GA 268 | Breaking Down the Seven Wastes with Jeff Kaas

When you graduate high school as you do a speech, I can't wait to work someplace where they torture me and I end up with diseases, not so much. Right. And so the mission today is to see if this stuff is true and then decide, shall we make changes which are good and move from red to green? That's really the whole idea of the day.

One of the most important lessons I've learned over the years is to never assume I know everything there is to know about a topic. It's just one example. A few months ago, I found myself watching Jeff Koss of Koss Taylor teach a short lesson on the Seven Ways. Now I need to come clean. When Jeff started a session, I was pretty sure this was going to be nothing but a nice review of a topic I had mastered long ago. But the longer Jeff talked, the more interested I became, since he did such a wonderful job shining a light on waste like I had never seen before. And while we'll soon release this seven way series in video format, I wanted to share the audio portion here on the podcast, since I'm confident you'll also find value from Jeff's wisdom and experience. The show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything Jeff talks about, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 268. You can also check out Gemba Academy's Lean Learning system, which, among other things, allows you to virtually tour more than 20 lean thinking organizations from around the world. Simply go to gembacademy.com to learn more. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show.

All right, so we're gonna go into the Seven Ways training now. Hopefully this isn't new to you. How many actually know the seven wastes pretty well? Like, yeah, I know those. Okay, so we'll go as if it's brand new for most of you. So before I tell you what they are. O, T, M, W, P, I, D. Those are the first letters of the WAIs. Okay, let's see if you know them. What does the D stand for? Defects. Right. How about the I? Inventory. How about the P? Processing. Processing comes in three flavors. Over, under. And so we'll talk about. Yeah. What is the W? Waiting. Yeah, customers love to wait. Right? You love to wait. What's your favorite thing? What is the M? Motion. Motion. What is the T? Transport. And what is the most evil of all the waste? Okay. Overproduction. Not over processing. Why is overproduction the most evil of all? The waste? Crates are the waste. Crates are the waste. Yeah. So the easy summary version is it creates and hides, creates and hides its tracks. I've been in factories that make VIP jets, for example, and they spent all their time on trying to remove waste of motion. But the root cause of it was actually they had a system choice based on overproduction. They were doing batches of seats. So they spent all their effort to make improvement on the wrong thing. If they just would have gone to one piece flow, they wouldn't need the searching improvements to make this a little bit worse. It's almost always the person who sits in the corner office who has made this choice. So if you have a president who thinks overproduction is super smart, you're kind of stuck. It's a tough spot to be in. Thankfully, if you work at mpg, Jen realized this and said, ooh, that's really bad. What can we do about it? And that makes for like 1 out of 100 people with authority. I meet hundreds of people a year and almost none of those people care enough to do something about it. When I evaluate those people, I'm looking for two things. Are they ignorant or the nice way of saying it is, do they have knowledge and are they evil? Why would I care if they're evil? What they'll do is they'll use this knowledge to hurt people. They'll use this knowledge to make more money for themselves, but they won't look at the long term sustainability of it. I consider it pretty evil when somebody with authority doesn't use this to bless the entire team and the customer. Yeah. So if I don't see that they're evil, if I see that there's some goodness in them, like they're about the customer, they're about the people, about moving forward, and they're willing to learn, then we can really help them. Which means I exit most conversations really quickly, which is kind of fun. Yeah. All right, so we're going to go deep on all these. Did Tucker make a decent case that adding more red stuff in your life is actually bad for your health? Yeah. So does anybody think, nah, it's fine, we're good. Or do you actually know, like, the more anxiety I have, the more diseases I'll have? At some point when you're old like me, you're going to be able to name those diseases. Yes or no? When you graduate high school, did you do a speech? I can't wait to work someplace where they torture me and I end up with diseases. Not so much. Right. And so the mission today is to see if this stuff is True. And then decide, shall we make changes which are good and move from red to green. That's really the whole idea of the day. And these are the evil things. So we'll talk through. Is that cool? Okay, so nine year old version of defects. What would a nine year old actually say? That's a defect. I have an opinion about it. Examples. Lego's not fitting together. Yep. Other examples? Lots. It's broken. Yeah. Something's lumpy. My milkshake is lumpy. Yeah, for sure. That's good. Or mashed potatoes. It's like gang flat. Yeah. What else? Basketball is deflated. For sure. Too hot. For sure. Yeah. What else? Other examples that could be immediate. Like this nine year old's pissed. I know about it. Sister won't leave me alone if she's pesting me again. Yeah, I had one of those and I would punch her right when my dad would show up. Every time. Really bad. She was good at it, actually. Didn't punch her, but yeah. Treehouse fell down. Treehouse fell down. Okay. That for sure would be a defect. