GA 193 | How to Leverage Pull Learning with Steve Cole and Carl Sanders-Edwards

You're listening to episode 193 with Steve Cole and Carl Sanders Edwards.

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 in 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 Steve Cole and Carl Sanders Edwards to the show. Now, the topic that we're going to be exploring today is what Steve and Carl refer to as poll learning. And it's something that's actually pretty near and dear to our hearts here at Gemba Academy in that, you know, we provide, obviously, a lot of online training solutions and learning solutions and videos and other resources. But there's always this dilemma of where do I start? And really, it always comes down to what we always say is it's not about the videos, it's about the problems that you're trying to solve. And so it really kind of perfectly fits into what Steve and Carl are exploring and had a great time chatting with them. And they actually have a system that they're going to kind of talk about. But as you're going to hear, it's very similar to what we're kind of talking about with Toyota Kata in that we are setting that target condition and we're identifying obstacles that are between our current condition and our target condition, and then we run experiments and take action on those obstacles. And so very similar to what Steve and Carl are talking to today. So lots of good stuff in here. Links to everything that we talk to can be found over@gembapodcast.com, just look for episode 193. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 193. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Well, all right, Steve and Carl, thanks so much for coming on to the show. I know you guys are in different spots. So where are you both calling in from?

So I'm here. It's Carl here, Ron, and I'm in San Francisco at the moment.

Okay, so sound like he got like a Norwegian accent or something like that. Carl. I don't know.

I like that. I like that. Thanks for. No, it's New Zealand, so I'm. I've only been out here since May.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Steve, where are you at?

I'm calling from Atlanta.

All right. All right. Good stuff. Good stuff.

And you can tell from my accent that I'm from this area.

Yeah. There you go.

Thank you.

And I'm all messed up. I grew up in Ohio. Now I'm in Texas, so I don't even know what I sound like. All right, well, good stuff. Hey, thanks for coming on, guys. I'm really excited about this topic. This enabling poll. Learning is kind of what we're going to explore. But let's go ahead and begin. I know you both kind of did your homework and you both have a quote that you'd like to share. So, Carl, do you want to go first?

Yes, I will. Thanks, Ron. And mine, I did some study out in Boston a few years ago, and I got introduced to this quote that it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, then think your way into a new way of acting. And I think it just says so much. So that's mine.

Yeah, I like it, Steve.

Yep. Mine is survival is not compulsory, and that's by My hero, Dr. Edward Stimming.

What does that mean to you?

You've got to work on survival. You know, anybody who thinks that they can just coast is not going to make it.

Yeah, yeah. Change is not necessary. Right? Survival is not necessary.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Yeah. Good stuff. All right, well, guys, let's go ahead and kind of get rolling a little bit, and why don't you both take a turn on telling us a little bit about your backgrounds, how you first got involved with continuous improvement, and then definitely share what you're both up to these days.

You know, I want to hear from you first, Steve.

Okay. Well, I was in IT at Delta Airlines and read a book called the Reckoning by David Halberstam that introduced me to Dr. Edwards Deming. And it took me three years, but I was able to get into a position where I was involved with continuous improvement over at Delta's Technical Operations Division, and we called it JIT back then. It's, you know, different. Different types of things. But that is what I've been doing ever since, helping people improve their processes.

Okay. Coral?

Yeah. So mine, it's almost the opposite. I grew up in a small town in New Zealand, which is where this accent is, and it was back in those days there was still automobile car manufacturers in New Zealand. And there was a Toyota plant in our town and as I was younger, it was the scourge of the town. They had some of the worst quality records in the whole Toyota network. They'd taken over from a Peugeot plant originally and it was well known as a terrible place to work, but it was a significant employer. And our government started to decrease the protection that was on the car industry, reducing tariffs against imported cars. And so put a lot of pressure on this plant to change and start doing a better job. And right before my eyes. I guess as I was growing up, I saw the place transform. By the time they stopped making cars, they were ranked second in the world for their class of factory in the Toyota network. They did that without a new CEO, without any new capital equipment, without any consultants. And my first job was working there. I studied manufacturing, industrial engineering and spent a couple of summers working close. And so yeah, got a real strong indoctrination into Lean and the Toyota production system and continuous improvement and particularly Pull, which has been educating me ever since and has come through. Interesting finish to that story, I guess about Toyota is that of all of the old plants that were in New Zealand, they're the only one that's still operating and employing people. And they do that because they refit imported cars. So they import cars, use Toyotas themselves and completely give them a refit and a five year warranty and sell them as a Toyota Signature class secondhand car. And so there's still people working there at the same plant.

