GA 276 | Using Lean to Enrich Lives with Ben van Asselt

Don't start all those nerdy Lean tools and stuff, but just listen to their problems and just ask, okay, why is this happening? And why are you doing this? And just work together with the people on the floor, as we call it, on the Gamba. Just work together with them.

Today I'm so excited to introduce Ben Vanisault to the Lean world. Ben, who's from the Netherlands, works with clients dealing with mental and intellectual disorders. Ben has a psychology background, which afforded him the opportunity to truly leverage the people's side of Lean from the very beginning. Now, this episode really inspired me, and I hope you'll listen to the very end, since Ben truly opens his heart to us all. Now, show notes for this episode, which will include links to everything we discuss, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 276. You can also check out Gemba Academy, Lean and Six Sigma Learning Library. And for those interested, we also offer formal Lean and Six Sigma certification at the Green belt, black belt, and Master Black belt levels. Simply go to gembaacademy.com to learn more. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Ben, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Hi, everyone. Thanks. Yeah, well, it's really very good with me here in Holland. Thanks.

Yeah. Holland. So, well, I guess we. You know, yesterday I sent you an email. I was like, I couldn't find an email of what we were talking, and then I remembered, oh, it was over LinkedIn. Yeah. So, yeah, I think we got introduced over LinkedIn. And you have a very powerful story that I'm really excited to get out here to the listeners. So, first of all, thank you for coming on, Ben. I know you are a regular listener to the podcast, and you know how we like to begin all of our shows with our guests sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Yeah, well, yeah, I was thinking a lot about it, especially after our LinkedIn contact. I knew that you would ask me about the quote, so I was like, oh, my God, I need one quote. And let me give you two. And I start with the most important one. The first one is, and I think really it's best suited for this occasion we have now in our conversation. The quote is, just do it.

Yeah, yeah.

For me, it was like I was listening to your podcast for almost a year now, and I do this while I'm running. So that means that, like two or three times a week, you and your guests are teaching and learning me about Lean and Six Sigma and stuff. And while I was Listening. I was thinking, wow, that would be awesome if I was on one of those podcasts, you know? And I was thinking a second after that, well, Mr. Benny, then start with expanding your network on LinkedIn, and let's start with Mr. Ron Pereira himself, and the rest is history. And actually, to be honest, it's the same with my Lean journey. I didn't know what lean was three years ago, and I just hopped on the train and I just did it. Yeah.

Oh, that's wonderful. You know, people, we joke within the community sometimes when we're teaching people about 5s, you know, and they say, well, which is the hardest S? And I always say, start.

Yeah, you're right to start. And don't be anxious about that. It's that it is going wrong, because it will go wrong. Just do it and learn and experiment. I mean, for me, that works very good.

For sure. For sure. Beautiful.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, well, Ben, tell us a little bit before we get into talking about your organization. Tell us about you. Tell us about your background, Ben, and then, you know, and how you first got introduced to all this continuous improvement stuff that we talk about these days.

Yeah, well, my name is Ben Van Asselt. I will do it for you in Dutch.

We were talking about it, and maybe it's pronounced slightly different in English, right?

Yeah, it's slightly different. Slightly different. I work in the Netherlands now on this moment as a black belt Lean Six Sigma program manager or project manager in our healthcare organization. It's called Lunette Sorech. And my background is not in the engineering or IT business whatsoever. I mean, on your podcast, you hear all those nice guests talk about their engineering background. For me personally, I'm in the psychology and orthopedic department. I mean, it's about behavior and people in a way. I hear you say that all the time. Lean is about the people. So there we got it. But, well, three years ago, like I just said, I did not even know what Lean was, and I started my journey with a simple Lean green belt certification. I thought it was nice. That's it. There was no problem for me on that moment. What we had in our organization was a different story. Of course, we had some major challenges, like a shortage on the labor market. There were financial situations because of our government made different choices. But the thing is, what we do is not about engineering. What we do is we take care of people who are, like, mentally disabled. They need treatment, they need therapy, they need support by our professionals. And, well, in a way, people live at our place. So we Are not manufacturing something.

Yeah, yeah. So it's really interesting, you know, coming into, into the, the lean and Six Sigma kind of movement with a, with a psychology background. And boy, I think I, I'm jealous in a way of you, you know, because I'm fascinated with, with psychology, with human behavior and just what makes our, makes our brains work. My wife and I just rewatched the movie A Beautiful Mind, you know, with.

Yeah.