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's a. Yeah. There's a little. There's flat tire. How about. Yeah. How about if the WI fi is down? When that happens in my house, you would think there's a home invader. WI fi's down, dad. Yeah. Or there's a glitch in my. What is that game they all play? Fortnite. There's a glitch, dad. It must be the WI fi. It must be you. Yeah. Yep. I need a new whatever. How about if you order a cheeseburger with no green stuff and as a nine year old, you're really clear. You spell it out. Meat, cheese, bun, no green stuff. If the cheeseburger arrives with green stuff, would he or she know that's a defect? Yes. Okay. And can we also use as a teaching opportunity, is there a difference between lettuce and dill pickles on that cheeseburger? What do we know about the lettuce problem? It's leafy, so you can remove it. And the cheeseburger doesn't taste nasty. But if you have dill pickles on your burger and you pull that off, you still have pickle juice. So I could start teaching my son. Hey, there's a difference between little defects and big defects. Make sense? Yeah. How about if you're aiming for A's as a nine year old and you get a fail on a test, Would you call that a defect? If you care. Yeah. What if you came home to your, you know, Hanging out with your dad. And you say to. If dad says, hey, how was your day? And they're like, oh, it was fine. Yeah. And if I say, how'd the test go? Oh, pretty well. Yeah. Great. And then later in the day, the dad's finally smart enough to say, hey, buddy, what's wrong? Your body's saying something different than your mouth. And then he says, dad, I lied to you. Would lying to your dad as a 9 year old, not 13 year old, would that be a defect? Yeah. In my house, trust is the most important thing I can have with any of my kids. I want them to be able to trust me with everything. And that's the currency that matters. When you violate trust, you violate everything. And I want to bless my kids with good stuff, but if I can't trust them, I don't do that. I withhold things. Is trust important in your relationships with your friends, family, loved ones? How many of you have a degree in college about how to build trust? Is it important in the business world for us to be trustworthy? Isn't that crazy? There's no. Nobody has a degree in trust. But it might be the most important thing we have. Not so. Yeah. Okay. So you understand defects. Yeah. When you add defects into the world, it pisses people off. When you've made a defect, can we say that's a red moment for you? Let's say it's your third time through the barn. Like, this is a defect you're known for. Maybe it's pride. Maybe it's something where you're like, I know better than this. This is my third time through this defect. How do you feel the third time through the same defect? Is there a heavier emotion? Let's name those emotions, what comes with it. Shame, disappointment, bitterness. Yeah. I always try to blame somebody else before it comes back to me. You guys don't do that. Just me. Yeah. And then I have to apologize for blaming them. Yeah. So take defects away. Defects away. And you'll delight people. So defect free product when your yes is. Yes. It delights people. When you deliver something consistently, per your promise, it feels good. Yeah. Okay, so definitely don't build an organization that's okay with 90% acceptance. What you're basically saying is 10% defects are okay, and then you're driving all that shame into the business. We're trying to aim for perfect work all day, every day. We fail every day, but we still aim at 100%. Yeah. Okay. Inventory. Are there any accountants in the room? People trained to be accountants? We'll go with no. Okay. So that was a class in college that I avoided. I saw the syllabus and said, a D will get my degree. I'm making an executive decision. I will sunbathe instead. Which means get yellow or red. I don't actually get brown. But anyhow, it was a good decision because I didn't waste my time. Had the syllabus had a chocolate chip cookie on top of it, do you think I would have attended based on what you know of me yet? For sure I would. If I want to teach my little boy about finished goods, I could say, hey, a chocolate chip cookie is an example of a finished good. Would my little boy go, oh, I get it. And he could go through the grocery store and say, this is the finished. These are people who make cookies. He would understand it. Is that true? And does he have an ideal finished, good experience with chocolate chip cookies? Does he know his favorite. Do you know that your favorite. So crunchy or chewy? Nuts or no nuts? Fruit or no fruit? What kind of chocolate did I say crunchy or chewy or warm or not? Yeah. Do you have an ideal quantity of cookies in your experience? What's your number? Yeah, everybody has a number, right?

