GA 162 | Continuous Improvement in the U.S. Air Force with Damien Hocquard

You're listening to episode 162 with Damien Hocard.

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 for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching Arlene and Six Sigma training videos over@gembacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now today, I'm excited to welcome Damien Hocart to the show. Now, Damian and I connected over LinkedIn. Seems like LinkedIn is an awesome way to find podcast guests these days. So if you're interested in coming onto the show, hit me up on LinkedIn and we can get you on the show if you want to share your lean story. But anyhow, Damian's got a really interesting story. He's part of the Canadian military and he's actually stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. And so what we did is we kind of really talked about his journey as a Canadian working within the US Air Force cpi, or Continuous Process Improvement Program. So Damian just kind of walks us through how he got started with the program and he also spent some time going into pretty good detail on a project that he worked on. And so I think you're going to enjoy the show. He's been practicing lean at Six Sigma for about a year, so he's still pretty new. But he's obviously, he's drank the Kool Aid, as you'll hear, and I really enjoyed talking to him. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 162 again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 1. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Damien, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

I'm calling from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.

Nice, nice. My brother in law was actually stationed at Tinker for many years and now he's in. Where's he at? He's in Georgia now, but yeah, that's a nice part of the country. But don't think you're from that part of the world, are you?

No, no, I've only been here for Just coming on three years now. Okay.

All right, well, we'll jump in with quotes and all that kind of stuff, but before we do that, set the context a little bit. Who are you? Davion? And what are you up to these days?

All right, well, like you said, my name is Damien, Master Corporal Damien Hocard and I've been in the Canadian armed forces since 2005. I joined as an Army Communications and Information Systems Special Specialist. Short form is asus. I'm trained in various forms of voice and data communications, radios, computers, all that, all that good stuff. I've done two deployments to Afghanistan and I've been stationed with the United States Air Force as a, as a CSO communication system operator on the awacs. Sorry for all the acronyms.

Talking to my brother in law, I'm like, whatever, dude, I don't either.

Yeah, exactly. So the awacs, it's an aircraft, it stands for Airborne Warning and Control System. And you might have seen them flying around. It's a giant aircraft with a huge radar on the top. So like a giant dinner plate attached to the top of it. Anyways, so I've been down here since 2014 and working with the USEF, and it was only about last June that I was first introduced to cpi.

Okay, well, we'll get into your continuous improvement journey here in a second. But as you know, I know you listen to the show, Damian, so thanks for that. We like to kind of get things going with a quote or two of something that possibly inspires them. So the guest. Do you have one?

Yes, actually I have two. Okay, so my first one is from Andy Glassow and he says that one of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. And I like that quote because it reminds me of the time management matrix that Stephen Covey goes over in his book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And I think it sums up the matrix perfectly by sort of saying that a good leader needs to focus on that top right quadrant, the important but not urgent tasks. You know, I mean, there's a lot of firefighting in the military and Canadian and American military, and. And I mean, it's great. People are, you know, they're putting those fires out, but, you know, we kind of need to shift to the right a little bit and focus on things before they become urgent.

It's not just the military, my friend, it's the world over.

I'll stick to my lane. Yeah, I can agree with you there. So my second quote is a Canadian Quote from retired General Rick Hillier. He was the former chief of the Defense Staff. So that's the head, the head military person for the Canadian Armed Forces. And he was in that position from 05 to 08. And he said that leadership is not about org charts, corporate structures, or the latest management theory or technology. Leadership is about people. And I like that one. He's from Newfoundland, and they always have a great way of just simplifying everything. And like he says, it's about people. And I mean, it's so simple, but I forget it all the time. And so I really like that quote.

Yeah, awesome. Good stuff. All right, so we know that you're, you're Canadian and that you're working with the US Air Force. So maybe let's back up a little bit even before you arriving in the States and tell us a little bit about your background and, and, and then I guess, kind of get into your cpi, your continuous improvement story, and how you, how you first came to learn about it.

