GA 192 | How to Use Visual Management with Julie Lushbough

You're listening to episode 192 with Julie Loeschbaugh. 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 Julie Lushbaugh to the show. Now, Julie works for Hallmark, the greeting card company, so I'm guessing most folks listening to this have purchased a Hallmark card or a thousand or two like I have over the years. And I met Julie at the end AME conference this past year. Julie and several of her colleagues and we were actually, she came to our cocktail party and I was started working on him to get him on the podcast at the cocktail party and it finally came to fruition. So it was a really fun conversation. We really got into Julie's kind of personal lean journey, talking about her background and how she kind of dabbled with what we now call lean back in her days working for the DoD, the Department of Defense, and then once got into Hallmark. She really shares their story of visual management and how they've used visual management to really improve the flow of their product and to just really help enable that problem solving methodology and just the importance of getting things out of computer systems and up on a board for everyone to stand back and look at. So really fun episode. Julie was a blast to talk to. Show notes for everything that we cover can be found over@gembapodcast.com youm'll just look for episode 192. That's 192 again, gembapodcast.com and just look for episode 192. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Julie, well, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

Hi, Good morning, Ron. I'm from Kansas City.

All right, good stuff, good stuff. Well, we're recording this the week after Thanksgiving, so I guess we've both made it through, didn't eat too much and all that kind of stuff. So thanks for taking time to come On Julie.

Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure.

All right, good stuff. All right, well, as you know, Julie, we kind of like to begin our shows with our guest sharing a quote, something that possibly inspires him. So do you have one?

I do, actually. I subscribe to a daily blog by a gentleman named Seth Godin.

Aha.

Yes. Yeah, so I have one and it's actually on the signature of my. At the bottom of my email. And it's one of his quotes that says, if you want motion, the only way is through. We get to the work we seek by passing through imperfection. So I think that really speaks to me in terms of you, not only personally, as I believe we all have room for improvement in many aspects of our life, but I think it really hones in on that need for continuous improvement. And part of it is you just gotta go, you know, can't work around you just actually let's look at the issue, address it, and the only way is through in order to get things moving. So I love that.

Can you say it one more time?

Sure, if you want motion, the only way is through we get to the work we seek by passing through imperfection.

I love that, man. That's very continuous improvement oriented, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

Yeah. That's awesome. All right, well, good stuff, Julie. Well, let's kind of get going with you sharing maybe a little bit about your background, Julie, and maybe how you first came to learn about all this continuous improvement stuff.

Okay. Well, actually my first job was with the Department of Defense, actually coming out of college. And I was a cartographer, which we worked for the Air Force at the time. And what I found was that there was a lot of structure around standard work and protection of information and quality management. And I think, of course, the military aspect I think probably had a lot to do with that. But looking back, I look at that and say that was a lot of lean and process and continuous improvement, just the management around process. And I didn't really realize that until I get into what we now know as the lean teachings. And I look back and I'm like, oh, well, boy, I know what SOPs were. That was one of the first things I did when I came into my first job. But then when I came in the corporate world and into a company that produced product for sale, you know, I wasn't surprised to find that there was continuous improvement and work going on in the manufacturing side of things because that just seemed very process oriented. But in the product development area, which is where a lot of my focus is now where there's many iterations of design, you know, continuous improvement wasn't as prevalent there, I think it occurred, but it wasn't as formal in the way that we think about it today. So that's kind of how I, you know, I look back and I see how I've understood the pieces and parts of lean and continuous improvement. But applying them in a new way now is really what I'm looking forward to. And really probably maybe the hardest part of my journey coming up.

Okay, so I got to ask. So somebody's listening. Maybe they're. They're like me. I think. I know, but I want to make sure. What's a cartographer do?

A cartographer makes maps and charts.

Okay. That's what I. Okay.

Yeah. So we actually did maps for the Air Force.

Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Very cool. All right. Well, what are you up to these days, Julie?

Well, what I've been working on over about the last 15, 16 months is some visual management process around an end to end look at really our product development in supply chain continuum, so to speak. What we were finding about a year and a half ago was lack of visibility with where the work was and why the work really wasn't moving to the extent that we needed it to be. And so what we've done, and I think there are 17 functional areas represented. We have a ginormous visual board where we're beginning to. And it's iterated. We probably iterated it every two weeks, which was another thing to, I think in terms of a lean journey is this test and learn, test and learn, test and learn. In, in terms of how we had to try to lay out the process, get everybody's heads around really what it entailed, and then began to drill down into the specifics around some of those areas. So that's kind of the biggest thing I've been working on lately is really this huge end to end visual management process.

