GA 278 | Concentrating on Your Mission with Mark Smeets

I want to give hope to people that again, you might be that person that's doing the work and you might not feel appreciated, but let me tell you, the person that you just helped feels appreciated and people should feel good for that. And take that with you.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Mark Smeetz to the show. Now, active folks on LinkedIn may have seen Mark around. Mark is really active on LinkedIn and he's connected, connected with a lot of awesome people that have been on the show, Katie Anderson and a bunch of other folks like that. And Mark and I have been chatting back and forth about this podcast and figuring out the best way to kind of tell a story. It's kind of a unique story in that Mark has gone through some, you know, I would maybe just, I don't know what words he would use, but maybe some rough patches in his career where he's not always had the leadership support that he was, that he was looking for and, but he actually found the way to kind of make lemonade out of lemons, if you want to call it that. And he got introduced to Lean and he was able to really kind of battle through some tougher situations that maybe some folks listening can relate to. And so Mark kind of shares his story of kind of how we overcame those less than ideal kind of situations with leadership. Not fully bought into the whole continuous improvement thing and what he took from that and what he learned from that. Towards the end of the show, we talk a little bit about how Mark has found that taking care of himself and how to care for others can be obviously a very, very critical part of all of our lives. If we're not able to care for ourselves and if we don't take care of ourselves, then really we have no hope of helping others. And so Mark has a very powerful story to share there as well. Now, show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 278. And also if you want to check out Gemba Academy's Lean and Six Sigma kind of learning library, head over to gembaacademy.com and you can check out everything. One thing that some folks don't know is the first video of all of our courses is actually wide open. Anybody can just go and watch it. Don't even have to sign up for a free trial or anything. But if you are interested in taking a test drive, that's possible as well. And we'd love to talk to you and learn more about your business. So for that Again, just go to gembaacademy.com and all the information you'll need will be there. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Hey, Mark, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It goes fantastic. Ron, how's it going over there?

I'm doing well. Doing well. So we're recording this at the latter part of June and we've got big Canadian holiday, an American holiday coming up a few days apart, so.

That's right. Happy Canada Day to Everybody and Happy 4th of July to everyone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess by the time this one comes out, they were like, that was a few weeks ago, guys. But anyhow, looking back, we'll just keep celebrating it. There you go. There you go. All right. Well, hey, Mark, thanks for coming on. I know you listen to the show and as you know, we kind of like to begin with our guest sharing a quote or two of something that inspires him. So do you have something you want to share?

So I've got two quotes that have resonated with me quite a bit. And one is from Amir Ganad, which is I am the one, but it is not about me. And the other ones is from my wife who says, I proved that I didn't need a title to become a leader that I wanted to be. I just had to be that person and have the courage to be that.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Good stuff. Well, Mark, so we've had a lot of exchanges over email and chatted a few times. So it's been, it's been fun getting to kind of know you. So why don't you just start by just introducing yourself, who is Mark? And just talk about maybe let's begin that part with just your background and even before you kind of got into your lean career and all that just kind of your background pre. Lean. The pre.

Lean side. So my name is Mark Smeets. I have got, I have now 14 years in logistics where I have worked for both first party carriers and third party carrier and a third party logistics provider. My background is actually in web design and programming as well as a bit of theater mixed in, believe it or not. And for fun, it's about music sometimes and the kids.

Nice, nice, nice. So, well, you know, this episode's going to be a little bit different in that we're kind of walking through a little bit of your journey with your, with your career, you know, even up to present day and just kind of looking through the lens of what, what we can learn from life's experiences that, you know, kind of get put in our way and, and the things that we, that we come up against. So let's just kind of begin with maybe like how did you get into Lean and, and that, you know, and what phase of your career was that in?

