GA 330 | The Power of 3P with Adam Lawrence

That the thing that holds us back is always us. And if you just open your mind up, the sooner you open your mind up, the sooner you're going to get to, you know, the next step in your solution.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Adam Lawrence back to the show. Now, Adam's been on a few times in the past year or so, and I got to tell you, every time Adam comes on, we have an extremely popular episode. So Adam has this great, he's super, super sm, smart, lean thinker, but what makes him so fun to listen to, in my opinion, is just kind of his humility, but he also has incredible wisdom. And so when you have those two characteristics, I think it's a, it's a really, really powerful combination. So today, Adam and I talk about the 3Pmethod, and in particular, we talk about what 3P is. We then talk about the. There's, there's, there's a roadma to 3p. And so Adam walks us through the, the steps of 3P at a high level. And then he actually shares some really, really interesting and fun stories of how he's seen three P used to, to create some new products. And, and, well, if you can imagine how you might be able to use corn flakes like the cereal to make ceiling tiles work the way you want them to. Try to imagine that. Well, Adam ties it all together later in really fun episode. Show notes, which will have links to everything Adam and I talk about, can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 330. Also, we mentioned it a few times in a podcast, but Gemba Academy actually has a 3P course. It's a short course on 3P. I believe Mike Robleski facilitated it. It's a live workshop with, was actually done with a group of healthcare workers who were working to design a new hospital or a new wing to their hospital. And so they were using three pilots to kind of facilitate that. And so we do have a short course on that. So head over to gembacademy.com to learn more about that course. All right, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Adam Lawrence, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I'm doing well, Ron. Thanks for having me again.

Yeah, so I was looking back into our records and you are back. You are with us on episode 287 where we talked about your famous wheel of sustainability. And that was a very, very popular episode. And let's see then more recently in episode 303, we were talking about running a successful Kaizen event. So, yeah, that was another. You're a hit man on these podcasts. I don't know, man. Like people like you, Adam.

Well, thanks. That's a lot to live up to.

Yeah, yeah. Don't blow it this time, man. You ruin your record.

Thanks.

No, no. It's fun having you back and appreciate you taking some time. So, Adam, you're.

You're.

You're an old pro. So, you know, we do like to begin our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So do you have one or even two?

Well, I do, Ron. I have two today, and they're going to be related to the topic I'm going to share. So they may not make as much sense until we get into the topic.

Okay.

First one is Sacred cows make the best burgers.

That's a book.

Yeah. Yeah. So apparently it's been attributed to a lot of folks, but doing a little research, that one's attributed to Abby Hoffman, but there are different versions, Mark Twain and others. But I think folks will understand why I said that one. But again, if you're unwilling to test convention, you won't make breakthrough. So that's the first one. Then my second one is by kind of the inventor of what I'm going to talk about later today. And this one is use your hands to think and your feet to see. So it's all about tristorming rather than brainstorming and going to Gemba to understand what's really going on. And that's by Chihiro Nakao.

Yeah, very good, Very good. All right, so, Adam, again, you've been on the show a couple times. I want you to just give just a quick rundown on your background and what you're up to these days, and then we're going to jump into the topic of the day, which is three pieces.

Okay, great. So 30 years in a corporate setting doing continuous improvement work over many different approaches over many different years. For the last two years, I've been out on my own, helping clients improve their processes around safety, productivity, customer service, performance, or anything to help engage and empower teams to make their lives a little better.

Yeah, good, good. PI-partners.com, right? Is the website.

Yeah.

Good. So, Adam3p, we were brainstorming ideas for this podcast, and I really like this one. I think we've talked about it a little bit here on the podcast over the years, but not a lot. So let's start with just a basic definition or maybe just explain what does 3P even stand for? And then kind of, what is it?

