GA 181 | How to Start Your Lean Journey with Steve Kane

You're listening to episode 181 with Steve Cain. 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 our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over at Gembacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today, we have a slightly different style of podcast for you. I'm going to bring Steve Cain back onto the show. Steve Cain is Gemba Academy's Director of Customer Success. So Steve and his team basically take care of our. All of our customers. Basically, once you kind of become a customer and you're on board, Steve and his team do everything in their power to make sure everything is successful for you. So involves everything from onboarding calls to just coaching calls to whatever it takes. And, you know, obviously all the customer service type stuff. If you have password problems or whatever, Steve's team's there to support those things as well. But really what we're going to talk about today is something that Steve and I have really spent quite a bit of time on over the last, oh, I'd say a few months. And that is really how to help our customers get started the correct way, not just with Gemba Academy, but with Lean in general and just continuous improvement in general. We found over the years that, you know, getting things going correctly from the beginning just makes everything else better. So that's what we're going to kind of explore today. Some of the things that we've seen that have worked well and some of the things that, you know, can cause problems. And now obviously, we're going to spend a lot of time kind of talking about our experience here with Gemba Academy and our customers. But I think the lessons that we're going to be talking about definitely apply, even if you're not a Gemba Academy customer and that that's totally fine. So this podcast will also hopefully benefit anyone that's on that journey with Lean and continuous improvement. I do want to give just a few quick updates for Gemba Academy. You know, we, we've mentioned this many times on previous podcasts, but right around the corner, folks, it's October 9th through the 13th. It's going to be in Boston this year. This is the, the International conference. So this is definitely the largest lean conference in the world. And so if you want to kind of come in and hang out with what I believe to be the best lean crowd in all of the world, you definitely want to be at this conference. Now we're obviously going to be there. We have a big double booth thing that we've, that we've done the last few years. So definitely swing by and say hello. But more importantly, if you're at the show, please be sure to come check out our cocktail party, which is going to be that Tuesday night, October 10th, that's going to start at 5:30 to 7:30. We have an epic, epic location this year. It's going to be on the top of the skywalk of the Prudential tower on the 50th floor. We've gone all out this year, folks. We've hired a three piece jazz band to come and play. We'll have food and drinks. There's no sales pitch. Uh, right now we're sitting at, We've had around. Oh gosh, I think last time I saw we were, we were approaching 160, 170 people who have already RSVP'd. Um, and we're gonna be handing out postcards there at the, at the conference. So I don't know, we're, I don't know how many we're gonna. Folks we're gonna have. My only fear is that we're gonna hit a limit. I, I can't remember what the exact limit is. So if you are planning to come, definitely be there at 5:30 to make sure there's no problems, um, if these things get gets out of hand. But if you haven't bought your tickets yet for Ame and you are going to go, Definitely go to gembaacademy.com Ame, there's a promo code on there that'll save you 10%. So yeah, go check that out. And there's also a button on there to RSVP for the cocktail party. Anyhow, that's enough about Gemba Academy. Let's get to the show with Steve. All right, Steve, well, thanks for coming back onto the show. How's it going?

Yeah, it's going really well. Yeah, it's my pleasure to be here.

Yeah, well, every time I have you on, we always say the same things like we talk about 40 times a day and so we gotta come onto a podcast and act like we don't talk to each other very often. I don't know. But nobody else hears us talking. That's on the podcast here, so I guess we'll go there. So, anyhow, I kind of laid down in the intro what we were going to talk about was just some of the things that we've, that we've seen over the years that have helped customers kind of be successful. Obviously, you know, we're focused on Gemba Academy, but I think it could be. Could be anybody that's on that journey with Lean, whether they use Gamba Academy or not. And then also, you know, there's some, you know, being fully transparent, there's some things that we've seen that have caused problems. And so I thought it would be interesting to have you come on and just kind of share some of what you've seen and I'll jump in as well, sharing what, what I've seen. We'll kind of tag team this and kind of freestyle it. Everyone listening. We don't have a big grand plan for this episode. We were just going to kind of talk is this is something that we're both passionate about, but.

