GA 270 | The Simplicity of Lean with Philip Holt

And again, it's about building trust in the team. And if you do that on a daily basis, you can really form a strong bond amongst that team where you actually see them starting to help each other out and work with each other and start the first steps towards becoming an autonomous work group.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Philip Holt back to the show. Now, as you'll hear, Philip has had a very successful, continuous improvement career that's seen him transition from a young apprentice 30 years years ago to senior vice president of a multinational aerospace company. And while this is impressive, the thing I most appreciate about Philip is his willingness to share his story with others, which he's done through two books, Leading with Lean and the Simplicity of Lean. So on today's show, Philip provides some actionable insight into both of these books, including an introduction to the idea of mosquito leadership. The show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything we discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 270. You can also check out GEMBA Academy's Lean Learning System, which, among many other things, includes courses on 5s, the 7 wastes, and value stream mapping. Simply go to Gemba Academy.com to learn more. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. All right. Well, Philip, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

It's going very well, Ron. Thank you. Really appreciate you having me back on the show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were talking before we hit the record button that I was like, well, yeah, I looked it up this morning. I was like, ah, you know, Philip, he was just on not that long ago. And come to find out, it was episode 55 in April of 2015. So I guess we've had a few sleeps since then.

Absolutely. Time flies when you have informed.

Oh, my goodness. And so, yeah, I guess a lot has happened in your life in the last four years, so maybe we'll catch up on that. But. But before we dig deep into the topic of the day and your background and all that, Philip, as you know, we like to begin our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

I do, Ron. It's a little bit of a longer one, but it kind of epitomizes one of the reasons why I wrote my latest book, the Simplicity of Lean. So it's a Steve Jobs quote, which is a little cliched, I guess, but it's perfect for me. The quote is, that's been one of my mantras. Focus on simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

So why do you like that one so much?

Because to me, it's the essence of what lean thinking is all about. It's really about making processes and delivering value to the customer as simple as possible. But it is hard work. I think we all know that. I think anybody who's tried to do it or is in the middle of a Lean transformation knows that it's difficult to move the organization in the right direction to make things simple. So to me, this just epitomizes both the benefits and challenge of lean thinking.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. All right, well, Philip, in case people don't Remember back from 2015, or I haven't followed your journey on LinkedIn, tell us a little bit about your background, how you first got introduced to all this continuous improvement stuff that we deal with. And then tell us what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so I'll try and make it a very potted history, Ron. So I basically started an industry just over 30 years ago. I started as an apprentice and was a design engineer for plastics injection mould. So really a little bit detached from what I'm doing now. And even that far back, I started to read up and understand the principles of Lean TPS Six Sigma, and was applying the toolkit and methodologies of Lean in Six Sigma for many years and having, I would say, limited success. But one thing that did really occur to me through all those years was that while on a project basis or individual point basis, we might see great success, it never seemed to improve the whole in a substantial way. So about 11 years ago, I was fortunate enough to join the Simply Phillips team in my previous company, Royal Phillips. And it was a relaunch of the Lean program. And we started with a small team that kind of grew as we developed our thinking and started to really get massive improvements to the company. And it was really then that I started to understand what lean thinking really was about. So it wasn't about tools, it wasn't about techniques, it wasn't about methodologies. It was really about how we think, how we apply simplicity to the process and to the business. And I was very fortunate. I went out to Japan to a Kaikaku experience, which was organized by John Miller, who I think, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And it was really eye opening. It was really eye opening to realize that it's a philosophy, it's a way of thinking it's not a toolkit. It's not methodologies. And that was it, really. Ron. I was kind of. I was completely and utterly sold on what we needed to do. And then I spent the last 12 years, 1112 years practicing. And I'd say that I'm still practicing. I'm still trying to get better every day, but really, really enjoying doing it.

Yeah. I know you and John have had a long friendship and relationship, so I know he'll. He's listening right now, and he's gonna. He's gonna send me a nasty email for this next question because he hates it when I do this, but what's your favorite. Your favorite John Miller story?

My favorite John Miller story, To be honest with you, it's one that I heard secondhand. So if you know the two second Lean, Paul Akers. It's a story he tells about how he really understood what lean meant when he had both John and Brad go into his factory, and he really thought he had a lean factory. He thought he'd applied the tools, the techniques, the methodologies per the books that he'd read. And then he experienced John, I would say, disabusing him of the idea that his sight was. His factory was lean. And it's a comical story to listen to. So there's a few experiences I've had with John which have been quite fun, but I think that's the most recent one that I've heard that really made me smile and really epitomizes what John's great at doing. He's great at removing the scales from your eyes and helping you to see.

