GA 138 | How to Use Kata to Create Service Excellence with Karyn Ross

You're listening to episode 138 with Karen Ross. 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 Forever 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 in your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today, I'm excited to welcome Karen Ross to the show. Now, Karen is a Lean service expert, as I'm not sure how she wants to be described, but that's what I would call her. She has really dedicated her professional Lean career to helping service organizations practice Lean. And so she's actually a co author of a book called the Toyota Way to Service Excellence, Lean Transformations and Service Organizations. And she co authored that book with Jeffrey Leiker. And Karen has got a really interesting background. She was actually trained as a sculptor, and so she's got an art background. And she's got this fascinating story of how she's been able to leverage, like the creativity side of her art background with problem solving and helping Lean thinkers kind of break through barriers. So I just had a great time chatting with her. Now, Karen's going to be one of the keynote presenters at the Katakan conference that's going to be happening in early part of 2017 in San Diego. And we can actually save you 10% on that conference. If you want to go to that, just go to gembaacademy.com kata and you can. There's information on there to save 10%. But I'm really excited for you to listen to Karen. She's got great energy, great passion, and she was just a blast to talk to. So show notes, which are going to include links to all of Karen's books and her website and just ways to connect with her can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 138. Again, that's gembapodcast.com and look for episode 138. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Karen, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

Well, thanks so much for inviting me, Ron. And actually, I'm in Rochester, New York, today.

All right. Beautiful. What's the weather like?

Absolutely fabulous. Beautiful, beautiful, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Fall leaves unbelievably amazing here today. So I'm really lucky to be here.

Yeah, you know, I grew up in Ohio, and so I grew up with, you know, seasons changing and so forth. And then I've lived in Texas for the last 15 years and, you know, I love it here. But I do miss, you know, the season. It's like, it goes from, like, hot to cold here. You know, it's like, where's the fall? Where's the spring? You know, so, yeah, so I'm jealous of, of you New Yorkers and everybody with all the seasons changing.

Yeah, absolutely. And actually I live near Chicago, so we're in the same season, changing. I travel a lot, so I actually happen to be in Rochester. I'm going to be doing a book signing and author talked tonight at one of the Barnes and Nobles for their Rochester Institute of Technology. So that's why I'm here in Rochester today having a fabulous time.

Fantastic. Well, hold that thought because I definitely want to hear about your book. So I want to talk to you about that a lot here later on in the show. But what we do in the beginning, Karen, as you know, just maybe start with telling everybody a little bit about your background, how you first came to learn about continuous improvement and then what you're up to these days.

Sure, absolutely. And I actually learned lean and continuous improvement from working as a customer service representative. So I actually was working for a third party payroll processing company taking care of about 300 customers. And as you can imagine, when you do manual input for something like payroll, there's lots of opportunities to make errors. And how do you feel if you get an error on your paycheck? Probably not very happy, right?

Oh, no.

Right. So we had probably 80 people who did the work in the branch office of the company that I was working for. And we all heard the voice of the customer loud and clear on the phone. And oftentimes that voice really was not happy. So we wanted our customers to be happy. And of course, we, the people who did the work, the service representatives, we wanted to be happy as well, because if you're in customer service, you actually really care if your customer is happy. Right?

Right.