Now is it okay if you share kind of where you work and like the product?

Yes. So I work at Hallmark Cards and so this is looking at our Greetings process all the way from determining what we will have in our offering to the point in time that we're actually distributing it out of the distribution center. So it's a, it's huge.

One general question, and we all been in the grocery store and we've seen, you know, bought a million Hallmark cards in our, in our lifetime. But like, what kind of mix are we talking about with, with cards, greeting cards? Are there like hundreds of SKUs or thousands, or what does that look like?

Thousands of SKUs when you think about when you. You walk in and now's a good time to buy your Christmas cards. Right. Yeah, done that already. Right. So depending upon the actual retailer and the space within that retail environment, you may have 24ft of product for Christmas and maybe even more for Christmas. We think about all of the potential sending situations that there are. Right. So to Nana and to your aunt and to the one you love, and, you know, it runs the gamut. Right. And so that's why there. There are so many is because there's so many different sending opportunities for people to connect, because we're really about relationships. So providing those types of offerings for people is super important for us, obviously. And so the number of SKUs traveling through our process at any given point in time, you know, is probably in the thousands. Mm.

Wow. So, okay, well, let's talk a little bit about the journey itself then. So would you say that your. Your lean journey started. Well, you talked a little bit about at the dod, Maybe that's where it kind of started. But officially, would you say it started at Hallmark?

Yes. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. So a lot of my experience at Hallmark has been related to supply chain. So in that vein, obviously, obviously, lean and continuous improvement and problem solving are pretty much in the DNA of a lot of those areas. So with the jobs that I've had over my 28 years at Hallmark, I've had an opportunity to have a lot of projects that maybe didn't have a lean title to them, but were certainly around process improvement and continuous improvement.

So visual management, let's kind of hone in on that a little bit. What, when you guys started practicing visual management or using visual management, what problem were you trying to solve?

We were trying to find out really where the work was within the multitude of handoffs within the process, where was the work queuing up to the point where it wasn't moving? And when we first started the process, we were looking at how to represent it. We have a lot of different systems, a lot of spreadsheets. There's a lot of different ways to track the data, but it was getting it visual to be able to show people where the work was beginning to stall or the work was moving. But was it the right work that was moving? So that was probably one of the hardest things, was the data is there. It was just being able to represent it in a way that somebody could stand back and look at the process and say, oh, now I see where I need to focus and why we need to focus. That was a huge aha, I think was one just getting it visual and there's just so many different ways, you know, we individually learn too. I'm a picture person, so I love visual. I have to draw it out on a whiteboard or out on a piece of paper. You know, other people can read it within a paragraph and other people can dissect the numbers. And the visual management in my mind puts all of that together so that you can connect with whatever type of learner or processor you happen to be. So the visual part of it, which was just showing the cue of work in a couple given areas and then beginning to show the data that goes along with it. Right. Began to get people into the process and dialogue about what it really meant to see the work.

So I'm gathering that you use a combination of maybe like an electronic type system where the data is stored. And is it that you pull it out of the electronic and then put it up on the board?

Yes, yes, we do a lot of that. One of the things we did initially was we tried to create, we did create a condition bond which when you think about the hundreds and hundreds of SKUs within a process, we began to group them, but it began to show that the work wasn't moving. And then we quickly transitioned into exactly what you said. Finding the information in the system and making it visual and people being able to ask the questions. One of the things I think that was most interesting around this whole process was once it's visual and you're standing there with your partner, one up and one down, you begin to see the dialogue happen. Right. So, oh, you're not able to do your work because I'm not handing off on time or you're not able to do your work because the quality of what I handed off isn't supportive of your needs. That was in my mind one of the most transformational things for us, which was you always knew who you know who your partners are for the most part. But really making it visible for them to understand the cause and effect of what was or wasn't happening in. In the process was. It was really pretty fascinating to see.

So as far as the mechanics go, are you. How did you start? Was it like literally like a whiteboard and post it notes or just Sharpies or how did you get started?

We had a. I think it's a 20 foot wall in a conference room with three by fives. So the walls are like pin boards and we essentially marked our kanban out with three by fives and pushpins.

Was it overwhelming when you first did it or. Or was it kind of, I don't know, like a relief that you had it all up on the board, you know what I mean?

I think a little bit of both. For me it was fun because I love that stuff. And I guess again, I'm a visual type person. It was hard to be able to. I guess in some ways it was hard for people to see the problem. I would say it was pretty evident. You know, once, once we queued up a lot of three by fives in one given area, it became very evident that that's where the problem was. I mean. Yeah.