Five.

Five. Nice. My little boy gets three, even though he would love to have more than three. So let's say tonight his mom is actually out of the country, so she's in Albania holding a baby. And I'm taking care of the dog that is over there. And Judd. And let's say today I decide to bake him cookies, which would never happen. He gets home, smells the cookies, and there's a plate with only two cookies on it. Now, he has zero chance of getting cookies, but today there's chocolate chip cookies his way. But there's two of them. What would be the emotion he would express? What's wrong with you, dad? What did I do wrong? I'd be like, dude, you have two cookies. You are deserving zero. This is called grace. Enjoy it. But he would be disappointed, right? Because he, as a consumer, has an ideal experience. What if I do this to him? I put four on there, and right before he grabs the fourth one, I take a bite of it and say, that's mine. Pretty rude, right? So could I then translate, hey, Alaska Air. What is their finished good buddy? And he might say, well, it's not really a product. It's different. Like, oh, okay, well, it's a service. We can talk about that. He would start to understand accounting. Right, got it. Do your customers know what they want? From you. They vote with their money, right? Yep. Every day. So great. And I've never seen a company more obsessed with trying to do a good job with that. Like, that's the one thing that you guys do better than any place ever been is what does a customer really want? How do we deliver that to her? And you always say her. I'm stereotyping. But yeah. Seems like a her before is a cookie. When we have the eggs and the sugar and flour and whatever the chocolate chips in there, would my son know that you can't undo that? The eggs are not going back together. So that's called work in process. Could I teach him? Hey, cookie dough is like work in process. Once you start it, basically, the boat has sailed. Could you understand it? Okay, so you all have a kitchen or live in a place where there's a kitchen? Yes. Okay, imagine this scene in your kitchen. You decide, let's say you're taking care of Judd and you're going to bake some cookies. But instead of just doing chive chip cookies, you think a brilliant idea would be to start peanut butter cookies at the same time and snickerdoodles at the same time. And molasses cookies at the same time. How's your kitchen looking right now? Can you imagine it? Do you have enough bowls? Everything started, not finished. And then you're going to make some spaghetti and pizza and tacos. You're trying to be the best babysitter ever by having his favorite foods. None of it's finished. So he gets to the top of the stairs. What would he see? Chaos, chaos, chaos. What would you look like in that moment? Okay, what would he be begging for? He's starving. What would he be begging for? Finish anything. Actually, they're all his favorites. He was like, what can be done first? So when he was about five years old, I told this story. And he was sitting in the back, little five year old, raising his hand. Dad, dad, that's not the big problem. If mom was doing this, there's a bigger problem. What do you think the bigger problem was? Which one to choose? Not even which one to choose. Mom's gonna put taco seasoning in the cookies. I thought that was so brilliant. I do that at work all the time. Buddy. I'm in the middle of a project and I have an ingredient like. Oh, that's from the other project. We talked about that three weeks ago. How did I forget you ever had that happen? How many projects do you have started and not finished currently? Everything on your to do list. Every email you need to respond to, all the projects that you feel like, you gotta get to add that to all the ones at home. So these might be things you're gonna decorate. You might have already bought some of the stuff. Plants you're gonna plant in the spring, it's November. Photos you're going to sort and share holiday plans that you were going to make a few weeks ago. Is your body reacting to this conversation? I can see it if you're paying attention. Your body's reacting. I can see it. What is your body saying about the waste? Are you feeling anxiety? Okay, what is your body actually telling you to do right now from this conversation? No, it's saying run or punch. Basically, it's fight or flight. Okay. Are you more creative in fight or flight or less creative in fight or flight? If they took a scan of your brain, they could show you the parts of your brain that's lit up in fight or flight. Trust me, it's not the creative part. It's physically impossible to be in fight or flight and be creative. The brain doesn't have blood to that part. Okay. Big deal. So little boy would understand inventory, waste. And then I could actually say, judd, my favorite inventory is cash. It's super flexible. And he would understand that too, right? Yeah. Making sense. Have you ever thrown away