GA 195 | How to Manage a Career Change with Thomas Frederick

You're listening to episode 195 with Tom Frederick. 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, and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy Podcast. As always, thank you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day, your week, and your year to listen to the show and for watching Arlene and Six Sigma training videos over at GembaCademy.com, we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today is December 28th, which means this is the last episode of 2017. So I just wanted to take a quick second to really, really deeply thank you, each and every one of you who listen to the show consistently. I know there's folks who listen. We've had folks email us that they've binge listened to every single episode we've ever, ever released. And that's so, so humbling. And we're so honored to hear stories like that. And we're so happy that this, this show is, is able to help folks, you know, learn more about lean, get inspired to practice lean, maybe get hope that other people are also struggling. And it's okay to struggle so long as we don't ever quit. So, yeah, thank you for that. I know I say that every week and it's just words, but I really do mean them. Now, we are going to be making a change to the format of the show. Now. I mean, we're still going to be interviewing people and all the rest of it, but we've kind of had the same formula, if you will, here for, golly, several, almost several hundred episodes. So we're going to be kind of just changing things up a little bit, kind of freshen the show up a little bit. So this may or may not be the last time you hear kind of this traditional intro and, and all the rest of it. But if it is, hopefully you like the new format. We definitely want to get your feedback if there's anything that you'd like us to change. If there's anything about the show that bugs you, let me know, man. Email me@rangembaacademy.com and tell us what you think because that's really important for us to hear the voice of the customer, if you will. And that's you. Now, today, I'm excited to welcome Tom Frederick to the show. Now, I think this is really a very appropriate episode here for the end of the year. Tom's going to kind of come on and talk about his experience transitioning careers. And I'm not saying that you need to transition your career, but if, if, if switching careers and practicing continuous improvement in a different industry is ever something that you entertained or thought about, this is definitely a great episode. So Tom's background was in education. So he was a high school teacher, cross country coach and kind of stumbled into practicing lean without even realizing it as a high school teacher. And then after 20 some years he decided to take a leap into a different industry and that's when he got into healthcare and that's where he's at now. And so we really just talked about really there's two aspects to the show. Kind of his life as an education and how he practiced many aspects of continuing supreme there and then talking about that transition into healthcare. So Tom's a great guy, really well spoken and I really enjoyed chatting with him. So show notes for this particular episode can be found over@gemba podcast.com youm'll just look for episode 195. That's 1-9 5again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 195. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, Tom, well, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

Calling in from snowy Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Yeah. All right, well, how much snow you got?

Well, we got about 10 inches on the ground yesterday and the flurries are still falling now, but not a lot of accumulation.

Alright, well, we're actually recording this. I'm not sure exactly when this one is going to be released, but we're recording this on December 15th. So you got about 10 days. I guess all the snow will stay for your Christmas and have some snow on the ground there.

I guess I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.

Yeah, yeah. You know, we're in Texas, so believe it or not, they're talking about there may be a little sprinkling of snow right around Christmas. So if we, we ever get any snow, our kids normally lose their mind, so. Yep. All right, well, good stuff. Well, hey, thanks for coming on. I'm really excited to chat with you. Kind of lean in the healthcare world is something that's obviously near and dear to everyone's hearts. I mean because, you know, one way or another we're all probably, if we haven't been, we're gonna eventually be, you know, customers of this. Of this service. So. So it's really great that there's folks out there like you trying to make it better. So with that said, as you know, Tom, you listen to the show, we like to kind of get things going with our guest sharing a quote, something that possibly inspires him. So do you have one?

Certainly do. Thanks for having me on, too. My quote is from Avedas Dhanabedian, who was one of the fathers of healthcare continuous improvement. And I learned after I posted this quote on my desk that he was actually from the University of Michigan, Michigan Health System. So he wrote, the secret of quality is love. You have to love your patient, you have to love your profession. If you have love, you can then work backward to monitor and improve the system.

What's that mean to you?

Well, I really think what speaks to the heart of Lean is not a set of tools that you apply to make things more efficient. It's about respecting and developing people. Certainly that aspect of it. And what's your motivation? If my motivation is to make processes that Michigan medicine as efficient as possible, but it's really not to make the quality of care for the patient better or deliver value to the patient. I'm really just spinning my wheels.

