GA 246 | How to Admit When You’re Struggling with Gary Peterson

Thirty years later, I don't know what I'm doing. I've got a vision, and if something's going to happen, they're going to do it. They're going to figure it out. They're going to make it work. They know that. I realize that they're closer to the process than I am. They can figure it out better than I can figure it out.

Today is the seventh and final interview from our AME podcast series, and man, are we going to end on a high note as we visit with Gary Peterson works for O.C. tanner, which, as you'll hear, is an incredibly cool company. Now, before we started the interview, Gary asked me what the secret to a good podcast was. And I explained the best interviews are the ones where the guests share stories and if they're willing to be a little vulnerable, the popularity of the episode goes through the roof. Now, as you're about to hear, Gary definitely delivers on the stories, and he also shares some aspects of his career he probably doesn't talk about all that often, including how he brought one of his co workers to tears. And these weren't happy tears. So be sure to listen to the full episode in order to see what I'm talking about. Now, show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 246. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 246. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Gary, well, thank you for coming on the show. How's it going?

Very good, thank you, Ron.

Well, it's good to meet you. I think it was Chet, wasn't it? Chet, how did we get connected? I can't even remember now.

Chet reached out to me and asked if I'd be willing to do it.

Yeah. At Lei, Our good friend.

Yeah.

So good stuff. Well, Gary, the way that we like to begin our shows is with our guest sharing a quote, something that inspires him. Do you have one?

I do. So I have a quote by Socrates. The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

What's that mean to you?

Well, I like it because too many times, I mean, people naturally going to put up some barriers to change. And in fact, when we first started our change effort at the O.C. tanner company, I moved into. I was actually the change facilitator. Facilitator of change was my title. Okay. And I thought, okay, well, everyone likes change. This is going to be great.

Yeah.

Nobody likes change.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I spent too much time fighting the old and really, I think creating the new, creating something that people can embrace and say, oh, I see where you're trying to go. I mean, at first as people were fighting, I thought they were just kind of being butt heads and just dragging their heels. And I actually learned later that they just, they loved the company as much as I did. They weren't convinced it was the right thing to do, and so they were trying to protect the company. And so clearly focusing more on the new, showing them possibilities, creating a future that's more exciting than the past, I think is the. Would have been the better way to proceed.

I got it. I got it. All right.

I learned that after I got all this gray hair.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. Well, I want to learn more about OC Tanner, but before then, I want to learn more about Gary. So tell us a little bit about your background. You know, how you first came to learn about continuous improvement and then what you're up to these days.

Yeah. So. So LC Tanner is the only company I've worked for. Okay. I went there right out of college. I was an intern, actually, when I. When I was doing my mba. Okay. And. And then I started working in marketing there. And the. The president of manufacturing was going to retire. And so there's like an opportunity to change the culture from kind of this authoritarian, top down controlling thing he had to something more empowering. And. And so they posted a job. What excited me about it was it was a promotion. So I was like, ah, you know, more money. Yeah, yeah. And again, change. That sounds fun. Yeah. So I just went over there. I knew nothing about Lean. I knew. I knew nothing about continuous improvement.

Had you even heard of it?

Yeah. I had seen in my operations class in graduate school, I had seen a video of One Piece Flow.

Okay.

And it blew my mind. Yeah. Because I, like everyone else, I think, grew up believing that batch was the most efficient way to do things. And so watching this video, I was just. My paradigm was just busted up entirely. And I couldn't get that out of my head. So I did. Going into this job, I thought, the.

Seeds have been planted.

I know one thing, Flow works. I don't know how to do it here. And then the other thing is, I really believed in the power of people. Okay. And when I got to the manufacturing side, I realized, these guys are so great. It's the best kept secret at O.C. tanner. And I just thought, put those two things together, empower the people, try to figure out one Piece flow. And that's all I knew. So just trying to figure it out.

Those are two good things, people. One piece flow. I mean, hey, get those things right.

So I've been there 30 years. The first five word marketing. And then I was doing about 10 years of just change and improvement. And then I kind of worked my way into a position where I was going to kind of take over supply chain and manufacturing. But my boss was still a few years from till retirement, so I left and not the company. But I went and chased a couple other careers at OC Tanner. Went back to marketing, did some research and did some product development and went and did some. Some finance type things and then came back to manufacturing. I've been there ever since.

Okay, so tell us a little bit about O.C. tanner.

