GA 289 | Combining TWI and Process Behavior Analysis with Panos Efsta

Decision making villains are really important to how we approach continuous improvement. And if we are not recognizing those villains through our emotional intelligence, we will fail in any journey we take. Regardless. If you want to call it Lean, Six Sigma, Toyota Kata or whatever that.

Might be today I'm excited to welcome Panos EFTSA back to the show. Now, Panos first came on to the podcast back in episode 271 where we explored the idea of scientific thinking as a lifestyle. It was a really fun episode. We talked about his book Seeing to Understand. So if you haven't listened to that one, that would be a great one to check out after this episode. But today Panos and I dig into the idea or the concept of how we can leverage all the components of training within industry, namely job instruction, job relation and job methods, and how those three then can be partnered up with process behavior analysis and to create a very powerful, almost holistic continuous improvement movement. And Panos is extremely passionate about these topics and I think you're going to hear that come through. I had a great time chatting with Panos as always. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 289. Again gembapodcast.com look for episode 289. Also, if you are interested in TWI and you want to learn more about JI job instruction, JR job relations and JM job methods, definitely check out Gemba Academy. We had Roger Bilas. Oh gosh, it's been a year or so now since we've had that course up and we have all three programs. So it's basically the five day training class captured on video and we've sliced it up so then that you can sit through your own five day workshop using the videos as your teacher. And yeah, it's really, really well done. Roger is a fantastic TWI practitioner himself. So if you want to check those out, just go to gembaacademy.com those are gonna be inside of our School of Lean. If you're not a subscriber, go ahead and scroll to the bottom of Gemba Academy and you'll see a button to sign up for a free trial and you can get access to all that, no strings attached, free of charge. Okay, that's enough from me. Let's get to the show. Panos, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Fantastic.

Yeah man, thanks for coming on. I was looking up, it's. You were back. You are on episode 271 back in June, so feels like a Long time ago, but also feels like yesterday. You know, I don't know if that's possible.

That's right. Yep. Yep. Especially if you're a time traveler, right?

Yeah, exactly. So good. Well, hey, I'm excited to have you back on. I think this is going to be a fun episode talking about some topics that maybe some folks are somewhat familiar with, but maybe we haven't kind of tied them all together quite the way that you're going to explore. So really excited for that. So, as you know, panelists, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one that you want to share?

Certainly. So, you know, get comfortable feeling uncomfortable because that's the only way you can expand your threshold of knowledge.

I like it. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Yeah. There's actually this YouTube channel, guys. I don't know how I stumbled across them, but it's called yes Theory. And really interesting, guys. They do some crazy stuff, but they have their whole mantra is seek discomfort.

That's right. I love it.

Seek discomfort. Yeah. So, yeah, Very good. All right, well, hey, Panos, in case folks didn't, didn't listen to episode 271, tell us a quick, quick story on who you are and your background and how you got all into all this continuous improvement stuff.

Certainly. Well, first and foremost, thank you very much for having me for a second time. It's a blessing to me to be on the podcast. So who I am. Right. I love change. You know, I guess I struggle myself with changing for many years, but I've come to acknowledge it and actually be part of it in many instances in my life, personal and professional. So my background started many, many years ago, over a dozen years as a senior manufacturing engineer in the automotive industry. And since then, I grew myself into learning more about continuous improvement on both sides, I would say of the fence of Six Sigma and Lean and definitely for the last ten years, practicing and learning, expanding my own threshold of knowledge around improvement in coaching Kata and twi. So for the last four and a half years, I've been coaching with my wife Kate, and we're really focusing around merging twi, process behavior analysis in improvement and coaching Cara, because we believe that's the foundation for the scientific thinking lifestyle. Just like I write in my book, seek to understand that when to be published this past May. So my background, my educational background is I, you know, I started learning my college, I started my majoring in physics, but because of things outside of my control, I could not pursue my dream to be A nuclear scientist, given I was not born in the US at that point. So I switched my focus into business. So currently I'm doing my doctorate in business administration in finance at Liberty University. So to try to keep myself as busy as possibly can, to learn as much as I possibly can every day.

