GA 191 | How to Reflect on the Roles of Fear and Love in Continuous Improvement with Renée Smith

You're listening to episode 191 with Renee Smith.

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, I'm excited to welcome Renee Smith to the show. Now, Renee and I are going to be exploring a topic today that is definitely, I would say, groundbreaking for the. For the podcast and may catch you off guard when you first kind of read the title. But we're going to talk about the topic of love and the role that it plays within the, let's say, continuous improvement movement. And so what Renee and I do is really explore really the contrast between what she describes as love, which maybe other folks would talk about, empathy and different things like that. But contrast that with fear. And was really interesting. She's got a really cool background. She's working with the state of Washington, and she's going to kind of give her background. She works with Darrell Dameron, who we've actually had on the show before back in. Gosh, it was a couple years ago, in fact. We'll link to that in the, in the show notes. But they're doing some great work out there in the state of Washington. But the topic was very appealing to me because, like I said, it's something that we've not really explored, but I think it's something that everyone listening is going to be able to benefit from. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com youm'll just look for episode 191. That's 191. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 191. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Renee, well, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

Hi, I'm calling in from the state of Washington from the Department of Enterprise Services.

Nice, Nice. All right, well, thanks for coming on. I'm really excited about today's topic. You know, we've had some folks on before who talk in a similar vein about empathy and different things like that. But I definitely think the first time that we've ever really just addressed the topic of love. So I think it's going to be pretty fun. And I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation.

I am, too.

So, Renee, as you know, we kind of like to begin all of our shows with our guests sharing a quote that possibly inspires them or is related to the sort of topic of the day. So do you have one?

You know, I do. In the research interviews that I've done, there was one of our participants, a state employee from the state of Washington, said something to me that I thought was really profound at the end of an interview. And she said that fear isn't a management system. And I think that that really just nails it right there, that too often we think and use, maybe inadvertently using as a management system, but that it can't be. It's not effective and it's got to be something else.

Yeah. Well, that's good. That's good. All right. Well, Renee, tell us about yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background, maybe how you first came to learn about all this continuous improvement stuff, and then definitely tell us kind of what you're up to these days.

Sure, sure. So I have a background in organization development, was in private practice and consulting for many years in both public, private, nonprofit sectors, worked at the University of Washington for a time doing this work and became more enmeshed and involved in continuous improvement work there, and then moved to the state of Washington to the Department of Enterprise Services right at the beginning of the state's lean journey back in 2012. The state started in 2011, and I joined in 2012. And, you know, our state has been on kind of a remarkable journey for really 25 years of embracing, you know, all kinds of performance and improvement and quality efforts over the years. But under our governor, Christine Gregoire, she kind of launched us on our lean journey, if you will, with a focus on having cabinet level agencies do process improvement projects, particularly value stream mapping projects. And then we had a governor transition. New governor came in, Governor Jay Inslee, and he took it to a whole other level and embraced lean as a management system for the state. And so I've had the, you know, the profound honor and pleasure of serving in the Department of Enterprise Services at the time when this was all happening throughout our state, and then sort of leading and spearheading the effort within our own agency, which was a new agency at the time. And Kind of building a continuous improvement culture and a lean culture here at Enterprise Services. So that's a little bit about what I've been doing.

Yeah, yeah. You know, we had. Obviously, you know, we had Darrell Dameron and Holly Jensen on the show. Gosh, it's been. I'm pulling it up. Was November 6, 2014. Wow. Didn't realize it's been that long. It was episode 31. So, folks, we'll link to that in the show notes, but folks can go check that episode out after this one. You know, the title of that one was Applying Lean within the State of Washington. So, yeah, we had a good chat there with Darrell and Holly. So I know you're colleagues with Darrell.

Right, right. Darrell is on my team now, and he leads up our government consulting services program, and we provide consulting, training, facilitation, and coaching services to really any government anywhere to help them on their Lean journey.