Right.

And I guess the other thing, you know, obviously that, that Steve and I know about is because we're. We're doing it, but we're, we're working hard right now on even coming up with almost a. A pilot program where we're going to be working with just a handful of customers, Gambia Academy customers, on different ways of kind of onboarding and different ways of getting things going, kind of Toyota Cottage, like in some ways, but really kind of focused on understanding our why and that sort of thing. So that's something that, that we got cooking right now, and we're going to hopefully learn a lot there. So by no means do we have it all figured out right now. We're learning just along with everyone else. But, but Steve, I guess let's just start with what are. I don't want to kind of be negative or start on that side of it, but are there any things that you can think of, just like, out of top of your head that cause problems for organizations who are, or individuals in some cases, who are just getting started with their, with their journey?

Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting the way we talk about that, right, because like you mentioned, like, there's this, this thought of this negativity along with, with identifying problems and the. Maybe that's even one of the things that people struggle with is, is thinking of problems as something negative. Right. And, and getting bogged down with the Negativity. Because when, when we experience that, there's also this kind of underlying desire to conceal the problems. I think that relates to one of the things that some people in some organizations struggle with is just the willingness, the lack of fear, to be transparent with the problems that are within the organization and just being willing to acknowledge them and confront them. So that's one example of things that some organizations doodle. Lean will encounter other things. First of all, I think we're in a really great position to see this. When I was in industry, in medical device manufacturing, I got to see my own Lean Journey, my own organization. And when I went to conferences and did tours and that sort of thing, I got to see a few others. But working at Gemba Academy, we speak to so many people and get to work one on one with so many different organizations and see so many different things that we're really in a great position to be able to see patterns when we're dealing with a large number of people and a large number of organizations. So some of the patterns we see, where the struggles exist is kind of the classic things that we've read from recent business books, right? The North Star or A Lack of a North Star. So that direction, that vision of the organization, where are we headed an hour, which really relates to why. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing Lean when that isn't really clear? We see people struggle, and the reason for that, I think, is that we're employing Lean for a variety of reasons and we could be heading in the wrong direction. Somebody in the middle of the organization that is really driving Lean within the operation, who isn't really aligned with the direction of the company could run into frustrations, could run into a lack of buy in, a lack of support, particularly from executive levels. And what we see related to that is we see people asking us, hey, how do I deal with a lack of buy in? How do I deal with the perception of flavor of the month when it comes to Lean? How do I deal with people saying, oh, we've done Lean before, and the eye rolling and that sort of thing? My first thought is, okay, what is the direction of the company? What is the vision and why are we doing this?

Right, so start with why. Right. Simon Sinek.

Yep.

So, I mean, and it's so true. I mean, one of the companies that we're working with, I was speaking to the gentleman yesterday and kind of the first piece of homework for them is to really go back and reflect on why are you doing this as an organization? Now they're just getting started, brand new to Lean. And so I think I'm really excited for the opportunity for them to get started the correct way by, you know, ensuring their leadership totally is aligned. And then we can communicate that why throughout the organization before we even mention things about 5s or value stream mapping or anything. Right. It's, here's why we're doing this. And so many times we hear that. And I. Sometimes I even think, steve, you know, Simon Sinek's become so popular and just about everyone's kind of heard of them. If you haven't, you know, yeah, look it up. Google the why video, Simon Sinek, and you'll, you'll find the, the TED Talk. But I think sometimes we almost go numb to it now. You know, yeah, we start with why. Start with why, and everybody nods their head. But really, what is your why do you know? And then people are like, well, you know, and even myself, you know, we're going to go to this workshop with Simon's organization to really even reflect. I think I have a pretty good understanding of genba Academy's why and my personal why. But, you know, sometimes I wonder, is it really what it should be and where it should be? So I think this is something to not overlook and to not just quickly rush through.

Yeah. I think that so many of these really good pieces of advice or principles to follow, they've become so popular, so popularized, and especially now with social media, it's like we get saturated with it, and then there's almost this desire to look for something new. What's the latest, newest, best thing? That's really kind of a point of caution for anybody in Lean. Focus on the basics. Lean is about simplicity, and the principles are proven over and over and over. So master those first rather than always looking for the new, shiny, latest thing that comes. Comes along, right? Yep, yep, yep.