So I thought to myself, there's got to be a better way to do this. And roundabout. I heard the word kaizen, and my husband happens to be a professor of Asian studies, so I'd never heard the word before. I asked Him. Could you go to your library at your college and see if there's anything about Kaizen? He brought me back Masaki Imai's book, Kaizen. I read it and I thought, oh, okay, this makes total sense. This is what we're going to do. So I managed to convince the branch manager of the office that I was working in to let me start a committee of all customer facing people. So people who process payrolls, the receptionists, all the people who packed and distributed the payrolls. And we just started working to improve processes so that we could satisfy our customers and make things easier for ourselves. I was actually, I read books, I was one step ahead. And we just really learned by trying things out and doing. After about eight or nine months, I actually happened to meet a fabulous person who was working in the head office of that company. And she had actually worked for Kodak before. Learned Lean from shingijutsu from Pascal Dennis. Her name is Leslie Henkler and we will talk about her a little more later. And she came along and actually started to teach me. And when she started to teach me, my learning actually improved exponentially because we learn and do many things on our own, but if we have a coach who knows how and who can guide us, that really helps us in our work as well. About six months later, I also happened to meet Jeff Leiker and so I had a wonderful opportunity to learn from him. So I've had absolutely fabulous teaching. Right now I have my own consulting company, Karen Ross Consulting, and we help all different kinds of service organizations and service parts of manufacturing organizations improve their delivery of services to customers through Lean and what we call practical creativity. So that's what I'm doing now.

Very good. And we'll link to everything. So, Karen Ross, the website is K A R Y N. Correct?

Correct.

Yeah. KarenRoss, is it KarenRossConsulting.com Yep.

KarenRossConsulting.com Got it.

Got it. So everybody needs to go check that out. I especially love just, I mean, obviously we all know, you know, Lean isn't just for manufacturing, but it really does help to hear from folks who are working in service based organizations, working in hospitals, working in whatever it might be, retail, and just seeing how these tools, these concepts, these philosophies, really this way of thinking applies no matter what you're doing, right?

Absolutely. And I'm actually in somewhat of a unique position because I never started out applying this in manufacturing as many people did, and then move to services. To me, I was always working in services and all of these 17 principles and four P's that we talk about in Toyota. Way to service excellence, pull flow leveling, visual management. All of them made total sense to me.

And you're like, wait, this is.

And services.

You're like, does this work in manufacturing? You're the opposite, right?

Yes, that's exactly it. And actually, in my opinion, Lean is much more important in services. In manufacturing, there's an advantage, right? You can see a product going down the manufacturing line. We don't have that ability in services, right? Things take place inside people's heads. Decisions are made, we can't see them. A lot of things happen behind the computer screen. So all of those tools that we have in Lean that allow us to make things visual, they are unbelievably important in services, right? Lots of times people will say to me, well, I don't know how many transactions we're doing today, right? I don't know how many insurance policies we're actually quoting. How can I know that? I don't see that. We need to be able to see. And when we see, then we can make problems visible. We can see what our targets are. We can see what our actuals are. So I will say, and I always do, Lean is much more important in services than manufacturing.

All right. Love it. Love it. All right, well, Karen, we'd like to begin our shows with our guests sharing a quote or two about something that possibly inspires them. So do you have one?

Absolutely. So the quote I'd love to share is that the right process produces the right results. And that's a quote from the Toyota Way from Jeff Leiker. And I think that it's an unbelievably important quote. When we think both about doing work, doing Lean, and how we actually learn and teach Lean, oftentimes we think about the end result, right? Did we hit our KPIs? Did we make sure that we got the result we wanted? However, the only thing that allows us to get the right result is the right process. So though we're often focused on the means at the end, what I really believe we need to be focused on is the means. So I always say how we get there is as important or even more important sometimes than when, than where we're going. And that goes for how we do work, and then also how we teach people how to understand all these Lean concepts and tools and how to apply them in their daily work, whether it be in manufacturing or services.

Got it, Got it. All right, well, let's get into the topic of the day, which is really Toyota Kata. So let's just start. We've had a few guests on in the past, Michael Lombard, a few other folks talking about Toyota Kata. So we'll link to those in the show notes for this episode. But just to kind of level set everybody, I don't want to presume that everyone has a total understanding of what kata is all about, so let's start there. Give us a quick overview on what the Toyota Kata is all about.

