GA 322 | Tailoring the Kata Model with James Newell

We're reflecting and laughing about the experiences that were sometimes quite embarrassing, but the learning came from that is that being transparent. Transparency usually does hurt, but it's always a great feeling afterwards that it's out there, it's no longer behind, it's no longer being slipped under the carpet.

Today I'm excited to welcome James Newell back to the show. Now James first came onto the podcast back in episode 224 and we talked about James experience, experience working in Germany. Now, as you'll hear, James's background is really, really interesting. He's the American guy. He was in the military and he was in Germany and once he got out of the military he actually stayed in Germany and that's where he lives. And so we actually kind of talk a little bit about it at the beginning of the episode where James claims that he's almost lost his mother tongue of English. Obviously he speaks English perfectly, as you're about to hear, but he does bounce back and forth between German and English. And so it's really just a really interesting story and background. And so that's kind of where we begin, is talking about his journey and his different experiences, professional experiences there in Germany and the different companies that he's worked with. And then we got into kind of the topic of the podcast, which was how James is leveraging the improvement kata and the coaching kata and his work there with different German companies. And so James spends most of the time kind of talking about how he's adapted the four step improvement Mikado model in certain ways to just better fit the audience that he's dealing with. And really, really interesting discussion. And James is full of wisdom and lots of, lots of experience. So I think you're going to benefit from this episode. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 322 again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 322. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. James, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Good, good. Thanks Ron, for the invite again. I really appreciate it and looking forward to sharing my experience with you.

Yeah, you know, we were talking back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're talking about before we hit record there, that you were last on in episode 224 which was back in July of 2018. So we've had a few sleeps since then. And so ye, this is episode 322. So we're just about 100 episodes later, you know, catching back up and yeah, I'm excited to Hear some more about your story and your journey. So, James, you know, I know you listened to the show and we do like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So do you have one that you want to kick off with?

Yeah, definitely. It kind of ties into my whole. I'm going to share with you, share with you recently, I'm going to share with you now is that people don't buy what you do, but they buy why you do it. Another quote from Simon Sinek. But it's so key because you can do a lot of things and you can do. And people can see. People can see you doing what you're doing, but not why you're doing. Unless you communicate why you're doing it and engage people to understand why you're doing it. Otherwise they won't buy your management style. They won't buy what you're doing. And that is so key. And also in the experience I've had in the last few months and the last few years as far as coaching is concerned as well. So it just sits. It sits so well. Coming from Simon Cynic, that just really fits well, the current situation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, James, you know, you have an interesting story and interesting background and I believe you're actually calling us from Germany, is that right?

Yes, correct. In Nuremberg.

Nuremberg, yeah. So tell us a little bit about your background, James. And I know you shared it in episode 224, but it's okay if you repeat it. We've had all had a few sleeps since then.

Yeah, no worries. I'm actually, I'm actually. If you don't, even if you don't may not believe me. I'm actually from New York. I lost my accent years ago and sometimes you have to excuse me, I'll throw some German words out there for sure.

Yeah.

And my grammar has kind of gotten bad, even though my mother tongue's supposed to be English. I've kind of lost it over about five years ago and came over the military, stayed here, been in different businesses, startup companies, moving from startup companies, always touching in, dabbling in lean. Built up a small international distribution company, moved on to a online platform company, basically developing sales agents and management structures, moving on to that into the automotive industry to a very large automotive supplier where I was a coach, a lean coach, Lean manager throughout the world. As we actually spoke last time In July of 2018, I was between trips between Shanghai and Vietnam. And since then, from July of last year till June. No, until July of last year. In July of last year. 2018 and July of 2019, I was around the world another four or five times visiting all my different plants. I was coaching different leaders and then moved on from the automotive industry into the industry I'm in now. Had a position offered to me to manage and to support the entire value chain from customer back requests back to the customer. Often they're made to even. Sorry it was German FOIA to meta level and basically engaging and empowering leaders in the value chain to take responsibility for their processes and lead them towards a vision for the company. Help them develop that vision and put that vision into what we'd call Hoshinkara, into the operative opera operatization. I came and pronounced it onto the road, basically engaging them, engaging their employees and the culture towards that common vision.

You know, it's funny you say you lost your, your New York accent, but I, but I can hear it like it's there. It's, it's, it's, it's in the shadows, you know, it's in the shadows.

You know, give me a few German beers. It comes out quite well.

Yeah. Well, I'd be curious, you know, do you ever get back to the States or like back to New York or any.

Yeah, actually I was there last year with my son for, for three weeks.

Yeah.