With Russell Crowe, you know, and talking about his schizophrenia and, and just how fascinating our brains are. Right. And complex our brains are. And so, boy, I think you have a big advantage, I would even say, Ben, versus us engineers running around with our spreadsheets and stopwatches. You know what I mean? So before we go even deeper, Ben, on your story, I want to back up just one step. I want to know a little bit more about, about your organization. You know, you mentioned you care for people with mental disabilities or something like this. But tell us more about it. Like what type of people are in there? What's the mission of the organization? Yeah, just. Let's start there.

Yeah. Well, Lunetzor is, as we just said, is an organization for people with mental disabilities. And the people live at our institute during their whole life. Most of them, they. We have people with like autistic problems. Well, we have people who are. Well, really mentally, not as you and me are. Yeah, the, the IQ levels are below 70. So in that way, if you know a little bit about IQ levels for, for us, and I will say this like normal people, we have 110, something like that. It's a. The norm. And these people, they live here, they don't understand the world as you and I do. So in a way, we help them with that. They have the same rights as you and me, but they cannot reach it. They cannot reach the goals that you and I want to reach because they have a mental disability. And we support them with that to reach their own goals. Sometimes you say there is a gap with them and we try to help them to overcome that gap. But we know that these people will never be self reliant. Is that correct in English? Yes. Self reliant as you and me are. So if you look at our organization, we have psychologists, we have people who support them on our little houses. We have. We have our own houses for them, we have our own medical center for them. And in a way, we are pretty big because we have like 3,000 clients. We call them clients. Actually, that's a pretty nice story in a way that a lot of time you hear in healthcare organizations you hear like patients, but in a way that's funny because at the nextor at our company we call them clients. And that's because the word patient comes from the French word patient passance, which, which means. Yeah, to be patient. And in a way that's, that's one of the, of the wastes we have in, in, in our Lean mind. Like the seven ways is waiting. Waiting, you know, so actually when we call them patients, we ask them to wait constantly, but we don't want them, we want them to be active in their own life and we help them with that.

Yeah. Wow, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about it now.

Yeah, yeah, well, and also like your quote, just do it right, you know, starts to play together. Yeah.

But the way is that we have like 300, 3,000, sorry of those clients, but we also have round about 3,000 colleagues employees. Wow. So the ratio, our employee client is like one on one. So that's pretty, pretty big. I don't know how it is in the U.S. but yeah, well, yeah, I.

Don'T think it's like that. I don't know for sure. I don't have the facts. But. So what is your role there at the company, Ben? I mean, I know you're Lean and Six Sigma and. But is this your full time job then, kind of continuous improvement or are you doing other things as well?

Well now in this moment, yeah, it is because I started here as a normal advisor and when the Lean came up, there was a new HR director three years ago and he came from Philips.

Oh yeah.

And he said, well, we have something, we had something, sorry, in Philips and it's called Lean and works pretty well. Maybe it also works for Lunetz or my company. So all the advisors were trained as a green belt. Lean, green belt, sorry, the lean green belt course we got, it was of course from an external party. But all the advice is we never knew what Lean was. But what we do is we advise about financial stuff or we advise about methods for treatment or advice about new policies we have from the government, et cetera, et cetera. So now we could focus because of the training we had of Lean, we could focus on the continuous improvement because there was not a lot of continuous improvement. A lot of times we spoke about continuous improvement. But in a way what we did was we did the damning circle, the pdca and when we reached the last letter, the A, it was not act, it was abandoned.

Okay, okay.

So in a way Lean helped us with that that, okay, now you have a problem. We try to continuous improve it. We try to improve it. And after that you're not finished. Yeah, just, just go on and go on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just begin. Yeah, it's just the beginning.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

So, okay, well, okay, so you guys, you all went through some, some green belt training and you got some, some learned some basics of, of Lean and Six Sigma. What did you do with that information in those early days? Did you, I mean, can you give us an example without. I don't, nothing confidential, obviously, but maybe just an example of a, of a, of a problem or a situation that you were facing with and maybe one of the early wins that you achieved with, with Lean. Can you remember?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. For me personally to get my certification, I needed to do some projects. Of course. Yeah, I think it's everywhere the same.

Yep.

And we had, well, it was not acknowledged as a problem, but we said that the process of getting new clients, the intake processes of the new clients, they thought that those processes were too long.

Okay.