So, yeah. All right, well, let's dive just a little bit more. Give us a little more context on the journey. The state of Washington's Lean journey.

Sure. So, you know, as I said, we've had this really rich history over the years, and first Governor Gregoire, then Governor Inslee embracing this. And what that's kind of brought us to now is that Lean is embraced at the state level across the state enterprise as the management system that the governors five goals for state government are kind of coalesced around. So we have goal councils, cabinet agency directors, small agency directors, policy budget folks that all rally around the goals of the governor and use lean methods and thinking and principles to try to move the needle, move the dial on improving our service to Washingtonians across the state. So it's been incredible to watch that work happen at the state level. And I think the state of Washington has been recognized by Harvard recently and in different forums for just being a leader in lean in government. And we're pretty proud of that and proud of the fact that we really believe that government can work and it can work when we embrace Lean as a philosophy and as a management system that guides us in that work.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right, well, so you're obviously getting lots of good results and have a lot of. A lot of success. But I'm guessing there's been, if you're like anyone else on this journey, some challenges along the way. So would you be able to maybe share some of those challenges and perhaps what you've done to counter them?

Sure. One of the things that always comes up when we talk to other governments and we do Reach out to state and local governments and governments across, really the continent. There's always the questions of how do you get started and how do you keep it from being the flavor of the month? And there's always confusion about what is lean and how to make choices because you can't do it all at once, all those kinds of things. And what to do with middle managers, how to bring middle managers along. We have experienced all those common challenges that we hear from industry, from our private sector partners and friends that have helped mentor us along in this journey. And we have faced those too. I think, though, that the biggest challenge that underlies many of these things is this issue of fear. And I really want to talk about that today. That overcoming fear, overcoming fear in the workplace, overcoming being risk averse, which we are particularly risk averse in government, is a really important thing. And can dealing with that fear and the confusion and the hesitance that fear brings is central. So we've had to kind of face that and think about what does it look like to move from a fearful environment to a safe environment. And I think when we love this stuff, when we love Lean, which those of us who are involved in this do, when we are excited about Lean, we get excited about the tools, we get excited about it as a philosophy, as a strategy, as a management system, and all the different ways that we think about Lean. So we're excited, we're jazzed, and we think it's fantastic. But when we start talking to people on the line, to workers, to middle managers, even to executives, we kind of freak them out. We can scare people with Lean, and I think we have to kind of get a handle on the fact that oftentimes the thing that we're inviting them to do is scary. And maybe they've even been punished for those kinds of behaviors before. So I think it can be helpful to sort of step back and listen to ourselves and we say things like, hey, we're going to be problem solvers and we're going to talk about our problems and our errors and, you know, let's put those things up on the wall and meet every day and expose all the things that are going wrong. And when we're into this and we get the culture that's necessary and we're about cultivating that, that's great. But if fear hasn't been minimized and dealt with, then we can freak people out. Then we say things too, like, hey, draw pictures of your problems, and people are not excited about drawing pictures and he going to come around and Come to your huddle and you get to tell the leader of the organization about your problems and your mistakes or errors. So, yeah, we can kind of freak people out. So part of what I think we need to do is understand the fear response that people have and how we need to move them, how we can help move them away from fear and into something else, into an environment of safety where good things can happen.

Okay, so talk about. So you've done some pretty groundbreaking research here on this topic. So let's get right into that. Tell us maybe how you got started on that research and then what you learned.