perfectly good food? It's pass, pull. Can we say that's waste of inventory? What is the emotion? So that's a fact. It is waste. So that's like the head part. What does the heart say when you throw away perfectly good food? What is the emotion that comes away comes from that? Guilt. Shame. Isn't that crazy? Like last night I ate some salad just because my wife made it. Made it for us before she left and we had to pick through all the wilted stuff. And the message to the teenager boy is we can tell mom we had some. Let's hope she doesn't ask how much we ate, because I felt guilty throwing it away sight unseen. Yeah. So add waste for sure. Create anxiety. But there's a lot of shame and guilt that come with it. Making sense. Have you ever had the opposite? You're making a meal for somebody and everything turns out you had just enough food for everybody. You do a project and you nail it. Like the sales metrics were perfect and you took some risks to make that happen. How does it feel when you get your inventory right? Pretty good. Okay, so Duff for 200. What happens when you guess inventory incorrectly? You overbuy. Can we call that a defect? Okay, then it Leads to some other activity. And we'll talk about that next. So moving up to processing. Processing waste. Over. Under. And we'll start with over. So anytime you take extra steps, an example of extra steps would be rework. How many minutes a day are you spending during rework? Another example would be you enter some information into one computer and then you have to enter it into another computer because somehow in 2018, they can't talk. You love that one too, right? Yeah, it's all the data we collect, but we don't use. You would not believe the data that we have at Nordstrom about the customer. And then the really sad thing is that we don't connect it yet. They're working on it. All that data they collect, they don't use. Yeah. How about meetings in general? Do you do meetings? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So by the Grandma Fox standard, my Grandma Fox lived in the depression and as a child I always wanted to make her proud. So by your grandma's standard, let's say she's up in heaven looking down on you. These are the minutes. She's proud of you. Like she's telling all the dead people, look, she's mine, he's mine. Got it. So how many minutes, by the grandma standard of a 60 minute meeting, career date are truly value added? 5. Anybody think it's higher than 5 minutes? 45. 45 minutes value added. That's the biggest number I've ever heard. Yeah. So somewhere between 5 and 45. So how many people think it's 10 minutes or less? How many think it's 20 minutes or less? Okay, so let's say we'll go with that number as the average 20. So that means that 40 minutes of every meeting, current date is not value added. It's over processing. Have you ever walked into a room and you see the person there that kind of screwed you last time and you're like, I'm not talking. Maybe at a different employment. Not trying to cause trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Literally, when I go to some customers, I ask my colleagues to pray for me. So I don't use the F bomb too early in the conversation. I'm going to use it. I just don't know when. Right? Yeah, for sure. Other examples of over processing might be if you have a bunch of computer systems that don't really make your job easier. So let's say you're moving into Flex and then you're moving into something else. You're moving into something else. As opposed to just dragging and dropping like you can on an iPad. How many Minutes of your talent is being squandered every day just with over processing, making reports. You know, nobody reads making reports three different ways because each one of the audience members has to have it a different way. How many minutes? Somebody give me a number and please do math. Take your meetings times 40. So if you do two meetings a day, that's 80 minutes, plus your rework, plus the stuff you type in twice, plus any rework. Somebody be bold and give me a number. Five minutes. Five hours. Oh, I'm sorry. That's a lot of time. Seriously, you think? That's about approximate. Okay, so that's. Anybody think it's lower than that? Let's start with lower. Is it less than five hours a day of processing waste? Two hours. Two hours. So can we agree that it's at least two hours like you all say? For sure it's two, but probably more. Okay, I'll write that down. So one hundred and twenty minutes. So when you're doing this, you're not getting your job done. How do you get your job done then? When do you get your work done? Not getting done. Not getting done. Or maybe you do it at night when you're supposed to be with your family and friends. Right. So we steal from our family and friends to get it worked out at Nordstrom. Is that a good trade? I don't think so. Okay, we're going to move on to under processing. If you've ever used a Microsoft product and it just