Yeah. I don't know if you listened to episode I think pulled it up 191 that we had Renee Smith on from State of Washington, and she was talking about the roles of fear and love in continuous improvement. So topic of love is sure coming up a lot lately on these podcasts, but it's so powerful and so important to really embrace that kind of respect for humanity side of the equation.

Sure.

Good stuff. All right, well, hey, Tom, catch us up a little bit and tell us a little bit about your background and maybe how you first came to learn about all this continuous improvement. And then we're going to obviously get into kind of a detail of your background and what you're up to these days and how you transition into healthcare, but maybe just give a glimpse of what you're doing today.

Sure. I come from sort of a unique background into the continuous improvement environment. I was a high school teacher for 25 years, taught physics and mathematics. Also a men's cross country coach for a high school here in southeastern Michigan. Loved my job, loved working with the kids. I love teaching problem solving. I was in physics. You do a lot of that.

Okay, okay. And today you're working, obviously in the healthcare industry. So. All right, well, let's kind of. Let's just dig into your background a little bit and Talk about those early days of lean and how you first kind of were introduced to it and how you kind of worked that into to your work. I guess back then in the classroom.

Right. It sort of came to me by surprise. I really didn't even know I was being lean. Didn't learn the word lean or really what it meant probably till about two, two and a half years ago. But I realized very quickly lean practices in my classroom, even though I didn't know what they were at that time, made me a better teacher. And just a beginning example is after a couple years of teaching physics, you got physics labs every week and kids need to find their materials. And I had bins and just sort of hodgepodge. And every time the second class would come in, they'd say, hey, Mr. Frederick, we can't find the Vernon calipers. Hey, where's the spark timer? I spent half my time just trying to locate stuff and find it. So I got this crazy idea. I'm going to buy a labeler. And I labeled every drawer in my classroom and I made sure that everything had sort of a spot and an outline. So basically I was doing a 5s before I knew what 5s was. And kids would sort of joke, somebody would raise their hand and ask a question, hey, Mr. Frederick, where's the so and so? And others would snag her and say, hey, it's in the drawer labeled calipers. Duh.

What made you do it? Like, I mean, have you been kind of an organized person in your life or what?

Yeah, I think I am an organized person. I just didn't, hadn't thought about it. It really was driven by the frustration of the bad experience of having to waste my time trying to find things and waste kids time trying to find things before I could really move into the lesson.

You know what's beautiful about that is we talk so much about, you know, why are we practicing these tools. So for example, 5S is a perfect example. You know, the worst way you could go about a 5s, kind of introduction to an organization to say, hey, let's go put some posters up and let's watch even game by academy video or two and learn about 5s. And then let's do it. And everybody's like, okay, you know, they start doing it, but they have no purpose, there's no why. Right. So you started with why you had a problem and you were trying to solve it. You didn't even know it was called 5s but you were solving a problem. And I think that's probably why it worked in your case and why sometimes it doesn't work is because people begin to do the activity without understanding why or what problem they're solving.

That is a great point. As I learn more about Lean and Lean implementations, I'll see web pages say, hey, first thing you do is a 5s and it's organizational. Maybe that's not the first thing you do. Maybe you actually go to the organization and learn about their situation and let their need drive what you do first.

Give me some other examples of the things you did in the classroom.

Yeah, evidence based decision making sort of evolved organically as well. You know, as teachers we talk about, well, I had an average of 80% on the test, so I guess the kids are getting it. But it's mostly anecdotal or just reaction to one outcome measure, not a process measure. And I decided Scantrons came out and I could figure out how many kids got each problem right or wrong and sort of made a frequency table showing the problems that were mostly missed on every test. And I guess I come to find out later that's a Pareto analysis. And I can look at that and say, well, gosh, I need to focus on these five main concepts instead of just sort of a shotgun approach. Okay, kids, let me read off all the right answers and you figure out what you did wrong. And that worked for a number of years, but it was still not a real detailed metric. So new technology came out where I could actually have my kids fill in a Scantron chart and I could take a picture with my phone and it would immediately give me an analysis of not only the problems that were most missed, but in each problem which choices were chosen the most. So now I can see not just what concepts the kids didn't understand, but why did they all pick circumstances when the right answer was B? And I can start asking why was that because of the way I taught the concept or failed to teach the concept. Was it an activity that we did or maybe could we add an activity to help to get them from C to B? And it just really opened my eyes to evidence based decision making instead of just sort of anecdotal patting myself on the back. Yeah, they did pretty good.