Yeah. So O.C. tanner is. It's a half billion dollar company. It's global. We have, our headquarters is in Salt Lake City, but we also have factories in Toronto and London. Okay. And we have distribution facility in Mumbai and also have some buyers and other functions in Melbourne and in Singapore. We have an IT shop also in India. We serve mostly global companies, big companies with lots of employees. So we go to where their employees are located, basically. And we provide cultural strengthening that allows their people to thrive in what they do. So we started in recognition, appreciation, and we provide awards. We provide software that lets people appreciate what everyone is doing. And it also rewards accomplishment.

Yeah.

And so my side of the business, the supply chain and manufacturing, about 25% of the total revenue is custom awards that we manufacture.

Like, give me an example.

Make to order. So it might be. Well, for 90 years it was a lapel pen or a charm with a corporate logo in it. Yeah, that's more of a mature product now. Yeah. We still make about 3,000 a day, but it's a lot. It is a lot. Yeah. The newer products are, you know, it's probably a desktop type. Something that someone looks at and says, that's cool. Where'd you get that?

Yeah.

And it's probably connected to the corporation in some way. So it looks, you know, it's designed to represent something that people care about in the organization.

Got it.

And we might cast that, we might mill it. We've just got lots of different processes that we use depending on what the final product is. That's about 25% of the revenue. About 50% of the revenue is more of a distribution model. So like somebody wants to recognize high achievement and they say, well, pick an award for yourself. And they pick a mountain bike. Or they pick an electronic or something like that. We have that, we ship it to them. And then about a quarter of the revenue is software as a service, service training fees, things like that.

Got it, got it, got it. So talk a little bit about.

O.C.

Tanner'S journey with Lean. Were they doing it like.

Yeah, no, yeah. They weren't doing anything. Okay. We were, we were 28 different departments and. And it took 26 days to manufacture something. Basically one day per department. Right. Okay. And totally people. Totally uninvolved. In fact, Salt Lake is an international Red Cross destination. So we get a lot of people from around the world coming in. Okay. And. And none of them spoke English. When I first went to manufacturing. I don't think they really cared that they. Because they didn't want to talk to each other.

Yeah.

Solve problems. That would be ridiculous.

Yeah.

So that's kind of where we were. Okay. And our CEO handed me Schoenberger's book, World Class Manufacturing and said, this is what I want you to do. And he had.

When was this?

This was 80. This was like 90, 1990. About. Okay. So Lean, the machine that changed the world, hadn't been right yet, right? Yeah, yeah. There wasn't. The word didn't exist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. And it was obvious when I, when I opened the book, he hadn't actually opened it.

Ok. Yeah. He heard it like, okay.

And in that book, you know, he's got a U shaped cell. And I thought, okay, I'm going to do a U shaped cell with one piece flow. That's what I thought because I knew the one piece flow. Right. And I'm looking at a U shaped cell. And so we go and we grab a couple of, you know, first I start to get people talking. I try to get them to solve problems and doing some training there. And I'm trying to retrain management to be more empowering and less, less, you know, controlling. But then we start to move some equipment and start to do some experiments with, with one piece flow and with Kanban. And that was crazy good. I mean it was, it was so obviously the right thing to do.

Yeah.

That we just kept expanding and kept getting better. Right. And you know, it took us, it took us five, six, seven years before we could change some of the machinery to not be so big and bulky and not to be so heavy that I couldn't. Had to be on slab, on grade. For example, once we start bringing processes together, every time we have processes together, efficiency went up.

Yeah.

Throughput, time went down, accountability went up. And we basically just kept going and going until that 28 days. No, 26 days of throughput time turned to 20 minutes.

Okay.

So now we issue materials. 20 minutes later, it ships.

Wow.

And it's. And that's a custom product that somebody orders and personalizes.

So how do you do, like, the engineering that fast?

Or is it just so the. We create an idea that a customer will want. Okay. And they say, yeah, I like that. I like that one. This one I don't care for. I like that one. And so now I've got a design that is approved. And so the recipient chooses the thing that they want. They get to choose color. They get it. And then they get to choose the way it's personalized. So that's what we're doing uniquely to them. Okay.

Okay. Well, current day. Talk a little bit about ideas. Let's say an associate has an idea for an improvement or something like that.

What do you got, like a box.

In a wall or what's.