Was it kind of like a process map sort of thing or value stream map kind of activity?

It's kind of like. Yeah, kind of like a process map. The major key handoffs along the, along the chain, so to speak.

What about the use of colors and stuff? I know we used to colors in our visual management. You know, red is bad, you know, green is good, that sort of thing. Do you guys work with that?

We did. We had different colors of three by fives dependent upon the type of program that was. So we could see, because some of the programs are so large that they are in absolutely every piece of the workflow. And so being able to take a glance at it and say, oh, there's program X and it's across these areas and oh, there's a few that are, you know, lagging behind that are way up in the workflow. So we used colors to represent some of the way the programs were laid out. And it was really, it really was a way to start the dialogue to say, well, why are those four still sitting here? What's the root cause, what's the problem? Right. It was, it was our first foray into why, why, why, why?

Yeah, yeah, you know, it's incredible. We've experienced here ourselves. Again, Bay Academy, we have got, our customer success team, has done a great job of pulling things out of our CRM and putting them up on this giant whiteboard over in the room that they all work in. And you would think, well, it's the same data that's in our CRM, so what's the big deal? But it's been, it's been a game changer, making it visual. So I, I really encourage folks to not get too enamored with their dashboards and their fancy software systems that even to the point of, oh yeah, get a big screen TV and put the dashboard up on the wall, that's cool, but there's just something about writing it by hand and having it up on a board that. I don't know, I just. I don't think there's anything that could match it electronically. I don't know what you think.

No, I agree. So we started to stand up process twice a week where we all stand up at the board and talk about what programs were behind or queued up or what areas were having challenges and why they were having challenges. And it was actually a matter of, you know, moving those three by fives. Right. And when you think about Kanban, it was standing at the back end, trying to pull those things toward the back end. Right. And you just actually physically do that. It does make you feel different about how you do the work. I think you actually feel the work moving because unless you're actually sitting at a press watching something, a widget go by, when you are in that more virtual system world, you don't see the work moving. And I really think it did make a big impact and it was very encouraging. Right. When we began to see programs move and, and everybody kind of got into it a little bit and you get some momentum going around that.

So we've been talking about how awesome it is and how well it's worked, but I'm guessing there maybe were a few bumps, maybe especially early on. Can you maybe share some of those?

Sure. You know, and I think part of it was again, when I think about my learn, my lean journey was what could I have done differently? And certainly as I look back, there are a lot of things that I would have done differently. I think one of the hardest things was, like you said earlier, mapping it all out. Right. Trying to understand the challenges. And I think it's an uncomfortable feeling when somebody asks you, how do you do the work? Because I think it's just human nature to say, well, why are you asking? Or what do you want from me? Or what are you going to do with the information? Or. Right. I can think it can be perceived as very negative. But once the successes start to happen and process isn't considered a four letter word, then you begin. I think people begin to engage a little bit more. Right. So I think part of the challenge was the question about, well, why are you doing it? We've got our stuff and we're managing our process, so to speak. Why are we needing to look at this?

How did you handle that early communication though? Because that's really important.

Yeah. And part of it was bringing in the people, you know, to begin to map it out, to say what Are those milestones that we want to be looking at, right. And bringing those people to the board, essentially, right. To say, this is why we need to do this. We're feeling the work's not moving. We need to discover why the work's not moving and really engage them. And again, it was hard, I think for some areas just because you're in their backyard a little bit. But once you look at it, you say, but my big goal is down here at the end, right? My big goal is having it available to ship, to get it to retail, to get it to the consumer, right. And then you back into those other milestones. And so we got into it slowly. I don't know that you could really jump into it feet first when you have such end to end. So we really, we kind of started a few key areas and then we began to add and begin to add kind of, you know, one up, one down and then we add more up and down and, and then begin. Began to be able to build the whole thing. And I, I think that worked. It worked pretty well. Part of it is just because of such a big process, it would be different if you were just working with two or three areas, but working, working with, you know, 15, 17 areas. I think the way we approached it, I think was the right way. It just takes time. And maybe the realization for me is that maybe I wasn't as patient as maybe I could have been. But on the other hand, you do need to continue to drive and move and drive and move, right? So the only way is through, right? With what? If you want motion, the only way, you, you've just got to get in there and you've got to start doing it and you've got to dedicate a lot of time, right? So hours and hours of time spent getting the board prepped and ready for the discussion. But then the discussion went faster, right? So you do have to put in some time.

Now how often do you guys meet at the board to kind of review where things are? Is it like a daily thing or.