Okay, great. Well, for those that have heard my prior episodes, I think they know that I'm more of a practitioner. I enjoy really getting my hands dirty and digging deep into learning new ways to help folks solve really difficult problems. 3P stands for production preparation process. And it's a method that kind of an extreme creativity approach to solving really complex problems are really blowing up preconceived notions to make breakthroughs around either producing a totally new to the world product or a new process or just totally rethinking how you do what you do and designing the waste out of anything you're considering doing.

Yeah, yeah, we have one, our Gemba Academy. We have a short course on 3P, and Mike Wrobleski is the guy doing most of that. And he was actually doing a seminar in a hospital. And they were, they were talking about how they were applying 3P to building this new hospital and doing some really incredible things to, you know, to figure out how to, how to best. The story that really stuck in my mind and that I really appreciated was they had one of the nurses lay on the. What do you call it when they move people around in a hospital?

Was it the gurneys?

The gurneys, sorry, I couldn't think of the word. And they're running her around the hospital like she's a patient. And they're like, well, what do you feel? She's like, wow, the floor is really bumpy and the lights are really bright and different things like that. Until you immerse yourself in those experiences, you can't really know what's going on.

Right. So that's great. And the whole point of this approach is that people become the object or the thing that we're trying to solve and really opens people's minds up to what's possible and drives creativity beyond anything that I've ever seen. Yeah, I'm sure there are other approaches, but from what I've seen, this is probably the most challenging to people's ways of thinking and creativity.

Okay, good, good deal. So let's jump right in. So how did you first learn about 3P?

Okay, so about 10 years ago, the company I was working for started their Lean transformation in their manufacturing factories. And because I had more experience than most in my company with Lean, the consultants that were brought in paired up with me for the more complex events. So about nine years ago, maybe nine and a half years ago, there was an event to try to develop a brand new product to take the place of one that was being obsoleted. One of our plants was going to be Closed. And it made this one proprietary product none of our other plants could make. So they knew that I was one to take on any challenge. So I was paired up with one of the consultants and we ran a 3P event. Now, I have to tell you, for the first time, I really had no idea what was going on. But I was intrigued by it because it was so challenging, not only for the team doing the work, but also the people facilitating the session. But by the end, the team had actually created a product that could be produced at one of our existing factories for one third the price that had been produced at the factory that was being shut down.

Hmm. Wow. How long did that take?

So the session itself was four and a half days. And it basically identified all the things that the team needed to do to develop that product. And within six to eight months, that product was running in the new factory. Now, for me, it wasn't enough that we got there. I had no idea what had happened. So I started to try to understand, okay, what was going on? Why did we do what we did and how can I learn more about this? So speaking with the consultants, I spent time truly getting into more detail of, okay, why did we do that step? What's it supposed to do? But there seemed to me to be some gaps in what they were trying to explain to me and what I was trying to understand. So upon further research, and it took a while for me to really get up to speed on this, I found a group that actually had invented the approach and convinced my manager that I would love to learn from the people that invented this so that I could really do a better job of helping our organization make these breakthroughs.

Good. So you did, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah. So, okay, so in 2013, so is that seven years ago, I convinced my management to send me to a worldwide 3P competition out in Muscatine, Iowa. So I had never been there, never heard of it, but there were three different teams, and we were competing against each other to come up with a brand new product for this office furniture manufacturer. And what was great was we had Sensei's in the company that had created 3P. And, you know, I came away with so much great learning and appreciation for every single step. So there are 11 steps to the method, and we had been shortcutting through them until I went to this seminar where we did the work and really got a great appreciation, but also got an appreciation for the thinking behind every single step. Why do you do this?

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but do you happen to know the 11 steps or can you summarize just at a high level? This isn't meant to be a 3P class here on the podcast, but is that something that you could do?

It's something that I can do only because I printed it out.

No man, you're supposed to have like, oh, let me just think of them.