Okay. Toyota Kata is actually a way to develop people through using particular practice routines for improvement and also for coaching people how to do that improvement. So many people are familiar with the movie the karate kid and Mr. Miyagi. And we know, you know, Mr. Miyagi's student was very frustrated when he had to do all of that waxing of the car and sanding of the floors. Right. And what really Mr. Miyagi was doing was helping him to learn how to do the underlying skills that would be necessary for martial arts. Right. So wax on, wax off created a habit of moving the arms in the correct way. Right. So kata is really helping us to develop the correct routines and practices so that they become habits so that we actually can improve the work that we're doing, but also that we can develop a habit of teaching and learning improvement as well.

So I feel like we're breaking some news here. Are you saying that Mike roller actually owes Mr. Miyagi some royalties here for this whole thing?

Might absolutely be. So.

But that's great. That's great. All right, so how did you learn about the really kind of the heart of Toyota Kata, the improvement kata and the coaching kata? How did you learn about that?

Well, I actually happened to be in 2010, just after the book was published in bookstore in Ann Arbor, and I was very intrigued. I love reading. And I picked it up and I started reading it. And one of the things that, as I said, I had been learning from a wonderful teacher named Leslie Hinkler, who also appears in the book. And what I realized when I started reading Toyota Kata, that even though she didn't use the words kata to describe what she was doing in the way that she was teaching me, which was in a very traditional master apprentice way, that's the way that I was learning. Right. I would have a challenge, and what's the next obstacle I need to remove, I would do something. I would send her the results of what I was doing very quickly. So do something. Send her the results, have a chat the next day. And then, okay, worked, didn't work. What are you going to do next. So we had very frequent interactions and when I read the book, I realized, oh, this is basically how I'm already learning. Because we can learn many different things from reading books and having all kinds of theory, but that's a kind of information. In my experience, we don't really learn until we do things right. Learning hasn't occurred until behavior has changed. So as practitioners and as coaches, what we really want to do is help people do, because in that doing, that's where the learning's going to occur. And so I realized when I read Toyota Kata, oh, this is the experience that I'm already having. The words aren't the same, but this is what we're doing.

So. All right, got it. Talk about coaching, really. I mean, you mentioned this earlier and you've obviously had coaches in your life, but what if someone's kind of self taught or they're, you know, they don't have access to a coach? Like how important is that and what advice maybe do you have for someone who doesn't have a coach?

Right. Well, I actually think that if possible, that it is really imperative to have a coach. As I said, when I started to learn, I was reading books and I was self taught. Right. And I made some progress. The work that we did really did have a very positive impact. We saved hundreds of thousands of dollars for the branch we were working in. We absolutely made things better for our customers. However, one of the things for myself in my learning, it was really hit and miss, Right. We could try something and I could see the result. Having a coach really can help accelerate your learning because the coach will help you see things that you can't see. Right. So when we practice things and when we do things and we try them out, the more often we do things, we make a habit. Right. And that's one of the things that kata is based on. So a lot of times we think practice makes perfect, but what I'm going to say is that practice makes permanent. So if we practice something in a way that's not correct, we'll make a habit, right?

Yes.

But the habit won't be a correct habit.

Exactly.

When we have a coach. Right. A coach can offer us corrective feedback because they already know the right way to do something. Right. So then they help keep us on track and make sure that not only are we pointed in the right direction, but the practice that we do is going to be the correct practice to make the correct kind of habit that we want to have. So having a coach really is imperative if you Want to develop really good habits, and you really want to make sure that you're doing things correctly. And as human beings, we don't always see the things that we need to see. Right. If you want to improve your golf game, what do you do?

Yeah, get a coach.

Get a coach. Right. And one of the reasons you get a coach is because the coach can watch you swing. They can see the placement of your hands on the club. They can see where your feet are placed. Right. You may. You're doing the golfing. You can't see that about yourself.

Right, exactly, exactly. Now, a misunderstanding on just really lean in general sometimes, like, especially when you talk about things like standardized work or, I don't know, even coaching to some extent, is that it could kind of put shackles on the practitioner, and it could potentially, some would say, stifle creativity. So with you getting all this frequent feedback and someone would almost say, being guided along the way. Right. With a coach, what kind of impact does that have on creativity?

