

You know, son, too, back 500 BC, made this, you know, he was the great general of Chinese, and he made the statement, he says, if you know yourself and you know your enemy, you will not perish in a hundred battles. But if you don't know yourself and you don't know your enemy, you will certainly perish. So a lot of it's about what you just said, knowing yourself and then understanding other people, and it will serve you well.

Yeah, fantastic. All right, Phil, well, I can't wait to meet you face to face October 24th through the 28th here in Dallas at AME. It's gonna be fantastic. I really appreciate you taking time to visit with us on the show. Let's wrap things up with you, sharing maybe some final words of wisdom. And then tell people how they might be able to connect with you. I'm not sure if you're a social media guy or anything like that, but maybe how people can reach out to you.

Well, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, so they can find me there. The thing I'd like for people to take advantage of is take advantage of developing those relationships and take advantage of the AME conference, if you can. I will assure you. I ran into a woman, she was from Kenya a few years ago, and I asked her about the conference and she said, you know, we only have so much money. We can attend conferences in Japan, we can attend a conference anywhere in the world. But she says, we found that this is the best use of our financial resources to attend this conference. And I thought that spoke so highly of it. Wherever you are in your journey, there's things there within that conference for everybody. And if you believe that, of course, I put in my little commercial here that it. There's still opportunities to sign up 25 or more for the conference. And if you do, you will get a dedicated facilitator to help you. You'll get a debrief room at the end of every day. You'll get reserved seating for the keynote speakers, those sort of things to help your group with its journey. So hope that we can see more people take advantage of that.

Yeah, Fantastic. Fantastic. Now on LinkedIn, is it Phil Rother or is it Philip?

No, it's Phil.

Phil. So, Rother, just for people listening, it's R O E T H E R. Is that correct?

That's correct.

All right, so Phil Rother, and we'll look for. Look for the handsome fellow on LinkedIn. That's you, right?

That's me.

All right, well, thanks again, Phil. It's great chatting with you. I can't wait to meet you face to face. And you stay cool out there in Texas, okay?

Thank you, Rob.

All right, take care.

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 Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Lean and Six Sigma training videos free of charge at gembacademy.

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