Awesome. Love it. All right, well, hey, so let's jump right into the topic of the day and it's kind of, I don't know what we're going to call this episode. We were throwing around some ideas before we hit record, but want to kind of just talk about twi and in particular we spend a lot of time on this podcast. We've had many, many guests coming on talking about, including yourself, talking about job instruction and job relations, JI and jr. And we've touched on JM or Job Methods a little bit. But I wonder if we could go a little bit deeper, tell everybody a little bit about job methods.

So Job methods, for me, it's one of the most fun programs under twi. And Job Method is not as widely known as the other J programs. JI is kind of the most widely spread program out of TWI followed by Job Relations. But Job methods, if there's one thing that you can describe job methods about, is question every detail with a purpose. What do I mean by that? Is really getting down to the DNA of every activity, of every detail that we see on a process, question its existence and question its purpose and really identify better ways of doing it. We go through a series of questions, six questions, the five W's and the one H. Based on those questions, we activating our thinking with ideas. Of course, that idea generation fuel allows us to evolve processes constantly. Then that's where JI tags along. And as we improve a process or evolve a process through jm, we're bringing in JI to standardize, to create the new standard, the new current best way for the process and therefore to teach individuals involved in the process and ensure that we are doing it all together. The one best way. And of course one of my favorite programs, Job Relations. Right. Because as we changing processes, we impacting people and the people are the center of every process that exists today.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Good stuff, good stuff. So another question for a, let's say a concept within the continuous improvement world that kind of goes across all many different disciplines. You know, we have lean, lean guys out here and then we had Six Sigma guys over here and we have the project management or the theory constraints guys over here. And everybody's kind of, you know, we're the best, but One tool that seems to kind of go everything or one concept that seems to go across. All of them are what some people are referring to as process behavior charts or in a more traditional kind of statistical way, control charts or something like that. So talk a little bit about what these are. We've had Mark Graben on who gave us a great explanation. But what's your take on it? Panos.

So I'm going to give you my bias. So I love process behavior analysis. So my friend Skip Stewart had actually put me across the book from Dr. Wheeler, Understanding and Managing Cows Understanding. Very excellent. After I read the book from my flight back from Memphis to Dallas, I was really attracted to the thinking because unfortunately we have forgotten to keep things simple. What's happening is we're fighting our sophistication bias where much simple and straightforward approaches are very difficult for us to accept. So we have overcomplicated things. The beautiful thing about process behavior analysis is really, really pairs very nicely with job methods is not only questioning everything with a purpose through job methods, but really understanding everything with a purpose through process behavior analysis. Just like your typical control chart without going into a whole statistical analysis, applying three mental rules that actually I also explain in my book Seek to Understand. You are able to analyze and understand the voice of the process. So when you changing a process, how do you know that the process has really changed? By looking some metrics, one data point might not tell you anything, right? A trend line that we automatically generated in Excel. And I've been, you know, I've done this in my past myself. We assume that, you know, the trend line denotes a change, but that's not necessarily true. So we fall victims of what another famous decision making villain, the confirmation bias. We're looking at a graph and we actually see only what we believe is true. And process behavior analysis comes to tell us otherwise. It's helping us understand really the voice of the process and is forcing us to go and see, go and question everything with a purpose and utilize our JM skill to understand what is truly happening in the process. What is the process is trying to tell us. So process behavior analysis is also very convenient for us because there's a lot of cases where the data are not homogeneous. So can you really apply your standard six sigma analysis when you're in a process and you know that the data behind it are not from the same background? Is this the right thing to do? Again, keeping things simple. And that's why I have to admit I have my bias that TWI as a skill set and process behavior analysis, not as a tool, but it really has a skill set because it's almost like being able to interpret another language. The language of data allows us to really making, make better decisions. So those, those two components together, TWI and process behavior analysis for me is the catalyst to decision making or you know, and of course if you're in health care, think about it as your pacemaker, right? Is the device, is the, that really controls, you know, your heart.

Yeah, I like that analogy. Pacemaker. So how does it all come together? Panos. So you're obviously a huge proponent of TWI as I am in process behavior analysis. So how do we pull it all together and how do we pull it all together if we want to practice and start thinking scientifically?

