GA 293 | Approaching the Certification Process with Craig Johnson

If I'm helping somebody at work and I can make their life a little bit better, then this person is a little bit happier at work. And if they're a little bit happier at work, then they go home and they're a little bit happier at home and then they're a better husband or father or wife and mother.

Today I'm excited to welcome Craig Johnson to the show. Now, Craig is a owner and president of an organization called Utah Lean Six Sigma. And he provides as, as you can imagine, Lean Six Sigma training and certification in the Utah area. And so today, what we really kind of chatted about was kind of his journey and how he got into it. He's got an interesting background, kind of started as a history nerd and got into engineering. The next thing you know, he's in learning and development. So it was fun to kind of understand his, his progression since so many folks come into this whole continuous improvement world by different avenues. So it's always fun to hear how people arrive. But then we really just kind of dove in and chatted about the who kind of training, learning, development area of continuous improvement. And in fact, during the conversation, we had a kind of a. I won't call it a debate, but we had a friendly conversation on the whole certification process, depending on who you talk to, some people are fans of it, some people aren't, and some people are proponents of using or requiring some kind of project work. And full disclosure, GEMBA Academy definitely is in that camp. And so that's kind of what we discussed and talked about some, some of the pros and cons of various certification approaches. So it was a fun conversation. Craig's a super nice guy and, and I think you're going to enjoy the, enjoy the episode. So show notes, which will include links to everything that Craig and I talked about, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 293. And we did talk a lot about certification. And so if you are interested in green belt or black belt or even master black belt certification, Gemba Academy can, can definitely hook you up and help help you out with that. You can learn more. And then if you're in the Utah area and you want that in person style training, Craig and his organization are obviously there to support you as well. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Craig Johnson, welcome to the show. How are you, man?

I'm great. You know, Ron, thank you so much for having me on.

Yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure. So where are you calling in from today?

A little town called Sunset, which is north of Salt Lake City, about half an hour north. Most people are more familiar with Salt Lake and the Ogden Provo area. And I'm just north of Salt Lake. That's where I live and work and made my home.

Got it, Got it. Awesome. All right, well, you got any snow there?

No, but it is bitterly cold. It was about 15 degrees when I woke up this morning, which is. I think I read on the news it set an all time low record for October in Utah.

Yeah, yeah. We're recording this on October 30th for everybody listening. And in case you're wondering, but maybe there's some big blizzard and you're like, what? By the time this one comes out? But yeah, we're in Texas. And so it's one. It's. It's that time of year where it's like 80 degrees and then one day and then 30 the next. So we're all over the place.

The weather was beautiful this weekend.

So awesome. All right, well, hey, thanks for coming onto the show, Craig. As you know, we like to kind of begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So do you have one?

I do. I actually have two that I'd like to share, if that's okay. Yeah, and the first one, it's something that I just recently found and it comes from the Bible. I hope that's all right. Yeah, and it comes from the book of Philippians, chapter 4, verse 12. And I'll just read it, then I'll discuss. Says, I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. And the reason I thought that was so cool is I know how both to be abased, which means I'm humble and I things, and I know how to abound, which I know how to live in plenty and in times of abundance. And I'm instructed to be both full and hungry and to both be humble and abound and have plenty, but also suffer need. And I love that because my second quote that I wanted to share comes from Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was the Roman statesman, you know, a couple thousand years ago, and he said that gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. And so in continuous improvement, we sometimes fall into the pitfall of seeking out problems and finding them right. That's our jobs. But if we let that sway our perspective to where all we see are problems, we don't see things that are going well, then it can really turn a continuous improvement process and culture into a negative thing. And so we need to find the things that need to be improved. We need to know how to be abased, but we also need to celebrate the things that are going well, which means we need to know how to abound. So if we can have gratitude in what's going well, then, man, a lot of other things are just going to fall into place.

