GA 128 | How to Implement Lean Efforts That Last with Amanda Culver

You're listening to episode 128 with Amanda Culver. 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 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, a quick reminder like we've mentioned in the last few episodes, to please go to gembapodcast.com survey1. And that's the number one. So gembapodcast.com survey one, what you're going to find once you get on that webpage is just a really short survey. Should only take you a few minutes to complete. And what it's going to do, it's going to help us form the podcast into a better show. So as I've mentioned, we plan to make a few small format changes, nothing major, nothing radically different or anything like that. So don't worry. But we do want to make the show better, but we need your feedback. So if you could go on there and take a just answer a couple questions, it's going to really, really help us. So again, that's GembaPodcast.com survey one. Now, today, I'm excited to welcome Amanda Culver to the show. Now, Amanda is a lean six sigma black belt with more than 10 years of lean and six sigma experience. And as you'll hear, Amanda spent quite a bit of time in a pharmaceutical world which gave her a really good continuous improvement foundation. And today she's currently working as a lean in Six Sigma specialist and leader in food manufacturing as an internal consultant. Now, during the show, Amanda covers lots of topics, including why she believes so many organizations struggle with Lean and Six Sigma. Now, I really enjoyed speaking with Amanda and can't wait for you to hear what she has to say. Now, show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 128. Again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 128. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, Amanda, well, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from.

I am actually in Indiana right now, but I work out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Middlebury, Indiana, and a couple other the surrounding cities.

All right, where in Indiana are you right now?

Middlebury. Tiny little town. Yes.

Okay. I grew up in Greenville, Ohio, which is close to Richmond, Indiana kind of thing. So been in Indiana many, many times. So lovely place.

It is.

Lots of good basketball, right?

Yes, yes.

All right, well, let's go and kind of kick things off, Amanda, with you telling us a little bit about your background, what you do these days, and maybe how you first came to learn about continuous improvement.

Okay. Yeah, so I've been doing continuous improvement for the past probably about 12 years. I started with it in the pharmaceutical business where I was actually an operator at the time. And it was introduced to us. And the first thing that I learned about was smed. So single minute exchange of dyes. We put together a team and took a changeover from 24 hours to about eight hours.

Wow.

Yeah, it was amazing. It was great effort, just kind of paralleling tasks a lot more than anything and standard work and stuff like that. And then from there I just developed such a passion for it that I continued to search for positions that put me in leadership roles and I used clean the whole time.

Well, I'm going to go off script here. I'm dying to know a little bit more about that Smed event. I'm sure some people are like, wow, 24 hours to eight hours. Is that what you said?

Yes. Yeah. So we did put other extra people at it, but we had such a need to turn over our cleans in a much quicker manner so that we could get throughput up that we went from a one person doing it and it was just kind of all over the place to where we had two people doing it. We had one. They would remove all the parts together as a team, and then one person would go off and wash the parts, and one person would stay and clean the machine itself. They would work together to assemble it.

Now, so it sounds like some skeptic was, oh, yeah, sure, you throw people at it. But many times what I see is these people are available. Right. And so perhaps they're running another machine and it's cycling or something and they can jump over and help out. So I think that's a good, fantastic, I don't know, tool or methodology, if you will, that's just not leveraged nearly as much as it should be.

Right. And that's exactly what we had going on. You know, the equipment was down. It couldn't run because it needed to be changed over. So we had people waiting. So it's like, why don't we just utilize that? That is a waste.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, I want to dig into more of your story and your advice for other practitioners, but as you know, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation or two that possibly inspires. So do you have one?

Yeah. So right now, I think mine kind of fluctuates depending on what I'm dealing with in the business. But right now, mine would be two of them that are from Deming, actually, and they're both based on systems. So 94% of problems in a business are system driven, and only 6% are people driven. And then to kind of pair up with that, if you put a good person in a bad system, the bad system wins every time. No contest.

So why do you like those so much?

I think we tend to get very focused on diving into the weeds and looking at people problems and looking at little parts of a system and lose focus on the idea that there's multiple parts in a system and we have to make sure that they're all working together. I really like those quotes for that reason.

