GA 350 | Emphasizing the Process with Cristian Goyzueta

Practice, practice, practice, practice. Kishiro Toyoda, Taishi Ono Were men's of practice means of actions. Practice, practice. I know this may be some quite difficult in this Covid situation, but practice.

Today I'm excited to welcome Christian Goizata to the show. Now Christian reached out to me over LinkedIn and mentioned that he had been practicing lean for a few years. He's going to opened up by kind of giving a little bit more on his background. So he's, he's a younger guy. I think he's 26. I believe he said he was. But as you're going to hear he is very, very full of lots of information. He's been learning a lot over these last few years about Lean and reading lots of good books and talking to lots of really smart lean thinkers out there. So he may be young but he brings up, he brings, he packs a punch with his information. So I was really, really impressed with what he knew and just his perspective on thing. It was pretty at some moment. So we, we cover everything from a little bit about his company and, and how they're getting started with Lean and some of the things that they're doing. They're more in a service oriented business. But then we get into all different types of topics. We started talking a little bit about philosophy and talking about eastern philosophy versus Western philosophy and then we got into Salesforce and you know, it was a CRM that that they use at their company and talking about how they use this for visual management and different types of dashboards. And so it was a, it was a wide conversation and I had a lot of fun and I think you're going to, to appreciate Christian's, you know, his attitude and his willingness to learn and, and to think and to, to get better and yeah, really fun episode. Now show notes for this, this episode will be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 350. 350. Again gembapodcast.com, look for episode 350. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Christian, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm fine. Ron, thank you for inviting me for this great opportunity to discuss some great topics about quality and continuous improvement. It's an honor, a pleasure to be here with you.

Yes, fantastic. Christian, where are you calling in from today?

I'm calling from Lima, Peru, South America. Many far, far away from Texas.

Yeah, no problem, no problem. Well, it's a beautiful part of the. So what's the weather like these days for you in Lima? Is it warm?

Sunny? Yes, warm, sunny, no rain in the past few days. We are in spring. We'll start our summer in two weeks.

Got it, Got it. All right. Well, I'm excited for the topic of. I guess we're going to kind of maybe call this fostering a culture, maybe with a service twist, talking about the service environment. So that's always exciting to. To hear about how Lean and Toyota production systems being used in non manufacturing world. So that. That's great. So. But Christian, I know you've listened to the show and as you know we like to begin all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So you do have one that you want to share?

Of course. Yes, I have one from Dr. Deming. Okay. Very, very simple he said. Actually from the first book I read about Dr. Deming, he said quality is made in the boardroom. Okay.

Quality is made in the boardroom. Right. Quality is made in the boardroom. So what's that mean to you?

That important decisions are made there. All the workers can do is follow the instructions they are given. They cannot change decisions, designs or systems. They can. They can only do their jobs, but they will get further as much as the managers really understand and grasp the basic concepts of quality.

Yes.

Okay, I know this. It sounds quite different from the concept quality from going to the game but doing Genshikenbutsu. But very important because if the C suite don't have a really clear understanding about what is really quality, the workers employee will have a lot of roads, logs, issues by trying to improve their jobs.

Absolutely.

Very simple. Very simple. But powerful I think.

Yes, absolutely. Okay, well, very good. So Christian, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you first got introduced to continuous improvement and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Well, ron, I am 26 years old. I actually graduated from university from school two years ago. I am working in ABB. Okay. Brown Boberry Company. We have a. We don't have a factory here. We used to have a factory here in Peru where we produce is different electric equipments. Okay. But right now we are working providing services, projects and every kind of. All kind of stuff related to the electric world. So quality is very important for us. Of course I'm working as a continuous improvement specialist. But I also do many other things like I help the commercial team with the salesforce management which is a. Which is a CRM. I also provide some help with suppliers management, I mean the audits, that kind of stuff. But my most important topic is ISO. Okay. That ISO standard of course trying to implement link management in a service environment now.

So. So your quality leader now is this your first kind of full time job out of school?

