GA 265 | Finding Your Best Way with William Harvey

And one of the things that stood out to me was how deliberate Toyota is in creating its own culture.

Today. I'm excited to welcome William Harvey back to the show. Now, William first came onto the podcast back in episode 106. So that was several years ago. And since then, William's been super busy working on his PhD and the research that William did focused on Toyota Kata during that research process. So William actually interviewed a number of people, and I was actually honored to be one of those folks that he talked to. But during these interviews, he was just obviously asking a series of questions that just seemed. Seeing what he could learn, right in the spirit of scientific thinking. And so today on the show, what we do is we talk a little bit about just the research itself, but then we really dive in deep on some of just the specific stories and things that he learned from various folks. We talked quite a bit about our mutual friend Karen Ross and Jess Orr and some other folks who are very influential really within the. The lean movement and the Toyota Kata scientific thinking movement. So show notes for this particular episode, which will include links to some of the defense work that William worked on. We're going to link to it here in the show notes page. And then as the dissertation becomes available, hopefully we'll be able to link to that as well. So depending on when you're listening to this episode, that may or may not be available. But to get all that, you'll go to GembaPodcast.com and just look for episode 265. So again, GembaPodcast.com, look for episode 265. And as always, if you'd like a free trial to Gemba Academy, head over to gembacademy.com and you can get that set up. All right, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right, William, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Outstanding. Thank you for having me on again, Ron. I appreciate it.

All right, let us look through our notes. You were back on and gosh, what was that? Episode 102, something like that. Is that.

Yeah, three years ago, maybe?

Yeah, man, that was a long time ago, man. You've had a few sleeps since then, I guess, right?

I did. I had that one time. That was right after I came home from a nap, actually. I've been working on my doctoral program at Northern Kentucky University. And after I was done with the very, very stressful day that is the dissertation defense, I just came home and took a nap.

I bet, man.

I bet. Well, congratulations.

Congratulations. I Mean, am I supposed to be calling you Dr. Harvey now or something like that or what? What's the formalities here, William?

Zero formalities. I would just love to go by William as that's the name my mother gave me and that's the one that's most important.

That's great. That's great. What an accomplishment, though. You should be super proud, but really excited to, to really kind of dig into to what you learned through that whole process here, so. Well, just in case folks didn't listen to that episode back in 2016 or they've had a few sleeps since, since then, William, why don't you just catch us up a little bit and, and tell us about your. Your background and, and how you first came to learn about all this continuous improvement stuff.

Certainly. So my experience is much like many that I hear through the Gemma Academy podcast. I just kind of found the work and a recent conversation my wife and I were having was just that I said, you know, did I get basically good at my job because I adore Lean and other continuous improvement activity, or was I just simply born in a way in which Lean supports that idea? So certainly a question there, but the short story went into production supervision, had a few opportunities to do different types of continuous improvement activities, and then went through master black belt training, lean training, Lean master training, and all kinds of transactional training to the point where I was part of a deployment for Toyota Kata, which is what inspired my research that came a few years later in the process, but ultimately prompted the question of were others experiencing similar things to me? Of course I had to change the question and the wording, obviously not to lead the research, the direction I wanted it to go, but a lot of fun going through all of it. And what I find most interesting, at least going back through the last three years, it was the first time in which I looked into what Taiichi Ono said about Lean and have been really just going back through all those books the last couple of months, just really as a reflective piece, trying to figure out what did he say, what did we miss, and how did I miss it after I read it so many times. So certainly a fun experience in reflection.

Talk about your kind of professional career, though. Where have you worked and what are you up to these days?

Absolutely. So my first career really came out of the Marine Corps. So I left at 17 and had a lot of fun. Four years as an enlisted Marine. When I got out, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I figured four years would give me the time. It Certainly did not. So I ended up going into warehousing and then ultimately printing for about a decade. And now I currently work at a chemical manufacturing company in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nice. Nice. All right, well, William, you know, towards the beginning of all of our shows, we like our guests to share a quote. Do you have one?

I do. And last time I shared a favorite quote around leadership. But this time, I would share what is my absolute favorite, which comes from Henry David Thoreau, and it comes from an essay in which he wrote many years ago called Civil Disobedience. And as he's going through this piece, there was a quote that stuck with me that reads, the only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do it any time what I think is right.

What's that mean to you?

