GA 248 | The Importance of Creativity with Karyn Ross

Every single one of us has a choice every single day in how we treat people, in how we treat our co workers, in how we treat the people that were passing by on the street. Every single one of us has a deliberate choice. So what are you going to do to create kindness in the world? Because I want to live in a kind world.

I'm recording this intro on November 28, 2018 and I just did the math and reading. Realize this particular episode is being released on January 3, 2019, so it's definitely appropriate to say Happy New year. I pray 2019 is full of success and happiness for you and your loved ones. 2019 is going to be a pretty special year for me and my Gemba Academy colleagues since our company turns 10 years old in March. So we have got some fun things planned for that. So stay tuned. Now the new year normally comes with lots of goals and resolutions for most of us. Now one of my goals and some of my colleagues goals is to improve our personal creativity as it relates to the products and services we offer here at Gemba Academy, even including this podcast. And I mean, heck, I'd love to be more creative in all areas of my life. That's why I'm so excited for today's episode since our guest is one of the most creative and passionate Lean thinkers I know. And she's got a new book coming out in February called How to Coach for Creativity and Service Excellence. Her name is Karen Ross and if her name sounds familiar, it should since Karen's been on the show back in episode 138 and 172. Now, during today's show, Karen and I talk about why we Lean thinkers need to be focusing on creativity. Karen also shares some practical ways we can begin to deliberately practice our creativity talents that are often find themselves buried deep inside our subconscious minds. Now we also talk about the importance of coaching and we wrap things up with a pretty deep and profound conversation about kindness. Now I always have so much fun talking with Karen and can't wait to catch up with her again soon. Show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything we discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 248 again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 248. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning system over@gembacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, Karen, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Oh, it's going absolutely fabulous. And thanks for inviting me. Doing a Gemba Academy podcast is absolutely one of my favorite things.

Thank you. Well, you know, I was looking up through our history of podcasts together, and you've been on previous episodes. We'll link to them in the show notes. But it was episode 138 and 172, so this is your third time onto the show, so that's awesome. Thank you.

You are very welcome.

Yeah, well, it's been a while, 172. Now we're at two. This is episode 248, so, you know, we're just cranking them away. All right, well, hey, Kieran, just in case folks haven't listen to those episodes, tell us a little bit about your background, how you first came to learn about all this continuous improvement and lean stuff, and then what you're up to these days.

Sure. Well, actually, interestingly enough, I come to the world of lean and the world of business through the world of art. I have a master's degree in sculpture, so for me, PDCA is actually the artistic process as well as the scientific method. So. So I focus a lot on creativity as well as lean in the work that I do. And I help all of the fabulous clients that I have really become more creative, get new ideas for how to do the work that they do, and then use lean principles, practices, and tools to turn those new ideas into fabulous services for their customers that they serve.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Very good. All right, well, Karen, as you know, we kind of like to begin our shows with our guests sharing a quote. I don't think we actually talked about that ahead of time, so I don't want to put you on the spot, but can you think of one of your favorite quotes?

Yes, I have a quote, and it absolutely relates to the intro I just gave. And it's, every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once grown. And that quote comes from Pablo Picasso. And the reason I chose that quote is that oftentimes when I talk to people, whether I'm speaking at a conference or whether I'm working with clients, I ask people, well, do you think you're creative? And do you know what happens when I ask them that question? For the most part, they look away. They look at their feed.

Yeah.

Check that important email or text message on their phone, and they say, no, I'm not creative. Creativity is for artists or is for people in the marketing department. But, you know, the problem is the world is changing, and customers are Changing. We can't continue to work in the same ways that we've always worked to meet those needs now and forever. So what we really need is actually our creativity. And we're at work and at home so we can create those new services and products and ways to work that will help our organizations flourish, thrive and grow forever and help our customers and actually help us find new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things so that we make a better world for the future, too.

Yeah. You know, I'm so excited for this podcast and this particular topic. You know, I recently had a conversation with some folks and one of their, their, their, their goals is to. And actually one of my goals is over this next year. We're kind of setting a kind of a long term challenge, Toyota kata type, you know, challenge of, of really improving our creativity. You know, here again, the academy, we're making videos and podcasts and whatnot. And so creativity is obviously a very, very important aspect of what we're doing. And what we find is that it's, it's tough, you know, and so I can't, number one, can't wait to read your new book, which I want to, I want about. I guess it's coming out in February 2019, so we'll drill into that. But I'm really, really interested to learn more about how to, how to improve creativity, you know, as a, as a person, myself, selfishly and then. And how to coach others. So I guess I'm really excited for this book. So I think is it February 2019 is when it's coming out?