Very cool, very cool. All right. And what are you guys up to these days?

Well, I'd sort of stop with my description of my background but when Six Sigma came along, I knew that it was going to be big. And I got involved with at Delta in 1999 in the first black belt class at Delta. And then I was able, fortunate enough to become in there to go into their first master black belt class which was different than the typical master black belt class. It was 18 months instead of two weeks. So anyway it, so now today I'm, I'm a one man consulting group called Flow Value Incorporated. But I met Carl in New Zealand because I went to Air New Zealand, their engineering services group, to establish a lean office.

Okay.

In 2004.

Got it, got it. Yeah, yeah. And so Steve's a mentor of mine and we work together on a number of projects. What I'm doing now is I'm running a leadership development firm and we've got two key arms, it's called Jumpshift is one part, which is direct services. So we go in and run leadership development initiatives for organizations. But we've developed a software product as well called Adeption, which is Adeption IO and that sort of turns learning, flips learning on its head. It takes more of a PDCA type approach to people developing skills and developing expertise rather than learning through pushing content on them. That's what I'm doing here in the US we're sort of building out adaption both with direct clients and through a number of amazing channel partners. People have got good content but want people to actually change their behavior rather than just learn something something and then continue doing what they've always been doing. So it's consuming all my time at the moment and a lot of fun.

Awesome. All right, well, so the topic of the day is this enabling poll learning. I don't know if that's what we'll call the episode. Maybe that's what we'll call it, I don't know. But as most of the folks listening and those of us that have been practicing lean for a while know poll is a key part of the whole kind of process. If you will flow first and if you don't need to pull, then just flow. Right, but pull is obviously a really important part of the Toyota production system. But what we're going to talk about today is how this concept of pull applies in a learning environment. So let's just kind of start there, guys. How does it work in a learning environment?

Well, since the invention of the classroom, we've had lots of batching going on pre kindergarten all the way to corporate training rooms. And in that process, it's a one size fits all. Everything. Looks like a nail type syndrome. Correct? Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. So Gimba Academy is actually assisting with these issues because you have on line, on demand content and the students can pull as needed.

Really handsome presenters too. I think that. Absolutely. Just kidding.

I've learned quite a bit from it.

Thank you.

So the question is how to know application is happening.

Yeah.

And this challenge is both in the batch world and on demand world. Okay. And then the second challenge is how do students learn from each other? Okay, so are they applying? And then how do they share what they've learned by application with each other? Okay, so we've got several challenges even in the pull environment. Now Carl's going to discuss how adaption is a solution to these challenges.