Yeah. Kind of the old TWI statements, right? If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught. Right.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. Good stuff, good stuff. What about like, you know, within education for sure, but not just education, just the business world. We, we often leaders are often guilty, myself definitely included, of, of just helping people solve Problems, you know, by giving answers. Somebody asking me a question, I tell them what I think. Instead of, sometimes it would be better to be maybe the more Socratic approach of I don't know, what do you think? Did you practice any of that in the classroom?

Yeah, certainly. And not so much in the beginning. When I first got my teaching job, I was fresh out of college and I knew all the answers. I was there to give them all the answers to solve all their problems. After a while, I realized that wasn't giving the payback, the return on investment that we'd expect. And I read a book or went to a seminar somewhere about using the Socratic method. And I thought, wow, this will really help me to understand their thinking. I need to know what they're thinking. Not when they come up to me and say, hey, how do you do 18? Well, just follow these steps. Here it is. I would then ask them, well, I don't know, what does number 18 say? And they say, well, I don't know. I thought you knew them all by heart. Let me get my book. And then I said, okay, let's read it together. Wow, what did they give you? I don't know. And students would sometimes get fairly frustrated because they just want an answer. Sometimes it's just human nature and I wouldn't give it to them. I quickly got a reputation of don't ask him a question because he's going to ask you five questions back. He's not going to give you the answer. But as kids saw the benefit of it long term, which is harder for high school students sometimes to see, they really benefited from it and enjoyed it. So I guess that was the beginning of my kata. Questioning and trying to really understand my students thinking, not just provide them a path to solution or a solution itself.

Or dare I say, you were trying to help them learn. Right. I know it sounds crazy, but that's what kata is, right? It's not problem solving, it's learning. Right. How can we learn faster? And sometimes we lose sight of that. You know, my daughter's a freshman in high school and she's taking some final exams here before the Christmas break. And, you know, she's cramming like we all did, and I'm just like, it just sort of drives me nuts, you know, that she's, she's studying to pass this test and is she really going to remember it? Did she really learn anything or is she just trying to get an A on the exam? You know, so that's the dilemma, I guess.

Yeah. And it's difficult because, you know, we want to cram so much information in, but we don't really have the time to develop the thinking process, the PDSA type of mindset. And that's a deficit in education.

Yeah. So the last question on the classroom side of your lean experience, talk a little bit about, I know we were talking before the interview started about kind of workouts, events, whatnot. Talk a little bit about that process, how that went in the classroom.

Well, with the workouts, I was really more thinking about my cross country coaching as opposed to my classroom teaching. And as I started with the coach, I'd sit in my office and I had this great plan and I read a couple books and here's your workout. And first couple of years just didn't see a lot of gains. And I thought maybe it'd be better if I actually ran with them. And I wasn't a great runner by any means, but I figured if I could run with them by their side, experience the workout and then come back and say, boy, I'm really, really sore. I can hardly bend my legs. Maybe I'm working a little bit too hard here. And in doing so, I was able to sort of go to where they're at and understand from their perspective how my coaching plans were working. And it made me a much more, I think, reactive coach to what their needs were at the time. I sort of relate that to going to the Gemba. Go and see. I can't just sit in an office and read this book and say, this is the plan, guys, go do it. You got to go to where the work's actually happened. Experience it, maybe yourself.