And well, we just started with that to look how long is a process, how many of those new clients are with a high quality placed on the correct treatment, on the correct houses, etc, etc. And what we discovered were that there were too many steps in the process. There were too many checks. People were checking each other. We were sitting together with all the, with all the people who work in those intake processes. So with the Gamba and we asked him, okay, what do you do? And then there was one guy and he told me, yeah, I do this step and I do that step. And suddenly he was stopped by his colleague and, and she said, excuse me, did you just tell that that you did that step? And he said, yeah, yeah. Why? What's the problem? Well, I do that step too. And then suddenly a third person reacted on the same way. So it was, for us, it was like, oh my God, you know, the process we have for many, many years was with so much over processing in it, we didn't even know from each other. I mean, well, the short version was that we could eliminate a lot of that process and now we have a new standard and it's still improving. But the new standard is making it possible that the clients, the new clients we have are faster on the correct spot in our organization. So in a way that's super.

You mentioned early in that description of that problem that you guys thought that it was taking too long. I'm curious, did you actually even have data in the beginning or was it just kind of feeling. And you had to go out and actually collect some data to set a baseline.

Well, it was mind blowing. When we asked the question, do we have data? The answer was what? And then we had to explain them, like, can you show us please, how many days, how many hours or how many people are working in this process? And they were like, well, to be honest, we don't really know. We think that. Well, yeah. So, okay, you're not sure? No. You're not sure. Okay, we have to measure this.

Yeah, well, hey, listen, you know, you're not alone, you know, I mean, you know, even everyone, you know, even here, again by academy, we, we feel like, oh gosh, this is, you know, but we don't really know. Right. So we talk about what's your current condition. Right. And oftentimes we just don't know, you know, or we think we know, but we don't have any facts. It's mostly emotion, it's mostly feelings, it's mostly assumptions. So. Yeah, so don't, don't beat yourself up. It's very normal, I think, unfortunately, to really not.

Yeah, you're right, you're right. And yeah, well, for us, data is sometimes a dirty word because we are in the care business and we are not a hospital. And why I say this is because in a hospital, the patients, it's all about throughput. I mean, it's how many patients we can cure.

Yeah.

Is that the correct word? Yeah, I think, yeah.

Oh yeah, I think it's a, I would say, you know, maybe a traditional healthcare professional, they would want to, you know, from a respect for people perspective, they want to move people efficiently through the system so there's no waste for those, for the client, for the patient, whoever it might be. Right, right, right, right.

And when I, when I paid a visit to those hospitals here in the Netherlands, a lot of hospitals here, they are really lean minded. The first thing they do, they bring you to their obeya room and you see all those charts and you see all those figures and you see all those indicators and I was like, mind blowing. It was amazing. And I thought, okay, we don't have this, this is a problem. And when I got back with this story, everybody was scratching his head like, yeah, but Data, how do we do this? How do we do this? Well, just do it.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, so, so okay, let's continue the story a little bit. So you then obviously have gone on and received more training, right? Get your black belt. And so what prompted that? Like, what was it inside of you that said, I need more of this. I want to go deeper. And how did that work within the organization?

Well, because we started three years ago, to be honest, as a big experiment. Our hr, new HR director came with the story of Lean. So, okay, it was an experiment. And after doing the green belt certification with a lot of colleagues of mine, 20 plus people, we did little improvements like the one I just explained to you, improvements of procedures, processes, how different policy documents came together. And we saw that it worked. So for us, the experiment was a great success. And then the organization said, okay, maybe, maybe we want more, but we don't want it in our staff department. We don't want it in the apartment. Well, we do want it in our staff department, but I mean, we want to make a transition. We want to make it more for the Gemba, where our clients live and where all those people that take care of our clients work. So we needed a higher efficiency of LEAN on the Gamba on the workflow. So I was asked to do the black belt training, the black belt Lean Six Sigma training. And after the training, I would be responsible for the organizational deployment of lean. So that was their question. And again, I had to think about it, of course, because, well, our organization is pretty big. That's one. And for me, I think I'm still a newbie in it. So I was like, okay, am I sure? Shall I do it or not? It's a new step in my career. Yeah, well, you know what my answer was? Of course. Now, yeah, just do it. But I went into the training, I passed the exams, and I immediately got into the deployment and. And the first steps I did was I visit other companies in the healthcare business, in the healthcare business, just to learn from them. I mean, I had my training, but I was not feeling super confident about it. I did projects, but deployment is. Well, it's something different. And I still think it's much more bigger than a project. So I went to all the hospitals, but I also went to some of the health care organizations as we are, so where people live. And what I noticed was that it's a lot of times about the tools in those organizations, all the tools we know about, all the tools we learned about. But what I didn't saw was that there was like a mindset, like a cultural change going on because of Lean. And that's how I really got inspired by the Kata. So I thought, okay, I know that I need tools, I know that I have to explain Lean together with the tools, but my goal is to give them an other Mindset. So a mindset of Lean that they could continuously improve, but do it as a team together and not all the time with me as one of those Lean gurus. Yeah, experts. Exactly, experts. So, and that's what I'm doing now in the way that I am teaching the yellow belt classes in our organization. Next to that, I ask everybody who is doing the yellow belt classes, okay, can you just improve a little thing on your own? On your own Gamba? And people are super enthusiast about it because it works.