That it's all about perspective, and one person's right is not the other person's right. So it's important to, A, follow your path, and B, respect other people on their path.

Yeah, got it. Got it. All right, well, hey, kind of during, before we hit record, we were. We were brainstorming some ideas and exchanging a few emails. And I know there's a, you know, kind of a saying that that means a lot to you, and I want to kind of dig into it a little bit. And it's one that many of us lean thinkers have heard it is. It's easy to say and harder to do sometimes, but manage the process, not the outcome. I want to talk a little bit about that. Like, what is that? What does that mean? Manage the process, not the outcome.

So rather than just share those exact words, I think it's important to reflect upon how I came to learn this lesson. One of the instructors, who was a former Northern Kentucky University president, His name is Dr. James Vitruba. He had said this multiple times. And where he had shared these stories is when he had his most difficult moments as the president of the university. And he would have two or three camps with very divisive opinions about a way in which to proceed. And as I listened to his leadership journey and those I would say critical moments, what he would often share was that exact quote, manage the process, not the outcome. And I don't want to get into divisive topics, obviously, because I don't want to distract from the meaning of the conversation. But what was really important to me was when you'd have these two or three groups at major conflict, you'd essentially just guide the process, make sure each person had their opportunity to explore, you know, their piece and share with others. And obviously understand for where other people are coming from and ultimately come to a decision that made sense for all parties involved. And obviously, while there were never really, I'd say good or 100% dedicated answers to one side, what I found is, over the course of 15 years, he had quite a few of those experiences, and I think led to a lot of his success in the career that he had. Because it obviously wasn't only internal. It could have been with the state government. It could have been with local agencies that were promoting something that I would just say go back so far in culture that they were embedded, but the actions that were necessary in order to promote something would just say something like infant mortality, while it isn't. While most people I would share don't have any issue with trying to protect children at that point and make sure mothers and children live at that point, it was a very big challenge for people to come through, particularly in a predominantly Catholic community, which is the Greater Cincinnati region. So when I heard that, I was like, this is really incredible. Manage the process, not the outcome. The answer isn't as important as both people being or both parties, I should say, being able to come to the table, hear each other's opinions, and then go from there.

Got it, Got it. All right, well, let's jump into the topic of the day, William. And that is really the research that you did for your PhD. And I know you talked to a lot of really sharp folks, and I'm not saying that because I was one of them, but I was like, wait, how do I say this without sounding cocky?

You did perfect.

Yeah. You did a lot of research here, and I'm really genuinely interested in hearing some stories. But before we get into who you talk to and what they said, talk a little bit about how you decided to even focus on this, and then talk a little bit about our mutual friend Karen. Karen Ross. Gosh, I've mentioned Karen on several podcast lists, and, Karen, I know you're listening to this one too, so, man, I don't know. Next time I'm gonna get you buy some coffee or something. You know, give her a lot of shout out. But Karen's awesome, and I know she played an important role in. In, you know, In. In your.

Your.

Your journey here. So. So talk about those two things, how you came up to decide to focus on this and then. And the role Karen played.

So meeting Karen was an interesting piece for me, and it was because there's a relationship I have with a gentleman named Samuel Soleil who has been on your podcast before, and he wrote a chapter with Mark Graben in his book Practicing Lean. And Samuel passed away, unfortunately and untimely in October last year. But the story, I really say revolves around him because in a conversation where he and I were chatting one day, he said, why don't you reach out to this lady named Karen? And at the time I said, what's it going to hurt if I reach out to Karen? And this was right around the same time I began the conversation of what do I research for my doctoral program? And when I spoke with Karen, I was certain that I was going to do a quantitative study, I was going to use statistics and I was going to prove something because that was the way in which I was trained. And then through Karen's thoughtful comments and questions, she asked me essentially, you know, why do you want to do that? And is that really what you're trying to find out? And where it started was with an assessment to look into something around continuous improvement practitioners. And through those questions, she really just inspired me to think about it more deeply and go, you know, are those assessments valid and what does it mean even if you did find the answer? So she was part of the journey from the very beginning in terms of prompting the conversations and the questions that I need to ask myself. And then she stayed all the way through the three year journey with me. And then as a surprise, during my celebration after defense, she drove down from Chicago and hung out with me for the day. So very phenomenal experience for three year journey for somebody who I picked up the phone and said, hey, let's chat for a few minutes.

Yeah.

