GA 304 | The Different Approaches to Training Leaders with Brent Weichers

And a dog in a fence yard. They always have that trail worn out right along the edge of the fence. They're always pushing the boundaries and wanting more. And I said, that's what you want, is you want those guys pushing boundaries and, you know, wanting to accept more responsibility and to take on more problems.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Brent Weickers back to the show. Now, Brent first came onto the podcast back in episode 272, where we talked about the work that he is doing at the Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle, Washington. So if you've not checked that podcast out, be sure to go back and give that one a listen after this one. That's again, episode 272. And we talk about this in the beginning of the podcast, but with Brent. But we just last year, late last year, we launched the Lighthouse for the Blind Gemba Academy series where we went with our video cameras and captured a pretty powerful story of all the work that they're doing, the amazing work that those folks are doing. If you're not familiar with the Lighthouse for the Blind, the employees that work there, the majority of them are blind, deafblind, and some have other disabilities, but they are still doing incredible work. They're doing the same work that sighted people doing with no disabilities. And in many cases, in most cases, I would say they're doing it better. So be sure to check that out as well if you've not watched any of those videos. We got some on YouTube and then obviously over@gembacademy.com but today Brent and I really get into a different topic. Brent does us got a lot of experience with continuous improvement. He touches on his history with Toyota and Danaher at the beginning of the episode. But what he's found over the years is training managers and leaders versus Frontline employees can be challenging. There's some differences and some unique twists that Brent has found work best. And so that's really what we talk about throughout this episode, is how he goes about training leaders. And there's some things that really surprised me and the approach and I think they'll probably surprise you as well. So Brent is just got the heart, just an amazing heart and just got such a caring person. And he really just wants people to learn continuous improvement. And that's the thing that I really admire about Brent the most. So be sure to give this one a listen. Show notes for everything we talk about can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 304 again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 304. And again, don't forget to check out the Gemba Academy live episode. And over. And that's over. Going to be on our main website, which obviously is gembaacademy.com. okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Brent, welcome back to the show. How's it going, my friend?

Going very, very well. We're keeping busy and keeping out of trouble over here in Seattle.

Yeah, that's good. That's good. Well, appreciate you coming back on. As I mentioned in the intro, we had you on back in episode 272, talking about the incredible work that you guys are doing over at the Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle. So I definitely want to encourage people to go listen to that episode after this one. So just go back into the archives of Gemba Academy. You can go to gembapodcast.com and look it up. Or if you're on itunes or Stitcher or whatever you Spotify272, scroll back to that one and give it a listen. And then also, just a quick plug for the. The episode, the Gemba Academy live episode that we did with you guys. I think it turned out really, really good. By the way, I haven't even talked to you since y' all watched it. What was the. The reaction of the folks that they're at the Lighthouse? Were they. Were they happy? Did they like it?

Oh, very, very happy. They're just ecstatic with how well that came out and the amount of response that we've received from it and, you know, from outside the company as well as within, of course. But, yeah, the folks that were in it were just really proud to be part of it. They were sharing it with their families. We had a nice little watch party here, so some of our folks who required interpreters to really enjoy it, we're all in the room with our entire interpreting staff helping out. So we had a wonderful time. But some of the things that came about from outside, people who are Gemba Academy fans, I had of a gentleman that's in the Portland area, continuous improvement professional, and his daughter is losing her sight. So he's gonna bring her up here next month and tour and kind of meet some other folks, some other young women that work here that are very successful careers, and they're gonna be mentors for this young lady.

That's amazing.

Just powerful stuff came out of all of this. Well, great.

Well, again, thanks again, Brent, and to everyone there at the Lighthouse for the Blind for allowing us to.

And.

And, boy, I've never Cried on again. Academy Live episode. But I sure did at the end there talking to Chris. Man, I, I can't even watch it back now. I'm just like, it's like breaks me up every time. So. But yeah, very powerful. Well, anyhow, Brent, so you know, we were kind of chatting over the interwebs and LinkedIn and email and all that about, about having you come on. Obviously you're very established within the community continuous improvement world, Brent. You've, you've got an incredible background, you know, working at different Danaher businesses. I mean, I guess rather than me brag about you, why don't you give everyone just a quick overview in case they don't know who Brent is?