Yeah, he hates any kind of publicity of him, but I've always said that, you know, I believe John's one of the brightest lean thinkers walking the earth today, you know, so we're all fortunate to know him. So. Yeah. Hey, so, all right, Philip, by the way, I don't think you finished your background. What are you up to these days?

Yeah, thank you. I didn't finish that off. So, yes, I'm working for GKN Aerospace. We consider ourselves the world's premier tier one supplier to the aerospace industry. And I'm the SVP for global transformation. And we're currently at the beginning of a very exciting Lean transformation. The company has been applying Lean tools and methodologies for many years, and we've got some great people here with some great knowledge and experience. But. But we've decided to build on that to really accelerate what we're doing and bring in a more systematic approach to Lean. And I'M really excited to do that. So we're really at the beginning of something I think we're going to be writing a book about in a few years time because I see this as something special.

Yeah, beautiful. So let me get this right. 30 years ago you started as a young apprentice and now you're senior vice president of a massive aerospace company. Is that right about right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, your mom and dad must be very proud.

They are, Ron. Yeah. And it's been a fantastic journey as well. Really, I really love what I do.

Yeah. Good, good, good. All right, well, so really what we're going to focus on today, Philip, is you're quite the author and you've written a couple books. One's about to be released and one has already been released. So I think we're going to maybe try to tag team both of them a bit. People can go ahead and buy the one that's available right now, and then we'll have to wait a little bit for the next one, but maybe we'll give a little sneak peek into that. So let's start with the first one, Leading With Lean. Just give us a short synopsis of the book.

Yeah. So Leading With Lean was really kind of. I was inspired to write it to share my experiences, which at the time was kind of eight or nine years into to the Lean transformation with Philips. And the idea is to talk about what makes a Lean leader and how you can actually make a Lean transformation successful. Because I'm really proud of what we. And I say we because it wasn't me individually, but what we as a team, many of us who worked in the Lean Excellence Model in Philips achieved. And it was a fantastic journey. So what I've talked about in Leading With Lean is how can you lead? How can you be the person who helps to take your department, your company, your organization through that journey? And I talk about the four different leadership styles that are required.

Let's cover those four, because one in particular is very, very interesting to me.

Yeah. So the way I've actually shown it pictorially is as a Venn diagram. And if you get all of these four right, you become a lean leader. So the first one is leadership activism. So it's about being somebody who is an active leader. It's not about being an advocate leader, where you tell people, yeah, that's what I want you to do. I support you. It's about being activist. It's saying, come on, this is what we're going to do. Let's do it together. The second one is visible leadership. It's about making yourself visible, so being at the Gemba, being active, and whilst you're being active, being visible. So you act as that role model. But what's really important about that visibility is it's not a facade. It's not doing fancy videos or staged activities. It's about being completely open so that people can see your successes and your failures as you learn and go through that journey. The third one is coaching leadership. So it's about changing into a coaching approach. And I think that's probably one of the things we all find difficult when we go into leadership roles, because most of us get into leadership roles because we're really good at what we do. We're real technical experts in what we do. So we get promoted and become a leader. But leadership itself is about getting the best out of the people who work for you, not telling them what to do. So becoming a coach in leadership is so important. And then finally, mosquito leadership, and this is the one, I kind of coined the term myself. And what it's about is, you know, we talk about spreading things virally and the mosquito leader infects the organization with their enthusiasm, with the opportunity, with the vision. And. And my argument is that there's no excuse. Wherever you are in the organization, don't be a victim of the culture. Don't say you can't figure out how you can. And in your own way, whether it's small or large, infect your colleagues, infect the organization with lean thinking so that you can help to make that organization better.

Now, is there something to the analogy mosquito leadership of. We know when a mosquito bites you, it's a little bit annoying, you know, initially, but, you know, it kind of stays with you, Right?

Absolutely. And there was a little bit of tongue in cheek in the way that I coined that because, yeah, I mean, nobody wants to be stung by or bitten by a mosquito.

Right.

But yeah, it can be a little bit of an irritant because it's about change, isn't it?

Yeah.