Sure. I was having a conversation with my director, the director of our agency, who's the CEO of our agency, Chris Lu, a couple years ago, actually, we were talking about what is the leader's role in a lean organization? What's the job of a leader? We were exploring his view as a CEO on what he should be doing and what was important. And in exploring that, I finally asked him sort of point blank, so, Chris, what's the leader's primary job? And without missing a beat, he looked at me and he said, to eliminate fear from the workplace. And it was like thunderstruck. Right? I mean, I knew that he had said something incredibly profound there and that it really resonated with what I had seen him working to do in our organization since he joined us a couple years before. And so that really struck me. And it's been a privilege to be working in an organization where the leader thinks that way and is pursuing that. And it's not that we've got it all figured out or that he doesn't sometimes engender fear, because he does. He's human, and we all do. But it's certainly kind of the ethos that we're going after and what people are encouraged to try to pursue. And so as I thought about that, though, to me it was sort of half the equation. Like, if we're going to eliminate fear and move to safety, what is it that is increasing? What is it that's changing in the organization? And I did some reading and reflection and talking to folks, and I came to believe that the thing that is increasing is love. That we're moving from fear to safety by way of increasing love in our organizations. And that love really is the countermeasure, if you will, to fear, or it's the solution to fear. And, you know, it's kind of funny when I talk about that, people get really quiet and uncomfortable. You know, it strikes home, but it's not something it's sort of the L word, if you will, at work. You know, to talk about love at work, or certainly in a lean context.

Okay, well, let's dig into it a little bit. So are there any themes that you've kind of explored?

Yeah. So I kind of looked at this as a research challenge and decided that one of the best things that I could do would be to just to talk to people about their experiences of feeling afraid at work and feeling loved at work and learn from those. And so I reached out to my local community of public servants and to others and other people that I know in the private sector as well, and started doing research interviews. So what that looks like is sitting down with someone one on one. And I asked them to just tell me a story about a time when they felt afraid at work and to tell me a story about a time when they felt loved at work. And then we just unpack those stories one at a time. And so, you know, what happened, what was involved in the story, what did they experience, what did they do, what did others do? What did it mean to them? Those kinds of things. And the insights from that have been pretty amazing. There are sort of four key themes that have come out of the love stories, or, excuse me, out of the fear stories. So one is that I didn't know how to be successful after a change. Something happened. There was a change, and I didn't know what to do. And oftentimes it was a new leader coming in. And then whatever we had going on in the organization before I knew what was expected, things were going well. And now I go to a situation where I never know what's expected and I'm not able to perform. And people described being. Not being able to be creative, not being able to kind of contribute in the way that they had before feeling on the outside. And oftentimes people in that kind of situation leave. Another theme was feeling betrayed by someone that I trusted. So a lot of people had violations of trust, and sometimes that was like a personal violation, and other times it was more a positional violation of trust. So we put a lot of trust in leaders and in their integrity and. And when they don't live up to that, it's pretty distressing. People experience that deeply. I had people say that they didn't want to go to work, that they felt unsafe, that they worried that they might be asked to do something unethical, People that were avoiding the leader. I had someone say that it was like that they were a hobbit trying to stay out of The Eye of Mordor. And so again, carried that pretty deeply. People described deep anxiety, physical illness, low energy, that kind of thing, which is pretty consistent with the kind of long term impacts of fear over time. Physical maladies that come with all that we have physically. The stress on our bodies takes its toll when we live in a kind of ongoing fear. A third theme was being publicly shamed. So it was really kind of sad and alarming about how many people were humiliated, called out in meetings, yelled at, bullied, those kinds of things, and how that could be allowed to go on and on in organizations. People, you know, became guarded and fearful and stressed. It took a lot longer for people to get things done. That was another impact. And even when sometimes things would shift, when teams have experienced behaviors like that, it can take a long time to unlearn their kind of protective behaviors and rebuild trust. So, you know, that was definitely described. People describe physical ailments like stomach ailments and insomnia, impacts to people's diabetes, people taking fear home with them, people needing therapy because things are pretty traumatic and kind of depressing and emotional. And I have had in interviews, people break down emotionally telling stories about something that happened 10 years before because we carry those things so deeply. And then. So the fourth theme was not being supported during a personal crisis. And so it was pretty amazing how many people were told, leave home at home and work at work. And like, somehow magically you're going to pass through some curtain and come into work. And whoever you are, whatever's happening outside the workplace is part of who you are in the moment. And just the amount of sort of a betrayal that that is and a sense of like, not being able to be fully human, it really impacted folks. I had someone say that when we're afraid and we can't be our true selves, everything's doused with hesitation and insecurity and none of that's healthy. And we can't share the good things that we're hired to share and do. So that betrayal of just not being able to be fully ourselves when life happens, because life happens is a real thing.

