GA 173 | How to Use A3 Thinking with Katie Anderson

You're listening to episode 173 with Katie Anderson. Welcome to the Gemba Academy Podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Perera. Hey there. This is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy, and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy podcast. As always, thank you so much. Thank you for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembacademy.com, we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today, I'm excited to welcome Katie Anderson to the show. Now, Katie and I have exchanged emails and conversations for the better part of, oh, gosh, a couple years, and we've been trying to connect on the podcast and just weren't ever able to make it happen logistically. She was actually in Japan for 18 months and just timing just was a challenge for us. And, well, she's back in the States now, and so we were finally able to connect. And I'm sure glad we did because we had a great conversation. So Katie lived in Japan for 18 months, and she's practicing lean way longer than that. And so what we did, we kind of just talked about what she learned in Japan, what she observed, and, you know, even some areas of. Of the Japanese culture that Katie believes possibly could inhibit the practicing of lean. So that was a really interesting take. Most people think, oh, gosh, if you're in Japan, everything's going to be easy with lean, and doesn't seem to be the case always. So Katie also kind of got into some really interesting stuff on the use of A three thinking and how about how that can relate to our personal improvement. And then I kind of dropped an interesting question on Katie and, and ask her about her opinion on the state of the union of lean. And she's been around the block, if you will, the lean block, for quite some time. So I was really interested to hear her take on that. And so we had a nice conversation about that. Lastly, Katie set up a nice little gift or treat, if you will, for listeners of the podcast. And to access that, you're going to want to go to her website and There's a particular URL that you want to follow. And, and that is kbjanderson.com GembaAcademy Again, that's K B J A N-E-R-S-O-N.com Gemba Academy kbjanderson.com GembAcademy so we'll link to that in the show notes as well, which can be found over@gembapodcast.com and you'll just look for episode 173. Again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 173. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, Katie, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

I'm calling in from the San Francisco Bay area, a tiny town called Portola Valley that's near Stanford University in Northern California.

Beautiful. Beautiful. All right.

We're having a heat wave right now.

Yeah. Well, what's the temperature?

It's in the upper 90s the last few days, which is pretty hot for us.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're smoking hot out here in Texas as normal. Oh, well, yeah, it could be worse. I could be in Houston where we have the humidity as well, but we don't have the humidity as bad. But anyhow. All right, good stuff. Well, hey, it's great to get you on the show. I know we were joking before we came on that when you were in Japan, we tried several times. We just could never make it work. But super excited to finally have you on the show.

Likewise. It's great to finally talk with you, Ron. Yeah.

All right, Well, I know you know the drill, so we like to kind of begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quotation or two of something that possibly inspires them. So do you have one?

I do. I mean, there are many quotations that inspire me, but one that I repeat to myself almost daily is a quote that I learned from my coach and mentor, Margie Hagueny, who learned from her own coach and mentor. And it's getting ready to talk is not the same thing as listening. And this quote really resonates with me because of I found that as a leader and coach so often, or even as a parent so often, I find myself just thinking in my head, not really fully paying attention to what someone else is saying. And that really, if we're truly listening our own internal monologue, what's going on there is getting in the way of really hearing what that person is saying. So we might be practicing asking more effective questions. For example, we've asked a great question, but then we're not listening to the answer and we're doing a disservice to the other person and actually not Being very respectful and not missing an opportunity to really understand what's going on for that person. So getting. When you find yourself having an internal conversation in your head, you're getting ready to talk and you're not listening. And I have to pay attention to that every day for myself.

So funny. The episode we recently recorded with a. With a guest, Karen Ross. I don't know if you know Karen.

Yes.

Yeah, Karen. And it was actually two of our customers, and we all got on and talked about virtual coaching and so forth. And towards the end of. I think it was maybe the reflection section, the. One of the guests was talking about the need to be better at listening. And. And I. And I. And I referred to. Do you know Brandon Brown?

I don't.

Yeah, Brandon Brown. He's a great, lean thinker, big in a Toyota Cotta space kind of thing. And. And he's famous for. I shared this in the last episode, but he's famous for. You'll be talking to him, and then you finish your statement and you're kind of ready for him to sort of.