Yeah, I mean, we could just talk forever on just that topic. You know, it's, you know, something my wife and I, we talk a lot about, even with our kids, is about. Is about being grateful and. And content, you know, with. With what? You could always want more, right? It's like, well, Susie's got the latest iPhone and I only have blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like, well, you know, are you able to do what you need to do on your iPhone, honey? Yes. Yes. You know what I mean? So. So we'd always want more as gre, but at the same time, you can't be content with mediocrity, Right?

Exactly. Exactly. Recognizing the things that are going well in your life is critical to happiness. Recognizing the things that can and should be improved is the key to progression. So, yeah, you're right. There's a fine line between being completely lazy and saying, things are fine, I'm fine. And that applies to so much of continuous improvement, applies to our professions, but also to us personally when you're talking about the cultural aspects of it. So, yeah, if we can just again, be grateful for what we have, but always seeking more, it's a great place to be.

It reminds me, I remember a long time ago, back in my corporate days, I had a mentor who told me this story. I can't remember if it came from a book or whatnot, but it was of this young Japanese engineer, and he was monitoring his production line or whatever it was from his, I guess, you know, from his. From his office area or something like that. And all of a sudden he got up and he ran out of the office and he ran down to the. To the shop floor and. And people were like, what's going on? You know, what's wrong? He goes. He goes, well, things are working so good right now that I want to understand why, right? Like, things are going so well that he just. He had to understand why. Why are they going so well. Right? And I was like, wow, that's a pretty cool. Pretty cool way of looking at it.

It's the same Thing as new parents, all of a sudden the kids are quiet. You got to go find out why.

Exactly. Can't be that good. Yeah, yeah. So. All right, well, hey, Craig, tell us about your background and kind of how you first got into all this continuous improvement stuff.

Yeah, yeah, Happy to the. It's. I took kind of a long and winding road to get here. I don't think anybody. Oh, my daughter kind of falls into this a little bit, but she kind of geeks out on this stuff with me. But I don't think anybody sat as a 10 year old boy or girl and said, you know what? I want to be a continuous improvement professional when I grow up. And in fact, I wasn't even doing that in my 20s. It wasn't until my 30s that I decided to go back to school and finish my manufacturing engineering degree. And I was fortunate enough to get a job as kind of an engineering technician. And I was writing manufacturing work instructions for a manufacturer. And one day the company brought in some consultants to lead some Lean Six Sigma efforts. And I thought it was pretty cool. I kind of latched onto that and that kind of piqued my interest enough that I sought out different training opportunities. And so I went up to the University of Utah and they had. Back then it was called Lean Six Sigma for Business enterprise.

Okay.

And so I went through that and it was like a three month process with multiple days over multiple months, and it was great. That kind of launched my continuous improvement career. And I was fortunate enough to work for an organization that allowed me to learn things that day and then, you know, in one day and then go to work and apply those things the next day.

Perfect. Perfect. So you mentioned kind of going back to school, getting your engineering degree. Was that always your plan to kind of be an engineer or how did that work?

No. In fact, when I was in high school, I had, as many people do, a couple really good teachers that impacted my life. One of them was my history teacher. And the thing that I was always so impressed with him was that he didn't stand up at the front of the class and have a textbook open and say, in 1942, this happened on this date in this place. And then on 1943, this happened at this place. And on this time, he stood up in front of the class and he told the story of American history or European history. And it was riveting. I just could not get enough of that. And so when I first went to college, I wanted to be a history teacher. So I went to a couple years of school. And I have no shame in admitting that I was the world's worst student. Just an irresponsible 18, 19 year old kid and eventually realized that that wasn't working for me, left school and, and I was fortunate enough that one of my uncles who worked in a. He ran a sheet metal shop, he kind of took pity on his, you know, no good going nowhere nephew and gave me a job in his sheet metal shop. So. And it was there that I realized that I really like to make things. And that was. I was just instantly hooked. He sent me to school to learn how to use Cadillac and then we got a new CNC turret punch. So I went to learn how to run that and program that. And I remember the first day that I had this idea for a thing in my mind and I sat down, drew it up in cad, did the programming for it, then walked out and created it on that punch. That was the day that I had an idea in my mind in one moment and then five minutes later I had that thing in my hand. And that was pretty magical to me. Yeah, I was hooked. From then on. I entered engineering school and, and I always went to school part time, 1, 2 classes at a time. And it took me forever, but it got done. And so that's, that's kind of what led me into my engineering path.