In real simple terms. And forgetting any sort of technology or classroom. I just kind of. I think it's good to go back to the PDCA cycle in many ways really, but we sort of call it diagnose first. So you've got a group, whether it's a room full of people or anyone who are coming into a learning environment. We've got to get away from the idea of an instructional designer who thinks about an audience and decides what they need to learn and then pushes it on them. And that's what we see time and time and time again. That's no different really from a production planner sitting back a long way away from the front line and deciding what needs to be made when or sold when, and pushing that out into the system. And so you need, whether it's a piece of technology or a facilitator or a teacher to come into a classroom, as Steve said, without a one size fits all, without a hammer and a nail approach and ask some questions. Quite simply diagnose and start to understand the current state. And this is so rarely done. And once you start asking questions and understanding the current state, you then identify the needs. So with adults who aren't necessarily learning for learning's sake, you can find out the challenges that they're facing now. Anyone. Then if you've got good, credible content, you can then deliver your content and shape it exactly to the challenges that those people are facing, either collectively or individually. It's even better if you take your content and break it into small bite sized pieces. Then say if you're in a classroom or you've got 30 people, or you've got 30 people online, there can be six or seven different sets of content being consumed based on the different challenges or needs of the different people within that group. So what you're actually doing is you're doing like a Netflix to learning. It's one size fits one and really narrowing content down to the individual based on what they are currently needing. Because our brains are so fantastically adaptive, we forget within a week 90% of what we don't use. This is just a classic waste that occurs in most learning. By finding out what somebody's likely to use in the near future and then delivering them that content, which is a pull based sense, then they can do what Steve said, go and apply it. And a week later, again, whether it's facilitated through technology or in a classroom, you can share those stories. And all of a sudden the richness of learning is increased many, many times as these individuals within your classroom or on your technology are sharing what they did with what they learned the week or two beforehand. That second loop of learning is even more valuable and we get that feedback time and time again that. That people learn more from the experiments or the checking back in and reflecting on the action that they took than they did from the original learning, where they got primed with some content for what to go and take. So not sure if you've got any extra questions on that, but that's just sort of try and simplify it down. You don't need the technology necessarily. It's just a change of mindset about how you go about designing your learning event.

Yeah, no, I mean, you're preaching to the choir, obviously. You know, I mean, it's, It's. It's. Well, you know, we're. We're knee deep in this. We're finishing our. As we are recording this episode, finishing our Toyota Kata course. And so we've been just knee deep in this. This kind of learning process of Toyota Kata. And it's just. It's perfectly. What you guys are talking about is when folks come to Gemba Academy and, you know, thousands some videos, you're like, gosh, where do I start? You know, and the answer, it really lies in what we used to say is, what problems are you trying to solve? Which was the right question. But even that's a little too vague. And so that's where, like, taking it one more step down and say, what's your target condition? Where do you want to be in a few weeks? Okay, you want to be there. Where are you now? We're here. What obstacles are in your way? These. Oh, now we can start applying. Oh, I have this obstacle. Do you know how to overcome it? No. Well, hey, there's this Lean Thig or this Sigma thing or this whatever thing. Let's learn about it. Now there's a purpose. Right. And yeah. So you guys are motivation. Yeah, absolutely. Good stuff.

They're highly motivated.

Exactly.

And, you know, I just love hearing you say that, Ron, because in our experience, I mean, that was what inspired me to start this business that we're doing right now. And a lot by what I learned from Steve is that what you just described then is so rare. We've got so many systems, so many people out there training, thinking that the content or the knowledge is the end game rather than the behavior or the application of that content and knowledge. And that's why there's just so much waste and learning. It's a big industry. There's a lot of money spent on it, And I'd argue 90% of it is completely wasted.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, as I really throw folks For a loop, if I'm on like a little sales call or something and they're asking about all these awesome videos you have, blah, blah, blah. And I say, here's the thing, it's not about the videos, you know, and they're like, what? You sell videos? I'm like, I know, but it's not about the videos. You know, the videos are there to help you solve problems, to help you learn, to help you grow, you know? Yeah, so, so it, but it's a, it's a journey, right? It's definitely a journey.

That's right.

Well, let's dig in a little bit more and talk about. We've dabbled on it. Yeah, sure. Find a need and then learn. But let's talk a little bit more. What does this really look like? Talk about the framework, this learning framework of poll learning.

Yeah.

So we've created a framework which we call diy and your listeners will, will hear my background and Steve's thinking and our biases in this. But the framework is broken into and it's a repeatable framework which you can apply any topic to. So diy, as in you do it yourself. And that's really, really important because we want to create, I think the aim should be to create self sufficient learners. We're surrounded by so much content, like you just mentioned, all those videos and a lot of it's very easy to access. So we want people to be able to go and find and apply it themselves. The framework gives them the ability to do that. D is diagnose, I is inspire, notice, not learn, and Y is your action. So within diagnose, we generally ask three key questions of individuals and then the individuals can share their answers with small subgroups and then with the entire population. So under diagnose it is whatever the given topic is and you can insert any topic. First of all, what would you like to achieve? So what's that target condition you mentioned earlier on in the next few months? What's your target condition for that topic? So if it's leading your team, how would you like your team to look in two months time? Secondly, which is really important is what strengths have you got? What's already working for you? We find that people have an inherent negative bias, which is not, there's no problem with that, but they have a lot of prior knowledge and a lot of things that are working well for them that just by articulating can really help inform what the next steps are going to be. So what's currently working is the second question. Under diagnose and then generally third is what are your challenges? If that's your target condition, why aren't you there now? And what's some of those current state constraints that you're facing?