Yeah, me too. All right. Dr. Deming can never go wrong. So let's kind of jump into things a little bit. And I don't want to start with necessarily, like kind of a Debbie Downer type question, but unfortunately, many companies and many organizations, they struggle, right, with either getting started with lean, or sometimes they get started, but then they just don't sustain it. And so I'm just curious, from your experience, you got a lot of experience, real world experience, what do you think causes this? Like, what's the. What's that maybe the root of the problem?

Yeah, I would. I would go right back to those quotes. Honestly, looking at my experience. You know, it's when people don't focus on lean methodologies as a system, they kind of look at the bright, shiny tools. You know, for example, somebody could easily take what I just talked about with SMED and try to copy and paste it into their existing business. And it may or may not work if you don't look at it as, you know, okay, what's the purpose that we're doing this for? What kind of behaviors do we want to see? What processes do we need to follow? What support do we need for it? How are we going to measure it? How are we going to make sure that it stays fresh and renew it and who owns it?

We Actually just redid our introduction to Lean video. We haven't even released it yet, it's still being edited. But one of the things that we're really stressing in there is that, you know, the tools of Lean are important. I mean, gosh, we have hundreds of videos on the tools. Right? So you do need to know the tools. But if you don't understand that, why, right? Or that purpose or why are we doing this? What problem are we trying to solve? You're going to really struggle. And I love it that you mentioned you're smed because people could listen to that. And I got excited. Right. 24 hours to eight hours. What? That's amazing. But what if changeovers weren't the problem? Right? Like what if that. I mean, sure, it's, maybe it helps a little bit, but perhaps your front office is a total disaster and it takes, you know, months to do things. And, and when in, in the end, in a manufacturing environment, hours really don't mean anything because it takes months to get the work through the front office.

Right, right. Yeah. I mean, you have to focus on what's important for your business. If you're struggling with having, you know, just standards and everything else, you got to stabilize that stuff first. I mean, smets a little more advanced.

Yeah.

You really got to go where the business needs are.

Yeah. So, so what advice though? So people say, yeah, I get it. Start with why Simon Sinek, all this kind of stuff. Right. And, and, but what can they do, right? Like someone that's just starting on their journey right now. What are some tips, some practical advice? Maybe speak to a kind of front level supervisor or manager or even higher up in a company. Like what should they be thinking about?

I mean, I think the best thing I could say right now is just never, please, please never start with a tool. If you're attracted to one of those bright shiny tools, just kind of take a time out, pause a little bit, start with the purpose again. You know, why do we, why do, why does it seem like we need to do sped? Develop a nice little statement, kind of like a problem statement, right? A reverse of a problem statement or I should say, you know, identify the goals that you want to see coming out of it. Put together a team that's cross funct. If it's about them, involve them. Try not to be prescriptive, trust your teams and allow them to fail forward when they need to. And then there's so many other parts of a system that you need to focus on too. The process. How are you going to tie it all together. The tools should come last, though. You should pull them in as you need them.

So not just focusing on a tool, like, why do we need to do smid? But why do we want to do not even lean? Just why do we want to improve our product processes? Right. Or do we all agree we should improve our processes? Right. Almost starting starting there. Right. And forget about Lean, forget about Six Sigma, forget about any terms and whatnot. Just kind of start at the start. Right. Like, should we get better? I know it sounds kind of crazy. Of course everyone should. But until people really buy into that concept, you may struggle. Instead of, like you said, running out and saying, oh, listen to this podcast. They reduce our changeover from 24 to 8. We got to do this, you know? Yeah. I love it. And I really like what you mentioned. You were speaking about the people.

Oh, if it's about them, involve them.

Yeah. Talk about that a little bit more.

Yeah. So, so many times I've heard, you know, of lean practitioners or people where they, you know, they get excited about something, and I do the same thing because I am a very passionate person. We get excited about something and we sit there and we map it out in a little desk with just a couple of people, and then we go out and we, we. We deliver it to the people that have to use it, and they kind of look at us like, oh, what is this?

Yeah.