Yeah. One question I have for you.

Yeah.

Have you, have you studied or looked into, like, you know, like, kind of the, the different types of love according to, like, I don't like ancient Greeks and whatnot. Like, you know, like, I. I'm thinking of like, Eros, which is like the kind of love you have with your, your significant other. Right. Which is obviously not what you're talking about here. But then I'm sure And then there was. I think I don't have them all memorized, but there's like, Philia love or like Philadelphia, like affectionate love. And then the most deepest one they talk about is that agape or kind of like this selfless love. And I'm curious if you've looked into any of that and, like, how some of what you're describing fits into these different buckets in a different way. So I'm just curious if you've ever looked into any of that.

Yeah, I have looked at those and am familiar with them. And I think the thing that strikes me about that is that it's really useful to have multiple terms for different kinds of love and different kinds of affection. And in our society, in English, we have the one word. We have love, and we use that in multiple ways. And I think that that often is what gets people kind of snagged up.

Right, right, right, right. You want to go on it.

Brotherly love or, you know, agape love, because, like, our brains automatically go to erotic love, personal relationships, and so we can't distinguish. And it certainly is useful and helpful to be able to distinguish. I think one of the things that I found when people talked about their love stories, and I'll share a little bit of the themes out of those, too, is that they often would say, even though they would agree that they're there to talk about and to share their fear story and their love story, but when they actually go to talk about the love story, they'll say, well, I wouldn't use the word love, but, you know, I would call it caring, or I would call it belonging, or I would call it trust or respect. And so oftentimes people would have their synonym, which is fine to me. It's all sort of in the love bucket, if you will. It all goes in the same collection of positive, compassionate, empathetic, caring behaviors and feelings and connection with people. But, you know, people will use the word that's most comfortable. And really, using the term love is in part by design to get people to stop and think. You know, if I were to say we're going from fear to respect, you know, we could all kind of yawn and say, yeah, we've heard that story before.

Right?

But when we kind of shock people with love, well, yeah, let's talk about what it really means to be human and human at work, too. And that's part of who we are and what we're bringing. And so what's the benefit of that?

So do you have some stories that you can share. I mean, obviously keep confidentiality and all the rest of it.

Well, I'll share a little bit about the love themes because I've shared the fear side, but let me share the love side. And then there's a couple cool stories in those. So one of the themes that consistently came out of the love stories was that my leader cared about me. And so many people described caring leaders in their stories. And they would say things like, my leader takes a real interest in me as a person. I feel belonging and appreciation and respect from my leader. I'm recognized and known for who I truly am. My leader has a way of making sure everyone feels included, those kinds of things. And so leaders played a really key role. And that kind of connection with the leader was really motivating and induced a lot of loyalty. Another theme was that my team was like a family. And so when you think about families, they work hard and they laugh every day and help each other and rally in hard times and celebrate and those sorts of things. And, you know, I heard from folks. One particular story was a woman in it who described her team like this. She said that knowing our team has so much love for each other has made such a difference. She said, our relationships are collaborative, and we look out for. For each other. There's this unified feeling, and we're not afraid to have unfiltered debate. And then she went on to describe how a couple people might gather around in their area, because we sort of have open cube and kind of an open environment in the office area here. And they gather around to have a conversation about a challenge or problem. And pretty soon the team is gathered around, and because of the trust and the love and respect and connection and the comfort that they have with each other, and they could go after it. They could get on attacking a problem and challenging each other's ideas. Not attacking each other, but really digging in to the problem and coming up with an even better idea than they started with. And they could do that because of the trust and comfort they had about being transparent and honest with each other. And that comes in an environment of safety. So it was cool to hear that, I guess. Another cool it quote. There was one woman who said that it was the first time in her life that others came to her without any judgment about her gender. She said, can we say shocked? So, you know, those are just great stories of a team feeling like a family.