And she's been with me that entire time.

Oh, that's so cool. So cool. All right, so let's talk about who you, who you just had conversations with. I guess you kind of like hour long interviews or something like that, wouldn't it, with the, with these folks, William, is that how you did it?

Exactly. And as I shared earlier in the conversation, I wanted to make sure the questions weren't guiding towards an answer. And I would share with you, just in summary, the answer later. But what I do want to share are the people that did participate. And as many know, I cannot share names without them being, I'd say, authorized at this point. So everybody's name I'm sharing today has given me verbal and or written approval to share their names. So I had Hal Frerek, Jim Hudson, Jess Orr, Jeff Utenbruck, Kush Pathak, Kathleen Sharp, Michael Smith, Panos Efts, Patrick Johnson, you, of course, Scott Laundrie, and Tracy Defoe. So a powerhouse group of kata practitioners, some of which go all the way back to the days when Mike Rother was writing Toyota Kata.

Nice. Well, okay. Well, I'm going to jump right into just hearing some of the. Some of the stories that they shared with you. And I don't know how you choose, kind of like your favorite kid or, you know, which stories you're going to choose. I know I'm sure there's too many to share on this podcast, obviously, but maybe let's pick two or three and just see where they go because. Yeah, I'm just really interested to hear.

So as many people, I think, are finding out, after 10 years of Toyota Kata in print, now, we learn that it's around scientific thinking, and we learned that it's a learning and development tool at its core. What I found interesting, when I spoke with Tracy Defoe, she went all the way back to one of her first operatives, and this was when she was in grad school. She went out to a local manufacturing company to help their HR team. And then she instantly saw what was going on because of the training that she had that essentially kata was that learning and develop tool, learning and development tool that she saw in education. So being a classically trained educator going into the field, seeing this in a manufacturer, she was able to make instant improvements in that process as they look to developed this program, if you will, at their time, and it was deploying something similar to the Toyota production system. And ultimately, 30 years later, she has the same client today. She spends some time with them. I think she said twice every month that she's hanging out with them, going through more learning and development opportunities. So very much one of those four figures, if you will, in terms of identifying what it was. And she spent a lot of time over the last 10 years since Mike Rother published, going around and sharing similar practical application of Toyota Kata. And she shared a really interesting quote, which I'll share when it's appropriate.

Yeah, go ahead.

So she shared, and this is, I think was one of the cooler things, when she would consult a client, the client would say, basically, I've got this problem. And they would leave the problem on Tracy's desk. And Tracy shared as nicely as she could. She said, you know, my job is the consultant is to make sure that I take that and put it back in there or on their desk and align them with some actions that they can take to help solve that problem. And I thought that was a very intriguing way of saying, basically, this is yours. You must learn and develop through this process. I can't simply be the answer for you. And I think that highlighted most about what I think about KATA is different from some of the other programs and that you don't have to be an expert in the program or so like Six Sigma, for example, or Lean, where you go into the traditional methods of be an expert in SMED to do this process, be an expert in statistical analysis to just do this analysis. So I think at that standpoint, this is something that opens it up more broadly. And I think that was a very insightful thing that she learned many years ago. And as she shared this, I said this really makes sense from a coaching perspective versus mentoring, in which she can teach others this a lot faster than necessarily become a technical expert in a process.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know I've said it on the show before, but like I'm telling people these days, you know, quit trying to solve so many problems. You know, that's. That's the problem is that you're trying to solve so many problems. If you would just focus instead on learning and learning faster, then the problems will go away. Right. And that's the beauty of scientific thinking, that it's not about. It's not a tool. Right. It's not like 5s or Smed or something like that. It's a way of thinking and learning and iterating in this process towards. Towards that ideal state. And. Yeah, that's a beautiful example there. So talk about another story.

William, I'll share another story, but I want to ask a question real quick to you.

Yeah.

In our conversation, toward the very end, when you and I are speaking, you mentioned the value of deliberate practice and you shared a story around sports. I don't know if other listeners have heard it, but I think it'd be awesome if you could share that real quick, just because I think it highlights the point of deliberate practice.