Well, I had, I've been working in ABB for four years. Okay. This is my fourth year but I worked two years as a trainee. I spent my first year working in the HR department.

Okay.

Okay. Human resources and then I moved to quality. This is my second year as with a contract. Okay. It's you know, quite different from you compare a trainee to a full time employee. So yes, this is actually my first full time as a responsible experience.

Nice.

So it's great. A lot of very challenging.

But what's it like? What's it been like?

Well, very challenging because you know, the work quality. There are so many methodologies, so many philosophies throughout the world and well, I fell in love with quality when I was studying in a university. I took a course called Quality Management. Our teacher taught us a lot about Deming, Taiichi, Ono Ichikawa, you know, the seven basic quality tools and so on. Yeah. But no one thing is talking about that, only theory. But if you try to implement that kind of tools or way of thinking in South America, it's quite difficult because we are kind of quite delayed compared to first world countries like Japan, usa, Germany and so I see that we have a lot of things to do regarding people, processes, methods and so on. Yeah, very challenging. I love this. But we have a lot of things to do.

Yeah, well listen, all over the world we have a lot to do. So don't feel bad. You know, everybody can improve, that's for sure. That's for sure. So. So you mentioned ISO. So I'm curious to maybe talk a little about the relationship between ISO and Lean and you know, obviously more in a service company type environment. So talk a little bit about how those things are working together. How maybe there. Is there any difference or talk a little bit about that.

Well, I think that if we want to compare ISO to link management 5s 6sigma, regardless of the methodology or philosophy, I think that ISO focuses much more on results, results documents and mapping the stakeholders for complete quality management throughout the company. But I think that it focuses much on more on results, is much more results oriented. Whereas Lean management, Six Sigma and so on is much more process oriented.

Yeah.

Has a process orientation, process risk, people development methods is efficiency against results. So I have dealt with many people in ISO audits when for example the auditor asks for hey, please can you show me your process KPIs and they are like, hey, Christian, can you help us providing the auditor our process KPIs? I am like, why are you asking me that? You should have your own process KPIs. And I see that many people only focuses only on results, financial KPIs, consequential KPIs, but they don't work too much on process KPI, which of course is very important. And I think it's one of the biggest topics in Lean and Six Sigma and so on. I think that the biggest difference, process versus process orientation versus results orientation.

Yeah, that's interesting. You know, there's a lot of research that there's been some. I won't necessarily name them, but there's some big Lean awards that certain companies try to win. Some big prizes, they call it sometimes, and the company will celebrate it and they'll do a big press release. But I saw very troubling statistic a few years ago that the vast majority of the companies that win these prizes, win these awards, ultimately backslide and in some cases end up worse than they were to begin with. So it's almost, you know, maybe one of the speculations is that, you know, these people are trying to, you know, win the prize or whatever it is just for the glory of, of the prize, but they don't really focus on the, that, you know, at one point it required them to do some things, you know, to win the prize. But it seems that the prize was more than important in the process. So I think that's what's very important. And whether it's ISO or anything like that, you know, you could easily try to just, you know, fool the auditors, if you will. I mean, I worked at companies, I'll be honest, and there was times where we would say, hey, at 3:00 tomorrow afternoon, how about you go to break and you be at your desk, you know, and because the auditor is going to come and we want the auditor to talk to you, not you, you know, so, I mean, it was very sad, you know, to see a company's behaving like that. But, you know, sometimes that's the reality that, you know, I mean, the standards like ISO are, they're all good, but, you know, if you're going about it for the wrong reasons or just so you have a badge on the wall or a banner on the wall so you can sell to other customers, then I think that's all backwards. And that's where Lean can really help, you know, with, you know, it like you about the process. Now we get the Results. We need the results. Right, obviously. But. But it is, it is about the process. It's about the people. Right. And so that's an interesting, interesting comparison there, Christian. Thank you for that. So I want to now kind of change directions a little bit, and I'd be curious to get your, your opinion on. You know, there's. There's a lot of folks out there who struggle to convince their leaders. You know, your quote, you know, early on about the boardroom and the importance of getting our leaders on, you know, want to help have this culture of continuous improvement, but sadly, a lot of times it's not always the case. Why do you think it's so hard to convince, you know, leaders to dedicate more time toward the process towards lean towards Toyota production system, whatever you want to call it?