Yeah.

And then the third theme was sort of the opposite of one of the themes that came out of the fear stories was receiving support I received support during a personal crisis was a third theme. And we had a team member, an interviewee, who reported when she had cancer. She was diagnosed with cancer, and she just actually had twins, you know, pretty early or pretty close to when this diagnosis happened. So she'd used up all her leave, and her team rallied around her and her organization around rallied around her and provided, you know, all the support she needed around making transportation arrangements and paperwork and benefits and so on. And she had leave donated so that she never missed a paycheck for a year. Just really incredible. And they visited her and sent her messages and kept her informed, and she just felt included all along the way. And I'm going to read her quote, because her story was just so profound. She said that it was hard to take in that much love. They must have valued me and there must have been things that I've done. But how could anyone be loved so much, she wondered. Her internal tapes kind of told her, I'm not worthy. But this love had such a profound impact on her being alive today. She felt this deep commitment and loyalty so that she could come back. Not only come back for her family and be well for her family, but to be well for her team. She wanted to be part of the work again and honor their commitment and investment in her. And she wanted to make work matter more. And that making a difference had a deeper meaning to her. She said that when she returned to work, she walked through halls surrounded by people who had carried her and it was like a holy ground feeling. She realized that those people cared for her and that they did important work and they were all connected. And like her loyalty and her participation and her engagement were off the charts. And so just a beautiful story of sort of, you know. Yeah. Bringing the whole person to work. And sometimes things happen, but when we meet people where they're at, you know, they will. They will show up as well. And that communicates things to the other people that are there participating who aren't the ones who have the cancer diagnosis. But see, how we treat people.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, probably obviously impacted, you know, this lady, but for sure it had to impact the people who actually doing it. I mean, being part of that type of a. Gosh, I don't even what the right word is. Like a movement or love movement, whatever you want to call it. It's got to be life changing.

Yeah, yeah. Well, because we, you know, we're empathetic creatures. Right. We are wired for empathy. And so, you know, I think our brains, even when we watch someone else experience something, our brains fire as if it were happening to us. And so that, you know, watching either watching someone be abused or, you know, shut down when difficulties are happening and, you know, or in whatever way, you know, any of those kind of fear stories. When we watch other people experience fear, we experience it too. And conversely, when we watch people experiencing love or we participate in caring and belonging and letting people know that they matter, we experience that too.

Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Well, so let's flip it around and talk a little bit more about fear because, you know, the human species, right, was survived many years in the, you know, because of fear. It's like, hey, there's an animal trying to eat me. I better run right and. Or I better fight, you know, or I better whatever. So sometimes fear, I guess, can be okay and can be perhaps even healthy. Would you agree?

I would, I would. I think we've. Fear is one of our oldest sort of reptilian responses that is essential to our survival. And, you know, we, we have a fear response so that we can survive and we can, you know, adapt to our environment quickly. And either, you know, fight or flight is a real thing. And you know, we have our work versions of fight or flight too. And so yes, those are real. And I think what I'm kind of distinguishing between is a healthy fear that can even be useful to us. You know, when we're learning something. There's a kind of a low grade anxiety I'm learning and I'm carrying that there's similar physical symptoms of fight or flight even in those situations. Or maybe I've got performance anxiety. You know, here we are recording this podcast. I probably got a little bit of fight or flight going on at some level, you know, right now. And that's normal and healthy and it helps us to perform and to sort of be on our toes and do our best. So that's sort of good fear, if you will, a normal, healthy fear. But the kind of fear we're talking about and that I'm talking about is a harmful fear. It's the kind of fear that is debilitating and that where people are really threatened for their survival. So sometimes that can be a fear that my workplace isn't physically safe. And that's either. We just haven't attended to workplace safety in ways that are. Should be really basic and taken care of. And the fear of being psychologically threatened, humiliated is a profound thing. And so when we violate that, fight or flight kicks in and we see people either get really aggressive, really Angry show up in ways where they are obviously ready to fight or in flight mode. People sort of disappear. They hold back. They're not going to share their ideas in a meeting. They're certainly not going to bring forward their A3 or stand in front of their, you know, feel good about putting their data up on the wall or talking about, you know, errors or anything. Then they're going to pull back and withhold and sometimes even leave, you know, physically actually leave the organization. And then we lose.