Before I got down here, I was in. I was in a unit that was sort of focused on first responding High readiness cbrny, which is another acronym for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive Threats. So I'd been working in that unit for. I was there for a total of five years. And looking back on it, I think that I've always sort of been a lean thinker. I just never. I didn't know what that was. I didn't know any of the tools or any of the concepts or anything. But on an almost daily basis, I'd be pulling my hair out going, you know, why are we doing things this way? You know, why are we doing it this, that way? You know, let's, let's come together as a team. Just in my section, we were called the Signals Troop or SIGS Troop. And Signals being the Army Corps that I'm a member of being working with communications. And so anyways, there was a group of radio operators like myself, and we had radio technicians and computer technicians, and not a very big group of people, but diverse enough that we were kind of going in separate areas. And I was always like, let's get together. Let's kind of have a common goal at the end. Let's streamline some of these processes and the way we're doing things. Because I'm having a heck of a time over here. I can only imagine what you guys are going through. Like I said, I've been there for about five years. And we've got career managers who kind of oversee where we're going and what we're doing long term. And I knew they kind of, they wanted to pull me back into one of the brigades, one of the army brigades around Canada and just back into the army, so to speak, as opposed to that high readiness area. And that wasn't really what I wanted. I either wanted to stay in that environment or I wanted to do something different. And it had kind of trickled down through the, through the vines that they were looking for somebody to go down to Oklahoma. And this might make me look bad, but I'm going to be honest here. When I first thought Oklahoma, I kind of pictured where Ohio was. And so to move ahead a little bit, once I MapQuested it out and looked and saw, okay, that's actually a lot farther south than I thought it was.

Had you been to the States before?

So I've been to New Mexico before, I've been to Rochester, New York before.

Okay.

A couple other places, but not, not really. I hadn't spent a whole lot of time in the States.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Well, good stuff. Good stuff. All right. So you get to Oklahoma and tell us about how you got introduced to cpi. Like, did you know it was a thing or how was that, how was that brought up to you?

I did not. So I was in the 964th Airborne Air Control Squadron. So that's a flying squadron, an AWACS flying squadron. So it's full of air crew that man the different positions on the jet. And like I said, I was a communication system operator. Long name for radio guy.

Okay.

And so I was wondering why they.

Don'T call him just radio guy, you know.

Right, yeah, exactly. So I was the person in charge of C flight, communications flight. I was the NCO in charge. So there was a senior NCO and an officer in charge as well, but I was the nco, so that low level leader. And so I'd been there for about a year and I'm going to talk about it a little bit more, but the usaf, they kind of like to shift people every year or so, you know, get him into a new position. And so like I said, they, I'd been there for about a year and they had moved somebody into my position in the flight and but they had nowhere for me to go. And so, you know, I went and asked, I said, you know, what's the plan for me? And I was told they didn't really, didn't really have anywhere for me to go, but because I'm Canadian, you know, they can bring in a USAF guy and you know, it's not hurting anybody. I mean, he, he gets his leadership billet, you know, and you know, I do my thing and it's sort of we coexist peacefully. So luckily enough, I happened to run Into Senior Master Sergeant Brad Zikis. He had just moved up from the 964th to the operations group which oversees all the different flying squadrons. And he moved up there to stand up a CPI office and he needed another person on the team. And I just happened to be fortunate enough to be selected. I had no idea what CPI was. I mean, there's so many acronyms down here. I just stopped asking. And so he kind of explained it to me and I'm sort of a problem solver and he sold me on it right away. I said, we're going to fix some problems, we're going to identify some waste. And that was really all I needed to hear. Like I said, I had no job in the 964th. So it kind of came along at the right time.

Yeah.

And so from there I was put on the CPI awareness course which was run by Master Sergeant Reza Zinalpour. And then after that I went on the greenbelt course which was run by master black belts, Mark Harrison, Larry Fisher. And at first I had a bit of trouble seeing how the tools were relevant to a heavy administrative environment. Master Sergeant Zinalpour and Mark and Larry, they came from, you know, the maintenance depots and more of a supply line and assembly line. That's the word I'm thinking of. More of an assembly line sort of very. You can immediately grasp how relevant CPI is to that sort of role.