And, you know, as we take an organization through change, it can be on comfortable. So it's really about the fact that as a mosquito leader, you are going to infect the organization. And they might be a little bit irritated to begin with, but you've got to keep at it. And the other thing about mosquito is that you're very small. So there's the old African proverb that if you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito. So it's about you're never too small to make a difference.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I want to go back to the third one, coaching. A few weeks ago, Steve Cain, you know, one of my colleagues here at Gemba Academy came on and he's been really digging into just the topic of coaching. He's, he's done some additional training and on coaching and one of the things that, that we talked about or that Steve is passionate about is the fact that, you know, even when we talk about kind of this so, so called, you know, Toyota kata scientific thinking of we've set these target conditions, you know, where we want to achieve something in a couple weeks, that it's not the coach's job to get to the target condition, it's the learner's job to get to the target condition. But oftentimes as coaches, we want them to be successful. Right. So we kind of maybe give them a little bit too much, I don't know, advice, if you will, and versus leading them and coaching them. Why is that so hard, Philip, to stand back and to really coach instead of kind of playing the game along with the learner?

Yeah. I think it's interesting. There's a couple of things I think that you touch upon. That one is, you know, you use the term kata coaching and I think kata coaching is one of the best ways of teaching people how to coach. But again, if we use, if we teach it as a tool instead of teaching it as a philosopher, we, we lose something because people can become almost checkbox in the way that they, they apply it.

Yeah.

So to make people good coaches, we need to coach them to coach. We need to help them to understand the philosophy and the thinking behind what they're doing. So I think that's, that's the first thing. I think the second thing about it is, and this is very much to a western mindset, is we only see our coaching as being successful if they've got what we consider the right outcome. Actually, failure can be the right outcome if the person learns from it.

Yeah.

So that, that to me is kind of a profound part of learning how to be a good coach. It's to learn that sometimes the person you coaching will fail to solve the problem the first time or maybe the second time. The important thing is that eventually you can take the stabilizers off and they learn to ride the bike, metaphorically speaking.

Exactly. It's about learning. It's about learning. It's about learning. Yes. Beautiful. So, all right, the last question on leading with lean, I'm going to ask the Same question on your next book. But what problem were you trying to solve? There's a lot of lean books out there, a lot of leadership books out there. Why did you write another one? What problem were you trying to solve?

So I think that is great question. So the problem I was trying to solve was I think there's some fantastic great books out there and I recommend many of them. What I didn't think that was was a practitioner written book that was really from somebody who'd started off in a leadership position but not at the top of the organization. So, you know, if you think about the lean Turnaround by our fantastic book, but that's a C suite written book. I started my journey at a relatively mid level management position, but still was able to lead a lean transformation and grew my seniority through success, not got success in the lean transformation by being in a senior position. So I felt that there was something there that could maybe inspire people who were in a similar position to the one I was when I started in, how they can be successful. So it was really inspired by that because I spoke at a lot of conferences and got very positive feedback from people and used to have some great discussions afterwards. And I just felt that it would be great to get my knowledge out there in a book. And one thing I would like to say as well is that I've always considered myself very privileged to be in the role that I'm in. All the roles that I've been in, I earn enough money to pay the bills. So the money I earn from the book, my personal earnings, they go to charity. I've never done this for self, for making any money, let's put it that way. It really is about sharing my knowledge and what people can take from that. I think is great.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. All right, good stuff, Philip. So, all right, well, let's transition now into, into your newest book. And these podcasts are evergreen. So you know, we're speaking right now. And what is this? May of 2019. So if someone's listening to this in 2024, it's obviously available. But so, so, so simplicity of lean. Give us the elevator pitch on, on this book, Philip.

Yeah, so I think a little bit back to the quote I gave from Steve Jobs. I think lean is equally simple and complex. And it's simple because the principles, the methodologies are simple. But the organization that you're trying to deploy lean into to change the way of thinking is complex because there's people in there and it's an organism it's got inertia to change, so it's actually quite challenging to make that change. But when you get that change, you create a simplicity in the organization that actually just makes it work so much better for you, for the customer, for the stakeholders that I really wanted to talk about. How do you achieve that simplicity? And it's building upon Leading with Lean. So Leading With Lean was very much about that leadership of the transformation. The simplicity of Lean becomes a bit more granular because some of the feedback I'd had from Leading with Lean was, this is great. We kind of understand what you're telling us, but actually we don't know how to do some of the things you're telling us we need to do. So I felt that it was good and my publisher felt it would be good to write a book that maybe got a little bit more into the details of how you actually achieve this. So it really talks about the elements of changing culture, how to implement Kaizen into the organization, how to make the kind of Kaikaku, the step change activities, work with horseshin, kanry value stream mapping, how to undertake Kaizen events, and how to ultimately conclude with the simplicity of Lean. So it's really hopefully a kind of a manual for how you can actually run your Lean transformation.