Was it the soccer. Soccer practice, yes. Story. Okay. I got a lot of stories, man. I don't know which one. I told you that was the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So, yeah, I think. I don't know if I've maybe shared variations of this on the podcast, but it is more about, you know, one of my. One of my. I have several kids that play soccer, but one of my daughters played at a pretty high level, and she actually missed a penalty kick. She was a young kid, real young when this happened, but it kind of devastated her that she missed it and cost her team and all the rest of it. So she would Actually kind of set off to practice. And the way she would go about it was, imagine a kid that's got a big bag of soccer balls and they just go out to the field and there's a big net and, you know, set the ball down and say you have, you know, 50 soccer balls in a bag or whatever, and you just whack 50 soccer balls into the net. That's pretty good practice. I mean, you had the right distance and penalty kicks and whatever. So you, you kick the ball 50 times and hopefully you made it into the goal right. All 50 times. That's pretty good practice. But it's not necessarily deliberate practice. So what I would say, deliberate practices, and that. And that example would be, okay, Brenna, my daughter, you know, let's write out a plan for what you want to practice today. So she's got a schedule, kind of a plan of attack. And first, you know, five shots are going to be to the bottom left corner. Next five shots going to be to the bottom right corner, and then the top left and then top right. And so you have a very specific plan of where you want to go with the ball. And, and, oh, by the way, the whole time your little sister's over there holding your iPhone and recording the whole session. Right? So we could go back and watch it if we needed to, or she could go back and watch it if she needed to. And so this is, this is how, you know, this is an example of deliberate practice, which is, you know, you're being very intentional about the way that you're going about the practice. So, you know, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hour rule, right? I mean, it wasn't his research. It was a Florida State guy who did the deliberate practice research. But what Gladwell missed or he didn't make clear enough was that the 10,000 hours isn't just practice. It's deliberate practice. Right. And there's a very big difference between just going out and practicing something and being deliberate about it. So. And that's, that's the beauty of scientific thinking in Toyota Kata and these routines that we're being very intentional, very deliberate in the way that we go about it. And that's why it works when it's done properly.

Yeah, that's a key point I would share just coming out of the research, is it has to be deliberate. And as you described the example with your daughter going through and kicking to the top left, bottom right, et cetera, because the goal was identified and you knew what the target was, it was essentially helping that learner Go back through whether they were doing it real time, correcting and. Or going back and watching video and going, you know, was my plant foot right where it needed to be? Was it too far forward, or did I kick it off of this part of my foot versus the other? Those are the types of things that were identified many, many years ago and with just Utenbruck, who was a gentleman that I thought was, I would say, one of the splendid conversations and I would just say a surprise for me, obviously, a wealth of knowledge in CI. But he was with Mike Rother, as Mike was studying Toyota Kata at some of the earlier companies before it became what we know today as Toyota Kata. And what he had shared, going through his examples. And I was asking him, obviously I was like, I didn't expect you to know Mike Rother, but I said, you know, what was special about that conversation and that development opportunity you had with Mike? And Jeff recalled, he said it was the clarity and simplicity that Kata brought. So he said it was just what it was, just very simple, very clear, the person understood. And then just being the curious person that I am, I asked if Mike followed his own advice. And the short answer was yes. He said he would give me something to work toward and then I would go. Obviously they would agree, obviously, but he would go and work toward that thing and then come back. So as KATA went through its own iterations, this became what became published. But as Jeff recalled, it was a lot of give and take back then trying to figure out what was Toyota Kata. And how do those questions essentially come to play in the generic five questions, if you will, from the coaching kata and then going through that process was pretty cool to see and hear that. And he was one of the two team members that was at the very, very early stages of Kata. So definitely from a curious. Caught a geek myself, it was nice to go dig in and say, okay, well, what were they doing? How did it get to where it is today? And not suggesting there's a next step, but what is that next step as far as where does Mike take his research?

Yeah, yeah, no, it's really cool. And the thing that I've really enjoyed with getting to know Mike over the years, you know, we all kind of grew up. Well, many of us grew up kind of learning to see and all the rest of it, you know, so we were tools, tools, tools. And then it's like, wait a minute, you know, you know, just stop, you know, for a second, and let's think. And this was the beauty of Mike's own journey it would seem, you know, with discovering that there's this underlying hidden or you can't see with your own eyes behavior going on, which is way, way above the tools. Right. And it's really the reason companies like Toyota are what they are. Not because they're good at 5s or, or kanban. Right. Because anyone can get good at 5s and Kanban, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be in an incredible organization.