Sure, sure. I've been in the continuous improvement game my entire career actually. So a little over 30 years now. Started out with being trained at Toyota. I was very fortunate at the time to I happened to be working for a company that we were purchased by a rather large conglomerate. We were offered a chance to learn about this new thing, this new Lean thing. And me being young and fresh out of school, I thought it was a great opportunity to continue my education. So I jumped in, volunteered. Next thing I know I'm at Toyota and studying at Toyota City. So years of working for Danaher and other very well known continuous improvement type companies and here I am six years now that I've been at Seattle Lighthouse with 500 employees and 80% of our touch labor is blind and deafblind.

Yeah, very good, very good. Well, so the topic today, Brent, is some training that you do. And I know you've been, you do it and you're working on it and continuing to perfect it. It's really, I guess the theme, if theme of today is, is perhaps a different approach to training folks at different levels of the organization. So from, from a senior C suite officer to, you know, an executive to a frontline leader, you approach it differently, I think is a safe way to say it. Is that right?

Yeah, that's correct. And it's something we found, or I found many years ago as I was doing a lot, you know, doing a lot of training and introducing different companies to Lean and Six Sigma and trying to get them started on this road to continuous improvement and realized we were training everyone, frontline leadership and the frontline employees were all going through the exact same training, which is the basic mechanics of how to. And we would train and then leave them to their, their purposes and say, okay, get out there and implement. And of course the people on the frontline shop floor Turning around, looking at their leaders and going, what do I do? And, you know, frontline leadership was like, well, I don't know, I, you know, I need to tell you what to do, because that's what I'm taught to do, is to tell you what to do. And they didn't know what to do and didn't know how to lead. So they revert back to what they've always known, which is not lean. And we would see things stumble and companies struggle trying to get some kind of traction and continuous improvement. So we started working on training that was specifically for the frontline leadership. So instead of the traditional, I just have to get the work done, get that order out day to day. Now we're expecting leadership to think about how do I improve work, how do I develop people, you know, and how do we change that, that way of thinking for the frontline leadership. So that's where we started looking at they still need to understand lean and the tools, but they also need to learn how to lead differently.

Yeah.

So we've been developing training over the last ten years or so. With that in mind is to say, well, before we even start training you on the tools, let's get you started on, you know, what's going to be the expectation, because you may not want to be a leader in this environment, this may be too uncomfortable for you. And we find that very rarely. But every once in a while we find somebody that just says, you know, that's just not, that's not going to be for me, you know, I got to find something else that's not my comfort. And then some people are, to them, it just makes sense and it's a perfect fit for them.

So talk about, so, you know, 11 years ago, if it's been 10 years, you know, like, what did you do like, or what do you see other organizations doing with leaders and kind of, what are the results if you don't approach it this way?

Yeah, and what we found is, when we don't approach it this way is we were finding they're just not gaining the traction that's possible. It's real difficult for somebody that's been in, say, a supervisory role for 15, 20 years, all of a sudden you're telling them, hey, train your frontline folks out there on the tools. Let's teach you a little bit about, say, Toyota Kata and the scientific method and let them go, let them experiment. And yes, they're going to fail, but that's all right as long as you learn from it. And then, and then do, do better the next time. That's real difficult for, to tell somebody who's been a manager or leader for that long a period of time to say, let them fail. Let it, you know, let them go and try and do things. And it's real, real difficult. And, and then they're, you're, again, you're training them in lean and they're asking things like, you know, how do I get people to do this? How do I get them to, you know, pick up these tools and actually pick up and run with them? And it's like, well, the way you do it is you do it and say, hey, guys, follow me. Yeah, you can't tell them. You can't whip them into it or, or, you know, legislate them into it. You have to actually, you know, it's stick versus carrot, and you just kind of have to pick up the leadership and say, come on, guys, watch me, watch me do it.