So are you open to peeling the COVID back a little bit here on the podcast? I know the book hasn't released yet, but I'm curious to hear some about these elements on changing Culture, perhaps?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No problem at all, Ron. So, yeah, if I look at Culture, the chapters within Culture cover daily management. You know, what is daily management? How do you run comm cells, communication cells? How do you make sure daily accountability and team meetings are in place? But again, at that, both the tool and philosophy level, how do you actually make them work? Not just put boards up, but how do you actually make it work?

Let's talk about that, because that's a tough one. You know, it sounds easy. Just throw a board up and have a morning meeting, right? What else is there to do? So it's up to talk about that one a little bit.

Yes, it sometimes seems as simple as put a board up and talk about it, but it's not because one of the underlying issues is do you really understand how to measure your value stream? Do you understand what the metrics are that are going to measure success? How are you going to ensure that you make your area your value stream visual so that you can actually understand whether you're winning or losing very quickly? And then how would you Ensure that you empower people as close as possible to where the value is added so that they can actually solve problems. Because what we want to achieve is 85, 90% of our problems are solved at the team leader level, the first level of supervision. What I always say, the most important leaders in our business. So what I talk about in the book is how to actually do that. So there's the technical aspect, so putting a comm cell, a communication cell in place, but there's the aspects of how do you develop team leaders, how do you develop people, how do you create trust? And that again goes up to the actual leadership level at the senior level in the, in the site and the organization and about how they should focus on the right things. And one of the key things, of course that always comes back here, and it's always a very interesting discussion is starting with 5s, and not just 5s in the way that it's often applied, cleaning up. But really starting with safety, really understanding what does an organized workplace look like for us. So again, we can make problems visible straight away and we can understand the condition of our value stream at any point in time. Yeah.

You mentioned earlier having visibility to whether or not we're winning or losing is one of my passions when I'm, when I touring a company is I often like to just walk up to and I'm not trying to be, you know, put people on the spot, but I'll ask people, hey, how do you know if you're winning or losing? Or I might even say, are you winning right now? And they'll look at me. I mean, no, like winning the game of your work, you know, your job here. Like are you winning or you're losing and, or do you not know? Right. And it's a, sometimes it's a difficult question because many times they don't know. Right. Because they lack visual management. So how do you go about or how have you gone about Philip, in the past setting up metrics or setting up visual management in such a way that people know real time if we're winning or if we're losing or perhaps we're tied?

Yeah. So again, that's one of the questions I like to ask as well. And I completely agree it's not to out point people on the spot, but it's just to understand are we in control? Do we know what we're trying to achieve on a minute by minute basis. So that's one of the first things we need to do. And again, I'm a great proponent, I'll sound Like a broken record. But I'm a great proponent of starting with 5s, because when you start with 5s, you start to understand your value stream. And a lot of people start with value stream mapping. But actually, I think that 5s is actually done properly, is the best way of understanding the cell and the value stream. So what I like to do is I like to get the people together in that particular sell area with the team leader, with their group leader and say, okay, what are we trying to achieve here? Who is our next customer and what do we need to deliver to them to really make them happy? And it's interesting when you start to have those conversations, because most of the time, people haven't really thought about that. They've come into a job, they've been told, you do this, you press this button, you turn this wrench, you press this lever, and that's what they're focused on doing. Nobody's really had the conversation with them of what are we trying to achieve to make our next customer happy? So having that conversation and then saying, how does that apply to the condition of our workplace? How are we going to apply 5s to make the condition of our workplace conducive towards delivering that customer value? And that starts to then drive the conversation around, how are we measuring ourselves? And there's very simple measurements of metrics at the highest level, your people metrics, or where are you in terms of safety, where are you in terms of engagement? So that's kind of the people and safety elements of it. Then you've got your quality. So how are we going to measure quality? How do we know if we're delivering to the right quality levels? Delivery, performance or how do we know if we're delivering what we need to do at the right time? And then cost, how do we know if we're effective, if we're efficient, if we're delivering at the right cost level and then cash? How do we measure our inventory? How do we know if we've got the right level of work in progress? How do we know whether we've got too much or too little? And if you start having those conversations, you really start to get people thinking about leading indicators, and that's very important. Leading indicators that are going to allow us to know whether we're winning or losing in very short intervals?