Well, actually, I'm going to say that I think that. And I actually have a master's degree in sculpture, so creativity is something that's really important to me. And I actually come to this work from the perspective of how do we help people be more creative and solving problems. Because solving problems, which is what we all do in our work and our regular everyday lives, has a lot to do with creativity. So I think people have a misconception that creativity has to do with flashes of inspiration that come out of nowhere. Right. And that happen to other people, those creative types, the art department. Right. If you're in marketing, I believe actually that what creativity is is the synthesis of knowledge and experience that you have from before. And you're able to take that knowledge and experience and combine it in a new and different way. Something that hasn't happened. So when we practice deliberately and we do things that are very standard, like let's say you have standard work, right, and you're doing something in exactly the same way. I actually think that promotes creativity because in doing something the same way all of the time, you gain a very deep understanding of that work. And as you're doing the work, suddenly you think to yourself, hey, I did this this way before, and now I did this this way by mistake today, maybe. And this is what happens. And suddenly you combine those things together and you have a new idea. So I believe that standard work actually is a way for us to become workers. Creative.

Beautiful. I love that. You know, and I also think just from your. The stories that you've told on, on coaching is that that coach can also offer inspiration and encouragement to keep going. And so I think about innovation, right. And I'm reading a fantastic book right now called the Obstacle is the Way. It's about. It's about stoicism. How the stoics would kind of battle through and overcome, you know, obstacles and break through and they tell a story of, you know, how the light bulb was invented. And it wasn't, like you said, just flash of genius. It was that they never quit, you know, and it just kept going. It kept going. It kept going and kept learning and eventually you hit it. So I think what you said is so true and especially on the coaching side is that your coach won't let you quit, right. If you stick with them.

Absolutely. I think, and there's a wonderful quote and I don't remember who it comes from, but basically it's that if you just tried one more time, think what might have occurred. So many people give up before the one more time that they would have had a success about something, right?

Yes. Beautiful. So, okay, talk about the service side though, a little bit more. I want to hear tell a story of where you've seen improvement. Kata coaching. Kata really make an impact in a service based organization.

Okay. A lot of times people think that again, like many other lean principles, practices and tools, people might think that kata can only be used for short cycle time, you know, manufacturing processes, but it really can be used for anything. And I work a lot in insurance and HR industry and all of the things that people do, make an insurance policy, renew an insurance policy, all of those kind of things, really, they have to think about, well, how do we do this in a way that's going to be more effective and more efficient for our customer? So one of the things we like to say to people is, all right, well, what is the vision that your customer wants? Right? So let's say we have an obstacle where our customers are saying, well, we want you to call us back after two hours, right? We say that's not possible. We cannot call you back and create your insurance policy after two hours. How can we possibly do that? It's impossible. So what we would do then we sat down and we said, okay, let's write down all of the reasons that we can't do this. Right? So we got the team together, everybody sat down, wrote down all of the reasons that it was impossible. Then every day we said, okay, choose one first. Right? I don't mind which reason you choose. Yeah, choose one. Right. Okay, we can't call people back because we don't have enough coverage. Right. Enough phone coverage to do that. Okay, what are the reasons for that? Oh, people go on lunch at this time. Oh, people go out and visit agents at this time. Oh, people do a variety of different things. Right. So tomorrow, tell me one thing that we can change to make that different. Oh, well, we could reorganize our lunch so it could be at this time. Great. Let's try it. Let's see what happens. Let's see if we got the time down. And so every single day we can go back until we actually work on all of those obstacles. And you know, what happened after a few months, took a little while of trying. Could they return calls and write insurance policies in two hours? Absolutely.

Beautiful.

Absolutely. Went from I can't to of course we can. Yes, right? Yes, Absolutely. Daily iterative practice. Break things down into very, very small bites and figure out what you can do.

