GA 271 | Scientific Thinking as a Lifestyle with Panos Efsta

Most importantly is our ability to really widen our options and look at things, you know, what is possible versus, you know, what's impossible.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Panos EFTA to the show. Panos has recently published a new book called Seeing to Understand. As you'll hear, Panos had a very specific problem he was trying to solve by writing this book. Namely, he needed a scientific thinking lifestyle coach to leave behind with his clients to ensure the gains they achieved with his help didn't slip away. During the show, we explore many topics, including some of the struggles Panos has had over his career and how he overcame them. The show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 271. You can also check out GEMBA Academy's Lean Learning system over@gembaacademy.com with a fully functional trial. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Panos, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Wonderful. Thank you for having me, Ron.

All right. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on. So. All right, well, hey, I'm excited to finally have you on the show. We've seen each other on airplanes and katakans and everything else. Right, that's right.

That's right.

So good to finally connect with you on the podcast. Hey, so really we're going to talk about your book that you just released, Seeing to Understand and for sure. I encourage everybody to go out and get that. I got some specific questions or not. But, but you know, I really want to dig into your. Just kind of. You talk about lifestyle.

Right.

Throughout your book and I want to just explore what that really means. But before then, pioneers. I know you've, you've heard on the podcast before. We like to begin all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Absolutely. So in the quote that I'm going to use today, it's been repeated throughout the book several times in bold letters. And then the quote goes, as you know, there is nothing arbitrary or unintentional about scientific thinking. So that is the baseline of what I believe and what the book is about as well.

Got it, Got it. All right, panelists, tell us about your background, how you first came to learn about continuous improvement. And then besides being a prolific author, what are you up to these days?

Far from it. Right. So I started almost 15 years ago as a process engineer, and then I had the opportunity to grow my capability at Modin Manufacturing Co. In 2008, I had an Amazing boss Tom Roberts. He was my engineering manager over at the Ringwood plant in, in Illinois. And that's where pretty much I got exposed to the continuous improvement foundations, particularly Toyota Kata. Modin was one of the first facilities in organizations that Mike Rother beta its book. So we had a lot of fun with the team there, with the engineering team and it got me very interested. Of course I got involved into the whole lean Six Sigma world. Not so much for the belt, for the black belts and the master black belt level, but primarily for me to able to connect the dots. And really this is what started becoming interesting for me around how arbitrary and unintentional we start becoming sometimes, if not often. And from there on I moved into more full time roles in lean Six Sigma, you know, continuous improvement, operational excellence. In the last four years I've started my own business with my wife Kate and you know, we're really focusing around Toyota Kata and twi.

Got it, got it. All right. And you're based out of Dallas, right? Big D?

That is correct. Yes, that is correct.

All right. But sounds like you're on an airplane quite a bit, huh?

Yeah, either on an airplane or in a car, whichever is more convenient at the moment.

Got it, got it, got it. All right, so seeing to understand you just released this book and before we get into the book I notice it's a very lean production system as far as printing and so forth. Talk about that.

Yes, actually you're the second person telling me that. So if we teach all about being lean, we should live that lifestyle as well. The book is created through my experiences the last 15 years. All the struggles and all the failures I've had deploying any form of continuous improvement primarily around Toyota car and twi. Those are pretty much my reflections, what I have learned and how I use those reflections to evolve my experiment the next time around. And it's the book is made for the practitioner, is not necessarily made for the executive that will make the decision are we going to go lean Six Sigma way or the Cutaway? Yes, they can read it, they can learn a lot about it, but the book is made for the practitioner because one thing I've realized in doing this for the past four years is in a lot of it. I want to mention that partnering with Brandon Brown over at Continuous Coaching Commitment, he's been a great mentor to me as well as Skip Stewart over at Baptist Memorial Healthcare. One thing that came clear to me is that it's not easy to leave those teams and come back to them a week after or Even a month after. Because as an external coach, it's hard to keep that constant connection with those teams. You know, as we say, you know, resources are not limited. So the book is created so they can have them on their hands and they can use it. They can have an external codes and guide with them at all times. So if they want to reference something that they don't know, they have a hard time understanding, they can always reference him through the book and experiment. So when I come back as an external coach, I can really review the reflections rather than keep them stale in. Then, you know, they haven't done anything. And as a result of that, you know, you kept. You keep building entropy and the more you keep building entropy, you're most likely to abandon the whole system.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you mentioned earlier in that section that you just mentioned writing about and exploring and maybe reflecting on struggles that you've had. What's been. Ask you to be a little vulnerable here. What's been hard for you as it relates to scientific thinking. I'm sure it's not always easy. Sometimes it's really difficult. Sometimes we learn air quoting more than we hope. What I mean by that is things don't go well and so we have to. We still learn, which is good. But what's been hard for you in.