I'm usually back visiting family.

So then I wonder if it rolls back in, you know, after a few weeks, you know.

Yeah, definitely after the first couple of days. After my friends are all checking my passport, making sure my birth certificate. After, you know, after that. Then a few, I think a few, few stops. The local roadhouse or wherever Applebee's thing is called. All that old jargon. The American language comes. Yeah. In the mind.

Yeah.

Because you order like a, you order like a foreigner. You get different, you get served differently as you order as American.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So James, we're the, I guess the topic that I want to kind of dive into a little bit. You've been, you've been experimenting with the, with Toyota Kata, with the improvement Kata, coaching Kata, with an organization that I don't want to misspeak here, but I don't believe had had a lot of exposure to these sorts of, these sorts of tools or methods or ways of thinking. So do we want to. Let's talk about that a little bit. Talk about, about what's going on.

Well, basically I've been working with the improvement content and the coaching conduct for numerous years and adapting it in the automotive industry throughout the world as well through my coaching and the coaching support of the different plants and leaders. And as I came to this company, or I'm currently, the company has a small, short history of lean Six Sigma and a really strong lean Six Sigma trainer, coordinator, lean manager that has a huge heart and a huge desire to bring the lean methods and the lean methodology and the culture onto the shop floor and into the culture. And he was basically alone for a long period of time. And the current production manager for all of Germany, he's got a strong background in Lean as well. And as I came on to help the company take the next step is to bring this whole. The strength of. On the shop floor, the strength of the production lean. And then to bring the lean and lean methodologies and understandings, the understanding of Hoshin Connery, for example, into the other areas is why I was brought on. And I realized that the history of lean and this company had a partially good taste and partially bad taste. There was a lot of burned earth, I think it's called in English, a lot of past that was questionable. So I've been doing a lot of selling or reselling of Lean and realized that the best way to engage the leaders of this company is to get them engaged and get them working in the improvement kata. Either they know about it or don't know about it. Basically selling them the improvement kata without calling it the improvement katana, Just using the four steps in a very visualized manner and working with them step by step by step. And the different value chain owners, this is from logistics and purchasing to production to engineering department or R D department and getting them involved, taking the next steps, creating a vision. Do we have a vision? Does the department have a vision? Just the basic questions of getting those. Getting these people engaged. And then interesting enough afterwards, after about six to eight weeks of just coaching them and getting them in this whole methodology of the improvement kata, I then share with them that this is nothing new. Been around for quite a while and I'm not selling something new, something that's been established, something that's been well known. And as I presented it, it was like, oh, we, we know Toyota, we know. That makes sense. That's scientific thinking. Nice, Interesting.

Nice.

It's if, you know, even. Even though I didn't. If I would have told them to begin with, it would have been different as. As far as. Or I had the chance to just engage them in this, that they feel they see for themselves, that they experience the methodology in their own brain and their own experience and then afterwards show them that it's not just me. Yeah, it's not coming from me.

That's interesting, you know, because I think a lot of times anywhere in the world when especially the folks have had some, as you mentioned, you know, some previous exposure maybe it's not always been positive. You know, you're almost, you're in a sales job a little bit, right? And so like how are you going to sell the product? And sometimes the best way to sell the product is to just start using the product, right. And showing that there's value with the product or the service or whatever it might be. And then oh yeah, and by the way, this product got a name and here's some of the background history. Instead of opening up with hey, this is thing called Toyota Kata or Lean or whatever it may be and you should do it because all these other great companies do it. And that's when you start getting people rolling their eyes and like, oh yeah, you know, this will pass.

Exactly.

But no, that's interesting. So talk a little bit about. So it sounds like you started with your senior management of the organization, is that right? Did you start there or did you start at the front line?

No, I started the senior management. My principal has always been top down, which means you have to first walk your walk or walk your talk or what are the phrases in English. But basically if the senior management doesn't have a clear, communicated, visualized vision or mission and that what are the next steps in a current analyzation, it's kind of hard for bottom up to go anywhere. So that was one of the experiences made in my previous company is that you have to start with senior management. They need to start walking what they're expecting from others, doing it themselves, communicating what they need, what they would like to hear. And that's why I started with senior management also. That's where my position was placed and I basically worked with those who were first come, first serve. And I always work according to the pull principle. It means people who want to learn and want to work and want to create visions and analyze the current situation and create next target conditions. People who, departments that want to do that was they had their first, their first, their first dibs I would say and through that created a little bit more pull effect. And there's a lot of great, great senior managers have a desire, strong desire. Now they've experienced what's possible. The desire has really gone through the roof and we've made a lot of, a lot of huge steps in the right direction.