Talk about engagement. How do we make measure engagement short of the Gallup poll that we all see and no one's engaged? Right?

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, if you look at the standard Gallup polls across all industries, across all countries, you know, we've got more people disengaged than we've got engaged. So that's a really sad indictment of industry in general. So, yeah, you've got your Gallup polls, but I think you want to have your finger on the pulse. So again, we need to divulge that down to the team leader level so that they can understand whether their people are engaged. So again, big part of a communication cell, a visual display board, is to have on the first part, safety, but also, and you can, you can adapt the terminology, but I just call it simply an emotional state and attendance indicator. And you basically have to. And again, this is about building trust with people so that when you have your stand up meeting with the team, they can either verbally or visually indicate how they're feeling. And it is very much about feeling because what you want to get off people is, is there anything that's actually holding you back from doing a great job today? And it could be about the condition of the environment they're working in. It could be that they've not got materials, it could be that they've had a really bad day at home the night before is whatever they're prepared to share. And again, it's about building trust in the team. And if you do that on a daily basis, you can really form a strong bond amongst that team where you actually see them starting to help each other out and work with each other and start the first steps towards becoming an autonomous work group.

Yeah, trust, right. It almost starts and ends there. Right. If you don't have it, going forward is going to be very, very difficult. Right?

Yeah, precisely.

Exactly. Okay, well, let's maybe wrap things up with just some final thoughts on simplicity of Lean. What else is there that you want folks to know about and to be excited about?

Well, I think for me, it took me a lot longer than Leading with Lean to write it. Leading with Lean was almost in my head, whereas the simplicity of Lean I had to really think about how did I make this valuable? And I'm really pleased with the way it's come out. And I think if I said, what can people really learn from it? I think holistically they can learn a lot. But there's two key things. I think the role of the Lean leader is a chapter that I'm particularly proud of and I think it's chapter 14. So it starts to bring together all of the preceding elements and really explains ultimately what does the role of the Lean leader mean when you're creating simplicity and then the final bit that I think is really nice is chapter 16, which is the penultimate chapter. I've got some personal stories from people I know from around the world who are practicing lean in their own way. And they're not lean practitioners per se, they're people in different leadership roles from all around the world who've shared with me a story of the Lean Journey and how they've brought the simplicity of lean into their own life and organization. So some really nice personal stories that the reader. Can you share one? Well, they're quite long.

Well, maybe just a synopsis.

Yeah, I mean there's a really nice one from Hans van Vuitt, who's the VP for Transformation and head of Implementation at Philips. I've known him for a few years and I asked him about his experiences and he's told a really nice story about his Lean journey which, similar to mine, it started a long time ago, 25 years ago. But how. Actually it's only in the kind of recent five to 10 years that he really started to see the lean philosophy work and understanding that it's more than just tools. So I think Hans tells a nice story there. There's a great story from Larry Hu, who's based over in Singapore, who's actually a lean consultant, but you know, went through a very interesting journey to become a lean consultant. And then even a gentleman called Rene Prainen who is an IT transformation lead at IMG bank in the Netherlands. And he's been non manufacturing all his life, but learns how essentially TPS lean could work even in the banking industry. So some really interesting stories that I think helps the reader to understand that it's not just something in a book, it's not just written words. It really can improve organizations and people work in life when it's applied.

Well, nice, nice. All right, so again, when is this book coming out? Was it November 1st of November.

It's already available for preorder on Amazon and yeah, it will publish on the 1st of November.

Brilliant, brilliant. All right, well I can't wait to get my hands on it, Philip. So we'll put links to everything in the show notes. So this will be. Folks can go to GembaPodcast.com this is going to be episode 270. 270. So we've come a little ways from episode 55. Philip.

Yep.

So hey, thanks for coming on. Philip. How can folks best connect with you?

The easiest way is via LinkedIn. Very easy to find Philip Holt on LinkedIn and always welcome to connect with like minded people and even not so like minded people who just want to learn and share experiences.

Brilliant. Yeah. Again, we'll put that link in the show notes as well, so. Well, Philip, let's not, let's, let's talk maybe before the next five years passes again. So maybe let's not wait so long.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll keep up the great work and you know, I guess next time we talk to you, you'll probably be CEO of some company, you know, or something like that, that we'll follow the journey of the Apprentice. How's that?

That sounds great. Rob, thank you very much for having me on. I've really enjoyed the chat.

All right, you take care. Thank you.

Thank you.

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