This journey the hardest is being intentional and getting away from any arbitrary decisions. And that's why I use that theme throughout the book and sitting back and reflecting, taking all the components and the foundation of the Toyota Kata as well as the TWI programs. And lately a lot of the process behavior charts that Dr. Donald Wheeler has put forward the last, you know, years. I think putting all together, it just dawned on me that it's a perfect marriage. Those are the three components that really support scientific thinking. Anything else outside of that, it has a hard time fitting in because it's really based on intentional decisions. So, for example, I've caught myself several times and I saw that on my early years at Mondin Manufacturing Company where we're applying, where we're starting the journey on Toyota Kata, that my decision on even a target condition on a simple. I wouldn't call it simple, but now maybe it's simple to me, but back then it was overcomplicated, I guess. How do you set up the next target condition, you know, two or three weeks out in really was. Looking back, it was based on my preference, what I thought it was right. You know, I thought, you know, what I thought it was the right direction. So based on that, and I Think we started talking about this a little bit. You mentioned this. I was fighting my confirmation bias, the same thing when I was grasping my current condition, I was going out there to see the process, but I was doing this alone. And what I realized now, I was pretty much confirming my bias. I was not really grasping my current condition. So then I was coming back, really, and I was putting something under the current condition that it was my belief, not what was actually happening. And then my target condition now was way off because it was based on my belief what the process should look like. And looking back, and I said, oh, my gosh, how much unintentional my thinking was back then. And I'm pretty sure I have some traces of that too. Now. I'm not saying it's perfect, but the hardest time was really being intentional on my thinking. And as a result, your actions, you know that they're going to accompany that they're not going to be intentional as well.

Boy, you know, confirmation bias is something that I've actually really been thinking about a lot over this last year, and it's something that I don't feel we in the continuous improvement community talk about or acknowledge enough. Because, man, you're right. And I don't mean just continuous improvement. I mean think about, oh, you want to go buy this new car? Okay. And what do you do? You just look up every article that talks about how amazing that car is. Right? And we are naturally drawn to that confirmation, right versus googling what's wrong with name of the car, or, you know, horror story name of the car? You know, like, we just don't do that enough. So acknowledging that weakness of the human person, how do we fight that? When we are seeking to deeply understand a current condition or trying to set an appropriate target condition, how do we battle confirmation by it? Because it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to do it.

Absolutely. And there's a great book out there by the Heath brothers, Stanford professors. It's called Decisive. And he talks all about the villains of decision making. And I found it very interesting going through this book because confirmation bias was one of the four villains. But most importantly is our ability to really widen our options and look at things, what is possible versus what's impossible. And often, especially in the continuous improvement world, we tend to fight our bias in such a way where not only we see only what we believe, not what is actually real, but also what is possible. Those are the things that I find that Kata and TWI help us overcome as long as they Put together in sequence, they really help us overcome those villains.

Yeah, I just had our mutual friend Skip Stewart on the show and you know, he's obviously very passionate about. Wow, Skip's passionate about everything. And I know he's listening. Hey, Skip. But we spent some time talking about the importance of getting the facts right within jr and that is right. Golly, again, very, three very simple words, get the facts. But how often do we not have the facts before we are jumping to conclusions or, you know, getting emotional, blaming whatever it might be, where if we would just stop and read the card and more important, certainly act on the card, we would be in so much better shape.