Reply, yeah, jump right in.

And he'll just sit there, and he just. He's kind of just looking at you, and it's kind of like, okay, what's going on? But it's like he said, he told me later, he's like, I've learned to be okay with silence while I kind of ponder, like, what's the right way to. I thought was such a elegant way of responding, but very difficult. Right. Because we're just not conditioned to. To listen. We're conditioned to talk.

That's right. I mean, even. I suppose you, too, are having to, you know, doing all these podcasts, constantly paying attention to what that person's saying so that you can ask a better question.

Well, I can always. I always. I say that when we get done with an episode, we'll scroll back on the timeline and, like, you can see, like, the audio waves for me on the top and then the guest on the bottom. And if there's anywhere close to as much waves going on on my track as there is the guest track, we're way off. Right. So it's like, for sure. Yeah. So great.

Immediate feedback for you.

Yeah. It's visual management. Right? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, good stuff. Well, hey, Katie, let's maybe kind of get things rolling a little bit with you telling us about your background, how you first came to learn about continuous improvement. And then obviously, we're going to get into your journey with your great 18 months that you spent in Japan. But maybe just tell us a little bit about who Katie is.

Yeah, great. Well, I've been working in continuous improvement in organizations for about 20 years now. Although I started my career really looking at a more macro level of organizations, I started off thinking I was going to get my PhD doing health policy research and really changing how we looked at health policies in our country and then in Australia when I moved there for my master's degree. But during that time, I shifted my focus more into looking at how to do continuous improvement in individual organizations, either at sort of the state or at private local hospital levels. So I started off primarily in healthcare, and then I shifted during that time to get much more interested in the how do we do continuous improvement at the individual level? And how can we help leaders in organizations be more effective at leading the change within their organizations? And through that, I've started my own consulting practice and really focus on coaching executives and leadership teams on how they are being more effective at leading continuous improvement at both the strategic and all the way down to the frontline level. But I work with a variety of organizations now, not just healthcare.

Sure, sure. Okay. Well, hey, let's jump into Japan. So I guess first question is, what brought you to Japan first and foremost?

Well, it was from my husband's job. We found out actually about three years ago. Exactly. And I had just had our second baby, so the idea of moving overseas with a small infant, I was excited and also a little daunted at the same time. But as a lean practitioner, I also thought, man, what a fabulous opportunity for me on a personal level as well, just for deeper lean learning and going to the source. We ended up going in January of 2015, and actually to back up about a month or two after we found out about the opportunity to move to Tokyo. I was speaking at the Lean Coaching Summit in Long beach, and John Shook's first manager in Japan happened to be at the conference and he still lives near Nagoya. And I reached out to him, met him, and he said, when you move to Tokyo, here's my card, I'll come to Nagoya, I'll show you around, and we can spend some time together. And of course, I seized the day and took his card and certainly reached out within a few months after moving to Tokyo. And ASAO Yoshino and I have become really close friends and he's a mentor of mine now. And it's just interesting how different connections come full circle and how that experience is now been a really powerful one for my own learning and development. And I've been writing about it on my blog, so that's been. I've been able to share it with others too.

Yeah, for sure. And we'll get you to share all of your links and everything. We'll put them in the show notes as well. So I don't know, let's kind of just start at the start of your Japan trip. Like, what were some of the most impactful lessons that you learned, maybe as it applies to lean or maybe even beyond lean human behavior?

Well, I think it all. I think the biggest takeaway for me is that it really all is about human behavior. I think many people who go to Japan, and myself included to a degree, sort of think that all of Japan is kind of like the Toyota production system. And it is not. There are certainly elements of the culture that are supportive of things that we consider, quote, unquote, lean, such as standardized work, following routines. There's kata for almost every aspect of life in Japan, but there's certainly a lot of other cultural habits, you might say, that are really inhibitors for what, you know, what I consider to be really deep lean thinking and practice around the leader as the coach and mentor of others. In a typical Japanese business, people look to the boss to give all the answers. And so in many ways, Toyota, it kind of created some countermeasures from some deep cultural traits. And so that experience of just being in Japan and also going out and visiting a lot of Kaizen or lean thinking organizations really led me to deeply realize that lean thinking and practice isn't just something innately easy for any one culture, but rather it's sort of countermeasures for our own limiting individual or cultural traits. So that was the biggest sort of macro takeaway for me on a professional level about being in Japan.