Yeah, pretty big into CrossFit. Myself and the coach at the gym that I go to, he does every workout, you know, sometime during the day. And it's exactly why he says, he says, you know, so many times like a CrossFit coach will program all this stuff up and then go do their own fancy workout over on the side, but never experienced what the class is going through. But he said, exactly what you did. If I'm beat up and this guy's super fit, right? So if he's beat up, then, gosh, the rest of us mere mortals are probably dying over here. So yeah, I think that's super important and great. Quick question, just random cross country question, like, what's the secret to building aerobic capacity? I know they're 15 years old, so that's a little different, but what's the secret for us 40 something year old trying to improve our fitness?

Well, it's overload and recovery. Overload and recovery. You have to push yourself beyond what's easy. You got to overload your body, the lungs, the legs, and then you have to be able to recover. A lot of people make mistakes because they overload, overload, overload, and they break down. The recovery is just as important as the overload.

Got it. Awesome. All right. So 20 years in the classroom and then I guess you decided it was time for a change. Talk about that.

Yeah, you know, I was getting a little bit frustrated, but not so much with the career or the kids, really, just with nobody does anything for 20, 25 years anymore. That was sort of a more 1950s or 60s mindset. I thought, how could I improve what I'm doing? How could I use the skills I've gained over these 25 years and share them in a different venue? And I started looking into different career options and talked with a friend who was in continuous improvement and thought, wow, I sort of been doing that, not really realizing that what it was called, and took a couple classes to see if I was interested and really fell in love with the whole process. And that got me on the beginning of my journey toward continuous improvement in healthcare.

Talk about the emotions you felt leaving education because it had to be a little bit heart wrenching. I mean, sounds like you really dug it and did a great job.

Yes. No, I loved it immensely. One of the most difficult things is leaving something behind that you love, but knowing that something ahead could possibly be better. That was my motivation. I remember I left coaching about 10 years before I left teaching, and I was just. I was bawling in front of the team saying, I'm so sorry, guys, but I got to move on teaching. I had been there for a while. I sort of thought about an exit plan for about five years. So it was a little bit easier transition for me. But definitely miss the kids, miss being able to work with them and see their growth. I certainly don't see all the same productive growth happening so quickly here in a big organization as I would in the classroom.

So as you're reflecting on this career change, I mean, obviously there's a million directions you could have taken even with continuous improvement. I mean, you could have gone into manufacturing or anything like, so why healthcare?

Yeah, that's a great question. I was working with a career coach and we were thinking, you know, healthcare, manufacturing, even using continuous improvement in education. I had taken a couple classes. I had actually got a six sigma black belt and thought, boy, education could really use continuous improvement. And I had investigated that. I went to the University of Michigan School of Education, made a presentation to them, and they weren't ready for it at the time. And I thought, well, should I go into healthcare? Should I go into manufacturing? And just really through a process of a lot of conversations with people who were in healthcare manufacturing, bouncing things off a career coach I was working with, I. I just sort of stumbled really onto the healthcare side. And once I made the decision, I'm going to go in that direction, I really focused everything in that basket.

Once you made the decision and obviously got hired, you know, what did you do? Like, I mean, did you know anything about healthcare or was that like the struggle to kind of understand what the heck's going on here before we worried about making it better?

Yeah, no, that's my continuous struggle. That's where I'm at. I'm fairly green, only been here about six months, but there was about an 18 month period in between where once I made that decision, I went sort of full bore into it. I took some classes at a local university specifically focused on continuous improvement in healthcare. I worked on a project with a local health care organization trying to use and apply some of my Six Sigma skills. And really I got onto LinkedIn and I started looking for people in healthcare who I knew and just networking with them, having coffee with them, learning some of the terminology. And I sort of came in with at least a working knowledge. And I can talk the talk, but being able to talk the talk and then walk the walk every day on a unit, trying to teach nurses or frontline employees how to think with a problem solving mindset and do PDCA are two different things. So I'm still certainly on the learning curve.

I assume that you've discovered my friend Mark Graben's blog and read every article he's ever written. Well, maybe not every, because he writes a lot.

Well, you know, there's so many great resources and Even in that 18 month period of learning, I spent a lot of time on Mark Graben's blog. A friend of mine said, you got to check out Karen Martin. She got all these videos. I watched a lot of Karen Martin's videos, listened to some Gemba Academy podcasts, which now is a staple for me on the way in to work every day. There's a lot of great resources out there.