freaks out, I haven't used one for years, so I don't know if it still does that. But it used to do a blue screen or just freeze for no apparent reason. Does that still happen? I don't even know. It does. Okay, so somebody didn't write the code. Right. It's under processed. Another example would be using a communication tool that isn't lined up with science. So, for example, human communication. What percent of it is body language versus the word? What percent is body language? Majority. It's a heavy number. It's more than 80% by most studies. But let's say it's just 50%. Is that pretty significant? So when you send an email, what percentage of your body language do you send? What if you add emojis? Have you ever sent an email and then find out like five minutes later that somebody is really upset and you're like, what are you even upset about? Or they come to you and say, hey, I didn't know you were mad at me. And you're like, I didn't know I was mad at you either. Well, but you used all caps like. I was just. Yeah, I wasn't paying attention. Let's say Boeing is going to make an airplane with 50% of the information they need. Would you want to fly on that airplane in your world? I'm not sure how prevalent it is, but do you send more than 10 emails in a day? Okay. So every time you send emails out, there's a decent chance you're being misunderstood, which causes a defect, which causes you to rework over process. It's a mess. Highly recommend you get face to face time. Most everybody here has an iOS device. I think everybody does. It's very normal to FaceTime, even if we're in the same building and walk next to each other because we're not stuck in meetings all day. Just talk. Okay. Under processing, I won't ask for an amount of time is when you just don't have a process. So when I go from one department to the next department to the next department, I would find that each job was different. So if I was a design director and I went to three different places, it would be totally different. In each cell or in any position you have, it's different. Have you ever walked into position? Like, are there any procedures to follow? Yes. So when there's no procedure, that means that the generation before you didn't care enough about you to make sure that they taught you everything they already learned. Super, super high ego. When we create standard work, it's a gift to the next generation. Yeah. A lot of people say, oh, standard work. That means I won't be creative, frankly. It means getting the laundry done so you have more time to do the fun stuff. If you enjoy laundry, you're not me. I don't enjoy that. So I always want to take all the stuff that's kind of boring and make it super easy so the next person can do that. So I can do something that's more valuable. That's really the gateway to growing our company. It's basically make yourself replaceable. Yeah. So any questions on processing weights? Significant amount of your time, right? Yes. Okay. And can we say we don't enjoy that or we do enjoy? Do you enjoy rework? Do you enjoy all those things or not? Okay, take it away. Have you ever had a new product or service that just totally delights you so much that you tell everybody about it? Yes. Feels good. Your first Uber. Could you believe you can just, like, stand here? Hey, it just showed up. The Starbucks app. When you can order and not stand in line behind people that can't figure out what they're going to order even though you know what they're going to order. Yeah. Delights you. Yeah. Yeah. That app was down last week. I freaked out. I had to stand in line behind three people. I thought, I'm not sure I even want coffee here. So stupid. Yeah. Okay. Waiting. Do customers enjoy waiting? Do you enjoy waiting? Do you have a follow up system for all the things you're waiting on? Do you have a to do list? So then you over process that and then do you have some people whose yes always means maybe? So then you follow up more with them so you give more of your effort to the least competent person because they aren't willing to let their yes be a yes. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Waiting. Do I need to write a book about it or do we all understand that's not so great? Y' all hate it. Yeah. Okay. Take waiting away and you'll delight people. We know that with your customers, if we can get there faster, we have a higher likelihood of them keeping what we sent them. Yeah. Yes. Big deal. Cool. Okay. Moving on to motion. This is when human people, human beings are moving. So bending, stretching, walking, flying, driving, or searching. Searching for the truth, Searching for the root cause of a problem. Searching through an Excel file when really a picture would have been better. Searching for the person to help you. Searching for, why did that not work? Searching through all the data systems to say, why didn't this flag me? If you're Jen, it's searching for, how are we doing? Are we getting