So for me it started and I didn't know this obviously at the time, but I was that kid who always asked why? And my parents will back me up on this and I probably asked why to a fault. And I was always trying to understand, you know, the root cause for everything. And throughout my career before I kind of found Lean, it was about those things. So I would always kind of get told, ah, you know, just, just do as you're told and go, go and just go do some work. And, and maybe I get the answer. My first exposure to Lean and my first exposure to continuous improvement was when I was working over and they had hired a consultant to come through. And I was doing what I didn't know at the time. I was doing a time study and I was trying to see how fast it would take me to get through some traces and, and traces for people that don't know are when you're looking for lost packages. And I wanted to see how many people I could call back and see if I could actually get, I think my number. I was trying to get to 150 people in a day and how long it would take me to do that. And the consultant sat with me and he says, do you realize that. And this would have been 2006, I think 2006 or 2007. And he goes, do you realize that what you're doing is what companies pay us millions of dollars to do? And the look on my face, it didn't register with me like it does now. But to me it was just, just to quote Tracy Richardson for a minute, it was just part of my job. It's just how I did, it's just how I did things. I just wanted to improve. Fast forward a bunch of years later and my father in law passed away from cancer dementia. More the cancer got him than anything else. But I had been searching for kind of a purpose for a long time and I fell in logistics by accident and had made something out of it. And it was, and it was interesting and it was fun, but there was still no meaning behind the work. And I went in to my boss's office and I told him, I said, you know, I think it's time for me to start looking for other opportunities. And I wasn't quitting on the spot, I was more giving them a heads up that, you know what, our interests certainly don't align. And I wanted to branch out and do something new. And the interesting thing was that I would say up until that point I was trying to do things in the office and to improve things in what we did. And it just wasn't. Not that I was disengaged. Maybe I would be by definition the disengaged employee, but not from what people think anyway. So I told him and he's like, well, we don't want to leave you. What are the areas that you think you might want to do? You're really good with processes and so forth. And it's like, I don't know, I can't see much of a. Much of us said, I'll, you know, well, I'll think about it and I'm not going anywhere. I just wanted to let you know kind of where my heart was as we. I went back to my desk and the first thing I typed into Google was process improvement. And I just typed in dcit, which is one of our schools here. And the first search result that came up was lean. And I started Googling some of the images and it's like, oh, you see 5s success and all these other weird S's and it's like I didn't know any of it. And I contacted the school, they let me sit in on my first class and within I'd say three minutes of sitting down in that chair and my teacher teaching, Bob's words just hit me like a thunderbolt. And that was it. I was hooked. The everything made sense to me and everything I did in the past of wanting to improve and, and to be better and to deliver value to people is what struck the chord with me.

So you were still so same job at that same time. Right. So you're kind of doing process improvement work just because it was naturally kind of part of your DNA and now you're formally trained or you began to get some formal training, I should say.

Well, I did and I took. The training that I did in the class was fantastic because every single time we do a lesson, I go back into my office and I would apply things to, you know, I'd try to apply one piece flow to a spreadsheet or I apply one piece flow to, you know, having a carrier pick up freight from one location and move it to another. There were so many applications that had nothing to do with. I always thought the manufacturing piece was the, you know, was going to be a Hindrance, but it wasn't because all these principles apply across the board. And it was so much fun to be able to sit there and realize all these things. So, you know, I5s' ed my desk, the office, cleaned up things, did a red tag and got rid of, you know, all this old stuff that we just didn't need that was just cluttering the office up. But we just had it because we did.

Okay, Sounds fun. Sounds. So it's all good.

It was. It was. It was all good. And there was a just. It was. It was. It just took a life of its own. And that's when I began to realize that I became not just engaged, but super engaged in what I was doing. And all of a sudden, I just kind of connected. Just to steal a Katie Anderson moment for a second, I kind of found my intention and to really piece all this stuff together, and it was incredible.

Okay, so what happened then?

So I was happy in the work that I was doing. What I wasn't happy was the treatment or the lack of respect that I saw going on within the office.

Okay, to you or to others?