You know, it's so much easier to make something work if you take the time and involve them throughout the process. And honestly, I really feel like lean is a lot more about leadership and coaching and mentoring than anything. You have to really develop those skills first.

Yeah, you know, I'm actually. We're working on a. On a visual management course right now and kind of pulling together some of some footage that we've done, captured over the years from our all the Gemba Academy live episodes and kind of putting a short course together. And so I pulled a book off my shelf that I've had for a while. Gwendolyn Galsworth. She wrote the Visual Workplace, Visual Thinking. We may actually get her on the show here. I've been emailing with her and she has this concept in her book talking about kind of an eye driven change. And when it sounds kind of selfish, like focusing on me, me, me. But it does start with each individual. Right. Like what? How can they, you know, work as part of this system?

Right.

And so you do have to. You do have to get down to the people. Right. And each individual person plays a very, very important role in the broader scheme of the system, certainly.

I mean, they're the ones that are going to make or break it, right?

Yep. Yeah, exactly. So another question has kind of popped into my mind, Amanda. Say someone's listening to this right now and they're like, yeah, it sounds great. Unfortunately, my boss is a jerk. Or okay, maybe they're not a jerk, but maybe, maybe their boss isn't. Or just leadership in general at their company isn't totally bought into the whole idea of continuous improvement. Maybe they have these folks on, you know, they're employed and so they have that level of commitment. Right. They have a job. Right, right. But they're just not getting that. That encouragement or that, you know, just that, that push from the top. What advice do you have for that person?

I try to ask a lot of questions. You know, that coaching and mentoring stuff. Yeah, that can be a tough one. I like to remind people that lean should never be something that seems like extra work that we're doing. It should be a way that we run our business. So if anything that I'm talking to you about seems like it's going to be adding work, tell me that so we can talk about it more. Because it shouldn't be doing that. We'll figure out a way around that. You know, what do we need to do to make that part better?

Yeah. Fix what bugs you. Right. As Paul Aker says. Right. Fix your bugs.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think another. Just what I found over the years for folks who are struggling, don't have senior leadership support, is forget about it. Just focus. You know, assuming they allow you to go out and try things, just go start making things better. Right.

I have taken that approach before, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, no one's gonna. And then what I used to do, honestly, I. I was in that position and my last corporate job I had. And I was a director of manufacturing, and I had a boss who was a good guy. I liked them, but the fact that we actually had to produce something was. Was kind of a burden to them. I know it sounds crazy, but this person had a sales background, right. And. And so they wanted to sell, sell, sell, which is important. You need to sell. But we also, once it's sold, we got to make it. Right. And. And this whole continuous improvement thing just. I was just foreign to them. Right. So I think they. There was a lot of uncertainty. So what I really tried to do was, you know, make things better. And then I would. I don't know if it was bad or not, but what I did is I tried to. I send them a couple slides every month for their big staff meeting with the C level executives and made them kind of look good, like take credit for this, you know, and your group did this and next thing you know, they. He loved that. And he was like, hey, where's the slides, man? You know, And. Yeah. So, you know, and then slowly they got more bought into it. And I heard, even heard a story one time, it was a C level staff meeting there with these folks and this billion dollar company, Right. And multi billion dollar company. It. The word was that they were getting so beaten down with spreadsheets and graphs and so forth and all this stuff, these people were just kind of like dead in their chair. And then when the continuous improvement stuff came in, they all leaned forward and. And that made me so happy. You know, it was like they leaned forward because it was real, you know, it was authentic. And there were pictures and we talked about the SMED and going from this to that. They didn't know what SMED was, but they knew that it used to take 24 hours. Now it only takes 8 hours. And they got that right. And it got them excited. So I don't know, I guess maybe to answer my own question for folks out there is just to, you know, make your boss look good. Right.

Find what they're passionate about. I mean, your boss, you know, he like, he liked sales, Right. So production wise, what can you do to help with sales? Increase throughput.

Yeah.

You know, find some face in there for him to get some more sales and then go out and fix that for him.

Yeah.

Once you have a win, it'll flow from there.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right, well, very good. So the last question I'm dying to ask you just. And I love to hear this answer from folks who've got a lot of experience like you do. Like, what are you most proud of? Let's say, over the last, I don't know, few years of your continuous improvement journey.