Yeah. So, you know, obviously, when we, when we teach people about lean, Six Sigma, continuous improvement in general, you know, there's really, you mentioned Toyota Kata, scientific thinking, that sort of, that side of it, that kind of the thinking side of it, the, the meta side of it, if you will. And then obviously there's a million and a half tools, you know, that we can teach people. Everything from 5s, 7, wais, all the 6sigma, one simple t test, regression, doe. I mean, you know, it's endless, right? The, the things that we can teach from a tool side. But so how are you, how are you focusing? What are the, some of the specific things you're, you're teaching these leaders?

Well, we're working, working with a lot of the leaders on. It's like, you know, you're not going to have a team that you're coaching, so you're not going to be, you know, you're not going to be barking out orders like you're used to. You're, you're going to start learning how to be more of a coach. So one of the first things we teach is Toyota Kata. So we teach them the coaching role because it's very, it's very much that, that actual, you know, just like a football coach, you're, you're in that coaching role where you're organizing your team, you're coming up with what your task is, and you're sitting out and trying some experiments. So you're, you're learning very early on with your, you know, along with your team. You're not the, you know, and you're letting your team know it's like, I'm not the expert in this. I'm, you know, I'm learning right along with you, and I'm right here.

Yeah.

You know, we're. We're all learning this together, and it's okay, we're going to fail, but we're going to fail together, and we're going to figure it out and we're going to learn and we're going to. And we're going to learn from it. You know, the only failure is not learning from it.

Yeah.

Yep. So, you know, we spend a lot of time with them on the Toyota Kata. And then the. One of the biggest parts of Toyota Kata is brainstorming. You know, how do I get a team to who's never who again is not used to being asked what they think to think? So we do a lot of structured brainstorming training sessions. So we look at classical brainstorm sessions, round robin, paper, pencil, brainwriting. There's multiple different types and ways to do brainstorming depending on your maturity or your group.

Let's talk about brainstorming a little bit because I think it's a topic that often gets glossed over as like, oh, yeah, yeah, brainstorming. Got it, got it. How hard can that be? But, boy, you can really mess brainstorming up. So, like, what are some of the practical tips that you have for folks as they go about brainstorming with a team of people?

Yeah, so one of the most common methods where we say, we're gonna do some brainstorming with my group is just that classical or random or also known as popcorn, where the leader just says, bob, what do you think? Susan, what do you think? And putting people on the spot makes them real uncomfortable oftentimes. And they'll usually just mimic or copy what they think the popular answer is going to be or what you want the answer to be as the boss or the leader. So round robin is where we literally just, you know, start, start like at one end of the room and go to the other and just say, next. Next. But all of those tend to make people a little uncomfortable and they're really not gonna say what they feel. So the preferred method, paper, pencil, post it notes. So, so with all of our, you know, our fishbone or cnes.

Yeah.

Is. Is post it notes. So I hand out packets of post it notes to folks and just say, whatever your ideas are. Brainstorming ideas, write them down. So we kind of use them in that CNE method with the fishbone and gather the ones together that are, that are like minded. And, and that way people feel a little less pressure.

Yeah.

To come up with their ideas. And another method I really enjoy doing that works well is brainwriting is where I have. Somebody starts with a blank piece of paper, writes their idea down, hands it to the next person and they read that idea, they feed off of that one.

That's interesting. I've never done that.

Yeah. And it just kind of passes it around. So it's almost like the telephone game.

Yeah.

You know, where they're writing and they're, you know, and people are reading five or six different ideas and then there's, and then they kind of write their idea down. So it's a real interesting process and sometimes what you get at the end of it is pretty interesting. But it's, it's just another way for folks that don't feel comfortable speaking in front of a group.

Yeah.

And not very many do. There's not too many of us that are comfortable like you and I can stand in front of a group of a thousand people and chit chat for an hour and be perfectly fine.

Well, the reason I love post it notes is, to your point, a lot of people don't want to talk, don't like to speak. But on the other side, people who do like to speak can like just rule the room.

Right. And all you get is you get one person's ideas.