February 8, 2019. I'm just as excited as you are.

Yeah. So what's the name of the book?

It's called how to Coach for Creativity and Service Excellence. A Lean Coaching Workbook. And not only did I do all of the writing in the book, I actually did all of the illustrations as well.

Oh, I cannot wait. Oh, I cannot wait. All right, Well, I want to just. I got a million questions that I want to ask you about this, the book, and then also just creativity in general. First just on the book itself, I guess give us just a kind of a cliff notes version of what it's about. But then I'm always interested when I speak with authors on why did you write it? What problem were you trying to solve?

Sure. Actually both questions go together. How to Coach for Creativity and Service Excellence is actually a workbook. It is working on solving the problem that you just talked about. How do I become more creative personally at home, Solve problems at home, Goodness knows. We all have enough of those. And then actually, how do we not only just solve problems at work, but go forward and proactively create the new services, new products that our customers are going to need in the future? Why a workbook? First of all, we only really learn from doing. Theory is great to get us going, but it's only actually in the doing that we turn that theory into actual knowledge and we gain confidence. So the second thing I wanted to do is actually give people the experience of flow while they're doing the. While they're doing the work. So the book is 21 days of actual Practice. There's a short theory section on each day of Lean in Services, creativity, and coaching, and then there's four exercises, a daily drawing, a journal entry, a record of the coaching that you're going to be doing on each day throughout the book, and then a reflection section. And everything that you need to practice your creativity coaching and create service excellence is in the actual workbook. Other than a pencil, there's nothing else you need. So that idea of flow, we're going to do the work in the book. We're going to do our reflection in the book. 21 days, you're going to coach someone through solving a problem or creating something new. And at the end of 21 days, you'll have all of the practice that you need.

So what? Oh, gosh, I don't even know where to start. I have so many questions. I don't even have them all written down. They're just like, overwhelming my brain right now. So I'll just try to start picking one. Well, okay, let me just start with a basic one. You know, our audience here on this podcast and most of the folks that you interact with, I would assume are within this. This lean world, right? This lean movement of ours. So why are you focusing on creativity? I mean, we leading people, we're kind of like standard work, right? And this is that, you know, so, like, how do the. I mean, obviously we need to be creative. I'm being kind of a smart aleck, but you know what I mean, why focus on creativity?

So I think that both of those questions really go together. First of all, in our lean world, we actually tend to focus a lot on teaching people. I will say, first and foremost, lean tools. Yeah, sometimes we teach principles and. And practices, but oftentimes we're focused on teaching tools. And tools are great. The principles and practices, too, if you have an idea of a new way to work or an idea of something you want to do differently. Now we have A method for turning that idea into the new, more effective and efficient way to work. What happens, though, if you don't have an idea? Because in order to work in new and different ways, in order to create new and different services, first part is have an idea of how to do that thing in a different way. So here's the problem. In the lean community, we focused all of our time and effort on the turn the idea into a reality. We've spent almost no time focusing on how to help people improve their creativity, because just like anything else that we want to improve, we can improve our creativity through practice. So I'm going to ask you a question, Ron. In all of the different places that you've gone to do teaching or training and worked with organizations, how many times have you heard people say, oh, I just came back from creativity class today.

Oh, well, it's funny you said never. Yeah, I mean, sometimes, I guess maybe the closest would be if someone by chance was kind of an innovation sphere of the world. Maybe they're beginning to kind of touch it a little bit. But that's very few and far between. But definitely just the word creativity is not something that I believe is in the normal lean lexicon.