It's such a great example because we take that big, vague problem, right, like you were describing, call people back in two hours. It's impossible. Right. And just naturally to think that. But then you just broke it down. And that's the beauty of kata, right? Is this taking it down one step at a. What's the next step? What are you gonna do today? And tomorrow, what are you gonna do? Right? And then get feedback immediately. So I love that.

And I'd like to tie it back to creativity too, because think about it. We think of creativity as, okay, the giant, again, big flash of inspiration, right? But what it is is figuring out how it's going from I can't to of course we can. Right? But what they had to do to go get to of course we can is to break down the big I can't into all of the little I can'ts, right? And say, oh, well, what could we do? Oh, we could do this. Now let's try that. That's what creativity is, right?

Yes.

Going from I can't to of course we can with things they already knew. Right. It was not a giant flash of inspiration or something that nobody had ever heard of to say, let's change our lunch hour. Right? That's just doing something that they already knew and experienced in a different way.

Right?

Right. Then trying that and see what happens. So I think that kata is actually a way to make a creativity habit for people.

Beautiful, beautiful. Tell us about your book, Karen.

Oh, thank you so much for asking, Ron. Toyota. Way to Service Excellence isn't a book just about leaning out processes and applying Lean Tools in Service Organizations. What it is is a book for service organizations to use to create a vision of service excellence so that they create and deliver peak service experiences to their customers based on deeply understanding what it is their customers want now. And for the long term, service is actually about other people, right? Yes. So oftentimes in Lean, we think about how do we gain internal efficiency. Right. How do we make things better for us? But in order for our organizations to flourish, thrive, and grow, really, we need to focus on our customers, deeply understand their needs, and then use our four Ps, our philosophy, process people and problem solving, and our 17 principles that we talk about in the book to actually make sure that we're delivering what our customers want now and for the long term.

Yes. Beautiful. Well, we're going to link to your book and definitely recommend everybody pick it up. So go to gembapodcast.com look for the Karen Ross episode, and you'll find a link there. So, Karen, thank you. So let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. And I got. Got a couple new questions that I don't even know if you're prepared for. So we're going to see how good you are on your feet.

Ask away. That's what I love.

All right. All right. Well, the first one's an oldie but goodie. You know, everybody knows what's. What's coming. So you. We spent a lot of time in Lean talking about those two pillars, continuous improvement being the tools, the things that we can do, and then respect for people. And respect for people can be a little bit harder to define. Wrap your arms around. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

Sure. And actually, that's a wonderful question. And you've chosen a question that's one of the things that I'm most passionate about. I think over time, respect for people has come to be somewhat watered down and mean that we treat everybody nicely. We don't shout at people, we hear everybody's opinion. A variety of different things like that. Can you think of any company that doesn't have something in its mission statement about treating people with respect? Right, right. I actually think respect for people means two things. First of all, it has the concept of challenge, which, when you look at our Toyota Way 4PS, sits on a foundation of challenge. And challenge means that we actually push people out of the comfort zone of what they know into what we call the learning zone, where we don't know. Right. Or where we may not be comfortable. I also like to call it the creativity zone. Right. Where we're figuring out how to create the new services and processes that our customers want. So when we respect people, we believe that they can be more than they already are now. Right. So my coach, my teacher Leslie, would always say, okay, here's where you are now, but I believe that you can do more than this. Right. So we push people out into that learning zone, that uncomfortable zone, but then also we stay with them and care for them and what I call nurture them in that zone. Right. So how do we make sure we don't do the work for them, but how do we make sure that we're right there with them saying, of course you can do it. If you have a question, ask me. Respect for people means that we absolutely believe that every single person is. Is a creative person and a person who's able to learn and grow and do more than they're doing now through the experience of doing.