To myself and to others. So I kind of. That quote by Amir really meant a lot, because about the time that I heard it is when that piece sort of started to click in for me, because I realized I needed to do more than just improve a process for myself. I needed to start helping out my co workers and getting them the help that they needed so that they wouldn't have to sit there and go through a bad day. So I started to help them out and improve their processes. And just so everybody knows it's not just one of the things that we did in the office is we've got a data entry system to create what's called a bill of lading, which is, some people may know it as a way bill, but it's the document that says, pick up from here and go to this location. But the trick with that is that there was you can data enter it and it's going to take you between three and five minutes to create the bill of lading and put in all the PL order numbers and so forth. But what I did is I found a way to automate the order entry, and I discovered that our system could actually automate orders through keystrokes. So I took my programming knowledge in Excel macros and so forth, put that all together, and I created an Excel template, and I started to use that Excel template on all our customers, for all our co workers, and that made their lives easier. In a huge way. Like, to see somebody's time freed up because of that was. It just felt so good to sit there and be able to help someone.

And how was that received by management?

What have you done for me lately? And that's when I sort of, kind of had that conversation with my boss, sort of come around with this, you know, the, that conversation reminder. Kind of like, oh, yeah, that's why, that's, that's why you told him what you did, because of this reason. And yeah, that was unfortunate, but it didn't, it sort of didn't stop me or deter me. I was, I was learning so much, and I just saw the learning opportunities that were ahead of me. And I say, I just, like, you know what? I need to stick with this and I need to learn and I need to. And I need to go through it regardless. I just have to push. And if that means that it's made uncomfortable for whatever reason, whatever, like, suck.

It up and go.

Suck it up, Suck it up and go. Or, you know, I mean, fire, whatever.

Yeah, I got you.

And, and that's, and that's sort of what. And that's basically what I made my mission to, to do is to go in and make sure that all my co workers could sit there and, and have a day where they didn't have to be bogged down by the waist and I could improve everything.

So. Okay, so now you know a little bit about, about lean. You've been, you've had some formal training, you're going back and you're making things better, doing it for the right reasons, trying to make, you know, everybody fix what bugs you, so to speak. Right. And you're making, Making your work better, your colleagues better. Management's not really necessarily, you know, enthusiastic about it. Okay. But you're, you're just ignoring that and fighting through. So how long did this go on at that particular job?

So I would say went on for a few years. Okay, and then what?

Did you leave eventually or.

No. So what ended up happening is the company, actually, they had already been outsourcing departments within our group, and we're already a small group, and they basically laid us off and they moved the work to another facility and then that was it.

Yeah. Yeah. So. Well, yeah, that's, you know, that's unfortunate and, you know, but unfortunately, that's. I guess that's the life of, in the corporate world, sometimes these things happen. So I guess what's the bigger lesson that you took from, from all this that you want to share with others? Like what is it that you want people to take away from your experience and what you learned? And if you could go back, would you have done anything different?

I wouldn't change anything. If I change something, I wouldn't be the person who I am now. And I think what I want people to take away from this, from my story, which I hear, I mean, we hear a lot about companies trying to implement Lean and to do this from a company point of view. But honestly, the old idea, not old idea, but the idea of you need to have your senior management engaged to sit there and fully implement Lean. I got to see that firsthand, which you really do need that. But what should never be discounted is the impact that these principles have it on it have on an employee to sit there and change, you know, their work, their co workers lives and, and you know, all the stuff that we changed in the, that I was able to change for my co workers in the office. They could go back home and they could have a good day and that would impact on their family. Yeah, that was, that was that, that, that's incredible. That's, that's incredibly gratifying to that, that I was able to have that kind of an impact. At the same time, I think you have to, I think to get to a comfortable place, you have to go through the uncomfortable to, to get there. And if I, if I hadn't have stuck it out like I did, you know, I couldn't have had wonderful opportunities. Such as, you know, coming up with the entire reverse logistics system, you know, streamlining. All the streamlining order entry to where it takes you five seconds to create an order.

Mm.

You know, and like I said, to go from three to five minutes to create a bill to down to five seconds because you push a button. Hey, yeah. Who doesn't want to do that?

Yeah.

You know, push through those things and it doesn't matter if somebody's talking behind your back or whatever. Stay focused on the mission, on the higher purpose you have. All that stuff will fall by the wayside. Just stay focused on that and don't give up. And if you are that lowly person that is, that was like me doing the work and not getting the credit for it or even if you are, forget the credit, just concentrate on your mission.