better? How are people feeling? How many minutes of your day is spent searching and not finding, looking for information, looking for research, looking for the way forward, learning your job. So when I say searching, I don't just mean searching and finding, but searching for the way to do it. Well, if we don't have standard work, what impact will that have on your ability to learn? Negative or positive impact. If there's no standard work, if there's no visual management. So you've been in my factory for a couple hours. If you needed to figure out if we're okay right now, do you think you can find out? How would you do that? Okay, so you look at the beer cups for right now. You look at the today boards for today and you look on the year to date boards for how we are year to date. If you saw green, what would you know? If you saw red, what would you know? Okay. And then there's metrics next to it so you can watch the video and figure out what the metrics are. Then there's a face next to it if you need to find that face. Why do we do that? Because we don't want any waste of motion. We want people to know the truth and be able to move forward. If you know your company's okay, what does that do for you as a worker in the company? Work harder. What does it do to your anxiety level? Kind of goes away right when the economy sucks. We'd still post red up there, and that's a little more scary, but we still want them to know the truth. And we've had years like that in the past, so. Waste of motion. How many minutes of your day is searching for the truth? Searching for information, searching for a component, searching for a better way, searching for, where the hell am I? Searching for? How do I say to that person, I'm not pissed at them because they're not going to believe me? Searching for, how do I say I'm sorry in a way that'll be understood? Give me a number. Somebody bold. You were too bold last time, evidently. Two hours. Okay. And can we agree that that's not a real good use of your talent? Yeah. Have you ever worked on a Saturday? And I would take the guilt aside, just say, hey, you worked on Saturday. And you're like, man, I was really zooming. Or I really. I was really flexible, or I was in the zone. Felt so good. Y' all have had that day. So then, you know, oh, the work feels like hobby when there's no waste. So how do we make it so it feels a little bit more like that every day on Monday and every Tuesday and Wednesday. Not just the days that we're taking from our families. That's the idea of all this. Yeah. Any questions on waste of motion? So far, so good. Okay. Take motion away. It'll feel awesome. And you already know that when you've worked a Saturday and felt good about it. Okay. Transport is the distance that stuff travels, not people stuff. I won't make much of a joy argument other than the fact that when we buy things in China or places far away, you kind of have to guess about your inventory, Right? Yeah. And we have to design in how many weeks for transport? Six weeks. So we're a little bit further away from the customer because we source things far away. Do you ever guess wrong? Okay. And then. So we'll call that a defect. Correct. And then we have to rework it. So we add value or add cost to racket. Does that make sense? Really expensive. So I would argue that having A near shore production facility for some of your fresher ideas could be a strategy you might want to consider in the future. Does that make sense? There are companies that do that in your industry and they're really quick. You know who they are, right? Yeah. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to see a trend and in season, get that trend into the store? How would our customers feel if we were not just fashion authority, but we actually delivered that stuff super fresh? Yes or no? How big would the market be if that was truly all about us? We found a way to do that. Kind of big, kind of fun. How fun would it be to chase after that stuff? I would even like that. And I'm not even a guy who can dress himself, so. Had to FaceTime with my wife just to make sure I looked okay today. And she thought it was wrong. Like, no, it's fine. I got black on black should be okay. Too much black, evidently. So, okay, moving on. So overproduction. Let's define what is overproduction? Too much stuff. Kind of too much stuff. Somebody would argue, well, that might be inventory. It's the most evil of the waste. It's the one thing we want you to know. Overproduction is super bad. Any guesses? Doing too much. Doing more than what? More than is needed. More than is needed. Really, really great. So it's making more than the customer needs now. So you can see there's a quantity element in that description more. There's an identity element, which is who decides if you're doing stuff in your garage, you're the customer. And then a timing element which is here, the now. So if I'm looking through a system, I'm looking for evidence of