Step one. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the idea behind 3P. And again, to your audience, certainly this is Adam's interpretation. I don't pretend to be an expert in any of this. I can only tell you that I've done 12 to 18 of these and they're just all mind blowing. So the idea is to go to the very deepest level to understand the problem you're trying to solve. So in the first step you're trying to what is the function or what is the theme and the scope of what you're trying to accomplish? And then you go deeper into it in the second step to say the essence, what are the keywords that describes the problem? So where the sensei's were really good is they say, I just want a noun and I want a verb. I want no other description. So if you think about a light bulb, this is the simplest analogy I can make. What does a noun and a verb do to describe what a light bulb is trying to do? Provide light or give heat. It's just that simple. But when you're working with a team, they have no idea what are you talking about. We want to talk all day about it. The next step is the one that tends to blow most engineers and scientists minds. Now we're going to look for examples of those keywords in nature. So essentially the idea is millions of years. If you believe that, if you believe thousands of years, whatever you believe, nature has basically spent all this time developing the most waste free way, the simplest way to accomplish tasks. So we're asking people to not just look for those examples, but we want to draw pictures. How does it work? What does it look like? So instead of talking and writing, now you're drawing pictures. You're kind of accessing a different part of your brain and a different part of your creativity.

Okay.

Now people used to make fun of the idea of going to nature. You know, some of our traditionalists would say, and we're not going to nature again. And they'd give me a wry smile, knowing that of course we are. The next step would be then go into the deeper mechanism of how nature accomplishes that. So for example, if you're talking about providing light There are tons of ways that nature does that. A supernova, a star reflection. Okay, now let's understand and draw pictures of what actually causes that to happen. So what is the deeper way? What is really causing light to be emitted in the sixth one? Now, what we're trying to do is we're going to use nature and all these creative things that we've come up with to come up with seven different ways to accomplish and solve the problem that you've identified in steps one and two. So instead of going to your natural engineering mind or your natural scientific mind, be as creative as possible. And there's. There's a power of seven versus a power of three. So most people can come up with three alternatives pretty quickly. When you get past that, if you want to get to seven, you're typically having to do things you normally wouldn't do. You come up with silly things or things that your subconscious mind might have, but you would never say out loud. And people start to have a little more fun with it when you get to that point. Now the team decides between all these many, many options because each team member is being challenged to do at least seven. Now we're going to do a thing called moonshine. Moonshine now means that we're going to try to build with whatever materials we happen to have, a simulation of the thing or the choices that you've come up with. So the team is going to narrow down seven times the amount of team members, down to three or four or five or six to actually try them out and the physical acting. So when I talked about using your hands to think and your feet to see, this is where tristorming, the idea of building rather than thinking, pulls that creativity out of you.

What's the backstory on the moonshine term?

So moonshine comes from during the days when it was illegal to make alcohol, you go back in the woods and you're distilling alcohol using whatever materials you happen to have. You can't go to the store to buy stuff because people would. Would be a little suspicious of you. And you didn't want the revenuers or the taxman to see you were doing it. So that's the idea behind moonshining. And so the idea when we do these sessions is whatever materials we happen to have in house, be it cardboard or foam or paper or wood or doesn't matter, you're not allowed to spend any money.

Whips over your wallet, right?

Fits over your wallet. Yes, that's right. Creativity before capital. Absolutely. So what's interesting is to Watch, team, build. And some of them will build in full scale. We're not just building a new product or a new process. We're actually laying out a line or a factory, and they're actually moving the material through these simulations or these moonshines. Which leads us to step eight. We're going to actually experiment in real time with whatever we're building to see. Just like you said in the hospital, what does it feel like to be the object being transformed through the process, given the new design? Collect data, you know, measure it. Measure how much you've moved and how much effort there is. And this is ergonomic. And how long did it take and how much standard work in process do you have? And all these various things do that. And in step nine, now you're basically going to use your data. You're going to create criteria beforehand, but we're going to use the data and essentially say, okay, what are the two or three or four best designs? And now let's continue to experiment on those. So step nine is pick those designs. Step ten is continue doing more and more moonshine. The idea is you're developing these concepts to become real, and you continue to challenge yourself to take the waste out of the process as you're going. So seeing it in real size, in real time makes it very easy to say, well, that's too far away from that piece. And why do I have to twist my body? I mean, you can see it in. Your team is helping you do that. And then certainly the end is at some point, time stops. You've got to have something. So you basically are reporting on your results. This is what we believe is the best approach. Let us demonstrate it to you. This is the results we're getting, and here's what we think we need to do to move forward. Okay, so that's the 11 steps.