What's up? So we have a. We have an idea. An improvement idea system I think is really nice. We've got a card that is. It's actually two pieces of paper that are. That are stuck together. Well, it was. Yeah. I mean, it's two pieces of paper stick together. The front one is white, the back one is yellow. And the reason we do that is you write on it and it transfers through. And most ideas are actually implemented by the team. Okay. But if the team can implement it, they peel it off and that. The yellow one stays on the board. The white one goes to the engineering team or something like that. But there's a board. The idea is the team board. So it's the huddle board.

Okay, got it.

So right on the huddle board, the operator picks up the card, they write down their idea, they put it on the huddle board, and that's where it sits until the team meeting. Okay. The team.

How often does the team meet?

Every week. Okay. So the team huddles around the board, the huddle, daily. But the team meeting is weekly. In the weekly team meeting, they pull the ideas off the board. They go through them as a team. What do you think?

Everyone?

Everybody. What do you think about this one? What do you think about this one? They talk about them, and the team decides which ones to implement. Okay. And they do it.

So what if someone's idea to get implemented, they get mad or upset?

Well, they're right during the conversation. Yeah. And they thought it was pretty cool when they put it on the board. But now they're listening to their team members talking about, they're realizing. Yeah, it doesn't sound quite so good outside of my head.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I got it, I got it.

But they get to be right there as opposed to some back room somebody stamping reject or accept. And in terms of wondering, when's it going to get implemented? Well, the team's talking about it, the team's deciding when to implement it and what to do. And I'm going to say 95% of those ideas get implemented. The team owns the whole thing.

So as a person had the idea they were going to be tendency to do it or not necessarily.

Yeah. I think a lot of times the person with the idea ends up implementing it. Yeah. But sometimes we'll put two or three team members on it to make it happen.

Give me some ideas of some of the improvements that they've done.

Well, so you know, when, when, when we first, when we first started doing our ideas, you say to a team member, hey, let's find, let's find an improvement here in your team. And, and I will tell you, the first things that our team members said was our team, no, no, no, all the good. If you want to fix stuff, you got to go to client services or you got to go to sales. They're the ones who are screwing everything up. Right. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, we're good here.

Yeah.

No, all of our problems come from outside. And that's the first thing they say.

Yeah.

And we say, well, you just, I'm just looking for a two second. Yeah. You know, three penny game. That's all I'm looking for. So they, you know, first they like indulge you. Okay, yeah, I'll do something for you. And they do one. And on the back of the card there's a place to do the math. Okay. So multiply. How many seconds did you just save on a process you do how many times a day times how many times a year? Now wait a minute, I just say $4,000. Yeah. How did I. Did I really just say $4,000? And that's kind of exciting.

Yeah.

And I'll try another one. And it really, it was only months before we went from people saying there's nothing to do here. Yeah. To man, I can, I can. I got lots of opportunity. Yeah. Right here. My own team.

Yeah.

And the idea is just fly fast and furious. We've actually gotten the point where we're thinking, I think this idea of low hanging fruit is a myth because it seems like every time the team turns around, there's more fruit on the tree. Maybe we're going deeper into the orchard, I don't know. But there's always something to pick, and the teams are having a lot of success with that.

That's great.

And, you know, we tell them, think this is something I picked up in. In Japan at a Toyota plant. You know, we say to them, think with your brain, not with your wallet. You know, so they don't come up with stuff that. That costs money. Yeah, right. They're gonna. They're gonna come up with ideas that they can implement and do on a. You know, just what they're thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. So what about, like, I don't know, like, PDCA or anything like that? How's that working?

So when Mike Rother first wrote Toyota Kata, we read it together as a leadership group and couldn't understand a word of it. We struggled with it, and we read it and we read it and we read it. And then we went out to Michigan and we attended the class, which is like the ones that he did here, only it was like a few days long. When we saw. When we saw the chart on the wall, it all made sense. The chart on. What's the target statement? What's the current. Yeah. What are the obstacles in the way? What do you want to try first? What do you expect to happen? That was like, oh, okay, yeah, I get it. Yeah. And so we came back from that training and we just went berserk. You know, we trained all the way across the factory throughout the supply chain. Now we've trained throughout the enterprise. We've trained client services and it. And we've got lots of coaches.

So is it kind of classic improvement kata? Coaching kata? Kind of.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So basically, we're using the improvement kata. Almost every team is using the improvement kata on a regular basis to. To do pdca. I like to say that our teams are doing daily pdca. Yeah. And not all of it's daily. Sometimes some teams choose to go three times a week. Yeah. For whatever reason. I'm not sure why I didn't ask them, but yeah, man, it's paying off. It's huge. Yeah. It's doing exactly what Mr. Rather talks about.