So, yeah, so there's good fear and ugly fear maybe, right?

Exactly. Debilitating fear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so what about, like, anybody that's listening to this? Like, oh, yeah, that's nice. Let's all love each other and be safe and this and that. But what about accountability? How does that work into this love equation, for lack of a better word?

Yeah, that's always a question that comes up and I think it's a really important one. And had to grapple with that and had a lot of conversations with different folks about that, folks during the research and other colleagues about this. You're going to have to imagine, if you will, a two by two or an X and Y axis, because we are naturally worried. Let me back up. If fear's at one side of the spectrum on the X axis and safety are at the other end, and I would say it's fear and indifference on one end and love and safety on the other. Eli Beitzel says that the opposite of love is indifference. So we're moving from, I don't care, I'm indifferent to you in an environment of fear to increasing love and safety. So if that's kind of that X axis, we are naturally concerned that basically that love is just too soft. Right. That we're just going to. People are going to get away with stuff, that we're going to allow poor performance, that it's just going to be a permissive or neglectful environment. And unfortunately, in any organization, whether it's government or I hear stories in industry too, we see that happen where people are allowed to kind of skate by or not perform, or where bad behavior is ignored. And so it's, you know, the common question is, hey, if all this love and safety means that we're just going to allow people to get away with stuff. And what I would offer is that it's not our love that's too soft, it's our commitment that's too soft. And so commitment would be the Y axis. And so when we have low commitment in an environment of love and safety, that's where we've got permissiveness, where anything goes. And I'm not advocating for that. And when we have low commitment in an environment of fear and indifference, we're like being neglectful and not advocating for that either. But when we raise our commitment, we get other options. And I think our commitment is increased when we do things like better understand our customers needs or when my work processes are well designed or when I have the tools and information I need to do my job. All those things increase our commitment when I know how my work is connected to the bigger picture. So if we increase our commitment, then we've got a couple other kinds of options. So if we're increasing our commitment in an environment of fear and indifference, then we've got compliance. We're going to make sure that we do the right thing. You're going to make sure you do what you're supposed to do. I'm going to verify and it's sort of like a minimum standard. We're going to prove that we're doing the right thing. We're committed to getting the right thing done. But it's an environment of fear and so it's, you know, it's compliance. And on the other side though, in an environment of love and safety with high commitment, that's where we've got mutual responsibility. So that's like the best kind of accountability. I'm responsible, you're responsible. Together we're responsible for the work and the customer and we're going to collaborate and create and innovate and that's the kind of accountability that we need. So I would just offer that it's. We need to be strong on commitment and on love together and focus on mutual responsibility.

Yeah, I know it's a different kind of arena. But you think about with our children, you know, those of us that have children, you know, I mean, we deeply love them and sometimes, you know, there's accountability because we love them. Right. And you want them to be so, you know, again, in different circumstances obviously, but I think there's some similarities.

Right. And see, yeah, I think it's a good thing if we think about with children, you know, we don't want them to just sort of. I'm trying to think about what the compliance version of that is with children, you know, where they're just sort of skating along and not really caring, you know, doing, yeah, I did my chores. There's like maybe doing the chores is a good example. I do my chores and you know, check the box and yeah, I Loaded the dishwasher, but, you know, I didn't really care enough to wipe the counters and smooth the floor. And, you know, I'm not invested in the family, but when I'm invested, I care about the family. I know that you care about me. I'm committed to making our home, you know, a good place.