That is absolutely right. And you know, last week Kate, my wife, was teaching junior and really we got some feedback in regards to, oh well, this seems very, you know, very baseline, you know, very basic and really this is for beginners and I'm staying back and as we having this reflection discussion with Kate and we say, well, how many of the examples they brought up during the junior they really took action that really matched the four step method and there was a gap there. So again, we're fighting that bias. Just because I have the executive experience, I have maybe my degrees and my education in place, then I know it all. And that's, I think the biggest mistake. We fail to get the facts on ourselves as well. So that's emotional intelligence hasn't kicked in yet.

Exactly. Hey, so let's jump back into the book. So in seeing to understand, you spend a lot of time talking about scientific thinking as a lifestyle, which is interesting to me because, you know, when you think about lifestyle, what does lifestyle mean? Lifestyle with the rich and famous or lifestyle.

Right.

It's like, it's a very powerful word. So what do you mean that scientific thinking should be and can be a lifestyle? Give me an example.

So the context behind the word lifestyle is that you cannot just apply it when you come in at 8 o' clock in the morning at work and then you turn the switch off at 5 o' clock when you punch out or you know, when you go home and you say, I'm only going to apply scientific thinking. And when I'm at work, I found out that in my personal life this carries over to everything that you do. So for example, as I was going through the motions of writing the book in the reflections, I caught myself really applying the same foundations that I had learned through Toyota Kata and TWI at my doctorate program and how I was approaching my education. I found the same thing when myself and Kate were having any discussion. We will really start with the JR card, kind of the four step method and getting the facts, and then wait and decide. So I said, hold on a second. What we're doing here is we have a. You know, the whole scientific thinking has spilled over into our everyday life. And it dawned on me that, well, you know, just like you mentioned the car example, you know how you pick a car, everything is really building on us being intentional. So you cannot just turn it off the moment it becomes a habit. And a great example is, and I learned that from watching Brandon Brown, is when he's teaching the Domino's class, right? You cross your arms and then pretty much you see how you feel confident crossing your arms. But then if you try to switch that around and maybe put your left arm on top of the right arm or vice versa, you feel very uncomfortable. So you're trying to build a habit, you're trying to build a routine that is. Then it's going to become second nature to you. So you cannot really say, I'm going to build a routine between these four walls of my work and then forget about it once I go home or once I go play soccer, golf, or whatever that is, or go to the gym. So that becomes automatically a lifestyle because it's a habit that carries over and follows you throughout your day. And I think through that lifestyle, you get to affect people around you as well.

You know, I got a funny story. I was thinking about even doing a podcast all on its own, but probably I won't because it's very specialized topic here. I built a chicken coop recently. Now actually, let me back up. This is more like a chicken mansion. This thing that I just built for my wife. She's long wanted chicken.

Nice.

And we live on an acre. So he's like, okay, we found a little spot. So I build this coop. And I'm not the handiest guy right out there, right? I mean, I can swing a hammer a little bit, but I'm not, you know, you know, you're not going to be watching YouTube videos of me or anything building things and. But what I found myself doing was instead of getting overwhelmed by the fact of, oh, I got to build a coop, then I got to build the chicken run and this and that. And there were so many things that I didn't know how to do. What I did is I just broke it down, right? And I said, what's the first thing I got to do? You know, and YouTube's your friend, right? So I would go and watch a YouTube video or a couple YouTube videos. There's a lot of chicken coops out there. And next thing you know, I had my next step, right? And then I would see what I was going to learn, and it just continues. So you're right. I mean, when you adopt this lifestyle or this way of thinking, it permeates all aspects of your life. Whether you're at work solving some amazing, you know, problem with your company, or you're building a chicken coop in your backyard. You can use these to use scientific thinking to navigate all phases of your life.