Agreed. And I think part of that, as I just internalized what you shared, to me, it highlights the importance of a coach through the process. So while I mentioned Karen, I had two more. One was Dr. Jim Allen, who was my committee chair, and there was another gentleman named Dr. Sean Faulkner. So between the three of them, it was just amazing to go through the process, particularly in those last three or four months as I was getting what I thought was close to being finished, only to find out I had a lot more opportunities to improve my writing, make sure it was more clear. And it was a legit year of writing the same paper over and over. But in the last, say, four months that I was working on that many iterations, add 20 pages, take away 10 pages, et cetera, to make sure it was clear. And at the end of the day, I have basically a 90 page paper on Toyota Kata that I will be able to share as soon as it gets through its copywriting process to any of the members. And once I share, or once I get that information, I'll share that link with you so people can gain access to it.

Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. So I know you talked to our mutual friend Jess Orr. Talk a little bit about what you learned from Jessica, because she obviously worked at Toyota.

So Jess did work at Toyota and she spent quite a few years there. And one of the things that stood out to me was how deliberate Toyota is in creating its own culture. If you go all the way back to my original podcast, somehow we ended up talking about culture for most of it. And I'm not really sure why or how, but that's what we ended up doing through that conversation. And with Jess's conversation, she really echoed some of those sentiments that I shared, that you must be deliberate in creating your culture. Examples of this, I would say, go around, how do you onboard new people? And with onboarding new people, there was a key component when they go through the A3 process, which is much like a dissertation defense, if you will, and the committee will examine thinking. And as Jess would go through this, she shared with Us that or shared with me, rather, that as she was going through that process, there were lots of trials and tribulations that you would experience through kata and those languages or the language Mike Rother used is the language Toyota used while she was there. So when you look at target condition, current condition, those are things that they talk about and what those challenges. It was really to stretch somebody's thinking and the way in which they did it, I think was phenomenal. But that's not the surprising part. For me, the surprising part is what happens if you meet Toyota's expectations. And that is they were rather quick to dismiss you if you did not want to fall into that cultural mindset.

So dismiss you. Like, fire you.

Not right away, but they would coach you, and if you weren't coachable, they would exit you out of the organization. And then one of those conversations matched something I mentioned or listened to a gentleman named Jim Hudson share. And Jim was working with some of the Twitter consultants. And I would say these were the individuals that were trained by Ono and those initial adherents to the TPS system. And they followed a very similar mindset, which almost took me aback because I wasn't expecting the answer to be basically, find out the people who agree with the idea and want to go challenge their thinking each day and learn something new, promote that agenda or that idea. And then conversely, if they don't, it's best to get rid of them. And what I find in other research that I won't bore any of the listeners with is finding the exact same thing over and over, that it's best to make sure those people are part of the organization because they hurt your chances of being successful.

So, I mean, obviously Toyota would give it a go. Right. To try to change these people before just whacking the bottom 10%, so to speak. Right.

Correct. But it wasn't a. It wasn't a generic, let's go find 10%. Obviously, they try to hire for this.

Yeah.

At the same time, when you get somebody who would just not wanted to. Did not want to adapt.

Yeah.

There's a piece where you get to say, okay, hey, let's coach, let's coach, let's coach, let's coach, and let's. Then eventually you say, get away from it.

Yeah.

And then there's another key component that I just loved hearing Jess talk about because it's something I've experienced in my own life. This goes back to a previous mentor of mine, and I would say even current mentor, Mark Shumate. He's one of my. Was My first plant manager in manufacturing, and when I first met Mark, I was given the opportunity to work in manufacturing for the first time. He shared with me a key lesson. He said, make sure you take care of your operators. And Jess echoed that comment and I would just say some of the best ways, and that she shared that at Toyota, the closer you are to creating value, that is a lawn operator, you're more valued in the organization in terms of the way. And I'm going to use my words here, but like tears away from the line. So if you were quality support or some process engineer, you were a little bit further back than you would say, obviously, as an operator or a team lead. And the way in which they promoted the idea of the operator being the core, I think is so much of why Toyota is successful. Because in my mind, as I heard just share this, it was that the managers and all the support agents really reflect on that and say, how do we make the operator's life better or easier in some way to make sure they're able to create value more effectively? And I thought that was an incredible piece that doesn't seem to play out as much in terms of U.S. business, and that it's usually about how do we take care of the top portion of that hierarchy in the traditional sense.