No, we started twice a week and now we're almost to the point where we still have, we have it twice a week. We're transitioning one of our stand ups for other topics and really we're only meeting about a half hour every week now. It's pretty amazing. And oh, by the way, we're really now to the point where we're only talking about exceptions, which is a beautiful thing. It's. Right. It's where we wanted to be to, to not talk about the 80% of the work. Right. But to talk about only those things and only those areas that maybe you're having some challenges or there's some concerns or you've got a new program or vacation weeks coming up, you know, and holiday weeks. This is a time where, you know, we're talking about, you know, this last week was a three day week for us. Right. You've got a lot of people taking vacation. And those are the kinds of common now is like what kind of help do you need? It's not so much about how the work is moving. I mean it's still a little bit, but it's more like what problems are you working on? You know, we've seen the success of the solves because the work's moving so that the tenor of the conversation has just changed dramatically and it's, it's super successful right now.

Yeah. I don't want you to share too many specifics or anything like that, but I'm guessing the whole visual management program or initiative has been helpful as far as your output and your production and the success of the company.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And I think one of the huge things is the fact that we're developing, and my boss would call it, we're building our muscle around problem solving and around lean. That is one of the, I think the big, one of the biggest successes along with the work movement is actually getting to the point where we're improving the process and we're, we're doing it so much more efficiently and more effectively and with higher quality. And it's just building that problem solving muscle and really beginning people to understand the whole lean methodologies.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I quick story. I remember back when I worked in the industry, I worked with a small factory in the UK and they were building these actuators and it was a little U shaped cell. And I asked the guys on the cell, how many do you need to make today? And they kind of just shrugged. And I'm like, as many as we can. You know, they had a good problem, they could pretty much sell what they, what they made. And so I asked the supervisor, hey, do you guys have a plan? And they did have a plan, but the operators didn't know. The operators were just going as fast as they could. So all we did was we took a small little whiteboard that was over on the, on the ground not being used and just drew a line in the middle of it and put AM at the top and then PM at the bottom and put numbers in there. That was the Target. And literally overnight, their productivity went up by like 20, 25% just because, you know, it almost gamified it. They didn't work any harder per se, but they were just more focused and they had a perfect purpose. And it was just. Just a simple act of writing. What's your plan and what's the actual. Just radically improve things, like, overnight. Yeah, it's crazy. All right, well, the last question on this topic, Julie, and you've kind of touched on it a little bit as far as maybe being more patient, but if there's some advice that you could give someone who was thinking about kind of dabbling with. With visual management or just maybe Lean in general, taking what you've learned with your journey, Is there any specific advice you would give those folks aside from being patient?

Well, you know, so I just attended the AME conference for the first time last. Last month where. Where I met you and talked with several people at the Gemba Academy booth. One of the things that really resonated with me at the conference was compliance versus engagement. And I think back to maybe in many ways, I wasn't as patient, and I forced maybe some compliance. And you can get progress with compliance. You may get really good progress. But it's, did I reach engagement? And I think now we have. But would there have been a way for me to help maybe improve, I guess, the speed at which the engagement happens? Because at that point in time, especially if you have it through your whole hierarchy in your organization, then the sky's the limit. Then you truly are beginning to build a lean system. So looking back, I think I would have probably, I guess maybe going forward even I would look at it and say, is this just compliance, or do I really see engagement? Am I asking the right questions? Am I helping to identify the pain points that the areas are experiencing? You know, now that I'm more familiar with some of the basic concepts of Lean, how do I push for making sure that kind of our PDCA model and how we're trying to engage people is really working? So I don't know that I have a lot of advice other than consider whether or not you just have compliance or whether or not you're starting to build that muscle.

I like that. I like that. Good stuff. All right, Julie, well, let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. And I know you listen to the show, so you kind of probably know this first one already. But, you know, we spend a lot of time within Lean talking about those two pillars. Continuous improvement. That's the tools, the Things that we touch and see. But that other pillar, respect for people, can be a little bit harder to define and wrap your arms around. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you?

I really think that listening is one of the best ways to respect a person because it proves that you're engaged and that you care. It opens up dialogue, and it's just not a conversation with the next person just waiting to, you know, for a turn to say what's on their mind. I know I feel a little slighted when somebody's already made up their mind and they're not even listening to what I have to say. So I try really hard, and it's hard for me because I tend to be a problem solver. I tend to just get in and let's get it done and let's fix it. And so it's. It's hard for me sometimes to. To take a step back and really listen. And I think when somebody does that, I think they're really respecting what that person is wanting to say, needs to say and really has to say.