So every time that we embark on a journey, on a continuous improvement journey, of course, regardless if we do it on our own or with our team, we're going to be surrounded by the decision making villains. And if you allow me, there are seven of them out there, at least that I know of. Patrick Lencioni on his book the Advantage is talking extensively about that. And also the Heath brothers, Chipe and Dan Heath that I had the opportunity to meet them at Stanford program, at the Stanford University program back in 2015 in their book Decisive also talk about that as well. So as we already covered, we have the confirmation bias and the sophistication bias, but also we have the overconfidence bias, right? We're very certain about what's going to happen, right. And we ignore all the signals and the voices around us. Also we have the short term emotion where we're letting our emotions dictating our next move and we have the narrow framing where we're very binary in our choices, right? It's a yes or a no. So for example, if I ask you, did you like reading my book Ron? And you say no panels. I did not. Well, you're not going to necessarily tell me, right? Unless I ask is there anything that you did like? So think about it this way. And the same thing goes to in our decision making world when somebody brings up an idea and we say no, this is not going to work. Well, which component of that will work and how can we make it work which is foundational right around the scientific thinking lifestyle. Then of course the favorite of a lot of us, the adrenaline bias. And when I was an engineer, I used to be, you know, I used to love being a hero, right? We love firefighting and that's the environment that we thrive in. So we're biased to that environment and we don't want to change it because who doesn't want to be a hero? And last but not least, the quantification bias, which is I think one of the biggest villains when it comes to continuous improvement. Because we're trying to quantify everything, especially financially and a lot of the changes that we're putting out there, they will not be able to be quantified necessarily. And that's why now we have the new movement on lean accounting. So why do I bring this up? Decision making villains are really important to how we approach continuous improvement. And if we are not recognizing those villains through our emotional intelligence, we will fail in any journey we take, regardless if you want to call it lean, six Sigma to Yorakata or whatever that might be. So the name of how you title your journey is irrelevant is your ability to fight those villains. So assuming that you have some sort of a strategic direction, strategic deployment, whether you're using a 3S or X matrix or whatever that system and methodology you might use, you're going to come back with some objectives that you have to achieve for the annual goals. Based on that, you're going to say, well okay Panos, I want you to focus on this area and help us improve quality or we need to improve cost, or we need to improve safety and et cetera. The biggest mistake we do is we jump into conclusions, right? Which is the kind of the theme when it comes to job relations. And we gather in a room and we're putting in what we think is happening today and maybe we go ask some people just to verify what we already know right now remember the confirmation bias. We're verifying only what we know it's true. And based on that, we start our journey and we soon enough find out that things are not progressing. Think about it, how serious the situation is. Turn to a mirror and ask yourself if you had a serious illness in the primary care physician that you were that you're going to do your annual checkups was actually never able to acknowledge that serious illness. And then it became very deadly to yourself. How would you feel about it? And actually that's exactly what's happening today in the continuous improvement world. We're ignoring those signals right in that is in front of us. And instead of really understanding and grasping our current correlation condition, we actually painting a picture that we think it's true, but it's never ever that way. So job methods is the best way I panels know to be the most effective way also to grasp the current condition because you Go out there not alone, but with the team. And especially sometimes it's even better to have a cross functional team for people even that haven't seen your process before, right? Because they will start asking you these weird questions, why are you doing it this way? You're going to give them the look of like, what do you mean, why are we doing it this way? Right. But in reality, those are the wake up calls, the wake up questions. So Job Methods is a great approach to help us grasp the current condition and really understand every detail. Because we're questioning with a purpose. But on the same token, when we start setting our target condition, how do you do it? Today I want all of us and especially our audience here, Ron, to ask ourselves, how do we really set up our target condition without having any bias for it? Do you negotiate with your coach and do you think that has not any sort of bias into it? So with Job Methods, by asking those six questions on step number two, where we question every detail, allows us to come up with some ideas how the proposed state the target conditions should look like. But we do this with our team. We do this in a scientific way. We're not doing it arbitrarily. And as I say on my book, seek to understand your scientific thinking. Lifestyle coach, there is nothing arbitrary and unintentional about scientific thinking. So if you want to practice scientific thinking, you should make sure that you're not arbitrary or unintentional, both on what you do, but also in the way that you think. So Job methods is really an antidote to several of those villains we cover. So process behavior charts though, because I haven't covered this on your question. The same thing applies with, when we talk about data. If we look, you know, a lot of, and I have done this in the past where I will put in a goal, right? I want to improve safety by 10% or I want to improve, you know, my first pass yield, I want to get it up to 95%. But what happens if I actually get it to 95%? Does that mean I have achieved a new process behavior? Absolutely not. So process behavior analysis comes in two ways. First is how we understand the current condition and also how we set up the direction and the target condition. So as I said before, there's three rules we apply on the process behavior analysis and we utilize those rules. And instead of actually trying to achieve a number, a target, right, what are we trying to do is we're trying to achieve a behavior. So the only way I will know, for example, that I have achieved a 95% first pass yield will be. If I see my process performing in such a way where my lowest natural process limit is at 95%, that means I have no points whatsoever below 95%. So if you really want to achieve 95% process first pass yield, don't try to achieve an average first pass yield of 95%, because you can easily go from 100 all the way down to 90. Right. So the same thing applies, the same thinking applies. When we set up target conditions, we utilize those process behavior analysis rules. And instead of going after a number of, we're trying to achieve a process behavior. So overall, we're trying to achieve a challenge where a direction where it has a behavior of the process, not just the number. So that's why, you see now we keep on finding all those biases that I talked before through job methods and process behavior analysis, we're really finding even that quantification bias where we're trying to just go after a number or narrow framing, go back, you know, and chase a yes or a no.