Yeah. You know, you said something that really resonated with me. It's actually something that I've struggled with myself as a leader. And, you know, we talk a lot about giving autonomy. Right. And freedom. And we've talked about Gemba Academy's talked about before in some of our videos, and I've given some talks that autonomy is not always received. Like people. Some people don't want autonomy. They want to just tell me what to do and I'll do it, you know, but obviously we don't want to do that. But I think what I've been maybe guilty of is you can give too much autonomy and just say, take care of it. And then I won't say, wash your hands of it, but maybe not be beside them as much as you really should be to offer that feedback. Right. Offer that, that coaching, you know, along the way. And so I think there's that really important balance. We talk about, oh, autonomous teams. Right. Or whatever it might be, but that doesn't mean that the coach walks away. Right. And so that's something that I've really struggled with. So I'm so glad that you kind of stated it that way.

Right. And I actually love that you said that because oftentimes I go and work in places and I ask people, what's your definition of respect? And they'll say, my definition of respect is that my manager trusts me and leaves me alone because they know that I can do the work. And for me, that's actually the opposite of my view of respect. Right. Respect is that your manager is going to go see what you're Doing. And then they're going to push you to the next level of learning and ability by questioning you and coaching you and help you become the best person that you can be. We spend more time at work than we do with our family.

Exactly. Exactly.

If we teach people how to be creative problem solvers at work, they're going to take that right back home to their family and their community and the world. To make a better world beautiful.

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

The best advice I've ever received in general or about lean?

Yeah, whatever. Could be grandma, could be Grandpa. I don't know.

Okay. The best advice I've ever received is be your whole self. Right. All of us question many different things about ourselves, right? And we think, oh, I don't know, maybe I'm not that good at this or maybe I'm not that good at that. People say to me all the time, do you think it was a waste of time to go and have a degree in art? And I say to people, hey, it was the best thing I ever did. Right. Because when you study art, you learn how to solve problems. I had to learn how to make a 500 pound concrete sculpture stand. Right? All of that thinking I apply to helping people improve business processes and improve business performance. If I didn't bring the artist part of myself to my work, even though I work oftentimes with corporate America, people aren't so used to having an artist show up. Right. But bring your whole self. Who? All of us, when we develop to be the best people we can be and we work all together, that's when we're actually going to make the biggest difference for our customers and for our companies.

Yes. Yes. Can you think of an experiment? Maybe a project or, I don't know, an event that you were a part of, Perhaps you led, that did work out, possibly failed. If so, what did you learn?

Things don't work out all of the time. Right. That's why we pdca. Right, pdca, Absolutely. And I'm going to answer your question, but I'm also going to tell you that I have a different idea about failure.

Okay.

Okay. So I think that oftentimes we like to tell people failing is okay. Right? Don't worry, try things out. It's okay to fail. When we work in big businesses and in companies oftentimes, although we say that to people, it really isn't true. Right. Failure actually isn't an option if you're designing a new product or if you're producing payroll checks for customers. Failing really is not an option. Right? Right. I think that if we actually say to people, don't have in your mind right or wrong. Right. And if you do this, it's going to succeed or fail. Say, here's the idea to try to do something different to get towards a goal, try it out. It's either going to work the way you thought it did, or it's not going to work the way you thought it did. Right. So when it doesn't work the way you thought, that's okay. It's not a failure. You just learned something. You can dispense with that idea that that was the right way to go. Right. And that way people are more willing to take a risk and people are more willing to try something and learn. So I'm not sure we, in the end, feel like we learn from failure. So I'm going to say for myself, there are things that don't work.

Don'T.

Work all of the time for me. And I'm going to say one of the things, and this is just a life story. I thought that I was going to be a professor. Right. I took a master's degree in sculpture. I was all prepared. That's the way I thought that I could best help people in the world. And that didn't work out for a wide variety of reasons. Actually, now I do a lot of the things that I would have enjoyed as being a professor. I teach people all of the time how to improve their business by using our principles and processes for service excellence. I had the fabulous opportunity to write this book. I get to do podcasts and keynotes at conferences. And really, in the end, I can't imagine doing anything more meaningful or that would have been better for me than what I'm doing now. Right. Helping people improve the world. What could be better? So had I hung on to that idea of what was that I failed, would I have been able to go forward and do this? Right?