Exactly.

Maybe that's a stretch.

No, no, I think. I think it works. So, last question on this topic, Rene. Maybe tie it all together. Like what are you guys doing at Enterprise Services to, I don't know, have all this play out and experiment and learn. I'm guessing lots of learning.

I'm sure it has been such a rich, supportive environment for this. Yeah. In our first six years as an agency, we have, I think, worked across the spectrum of expressing our lean culture, developing our lean culture in lots of different ways. So we think of lean not just as process improvement, but that it touches everything, that it is a philosophy and a management system that impacts everything. So, so we've developed our planning and our customer listening efforts around that. We definitely have had work on continuous improvement and process improvement and capability building. The people that we choose and how we bring them in and what we're developing in them, the capability that we're developing in them once they're here, and then management systems and culture, all those pieces are part of how we see the lean work that we're doing. And so we've, I think, continued over the last six years to develop those things. And like the theme that runs through all of that and that was there from the beginning is this respect for people and attention to focusing on people and really engaging people and trusting people. So from the very beginning, when we developed our mission, vision, values, goals as an agency, we did that in a way that was high engagement. And that didn't mean our leadership team going away to a retreat and drafting some things and then bringing it back and asking people to respond to it or to add to it or whatever. But instead it meant forming teams, cross sectional diagonal teams from across the organization. Teams of employees, managers, executives, who all together developed our mission, vision, values, goals, our strategic clarity. And it became assumed from that very beginning point that people would be involved, that they would have their hands and their hands all over things and their voices involved in things. And so we've kind of set out from there and went after exploring what does it mean to be an organization that works this way and that expresses ourselves in this way. And sometimes we got it right and sometimes we got it wrong, but always it was sort of this human centeredness that was at the core of everything. So that's been something for us from the beginning. And now after many years of working on this, we've kind of renewed our focus on being human centered and expressing that through a deep commitment to customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction and financial health. And to sort of doggedly pursuing those three things and pursuing those, though, in a human centered way. So that's, you know, we've got work happening across all of our lines of business, which are really eclectic. Everything from fleet services and buildings and grounds and surplus to financial services and contracts and legal services, those kinds of things. So that's happening and we're teaching people to listen, to understand, listen to customers, to understand what they really want, listen without defense and, and to listen to team members and listen to each other and understand what they want and what it's going to take for them to be fully satisfied. And out of that effort comes clarity about what's important to customers, what's important to team members. And then we can baseline those things and have basically establish gaps so that we know what to go after to improve, to better meet customer needs, to create more satisfied customers, to better meet team member needs, to create more satisfied team members. So it's an expression, this renewed effort on customer satisfaction, team member satisfaction and financial health is sort of a renewed expression of our human centeredness and how we honor and respect people we really like. And I had, actually, our deputy director has embraced John Miller's translation of Toyota's respect for people, meaning holding precious what it means to be human. And it's an amazing thing when you have a leader of an organization saying, what we're going to be about is holding precious what it means to be human.

That's pretty powerful, isn't it?

Dovetails beautifully with this idea that we've got to move from fear and indifference to love and safety. Holding precious what it means to be human and going after that in really tangible ways, which means learning to listen to customers and humbly hearing what we're doing wrong, hearing what they really want, and then using all the good lean tools and methods and thinking that we've developed over these last six years and that we've received from all those who have gone before us and have learned from, and applying those then to closing gaps around customer satisfaction and team member satisfaction and financial health. So that's, that's kind of the big experiment that we're doing right now in this lab of enterprise services, if you will.

Hey, do you speak at conferences and whatnot?

Yeah, I do.