Yeah. You know, I can't tell you how many times that I've encountered just the whole idea of describing a problem with data. You know, many times it's an emotional thing, like talking about a problem statement. It's like, oh, yeah, we're really bad at xyz. How bad? You know, and oh, so we're so bad our customers are yelling at us every day. And they come to find out that. But they don't really know how bad they are, just that they have a lot of unhappy customers because they lack the discipline to track any sort of. Or they might have the data. They just don't ever look at it. Right. Or they don't organize it correctly.

They don't understand the true voice of the process. Right. So we hear some rumblings, but we cannot translate it and understand what is really what really the process is trying to tell us.

Yeah. Hey, I wonder if you could talk a little bit. We talk a lot about the voice of the process and process behavior analysis, whether they're going to give us these calculated control limits based on our standard deviation and so forth. But let's talk a little bit about the voice of the customer and then the relationship between that voice of the process to the voice of the customer. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So in dwi, we're learning that. And for those that go through the job relations skill development program, they learn that the center of everything is people. Right. So people are the ones that they actually have their their direct control over our processes. And it's typically, you know, often we look into people to improve a process. We look into, let's be real, we looking at people to blame, right? Why they did not follow a process, that's the unfortunate part. But really, when it comes to the voice of the customer, the only way that the customer is going to get satisfied is if we give people the right skill to be able to satisfy the customer. And of course, the customer at that point, right, they will buy more. So what do they do with this? So they, based on their actions, they will then satisfy our shareholders because not only we have the voice of the customer to worry about, but we also have the voice of the shareholder to also be concerned. That's the world we live in financially, you know, the past, the few past decades. So the baseline is take care of your people and develop their skill set to better serve the clients who in return increase the valuation for the shareholders. So everybody's happy all the way around. So when it comes to the voice of the customer, the only way we can achieve that is really by first understanding it right in the process. Behavior analysis is the most important methodology that we need to use and we can use to understand that voice of the customer. And of course, how do we translate that back to our people, to our processes? Because we're going to have to go back and say we have variation issues on this product or this service. Is TWI job instruction the right approach to use, or should we revamp that process first through job methods and then follow that up with job instruction? One thing I wanted to make everybody aware and cautious is that don't try to piece things together. Don't look at the piece of the puzzle, but look at the puzzle holistically. TWI is a puzzle. So you cannot just take one piece of it and say, I'm just going to do ji, right? You're not doing anything. JI is a skillset that is really fundamental but also important to have alongside JR and jm. So when individuals or organizations really going after one piece of the puzzle, they unfortunately come back and find themselves that they don't understand where that piece fits in. Right? And that's where we see the behavior. So well, this doesn't work for me. This is not going to work in my organization because I'm unique. Well, for sure you're unique, no doubt about it, because you're not looking holistically. You have very narrow frame. So twi, in my opinion, is the utmost important part, part of the DNA of your management. System without twi, I cannot see any organization's management system be successful. And I think there's a lot of examples out there with organizations trying to piece things together unsuccessfully without really taking into account what we had created back in, or I would say our predecessors had created back in the 1940s very successfully. But, you know, our lack of emotional intelligence allow us to kind of give it away and then let it die over the years.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's fighting its way back now. That's right.