Yeah, yeah. So what are you doing then at Michigan Medicine?

I'm a continuous improvement specialist, AKA improvement coach. So I have really a twofold job responsibilities here. I'm helping to design, redesign the products and services that we provide to the organization at large for continuous improvement. That's courses, individual courses that people can take, sort of classroom learning, interval learning where you bring a problem to us and we'll work with your team to coach you through it, coach you through the whole problem solving method. And then maybe the next time you don't need quite so much coaching and maybe after three or four iterations you're just doing it on your own. And we're moving to another group who's very green and needs to start at the very beginning. So doing a lot of education, which fits right into my wheelhouse as a teacher, and also doing one on one coaching on the hospital floors with different individuals and teams and really just learning my way around the hospital. So much going on, so many great resources here and great opportunities for improvement. It's a whirlwind. It really is.

Now University of Michigan has like some of the most prolific lean thinkers out there, namely Mr. Rother, you know, in Toyota Kata. So I assume that you've heard of it at least and maybe are you practicing it at all?

Kata, definitely. I've actually got on the back of my ID badge, I have a shrunk down version of the kata questions, so I can just flip that right around and make sure that I'm on the right path every day taking courses in that practicing. I'm participating in a course called Managing to Learn, where a coach will have gone through it, sort of as in their training now, they're going to mentor me through it. So I'm learning kata every day. I'm actually very excited that I believe you guys just opened up a kata resources web page and you're planning a kata academy.

Yeah, no, we're finishing up a course right now. So depending on when this episode comes out, it may or may not be out. But yeah, we're working hard on it. We're pretty passionate about it and we think it's, it's definitely a way to learn and to rapidly work your way through obstacles.

Yeah. One of my biggest misconceptions coming into continuous improvement is I actually thought, sort of embarrassed to say it, but that I would sort of be like, I'm a black belt and I'm a lean bronze and I'm gonna fly in like Superman, solve all their problems, show them the way, and then fly out and solve the next one. And that's totally wrong. It's more like I'm Yoda and I'm walking through the process with Luke Skywalker and watching him fail and letting him fail and learning from those failures and from my own failures. Even this morning, I was talking with a colleague. We're heading to a new unit at the hospital, going to be working with some of the nurses. And every time he sort of started to say what a possible problem was, I chime in, and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're not going to be successful if you just give an answer. Every single time someone asks a question, you got to listen. And it sort of caught me off guard. I thought, oh, my goodness, I still have to learn this every single day. I have to remind myself, yeah, put.

Yourself back in that classroom with those students.

Right now, I'm sitting in the desk.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's so hard, though. I mean, and I think that's the power of Kata, is that, you know, if you're really following the process and you're. And you're being authentic, you know, true to the process of, what's your target condition? You know, what's your actual condition? What obstacles are under your way? Which one are you working on next? You just. I mean, literally follow the card. It kind of keeps you. I don't know. I've personally experienced that. It keeps you out of that mode of. Well, here's what I would do, you know, if you let the process work and you genuinely go in with the mindset, I want to help these people learn faster. If you have that in mind. I think it's. I'm not sure there's a more powerful way of thinking available today.

Right. And unfortunately, it seems to be something that's just contrary to human nature for most of us. I'm working with another team in radiology, and we're trying to solve a problem. And, you know, 10 out of 12 people, every time we get together, want to say, well, we don't need that data. We know what the problem is. Let's just do this. And the coach I was working with said, man, we have to just reinforce the process works. Trust us, we know this process works. Let's go through every step. Let's gather data, let's ask questions, let's not assume. But it's just not something that we, as human beings, comes natural to us.

Yeah. Here's a good one for your radiology team to consider. Uh, my daughter had a. My freshman, the daughter I talked about earlier, she had a. Just a checkup with her doctor, and he was looking at her back and thought, hmm, maybe I see a little bit of curvature in her spine there. So they wanted to. To have it X rayed you know, and so they go in and. And they X ray her. And doctor calls the next day, and he says to my wife, Mrs. Perera, your daughter has a 40 degree Cobb angle. And we're like, 40 degrees. I'm googling it, right? And it's like 40 degree cob angle is like this C in the back, you know, I mean, it's this massive curvature. And we're looking at our daughter's X ray, and I'm like, I don't see that yet. It looks pretty straight. And so one thing led to another. Come to find out the radiologist uses voice dictation.