Yeah. Johnny's ideas or Cindy's ideas. And it's like Cindy's brainstorming session, you know, Meanwhile, eight other people had great ideas but you couldn't get it out of them.

So yeah, you always hear about it afterwards. It's like, well, I was thinking this and you know, so it's really difficult as a leader to make sure you're getting all of those thoughts and all of those ideas out. You know, deferring judgment is so important when you're brainstorming. You know, as that leader, there's no bad ideas. You know, just, just write them down. You know, keep it customer focused and always invite people who are with really diverse backgrounds. So if I've got an issue in the machine shop, I don't necessarily have a brainstorming session with people from the machine shop. I'll have somebody from scheduling, maybe from accounting, you know, throwing idea, just asking those silly why questions. And you know, and we don't ask how or why. Just, you know, we got an interesting idea. Don't ask how or we're going to implement it. Just write it down. Just, just some basic ground rules like that.

Okay. So we Got scientific thinking, we got brainstorming. What are a few other things that you're focusing on with these leaders?

After that we start getting into either value stream mapping or just process mapping or some hybrid. We've been working on some hybrid versions of both here. So starting to get them into problem solving. So, and those are some of the easiest tools in the very beginning of Six Sigma problem solving is how many frontline leaders do we know can sit down and just lead a group through a process map? Not very many. That's again a new tool for them. So one of the quickest ways for a team to start focusing on problems is to actually get it out there visible, make it visual, and start laying out process mapping. That's the first thing. After that it's like, okay, you're getting comfortable with working with your team. You've got some brainstorming ideas. Now let's look at an issue or a problem that we suspect is an issue. And now let's process mapper. Let's do a value stream app and try to narrow it down and then use those brainstorming tools to come up with some possible solutions.

Well, in tying it back to kata, if you think about really what's the leader's role and kata, obviously we want them setting that long term challenge, but then I think they're also, it's very, very advantageous if they get involved in that first step, see that current condition, like deeply understanding the current condition and being along for the ride. Not that they're doing all the work to your point, maybe they're leading the exercise. They aren't necessarily doing it, but they're facilitating it or, you know, at least deeply involved.

Exactly.

I think that's a beautiful use of a le time and skill set, really.

And there's many times as leaders, and we've run into that even just here recently, where the leader knew that their idea probably wasn't going to work just from his experience. And he was like, well. And I said, don't, you know, don't naysay, let them learn from it. You know, they're about to learn an amazing, valuable lesson by, you know, they had the idea they're gonna run the experiment, it's not gonna work. And it didn't. And instead of him coming out and saying I told you so, he just kind of stepped back and let them learn.

Yeah, what did we learn? Right?

And then he said, now what did you learn from it? And the great thing was what they learned from it was two or three different things that he never Thought of even though he knew it wasn't gonna work.

Yeah.

And it's like, that's why, that's why as a leader, sometimes it's difficult to not jump in and say, oh, I know, I've been there, done that. That's not going to work. And they wouldn't have come up with the interesting solution that they did.

Yeah. Yep. Now, what about any other tools are you focused on with these leaders? Are you, are you teaching them things like some of the basics, like 5s, 7 waste some of the basics?