Right. So here's the problem. The problem then begins, becomes, well, how many times do we go and say to people, okay, we want to do this work in a new, different way. Give us all of your ideas and you know what happens? Silence in the room. Yeah, because we haven't helped anybody practice their creativity. But just think about anything else that you want to get better at. If you spent 15 minutes a day practicing, deliberately practicing that skill, you would be able to do it. We spend a lot of time in the world, and you'll find this in the book. There's a lot of, a lot of information about divergent thinking, which means creating more possibilities. Instead of convergent thinking, which we often use, look for the one possible root cause in a service process where there's an unbelievable convergence of people. Technology customers are human beings. They're not perfect. And, you know, we're not perfect either. The service reps who serve them. Chances are you're not going to only find one root cause. There's going to be multiple different things interacting obstacles. I like to call them I can'ts. So there's lots of different ways we can teach people to practice overcoming each. I can't. And you'll find all of those exercises daily practice in the book. And really, just like anything else, if you practice soon, it becomes a habit. In this New, divergent and creative way. That's really what we want.

Well, what's beautiful about this topic, Karen, is like, in this movement of scientific thinking, Toyota Kata, right. That's really gained a lot of momentum over the last, whatever it is, five to 10 years kind of thing. This perfectly lies in with it because you get to that point to where you're like, all right, what's your next target condition? Well, this. Okay, well, what's your next step or experiment? And you're like, I don't know, you know? But this is where creativity comes in, right? Being creative with the experiments that you want to run. Right. And what you're willing to and how you want to learn. Be creative in how you want to learn. And I struggle with that myself. I mean, so I imagine many of our listeners do as well.

Many, many do. And so what I ask people to do, and it's really simple because sometimes people even struggle with the word obstacle, because a lot of times we just see obstacles as the way we do our work. I ask them to create what I call the long list of I can'ts on a piece of paper. Simply write down all of the reasons you cannot complete this work in the way your customer wants you to work. Because no customer ever wants to hear the words I can't. Once you write that long list of I can'ts, simply take one of them, circle it, and then think about all the other ways you could do that. You don't have to think of all the answers on your own. Go ask your friends, go ask your colleagues, go ask people from other departments. And suddenly we have many ideas to try out. That is not the way we normally approach things. So this is why I say PDCA is the creative process. We're looking for those different ways, those new ways. And I'm going to tie this directly back to Toyota. Sakichi Toyoda is known as the king of inventors in Japan. He was the unbelievably creative person. So really, the whole basis of Toyota Way and Toyota Production system is that idea of being creative somehow, in the idea that we're going to just solve a problem that already exists, I think we've lost that idea. I think we've lost that in the challenge. The challenge is how else could we do this?

Yeah. So if someone believes that they're not a creative person. Right. They just say, I'm just not creative. I can't come up with good ideas. First of all, I don't believe it's true. I believe everyone can learn. Some people are probably more creative naturally than others. Perhaps. I don't know. But maybe that's the case. But can you learn to be more creative if you feel that you're not?

Absolutely. Just like anything else. And we can practice in all different ways. So I'm going to give you an example and you'll find this in the book as well for practice.

Good.

Oftentimes as human beings we tend to think in either or thinking. We say, oh, we could do this or we could do that. Now we've actually already eliminated 50% of the things.

Yeah.

Which may be assumptions. Every time you hear yourself or somebody else saying either or, what I want you to do is substitute the word and it's what I call and thinking.

Yeah.

So we have to complete this work in 50% less time. And we have to improve the quality because our customers don't want errors on what we send them from their orders. By replacing either or and getting. And we will create a condition in which, well, we don't know how to do that. Let's brainstorm the long list of reasons we can't and then start asking around, well, what else could we do? And then let's try it out.

I love that. And so instead of making assumptions on what you like thinking about root cause analysis, like, well, we could do this or this. Well, no, no, no, no. Like you said, do this and this. And then see what we learn from both experiments. Right. Like quit worrying about which one's going to work. Try them and see what happens. Right?

Absolutely. And on that topic, can I also ask for one small thing that I think will really help people with their creativity? Stop using the four blocker effort impact matrix. Because then what we're already doing is we're discounting ideas. No, that one is too hard. That one doesn't make a big impact. How do we actually know that until we try something out? Instead, write your list of I can'ts. Write down all the possible ways you could do it. Of course, some of them may take longer to do than others in it. Fix may take more. Well, we assume it may take more effort. Actually it may not. And start working on them. Anything that we can do to stop limiting our own thinking. And I find that effort impact matrix is unbelievably limiting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Write down all of the ideas and then start giving them a try.