Dictation. Yeah.

Yeah. They talk into the deal and to narrate their findings, and apparently the gentleman said 4 degree, but the voice dictation picked up 40, and he didn't catch it, you know, and, you know, mistakes happen. So I'm not trying to be critical of the guy, but anyhow, my doctor got it, just got the report, didn't actually see the picture, and then relayed it. And so me and my wife are panicking over here, like, oh, my gosh, our daughter's gonna be in a brace. And this and that, you know, surger. And, yeah, all it was was dictation, you know, so it's like how easy it is for mistakes, you know, potentially. I mean, nothing would have happened. Right. I mean, they would have checked it again and said, no, this is not 40. But golly, man, there was some serious panic going on in our household because of that.

Sure. And what can we do to fix that process so the radiologist isn't able to have that mistake occur.

Yeah, yeah. Me and a buddy of mine were talking about it. It's like, perhaps, you know, when you hit a certain threshold, some other box pops up and it says, are you sure? You know, And I don't know. But, yeah, easy to cast stones because mistakes happen. Right? But, gosh, in healthcare, it's just so, so, so important that we get things right.

So, yeah, that's one of my motivators was the IOM report that came out a couple decades ago said that, you know, in healthcare, we may be responsible for about 100,000 unnecessary preventable deaths a year. Wow. If that's not motivation, what is?

Exactly. Exactly. Good stuff. Well, hey, let's jump into the reflection section. I definitely got a couple of these I want to ask you. So, you know, this first one is the oldie but goodie. It's. It's, you know, those two pillars, continuous improvement. It's the tools, the Things that we can, we can touch and do, that's pretty easy to, to understand, but respect for people can be a little bit harder. So I'm curious, Tom, what does respect for people mean to you?

I think it's being patient and listening to people. Listening is key. Letting other people tell you what their perspective is. In 80% of the projects I've worked on so far here, most of my job is just getting people from different parts of the process that's being improved into the same room, talking to each other and listening to each other. And I'm more of a conflict manager or a communication facilitator than a problem solver sometimes. So listening to people and hearing their perspectives, trying to allow people to see the whole picture. What's happening upstream and how do my actions affect them, what's happening downstream and how do their actions affect me?

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

I think I was at a lean course and Toni Benner was teaching and she said, go slow to go fast. And I've heard it a thousand times since then, but that was the first time I've heard it. And I'm the kind of a guy who just likes to dive in head first, you know, guns blazing, let's get this done. And that often is a, is a hindrance to real problem solving. So just got to be able to slow myself down. Listen, be patient, patient. Let's understand the situation before we try to jump to a solution.

Well, another powerful reason to think about Toyota Kata, right? I mean, because you not achieved the target condition and you didn't totally wipe out an obstacle, you don't go forward. Right? You know, you keep working until we've identified the issues, right, with those obstacles and, and hit that target condition. So, yeah, it's a it. I think we're all in the same boat, Tom. We all want to solve problems, we all want to fix, fix, fix. But that's just not the right way, you know, to approach problem solving.

Exactly.

Hey, what are you most proud of as it relates to your journey?

Well, I think I'm most proud of the fact that everything I do, large or small, every single day, is in some way geared towards improving patient safety, improving patient experience, improving the health people in the populations that we serve. You know, teaching was great. I was forming future thinkers and problem solvers and leaders, but I really see that's something I'm proud of. There's not a minute of my day that isn't spent at least tangentially trying to make people's healthcare experience better.

Have you read any good books this past year?

Well, you know, Being Green, I have a stack of books on my desk. Ed Schein's Humble Inquiry, going through that. Mark Raven's Lean Hospitals, three quarters of the way through that. But there's one that really sort of hit me lately. It's called Focus and Leverage by Nelson and Sproul. And it's different because it teaches lean six sigma theory of constraints in the context of a novel. So it's not like a textbook analysis or something, it's a story. And in the story, within the context of the story, you're learning, you're seeing them apply it and you're seeing what effects it had. Really engaging. Great book, Tom.