Manufacturing in civilian terms.

Absolutely. Manufacturing. Yep. Yeah, got it. And like I said, I had a little bit of a hard time thinking, seeing how this, how this was relevant. But you know, as I learned more about the tools and concepts, you know, I had, I had faith in the people I was working with, with Sergeant Zeke's and Sergeant Zinopor and, and of course Mark and Larry. And I mean, I just, I just started to see the light. Like I said before in my last unit back in Canada. I was always like, you know, why are we doing it this way? You know, how do we, how do we fix this? How do we make it better? Right.

Talk about your greenbelt course a little bit. How did that, how does that look in the.

Right. So it was a four day, four day course run by the master black belts. Like I, like I said there. And you know, they go over, they go over everything, pretty much everything that the CPI Awareness course. We kind of refer to that as your white belt. Your introductory level, you know, here's, here's Tim Wood, here's, you know, this is how you identify waste. Here's 5s, all of that stuff. And they kind of go into that as well. But then they go, they go a lot deeper. They go into, you know, into deviations and, and all that stuff, you know, and I won't lie, a lot of it was, was over my head. But the stuff that I managed to grasp, you know, to grasp. Sorry, I, you know, it just, you know, whetted my appetite for more.

Yeah.

And so like I said, it was a big time light bulb effect. You know, I was like, you know, we don't have to do things the way we've always, they've always been done. There's, there's, I mean, there's an actual way for me to bring about change. It was, honestly, it was a life changing realization.

So talk about maybe a first project or first event that you were involved in after you had a little bit of knowledge put into your head.

Sure. So the very first event that I was involved in was a instructor positional upgrade process. So the process that the USAF uses to take an aircrew flyer and upgrade them to another position or to be an instructor, the way they do that is they take you out of your squadron, they bring you over to a different squadron that focuses solely on training, on the upgrading and training of initial and instructor students. And so they bring you over there, they give you the academics that you need to know, and then they give you, they assign you a primary instructor and they assign you a student, and you've got the instructor looking over your shoulder and you're teaching the student everything that you've learned and making sure that they do their job correctly. Because as an instructor, that's your job. You're there for safety, you're there for job correctness and making sure that they know what they're doing. Because if they don't, that's a problem. And if you're not able to step in, that's an even bigger problem as an instructor. And same thing as a positional upgrade as well. So the way this was brought over to us, a guy, his name was Tech Sergeant Doug Yarnell, he was in the trs. And again, I'm going to apologize for all the acronyms. It's the training, it's called the Training squadron.

Okay.

And so that, that one is sort of, that's where they do the initial academics and then the 966, the other squadron there, that one is the one that focuses on the actual flying instructing portion of it. So Doug called us up and he said, so I've got these folders, these training folders that they come over to my office and if we don't get them according to the regs, they're supposed to get them a week prior to a student starting class. If that doesn't happen, they're supposed to be recommended removed from training and then that's that. So he said, I believe the numbers were 119 of 194folders in a 15month period showed up late. So we asked him, so what, what does that mean? So like he, like I just mentioned, if, according to the regs, if that doesn't happen, they're recommended removed from training. And if it does, then they go on. The problem was that they weren't being recommended removed from training. Right. So people's folders were showing up late or not at all and they would still get their class start date and they would go on training and then they would get over to the 966th looking to fly and they didn't have their folders or anything. So they, you know, they couldn't, they would sit there and wait and wait and wait. But so to go back a little bit to that. So we kind of mapped it out, we mapped out the whole process with him. And if the student's folder doesn't arrive on time, what happens? He starts training. So if the student's folder does arrive on time, he starts training. So we go, there's no impact there. I mean it's a terrible process of course, but, but there's no impact. Nobody's going to care.

Right?