Okay. So replace or with and I love it. Can you give us one more sneak peek of your book? Don't give away all the secrets you know, but.

All of the secrets. But the biggest One is really also to work with others. A lot of times we think that we have to have every great idea on our own. We have to solve things on our own, when in fact, well, luckily we work with teams and there's lots of other people in the world. My idea may be part of an idea. When I tell you the idea, you may say, oh, yes, and we could also do this. Oh, yes, you tell a third person when you synthesize all of those ideas together. Because we tend to like to pick things apart. Right. We're going to look for root cause, we're going to dissect everything. Instead of dissecting things, tell your idea to someone else, see what they can add to your idea, then go to a third person, see what they can add, put the idea together. That's what creativity is all about.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, unfortunately, I think pride and ego get in the way of that. A lot of times people want it to be their amazing idea, want to share the credit or whatever. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't speculate, but that's what I feel sometimes.

Yes. And let's remember who every single person, whether we work in a manufacturing organization or a service organization, we all exist for one reason only, and that's to serve the customer. It doesn't matter whose idea it is. And if we don't actually create those new services and products and better ways to work, it doesn't matter what kind of organization we work in, because customer needs are changing. We're not going to meet them and they're going to go elsewhere.

Yeah, yeah. You know, when you talked about working with others or sharing ideas of others, the example that popped in my mind immediately was our friends over at Menlo Innovations, you know, Richard Sheridan and the guys. Have you ever been there?

Oh, I know them quite well. Absolutely.

Yeah. You know how the two people work together on the same computer, you know, to write software? And I just. I remember the first time I saw that, I thought it was the craziest but most amazing thing that I've ever seen in my life. You know, it was like, how could you do that? You know, you're like, couldn't you be doubly productive if they each had their own computer? But that, you know, as Richard goes on to explain, you know, they found that it's far better 2 brains looking at the same problem. Then they switch off, take turns, and they create this amazing product.

So the wonderful thing is that we're all unique human beings. We come with our own temperament, our Own experiences, our own ways of seeing the world. So that when we combine all of those different things, you and I may look at the same thing and we will see totally different things when we put those ideas together, that's when we are really able to truly come up with creative new, new things for our customers.

Yeah. All right. I want to, I want to now I want to kind of pivot a little bit here and talk about, you know, so your book. And even, even before this book, I mean obviously you spend a lot of your time, Karen, within the service organizations and helping people within the service organization or side of the business talk about coaching in the services arena. Why is it so important?

The reason that coaching is so important in the services arena, it's going to seem extremely simple and obvious to you. And the answer really is people. Service is unbelievably heavy on people. Human beings do all kinds of work for our very human being customers. And the wonderful things about human beings is that when we spend our time coaching them and working with them and helping them on a daily basis change either or thinking to and thinking. When we help them synthesize ideas, when we help them get over the ego that we all have, that we want to be the great idea haver those people appreciate unbelievably in value. As people, we work in the best ways we can. We work in willy nilly ways. The way we figure out how to do something, we don't necessarily see that there could be another way to do it. So when we spend our time coaching someone and helping them to learn to improve their creative problem solving, their critical thinking, not only are they able to say oh yes of course we can to the customer who is on the phone now, but they're able to extrapolate and think quickly and creatively to the next customer. They're very human being customer who gives them a call and wants something slightly different. Because the truth is no customer ever wants to hear the words I can't. So we need the people who work in services to be able to think creatively very quickly. And the best way to help someone to do that, to make any habit like that, is through coaching.

Yeah, yeah. And that deliberate practice, right?

Yeah, coaching. Deliberate practice and support from your coach because your coach will challenge you, push you out into the uncomfortable learning zone. But when we push people out into that zone, they also need nurturing. We only gain confidence from doing so. The coach has to be able to nurture them. And as I always say, the coach lends the learner courage to Actually try things out when they don't have the confidence that comes from doing.

Yeah, I love that. You know, we've been mentioning this fancy phrase, deliberate practice quite a bit throughout this episode. I don't want to make any assumptions, like talk to us a little bit about what deliberate practice means to you, Karen.