So give us some examples of, of, of, of. Because this is a very unique environment. You know, most of the people listening don't work in this type of environment. Even healthcare professionals don't work with, with folks with intellectual disabilities. So talk about the sort of maybe an example or two of some more problems that, or maybe more people. Centric versus process. Centric.

Yeah.

And how you're applying the methodology of Lean and Six Sigma.

Well, there's a great story about the food we have for our clients. What we want is that they can choose their own food. That's normal. No, I mean in normal life you yourself choose your food like maybe two minutes before you start cooking or something like that. And for our clients, they want the same as you and me. But what we have is we have that the food is pre made so they can choose like two weeks in advance. What we noticed was that a lot of people don't eat all their food, so there was a lot of waste. So we started with a process, but what we discovered was that the people just wanted to choose on the moment that they are hungry.

Yeah.

So we changed that. And because that we changed that, people can choose like, I mean, an hour before dinner is served, so they can choose depending on the weather, for example. So in that way they are eating better because they're eating the whole portion. And it's not as it was, as it used to be that we told them, yeah, now you are going to eat something with potatoes because you chose this two weeks ago and then the client was looking at you. Yeah, but I don't want it now.

Right, right, right, right.

But for us it was. So that was our way of thinking, our way of doing. But thanks to Lean, everybody looked at each other like, yeah, we're doing this completely wrong. We don't do this at home, so why do we do this here? So that's one of the examples that Lean is really into the care of the people. Not only the process, but really about the people that we care for.

Now, do you ever Have I know we talked earlier about IQ levels of your clients and so forth, but I'm curious, is there an opportunity to even teach Lean, you know, some basic principles to the clients, to empower them? Is there any opportunity for that?

Well, in a way, what we do, we use a lot of visual management for our clients to show them what to do, what is next on their line, what is next on their program. For today, Lean is about a lot of visual management. Make it visual, make pictures, make it clear. And that is something we really can use for the clients. But they also can use it themselves. They can make pictures of their own room or problem that they want to improve, to clean or something like that. And what I'm trying now is maybe the improvement. GATA also works for them.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they all have a goal there. In that way, they are as normal as you and me.

Yeah.

They want work. They want a girlfriend or a boyfriend. Well, okay, that's a good goal. Let's work to that. Yeah, we use the kata, of course.

Yeah, yeah. So obviously, this is such an incredible job that you have and this opportunity to serve people and serve humanity. I'm curious, Ben, how is this Lean and Six Sigma continuous improvement in general? How has it impacted you personally?

Well, actually, you have to ask my wife. No, for me, to be honest, I think I use. For myself, I use the gutter a lot. I mean, I set my goals. Now in that way, I get focused on the things I have to do, not on the things I can do. I mean, like four years ago, before Lean, I thought I had to do it all. But now we have a proper goal. We know where we are heading. So in that way, the focus is clear, and in that way, we know what to do. What the next step is a pretty funny story is that in my personal life, when I have to do the groceries, we have a digital list, my wife and I, and it's perfectly on how the supermarket is organized.

Yes.

So when my wife, she clicks on, okay, we need, like, bread or something like that, it pops up. But it pops up in the order of how the supermarket is organized.

Yes.

In the beginning, she was really laughing with that. She said, ben, please, why? Why do we need this? But now on this moment, she's like, yeah, it works. Your ex.

The last question I have for you, Ben, and I'm pushing my boundaries here as a podcast host here, so apologize in advance if I'm getting out of line here, but I'm wondering if you could please don't use names or Anything like that. But I'm wondering if you could tell us about one of your clients. Just tell us about their life and tell us about, I don't know, like, what's the normal life like for that individual? And maybe I do not want to make you pick your favorite client or anything like that, because I am sure that you like them all, but I don't know, is there anything that you can tell us about one of these people?

Well, maybe for listeners who were not familiar with those people, they're normal people and they want the same as you and I. And I mean, really, they want the same. And a great story about one of the guys. I really worked a lot with them a lot of years ago, but doesn't mean he's still here. He said to me, he said, ben, I really, really want a girlfriend.

How old is this gentleman when he said that?

Sixteen. Okay, 16 years old.

Okay.

So on that moment, if you look at that guy, he looks perfectly normal.

Mm.

So if you walk on the street and you meet him and you don't talk to each other, but you just look at each other, it's like, okay, that's a normal person.