Or obstacles.

That's right.

Or obstacles in the Carter.

Yeah, exactly.

Obstacles is a good way to frame it. Then you move into inspire here. One of the key rules is that the content that you're trying, that you want people to be inspired by is broken into small, individually digestible chunks. So if you're in a classroom environment, you can hand out 10 or 15 quick reference cards to everyone and each person flicks through those based on the priming that they've had from their diagnose and they can identify which of those is most relevant for them and they just tag them with a post it note. In our technology we've got some machine learning algorithms which actually take those diagnose answers and customize content back directly to that individual based on their needs. The more people that go through it, the better that matching gets. We don't mind though whether you learn those things necessarily or not because the most important thing and whether you know what they are, the most important thing is that you apply something. So that's the why, which is your action. So after taking this inspiration and looking at some different ideas and discussing them with each other and the facilitator or the teacher or the coach who's online, you then plan your action and you get really specific. So what are you going to apply at work? This is your experiment, this is your action to gather some data from. And we try and frame it really in the term of what are your experiments, what are your workouts, your action learning cycles that you're going to take within the next few weeks. And everyone before they finish, whether it's an online module or in a classroom, they commit to each other what they're planning to do, what they hope will happen, and how they're going to stay accountable. And I think that's probably one of the most valuable steps that happens in this pull based learning approach because that public commitment really puts you on the hook.

That's been shown to be huge.

That's right. So it really shifts things and then, then we never leave them there. Ron. We always, in the spirit of continuous improvement, which we've really taken a really full approach into this field of learning, we get back together again. There is never a one workshop learning event or there's never a one module online engagement. There is always another one. And the first step of the second one is how did you go? So you have to reflect on how things went and then you can share your reflections again. Digital technology is fantastic for this because you can share the results of your experiments with a very large number of people. The basic framework there is diagnose, inspire your action and then repeat. And the idea is if you repeat that four to five times, you've built a new mindset, a new mindset about that you can do this yourself in a more independent or interdependent manner into.

The future and become a lifelong learner.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's funny as adults, I think when folks, you know, they talk about, oh thank God it's Friday or whatever it is, you know, or they're, you know, three, four o' clock in the afternoon on Sunday, they get that empty feeling in their stomach. So, you know, they're clearly not enjoying their work. My opinion, and I could be wrong, but my opinion is these folks just have lost the zest to learn. You know, they're not growing as individuals and so it's just, it's just monotony for them. And so I think it's so important that, that this, whether it's this model or, or some other model that we keep learning.

Right?

Keep growing.

Yeah, actually, yes, it's funny you should say that. Isaac Asimov said in 1988, he talked about the current form of education destroys creativity. Yeah. And motivation.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's like kids are like, why Daddy? Why? Why? Why? Why mommy? Why? Why? Why? And then eventually we're like, be quiet, you know, so we, you know, we beat the why out of them. Right. And, and gosh, it's a pity. Right. And now what do we do as why five times? You know, Well, I just got told all through school to be quiet and not ask why, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think there's a lot of risk mitigation that happens too. Because what, what we're describing now, there are unknown outcomes with it, you get the equivalent of production planners, whether they're learning and development professionals that want to take away all the variability out of what people will know by prescribing exactly what they need to be taught and when. Ironically, that actually increases variability and steals the ability for people to learn for themselves. And therefore it steals also that self sufficient zest for learning that you mentioned, Ron, because they're getting forced to learn things that they don't need to apply. They're getting forced to remember things that they're never going to use for the next two or three years and therefore it becomes monotonous and that spark is lost. Whereas if you actually embrace a little bit more mess and say as an audience, we don't know what everyone absolutely needs at this moment, but if we can live with that, we actually end up creating a far more self learning culture and self sufficient environment.