Absolutely. You're absolutely right. You know, and in the book I write about, you know, the roadrunner that kids show back in the day was, you know, one of my favorite when I was growing up. And it's funny, you know, looking, you know, kind of looking back in the coyote trying to catch the roadrunner. He was really always very unintentional. You know, of course he wanted to eat dinner, right? He wanted to have its favorite dinner, which was the roadrunner. But the coyote was never successful in catching the roadrunner. And looking back, you know, I saw. Oh, my gosh, this is very ingenious because it's really showing you what happens when you become. When you are arbitrary in your thoughts and you're very unintentional in your. In your actions. You were never going to eat your favorite dinner. Right? You were never going to have any tangible results. And really, you never show in those comics any reflection for the coyote. And there's one episode where, you know, he leaves a little sign that says, okay, wise guys, you know, you always want me to catch him. Now what do I do? So it's, you know, it hit, you know, it shows that kind of how the coyote hits the threshold of his knowledge. But really, scientific thinking for me is not a form. It's not a board. It's not a whiteboard. It's not any specific form on the board. It's not the dominoes. It's not just Toyota Cara. I think it's putting everything together, building on the foundation of Toyota Cara and adding the TWI programs, the knowledge that we're getting and the skill set from those, and even the process behavioral charts and the way we're looking at the context of the data, everything, it becomes the perfect nucleus around scientific thinking.

Yeah, Beautiful. Beautiful. Something else that I know you're passionate about, Panos, is making sure that we don't fall into the trap of scientific thinking being a tool or a project or something like that. Why is that so hard for us to grasp? Within the continuous improvement world.

It's interesting you said that because as we were wrapping a client last week, they would keep talking about the word project and they will look at me laughing. I was like the red flag indicator that this is not a project has no ending date. I think we're getting caught and I've seen myself getting caught because we want to wash our hands clean. This is off my table. What's next? And the reason we do this is because we feel more fulfilled by putting things through our, you know, our, you know, through our hands and through our vision. Getting them processed, then pushing them off to, you know, to the next task. And then the more we, things we process, the more fulfilled we feel. But in reality it's how much we learn. So it's better to do one task right and really learn a lot versus do multiple and learn nothing. And I see this over and over again because we live in a very fast paced world. We look for problem solvers. And after talking through several couple of years with Skip Stewart, I said, skip, we need to be obstacle hunters, not problem solvers. And as we were talking, obstacle hunting is really about first understanding your, your obstacle is really understanding and appreciating that obstacle because that is the obstacle that actually is going to teach you a lot, not the solution and working a lot in healthcare. I've realized that, you know, nurses, they're such a great assessors and their, their, their foundation, their thinking is, you know, based on assessing the patient. And I said, oh my gosh, you know, this is what we need to be. We need to be like this awesome nurses regardless of the industry you are, that really understands the obstacle before applying any form of, before even thinking about designing a solution. An example that I have in the opening of the book talks about, you know, walking into the doctor and you know, with low abdominal pain and the doctor sees you and says, okay Ron, you know, I think we should just put you through, you know, surgery and remove your appendix. I mean I said people would freak out, they would just run away from the emergency department because they expect the doctor to really feel them, assess them, do some blood work and say, okay, yes, we verify that it's time for you to remove your appendix, otherwise it's going to burst or it's something else and we're going to treat it this way. We don't realize it on everyday life when we don't do the proper assessment of the things that happen around us. And same thing happens when we were talking before about confirmation bias. If we don't really assess the current condition. We almost acting like that doctor that will tell you, okay, you have low abdominal pain. So the best thing that I know is let me put you through the surgery room. So everything, all of that feeds into scientific thinking. Really slow down and understand the context of your environment so you can make a better decision. Not necessarily to hit a home run, it's a better decision so you can learn the most run. And that's the gap we have nowadays. We see everything as a project because we looking at things into completion, we're not looking at things to learn from.

Yeah. I think it's also because we humans, we're dopamine hungry, we want dopamine. Right. The research on dopamine has been evolving over the years in that that the dopamine is actually once you've had experienced something, you know, like a very unfortunate example, but it's powerful example is someone who's addicted to some sort of drug. You know, the first time theythey receive the drug, they feel that feeling, right. That they like. Well, then they. But going forward, the dopamine actually spikes before they take the drug. You know, so it's almost the process of getting the drug. They can see a picture of the drug and their dopamine levels spike. So I feel like this is also a battle that we always want to have that check mark. We always want to cross something off the list because it makes us feel good. Right. And so this is contrary in a way to scientific thinking. Sometimes it's not about the end, it's about the process as we talk about. Right?