Yeah, no, that's great. That's a great message. So, so I know you, you touched on it earlier. There was a death in your family that, that touched you and it touches all of us when loved ones pass away. But I know it was a really important Part of your journey. So talk about health and what that means to you and how has that impacted you. I even understand there are some things with your own son that you wanted to possibly share.

Two things I will share there for myself personally with the way things were in the office. One of the things that I did, and I can't remember which episode Katie Anderson was doing the A3 podcast on, but I think it was 148. I could be wrong, but the. When you and her did that podcast, I did an A3 on myself. And I said, you know what frustrates me, and I should send you that a 3 actually, it'd be funny to read, but I said, you know, I was just stressed out, overweight, and I just had to start doing something. And so my first idea was, after doing the A3 and coming through everything, I was like, well, if I can't be 170 pounds and I'm, you know, now at 225, what can I do to get myself started? Oh, okay. I'll just get myself out of the office. And I started going for walks for an entire hour, which is my whole, whole lunch and two breaks combined. And the walking led into running. And I tell you, I became a runner by accident. But I can tell you, after now two years, I have lost 55 pounds and gone from, like, my waist was 44 inches, and I'm now down to a 36.

Wow, that's great.

My shoe size went from, I think, a ten down to eight and a half, depending on the brand. Even my blood work, which is hilarious to sit there and see this. I was on the verge of kind of going through the route of diabetes to a point, and now my blood work just came back, and everything's the complete reverse of what it was.

So was it just running or did you change your diet as well?

I did. I changed everything. And I shouldn't just say I changed. I don't like to use the word change in that sense. I just had to be. I just had to eat better. I had to get out and get the exercise. I had to put the work in to get to this point. And that was a huge. That was a huge thing. So if you're, you know what, if you're. That. If you're like me and you're frustrated and you, you know, you've got that overweight side of things, you know, get out of there and get out. Go for a walk, Take a half hour, hour to yourself and just go do it. Yeah, I remember your story as well. Of how you were saying you were in the middle of the soccer field eating McDonald's Starbucks.

It was in that Starbucks. Caramel Macchiato used to be my jam.

And you just got fresh, and you just got fresh and you just like, I just had enough. And yeah, that was a. That was a big deal. And you know what? I'll just take a page from Paul Akers because I thought. Two second. I thought the health book that he wrote did a good job in really just kind of saying, cut out the waste in your food, in your diet and so forth. And to really. And to put value, you know, eat healthy foods, go as natural as you can and do that. And that's what I have to say. And if anybody wants encouragement, feel free. Feel free to reach out to me. Go for it. I will happily give you the most positive vibes I can or advice. I never thought I'd be considering a triathlon in my life, and here I am doing just that.

Oh, wow, that's awesome. That's awesome. What about your son?