Yeah.

It is building creativity amongst the team members. They feel like they can be innovative. They feel like they can solve a problem. Yeah. And it's almost, you know, after you've done two or three of these. Yeah. It kind of becomes a game when you write down the challenge and then the question gets asked. Okay, so what are the obstacles yeah. And everyone, everyone knows you just pour them out. You're going to ride them down until they're all gone. And then you're just sitting there smiling at each other. Now we're going to fix one of them.

Yeah.

You know, it's like. Yeah, it's like I'm out of ammunition.

Right.

I'm done firing at this thing. Yeah. Now we got to do something. And they have total confidence that they can. It's to walk around the plant and see all these cutter boards with these obstacle lists. Yeah. And. And sometimes it's a brand new one. So there's only one scratched off. Yeah. Sometimes like, like two thirds of them are scratched off. Yeah. You know, sometimes it's just half scratched off and they've already hit the target. Yeah.

So they're onto a new list.

Yeah. Yeah.

What a. I mean, I'm sure it hasn't always been perfect. Let's just stick with the whole Toyota Kata. We've had a lot of conversation. Heck, Mike interviewed me yesterday. Is kind of crazy.

Did he really?

Yeah.

So the man is a superstar.

Oh, yeah. He's incredible.

My favorite.

Probably the most influential guy in my career. You know, all of us, I'm sure, you know, started with the values, remapping, learning to see, and here we go. But what if he screwed up? Because everybody talks about all their successes and. Yeah, yeah, he's great.

But you know, so, so you probably. I mean, when I mentioned that, all I knew was, was one piece flow and maybe some empowerment of people. Yeah. So we didn't, we didn't hire anybody to help us. So we've been, we stumbled around in the dark. We. We took a lot of steps forward and realized into the end of the unknown and figured out that was the wrong thing to do.

Give us an example though, because I mean, people are listening. They're like, yeah, they're so great. They're so great. And you know, we're struggling.

So. So I thought. I think the biggest failure that, that I personally caused was as we were trying to do the one piece flow, the first thing we did is we started to shrink down the, the size of the pile of whip that was in front of every department. So the, all the processes were there for that one department. They'd go to this pile of work and they'd grab. They'd cherry pick. Right. They picked the one they wanted. And so dates were crazy. We were laid all over the place. But, you know, what I wanted to do was shrink that WIP down to the point where it Sent a signal to departments to stop working. Okay. And to. You have to learn some new processes. Now. Everyone knew how to only do one thing.

Yeah.

And nobody wanted to learn something else. Especially not that dirty department after me who's always blaming me for stuff. I don't even want to see them.

Right, right, right.

So I kind of. We put in these Kanban that kind of forced people. Forced is a tough word to use in lean, but strongly encouraged. No, we forced them. Okay. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Big mistake. We forced them to. They had to move to another department. They had to learn some job skills. And we had not yet figured out how to shrink the equipment. We hired the engineer that we have now came a few years later. And so I really couldn't bring processes together permanently yet. And it was just awkward as people were moving and try to respond to this Kanban. And I just. I made them do it. Okay. And I don't think they really had a good reason why. And so, you know, we're still shipping out the back end.

Yeah.

And we're meeting customer needs. We're actually doing it faster, doing it better. Yeah. But everybody's miserable. Yeah. I mean, everybody's just unhappy.

Yeah.

And. And I'm kind of holding this thing together with just force of will and personality. Okay. Not a great. Yeah. Not a great.

So how'd you come out of that one? Like, what'd you do?

Well, it's actually a terrible story. Okay.

It's always a good way to start a podcast.