So I'm curious, did you know, obviously, I'm sure you probably know this, that Mike Rother definitely has some German roots.

Right.

And some of the research that he did for Toyota Kata was in Germany. Right. And so did that play into the. I don't know to your pitch or your explanation of where this came from that it is more than just Japanese companies. You know, there was a lot of German influence into this model.

Actually, actually I haven't even brought that aspect in besides people wanting to read more of the material was coming from. So I definitely, I definitely shared all the books from Mike Rother and I think his name is T O Schwartz as well, which is kind of like the German speaking version of Mike Rother in Germany. Yeah. So but one of the adaptations that I brought into the kata, the improvement kata is developing in the vision, a technical aspect of the vision and a cultural aspect of the vision. And this is what kind of helped bring in that. Why behind, why are we doing this? Why are we creating a vision? And that is one of the things that I would call the adaptation of the improvement kata. It's made very clear. What is your vision? Technical vision means what are. Isn't it? If I was, for example, OEE, you have the OEE is at 28%, you want 70%. That would be a vision, technical vision. But you also need smooth processes. You need your workplaces. I'm trying to translate my head. Workplaces that are standardized. These things are process orientated or cultural orientated aspects of the vision that help you achieve your technical aspect. Yeah. And that, that constant. I use that to engage the leaders, helping them focus not only focus not only on the technical stuff.

Yeah.

But, but also on the cultural aspects of what are the processes behind these technical results that we're looking to engage. That we're looking to rece.

Yeah. No, I love that. I mean I think the way that I like to explain it is that there's two things. What do we want the score of the game to be? Right. To your OE example, you know, want it to be 75%, 85%, whatever. OE. And then, but also, you know, it's possible to win a game and play really badly or play a really ugly game. Right. And so we don't want to know how are we going to be playing the game. Israel. Right. So it's not just what's the score but how are we going to play the game. You know, and, and I think that's so important. And you're right. A lot of times people just get fixated on what do we want the score to be. But yeah, you could, you know, as they say, you know, tell me what you want to measure, I'll tell you how I'm going to behave. Right. And so I think it's important to mention both sides of that coin because it is really vital.

Right. And that's key because both sides, you engage some people in their brain. Some people are engaged technically, some people are engaged culturally. It means some people like the results. They're more interested in seeing the results. You can trigger them with a technical. Technical clarification and vision. But there are people out there who are visionaries who are of a high value on the cultural aspects of getting to that goal together, playing well together and not, I'll say, just playing well together. Yeah, well, so you have to.

I'm curious, James, like, talk a little bit about, you know, you mentioned cultural many times here, so, you know, I'd be curious to hear your perspective on. And I know I don't want to stereotype German people because I know there's all different types of German people, just like there's all kinds of different Americans and Europeans and, you know, all over the world, everyone is different. Right. But. But having that mind of a scientist, right? Like being open to experimentation, being open to the idea that no one really knows, you know, no one really knows. All we can control is that next step, right. And then learning from that next step. So, like, what's been your experience having folks being open to the idea that we don't necessarily know, but we've got to take a step and experiment. Is it. I've been. People been open to that. Have they. Have they struggled with that?

It's. It's a mix. Mixed experience with the. I'm thinking about certain people that I've been working with. Some people are more. Some of the guys I work with are more. More understand the experimental side are risk takers. They enjoy trying the experiments and saying, okay, what do we expect? What do we think is going to happen? And after the reflection, come back and without knowing that they're in coaching and using the cutter coaching technique without even knowing it, we're reflecting and laughing about the experiences that were sometimes quite embarrassing. But the learning came from that. Is that being transparent. Transparency usually does hurt, but it's always a great feeling afterwards that it's out there. It's no longer behind. It's no longer being slipped under the carpet. Some people. Some of the guys I work with can do that. Some of the guys are open to it at the moment. Everybody's open to it. More guys are Looking for it. There's more of a pull saying, let's get things transparent. There's others I'm working on to get there that they, they're looking for transparency, looking for that, for that wounded point, you know, that pain point. And work on that, Set a vision, set a goal. So it's been a, it's been a mixed battle. I know the guy is going to be hearing this podcast afterwards. I have to be careful.

Hey, man. Were you talking about me? Everyone's great. Everyone's great. And they're very good looking, all of them.

Right. They know me well enough and they know me well enough now.

Yeah.