Have you read the Goal?

I have not.

You need to get it. It was, it's Eli. Eliyahu Gold Rat is the author. It's a novel. It's theory constraints. So it's not lean per se, but it's, you know, obviously very lean oriented. But he's a physicist or. He was, he was. So. But I think his thinking and his way of communicating be right up your alley.

So I'm putting down my Christmas list.

The Goal? Yeah, it's. My wife read it. It's a, you know, it's a novel. Just, you know, this plant manager's wife's all mad at him and all, so there's all these fun stories that kind of keep it going, but it's fantastic. It's a must read, I would say, for anyone kind of in this, in this field. So.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, good stuff. And also another one for your Christmas list. Make sure you get Mark's Healthcare Kaizen if you haven't, because that's also, I would say, must read for anyone in the, in the healthcare industry practicing continuous improvement. So. So Mark, Mark, if you're listening. And buy me some coffee for all the plugs I've given you.

Yeah, I'm giving away Lean hospitals for Christmas to friends and family.

Yeah, no, Mark's a great guy. I can't think of a person who's done, you know, more for the lean healthcare movement than Mark. I mean, there's a lot of great folks out there, but. But Mark's. Gosh, he's been the most consistent. I think so, yeah. Hey, so last question. Is there a knowledge or skill area that you feel you need to improve in order to become more. More successful as a lean thinker?

Certainly. Well, there's a number of them, but I think the one really in my headlights right now is kata. I want to learn more about kata. I want to practice a kata approach until it's habit. And frankly, right now it's not. If I have to turn my badge around to read those five questions, I. It's not yet a habit. So that's really the one main thing I'm focusing on right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, so this last question, I'm going to kind of just change it up just a little bit. I normally ask folks for final words of wisdom or something like that, but I want you to speak to that person who might be listening to this right now. And, you know, kind of end of the year, people are reflecting on, you know, the year that was their life and all the rest of it. And let's say they're, I don't know, entertaining the idea of a career change, not necessarily to healthcare, but just a career change. But with the continuous improvement thing there, I mean, practice continuous improvement some way. What advice do you have for that person?

Yeah, that's a great question. The first thing is you gotta do it. You gotta make the leap. I was a high school teacher for 25 years. Not a lot of people jump out of that career and go into something after that long. But first, you gotta make a decision and do it. And second, network with people. The most helpful thing for me was networking with people on LinkedIn and at our local ASQ chapter and seeing what they do. And it really is people hire folks who they know to be good people who work well with folks. I didn't have a full skill set. I'm not an IoE engineer. Up to five years ago, I would have never got this job. But leadership here changed and they said, you know, all that learning's important, but we also want somebody who can relate to people who's a hard worker. So don't sell yourself short. There's a lot of opportunities out there. Just in healthcare alone. There's a ton of opportunity for continuous improvement.

Good stuff. Good stuff. Tom, how can folks connect with you?

Probably the easiest way is on LinkedIn. Just search for Thomas Frederick. F R E D E R I, C, K. Okay.

Yeah. And we'll. We'll link to that in the show notes. Let me see. I think the show notes number here will be 195. So, yeah, Gemba podcast dot com. Look for episode 195. And we'll link to Tom's. To LinkedIn. And. Well, hey, thanks for coming on, Tom. This was great.

You.

You know, I always love talking about lean in the healthcare world, but really opening up with all your experience in the classroom I think is super, super helpful because I'm sure there's some folks out there in education who can take a lot from what you've done as well. So thanks.

Well, thank you so much. I am honored. I listen to you almost every day on my way to work, and I have learned so much. You've got some great resources, some great people. I just love listening to some of the stories, so I really appreciate that.

Yeah, that's probably one of the favorite parts of my job because I'm learning with every episode, so it's awesome. All right, Good stuff. Well, hey, thanks again, Tom. And hopefully we get to. Maybe we'll meet up face to face sometime in the. In the coming year. But in the meantime, keep up the great work.

Thank you. I'm looking forward to your kata class.

All right, take care.

You have a happy holidays.

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