Yep. You know what I really appreciate about 3P? Obviously, we're big fans of whole scientific thinking and experimentation. And that's really what I've always taken from 3P. It's the ultimate thinking and experimentation activity. Right. I mean, you brainstorm, you think of all these crazy ideas, and sometimes you're talking about the seven, sometimes it's the, the sixth or seventh one that actually is it. You know, it's like the further you reach, the more your imagination takes over. But then, yeah, like, you just keep experimenting and trying and learning. And that's what I really love about it. And, you know, we've all seen examples of cardboard boxes all over the place where we're Mimicking what something might look like in a. Like if you were doing one of those layout style 3P events. And there's many different types, but. But yeah, you don't pretend to know the answer. You experiment your way forward. That's what I really appreciate about it.

Right. And I find, as you said, it's really that sixth or seventh one that opens up the thinking beyond what was the obvious answer. So I find as a facilitator of these, you know, there's a number of things facilitators have to do. One is to carry Tylenol and stomach pills.

Okay.

Because somebody is going to have a headache. It's really. If you're doing your job well, and this sounds awful, somebody's gonna have a headache. Because what we've done is we've pushed minds. We're softening the minds. That's a term I think Sensei Nakao uses. Softening minds, get them to think like children, where there were no limits to the way we do things. So we try to play with our teams as much as possible, but not everybody is really ready or prepared for that. So I do bring pain pills and offer them because sometimes there are people in pain. I've had people walk out. I've had people say, I can't do this. This is just not for me. And they're gone. And you have to understand that it isn't for everybody. But what's amazing is when you get the team really laughing and working and trying things that are just crazy to them most of the time, that's the idea that sparks the. The final one.

Yeah.

It's not the early ideas. It just never seems to be. It's when somebody starts drawing a frog that can leap further than most frogs and the legs are much bigger and how they're able to, you know, they do the research to figure that out and all of a sudden that becomes the answer. Yeah. And then they. And then they tell their sponsors how they were inspired by frogs. And then the sponsor will look at me to say, what did you do to these people?

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Adam, have you. Are you familiar with va ve analysis, value engineering? Are you familiar with that topic?

I am. I would not say that. You know, I could give you much detail on that, but I am familiar, right?

Yeah. Yeah. There's. I remember a previous company I worked at. They were big into this and there was a lot. There were. There's a lot of parallels to 3P, where you're looking at something and challenging. What's the function of that? Part, you know, and, and so I was just curious if you had any experience with that. So let's talk a little bit more about. I think you've talked about some examples of how you applied it. What about maybe some stories, some specific examples of stories where you've seen 3P in action and maybe some wins, some losses, some challenges, some learnings. Can you tell us some stories?

Okay, sure can. So let me go back to the product that was being produced by a plant that was going to be shut down. So we were looking for kind of an interesting texture to a ceiling tile that had a lot of strength but a lot of texture.

And like a ceiling tile that you drop into a grid kind of thing. Right?