Right. I mean aside from the people who are doing all the work. And we saw that, so we had to kind of shift our focus and that's what we did. So I'm just going to read my problem statement here. And it was between March 2015 and August 2016, 150 of 189 folders tracked from the flying squadrons arrived to the training squadron between one and 108 days after the training date. So that was the problem. We tracked the folders like Doug said, the impact being 337.5 man hours were exhausted routing these folders. So instead of looking at all these folders, being late with no impact, we're looking at all this time people are going into routing these folders. Once we identify that, we got the team together and we mapped it out and Once we mapped it out, the entire process, it's a very big process, and I'm not going to explain it all out for you here, but just briefly, our scope was. So once the group commander, the person in charge of all the flying squadrons says that this student can go on training, he's assigned a line number and a class start date. So once that happens, another section has a checklist and they run this checklist and then they route it. And what I mean by route is it goes through, let's say, six or seven different offices in a squadron, and the person in charge of that section has to sign off, physically sign on a piece of paper in a folder, and then it goes to the next person on that checklist. So like I said, about six or seven different offices, and that can take anywhere from, you know, a day to three, four, five weeks, it routes through that first squadron, then it goes over to the TRS and it routes through the TRS and then it goes back to the member squadron. And then they shred it, right? And we're like, so why are they doing this? You know, why is that? So they don't need it at all. And so we dug in a little bit deeper. And so as soon as we realized that, we said, there's our scope, right? So from the second they, they run that checklist to when they shred it, that like that, if they're shredding it, it clearly doesn't need to happen, right? And I mean, they. There's a lot of routing down here and, and you know, it could be due to anything from, you know, just wanting to be part of the process, wanting to have situational awareness, you know, maybe not a lot of faith in the actual process itself. So, you know, an individual saying, I need to know where this is. And so I want it to come to me. And, you know, they can like accountability probably. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. So there's lots of reasons that they route, but there's not a lot of reason to route, in my maybe not so professional opinion. So what I had the team do was instead of shredding them, take the top sheet, that sort of sign in, sign out sheet, and it's a timeline. It's a timeline of how long the folder took to get from point A to point B to point C to shredded. So I said, instead of shredding that top list, keep it. And I had them keep it for about six weeks. And that's where we got all of our data to track, that these folders were anywhere from one to 108 days late. So we built that timeline, I had them create that and we were able to break down the problem and identify the gap. Our target was to reduce the number of late training folders to no more than 7% per month by December 2016. So this was about late summer that we were working through this. So we gave ourselves about six months to go through it all. And the thing about the target, our honest to God real target, was to eliminate that whole step. So they were going to receive zero late folders. But I mean like this was my very first process. And so I had a couple of conversations with Sergeant Zekis about that. I'm like, can we just not have a target of zero? And I mean he said you could, but you kind of want to give yourself that buffer, right? And so that's kind of how we came up with that 7%. Because it's not just going to be like you're just not going to shut off the flow, right? And I mean there might be some stragglers or whatever. So anyways, that's how we got our target and we went through the practical problem solving model there. We determined the root causes which we had as like I kind of alluded to before, the regulations say that if the folder doesn't arrive on time, member is recommended removed from training. It's not enforced. If they started enforcing it, you better believe that they would start receiving those folders when they're supposed to, because nobody wants to say so. And so didn't start training because.

So is that what you did?

So that was, that was one of the options and we discussed it. But we also talked with the commanders of the TRS and the 966 and we said, do you guys need to receive these? Do you need this much situational awareness and does your staff need this much? And they said no. So instead of enforcing it as a team, we decided let's submit a change request in 847, that's the name of the form change request to actually remove that regulation for the folder to be routed to these two squadrons and to arrive no more than seven days before class start date. So like I said, that's. And that's how the target was going to go down to zero. So I mean that was a really easy. Those are really easy countermeasures to develop. I mean, remove the two lines or so that talk about this. And we also. One of the countermeasures that we also were working on was to instead of just get rid of that checklist entirely because I Mean there is value there. It does things like check a member's his prerequisites before flying. So you need a certain number of hours based on your position. You need to be fit. You can't have any sort of waivers precluding you from flying or anything like that. So it kind of checks those items. And so rather than get rid of it, we wanted to push it down to the individual flight level.