Yeah. So as you were going through these conversations with these various folks, was there anything that, like, really surprised you or really had you sit back and, like, wow, didn't know that.

So I would share with you that the biggest takeaway for me, and this is something that I'd say is more challenging, and I need to unpack this additionally in my world. But when I look at the questions of why we didn't find the answer to, at least for me, I did not find why we had so little to talk about in terms of sustaining Toyota Kata. And then I found something very interesting around the intellectual and ethical development of people. So essentially, how does a coach teach somebody to think more broadly? So in the easiest of terms, and trying to explain something that's not so much complex as it is just a very, very long read, we're taught AB thinking, yes, no thinking, or just, you know, there's always the right answer. And as people progress through Toyota Kata, I see something a little bit different, and that is you're finding your own best way. And this does not fit well what I would say with U.S. education. And since a coach is asking you basically to play your own game, find your own, you know, create your own rules, figure out how to solve the problem and there isn't necessarily a single right answer. It's one that I think the coach has to be able to walk the learner through.

Do you have any examples of that?

Yes. So I was, I think, going back to the Karen Ross conversation earlier where I shared, you know, I was going to go in with this quantitative study. I was confident walking in that I was going to find my answer. And through kata asked questions. I can't recall that conversation exactly, but she shared with me that, hey, this is the approach, or not this is the approach, but there are other approaches to answer the question. And what that came about was unpacking my own assumptions that that was the best method.

Yeah.

And because of that, I found things I wasn't looking for. So had I went in with my original assumption, I would tell you that I would not be where I am today because the information would not have been as valuable. And then I think another piece is my own example, which is my first kata experience where I was solving my own problem. I was working on a gas oven and a steel drum manufacturing facility. And I knew zero about steel drum manufacturing before I started my Toyota Kata cycles. But I went out every day like Toyota Kata asked or requested of people to go through and I would try something new every day. I worked with a small team in that area only to find out the answer was something very simple and something very mechanical that we failed to execute properly on setup. But in those, let's call it seven to 10 days, whatever it was that I was working on, that problem, we had, I would just say dozens and dozens of minutes because the downtime event was a dozen minutes that I was able to go through that process and find it. But initially I was, you know, I think it's this, I think it's that, I think it's this. And then it ended up being my fifth or sixth obstacle that I found the answer. So by doing that, had I just gone with tell the team to go do this, you know, put a PM plan in place, let's do something different, I would have gone about it a different way. And because I had a coach who was asking me those things each day, you know, is this the right thing? How did you know? How did you verify? Because a lot of that time it was just going in with assumptions.

So I got a bunch of things I want to talk to you about, but in the sake of time, I want to kind of focus it in on. In the early conversations that we had before we started recording, you were talking about implementation, execution and sustainment And I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about your research and how and what you learned about implementation, execution and sustainment. Because I know there were some, I believe there's some things that stood out for you.

There were. And I want to start with implementation because it seemed from the research participants that the most important piece was the advanced group. So as rather talked through the advanced group, it was essentially making sure you're picking the right people in the beginning. But as I went through that implementation standpoint or deployment in some terms, that was where most of the team members emphasized their work. And of the key components, the I would say the standout difference that I've heard from other people in different continuous improvement activity is executive leadership. Participation is required. And that differs from just support or hey, I'm a champion, I'm going to do this thing with you, come together once a week. So that is something that I think was very, very helpful. And then I heard from others that I would say within this research group that they were miss to pick people that really need to complete Toyota Kata. So if there were anything really out of deployment side, I said make sure you get your advanced group right, make sure there's an executive leader who's participating in that advanced group and make sure you're not trying to convince people of the method. So find people that are already pretty open to new ideas and very curious as a general personality disposition.

What about execution?

Follow the books. So when you talked about deliberate practice, the reason I wanted to share that story with your listeners is because that's exactly what was talked about through many of the participants. So essentially when you're in that beginning phase, so think advanced group and that group, that's training. So probably for your first six months as a coach, just follow the path. The way it's written by Mike Rother. Having a common language seemed to be very, very helpful for people. So while there are other coaching models, it's not to say one is better than the other at this point, but having some consistency in a common language is very, very helpful. And then if you are going to expand to it very, very, very slowly. So when I talk advanced group, I'm speaking five to seven people speaking about them in a specific area. So this could be a department, a hospital wing, a specific manufacturing site, but even within that, which value stream are you looking at? Which part of the value stream? So it becomes a very, very focused effort to follow the books and start very, very small and expand slowly as you do.