Oh, yeah. So they're absolutely getting all of the, what we call the hard skills, you know, the 5s, how to do standard work. They're learning all of those hard skills right along with the shop floor folks. But they're learning how, in a lot of cases, just how to step back and learn to be that leader. That's asking why five times and asking them to experiment and learning to let go. What I've always been told is the difference between a dog on a chain and a dog in a fence yard is, you know, the dog on the chain knows I can only run so far and I'm going to stop. And a dog in a fence yard, they always have that trail worn out right along the edge of the fence. They're always pushing the boundaries and wanting more. And I said that's what you want, is you want those guys pushing boundaries and, you know, wanting to accept more responsibility and to take on more problems. And we work with them a lot on, you know, when it comes to, you know, problem identification and brainstorming, we still work with them on, with, you know, the whole psychology of a group is, you know, at work you have your four personalities. We use the disc example here. You know, we have our DIs and Cs and you want to make sure that you're. You don't have the entire room full of any one personality. You want to have a mix of them, but also understand that it's important to speak to each one in a certain, in a certain way. And so when we're, you know, we're working with them on that to say, well, you know, a D is your demand type, those are your managers, and you want one of those. Those are usually your leaders. But you don't want a room full of them. So you want to make sure you have a good mix. And then when we're looking at possible cause identification in brainstorming, groups get stuck. You know, the psychology of a group, sometimes they're just going to get stuck on an idea or just not coming up with very many ideas. So we'll take folks and say, you know what? You be the optimist, you be the pessimist, you be the realist. Now start discussing your ideas. You know, so one person has the voice of the optimist, where everything's gonna work and, you know, the other person's the devil's advocate. And they. And they end up kind of looking at their ideas, you know, differently or the whole reversal of ideas. So, example being, I want to get better, get along better with my boss, and I'm stuck on ideas. So I start thinking about, well, how do I get along worse with my boss? You know, what I'm. What are the things I can do that would make it. Make her really bad at me? So then it kind of gets you unstuck, you know, sometimes when you're in these brainstorming sessions. So we spend a lot of time with. With our. Our new leaders and our young leaders just on a lot of those soft skills like that. And they're spending just as much time as everyone else on the hard skills, implementing 5s, you know, establishing standard work, you know, all those sorts of things. But they also have to learn these additional skills, which really just surprised me. For how long? A lot of companies just aren't doing anything with it at all.

So what's interesting is what I'm hearing you say is that these leaders, they're learning everything a frontline employee is learning, plus some more.

Is that fair? Absolutely.

Well, it's interesting because I think if you pulled the audience listening to this episode right now and how their company approaches training their leaders, you might find the opposite. Right. Is that the leaders get this leadership stream where it's, oh, they don't need to know all the tools, but they've got to know these whatever soft skills or whatever it might be. But what I'm hearing you say is you're giving them the tools and all the. The meat, if you will, but they're also getting some. Some extra soft skills and some extra facilitation skills.

Yeah. So they're. They're getting all of those skills that they're going to need to feel comfortable with leading a team, you know, through lean implementation. So that, I mean, that's the most. That was the most frightening thing for me early on was, okay, I learned all the tools. I learned about standard work and, you know, and absorbed that instantly. And then when they said, okay, now go lead that group over there through it, and I had no idea. And, boy, Did I? You know, they talk about, you know, you fail and, you know, you fail miserably and you learn from it. And I did a lot of learning, a lot of learning early on.

So are you working to kind of formalize this approach?

So, yeah, so about two years ago, I actually formalized it into a series. So it's a series with five blocks and it goes through the first chunk of the first piece of it is again, just learning those soft skills and practicing them. So we do some practicing where part of the group or part of the room is the frontline employees and a few folks are selected to be managers. And the folks actually draw personalities out of a hat. So nobody knows that I'm playing the optimist and I'm the pessimist and I'm the boss's favorite and I'm, you know, they're playing all these roles and the person that's pretending to be the manager doesn't know this. So they're having to lead this group with sometimes very difficult personalities and, and going through brainstorming exercises and those sorts of things. So they get some, as much as possible, some real world practice and opportunity. So we formalized that piece of it. Then of course, Toyota Kata is the next chunk. Then we get into Hoshin. So Hoshin Connery, which gets into metrics and driving behavior through metrics, which also includes establishing some 5s, you know, getting some of the basics established, and then we move on into some Six Sigma problem solving, which gets into value stream mapping and process mapping and those sorts of things, and then into transactional. So so many folks do not work in manufacturing. Right. They work in accounting offices and those sorts of things, or insurance companies. And so we get into a piece of it that gets more into the agile world, more into the software type world.

Nice.

So we broke it up into those pieces and each one's about two hours. And I do like every couple weeks would do the next one and then restart the series again.

Right. Right. Now these are obviously a lot of Lighthouse folks kind of going through this, but is it open to outside folks outside of Lighthouse or.

Very much so. So I get about 30. I got the room I use has space for 30, and I get maybe five or six lighthouse folks and the rest are all from outside.