Oh. So I think the first time that I went from the lean practitioner to the lean leader, you know, the first time that I saw somebody achieve what I used to achieve, there was just so much glory in that. You know, I'd been working with a team of frontline leaders or specialists out on the floor, sorry, specialists on the floor, that I was given the opportunity to pull them off a little bit at a time. You know, I got to have a team of four people for two to four weeks at a time. And the first time that I walked through and I taught them how to make an improvement. And then they presented to our leadership team of the improvements that they made. It was amazing. It was probably the proudest moment that I've ever had, except for my kids, of course.

Yes, yes. Very cool. Very cool. Well, you sound like a great leader. All right, well, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. And, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about these two pillars of lean, continuous improvement and respect for people. So what does respect for people mean to you, Amanda?

Yeah. I think that the first thing that you need to do is in order to be able to respect people, you have to see the value in them. You have to really dig deep and understand, okay, what are these people doing for me? And then when you do that, you're able to list, to lead with humility and to actively listen to remove roadblocks for them and provide resources and follow through on commitments.

How important is that last one? Following through on commitments?

Oh, that's huge. That's how you gain trust. And trust is so important when you're a leader. You know, I like to say servant leadership. I mean, it's really what I strive to be as a servant leader. And in order for me to do that for people, that I have to gain their trust.

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

So I would say, if it's about them, include them for one. And then going back to that servant leadership, I had somebody tell me one time, amanda, remember that leadership, it's a gift from your followers. You should be thanking them for it all the time.

Talk a little bit about surrent leadership. Just. Just give an overview of what that means for folks who may not be aware of it.

Yeah. That doesn't mean that you're going out and you're shining their shoes or anything like that. Right. But your job isn't to go out and tell them what to do. It's to help them learn, to build them up, to remove roadblocks for them. You know, you're there to help them build them up. That's our job as leaders. And when we do that, it makes our job easier because we have improvements happening at the floor level and at the level that we need them to. We have a team of people working on things rather than ourselves trying to dictate something.

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

I a big user of Outlook calendars. So any little appointments that I have, I put my calendar. If I have little activities that I do on Mondays or whatever, I Pop a reminder in there for like 3 o' clock in the morning. So that's the first thing that pops up when I open my calendar.

Three o' clock in the morning?

Well, it doesn't come up on my phone or anything.

Do you wake up at 2 or what?

And I have standard work for myself. I mean, I can't. Yeah, I can't be a lean leader that tells people that standards are super important and then not have it for myself. So I have weekly standard work. On Mondays, I plan my week out in more detail. So I'll make little details of things that I want to hit on on each day and then I use that throughout the week to take notes. Then Tuesday through Thursday are my actual working days. My Gemba. Go to the floor, talk to the people, interact, be a part of what they are. And then taking on my lean activities at the the same time. And then Fridays, I try to allow as much time as I can for a reflection and follow up. So I go through my notes, I compare them to my personal objectives and I adjust as I need. You know, I reach out to my leadership team and ask for help where I need to and compare results and all that good stuff.

Now how do you make take notes? Just basic question. Do you write it on a paper? Do you keep it electronically? Both.

So it depends on the situation that I'm in. So I do have my iPad and my computer with me and I try to take notes as much as possible. But if it's an intimate, personal kind of setting, I'll try to jot down notes or come back to it later because I want to be able to give the people that I'm working with the attention that they deserve. So it's finding a balance of what works for each person. Just like the other stuff. Don't just copy and paste my stuff. Find what works best for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there anything over this past year or so as you've been practicing and leading people through lean transformations, that surprised you?

Yeah, so I was with the same company for a long period of time. And then as I started transitioning to other companies and working with other people, it was really surprising to me to find out how many people out there had their way of doing lean. You know, this is our way of doing A3s or problem solving and stuff like that. That was kind of surprising to me that everybody has their own little take on it. So I've had to adapt.

Give me an example. You don't have to name names or anything like that.