And you know our movement, Toyota Cotta movement is only what, 10 years old or so, so might be too early to tell here, but maybe talk a little bit about sustainment.

And that's where my research did not find much information. So this is something I think I have to come back to and ask the same question again in about 10 years because most people through the research found that it was what I'd say is a self fulfilling prophecy. The more they did kata, the faster they learned and the better it was. So that was the only, I would say, key takeaway that I had out of the research. As a best practice, however, to what you shared, it's really too early to tell. So even going through my own research, I struggled early to get two of my three committee members to understand it was this limited. They kept saying, well, you know, there's lean, there's Toyota production system, there's all these other things. I said they are, but they're not what I'm researching. So I've got to be very, very, very specific in what I'm finding. And unfortunately there wasn't anything, you know, call it pre 2009 at that point. And since then there has been very, very little empirical evidence to help support one way or another.

Yeah, I mean, I suppose you could, you could make the argument that companies like Toyota, you know, have been practicing. I know they don't run around with five question cards and whatnot, but you know, these are the underlying behavior. So that's one data point, right. Is one company, right, who is clearly kind of practicing this. And what's also interesting to me about this idea of will it sustain, has it sustained? And Mark Rosenthal, you know, is one of my good friends and one of the best kata thinkers out there, I believe. And you know, he's, he, he will say that, you know, this is nothing new. This, this is, this is the same, these are the principles that underlie all sound kind of problem solving methodologies, even like back in Six Sigma, DMAIC and you know, PDCA and whatnot. Many of the things that done properly, you know, and that's the key word properly, you know, these things are in there. But yeah, I mean, deliberately practicing the way that Mike introduced 10 years ago, at least here in the west, is very new, you know.

Absolutely. And it's, I think it challenges one of the things that makes America America, which is, it's more individualistic than Japanese culture. So in many ways we focus on the I in America, where I hear a lot of countries and Japan is one of them that focuses on the we so when you go all the way back to the beginning of what was Toyota after World War II, there was a lot of we and an opportunity to come together. And in America, you're going to something a little bit more individualistic. And that's a bit of a challenge, particularly as you're working through these types of processes. So that was one of the other, I would say, interesting pieces that came out of the research. And of course I wasn't trying to find this. This just came to be about or came out from the research participants. So if there's another tip, when you are recruiting people, find people that already talk in the terms of we versus I and they're more likely to be successful in this practice of Toyota Kata.

Yeah. So if you were to take a guess and we'll come back in five years or whatever and record another episode to see how your prediction worked out. But like, if you were to think of some, I don't know, key characteristics or key behaviors for making sure this does sustain, like, what would it be?

So I want to go to something. I think selecting the right people is critical. And one of the pieces that I'm interested in as a follow up research question is something called openness to experience. And this is one of the big five personality traits that's linked very closely to curiosity and that curiosity is linked to intelligence. So for me it's saying, do we find that organizations that have more curious people succeed with Toyota Kata? So as part of the next research piece, this is kind of funny because I found myself full circle back to my beginning conversation with Karen, which is I want to create an assessment tool. Well, I don't necessarily need to create the assessment tool, but I can test whether or not people are more curious using some existing research and then helping people find these advanced groups. So I think as you find the advanced group that builds the, I would say the strong majority to make the change, those late adopters will eventually come to the agreement that that is the new culture. So I think for companies that are proactive in recruiting the right people for the advanced group, those are going to be the companies that are most successful.

You know, I recently read a book, actually I listened to it, an audiobook. It was recommended to me. The book was called Grit. Have you heard of that? Angela Duckworth?

I have, yes.

Have you read it?

I have not.

Yeah. So it's super. Good book, man. I might even do just a solo podcast on it. I'm trying to see if I could get her to come onto the podcast, but still in process there. But part of her whole angle and kind of how it relates to what you just said was she has a so called grit survey and it's just a short survey and anybody can go to her website and take it and, and it's kind of a measure of perseverance and are you going to stick through it? And she claims through their research that they can predict who's going to be, who's going to successfully make it through like West Point. And it doesn't have to do with how smart they are or how many pull ups they can do going into it. It all had to do with their grit or their willingness to persevere. So I'd be curious maybe as part of your endeavor here to meas and understand the role of curiosity is to come up with a curiosity survey, if you will, you know, a 10 kind of Myers Briggs kind of thing, you know, but it really focuses in on curiosity and then to see if there was any correlation. Obviously gotta be careful with the whole causation thing. But correlation to, you know, success with scientific thinking, that could be really interesting.