So how do, how do folks know when, when you're offering this?

Oh, I'm usually posting it on LinkedIn. So follow, follow me on LinkedIn and you'll see posts for it quite often.

Nice, nice. And so folks, we'll link to Brent's LinkedIn in the show notes. This is going to be episode 304. So go to GembaPodcast.com, go to episode 304, and then we'll link to Brent's LinkedIn there. But just in case you're listening and don't know how to spell weickers, it's W E I C H E R S Brent Weicker. So, man, it sounds great. I mean, I think I might fly over there and take some of it because I'd love to learn more and learn about your approach and most importantly, just see the other folks. I just love watching people learn and just seeing a light bulb go on. I know that's probably one of your passions as well, right?

Absolutely. That's exactly what I say, is when I see that light bulb. You can tell when you going over a concept that somebody struggled with. And most often what happens is it's during an exercise. And when I spoke at AME in Chicago, when we were there together in Chicago, and that's what I was speaking about is how to make activities and games and how to associate those with what you're trying to teach. And what I find most often is that's when the light bulb goes off.

Yeah.

When someone's able to relate it to some, some physical movement or activity of some kind. And it's like, oh, that's how it works. Yeah. And that's. And to me, that's extremely satisfying when somebody approaches me and says, I struggled with that for years trying to understand that. And then here we were tossing, we were tossing little nemos around the room there at ame, back and forth. And somebody finally understood Kanban, they said for the first time. And it was because we were throwing little nemos back and forth at each other and using Kanban signals in the room. So that, that was. Yeah, that was fantastic.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, Brent, it's always so fun chatting with you and inspiring. You've got such a, such a heart for continuous improvement and you really care about people and helping people learn. And I think that's what makes you, makes you so good. So keep, so keep on keeping on. Don't stop. And let's definitely stay in touch and, and maybe we even. We'll find a way to help you advertise your, your sessions or whatever through our, our newsletter or something. Just. And, you know, I only got 30 room, 30 spots, but we'll. Maybe we'll. We'll have to crank up more sessions for you or something like that.

No problem. No problem. So all the, all. All of the more the merrier, as I say.

So outside of LinkedIn and what's. Is there any other way folks can, can get in touch with you, Brent?

Yeah, they can direct email me, which is my, my last name, first initial. So it's W, E, I, C, H, E, R, S, B. The letter B as in boy. And that's at Gmail and. And then of course LinkedIn. I'm fairly active on LinkedIn. I'm constantly posting articles, doing event invites for the different trainings that I do and I do that. And my company here, the Lighthouse for the Blind, has been fantastic at supporting that as far as they're concerned. The more folks that know about us and what we do, we get more attention to us, which is always a great thing. So they allow me to have outside guests in here constantly. But it gives. The nice thing is it gives our internal people a great training experience to be in a room full of people from major insurance companies and FedEx and all these amazing companies and their range of experience and our folks get to have that, share that experience with them. So it gives them that much more of an experience.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Good job, Brent. Thanks again for, for all you do. Thanks for coming on the show. I know you will have you back on here down the road as well. So I guess, always a pleasure. You're speaking again at ame. Have you got that dialed in yet for Toronto?

Yes, I'll be speaking again at AME Toronto. And was that again in November, I believe.

Yeah, sometime. Yeah.

And that's going to be. I've been developing documentation for standard work that's automated. Interesting. So just basic Excel with some coding behind it, but it just simplifies the creation of the documents for standard word. Love it. So, something I've been working on for about 10 years.

Wow.

And I've been loaning it out to, you know, just giving it away to whom ever might find it useful. And I thought, well, I finally got it to the point where I think it's mistake proof enough. It's. It's shareable.

Yeah.

So I thought maybe I might present that at Toronto and give copies of that away.

Wow, awesome. Looking forward to it, Brent. All right, well, thanks again. Take care and say hi to your lovely wife and try to stay warm out there in Seattle. I know it's chilly for you guys out there right now.

We've had a little snow.

It keeps you out of trouble.

Absolutely.

All right, take care, Brent.

All right. Thanks, Ron.

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