Right.

Yeah. Beautiful.

What are you most proud of as it relates to your journey with continuous improvement?

I'm actually most proud of the people that I have worked with in all different service organizations who work hard to put these principles and practices into place every single day. People work in service organizations because they absolutely care about other people. They absolutely care about their customers. A lot of times when I go to help people, it's not easy to learn something new. It's not easy to try something new. They're doing all of this while they're doing their work right. On a daily basis. So what I'm really most proud of is how much effort the people that I work with in every service organization have put in to learn, because what they really care about is their customer and working in ways to serve them better. So when someone comes up to me and says, I'm really excited we tried this and our customer was happy, or I'm really excited we tried this, it didn't work as we thought, but it gave us an idea for the next thing to try. That's what I'm really proud of. And I say to the people that I work with all of the time, I say to them, thank you so much for the hard work that you do to serve your customers every single day, because that's really what service is all about.

Yes. What's the best book that you've read or possibly are reading maybe, I don't know, over this past year. And it doesn't have to be kind of lean related. Any book.

Sure. I am currently reading a book that I am absolutely loving and absolutely passionate about and it's called the Book of Joy. And it is a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And in that book they discuss how we can have more joy in our lives and things that we can do, every single one of us, beautiful every single day, to make the world a better place.

Now you mentioned earlier in the show Ann Arbor, have you been to Menlo and visited with our friend Richard Sheridan?

Absolutely. I had wonderful. I've been there a few times, but I had a wonderful opportunity to actually spend a day with Jeff Leiker and with Richard Sheridan together at menlo. Absolutely inspiring.

Well, obviously the book that you just said reminded me of Richard's book Joy Inc. Right. So it's a beautiful, beautiful book about Joy as well, in a business context of business.

Yes. And I actually recommend Joy, Inc. Very often to people, especially when many businesses want to know about purpose. The section in that book, Joy Inc. That Richard writes about visioning, I think is absolutely one of the best for people who are interested in figuring out how do we figure out what our business's vision is and what our purpose is?

Yes. Yes.

Beautiful.

All right. Hey, so to wrap up the show here, talk about what you're going to be doing at the Katakan conference.

Sure. At the Katakan conference. I'm really excited and honored to be a keynote speaker and I get to speak after Mike Rother. That's very exciting. Yep. On the first day. And I will be talking a bit.

So really what you're saying is the warm up show for you. Is. Is that what you're trying to. Nah, I'm just kidding.

Absolutely. I'll be talking about Kata for Creativity and Service Excellence. So if listeners have not been to Kata Khan in the past, please do come along and join us. It's a wonderful opportunity to interact. All of the sessions are very interactive. You're going to learn by doing and you're going to come away being able to do different things than you could when you arrived and also to meet a wonderful community of practitioners who are really interested in helping other people learn.

And there could be worse locations for this, right?

Hey, absolutely. Chicago, you know, San Diego in February. I'm going to be very happy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're so it's February 21st, 22nd in the San Diego, California. So we've already mentioned it. We can save folks 10% on the Katakan conference and also the TWI summit, which kind of going on to the same time there. So people can look for that. Just go to gembacademy.com twi that's going to be the landing page for it. And yeah, we hope everybody goes and checks it out because it's going to be a great time. All right. Well, hey, how can people connect with you?

Oh, absolutely. Please feel free to look up my website, www.karenrossconsulting.com. send me an email. You'll find my phone number on that website as well. Please do connect with me on LinkedIn and on Twitter. Send me an email, give me a phone call. I always love to hear what people are doing and see how we can help.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Well, we'll link to everything on the show notes page. So, Karen, thank you. It's been so fun to talk to you today and can't wait to meet you face to face.

I feel the same way. Thanks so much for having me, Ron.

All right, you take care.

You too.

Bye. Bye.

Bye.

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