Yeah.

But when he starts talking to you, then you notice like, ah, okay, okay. But he said to me like, okay, Ben, I really want a girlfriend. Because when you are 16, it's normal to have a girlfriend. And I said to him, yeah, yeah, you're right. I know what you mean. So he said, what should I do next? Yeah, it looks like he had a lean course or something, but he said, what should I do next? And I said, well, if you want to have a girlfriend, you should look nice. So that means that you have to comb your hair. I mean, it's a simple little things. Your shoes, man. I know that you really like those shoes, but come on, there is no girl that likes those shoes, man. So in a way, I start with this guy. A normal conversation you do with a normal 16 year old. Yeah, but you help him a little bit. I mean, I mean, purity comes up, but the mind is not really following, you know, and you have to help him with that and tell him that it is normal that he wants a girlfriend, but he really should do some things.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think that's nice as a, as a nice story.

Like. Yeah, that's powerful. You know what, what advice do you have, Ben, for other, other people who maybe we can. Hopefully we can get this, this podcast out to people who, who work in, in the healthcare organization similar to yours. Right. And not just a A traditional hospital or something like that. So maybe you're speaking to someone right now who also cares for people with the same type of, you know, clients that you're dealing with on a daily basis, but they have not done anything with Lean. So speak to that person. What do you want to tell them right now?

Well, in a way, I think that Lean is. It is pretty simple. The hardest part, and especially in our type of healthcare organization, is to keep it simple. Lean. What I mean with that is that if you go to, like the work floor or the Gamba, as we call it, when you go there, don't start about all those nerdy lean tools and stuff. Just listen and listen to their problems and just ask, okay, and why is this happening and why are you doing this? And just work together with the people on the floor, as we call it, on the Gamba. Just work together with them. Learn their clients, learn the parents of their clients, who they are. I mean, be interested in the people. And if you are interested in the people, in your colleagues, in the clients, in their parents, then you will see a lot to improve. And you can improve together with those three parties.

Focus on the people, I think is what you're saying.

Yeah, focus on the people. Exactly. It's not about your spreadsheet. It's not about your computer telling you something. It's about the people.

Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Ben, what is the best way for people to connect with you?

Well, I think the best way is through LinkedIn.

Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

And so we're going to link to your profile and the show notes. So the show notes for this episode would be GembaPodcast.com this is going to be episode 276. And I'm going to go ahead and spell your name now, Ben, obviously. And then V, A, N, space.

Yes.

A, S, S, E, L, T. Correct.

That's correct.

Okay. Yeah. So we want everybody to connect with Ben. Let's flood his LinkedIn and support Ben and all healthcare professionals. I'm so honored to talk to so many people in the healthcare world because not that the work that we do in manufacturing or service businesses isn't important. It is. It's all important. But goodness gracious, I can't imagine a more honorable endeavor than the type of work that you do, Ben. So thank you for, for all that you do for those, for those folks and the lives that you're impacting. And then thank you for helping move the lean community, the Six Sigma community forward, you know, into. Into maybe less, Less, less, less traveled roads. Right. And yeah, because this stuff we talked about, it knows no boundary. Right. The boundary is in our own minds. Right. And. And the limits are created by us.

True. Completely true. Yeah, you're right.

Thank you for that and keep up the great work. Hopefully we can maybe meet up at a conference. I know you said you're getting out to Canada here for some holiday coming up, but. Yeah, maybe. Have you ever been to any conferences or anything like that?

Well, we have conferences, of course, in Holland and the Netherlands or Belgium. It's really close to each other, but it's not as big as you guys have in the US Or, I think, in Canada. When I hear you talk about all those big conferences in your podcast, for me, it's like, wow, that would be cool if I got the opportunity to go there, you know?

Yeah, well, if you can, let's do it. But maybe next time I'm in the Netherlands, I'm definitely gonna look you up. We'll go have some nice Dutch beer or something like that, you know, and.

Well, try the Belgian beers, I think.

Oh, Belgium beer.

Okay, okay.

Okay. Okay. Try any of it when in Rome, right?

No, but if you are here in the. In the. In the. How do you say that? In the vicinity. If you are here in the Netherlands or in Belgium or something like that, just. Just shoot out a message and maybe we can arrange something.

Yeah, that'd be great.

That would be nice. Yeah. Super.

All right, well, thanks again, Ben. Keep up the great work. And, yeah, we'll. Hopefully we'll connect again and talk. Talk down the road.

All right, Ron, well, thank you for the opportunity, and, well, we hope. I also hope that we meet again soon.

Okay, take care.

Take care.

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