I think. Well, first of all, I like to point out that I'm not against ISO. I think ISO is good for a company, but I think it will be much better if company focuses even more on this kind of philosophies like Lyling. Okay, so if anyone thinks that I hate ISO.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Totally. No, totally get it.

Okay. Well, I think three weeks ago, I finished reading this book, Toyota Way in for Service Environments, wrote by Jeffrey Leiker and Karen Ross.

And we've had Karen on the podcast many times. I don't know if you've heard Karen, but she's fantastic.

A great book. Okay. And they made a very good comparison between Orientals. I mean, Japan, usa, Canada, west and East. Okay. And they say that one of the biggest reasons, one of the main reasons of why our managers behave this way, you know, focusing much more on profit, sales and so on, is that due to our ancestors, Greeks and Confucius, you know, our philosophers. Okay. If you, if we compare Western philosophy from Greeks, Rome against Easter or Oriental philosophy, we can notice that in the past, Greek, Aristotle, Socrates, and so on, focuses much more on the atom, the person and, you know, trying to. To seek the true. The true, but like a little bit like a selfish point of view of the human and the society. Whereas in the Eastern world, you know, Confucius, Lao Tse, and so on, they focuses much more on the path, on the way, not that much on the true, but on the society, on working with harmony, teamwork, and so on. So I think I find that very important because if I think about that or present, I see that in many cases where people tend to be a little bit selfish, they focus only on their jobs. Most of the people, I think, don't have a 360 degrees overview of the processes on the company and I think that's very harmful for everyone. Okay, so I think that what that one of the biggest reasons we have to know our, we have to understand our history. Otherwise the history will repeat. Okay, that's one of the biggest points. And the second point I like to talk about is the fact that altogether lean is common sense. If you wrong, I know that you are a guy with a lot of periods that have read many books, I have seen many of your videos. If you think about lean, common sense, common sense just in time. Kanban is common sense. Hey, don't overproduce. Hey, don't waste your products. Hey, be careful with your inventory and so on. But it's like diet. Like diet is like wanting to be fit. It's like good habits against bad habits. Hey, why if healthy, if everyone knows that healthy food is good for our, our body, why if still so many people eating fast food, why, why is you, you can find so many groceries, cookies, candies and so on if you know that that's not good for you, for your health. Kind like trying to change our bad habits to good habits. But I think that takes a lot of time, a lot of dedication, a lot of discipline. And I think that, I think that's the biggest turnaround that we could give. If people, the C suite is really interested in trying to deploy lean and so on, they have to understand that it will take time. You go to the game, to the gym, you want to lose weight. Hey, you won't be a bodybuilder in two weeks. Of course not. It will take time. A lot of time is having a long term focus. And that's something that we haven't understand. Even though this is something that many gurus have talked about for many years. For example, Dr. Deming talked about this 40 or yes, 30 or 40 years ago about long term philosophy, long term vision, you know, the 14 management principles. So it's like, for me it's very simple. I think that's that comparison between good habits and bad habits and health, trying to be fit. That's exactly the same that is happening in our current business.

Yeah, no, it's true, it's true. And it's all over the world, you know, because, you know, even when we do sometimes we contrast the east from the west and, and I don't know. Have you, have you ever been to Japan or to the East? Have you visited?

Not yet, but of course I will.