That is absolutely right. I was teaching a JI class and as we were going through the 10 hour course, you know, one of the attendees mentioned as to well, my goal is I have to have all these people trained by the end of every day and I cannot train them one person at a time. And all the feedback I was kind of getting from that individual was pretty much we were trying to put a check mark, right. And said I did this, I did that. You know, what's next, I did my job. But reflecting back as we were trying to really sit back and reflect as to the success and failures and what we have learned over the past few months doing it that way, you know, it was becoming so obvious that boy, oh boy, we have run people through a training program that we think they have been trained. Right. This is the confirmation bias because we never really looked at what actually was happening on the shop floor where action takes place. But we on the other end, as trainers, we Said, well, I did my job, I trained Ron. Ron now it's on his own and it's the supervisor's job now. So reflecting back, we saw the necessity of really slowing down and understanding that teaching somebody is going to be different for two individuals to learn the same job because they have a different starting condition, which comes back to scientific thinking. You cannot just teach people the same way, even if it's the same content. You have to really adjust your content to the level of the experience of the individual you're teaching. Because everybody has different target, I mean, different starting conditions. Even if they're heading on the same direction, their paths will be different. And a great example is, I mean, Ron, I mean, you went to college and I went to college. I mean, we dealt with different directions, right? Different starting conditions. And I'm pretty sure we have different obstacles to overcome. So you cannot really copy paste solutions. And we are in such a. We have taken the whole best practice mentality the wrong way. Instead of really from trying to understand the reflections of others that have had success implementing a system or implementing a solution, we're really looking to copy, paste, paste it, paste it in our environment in order to move on faster forward. And I think that's the Achilles symptom that we have to deal with.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, well, panelists, thank you so much for coming on. I want to definitely get you to share what's the best way for folks to get their hands on their on scene to understand your new book?

So the best way is, you know, they can go on our website, www.uspi, like, you know, Apple PI LLC US, and then they can choose a copy either in the healthcare field or in the manufacturing and services that will take them, you know, by clicking on each, the version of the book that they will prefer, it will take them to the printing site and they can order their copies. And again, we make it in such a way the process is very lean, so it can be very. The pricing should be optimal for the readers because I want all the readers to be able to get this for the practitioners and be able to really benefit from having almost the panels in 288 pages to carry with them every day.

And Kate.

Right, that's right. That's right. And also, you know, Ron, as I said before, this is the experience and reflection, everything that I have learned from Brandon Brown, from Skip Stewart, from Tom Robers, you know, from, from reading Mike Rother's books and Patrick Robb and his work on TWI, as well as, you know, Dr. Donald Wheeler. So it's really again, all my reflections and everything that I have learned from failing primarily and also how to turn those into really successful implementations.

Yeah, I love it. Beautiful. And we're going to link to everything in the show. Notes. This will be episode 271 so folks can go to GembaPodcast.com look for episode 271. We'll link to Panos, to the website there and then also your LinkedIn, I guess. Are you LinkedIn guy?

Absolutely, absolutely. I try to keep busy as much as I can.

Got it, got it. Yeah, we'll put you, I don't know, you a Snapchat or panels.

Be honest, social media I'm putting my hands on is LinkedIn. I don't think I'm time for anything else at this point given, you know.

Everything that I'm, you know. I know there's a few people at a Lean world who I'm like, hey man, how much work are you really doing? You spent a lot of time over there on Twitter and this and that. I'm like, come on people, I don't have time to open that stuff.

Yeah, anything. You put the word out, no doubt about it. But I think, you know, LinkedIn is kind of my primary resource where I share a lot of the videos that we make. And in this past weekend, actually we share a lot of live videos of coaching cycle using the book. So I advise folks to if they visit our LinkedIn page, they will be able to see some videos of really feedback on the book from practitioners and also how they use the book to jumpstart their scientific thinking journey. Got it.

Panos EFTA P A N O S E F S T A Is that right?

That is correct.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, again, we'll put that in the show. Notes Episode 271 canvapodcast.com Panos, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I know our paths will cross again at some future conference or airport or whatever it is, but pretty soon we're.

Going to meet at Katakan 6 in Austin in February for sure. No doubt about it.

For sure. All right, thanks again, Panos. Keep up the good work and we'll talk soon.

Thank you, Ron. It's been a blessing. Appreciate you.

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