Okay. So let's assume that an organization or an individual deeply understands their why. They understand why they want to go about this. They have their purpose, their cause. They got that nailed down. What do they need to focus on next? Steve?

Yeah. Yes. Well, first things first, right? The. There's a. We see a real tendency for some organizations to just jump right into making some changes. For some organizations, maybe that's the best thing to do. And sometimes maybe not. When we look at Lean, especially when we go on benchmarking tours, we watch videos of other organizations and what they're doing, well, we want to just jump right in and do those things. But what we don't see, what's really hidden is all of the foundational work that's done ahead of time to make these efforts successful. First thing is make sure that we have the leadership in lockstep. Everybody's marching to the same beat, right? And we all understand what's going on. So it's not just that I understand why, but everybody on the team understands why. We all have the same goal, the same vision, and we all believe in these principles that we're about to employ. Then we have to not only train our workforce to understand lean, but we also first have to learn how to teach. And we need to make sure that we're going about things correctly. Once that's done, then the suggestion is we want to. How do we say this? Move slowly and move quickly at the same time. PDCA cycles. But we want very small PDCA cycles moving very, very quickly. So we want to take on very, very small steps and small improvements, get those done. And there really is a great tendency to jump into big projects, massive transformations, and those are very difficult to get going, very difficult to sustain and difficult to complete. Where the small PDCA cycle. Let's do one small thing at a time. Let's break down these massive projects or these massive problems into many, many small projects or very small problems and work at those one by one and gain momentum and gain expertise in our Kaizen event process, in our transformation process. I think that often gets overlooked. Just that desire to go so quickly is a real risk and it introduces a lot of struggle. So, and we think, I think back to it was what Ono, who, who spoke of the tortoise and the hare, Right?

Yeah, no, exactly. And I think this is why, you know, we've obviously seen a lot of success with kind of a Toyota Kata like approach to problem solving here internally at Gemba Academy, like we practice it ourselves. Right. And then, and so, so that, that's the beauty of that, that, that those rapid PDCA cycles is you can still start with that big challenge, like you can set a goal right out there, you know, maybe a year out or whatever it might be. And then we kind of come back. What's the actual condition? And then, okay, well, great. Well, where do you want to be in a few weeks or a month or whatever it might be so called target condition. Right. And then what are the obstacles in between you and which one are you going to go after first? Right. And that's the beauty of kind of systematic problem solving. And that's really what we're, we're, we're really excited to, to Help folks kind of understand. In fact, our Toyota Kata course is being edited right now. I'm standing here looking at Greg and Carlos. Actually, Greg's leaning back in his chair right now, kind of taking a break. I don't know. He's sick of looking at Mark Rosenthal and Kotter. No, Mark, you did a great job. So it's an exciting course. But, yeah, I think. I think he hit it right Is. You know, and we see this sometimes when our Six Sigma folks that are going through their black belt or their green belt certification, whatever it might be, is we work a lot. We spend a lot of time early on that project selection to make sure they're not boiling the ocean. You know, they want to boil the ocean.

Right.

Almost. I would say 8 out of 10 people that come through our program want to boil the ocean. And I'm constantly pulling them back and saying, no, we can't boil the ocean. Let's go after a teaspoon. And then. Because. Because it's so much about learning, too, Right. In the beginning. I know it sounds weird, but I. I really believe it's less about solving the problem than it is about learning how to solve the problem. Right, right.

It's the process. It's the process more than the result.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yesterday, you know, I sent a. I read an article and. And it was. It really resonated because it was exactly like what we're preaching, that, you know, focusing. The article was more slanted on kind of. Kind of pooh, poohing. Setting goals. Right. And it was. It was kind of saying that. And I think setting goals is still okay and an important part of the journey. But when you become obsessed with the goal, then, you know, you. Maybe you reach the goal and then you're like, then I'm done. Right. Oh, I want to lose 10 pounds. Okay, great. So you go after you eat, clean, workout, lose 10 pounds, and you're like, oh, I did it. Let's go get a Big Mac. Right, Right. Versus focusing on that process. Right. And falling in love with the process. And then the results will come when we're disciplined and we follow the process. So I think. I think that's what you're really getting at with those rapid pdca. PDCA cycles.