So not to put you guys on the spot, but obviously as we're kind of exploring this polearting and you're practicing and you're trying things and learning yourselves. Right. As facilitators of this, I'm curious if there's any mistakes that you've made along the way and if so, what did you learn from them and how did you maybe grow from them?

I'm happy to start. Steve, I know you've got a couple, but. No, many, many. Ron. And the first one I think goes back to. We've that DIY method that I mentioned that has worked very well in face to face environments. It does though, it takes a lot of confidence as a facilitator because you go through the diagnosis and all of a sudden you realize that everything that you had lined up to talk to the group about isn't relevant to them and that can really expose you. And so I've had a number of those occasions and really it's what'd you do? Yeah, I knew you were going to ask that. It was about being honest and it was about saying and showing some vulnerability and saying, hey, here's what we prepared but you guys have got a need that's clearly somewhere else and I'm struggling right here at the moment. But let's take a minute and recalibrate. And you wouldn't believe how sympathetic across the world I've worked in a number of different places people are with that sort of straight out authentic honesty. I've also tried to blag it as a colloquial term. We have. And where I've tried to not be so honest and that's what doesn't work. You lose the group, it's disingenuous and you lose them. So that's one real one. It's just about being authentic with that. And one of the best experiences I ever had was when we did that and the group started coming up, people started problem solving, offering different things. We created one of those incredible synergistic environments where it was possibly one of the best experiences I've had as a facilitator and it could have also been one of the biggest bombs I've ever had.

Wow. So we don't want to go into all my failures. What I've learned is that the people in the process are the people who need to understand the solution and need to own it. It's not about me, you know, so they need to understand the problems. They need to understand the current prop. The current state. And then how are we going to get to. How are we going to overcome the obstacles to get to the new state, the future state? And they have to own it.

Yeah. And just jumping in there. As we've transitioned into more of a digital offering, we've had to loosen up on the whole DIY framework because of exactly what Steve just said. When you're working with other organizations and other people with their own philosophies and their own frameworks, they maybe want to use the technology that we've got, but they don't want to use diy. That took me far too long to realize by loosening up on that and making that less of a requirement in our technology, we've been able to learn faster ourselves because it was something that we were stuck on. And we've also been able to make solutions far better for the end state because people with their own content and their own challenges have better ways of framing it than what we had. So that's another. Just a very recent one, actually.

Good stuff. So I'm curious, guys, what do you see as the future of learning? Whether that's colleges, professional learning, children. Do you see any trends or changes coming?