So I know you wrote an article on Planet Lean about these cultural traits. Can you like. We'll link to the article, but can maybe give the highlights of what you wrote about in that.

Yeah. So it touches on what I just shared and I highlight some of the things that I observed that were, you know, some more innate cultural traits that might help lean thinking, such as the, you know, the being having the kata for everyday life, really striving for perfection and taking pride in everyone's everyday work. I mean that was something, this pride in everyday work was something that really stood out for me. Just walking around daily life, people don't get tipped there. They expect that their job is to do a good job and they do it with utmost respect for the customer. This concept of omotenashi of customer service is one that's just pervasive and really amazing. Amazing experience to be in Japan. And a very sharp contrast when you come back to the United States around the level of customer service. And also getting back to the opening conversation, you and I had this idea of listening in patience. My gosh, Japanese people are very patient and especially in conversation and listen. So I would have conversations. Now typically these would be with Japanese people who also spoke very good English, having either studied or lived abroad. But they are very comfortable with silence in conversation to a degree that we as Americans certainly are not. And me as an extrovert had some discomfort with. But it was also good practice for me sitting in silence and being okay with that lull. And I think for the most part Japanese people as a culture have a longer term view and vision. So many business leaders that I either read about or met and talked with have a expressed a view of the long term and, and that they were going to have patience to achieve their vision for their company. It wasn't looking at this year or next year, but really where do we want to be in 50 years, in 100 years, even beyond their own lifetime.

I've only been to Japan once. I went on way back in the day on a kaizen or not kaizen or back then it was Gemba research. They did their kaikaku experience. And I went and Brad Schmidt was our tour guide. I don't know if you know Brad, but I did.

I went on, I met Brad and we spent some time together.

Yeah, super cool guy. And. And anyhow, he the kind of the opening training for all of us, you know, knucklehead Americans, you know, going over there was the importance of harmony, you know. And I remember just like he really went over like how to greet people, you know, and how to bow and how important this is. And if you don't do it right, you're disrupting harmony. And I was, golly, I didn't really get it initially until I remember we were pulling away from the Toyota facility and a young lady that was taking kind of care of us, she was like kind of our handler, if you will. And she was young lady and really nice and she kind of waved. And then as our bus was pulling away, she bowed and she just stayed in the bow. And Brad said, watch, just watch. And I'm like, okay. So we're all watching out the back of the bus and this young girl is bowing and she's holding the bow and he says she won't come up until the Bus is out of sight. And I was like, goodness gracious, man. I mean, so there's respect and harmony, and it's just. It's a different world, right? When those sorts of aspects.

Totally. And I think we can learn something from that. And at the same time, there are some aspects, certainly around even this concept of maintaining harmony, they can do a disservice for being lean, thinking and challenging some of the rules. Japanese people as a culture are taught to rigidly follow rules and to not think outside of the box. There's a lot of talk in Japan right now about how to bring back innovation, innovative thinking to Japanese industry. And one of the inhibitors is that school children are taught to memorize. They are taught to follow the rules, which on one hand has some strengths, but it also can be a limiting trait as well.

Interesting, Interesting. All right. Hey, what does the word intention mean to you?