You just get me to tell this story. Yeah. So. So. So one day. One day, this lady stops me on the stairs. She's working in the soldering department. And I'm thinking, you know, this thing really isn't working. And I'm thinking, nobody really knows that except me. They're all just kind of too busy doing stuff. She stopped me on the stairs, and she's just listing off all the stuff that's not working. And it terrified me. And I wasn't yet comfortable with vulnerability. Okay. And I was feeling very threatened. Okay. And I thought, oh, this could all come unraveled on me. You know, A bunch of these people realized that I don't know what I'm doing. They march down the hall to our CEO and say, who is this clown? Next thing I know, I'm out of a job. So I panicked. And I thought, I gotta get her to stop talking. And I basically responded to her in a way that. That showed her how smart I was. And I. I kept talking at her. Until she stopped. I realized, okay, this is having my desired effect. And I kept talking at her, and then she started to cry, and I realized, okay, well, I care so much about myself, I'm willing to let another human being cry. You know, my expanse. Yeah. Needless to say, she stopped and she left. And I had to live with that then. And it took me, you know, immediately I realized, okay, I've got to apologize. Yeah. But as I thought through all my reasons for why I behaved so badly, there was no good explanation other than, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm making this up. We're trying to find our way. Yeah. I mean, I could say. I could say I understand the principles, but I really don't know how to implement. Okay. Right. And that's. That's why this is. This is all. Yeah. Messed up. Yeah. So it took me a few days to finally realize the only way I could fix it is apologize and tell her the truth and then just live with whatever fallout came from that.

Yeah.

And I tried to catch her, you know, but she wouldn't. She. For some reason, she wouldn't let me catch her alone.

Made her cry, dude.

I made her cry. So instead. Instead, I finally realized, okay, I'm have to walk in the soldering department.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, lady sitting next to you should dirty the shoulder walking at. You know, when I walked. When I walked in there. There's no chairs in there. So I just had to kneel down next to her. And the whole place got quiet. And so I thought, okay, well, they all know. They all know that I'm a jerk.

Yeah.

To her. And so if I'm Apollo, I'm really apologizing to hold apart 20 ladies. And these are. These are kind of tough ladies, these soldering ladies.

Okay.

And so I knelt down next to her, and I apologized. And I just said, you know, the reality is I know what the outcome is, and I'm seeking, but I don't know how to make it happen. Yeah. I have no experience with this, and that's why everything you're saying is true. And I just couldn't. I just apologize.

Yeah.

And nobody said a word. And I got up, I went back to my office, and I thought, okay, let's see what it sounds like when the other shoe drops. You know? I mean, who knows? And I waited. And a couple hours later, two of the high performers in the solder department came to my office, and they said, hey, Gary, we've been thinking about this. And they proposed a Solution. They proposed a way out, and that was the first time. First time. Probably because I had never made it look like I was open to help. Yeah. I'm guessing.

Or vulnerable.

Yeah. I wasn't willing to. Yeah. So. So they. They came, and instead of. Instead of chasing me out of town with. With pitchfork and torches, they came and said, maybe we can help. And I was like, yeah, you want to try that? And. And they tried it. It didn't work. But. But, you know, they tried something else.

Yeah.

Because. Which is what you do when you're not doing what someone tells you to do. When you do what someone tells you to do, it doesn't work. You just suffer through it.

Yeah.

But when you're doing your idea and it doesn't work, you fix it. You adjust it. And next thing I know, people from other places were coming over and helping them and working with them. And it just. In my mind, that was the beginning of people getting involved, people making things happen. Yeah. And it happened because I was finally willing to make myself vulnerable.

Yeah.

So I'm a big believer in that now. You know, I think. I think teams, our teams now realize that still, 30 years later, I. I don't know what I'm doing.

Yeah.

I've got a vision. Yeah. And if something's gonna happen, they're gonna do it.

Yeah.

They're gonna figure it out. They're gonna make it work. They. They know that I realize that they're closer to the process than I am. They. They. They can figure it out better than I can figure it out.

Well, that's what. You know what's beautiful about practicing prima kata, coaching katas. You don't need to know.

That's right.

It's better to not know. Just know where you want to go.

I love what he said today, this morning, about. You don't need a road map. Yeah. Use the compass.

No one knows.

No. It's really good.

Yeah.

You just learn. Take a step into the unknown. Start to figure it out.

Figure it out.

Yeah.

Learn.

Exactly.

That's beautiful. Beautiful. So. So your OC Tanner makes products that reward, you know, other companies and. And all this kind of stuff. But what about yourselves? What do you use your own product or how do you.

We use all of our products. Okay. So we use it all. We use the software, and appreciation is built into our daily activities. So in. In the huddle while they're doing their ergonomic stretching, that is also the time for a team member to call out who wants to do some appreciation. And we appreciate each Other. We honor each other by words or by stuff. Well, we actually do it. We do a simple, inexpensive little pin that, you know, like, I voted or I gave blood. One of those with the little. The little pin in the back of it. And we got a ton of them for every type of topic, anything happened, and they're handing them out to each other with a little card with a handwritten thank you note. And it's. It's.

It's peer to peer.

Peer to peer. Wow.