So, Ron, I. We ran a virtual session just last week and the topic was the future of leadership development. We looked at all the data that we had and we've talked to a number of experts. I can give you those trends. I think they fit very closely with learning. Anyway, I know Steve just mentioned somebody earlier, so he'll come in as well from a general learning point of view, but the four big trends that, that we're seeing and that we're, I guess, aiming towards. Favorite book of mine was Jim Collins Good to Great, and he talks about the power of. And so we've seen a lot of shift towards digital and asynchronous learning and leadership development at the same time. We see people, we've worked with some companies here in Silicon Valley, some of the most technologically enabled and driving organizations in the world. And they don't want to do anything online. They just want to be in person. They're crazy users of technology, and they don't want to be on technology when they're learning. So we sort of see the first trend is the power of. And technology will help make learning less. When you do get together in person to person less boring. You won't need to listen to a facilitator teach you things. You can do that online, you can do that through follow up. But you'll learn human to human interactions. Those critical soft skills which we all know are so important and that is a chance to practice those and get to know other people better. The content and then the application and staying accountable to using that content will be driven more through technology. That's one thing that we see. So it's actually more human and more technology. So we'll take away the boring bits from the face to face and make it a better interaction by using more technology. Second one is something that I think is related to that human thing we termed it particularly for leadership development is more nac. So automation and technology is taking care of a lot of the easy work that humans have become involved with doing for the last few hundred years since the Industrial revolution and we probably should have never been doing. If you look at where we've evolved and where we've come from, we're optimized to live outdoors in highly dynamic problem solving environments where there is low levels of predictability and we're really good at that. And we work together in social groups to solve our way through those problems and challenges and survive and thrive only for the last few hundred years as we've become involved in very, very, very narrow, specialized field with very very narrow skill sets. So we see the future as a return to the long term average actually. And that people, those narrow, narrow things are going to be taken care of either by AI or automation. They already are. And the jobs and the needs that people fill. And we've got a long way to run I think before those really human to human interactions and those sorts of skills that are uniquely human and very complex are going to dominate in what we need to do. So learning needs to engage in all of the sense empathy skills and basically more broad based individuals who can act across a number of different domains and problem solving creativity. As Steve mentioned, the third one, and I'll just make this quick is scale leadership in particular development. It's not a role based thing anymore. Everyone in your organization, everyone in our organizations need to take leadership. We've got matrix and networked organizations right now. So you can't rely on somebody else taking the lead to fix something. You're at the point and this is again where I think the Toyota production system was a long way ahead of the Rest. Everyone's empowered to make a decision, no matter what level of the organization they're at. In order to be empowered to make a decision, you've got to have some basic leadership capabilities. So learning is not for just the few anymore. It's for absolutely everyone in any organization across society. And then the last one I've already mentioned a few times is one size fits one. So that sort of speaks for itself, I think. So that's where we see the big trends are heading. And it's an exciting time, and it's an exciting space. And I've learned a lot about a couple of those from Steve. So I don't know if you want to add those in particular. That video you shared recently, Steve.

No, it's just. It's online. It's from Isaac Asimov. He outlined the future of education. And I would say that the things that Carl is endeavoring with supports the future. Yeah.

Well, I'll get you to send it over and we'll link it up in the. In the show notes for folks to check it out. All right, well, good stuff, guys. Let's go ahead and transition into the reflection section. I know you guys have listened to the show, so you probably got these questions memorized already, but this first one is really, really critical, and I think it's very appropriate for our conversation today is. Is, you know, we spent a lot of time in Lean talking about those two pillars, continuous improvement, the tools, the things we can wrap our arms around. And then the other pillar, respect for people, which can be a little bit harder to understand. So I'm curious, what does respect for people mean to you guys?

Yeah, I mean, I love this question, Ron. And I just. I've evolved a lot myself here now. What it means to me is, is letting them learn and grow and not robbing people of the opportunity to develop and learn for themselves. And I can. So often, by trying to get a good result and trying to help people, I actually minimize them and rob them of the chance to have their own experiences and create their own opinions and shape their own future. So respect is actually. And something I'm personally working on now is letting people basically walk their own path and not making it too safe and easy for them.

What's the best advice you guys have received?

I think mine ties back to Carl's favorite quotation from David Mann because I'm overly analytic. It's take action, don't overthink it.

Analysis, paralysis. Yeah, that's the master black belt in you, man.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it, too. No worry.

Okay.

Yeah. Good stuff. What are you guys most proud of as it relates to your. Your journey?

I'm going to start with this one. I was serving in the. The role of a master black belt at Delta Airlines and component maintenance, which is a big area within Delta's technical operations division. We had an incident where a wheel fell off of a 737 at climb out at a Salt Lake City airport on Christmas Eve. Okay. And this is something I learned after this event. The 737 model could not dump fuel and had to circle the airport to burn off fuel. Okay. To reach a safe landing weight. Because, as I learned, also, there's a maximum safe landing weight that an aircraft can have. So the emergency landing was executed with fire trucks, et cetera, et cetera, and no injuries occurred. And the FAA opened an incident which required investigation. Okay. We determined that the wheel had fallen off due to the wrong bearing being installed in the wheel. A 757 bearing was installed in a 737 wheel. Okay. The difference between the inner diameter of the 737 bearing and the 757 bearing is 3/10,000 of an inch. Wow. Not perceptible by the human eye. Okay. I'm most proud that the general. The general manager for the wheel and brake shop stood up in front of the whole shop and announced that the process had delivered the defect, not the people in it. Previously, they would have sent. The people who had installed the bearing would have been sent home without pay for a number of days. In other words, they would have been blamed for the defect. So that was one of the proudest moments I can think of. Yeah.