So that's a great question. I always have thought that the word intention is something very important. Certainly over the last five to 10 years, in particular, with my focus on continuous improvement, that we need to be intentional about what we're doing and have intention for how we're behaving. And when I moved to Japan, I got a deeper appreciation for the word intention. Short story. When I first arrived there, I realized that I needed to create some business cards. Who hands out business cards anymore? It's LinkedIn or whatever here in the U.S. but the ritual, the kata of handing out business cards is very, very important in Japan. So I worked on getting some business cards, and I didn't have a logo, so I asked the company to use the word intention in the Japanese symbols for intention on my business card. Now, I didn't know what it would look like. I just feel the power of the word intention. And so I got the card back. I thought the two characters looked really kind of cool. And I started handing out my business card in bulk, handed out every time you meet someone, and quickly. Many Japanese people would say, oh, this is very, very important and powerful word. And I said, yeah, you know, I like the word intention. It's important for us to know where we're going and feel like we have awareness of our actions, both on an individual, organizational level. I said, no, no, no. Do you know what these characters mean? And they described to me that the first, there are two kanji, so the original Japanese characters that make up the now Japanese word sh. The first one comes from the character of representing a heart, and the second character means direction. So really having your intention is your heart or what's important inside of you and your direction and your compass. So are you pointing yourself and your behavior in the direction of what's important in your heart? And kind of think of now intention as your personal true north, you know, aligning yourself to what's important to you. And then obviously you also need to create a plan to get there. But first to have awareness of what is your intention in life, in your profession and then are you aligning yourself that way? So I now have this deeper appreciation for the word intention and share that with many people.

Yeah, you know, there's always the age old debate, do you use Japanese words or not? And you know, some companies are really against it, some don't care, some are indifferent. But it's the stories like that to where I think you should at least acknowledge, you know, the meaning behind words within lean, whether you use the Japanese word. Okay. But like here's I never knew that. Right. About the word intention. And that's very powerful when you break it down like that.

Thanks. I've kept the characters on my business card.

Cool.

Yeah, it's great.

Very good, very good. So, next question I have. I know you've written about A three quite a bit and in particular for personal improvement. So talk a little bit about aligning A three thinking and leadership skills and developing good habits.

First, I've been using the A3 framework for strategic problems and problem solving and teaching others and coaching others how to use the A3 framework for problem solving. About five years ago, again, Margie Hegeny, who I mentioned earlier, who is my coach and mentor, an external one, when I was at the Palo Alto Medical foundation, introduced me to the concept of the personal improvement A3. And I personally found it a really powerful process to work through looking at myself and subsequently. Now I teach some classes around how to use the personal improvement A3. It's, you know, it's the same problem solving framework that we use for solving operational organizational problems. But so rarely do we look inward at ourselves and sort of consider ourselves a business condition that requires improvement. And if we look at our own behaviors and actions and think about what observable outcomes we see from that, we can really understand opportunities for improvement in our in ourselves. And I found it really aligned with the literature on habits such as by Charles Duhig, that to create a new habit, we have to set a goal or intention. So going back to this heart direction, we also need to understand your current behavior loop. So your current condition on the personal A3, establish a specific plan for improvement. So that's Once you understand the reasons that are for your limiting habits or your actions right now, which would be the, you know, the root cause analysis part, you move into the right side of an A3 and think about what's your specific plan for improvement and how are you going to improve? Use a coach and practice. And it all aligns with that same A three thinking flow, and it uses that rigorous process to look inward.

Yeah. Duhigg's book is one of the best that I've read in quite some time on habit development, especially thinking about those triggers or the cues that everything kind of goes off of. Right, right. Why do I always want sweets at 3 o'? Clock?

Absolutely. That understanding your trigger and that behavior loop, really analyzing for yourself what's going on internally for me in a certain situation, can create that aha moment for yourself about what do I need to do differently? Or how am I going to truly change my hab? I think so often we talk about, oh, what is our personal improvement goal? Like, oh, I want to be a better question asker or I want to be a better listener if we get back to the beginning of our conversation. But to really change your habits, you have to dig down very specifically, what am I doing now? What are the reasons for what I'm doing now? And now what am I going to be doing differently?

Do you have any. I don't want you to share anything you don't feel comfortable, but any examples of where you've actually seen this work?