So it's interesting, a lot of things. I started with them in the beginning and planted a few of the seeds and the visions I was planting with them back then are now coming to. I use the word fruition. Is that the right word? Yeah, yeah. Fruition means they're seeing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're seeing. The fruit of what we started back then is now taking, Taking hold and things are starting to click and make connection. And that's what's engaging more and more people. Because that pull effect of people seeing the connection of certain things happening that they set in motion months ago is now becoming part of the puzzle. One of the guys I work with says, I'm now engaged, really happy to come to work because I can coach somebody. I can take this method and coach one of my employees.

So did you. You know, I'm going to send this episode to Mike, you know, hopefully he'll listen to it. And one of the things that he's really, really excited about, I know because I've talked to him about it many times, is that, you know, wanting people to, you know, practice it, you know, as it is, you know, so called starter cotta, whatever you want to call it, but then definitely, you know, to adapt it to your. To your world, to your business, to your situation. And in fact, he would go so far as to say, as I've heard him say it, that if I come back in three years and you're still reading from the card exactly as, you know, as it's written, you know, wow, maybe you could have done. Done it differently. Right? And maybe. Yeah, definitely done it better. So. But did you start, I'm curious, did you start kind of traditionally from the card or using the questions as they are, or did you do. Yeah. With this company?

No, I used the four steps of the improvement kata. I used the terminology. I use the steps. The steps. The sequence was always the same. The Sequence never changes. But my terminology and how I sell it and how I use it, I adapted to the person I'm speaking to. That means I'll have one word. You have maybe five ways of saying vision in Germany. In German. So what is your target condition? Some people are using those words in Germans as next nasius stand, which is your next goal definition, goal, target. So you'll be changed. I'd be changing my wordage or my verbiage to fit or adapt the person I'm talking with.

Yeah.

And after that was established and also with the coaching kata with the questions and reflection kata, I then after then basically share with them. This is nothing new. We did then a kata coaching workshop where I taught them the lean coaching mentality and lean coaching technique of improvement kata and kata coaching where they actually work with the cards and I used a self built example of where they actually took the cards and worked step by step with the language with a coaching board and with three guinea pigs that came in and they were surprised. They thought they'd be coaching each other. But I put them right to the test and brought in three guinea pigs from outside and they were then the three people they had to coach with this experiment and it was quite interesting and quite fun to watch. And we had the owner, one of the owners of the company was in the workshop for two days and all the senior management, I was able to engage them and now they're actually coaching according to coaching kata and improvement kata, setting up coaching cycles with their employees, their next directs. And I'm basically the second coach and now developing with them the second coach cycle which is a little bit different as well. My second coach, I'm teaching 16 coaching competencies that are also in the same folk, the same focus or the same rhythm as the coaching cutter. But your coaching competency is what the coach is working on. So I'm second. I'm second coaching the coaches. We're working on one of 16 competencies within coaching.

Nice.

But using the same technique of improvement kata and the coaching katas which I use with them in their feedback.

I love it. I love it. James, this has been fun, man. Let's not, let's wait, let's not wait another 100 episodes before having you back on.

But yeah, it'd be great. It'd be great. There's other topics out there as well.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Hey, so if folks want to connect with you. I think you mentioned that folks were connecting with you even still today from the episode 100 episodes ago.

Yes, it's been a really. Well, it was really, really good for my LinkedIn account and my connections and had a few chances to speak elsewhere as well. This episode I spoke on a German podcast and basically shared the exact same story that I did with English. With you with him in German.

That's great. That's so good. That's so good. Well, if folks do want to haven't connected with you and they want to connect with you, James, what's the best way? Is it LinkedIn?

Yeah, definitely.

Okay, so James and then N E W E, L L. Yeah.

Is that correct?

Your last name? And we'll go ahead and we'll link to your LinkedIn in the show notes. So this one is GembaPodcast.com and this is episode 322. So yeah, we'll everyone go and flood. Flood James with LinkedIn requests.

Sounds good.

All right, is there anything else that you want to kind of say in parting? Any final words of wisdom?

Yeah, anybody out there using a Fruben kata or the Cochin kata? I would also advise get the solidness of the methodology and develop a multifaceted presentations approach means finding the finding different words and different ways of saying the same thing, following the same methodology and learning to speak to different sides of the brain of your Kochi.

I love it.

That's one of the keys of success.

Very good. All right, James, well, hey, thanks again. You guys stay safe over there in Germany and keep up the great work. And again, let's catch back up here. Maybe another. I don't let's go for 50 episodes or something like that.

Sounds like a plan.

All right, thank you as well.

Talk to you soon. Ciao.

Thanks, James. Bye. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 lean and 6 Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.