overproduction. Because if I find that, that's the first thing I need to go to the president with and say, hey, all that other stuff is fine and dandy, but if you don't fix overproduction, we can't help you. So when I find batch work, batches of things, I know you have overproduction. No thinking required. Just it is what it is. Yeah, it's not judging, it just is what it is. It fits the definition. If I hear victims, I can't fix that. If I wanted to get an iPad, I'd have to buy it myself. Yeah. If I hear silo speak where it's us versus them, usually good indications of overproduction as a system choice. And if it's push, everything is scheduled by push. I know we have overproduction. So let's do the opposite. Of batch. What do we think is the opposite of batch work? Bit. Okay. So move in the direction of smaller batches until you get to bit. What is the opposite of push? Pull. Right. Really good. And if you add that to the word truth, which is one of the things we believe very strongly in, you kind of have the antidote to the seven ways. If you know where you're at, you know where you're going, you know where your colleagues are, you trust their yes to be yes. We're doing the right things at the right time for the right reasons. You're working in little bits to the customer's pull. You're not going to be talking about waste so much. You're going to be talking about how big is this business going to get. And the faster you do that, the more joy you're going to have. Because when you remove waste, you'll find joy present abundant joy. It's crazy. What do we know about truth? What does truth do? Builds trust. There's a saying, Truth will what set you free. Truth sets you free from what? You're quoting somebody kind of famous. Truth will set you free from. Huh. Kinda. No kinda. Slavery. Truth will set you free from slavery. Two missing the mark. Have you ever felt like a rework slave or. I'm just a meeting slave. I just go there. I'm just a data clerk. I'm just a slave. I just slave. They're not using my talent to do anything valuable. Have you ever felt like a slave? Yes or no? How does it feel as a human being to feel like a slave? Okay. Why would we go to work and let somebody enslave us to waste? Why do we do that? We kind of need to eat. Right. You work in an organization that doesn't want you to waste your talent anymore and they at the highest levels or the lowest levels in Nordstrom speak understand that the only way we can do this is to do it together. You're in a position to change for generations to come. The way Nordstrom lives, breathes, works. The next version of you coming to organization can live totally differently if we get this right. Yeah. I'll give you some examples of systems and tell me if they're overproduction. Yeah. Email in general, does it fit the definition of overproduction? Yeah, it's frequently copy all and it's for sure pushed. How many emails do you get in a day? Oh Lord. Seriously? More than 100. How do you get your job done? Okay. You do it at night? Yeah. So when you got your first email was kind of exciting. You have mail. Yay. And then it got not funny after, you know, one day at work. Right. How many emails do you think I get in a day from my internal folks, my internal colleagues? Yeah. Below 10. And we're as big as we've ever been, as crazy as we've ever been, and I spend a lot of my time with you all. So there are other ways to live. I want to encourage you to think about that one. Yeah. The way Starbucks makes drinks for us today or the E bar. Overproduction. Yes or no? When you order a mocha your way. No. No. Why? It's a bit to your pool and if you watch closely, you can tell whether it's going to suck or not. Right. So Starbucks, once they started understanding one piece flow, they had a problem with trying to get the people to do it right. And what they found was if they just took the pitcher size down from like a jug to just a drink at a time, that that would cause the discipline they needed to make sure they made one drink at a time. Have you ever walked into Starbucks and seen a queue of stuff and you know it's going to suck? Right? Yeah. Right. What if Starbucks thought, hey, McDonald's in the 80s, that's a great business model, we're going to have heat lamps for mochas and lattes and whatever else that they. What would you know about the quality of that drink? Would it be your way? Not so much. Yeah. French language high school Jeff, you have to guess if you've been here before, don't tell the answer. Was it over production? Yes or no? French language high school Jeff. This guy. Yes. Why? Why? Was it overproduction? Was it batch? Yes or no? How many years do you have to get in university? Like two or three. Right. So three years of French, Was it pushed on me? Yeah. What did I learn? I learned a song. Not in class. That's it. That's all I can remember. We know. And a song. Yeah, yeah. If you want to learn as a kid today, how do kids learn? Do they