That you're going to drop into a grid. So this product was being bought by, you know, in the millions of square feet a year by one particular customer. And again, the factory is going, it's going to be shut down. So in this 3P, we're trying to figure out how do we make the same or a similar tile with similar visual appearance and durability that no other factory could make. So the team was. We had a pilot facility where we could do all sorts of testing and we had different materials. But in the middle of the second day, a 35 year engineer, very traditional engineer, said, you know what, I'm going to the store. You're going to the store? What are you going to do? What are you getting? I don't know. Who wants to go to the store with me? So apparently this gentleman goes to the local hardware store and he goes to the grocery store and he goes, who knows where. But two hours later he's got this big pile of materials with him. He's got kitty litter and road salt and corn flakes and everybody's just like, what in the world is he doing? So he gets to a workbench and he starts grinding up materials and he's just having a blast. He's got adhesives and he's got this and he's got that. And he starts throwing kitty litter on a ceiling tile, a blank ceiling tile. And he goes, what in the world is he doing? Well, that didn't look right to him. So then he takes the road salt and he's grinding that up. That didn't look right to him. All of a sudden he takes Kellogg's corn flakes and he just puts them straight on the tile. And he says, no, no, that's too big, let me try something else. And he starts grinding them down. All of a sudden, at the same moment the entire team says, that's the texture. Okay, now how do we replicate that exact texture? And through the rest of this session, not only did they figure out how to replicate that texture with existing ceiling tile type materials, but they actually designed the process that would apply the texture and paint over the texture again. It was one third of the cost of the existing process in the plant that was going to be shut down. And now I would love to tell you that our customer was there and we could show the product to them. We weren't able to do that, but we did get them on the phone and we're able to get them to take a look at this prototype within, I think, two weeks of the effort. And they were just, just blown away by it. They said, we love it, we don't see it different. This is what we want. And then, you know, getting the plant tooled up took longer than the week, obviously. But, you know, we had something that it probably saves six to nine months of effort. Inspired by Calyx Corn Flakes. Yeah.

Wow, that's pretty cool. Now, I hate to, you know, put people in a box or stereotypes or anything like that, but you're an engineer, you know, so I can, I can pick on engineers a little bit. Because you're one of them. So do you find that the classically trained engineer struggles with, with this whole idea of, of, you know, getting corn flakes and throwing them down? You know what I mean? Because it's just, it's pretty. I don't know, I don't even what the word is.

It's.

It's primal, almost like, do you ever see that? Do you ever run into any problems with that?

All the time. So that's so. Okay. So us engineers, we really don't think that way, right? We don't think, oh, let's just open our mind and throw food on the wall and see what happens, see what sticks. So there are a couple steps in the process that really tell me if we're going to get anywhere. One is that first step where you're talking about determining the function. This whole noun and verb idea is so foreign to us linear thinkers. So it's a right brain, left brain discussion, really. And while you're trying to do. And we have been taught to be adults and be structured, and now we're telling you to be like children. Nothing gets in your way. So that's why I say my 35 year experienced engineer, him getting inspired by cornflakes was awesome. The second part, that's difficult for us engineers is this nature idea. So some people, they take to this idea. No issue. I love this. Why don't we do this all the time? And like I said, I've had scientists, I've had engineers, I've had people walk out, I've had people say, this is too fast. We want to have the exact answer. We can't have the exact answer. How are you going to have an exact answer? You got to try this stuff. So that's always a challenge. Now going back to the story of when I learned it from the folks that designed it, their method is to put you out there and try stuff rather than explaining. There's a lot less explaining when they do it than when I do it. And I'll never forget in the team that was trying to develop this new piece of furniture out in Muscatine, Iowa, there was a step where we were trying to solve something at a table. And you already know where this is going to go. I'm going to say maybe about a minute and 15 seconds of discussion, we'll call it at the table. When our sensei walked up and says, stop talking, go to Gemba and figure out the answer. Go find it. And being the respectful participant, of course, I stood up and said, dude, I don't even know what it is. How do I know how to go find it? And he gave me that look that I get often from folks. So I did what any respectful person did. I stormed off, went to Gemba, I'll show him, you know, and I walked around their factory for about 20 minutes, close minded. And then eventually something let my mind relax a little bit.