Yeah, I do both for myself and for people that I work with and coach for myself. I actually wrote an article recently for the Lean Post about my own personal experience and improvement using the personal improvement A three process. Getting back to I wanted to become a better question asker and also be a better listener. But using with a coach working through the process really honed in on what were the things that I was doing that was getting in my way of first defining what I wanted, what it meant to me to be a better listener. But then what are the specific things that I was doing today or yesterday back then, and what was happening as a result of that, and then what is a specific plan that I was going to put in place? So for myself, I found myself saying the words I think all the time. So I'd ask a question I might be good at, you know, respond, listening for a moment, but then I would start interjecting my own opinion. And so I learned my trigger for myself when I was falling into that habit was the words. I think another example is I'M working right now with a physician leader and he, we started off on his personal improvement A3 and you know, he, he started off by saying that his problem was that he doesn't use his admin effectively and we didn't. We that's really a solution instead of a problem. We started to dig into that what is, you know, his own behaviors. And he started to reveal that, you know, he, he realizes he doesn't manage his time as effectively and he's, that he's into firefighting and that he's not leaving time to think. And, and we worked through that. He now plan in place for managing his time and showing up in a different way. So instead of looking outward so much at what other people were doing, he started to look at his own behavior. It's not any magic within the A3 process itself. Using a familiar process in our lean tool or process that we're used to using, it can also be applied to that personal development side as well. Yeah.

Love it. Love it. Hey, so the last question I have for you before we get into the reflection question is something that just kind of popped in my mind. I like to ask this from time to time to folks who have been around the lean world for quite some time like yourself. If I were to ask you to just give a, oh, I don't know, two minute State of the Union on lean, let's say, let's say in the west, here in the west, what would you say? What's the State of the Union on lean in the West?

What is the state of the Union? I can only speak from my own experience, so I can't speak for what's happening for everyone else. But from what I'm observing from my own clients, the people I work with, people who are in my workshops and then the social media space, I feel like there is a ongoing, I don't know if tension is the right word between. We're sort of at a tipping point with lean. Are we really going to embrace this as a behavior change, as a real mind shift change for leaders at all levels of organization, or is it going to be just the flavor of I guess the decade rather than the flavor of the month and stay in a more tools based in a tools based environment? And that personal change is so hard and it's so much easier to focus on the tools and the processes. I also see some challenges in, primarily in my experience in healthcare, is that different organizations get traction with lean thinking and practice with some either leaders who are helping support lean thinking in the organization or if it's going from the middle. But when these leaders leave that things, the new leadership comes from outside and doesn't potentially have the same mindset. And so basically it shifts and changes or doesn't, doesn't work. People are moving around in organizations so often. So that's, you know, that's another challenge I see in healthcare in particular, possibly in other industries as well. I don't know if I answered your question.

Yeah, no, that's good. I mean there's no right or wrong answer. Right. It's just everyone your perspective. I mean I along what you said. I think I actually have a lot of hope. I'm as guilty as anyone of being a tool head if you will. Back in the day you learn all these tools or go to this workshop and you're excited about this thing called value stream mapping and you read this blue book. And so we want to value stream app everything which is fine. Right. You know, but. And so you learn all these tools and you practice them, maybe you make a few things better. But then I. What gives me hope is that this, there seems to be people finally grasping that in the end this is really about people. Right. And the tools are great and they are important. You know, you can't get on the deep end. It's. It's all about people and you don't have a clue about how to do 5s or what a value stream map is or whatever. You know, you still, you're probably going to struggle. So you got to have a balance of the two. But. Right, but I think that's what it is. I see more balance coming into the, into the, into the lean world and I don't know, it gives me a lot of hope.

Yeah, it's. I mean John Schick talks about this often that you know, lean is a socio technical system and there does need to be balance between the two and that we need the technical side that how do we, you know, how are we solving problems, you know, what are the different technical concepts just in time or whatever. But we also need to be looking at how are the social side of how are we developing people, how are we becoming better coaches of others in their ability to solve problems. And so I too have a lot of hope. You know, I see so much more interest and awareness of people that you know, having the aha's that it is about the people and, and pulling and for more coaching and more support and how to do that more effectively.

It's interesting, my wife actually shared an article with me recently. She's kind of we're big into sort of classical education for our kids. And there was this article written about how, you know, the need for technology is so great now and everything's, you know, on the web or whatever it is. But the article's premise was that the need for, say, liberal arts and humanities is going to be extremely important down the road because all these things are impacting people. And if all we are is engineers and technologists and whatnot, we may not understand people. So you've got to have both sides, right?