It's a very interesting question. You're in a very, I would say, fun sandbox of mine right now where Angela Duckworth talks about grit. It's something that in the big five personality model is known as conscientiousness. And I was reading some stuff over the last two or three days that conscientiousness, or what Angela Duckworth calls grit is the same type of thing that basically says this is why you're going to be successful in life or not. So this counts for higher income across a lot of people. And obviously I would say success in life in general. But one of the really cool things I found with this, and I was just having this discussion with my wife, that higher conscientious people have longer marriages than those that do not. So we were unpacking that just in just sharing opinions on why do you think that is or is not the case? Based on our friends that have been successful versus those that have not been successful in marriage and then in the openness to experience. It's separate. But it's really around that curiosity piece and where I go back to the very, I'd say call it like 2/3 of the way through this podcast conversation around intellectual development. That's why it's so key. Because if you think about it, if I come to Gemba Academy and I come to your customer service group that started the started Toyota Kata for you and your organization, if I said, hey, I got this idea to change it. Some people are going to be all about changing because that's who they are dispositionally. But you're going to find some people even in that group, they're going to say, well, you know, we've really got something good going here. And I'm saying, yeah, I know, but maybe it can be better because their satisfaction scores are X and we want them to be a little bit higher. So it's looking for those people that are definitely willing to go and say, let's try something new. And I think to your point, what is that success and how does it link to personality? Because if it links to personality, the great thing is there are quite a few tests already that can test for that. So the good news is I don't have to spend another four or five years in studying other research papers to develop a test. I'm going to just go find one. This is validated, this is reliable. Let's just go forward and get it out to 1,000 people that practice CI. So I think part of going back to those hypothesis tests that you and I are all too familiar, if we have people that are Toyota Kata and their higher openness to experience exists, is that the key differentiator between those that are successful and those that are not, and if it is, the best thing for me is at least organizations can find it and test for it and then hire those people appropriately.

Interesting. Yeah, really cool. So, last question, I guess in the whole spirit of scientific thinking, do you have a kind of a long term vision of where you'd like to go next? And if so, what's your current condition?

So my current condition is I need to find an IO psychologist to help me with the next stage of my journey and that is to drive towards that target condition of understanding whether or not people that practice CI, specifically kata, differ from the general population. So the hypothesis is that there is no difference and the alternative hypothesis would be that there is a difference. So the nice thing is if I can get enough data points, we can detect that pretty early. And if it is, there's some validity to the other assumptions I made or the themes I drew from the research. And if not, I know that's not it and I can go find something new to work on.

So how would you define success?

Success in the sense that I have something to continue down, not necessarily that I have the answer, but the success would be that the alternative is true and that there is enough data to support that there is a difference in personality between KATA people and not Practicing Kata people at this point as a general population.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, William, so recording this here in April 2019. So when do you think all the documentation is going to be ready for the world to get their eyes on?

I would say the long dissertation, probably another month and a half. But I do have the dissertation defense PowerPoint that I'm available to share. So for those that haven't seen the updates through LinkedIn, they can find me there under William Harvey. And if they want to have access to that, I will share it with them with as quick as a message requesting it.

Yeah.

Which will go over a lot more of this and people can ask questions appropriately. So it'll be the one that I presented. I won't take anything out, but people can see it and certainly see the value in it. Yeah.

Very good, very good. Well, thanks for coming on, William, and sharing so much of your, of your journey. And again, congratulations. I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing when you have that ready. And yeah, so I guess you said LinkedIn was the best way for folks to connect with you, correct?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay, well, when we'll link to everything here on the Show Notes page. So depending on what when you're listening to this. Well, if there's any updates, we'll update the the Show Notes page for this episode and that'll be gembapodcast.com this is going to be episode 265. So. Yeah, 102 to 265. So there was a few, few episodes in between there, William.

There have been many very, very good ones. So I appreciate having the opportunity to come back again today.

Yeah. Well, great job and thanks for coming on, William, and let's, let's talk again soon.

Thank you.

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