That's pretty powerful.

Yeah. That's awesome. I love that story, Steve. Mine's. I guess, going back to that Toyota story that I told at the beginning. I got really inspired by Lean and became a practitioner and had a number of wins, but also a number of failures, which is where I got onto the whole leadership development side of things. Because my diagnosis, I guess, was that was where most of the failures occurred. Nothing to do with the tools or the techniques, but more at the human level and the level of leadership that was provided at all levels, too, not just sort of senior levels. And so overtly applying the principles of LEAN into leadership development. And in many ways, we've worked with tens of thousands of leaders now and had some fantastic results. And I kind of feel like by stealth, we've smuggled some of the really good thinking of lean into many organizations that would never have normally been attracted to it. So I'm pretty proud of that. And hopefully underneath all of that, there's a few stories like what Steve just mentioned as a result.

Got it, guys. Read any good books over this last year?

Absolutely. I'm very fond of Jim Lancaster's the Work of Management. Yeah, I've been working in sea ice since 1989, and I'm extremely frustrated with the gains are not sustained.

Yeah, we had him on the show. I don't know if you listened to that episode, but he was great.

Yeah, now it's good. I just read Sapiens, which is quite a different spin. Not really a CI related book, but it's about the history of humans. And yeah, it's just. It's sobering in some ways about the challenges that we face ahead of us, but also enlightening around what we can create when we work together and how cultures are shaped. And I think there's a lot of insight that CI and Lean practitioners certainly I took can take from that around how people work and use that to improve the way our organizations and societies work.

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, guys, it's been great. I really enjoyed talking to you guys. It's obviously a topic that I'm passionate about with what I do to earn a living here. So thanks for coming on. Let's go ahead and wrap up things up with maybe each of you sharing a bit of wisdom or final words of wisdom, and then definitely tell the audience how they can connect with both of you.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm not sure how much wisdom I can share, Ron, but I guess the one thing that I would say is related back to if you ever get people in a room or you ever get people's attention online or on a podcast like this, ask them to reflect before they finish. The most valuable 30 seconds they'll take is reflect on two things. One, any insights that they gathered and write it down. And then secondly, what are you inspired to do within the next week? Because I think too often we rob people's time. We get their attention, and then we don't just give them that 30 seconds to frame it to say, okay, what am I going to do with this? Because it's through the act of doing that you learn and that your behavior changes. So that's my snippet of wisdom. As far as contact, it's Carl Sanders Edwards. That's a hyphen in the Sanders Edwards. And if you can decipher my accent, you'll get all the letters out of that. And easiest way to contact me, though, is through Adeption. And adeption is a retired word which means the act of improving or being better, acquiring skill every day. So we've brought that word back into the. Back into the vocabulary. So A, D, E, P, T, I, o, n, IO.

Okay, good stuff. And we'll link to that in the show notes. That'll be GembaPodcast.com and this is going to be episode 193. 193. So people will link to everything you guys talk about here.

Okay? I'm. I'm not nearly as advanced as Carl, but I can be reached on LinkedIn. It's just Steve Cole.

C O, L, E. Right, yeah. Good stuff, good stuff. Any final words of wisdom, Steve, that you want to leave folks with?

Wow.

It's. I think survival is not compulsory, you know, and we did. We need to all be involved. Lifelong learners.

Fantastic. All right, guys, well, thanks again for coming onto the show. Really enjoyed it. Keep up the great work and let's definitely stay in touch, okay?

Yeah, you bet. Hey, thanks, Ron. And thank you, Ron, for listening. Really appreciate it. All right.

Yep, yep. Thank you.

Take care, guys.

Great work.

Thanks.

Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast.

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