Yeah. I read this article just this morning, came through the kqed, which is our local NPR radio station, talking about how principals should look at hiring teachers for the future. And one of the concepts which I tweeted about was this idea about how can teachers shift from teaching the content that they know already to students who don't know that content to teaching students the process of learning, the process of how to learn. And I was like, oh, it's this exact same thing in Lean, as leaders, we can't be around solving all the problems, like giving our opinion. It's about sometimes solving the problems that are within our scope of our authority, but it's about supporting other people in the process of how to solve the problem.

For sure.

I was like, oh, it all goes. It all goes around.

Awesome. Well, good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Well, we could talk all day about this stuff, but in the sake of time, let's go ahead into the reflection section. So this first question we've asked for, well, 100 and some episodes now, every episode I think we've ever done, it's an oldie but goodie. But you know, those two pillars of Lean, we talk about so much continuous improvement, the tools, the things that we can touch and put our hands on, it's pretty easy to define that. But that other pillar, respect for people, can be a little bit harder to grasp. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you, Katie?

There are a lot of dimensions of respect for people, but ultimately, to me, it gets down to supporting other people in making improvements in their own lives, either personally, professionally. So that going back to the other pillar of concept of continuous improvement, but how do we enable other people to have the skills and competencies to feel confident in taking control of their own situation? To me, it's also related back to this concept of helping that Edgar Schein describes in several of his books. It's about supporting someone to move forward in his or her life and feeling confident that they have the ability to do that.

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

So much advice. But if I look back in the last five years or so, to me, the best advice that I've applied personally is that sometimes making the decision to sort of leap into the unknown or to make a change in a situation can be better than staying in the current situation. So sometimes it's not about leaving, isn't about quitting, but it's about deeply understanding your current situation and making a change, even if it's towards something that you don't know if it's going to work out.

You mentioned deeply understanding current condition. And it's something that we've, we've spent here at Gemba Academy. We do, you know, we're far from perfect as a company, so we're constantly trying to improve ourselves and, and just thinking about, you know, Toyota Kata and just PDCA in general, what we find is that so often we don't deeply understand the current condition. Right. You think you do, you think you understand, but when you really start probing at it, you don't. Therein lies a huge problem because we just don't understand the situation, the current situation. So how could you ever worry about countermeasures down the road when you don't even understand a current condition? Right.

For sure. And if you, you know, if you're taking it into your own personal life, sometimes there's the fear of not knowing what the outcome is going to be. So sometimes you do have to, you know, make an experiment or take a countermeasure where it is truly, it feels risky because you don't know how it's going to turn out, but that it's better to do that than to stay in a current situation where you know what the outcome is going to be and not necessarily the one that you want.

Yep. What are you most proud of as it relates to your lean journey?

I'm most proud of. Well, I should take a step back, take a moment. I'm most proud of every day when I can't support someone and doing better for themselves when they have that aha moment. That is, you know, to me, that's what gives me energy about what I do personally and professionally. And it's, you know, on that individual level, enabling people to, you know, to do the improvement. It gets back to that concept of respect for people. When I've, I feel like I've been able to help many other people do better in some aspect of their life. And so to me, that's what I'm.

Most Proud of any good books you've read lately. It doesn't even have to be continuous improvement related.

Well, I did make myself read all of Hamilton in advance of seeing the Musical. That was interesting on many levels, but it's quite a tome. But it did make. I did appreciate the musical better. And then I just recently finished the new book the Lean Strategy by a few authors. And there were, you know, there's some parts of the book that I didn't completely agree with, but I really resonated with the concept that they have of frameworks and structures as a way of thinking. So, so much we know and lean are really truly frameworks and structures for us to more deeply think about our processes. So that resonated with me. And I've actually just talked to the authors and we're going to do an interview soon. So I'm looking forward to that.

Love it. So you've been around for a while, Katie, and you've been practicing lean for many years, but is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become a better lean thinker?