Yeah. So just going from one organization to another, I thought that I had learned everything that I ever needed to know about A3s and practical problem solving and everything else. I love the get the Academy practical problem solving course, by the way.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's my favorite. I love. And I. And I come to another organization and they're like, you know about problem solving? Like, yeah. The eight steps are like, no, we don't do that here. You know, so just adjusting and adapting. And I'm like, oh, well, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's always a learning journey too, right? So, yeah. Yeah. That's what's so cool about it. All right, so let's say that you're going through your week and things just aren't going like you'd like. It's Wednesday, and your plan was to do A, B, and C, and you haven't got any of it done, and you're just feeling kind of rotten and down in the dumps. Do you have a routine or ritual that you follow to kind of break free of that slump?

Yeah, sometimes I really just have to take a break, and I call it zoom out. I'll get caught up in the little tasks or the little nuances or the little issues that I'm having, and I'll get so focused on them that I can't see the big picture. I can't go back and I can't reflect on, okay, where are we doing good? Where have we made progress? Where can I gain from that? So just trying not to get caught up. Trying not to get caught in the weeds or caught up on the negative.

There you go. All right, so you've obviously been around for a while and you've learned a lot. But I'm curious, is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become a better lean thinker?

Yeah, I think you can never be a good enough communicator, so I'm always working on that. For me, I'm a very type A passionate, go for it type of person. So sometimes I have to remind myself that I have to slow down. I need to work at the pace of others. One area that I'm really looking into right now is just emotional intelligence. I've been reading a lot about it and learning a lot about it. So I'm trying to improve my own emotional intelligence.

What is that? Sorry, I don't even know how to begin to understand emotional intelligence. I think I could make something up, but what is it?

Basically your ability to understand how Other people act and work and adjusting yourself to the best way to work with them, basically. Wow, that's interesting job explaining it or not, but you know, the whole covey seek to understand and then be understood. So it's playing more and more into that part of it.

So are you reading some books on that?

Yes, I am. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Bradbury.

I'm going to check it out because that sounds really interesting to me.

Yeah, I probably did not do it any justice in my explanation, but yeah, yeah.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0. All right, everybody go to Amazon and pick it up. All right. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for taking time. I know you're very busy and. And we really enjoyed talking with you. Are you into conferences or anything like that? Do you get out and network much?

I'm trying to. Just very, very busy life right now. So I try to stay connected as I can. I just did a global leadership summit just a couple of weeks ago.

Good deal. Well, we've been plugging the AME conference pretty hard. So if you are interested in that, we'd love to love to see out there and everybody else out there.

So I would love to go to that one. That's in Dallas, right?

It is, yeah. Our backyard. So we're even more excited. I don't have to get on an.

Airplane like Emmett Smith or something.

Oh, yeah, Emmett Smith. It's the biggest Lean conference and I think in the world. I mean, it's huge and awesome and I just can't wait. So, yeah, if people are interested in learning more about that, we have a deal. You can save 10% gembacademy.com and then just forward/ame and people can go check that out. But yeah, it would be great. If you do go, definitely let me know and we'll meet up and have a coffee or something.

That would be great.

All right, well, how can people connect with you?

Probably the easiest way would just look me up on LinkedIn under Amanda Culver, Lean Sigma black belt.

Yeah. And it's C U L V E R. Yeah, Amanda. So everybody knows I pinged Amanda on LinkedIn to say, hey, you want to do this podcast? And she was like, what?

So, yeah, sign me up.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I love talking to real world practitioners. We actually did a. We're running a little survey right now and I mentioned it in the opening, but it's. People can go to gembapodcast.com survey1 and give us some feedback and some of the feedback that we've already gotten is that people are really enjoying real world practitioners. Not that they don't enjoy the book guru author guys and gals and all that. Those are also good. But the real people in the trenches like you are, I think that's really an angle. And that's what LinkedIn is so awesome about. Right? Helping people find people with common interests.

Yep. That and podcasts I think are amazing. So I do a lot of that.

Awesome. Well, thank you. All right, well take care, Amanda. And hopefully we get to meet up in person one day.

That would be amazing. Thanks.

Bye.

Bye. Bye.

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