Sure. As human beings, oftentimes we're going around in the world without being very intentional. Things are just happening. Deliberate practice means when we set a target of what we want to be able to accomplish. Ron, you want to be more creative. So then you say, guess what? Two months from now I want to really see that I've improved my creativity. So I'm going to set aside 15 minutes every day in which I'm going to do things that practice creativity. I'm going to draw, I'm going to do some writing in my journal, all of those different kinds of things. Oh, and maybe it would be great to have a creativity coach. So I'm going to call up Karen and see if she'll do something or.

Maybe a book that has a 21 day exercise that I can follow along with. Right?

Absolutely.

And I don't mean that to be flippant because I think this is a big thing that people miss because I can say, yeah, I want to be more creative by this particular date, you know what? And I'm willing every day and for 20 minutes I'm going to practice. But that's actually, to me, not exactly perfectly deliberate because I could just do whatever I want. But when I have a book like a 21 day that has a very specific plan from an expert or I have a coach like Karen or whoever who can really guide me along the way, I think there's a big difference, right. I can just go practice randomly for 10, 20 minutes or I can follow a deliberate specific plan. And so I think there's a big, big difference. And that's where, you know, in the book, what was it? Tipping Point, I think it was, or Outliers, one of the, one of the Malcolm Gladwell books where he talked about the 10,000 hour rule. You know, a lot of the social scientists got upset about that because the way Gladlow wrote it, he said it's 10,000 hours of practice and you're an expert. The Beatles, he gave all these nice examples. The problem is the research that he, that he looked at that. I can't remember the guy's name that he was, you know, ripping this off from. But the guy was very specific. It must be deliberate practice for 10,000 hours. You know, so like, a kid can just go whack soccer balls into the net for an hour. That's not necessarily deliberate practice if they have a plan. These 10, I'm going to go to the left corner, bottom corner. These 10, I'm going to go to the bottom right corner. They're very specific. They videotape themselves. Now they're practicing deliberately. Right. So I think there's a big misunderstanding on this concept of deliberate practice. So I'm really glad that. That you're honing in on this.

Yes, I absolutely agree. And there's a lot of. Sometimes people say, oh, it's very tiring to have this deliberate practice. Deliberate practice. Or it's a chore. I actually find it's very joyful.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's freeing, you know, because you can follow a plan, you know, and you can feel confident in your plan, you know, and. And, yeah, I love it. I love it. So, listen, I got another question for you, and it's not really related. Well, maybe it is. I don't know. I shouldn't assume. Right. Quit assuming. You know, I follow you on social media. You know, we're friends on all of our Twitters and LinkedIn and all the rest of it. And. And one thing that I always. I really appreciate about you, Karen, is no matter what kind of day I'm having, if I come across one of your postings, especially LinkedIn, I feel like, you know, you're talking about a word often, and the word's not actually creativity, it's kindness. And you talk more about kindness than anybody that I know. And so I'm wondering if you could maybe share. Like, why is that? Why is kindness something so important to you?

First of all, Ron, thank you for asking me this question, because kindness is absolutely, unbelievably the most important thing for me. And I actually think that Toyota Way and creativity all work together because the idea is to create a kind world, and a kind world in business. There are 7 billion people of us on this earth, and oftentimes we're very locked into what we're seeing, who we are, what we want. However, we're interconnected with all of those people, animals and plants, too. And just like we practice anything deliberately, if we want to make a better world, if we want to have a kinder world, if we want the world of our children and our grandchildren to be a safe place for everybody, not just in our family, but in our community, in our country, in the world, then we have to go about that deliberately, every single one of us has a choice every single day in how we treat people, in how we treat our co workers, in how we treat the people that were passing by on the street. Every single one of us has a deliberate choice. So what are you going to do to create kindness in the world? Because I want to live in a kind world, and it's not good enough for me to just say I want things to be better, I want things to be kinder. I have to work every single day deliberately to create that world. It's not necessarily the world that we live in now, but it's the world that I'm working hard every single day to create.

Yeah. That's so awesome. You know, and I, you know, obviously in this, these, these times of ours, you know, with politics and this and that, it's so easy to, to get entrenched in, like, your side. Right. And, you know, some of my best friends are. I'm not trying to, like, toot my own horn here, but like, some of my best friends are like, completely opposite of me when it comes to who we vote for on election day. But it's okay, you know, it's okay that you like something different, you know, but it doesn't mean that I gotta be a jerk, right? I mean, I can still like you, right, and be kind to you. And so I think if the, I think, I think if the world could just figure that out, it would be a much, much better place. Doesn't mean we all have to agree with each other. But just don't be a. Just be nice, you know, it's not hard. It's easier.