Got it, got it. So tell us about your organization that you run today. Utah Lean Six Sigma Training Center. Talk about the work that you do there. And then I want to kind of dig into maybe some training type questions.

Awesome. Yeah, I am, as you might suspect, wanting to be a history teacher. When I left high school. I really get excited about teaching and about training. So I'm gonna actually back up and tell a little bit more of the story of my career path. And that leads into Utah Lean Six Sigma Training Center. So when I was working as a continuous improvement professional, after I had finished up my degree and gone and taken my Lean Six Sigma training, and the person that I worked for, who is a wonderful, wonderful human being, his name's Trip Worthy, he's in Jacksonville, Florida. He was the VP of the company that I worked for. And he was reassigned out of the quality and continuous improvement group to create the. What we called Malnove University. It was for a company called Malnove Packaging. And he was tasked with creating Malnove University, the learning and development program for the entire corporation. And I was one of his CI professionals. And so as he was putting together his learning and development team, he called me up and said hey Craig, want to join me? And I jumped at that opportunity. So over the next couple of years I just dove into learning everything I could about training and development, about learning and development. Some of the science behind that and some of the tech techniques behind it. In fact, just yesterday I was listening to Randy Matuski's episode. Yeah, that Gilbert's behavior engineering model. Yeah, I was fascinated. So in fact I, I pulled over to the side of the road and sent to connected with him on LinkedIn.

So good.

But I've had actually had a couple experiences with your podcast like that. But so that led me into the learning and development sector and I loved it. I just, I really love to teach and to empower people not to, not to give them a fish, but to teach them to fish. Right. And so that, that is very personally and professionally rewarding for me. Got it. So one of the things that, one of the obstacles that I ran into in my continuous improvement career was the, the availability of training and at least here locally and there were, there's a handful of, of, of options and for, for people like me, I prefer an in person training. But that's not for everybody. You know, Gemba Academy is an amazing resource, you know, to plug GEMBA Academy real quick. And I found that the, the training that was available here locally was incredibly expensive and, and it was very time consuming. And then to receive some sort of a certification, a resume building certification was very difficult to obtain. The test was the easy part. Getting to the test, yeah, that was the hard part. And so that I, with that in mind, keep that in mind, I, I was a practicing lean Six Sigma professional, but I had never gone and received any kind of a green belt or a black belt. And I was always very careful on my resume to never indicate it as such because I couldn't honestly tell anybody that, yeah, I'm green belt certified or I'm black belt certified. And so I found an organization out of Las Vegas, it's actually called Las Vegas Lean Six Sigma Training Center. And I got looking into it and the person that runs that, his name is Eric Christensen. And he offered the green belt, the black belt training, a certification through an independent accredited organization. And the way it works is you go and you sit for your training. At the end of that training, you take an exam. And if you pass the exam, you have your green belt or your black belt. And we could debate back and forth all day with validity on both sides about the usefulness of needing to submit a project in order to obtain a belt certification or not do that. There are pros and cons of that. But that really spoke to me. So I actually flew to Vegas, got a rental car for a week, got a hotel for a week, bought food and everything for a week, took my training and flew home with my black belt. And that was all still cheaper than just taking the course here locally. And so I as I did that, and I did that just to boost my own resume. Right. But as I, as I was flying home, I thought, you know what, it doesn't have to be this way. It shouldn't be easier, faster, more cost effective for somebody to have to fly to Nevada to do all this stuff than to take it locally. And so I got to thinking, you know, I know a thing or two about Lean Six Sigma. I've been doing it for 15 years and I know a thing about learning and development and I'm passionate about that. Who better than me to create an organization to provide that training here locally? And so that's exactly what I did. And that's what I do with Utah Lean Six Sigma Training Center. I teach the curriculum that, the same curriculum that Eric teaches in Las Vegas. And one of the little bit different things that I do than he does is I partner with the Utah System of Technical Colleges, which is here locally. It's the Ogden Weber Technical College, the Davis Technical College, basically the community college network that exists in every state. And I offer the courses through them. And so allowing people from different industries, from different manufacturers, even non manufacturing industries to come and take that training and be able to go back to their companies and apply that knowledge. So that's kind of what I do at Utah Lean Six Sigma Training Center.