Your heart softened?

I guess so. I guess so. Because all of a sudden I was starting to see what it was. Yeah. And just 20 or 30 more minutes out in Gemba really told me, well, there it is. That's what we need to do. You know, let me show others. And you know, so, you know, I'm not sure I could get away with that. You know, I have what I call the five to ten minute rule. And I'm not nearly as stern. I don't scold the way I was scolded. But you know, go to Gemba for sure. But they really demonstrated that the thing that holds us back is always us. And if you just open your mind up, the sooner you open your mind up, the sooner you're going to get to the next step in your solution.

Yeah, yeah. So do you think is 3P1 of the more challenging things you've had to facilitate?

So I would say that's an easy yes for me. So most challenging around helping people through it. Love the approach, love that it drives breakthrough difficult in helping people through it without trying to give them the answer. So it's almost too easy to try to explain what, why we do step one before we do step two. I always get the feedback. I wish you had told us what all the steps were going to be so we would have understood it from the beginning. And I say, okay, you saw that slide. We do that. Yeah, I said, I said the same thing. It doesn't, it doesn't click until you've done maybe three or four of them. And even then that's a challenge. And I told you earlier, bring the pain relievers, bring the pain meds because going to bother people unless that's how you're wired. So sometimes you get folks, you get the artistic, crafty types, they love building, they love trying stuff, they don't want to know what the answer is. So I find for me probably the most exhausting by far of any Kaizen event that I run because I'm more concerned about how the team will feel through it. You know, I want them to have this wonderful breakthrough experience. I know we're going to get a breakthrough, but I want them to have the breakthrough experience. So it's just, you know, you're feeling their pain for every single person because you're trying to help them through.

Yeah. Hey, Adam. So let's wrap things up. I think this has been a really interesting podcast and hopefully one gets people wanting to dive deeper, right? Well, I think we've given enough to whet some appetites, but what tips do you have for folks who are thinking about taking on a 3P event to facilitate that event? Like what advice, what wisdom can you share?

Okay, so the first thing is if it's your first one, you need to do it with somebody that's done it before. And always have at least two facilitators. So I always had one experienced facilitator and one new facilitator to bring along. So never have a co facilitator that isn't going to facilitate it later. Okay. So always pair up. You can't manage this. The second tip would be to create some fun activities before, during and after the session. So you're. You try. So there's always some neat warm up exercises. There's tons of stuff on the Internet play games. The only risk of that is don't keep playing the same game. If you get people that have been in prior sessions because now they know the answer. Yeah, the third one's probably the most important. Don't shortcut. So when I first learned of the method, we shortcutted some stuff and wow, you know, I learned quickly. That was a big mistake. So there's a lot of talk about process at a glance and seven flows. And of course this, you know, this topic could be spoken of for weeks rather than 30 or 40 minutes. But I will tell you, there's not a lot of good documentation. I haven't seen your video on Gemba Academy, so I apologize for that. But there's really not a lot written about 3 p. You're right. And I would say that you're not going to learn it without doing it. I say that that's the only way to really start to understand what it's all about. But it's fun, it's worth it if you're looking for a breakthrough. Kaizen events are awesome. This to me is just that next level of awesome.

Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Awesome. Adam, what's the best way for folks to connect with you?

Sure. So my website, PI-partners.com you can find me on LinkedIn. Been doing a couple of workshops. It's been fun to connect with some more folks and share stories and information with them. So yeah, just check those areas out and be happy to speak further with anybody who's interested.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll link to to everything in the show notes. So this is episode 330. So just go to gembapodcast.com look for 3:30 episode 330 and yeah, Adam, it's been fun. Again, let's. I think this is going to be another hit. I. I really enjoyed it and appreciate. I appreciate you always being humble but extremely wise at the same time, if that makes sense.

Well, thank you, Ron. I appreciate the opportunity.

All right. Okay. You take care.

You too.

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