Yeah. And I, you know, I have two thoughts on that. When you obsess with the. With the goal. Right. Losing that weight, you're going to be obsessing over that goal repeatedly.

Yeah.

So. So you're going to reach that goal, you're going to lose that weight, then you're going to go out, have your piece pizza and a beer, and then you're going to gain that weight back and then you're going to obsess over that goal again. You have this yo yo effect. And we see the same thing happening in business where we focus on projects, we get things done, and then there's some time later like, oh, we're kind of doing this again. Right. It didn't stick. Right. Because we're focused on the results, not on the process. The other thing is that it is very much in an emotional experience. We don't like to talk about emotions a lot in business, but we're dealing with people and this is all about people and helping people be successful. Focusing on the process, I think is a way to help people feel successful by revealing a problem. Or even if the results that were expected weren't achieved, that we're still successful. That's something that we see practicing the kata. What's our next target condition? We're going at it, going at it, going at it. Then we realize, oh, we're going after the wrong target. Then there's this feeling of, oh, I failed. And not realizing. No, you've worked and worked and worked to get to this point to understand that you were going after the wrong target. That is successful. Now you're even closer to getting to where you want to go.

Yeah, yeah. Now, Beautiful. Okay, so what else? Any other thoughts on maybe one more tip before we get into some of the things that maybe go wrong? Can you think of one more?

Well, yeah, yeah. I think of it as like the workout program that's on some infomercial at one o' clock in the morning. Somebody stayed up really late, couldn't sleep, and they get all motivated about this diet and exercise program. We're going to get you fit. And we have this package for you.

You got a bag of chips next to you as well while you're watching it, right?

Yeah, yeah. But you get all motivated and you buy this package and sure enough, it shows up at the door and you get this box, you open it up and the first thing you see is the recipe and diet guide. Like, oh, okay. Well, you kind of paid through that. Well, that doesn't look too appealing. You set it aside side and then, okay, here's your workout regimen. It's all printed out and maybe there's an exercise band or something in there to help you with your exercise. It tells you do these things, get up early, a little bit earlier in the morning and go work out for 45 minutes. Start with an easy rut and do this every day. And in the afternoons, you want to do this workout, then you're looking at it and thinking, man, that's not really appealing either, because I'm really looking for the. The package that will get me fit while I'm sitting on the couch eating chips. Right? So people buy the package, they get invested, and then they open the box and they realize, oh, I have to eat. Right, I have to exercise, and I have to do it always. Then, like, reality sets in and like, okay, I wasn't really prepared for this. So that's where we start to engage with people and start to get their focus back on their. On what it is they want to achieve, and then just very gently changing their day to day, hour to hour work processes to align with these greater principles, lean principles and values, and kind of change the way they work and get focused again on those small PDCA cycles, doing one little thing at a time. And then over time, they kind of get to that level of fitness that they're looking for.

Yeah. You know, my favorite tagline, and I. If I'm ever on a sales call, and many times I am, people have, you know, questions about our content or the company or whatever. So I'll jump on it and talk to folks. And what I really want to tell people, and I do tell them, is that, listen, you know, we're really proud of what we've created here at Gemba Academy. We've got a lot of resources that can help you, but please know this is not get rich quick.

Right.

You know, we, we. And the other thing we've always got to let our customers know is we can't do the work for them. Right, right. We can help them, we can coach them. But, you know, the gentleman that, that we're. We're coaching right now talked to him yesterday, and he said it perfectly. He's like, yeah, you can't. He's from Amarillo, so I can't do his accent too well. But he said, yeah, you can't play the game for us. Right. You know, they got to play the game, and, and so they understand that. But I think it's important for folks, you know, even if you're not using Get Back Academy, bring a consultant in or somebody like that. I think we can, we can fall into this, you know, false sense of security that, oh, don't worry, the consultant will help us, you know, and, and, you know, many consultants are happy to help you, and you keep paying them three grand a day. You know, they love that. Right. But that's not our style. Right. We would rather teach you how to fish and let you. Let you kind of live on your own and be there to support you when you need it.

Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, our role is to stand on the sidelines. Right. And we offer tips, we offer suggestions, we coach, we bring some insights and help by asking the right questions and get people playing well again. But we, you know, it's like the team gets penalized if we try to take the field. Yeah, right. It just doesn't work.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I think I'm gonna try to get John Miller to come on as well. You know, as we know, we're working on a new series of videos that we're gonna be. It's more targeted to. Not necessarily about like a Lean tool or Six Sigma tool or anything like that, but more about how to kind of get going, how to. How to get started, if you will. And one of them. One of the videos. And John has worked really hard with us to come up with some really good thoughts. So we may go even a little bit deeper onto this topic of how to get started in a future episode and definitely have some videos coming down the road. So there'll be more to come as far as tips for success. But let's. Let's kind of, I don't know, change gears a little bit and talk about some of the things that. That you've seen, Steve, that. That maybe have caused challenges or, you know, let's be honest, you. We have some customers who just aren't successful. I mean, we would like to say we're. We bat 100%, but we don't. So. So what are some of the things that you've seen kind of go awry.

Going after immediate financial results? That's a matter of managing expectations. I think there's this demand for. We need greater profitability or we need to cut these costs. So let's implement Lean here. We're looking at next month's or next quarter's financial statements, and then trying to implement Lean, hoping that we're going to have that immediate result, and it just doesn't work. Lean is a journey, and it's going to take time, and those financial results will come over time. But cost savings can't be your primary objective in order to be successful, in my view. Something else that I see is that the desire to be perfect. We'll implement this tool, it will be perfect, and then we move on this again project. It'll be Finished. And with Lean, we're pursuing perfection in the long term, but what we're really trying to do right now is be better than we were yesterday. So, again, our process, if we're just better every day in pursuit of that perfection and celebrate and enjoy being better.

Yeah, no, I mean, like you said, even when you do hit those, what you might consider a failure, we've got the wrong target condition or whatever it might be. You know, it's super easy to get negative and down on that versus say, hey, let's learn from it. And we. We just experienced one here at Gemba Cannon. We can't go into too many details, but we had a process of. Well, I don't know how to dance around it a little bit. We had a situation with an external person and it didn't go as well. And we invested a tremendous amount of time right into this process, and it didn't work out. And so then we were like, oh, my gosh, we just wasted all this time. And then, you know, both you and I kind of looked at it, said, well, yeah, well, sure, it didn't quite work out, but, man, imagine what we can learn from this. You know, imagine what were one of the failures that we had. We didn't have good standard work for this particular thing that we were trying to execute. And so now we've got the opportunity to go back and create good standard work, you know, as we repeat this process. So it's a perfect example, classic example of how, you know, you could look at something as a failure and like, oh, who. Who messed that up and why? Why did you do that and start blaming people and whatnot. Versus, hey, it's. It's about the process, man. It's about the process.

Right, Right. Yeah. And gosh, yeah, it's not about any. Any of the people involved or anything before. It's just like, okay, here's our situation. This is what we did. It didn't work. Let's understand that. Let's write it down. What would work? Let's write that down. Because this is something that we don't do very often when we do it. Let's make sure that we're able to remember what worked well for us and just start creating standard work. I recall as we experienced that, I just decided, okay, we're going to write this down, we're going to standardize it. And I started thinking, okay, I want this standard work to be perfect. I want the format. What kind of a document will it be? And all that. And I forget that I had to tell myself, stop, just write it down. It doesn't matter, because the next person's gonna come along and look at it and say, you know what? It would be better if. And then just do it. But now we're off into the races. Off to the races with this. And we have a lot more confidence going at it the second time around.