Yeah, so let's, I think it's okay to have friendly conversation, friendly debate online. And I don't even know your position on this, but maybe let's explore it a little bit on the whole practical side of a certification like GEMBA Academy. You've probably seen like GEMBA Academy's certification program. We definitely feel strongly that we want our folks to have some, you know, some hands on, some practical project work, you know, as part of the, as part of their certification. Like we won't, we won't certify someone until they've, you know, they've, they've, it's not that they got to save a million bucks or anything like that. Right. It's. Right, we're not chasing money or anything like that. But, but we have a, you know, a thing that we want them to practice, basically the things that they have learned. You Know, in addition to watching videos, passing examination, normal stuff like that. So what's your take on that? Like on, on the practical application of what you're learning as folks seek certification?

Yeah, it's one of the things that you'll find out quickly about me is I'm not what I would call a Kool aid drinking participant of any particular thing. I really pride myself on being able to look at the both sides of any kind of an issue. And so one of the things, and you know, and I'm, I'm smart enough to admit that I don't know what I don't know and that there are perspectives out there that I don't have. So one of the way I've kind of seen my philosophy taking shape is that with green belt body of knowledge, your typical green belt may be a continuous improvement professional, but in my perspective, in my experience, typically is not. They're typically a department manager or a supervisor or a lead of some sort. And they're just, they need to be able to apply some of these things to their department, their area. And so there's a different application and a different focus of training for a green belt than there is for a black belt. The black belts being more strategic than tactical. You want to train that and teach that in a little bit of a different way with a different mindset. And so, so if I can talk out of both sides of my mouth for a moment, the beauty of having a project is it's the master test of did you learn anything in my class? If you did learn anything in my class, can you apply it? In the learning and development world, there's a lot of different models that, that kind of rank the learning, the knowledge. And you know, and as you master that knowledge, your ability to repeat it, you know, that's your basic, your understand it is your next and all. I apologize in advance to all the learning and development people out there because I'm butchering this a little bit. But, you know, as you can repeat it, then you can understand it, then you can apply it, then you can modify it, and then you can teach others. So having a project allows you to know that people really got something out of this training. So the other side of it, of course, is what is the criteria for a project and what constitutes a successful implementation? What makes Project A worthy of certification, but Project B not worthy of certification? And with the limitless applications of Lean, Six Sigma and continuous improvement, at least in my mind, I thought that's just a little bit much to handle. So the way That I tend to practice is I train green belts and then I say, okay, free of charge because I'm your trainer, I'm your friend, I'm your CI colleague. If you have any questions, call me. There's no charge for that. Just call me. And I would love to talk to you about what you're facing in your organization because at the end of the day, I'm a manufacturing nerd. I love to see what's going on in different manufacturing organizations and I love to help people solve those problems. It doesn't mean that I have all the solutions, but so anyway, I get a bit long winded, but there's definitely a pro and a con to having the project. Now one of the things that Eric and I have discussed is that going forward we're going to require a black belt project. You know, because we feel like the implement, the application of black belt is so much more, have so much more potential to affect an entire organization with a black belt body of knowledge that we thought it is very appropriate. The, the potential is, is sufficient enough that we thought, yeah, let's, let's go ahead and, and create a, A, a black belt project kind of rubric in order to, to determine what is a, what is an acceptable and what is an unacceptable.

Yeah.

Project.