I know we got AME folks listening to this. We got Lean Frontiers folks listening to this. Have you ever spoke at a Lean conference?

Yeah, I have. I have spoken quite a bit.

Okay.

Yeah, I've spoken at the Canadian Institute. I spoke there last year in speaking there again this year in Toronto. We have a Lean conference here at the state of Washington and more than 2,000 people over the course of two days. I've spoken there several times, but had the pleasure in October of speaking on this channel.

Well, I think you need to be. I think you need to be in San Diego next year at the AME conference. So AME folks are always looking for people who have very interesting things to share. And it's not the same old, same old Lean stuff that we hear every year. So ame Jim, Lean Frontier excuse. Guys, holler at Renee because we need to get you up on the stage talking about this.

That's kind of you. I appreciate that. And you know, I've been what's been profound. So Daryl Dameron and I did, you know, have traveled some and spoken on this in different places, spoken on Arlene Journey, I should say, sort of the whole enchilada. And we were in Canada last June and traveled around and we were in Ottawa at the Canadian Revenue Agency and at a Lean conference and then in New Brunswick speaking to deputy ministers of their provincial government and in just different settings. And it is, you know, we've talked about our lean government framework, which is fun to talk about and you know, awesome. And we, you know, talk about our Lean journey as a state and as an agency. And then I've shared about this and people line up to talk about this afterwards. There's something about this, Ron, that is striking hoard right now. And I think people know deep down that it is true. Right. It resonates.

I think it's the answer to the world's problems, you know, whether it's politics or religion or whatever it is. I mean, if you just do this and, you know, everything's going to be better. Right. You know, everything.

Right, Right. Yeah. I think that we live in a time when it's needful and we need more human centered, loving, safe kinds of ways of working and taking a stand against. Fear and indifference is really the thing. And that's not, you know, fear and indifference aren't going to give us, you know, fear as a management system isn't going to give us government that works. Right. It's not going to give us better value for more Washingtonians. It's not going to make public service deeply gratifying.

Right.

But love and safety and more respect, more care, more trust, belonging. Those things are awesome.

Well, listen, we've been going for about 40 minutes, so the one question I want to ask you from the reflection section is just because you're obviously very well written and read any good books that you recommend, folks pick up that perhaps are related to this topic or something that you're passionate about.

Yeah, so the one that I am working my way through, that I've read and then I'm working my way through again is the General Theory of Love. And it is a beautiful book. It's a profound book. And it's. It's a beautiful blend, really, of science and I would say poetry in a way, or, you know, kind of the art and the science of love.

What's the author?

Yeah, you're going to ask me that and I can't tell you. There's like four or five authors.

Well, send it to me in an email and we'll link to it in the show notes for folks to listen to. So show notes here will be episode 191. So GembaPodcast.com just look for 191 and we'll link to it.

Great. Yes. I apologize that I can't.

Oh, no, that's fine. That's fine. Hey, so how can people connect with you? LinkedIn, you know, like Snapchat or. What are you.

Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn and actually I'm blogging so they can connect with me@makeworkmorehuman.com and we're blogging about this topic out there. And there's sort of a burgeoning community of. I don't know if it's a community of practice. I don't know quite what it is yet, but there's a burgeoning community about this. Love, not fear, work. And so there's blogging out there. There's a book club that's starting the opportunity to share thoughts and resources and so on so they can find this thinking out there at that. And then renekeworkmorehuman.com as well as renee.smithdes.wa.gov my stateroom. Yeah.

And so it's Rene Smith on LinkedIn. It's R E N E E Smith on LinkedIn. Okay, awesome. All right, well, we'll link to all that as well. It's been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on, Renee. This is a really fun episode and I think it's going to really resonate with a lot of folks.

Well, thanks for the opportunity, Ron and I look forward to talking with people who are like minded and interested and excited about pursuing more human centered workplace nice.

All right, well, thanks again and you take care.

All right, you too.

Bye Bye.

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