I've given out in the last, in the last two and a half years, I've given out about 4,500 buttons from my love and kindness button project all over the world. When I meet somebody who I see as being kind, I go up to them, I give them a button. I say, thank you for being kind. And the reactions of people are unbelievable. They hug me, they say, you know, I so appreciated that you've noticed there are really easy things we can do to be kind. Every day when you're walking down the hallway at work, look up from your phone and smile at the people passing by the tiny act of kindness. You don't know what a difference it's going to make for other people. Yeah.

So good. I think you need to find a way now to write your after creativity and service excellence. I think kindness is on tap because I think the lean world in particular could use it and benefit from it.

Thank you. And actually, I have a third book that I'm starting and I will give you a sneak peek of the, of the title and it's called the Beauty of Helping.

There you go. I love it. I love it. So good. All right, Karen, well, thanks again for coming on. I really, really enjoy talking with you. So let's do this. Let's wrap things up with you. Maybe, Sherry, just some final words of wisdom and then definitely tell people how they can connect with you via social media, your website, anything.

Sure. So some final words of wisdom. Anytime you hear yourself say to yourself, oh, no, I'm not creative. I'd like you to stop thinking that way. Stop and say to yourself, you know what? Every single thing that has been created in our lives, every single thing, I always use my iPhone as an example. You know, that wasn't, that wasn't made by superhuman people. It was created by lots of regular people. It wasn't made by artists. You're creative. You have a choice. You have a choice in the way you treat others. You have a choice in the way that you do your work. Help others be creative, Help others be kind. It's going to make a better world for all of us. And if you would like more information about me and love and kindness, button projects and my new book, how to coach for creativity and Service excellence, and of course, Toyota Way to service Excellence, you can find me on the web@karenrossconsulting.com.

Spell your first name.

Karen K A R Y N rosconsulting.com. but actually I own the domain name for the other name too, so even.

Do you really? That's so smart. Poka yoke. Right?

It will come to me. And you can find me on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram also.

Oh, nice. Okay.

Under Karen Ross and krclean4service.

Got it. We'll link to everything in our show notes. So this is going to be episode 248. So everyone can go to GembaPodcast.com, look for episode 248 and we'll link to everything Karen's ever done and will do. How's that?

Thank you so much.

All right, well, thanks again, Karen and I know we'll talk again. So I won't say I don't know when, but I'm sure we'll. Are you going to Katakan and all that this year in February?

Absolutely. You'll see me.

We'll see you there then. All right, everybody else needs to go to katasummit.com and sign up and yeah, you can use LF10 to save 10%, by the way. Slip that in. But I can't wait. It's going to be pretty incredible, right? Mr. Leiker and rather over there celebrating all their stuff. So that's going to be a pretty special time, I think.

Yes. And actually one other quick plug, if you don't mind. I'm going to be hosting my own conference first global convention on organizational excellence in Orlando, Florida, May 2nd and 3rd. Katie Anderson is a keynote speaker to Mr. Yoshino fabulous conference.

Hey, we need to touch base offline on that because I want to see about maybe Gemba Academy getting involved in that little action. I think that might be fun.

We would love it. We would absolutely love it.

All right, Is there a website for that or anything? Or is that on your website?

It's on my website, but it's www.oxconvention.com.

Okay. All right, good. We'll put that in the show notes as well. All right, well, good stuff, Karen. You know, we're nearing the end of November, I think with this actually, we're really ahead on our podcast schedule right now. So this actually episode I think comes out maybe even after Christmas. So happy New Year, Karen.

Thank you very much. It's a wonderful way for me to end my year to Gemba Academy podcast. Always the best.

All right, good stuff. Take care, Karen.

Thanks, Ron.

Bye. Thanks for listening to the Gemba Academy podcast. Now we invite you to take a no strings attached, fully functional Test drive of Gembaacademy.com gain immediate access to more than a thousand Lean and Six Sigma learning resources, all free of charge at Gembaacademy.com.