Yeah. No, I mean, to your point. I remember back when I was like when I was in my industry days, back when I was going through, you know, a traditional route, green belt, black belt, ultimately master black belt. And I remember, you know, I was kind of trained in the, I didn't work at ge, but back then we were, you know, all of the folks that worked at my company, it was Nokia at the time, the cell phone company. They were all former GE folks. Right. So basically had the George kind of a Six Sigma training program. That's kind of how I was trained. And, and it was good and it's good material. But I remember, you know, be basically being forced to, you know, use certain tools, otherwise I wasn't going to be certified. So I was like inventing ways to use multiple regression in my project. And, and it was nonsense, honestly. And, and so yeah, like my passion today and Gemba Academy's passion, not that that's not a commercial for Gemba Academy's approach. There's many approaches to this, but I've never.

Awesome.

Yeah. I'm never going to force someone to use a tool. Right. We've got an exam, so you've got to pass the exam. So I know you know what multiple regression is and you know how to click the buttons in minitab or you're not going to pass the exam. Right. But you know, from a practical side, like for us, the thing that breaks my heart and this is what honestly has given the, the Six Sigma Lean, Six Sigma, what do you want to call it? Community. A really bad name. Over the last, you know, I would say five to 10 years, there's a lot of people who just can't stand the whole idea of belts. They're, they're being made fun of on LinkedIn and whatnot, you know, the hardcore lean guys, you know, and, and they're partly right because you know, if, if we're, if people are chasing this for, you know, simply to, to improve their, their, their resume or whatever, and they don't, they're not really genuinely interested in making anything better except for themselves, then it's a very self serving kind of approach. So like my thing is I don't want this to be a one and done project for your green belt or your black belt. I want this to be a one and we've just begun. It's kind of my favorite, you know, it's like you're just beginning, man, you know, and so don't, we don't sweat, you know, like how big is the project? Like find a problem, identify the problem, deeply understand the problem. This is project selection, right? And then, yes, and then let's work to identify some root causes, let's work to counter some root causes, let's test those root cause, you know, solutions and see how they're working and monitor the performance, you know, and let's document that in a, some sort of a, an A3 or if you want to use a short PowerPoint presentation, tell your story, you know, and to me this is the best application, you know, not, not how many tools you use, but that you are, that you are, you're gaining confidence yourself, right? Because you know, there's so many people who will go through and they'll get a certification and they don't really believe they can do it, you know, that imposter syndrome.

Right.

They've never done it, first of all, you know, and so they're not going to add a lot of value to themselves or to the community. Right? So, so I guess that's my bias on why I'm so passionate about practicing a little bit of what you're learning. Not all of it because you're only gonna use probably 10% of the things that you just learned through this curriculum. You're only gonna use maybe 10, 15 maybe 20% of it for some practical application today. But listen, that chi square thing that you learned about, it might come up, you know, six months from now when the HR department's being sued for discrimination because of this or.

That's right.

Hey, that's right. Let's use chi squ. To see. You know, so you have it in your, in your, Your arsenal. Right. Not that you had to whip it out for your project, but. But, you know, it's a thing and, and you can, you can pull it out, you know, down the road later. So. Yeah. But.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And it's. And I. And I look at it. Kind of like it, you know, my, My engineering degree to. To get my manufacturing engineering certification, I had to sit down and take an exam. I didn't have to give a project per se. You know, there was a senior project, kind of a capstone project that I did for school, but for my certification, that wasn't part of it.

Yeah.

And so. And I can tell you a lot of what I had to talk about on that certification exam doesn't really apply to what I do today.

Yeah.

But here's the cool thing, is that I may not do this forever.

Yeah.

And especially if I'm. If I'm a young CI professional. You know, we all change jobs, we all switch careers. I mean, studies show that, that, that people aren't just changing jobs within a career path, they're changing complete careers. You know. You know, knuckleheads like me who go from engineering into learning and development, you know, that's a. That's a bit of a leap sometimes. So. But the beautiful thing about these tools that, that, that you and I and all these listeners use is they're applicable to any industry. Yeah. I've yet to be a part of anything that, you know, that I, That I think, you know, what they need is some standardization in, in that process.

Yeah.

So it's a. It really is a remarkable tool set. And, and it's a real privilege to be able to. To teach it.