Talk about your son. So with both my kids, specifically my son, he was diagnosed with adhd. We thought he was on the spectrum. And when I was first starting out in Continuous improvement and going through those classes, we could never get my son to sleep. So he wouldn't be able to sleep on his own. Like, he just had no way of switching himself off. Even to this day, it's very hard for him to fall asleep. And so I put him in the car and gave him a car ride around the neighborhood. And when I was listening to James Womack Lean Thinking on the audiobook, that's what he would fall asleep to. So I love joking that Womack, Mr. Womack, put my son to sleep for me. Thank you, sir. I'll shake your hand one day, I'm sure. But that actually got me down a path of using Lean tools to help my son, but also to teach me humility and that not looking at ADHD as a label per se. I'm calling it that. But that my son has different strengths than everybody, than other people, than you or myself, and it's finding out what those things are. But we did things like having a morning meeting for him. I did this. Awesome. Just to help his anxiety around tasks and to going different places because he's just. He gets so rigid sometimes. I did this really cool visual schedule that I put together from scratch to where he could move his little Lego guy on the fridge, going from task to task to task, and there would be a little visual timer that shows you how much time is left. He taught me so much of how we talk to people and how we deal with people is so much. We just don't self reflect enough to know that the words that we say mean things. And it's not just about. The world needs to shift away from behaviorism, which is do as I say, not as I do. It needs to get away from that command and control because that's not how our brains work. We have four brains, a left and a right. Right, which we all know. And then you've got your lower and upper brain and your lower brain is where your emotional center is and your upper brain is where you know your critical thoughts are. And when you go through, when you're trying to reach someone who's having a meltdown or what have you, or they're having a bad day at the office, right. You go through that emotional center first and you make them feel safe. And then you can get access to that upper brain critical thinking then, then you can reason with them. And I've sort of seen that firsthand with him. And I see that within offices, I see that within offices as well where we just tell people, buck up and do the work. Well, no, it's not buck up and do the work. It's like you were disrespectful. I'm supposed to go back and work. Oh come on. Like this is not the way we do things. And that's what made that, that was the other thing that I didn't expect to have resonate so much within continuous or proven. Because if you read, you know, if you, if you read, you know, Tracy Richardson's book, you know, the Toyota Engagement Equation or any other of those books, yeah, there's all the hard stuff about the work, but you're engaging that person as much. And one thing I like to say is that, you know, I'm, I'm 44 now. I am 44 removed, 44 years removed from being child. So we are all children, we're all children of somebody else, you know, someone's son, somebody daughter and so forth. That's what we, you know, that's what we are. So our brains all work the exact same way. So. Exactly. He's been the biggest lesson in humility and to show that I was, I may have had good intentions, but I was exposing my own kids flaws as I was trying to help him and not seeing it from his point of view. It's not, you know, oh, and put down that item. It's well, what are you doing? Can I go help you? You know what, Can I help you achieve what you're trying to achieve and then we can go do it. Right, That's. It's a big shift. It's a huge shift. Right, right.

Good stuff. Well, gosh, Mark, you've had quite the journey so far, but like I said, you're only 44 years young. Young. So you know a lot more to go. So what's, what's your next. What's your next step? What's your. What's next on the horizon for Mark?

My next role, I want it to be a process improvement role. I. I want to be able to go and make a difference in people's lives and be able to. To not only improve the process, but to help coach people to do that. That is where my passion is. That is where my purpose is, and that's what I'm currently looking for. So I'd say if you're in the Vancouver area and you want to hire.

Me, let me know. Yeah, awesome. Well, Mark, what is the best way for folks to connect with you?

The best way I would say, is on LinkedIn and you can find me at Mark with a K. Smeets S M E E T S I goof around on Twitter every so often. And I, you know, one other, one other thing is that I'm big and big on as well, is networking. And I stepped out of my comfort zone recently, a couple years or a year and a half ago now, and I started a lean WhatsApp group for lean. And I have people, you know, there's people on the. All over the planet. I think it's about 40 of us. But anyways, the thing that I didn't expect to have happen was I had people come get jobs out of it. And just because, you know, I started this group and all of a sudden, oh, you've got this interest in people who just ended up being in the same area. Oh, my gosh, you know, things like that. I got to see a couple companies exchange information as well and help share things and build a brief partnership. So that was pretty cool as well.

Who can join that and how do they do that?

You know what, if you want to come join it, just let me know. It's a pretty loose, pretty good group of guys. I started it so I would have a soundboard because at the time with LinkedIn, just like I said, contact me and if you want to really come into it, that's fine. It's not that we're purposely recruiting. We don't it's just something I've got for networking sake. But if you want a soundboard, you want to hit off some ideas, we're there to do it. That's what I started it for.

Nice.

You know, a safe place where your wife will just look at you and be like, what are you talking about, honey?

Exactly.

That's what my wife says to me half the time. Yeah.

I love it. I love it. Well, good stuff, Mark. Well, hey, thanks for coming on. It was great to connect with you, and let's obviously stay in touch and. Yeah, let me know how things go for you, and we'll have you back on in a year or so and we'll get an update on where you're at.

Awesome. Thank you, Ron. And I appreciate you letting me tell my story. And, you know, honestly, I want to give hope to people that, again, you might be that person that's doing the work and you might not feel appreciated, but let me tell you, the person that you just helped feels appreciated, and people should feel good for that and take that with you.

Love it. Awesome. Thanks again, Mark. Take care.

Thanks, Ron. You too.

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 a ,Thousand Lean and Six Sigma learning resources, all free of charge at Gembaacademy.com.