Yeah, my friend Brandon Brown, you know, we've had him on the. He had a couple episodes in a row there. He's one of the best listeners that I know, and he taught me, like, the power of silence. You know, it's okay if there's silence.

It's hard.

It is hard. But he's so good at it. You know, when you're talking to him, it just. You're done and he's just kind of looking at you and he's just pondering, you know, And I'm like, say something, Brandon. But he doesn't want to just throw up words, you know, he wants to speak with purpose. And it's a beautiful way to behave, but it is so hard. So hard. And what's the best advice you've ever received?

Yeah, I was thinking back on this. One of the first managers I had really said, do the best you can and learn from it. And it was a point in time where we had decentralized one of our functional areas. And. And so I had a group and we actually moved to a different building into a different organization. And we were having some growing pains. And as I look back, she allowed me to really test and learn again as I look back on my life. And I think, oh, that was lean stuff. And I didn't even know it at the time, you know, because we think about one of the PDC state step PDCA steps where you're, you know, testing and learning and experimenting. So she had faith in my ability to make the best decision based on what I knew at the time. And if it wasn't going to work, then learn from it and do the best you can, you know. So as a reflect back, I think that was, it was really encouraging for me to, you know, she didn't let me fail. But you know, you do learn from those things that don't go quite the way that you anticipated.

Yeah. What are you most proud of as it relates to your journey with Lean?

You know, I still feel like I'm kind of in the elementary stage, you know, when I, when I go to these conferences and some of that stuff just goes right over the top of my head. But you know, I'm proud of my growth in using the Lean tools and I'm proud of the fact that, you know, I've helped others to understand it more as well and I haven't spent, stopped learning and applying it. So I've had the benefit of being involved, like I said, for this, you know, this big end to end visual management that we're working through. So I'm, I'm proud of the fact that I've learned from it. I'm continuing to learn and then I'm helping others learn as well.

So we're coming up on the gift giving season. So if there's one book that you could gift to someone this year, what would it be?

You know, there's one book and it's called People. You probably have it as well. A Leader's Day to Day guide to Building and Managing and Sustaining Lean Organizations. I had to write it down because it's such a long title. Steve Grann and others are the authors. It's a really good primer on Lean. It's short, you know, four, five page chapters. Some good example. They're bite size. It's easy to take a concept and give it a try. Even if there's a lot of little visual things in there. You know, do you want to use a dot, do you want to use arrows? There's kinds of things that just make you think about. Even a small change like that on a visual board might create a different dialogue. Right. Might provide you a piece of data that you don't have to ask questions on. Right. Because the visual does it for itself. So it's a nice little, I call it a little primer and I have it at my desk so with lots of little post its on it.

And it's called people.

It's called People.

Okay.

A leader's Day To Day Guide to Building, Managing and Sustaining Lean Organizations.

Nice. And the author was Steve. What was the last name?

Gran. G R A N. Okay, cool.

I'm going to check it out. I've not heard of that one. Thanks. That's great. Yeah, that's great. All right, well, good stuff, Julie. It's been great. I was happy to meet you at our cocktail party. So thanks for coming to that. That was a great time.

Oh, it was a great conference. I really enjoyed myself.

Yeah. So I guess to kind of maybe wrap things up, why don't you share some final words of wisdom and then why don't you tell folks how they can connect with you, Julie?

Okay, sure. So I am on LinkedIn. I'm probably not one of the best LinkedIn people.

Me either. Don't worry.

But I am on there. I don't always update it like I should.

Spell your last name.

Yeah. L, U, S H, B O, U, G, H. Yeah.

Julie Lushbough. Lushbough. Okay, got it, got it. All right, well, good stuff.

Yeah. One of the. One of the final words of wisdom, I guess. And I. I remember this, I think, even in college, that Chinese proverb that says, tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I'll understand. So I think, you know, as a leader, role in whatever stage you're in, in your lean journey, those kinds of things apply. Right. I think that engagement and an involvement builds the. That deep understanding that just becomes part of your DNA.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Can't think of a better way to end the show than that. All right, well, Julie, thanks again for coming on and keep up the great work. Perhaps we could, well connect later this year to see how the journey's going over at Hallmark.

Yeah, that would be great.

I'm a big stakeholder in your company, trust me.

Oh, we love you.

Matter of fact, just bought one the other day, so. Yeah, there you go.

Oh, you're a good man.

All right. Okay, Julie, you take care.

Thank you so much. Bye.

Bye. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now it's time to take a free, no strings attached, fully functional test drive of Gemba Academy's School of Lean and Six Sigma. Over at Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than 500 Leans and Six Sigma training videos free of charge@gembaacademy.com.