do batch push or when they actually want to know something. What is the method? If you're a curious kid, you want to learn about something. Let's say you want to jump start a car and you're nine years old with your big sister. So they pull the bit of information and this kid, the 9 year old, when he was 9, called said, dad, we jump started the car. It was really cool. I'm like, have you told mom yet? No. Okay, let's keep. Okay. Don't Tell mom. Tell me more. How did you know how to do that? And his answer was YouTube. I asked him then how did you know the video was a good video? What was his answer? It worked, but he knew before. It was views and likes and comments. I think they read. Yeah. So then they actually jump started. It's a yellow pickup in the back. You can look at it and go, that needs to be jump started every time. What's the next thing they do after they've done something? They share it. They tell the whole world, hey, we're the jump start kids, if you want to know. Jump start. We know how to like this for whatever. Try to make their own channel. So they do seek truth through the influencers. They pull a bit that they need. They do the work and then they teach it. That's how human beings actually learn. You heard a lot of old people make fun of the millennials as being lazy and not wanting to work. The difference is that you all know how to work in a way that doesn't have waste and you're unwilling to work with waste. Kind of. And I'm stereotyping. If you fit into that, my kids will never want to work in a place that wastes their talent. I will beg them not to work in that place. I hope you will, too. Would you want to send your kids into a job where you're going to spend four hours a day polishing crap? If there are other options available, yeah. Okay. Cafeteria food as you know it today. Overproduction. Yes or no? It's under the heat lamp. That's a clue, right? Yeah. Okay. Can overproduction happen in the context of the home relationship with, let's say, somebody you love? Yes or no? Yes. Okay, if you've heard this before, I'm sorry, you're here for a repeat, but I actually did this. So my bride, her name is Stacy. Been married almost 30 years, which is incredible because she's pretty great. She suffers from anxiety. It's a medical thing, for sure. And now we're old enough where things are starting to break. I actually noticed how wasteful she was in the kitchen one day, and I thought, I can fix her. Super smart. Yep. So she went away for three days, and me and the big kids rearranged her kitchen for her. We got rid of all the dishes that weren't needed. There's a bunch of ones that were just pretty for special occasion. And like, let's be clear, those never get pulled out. Everybody has a dish. If you want to eat, you'll clean the dish you messed up. We organized the cold thing, the fridge, got rid of all the extra food, and in the pantry, we made a two bin system, much like we have next door for the coffee and stuff. It was beautiful. And when she came home from her weekend, we said, hey, we want to empower you to use your new kitchen. Hope you're going to love it. How do you think that went? Okay. So did I lead with overproduction? I could argue it wasn't even leading, but I did that. Yeah. Yeah. Would my littlest kid at the time know that there was a defect? Dad's in trouble, yes or no? Yeah, for sure. Was I transporting dishes back to the place where it belongs? I actually did. I had boxes of them. Yeah. Yeah. Was I searching for a safe place to sleep and arming the. I can beat her if I have a step on her. I'm faster than her still. I actually did that. I had all kinds of noisemakers so that when she came, you know, after me. Yeah. I'd be able to run. I did that. Yeah. It's funny if you didn't work there. Was I trading my cash for dishes because I broke some dishes in the process? Yes. Was I choosing to rework my conversation with my bride because I want to stay married, only want to do that once? Was I choosing to? Yeah. And at this age, being a dude is not an excuse. I had to learn that. So I'm like, hey, I'm a dude. I didn't know. She said, no, you're an idiot. It's different. Went around that a few times. Really? Great. And then was I waiting for things I care about? Yes or no? Overproduction causes and hides all the wastes. Yeah. So was it my motivation there or my method? What was wrong? Yeah. So it's a method thing. I care deeply about. Her anxiety will hurt her. I want to spend my life with her. My motivation was really to try to help her and me have a longer life together. My method sucked. Okay. I have no doubt that most of the people at Nordstrom really want to do what we do for our customers. The motivation seems to be there. Would you agree? And we're talking about methods, and the methods are kind of jacked up, to be honest and open. Only we can fix. The methods make sense. Yeah. So that's the seven ways.

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