Yeah, no, for sure. You know, we. Gosh, a few months ago, we were out in Seattle and visiting an organization called the Lighthouse for the Blind. And these, These employees are. We actually are producing a Gamba Academy Live episode is coming out here pretty soon, depending on when you listen to this. But, but, you know, they're applying lean and various. You know, Obviously things like 5s are super important, you know, for someone who's blind. And there was even employees who were deafblind. They couldn't See or hear. And they're running CNC machines and, you know, measuring parts, and you're like, how do they measure parts? Well, the caliper has a braille output, you know, on it. And. But it's incredible when you think about, you know, the power of this continuous improvement stuff that we're practicing. It truly knows no boundary. Right. I mean, the boundaries are in our minds. Right. And they really are. And. Yeah. So once you've, once you've drank the Kool Aid, so to speak, you know, it doesn't matter where you go or what you do, you'll be able to, you'll be better at it, you know, or you'd be better for knowing these things.

So, yeah, as a young engineer, I found I was working at a, at a commercial H Vac contractor and I was designing H Vac systems. And that's not, you know, what I went to school specifically for. But again, this is, it goes back to what we were talking about. I, I had a skill set that in part covered that. So. But the funny thing is, I had never before I started working there thought about H Vac at all. Ever in my life. Ever. Unless I was hot or cold. Yep. And. But I found after I started working there that every single building I walked into, I'd be looking up at ceiling diffusers and return air ducts and everything, you know, so when you, when you obtain skill set, you naturally look for ways to apply it.

Yeah.

And it's pretty cool. You know, one of the things that you talked about in this, that organization that you visited is how important is 5s in their organization and the importance of teaching that and training that. Right. Is paramount in that organization. And I think if there is a two letter word that is more of a four letter word in our industry, it's 5s. Because everybody has a horror story about 5s and somebody who came into an organization and tried to implement it. And I always joke that the first three S's are what they are, the fourth and the fifth stand for. See what happens and then start over.

Yeah.

And so if you do, if you don't have the proper implementation of it, that's exactly what happens. So how cool is it that there's organizations out there that are actually applying this kind of stuff so that they can employ people who need it? It's fantastic. In fact, one of the notes that I wrote down to kind of give a shout out was Adam Lawrence. He talked about the wheel of sustainability. I thought that was a magical episode.

Yeah. We've gotten A lot of good feedback on that one. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. So anyway, it's fun to be able to teach this stuff and see the impact that it has on people's lives and in their careers. I have a firm belief that if I'm helping somebody at work and I can make their life a little bit better, then this person is a little bit happier at work. And if they're a little bit happier at work, then they go home and they're a little bit happier at home and then they're, they're a better husband or father or wife and mother. And, and that, that's why we do what we do. Lean Six Sigma is about respective individuals and, and if we can help those individuals in their lives, then, then we're meeting our, our duties as, as leaders.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Circles right back to your original quote.

Right.

Of, of being, of being grateful but also being hungry. Right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Good stuff. Good stuff. So, Craig, what's the best way for folks to, to connect with you or to learn more about your organization?

Well, you can hit me up on LinkedIn, Craig Johnson. There's a picture of a guy with hair, but about a year ago I started shaving my head because my hair was leaving without my, my permission. Anyway. Yeah, yeah, I don't look entirely like that anymore, but yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. You can also look at utahlean6sigma.com okay. You can find us on social media and I'd like to also plug real quick if it's all right. I'm so I, I'm the train. I do all my stuff at Utah Lean Six Sigma Training Center. But I'm also the other side of my profession is that I'm the director of quality and continuous improvement for all metals fabrication here in Utah. And so you can see them@allmetalsfab.com got it.

Love it. And we're going to link to everything Craig in the show notes so folks can just go to GembaPodcast.com this is going to be episode 293. So yeah, getting up there, approaching 300. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, hey Craig, thanks again for coming on. It's been fun and keep up the good work and perhaps we'll meet face to face one day.

I look forward to it. Yeah.

All right, well, thanks again and take care.

Thanks, you too. Bye Bye. Bye.

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