That's pretty powerful.

Cost any money? Yeah. But, you know, these guys got these posted on their lockers that everyone puts these up and they're proud of them. And then actually, the teams have created for themselves a quota for how people need to appreciate each other. It's just an expectation. People just like you do safety, just like you do ideas, you express appreciation to each other, and they keep track of it. You know, who's doing the most appreciation, who's not doing any. Come on. You need to step up and find someone to appreciate. And how long have you been doing that? You know, I think. And by the way, that wasn't something that I didn't. I didn't say, hey, you need to start expecting everyone to appreciate. It's just something they started doing. It just spread like wildfire. It's been years. It's been four years, five years, I think, since everyone started doing that.

Wow, that's pretty powerful.

Yeah. And of course, we do. We do. We do career achievements, so, you know, years of service.

Yeah.

And the powerful thing about that for us is you got your statements about ideal work behavior and what's expected of people. And when we're honoring people for their service to the company, inevitably someone who's talking about your great work will relate it to what we care about as a company. He's a great example of this, working shoulder to shoulder even when we don't see eye to eye, you know? And let me tell you what he does and how he does that. When you think about that, you know, I mean, I could present expectations with a PowerPoint presentation, get everyone, all the teams together, but there's something about me walking in there, even though everybody likes me now. I don't. I haven't made anyone cry in a long time. Even though he likes me now, there's something about. I wonder what Gary's gonna say. Is this safe? Is this okay? What's. What's the big news? But when you say, let's gather together and let's honor somebody, everyone just comes. Nobody's Defenses go up and that. But now we're sitting around and we're open, and someone starts talking about stuff that matters to the company, just soaks in. Everyone just takes it. Does it ever get emotional? Oh, it gets so emotional. Well, because we let family come. We invite family to come to these things. Pretty cool to see a teenage boy listening to good things about his dad and thinking, my dad, there's some power in that. There's some power in that. So we use all those systems because best practices that we learn from ourselves is what we teach others to do. I love it. I love it.

Hey, so speak to that manager listening right now that might be starting their journey. Maybe they got the red badge on right now, walking around Ame here first time, and they're just kind of figuring out with all this stuff, what advice do you have for them?

So, you know, it's interesting. Even though initially the CEO handed me that Schoenberger's book, he really didn't know what was in it. And he wasn't a big fan of the stuff we were doing. He didn't really believe in empowerment. He didn't like my one piece flow ideas. And several times he came and got in the way. He undid stuff that I did. We have a great relationship now. He's not the CEO anymore, but he's on our board. Yeah. And. But. But there was just. I didn't have the support, and yet I just persevered. And I think, I think I would say to that young person, you know, just get your heart set in the right place, get your vision and just keep marching, keep going. Major setbacks. I experienced them repeatedly. It's got to keep getting up, brush yourself off. You got to keep moving. Yeah. I also feel like even if you have no authority and, or even if you, you know, at other levels besides yours, you feel like, totally cut off. I like to tell people, well, you have. You have a circle of influence. You have an area around which you do control something.

Yeah.

If only yourself. Yeah. And you get to choose, you know, am I gonna live by these principles? Am I gonna show respect for people and am I gonna be a humble leader? Am I gonna, you know, focus on process and seek perfection? What principles will I pursue because I care about them? And then. And then how do I help the people around me live those principles as well? And I, I think if you do that, you create a circle of excellence. Yeah. Other people want in.

Yeah.

Other people want to take what you've got. Other people want to say, hey, show me how to do that. Yeah. I think you have an ability to grow and create something no matter what your situation is. Yeah. I love it.

I love it. Gary, how can people connect with you?

What's the best way you can get with me on. On LinkedIn?

Okay.

Gary.petersonctanner.com okay. And I'm happy you guys offer tours or anything like that. We actually do. We have a quarterly tour. Okay. Where companies can sign up and come. We also, we're a go and see site for McKinsey Company. Okay. So if. If you're a McKinsey client, they can usually get you in the door.

Yeah.

We do a thing for ame. A workshop for ame. Yeah. In the spring, usually before the snow melts, so people can get some skiing in, Snowboarding in.

Yeah.

And we also do a thing for the Shingo Institute. We do a couple of those a year as well. So there's lots of opportunities to. To get. To get to see us. Yeah.

Great. Well, thank you.

Oh, you're welcome.

All right, thank you. We'll see you around.

All right, thanks.

Take care.

Nice to meet you. Ron.

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