Oh, there's so many things that I always feel like I need to improve on. But that's good, right? To think we're perfect is probably not a good place to be. So, I mean, the first is get back to the concept that I think Duhigg talks about in his book Habits, that old habits are not never fully extinguished, that we just replace them with stronger habits. And to that point, I'm always having to constantly think about how I'm not, you know, how to counteract my instinct to jump in or to be thinking while someone else is talking. Getting back to our first quote. So that's my sort of my daily intentional practice. But the other skill that I need to be bringing in is my own sort of personal kanban. I've been writing this blog for about three years now, and I always have way more topics that I want to write about than I actually have time to write about. So I keep saying I need to create a personal kanban to really manage the flow of my writing. And so I need to not stop saying that I need to do that and actually put that into practice.

Now, are you thinking of like personal combo up on a whiteboard or digital or what are you thinking?

Oh, no, I have this corner of my office. I'm looking at it right now. Just get some, you know, some. Some sticky notes and kanban. Create some kanbans with topics and actually create a little bit of more of A schedule so that I can manage all the ideas that are in my head, but also keep myself on track and not feel so overwhelmed sometimes by all the things that are percolating.

Plus, you get to move that Kanban card into the done column and get a little hit of dopamine. Right. So you don't feel great.

That's true. It's a sense of accomplishment.

Yes, exactly. All right, very good. Well, hey, I really enjoyed talking with you, Katie. So let's maybe wrap the show up with you sharing some final words of wisdom and then be sure to tell everybody about your blog and then how they can connect with you on social media.

So I guess my final words of wisdom are just for each of us as individuals to identify for ourselves or yourself what your own intention is, your own personal true north, that heart. And are you directing yourself towards that? And think about how you can use the a process such as the personal A3 framework to really identify for yourself what habits that you want to improve on and skills you want to create and how you can put some intentional practice to improving every day. And to that point, I'm actually teaching two one day workshops both in September and November on these topics around coaching and the personal improvement. A3. I have information on that on my website and I spoke about that. I'm also blogging about lean and leadership and experiences in Japan and the US and other countries on my blog. And it's kbjanderson a N-E-R-S o n.com and I've also pulled together some special bonuses for the listeners of the podcast. So if you go to kbjanderson gembaacademy, you can find some things for you there.

Wow, look at that. So it's KBJ anderson.com forward/gembacademy.

Yes.

Okay, got it. All right, well, we'll link to that. So everybody can. We'll just remember that or remember gembapodcast.com and then look for episode. What number is this one going to be? I think 173. So we'll link to everything there. And I guess you're on LinkedIn and all the rest of it.

Yes, and Twitter with all the same handle, KBJ Anderson.

Got it.

So, yeah, stayed consistent. Sure.

Nice standards, right?

Yes, it is good to have standards.

Good stuff. So I should undo this because we should wrap this show up, but I gotta ask one more question. All right, so you talked about people knowing their personal true north and make sure that they're aligning, you know, their behaviors in that direction. And I mean, a lot of it has to do with probably what you do, like to earn a living. Right. And that sort of thing. What happens if someone, you know, evaluates their life and then they realize that, I don't know, their personal true north just isn't where they're going, isn't pointed in that same direction? They're going in the wrong direction? I mean, what advice do you have for that person? Kind of follow their heart or suck it up and you know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, sometimes, you know, life presents us with situations where, you know, we. We can't always be doing what we want to be doing. But I say there are also opportunities for us to make small changes in ourselves and the way we behave and act that start to align ourselves closer to that. So, you know, you may have a larger goal that your current condition is not aligned with, but think about ways that you can take some control or realignment yourself with that direction. What's something small you can do today to go closer in that direction?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I love it. Yeah. When you were answering, I was like, gosh, I want to ask this question, but I probably shouldn't, but I'm glad I did. Good stuff.

Yeah. It's great talking with you, Ron.

Yeah, likewise. Well, are you going to be at any conferences coming up or ame or anything like that?

No, I'm not, unfortunately. This. This week's the Lean Coaching Summit, and I've gone the last three years. I mean, that's where I met Mr. Asao Yoshino, but we had some personal plans that were already scheduled, so I'm going to be out in the Midwest with my extended family this week instead of at the conference. But I will be at both. Catalysis. How do you say that? Catalysis. Lean Learning sessions in September and November, so there's some open registration there.

Cool. All right, well, good stuff, Katie. Thanks again and be well.

Thank you. Talk to you soon. Bye.

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