So.

Back down to almost step one. So me as leadership in the flight, if I decide that so and so is ready for upgrade, I'm going to use this checklist and I'm going to check all of his requirements. And instead of me going, yeah, I think he's good, I use this checklist and go, yeah, he's good. And here's the proof. So that was what we decided to do with that.

Okay, so kind of jump ahead a little bit and talk about maybe implementing, finalizing your countermeasures, if you will. And then how did you confirm if they, if they were working?

Sure. So we had Tech Sergeant Yarnell, who was the team lead, we had him submit the change request. We also had to brief the squadron commanders that we wanted to take this checklist and push it down to the lowest levels. And honestly, I don't know if that actually ever got done or not. That's still part of my follow up for it. It being my first event, I kind of, I kind of glazed through step eight, you know what I mean? Once I kind of put the countermeasures in progress and kind of went, hey, we're done, off we go. It wasn't too long ago I kind of sat down and I was looking at some past events and went, did I actually follow up with that? So I mean, it's on my to do list. But you know, it was, it was a great learning experience for me. But so we, for confirming results and process, it was almost instantaneous. I called the trs, their training people, and I called them once a month for three months and they were receiving zero, which is great. I mean they're not wasting any more hours. That was almost 340 hours they were wasting doing a job that nobody really needed them to do.

Wow, that's awesome.

Yeah. So the change request was submitted. I don't believe it's been changed yet, but I mean that stuff takes a long time. So I mean, I think it's, I feel like it's just, it's even a success for us to submit it. So we're still waiting for that to come down. But I think they sort of, I don't want to use the term batch but I think they batch those change requests and then when it's time to, you know, reissue the publication, they make all those changes. So not being an expert in that area, that's sort of, that's what I think is, is the hold up for that. But in the meantime, you know, we, we eliminated those hours and, and I think, I think that was, that was a pretty good first event for me personally.

How long did you work on that again? So you had planned for it to be about four or five months. Is that what it ended up being?

Yeah, so we, we started in, in July of 2016 and we finished at about September. We had implemented everything and yeah, yeah, it went up a middle of September and by December we had kind of said o, we're still at zero. I mean everything's looking pretty good.

Right? Nice, very good, well done. So the last question I have for this section, Damian, is just, and I don't want to put you on the spot, it's kind of a Canadian guy talking about the US Air Force or whatever, but it's like what are the, I don't know what the challenges are. What's difficult about CPI within the military?

Let's just say in any given office, in the ones I've worked with, again, I'll stick to my lanes. You come back in a year and you'll have pretty much 100% turnover of people. So I mean that makes lasting change incredibly difficult to implement and sustain and it also makes employee engagement very, very difficult as well. Right. The men and women that I've worked with of the usaf, they're very professional and they've got great ideas. But how do you tap into those ideas and that innovation when they're not around long enough to see the fruits of their labor? So that's some of the issues that I faced up in my CPI office. So another one is there's a culture of fear over broken processes and failure. So there's a perception in the USAF and even the Canadian military as well that being the one to identify a problem, it's a negative thing. Something that even I've said to my subordinates, if you're going to identify a problem, if you're going to complain about something, come up with a positive as well, like this process is terrible or why am I showing up so early? This would be a better way to do this, that sort of thing. You know, I believe we can change that culture. But like you've mentioned before, in some of your previous podcasts, culture change is very, very hard. But I believe with Kaizen events of all sorts of magnitudes, from the individual squadron or individual shops processes to group wide. And that would involve all of the squadrons that I've mentioned and acronyms that I've kind of thrown out your way.

Yeah. What's interesting is you talked earlier. The first challenge was, you know, the high turnover. So they kind of learn about CPI and maybe drink the Kool Aid a little bit, if you will, and then they leave. So all your friends leave. I guess my counter point to that, or to play a little bit of a contrarian, may be that that over the long term could be a very powerful cultural enabler where you get enough people who have been introduced to this that then go out into the world, so to speak. Right. And they bring that thinking along with them. And, you know, it's not a quick fix. Right. But eventually, over the, you know, one year, two years, three year, four years, five years, and, you know, you keep developing these people and helping these people see a different way, perhaps, you know, culture change can take root. Right. I mean, easier said than done.