That's exactly right.

Yeah. Hey, so last question, Pano. So let's talk a little bit about how this approach, this. Oh, this more holistic approach of TWI process behavior analysis, kind of combining them all in. How's this benefiting individuals and groups and maybe just companies in general?

So let's start with the company, the direct customer in this case. We're talking about developing new processes. We're developing a new way of thinking in nowadays management systems. Well, are we developing it? Is this the antidote that we want to have and spread around, or is this a virus that we think it's an antidote and by spreading it, we're taking everybody down with us. So TWI and process behavior analysis, they allow us to understand what we're looking at, what we experiencing in act intentionally. If our management system does not allow us to act intentionally, we can always end up being reactive. And a good way to understand this is imagine that you always react to a stock market move too late. What's going to happen to your retirement savings account? Right? So having those purposeful components in our management system allow us to create the market, allow us to move the market. Because we're being intentional, we're being purposeful. And the beautiful thing is that the core of it all is people. It's not equipment, it's not machine, it's not software, it's not artificial intelligence, it's people. So you're investing as an organization or as an individual on developing your own core skill, your supervisory skill, if you talk to a lot of TWI folks. But in my opinion, you develop your own scientific thinking skill, which is more important than any college education, which I'm not saying that it's unimportant as well, but it's one of the highest capabilities that you can have to scientifically be able to think scientifically and act scientifically as well. Because it's not just a matter of thinking, but it's also acting alongside with it. So it takes time. It's not about attending a 10 hour training and getting a certificate. And that's the beautiful thing about gwi, that it needs a lot of follow up and validation because it's skill. You know, I used to play soccer when I was little and it took me many, many years to really be able to, to say that, you know, I could play soccer, you know, with, with kids, you know, at higher ages than I was. That was because I was practicing all the time and I had, you know, good coaches around me to help me correct the errors. So one thing that I came to realization as myself went through the TWI programs for, you know, for several years now is that just like we have an erasure for correcting any mistakes that we make, TWI allows us to really go back to our drawing board and raise not to eliminate our faults or our mistakes is allowing us actually to rewrite our decisions. So this is very important that people need to understand and I hope the audience really understands that. Think about TWI as the eraser that really allows you to rewrite your thinking, not erasing your mistakes, because there's no mistakes to be made. Everything is a lesson.

Always learning.

That's right.

Good, good. Well, Panos, thank you again for coming on. You're so passionate about this topic. It's always fun to visit with you. How can folks best connect with you?

The best way is always through LinkedIn. You know, you can go and search for me Panozepsta or you can visit us in our website www.pilc.us PI like an apple pie where myself and my wife and I are posting a lot of videos around the world work that we're doing with a lot of clients around the country in different industries. I mean, personally I'm very invested in the healthcare industry, but we also work with clients outside of that.

Got it, got it. You going to be at any conferences coming up here in the coming months?

I know I'm going to see you in Austin, God willing, in February. I was there with the Lean Frontiers team this past September.

Yep.

But I look forward onto the TWI and CATA summit in February.

Yeah, awesome. Okay, my friend. Well, thanks again for coming on. Give my best to Kate and you guys keep doing good work.

Thank you very much. Have a blessed day.

All right, you too.

Bye. Appreciate you. 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 ecosystems learning resources, all free of charge at GembaCademy. Dot com.