Yep, Exactly. Exactly. All right, well, anything else, Steve? We've been going for almost about a half hour, so it's probably a good time limit, but don't want to cut anything short. Any final kind of thoughts on kind of getting started? Some things to do, not to do.

Yeah. I think where we see a lot of success with our customer base is the organizations that really come into it with an emphasis on developing people. Those organizations tend to be very, very successful. So getting the focus on developing their people to be problem solvers and really taking a very human approach and building trust within the organization before we start to shift things. So one thing to remember just about people, we all have these basic human needs, and the first one is this need for consistency. And as we come in and say, hey, we're going to adopt lean, we're going to have this transformation, what we're saying is we're going to change everything about the way we work, Right?

Yeah.

Right. So people have been working at a particular place for quite a long time. They're very well established in their work. They understand what happens. Every minute of every day I come to work, I know what happens, and I know how my day is going to go, more or less. There's comfort in that. That's just the way our central nervous system is wired. So when we come in and say, we're going to change it, we're going to transform now, we don't know where we're headed anymore. Here are these people who are not in leadership positions, and they're just like, in the fog or in the dark. They're not really sure where this path is leading. Those who are really successful with their lean transformations that we see, they do a really good job of taking. Taking care of those people and helping them with their sense of consistency and illuminating the path ahead. Right. We're starting with why, why we're doing this. Here's an indication of how we're going to do it. We're going to train, expect to see managers and leaders out on the floor. We're going to be doing these sorts of things and all of that preparation ahead of time. And then when we do it, standing with those people side by Side. Okay, we're going to implement this change, and I'm going to be right here with you because I want you to be assured that you understand it correctly and that you feel confident in what you're doing. One big obstacle, I think, with any kind of a transformation is the people who are responsible for doing the work, the value adders, the team members, the associates, they don't really need to be told what to do so much. They know that they can make improvement. They don't need to be told what to do, but they do need to feel like they have permission to do it. They need to know that it's the right thing to do because this is different. They're going to be insecure about it. They have to see, they have to trust that this change is good and it's okay. And it's going to take a few repetitions of that before anybody starts to feel confident.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, that consistency and that trust and that safety are so important and.

Absolutely.

You know, and I think it's also prudent for. For leaders to stand up once they've communicated their why and be. Be transparent, be very transparent with the organization to say, listen, there's going to be some things that do come along that we're not. We don't know yet. We're a little bit unconsciously incompetent, as they would say. Right?

Yeah.

And just being kind of almost vulnerable a little bit like that. But reassuring people back to the consistency that it's gonna be okay and we are gonna work our way through it. And when people hear that, that kind of talking and they can believe it, then I think you're really setting yourself up because it's not always gonna be easy. And there's gonna be many, many bumps. More bumps than smooth right in the beginning. But reassuring folks that, you know, we're gonna work our way through it. It's gonna be a no blame culture. Right. We're going to blame the process, not the people, you know, speaking like that. And really meaning it, I think is going to go a long way to making folks successful.

Yeah. You know, it's like, it's kind of like learning to walk, you know, learning any new skill. And I think it goes a long way to just admit from the very beginning, hey, we're going to do something new and we're going to make a lot of mistakes and we're going to figure out together. And just like when we all learned to walk, we spent more time on our backsides than we did on our feet. Right. Because you try, you fall, you try, you fall. And we're going to keep doing that. And just like you said, there are things that we don't know yet, and we're just going to figure it out together, but we will do it and we'll be successful.

Yeah, exactly. Good stuff. All right, Steve. Well, hopefully this has been helpful for folks. I know you and I talk about this stuff every day, and it's always a blast to kind of go through the journey with you, Steve. And we're always learning every day ourselves. So if folks have any questions, obviously. Steve, how can they reach out to you?

Well, they can reach out to me dot com, the contact us feature of the website. That's a great way. And also on LinkedIn. Yeah.

Steve Kane, K A N E. Yes. All right, good stuff. All right. Well, hey, Steve, thanks for coming on. Now I guess go get my. Go back to. Get back to work. Okay.

Yeah.

All right, everyone, take care.

All right. Thank you.

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