Absolutely. No, I 100% agree. And it's funny that you mentioned that. So I listened to Diandra Wardell's podcast. I think that was 158. And so she talked about her sustainable employee engagement program. And hearing her talk about that, it just kind of made it click with me. Exactly what you're saying. We don't have the people that we work with for very long. Like I said, the turnaround is so high. But if we can provide that education piece and make it engaging and, you know, capture them, they can. They can spread it. Yeah, right. So, you know, we. Sergeant Zegas and Sergeant Zinalpour, they're starting up greenbelt courses on their own. They're both. They're both. They just completed the black belt training themselves, so they're well on their way. And they're both very smart and they're setting up regular black belt training for all our members here. And so I think between education and also Toyota Kata, so I just started it. I heard probably about four or five different people on your podcast mention it, and I said, okay, I gotta pick it up. And also Sergeant Zinil Poor recommended it as well, so I picked it up and I'm not very far in, but I can definitely see the.

How.

I think it's Mike Rother who writes it. You know, he alludes to tapping into the continuous improvement, not just. Not just Pumping out these events, not just putting together these action. Action item lists, but, you know, getting to the point where your member, your worker in your assembly line or your office or wherever is able to identify waste and, you know, eliminated or, or, you know, improve it on his own in a. In a low level but effective sort of way. So, I mean, I'm. I'm not there yet, but, you know, I'm.

Yeah, no, it's really powerful. I mean, and that your advantage is over a lot of people who just pick up that Toyota Kata book with no other foundation you have a foundation of. You understand pps, the eight steps. Right. Because that's Toyota Kata is a, you know, in my opinion, kind of a. It's a powerful way. I love it, practice it myself. But it's pps, just accelerated, if you will, and.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And smaller and smaller, more rapid cycles, if you will. But with you having that understanding of, you know, those eight steps, break a problem down, you know, set a target and just, you know, you. You have those embedded into your. Your DNA, if you will, your CPI DNA that, you know, you're going to be far better off than some folks who just. Who don't have that and pick up that book and just think. That's all there is to thinking, when in fact, there's a little bit more.

I mean, when I first got into it and I went through the instructor upgrade process event, and I did a couple other events after that, I was trying to figure out a way to get the Yousaf to come to me and our office and bring us these problems so we could run the PPSM and fix everything for them. But the more podcasts and the more books I started reading, I realized it's not about just pumping out these events. I think the Kaizen events have a benefit back to that culture change piece to get by and show people what we can do with this. But it's a stopgap or it's part of the way there. You know, throw in Toyota Kata and a program similar to Deondra's Sustainable Employee Engagement and, you know, I think culture change is inevitable.

Yeah. Have you read 2 second lean Paul Akers?

I have not.

Yeah, you need to get that.

Yeah, I'll add it to the list.

Definitely add it. Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's just, you know, Paul's a fantastic lean thinker and. Yeah, I think that will add a lot of value to you.

Awesome. Do you know if he's got it on audiobook?

Oh, he does.

I got two Small kids that kind of, you know, me sitting down reading.

A book that's matter of fact, you can listen to it for free through our podcast. We released it as a podcast. He let us do it. So, yeah, I'll find it and send it to you. You just go to the podcast and you can find it on there. But, well, good stuff. All right, well, listen, man, we've been talking for a while. This has been good stuff. Let's jump into the reflection section. I got just a couple of these I'd like to, to ask you. So we can't, can't skip the first one, you know, oldie but goodie. So that, that respect for people part of it. Just, just really curious to get your perspective on that, you know, because you're relatively new into CPI and, and your experiences, has been in the military. So, so what, what does respect for people mean to you?

So listening to people, you know, actively, deliberately listening, not looking at a computer or phone or, or you know, typing away. I'm sure you've, you've had a conversation with somebody where they're, they're typing and you kind of stop and then I go, no, no, no, keep talking, I'm listening. Yeah, you know, you're not, you're not actually listening to them. You know, you're, you're not, you're not formulating your response, waiting for a. I do this all the time. I'm thinking of something to say and then I'm just waiting for my chance to get in there and say what I got to say. And, and you know, I didn't actually hear anything they said. So again, it's, it's something I struggle with every day, but respect for people, hearing what they're saying and understanding them, involving them in the process to bring it back into cpi. Without their buy in and input from the start, they won't feel that necessary ownership to permanently eliminate the waste and sustain the improvement effort.

So far within your journey, what's the best advice you've heard?

Oh, I've gotten so much advice, you know, I've hit so many walls and I've done so many things wrong. And like I said, I'm surrounded by tons of very smart, very smart people. But the best advice I've ever received was from a supervisor in my last unit. His name was Warrant Officer Mike Byer. So like I was saying before, you know, we were in a high readiness unit, high tempo mindset was to get the mission done, period, right safely and all of that stuff, but get the mission done that was the end state. The problem came when we kept accomplishing the mission and kept doing the job despite a decreasing support and equipment, personnel information, etc. We were doing it with less and less, so they were giving us less and less. I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to do what we needed to in the future. So Mike told me, he said sometimes you need to fail. And what he meant by that was, don't forget about the mission and don't stop trying. But it means sometimes it's necessary to show that the system is broken or that the process is broken in order to bring about that change. I mean, if the machine's still trucking along, it's really hard to say this is broken. We can't keep going this way, guys. He said sometimes you need to fail. And I think it's. He's right, you know.

Yeah, got it. So the last question. So you've been at it for about a year, and obviously you, I'm sure, have believe that you got lots to learn. What's one area in particular that you want to, to really focus on? Maybe within this next, I don't know, three to six months.

I think. I think listening to people and, and knowing my role as a, as a facilitator. So, you know, I tend to get too involved and there's been a couple of events where I've even sort of came right in as the team lead said, oh, you know, you guys are too busy to turn the machine off. Oh, let me, let me just do what I got to do. I know what I need here and I know how to fix you and leave. And that's blown up in my face. And so, like I said, listening to what people have to say and knowing my role as a facilitator, I think those are pretty good goals.

Awesome. Awesome. Very good. Well, hey, it's been great chatting with you. Would love to stay in touch with you and maybe we can when you get back to Canada and, and jump into their, their continuous improvement program, which I don't, I don't really know. Do they have a strong program kind.

Of like in the military? Honestly, I don't. I have no idea. I hope so. I mean, if, even, even if they don't, I'm interested in.

Yeah.

You know, how can, how can an organization not want to improve what they've got? I'm sure there's something and, you know, I'm going to find out. Yeah, I was really, really happy to do this. I wanted to. If they don't and if it's not a possibility for me, then I want to build my network for when I go back to Canada and kind of.

Yeah. Get it going.

Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome. Awesome. So how can people connect with you, Damian?

So I'm on LinkedIn just under my name, Damien Hocard. Hocq u a r D. And so, like I said, I'm looking to build my network and surround myself with smart Lean. Already connected with a bunch of folks that you've had on your. On your podcast. Actually, this afternoon, I'm supposed to talk with Diandra about her program. So I have you to thank that.

Yeah, it's so funny how this Lean world works. You know, like Deondra, as you heard on the episode, I just. I met her because we sat together at lunch, at a table, at a conference, you know, and it's like, hey, I'm Ron. She's like, oh. Next thing you know, we're on a podcast together. And, yeah, she's awesome. So, yeah, good stuff.

I'm looking forward to it.

Good stuff. All right, well, hey, thanks again and thank you for your service. And I don't know if you're into college football or anything like that, but you don't need to follow those Sooners or anything like that just because you're there, you know?

No, no, no, no. I'm more of a hockey guy.

Okay, very good, very good. All right, David, you take care and appreciate you.

Thank you. You too, Ron.

All right, bye.

Bye. All right, 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 Gembaacademy.Com.