There are some companies that do some nice Tours. Katie Anderson does a nice tour and some other folks. But I encourage you to. What's interesting is there's a lot of truth to what you're saying. As far as, you know, they're big on like the first time I went to Japan, the thing that struck me is their importance of what we say is harmony. You know, like even to the extent of going up an escalator, you know, if you, you know, you stand, I think if I remember right, you have to stand to the right. So if people want to walk, they can walk on the left. So there's like, there's harmony and there's, there's a rhythm, you know, into the way that life is working. However, on the other side of it, I will tell you that there are many, many non lean, you know, companies in Japan and they'll be the first to tell you that. Right. And so, so it's not always as easy to say, well in the east it's so easy because of their, their philosophies and whatnot. Because even many people in the east, they don't even practice their eastern philosophies anymore themselves. Right? And so just like in the west, many people are changing. So, but there is some, there is some truth to, to, to that long term perspective. And, but I think what it's always taken me back when I've visited the east is, is just the importance of, of harmony and, and, and, and working together. But now for sure, you know, nobody should think that they've got it all figured out over there when we're totally lost in the west because there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of goodness obviously in both sides of the, of the, of the world. There lots of, lots to learn for sure, for sure. So what do you think then? So like as far as you guys, you principles and different things that you guys are working on, what are some of your goals, you know, over this next year or so?

Well, honestly we have a lot of work to do, but fortunately I had a couple of managers who are very interested in deploying lean, okay. Implementing lean in their processes. And I'm talking about the operational side and the sales and marketing side, which is very good because we can send a message to the people that hey, you can apply lean principles in any processes. Okay. Almost everywhere. Okay. So my biggest focus for the coming years is to first we have to, we gotta have a common vision, a vision we are looking forward to deploy two or from three years plan. But that plan will only be successful if we Have a common vision. If we are really committed to if we have the right resource skills and of course a plan. Okay? Because if we don't have a plan, it will be like false attempt. Okay? The people will be frustrated, a lot of confusion, change, resistance. So of course, you know, many, many books, many gurus talk about, hey, you have to start with your balance tree mapping. You have to map your current state. Then you have to design your ideal state for the future. And then you have to do some Kaizen events or trying to implement Kanban here or trying to implement standard work, your andom, you know, trying to implement Jidoka or business management Miruka and so on. And they think that, you know, of course I don't have a lot of experience. I only 26, but I have, I read many books. I have been fortunate to talk with Experts thanks to LinkedIn. For example, Emiliani da Duarte, I don't know if you have ever heard of him. Oh yeah, for me he's a genius. Yes. And for me there's not like a recipe, okay? But even though for me there is not a recipe that will work for everybody in the same way we do have to understand the basic concepts. Okay, which are these basic concepts? Of course, engagement, going to the game bus, total work, business management. But for me there's no like hey, first you have to do this and then you do that, then you proceed with this. For me it's not so logical because it depends too much on the current state of your processes. Okay? But yes, if we talk only about principles in a service environment, of course I will focus a lot on standard work, but not doing these standards in a desk. We have to go to the, to the game, but to the place where these value added processes take where people do this value added processes. And also we have to focus a lot on Visa management because we work principally main on transactional processes. Okay, we use a lot of Salesforce, we use Power, bi, Excels and so on. But we have to do this business management on a preventive way. We don't want to design these business management platforms or dashboards in a way that may tell the sales manager, hey, you had a problem last week. No, we don't want that. We want, hey, if you don't do this, you may have this problem in two or three weeks. So you better take action right now. Something like that. For example, we work a lot with case management. We have a strong link to our customer support team so we can be able to stabilize the workload of our people. Will Help a lot to identify where maybe coming these different kind of wastes, you know, trying to eliminate waste, mudas and so on. So yes, standard work business management. And we have to focus also on that. People need to understand that it's okay to make mistakes. Okay? The company should not fire you if you make a mistake. I watched a video From Norman Bodek 1 month ago and he says that, hey, one of the main reasons why people learn if I make mistakes.

How.

Else can you learn from your experience? Most of the time it would be by making mistakes. It's okay to make a mistake, but you have to understand what happened and you have to learn from it. Okay? So that has a lot of this mindset, has a strong link to the jidoka TPS principle. Okay? Because, okay, we don't want to pass defects, we don't want to pass a bad process, bad information. No, if you find a mistake, you better talk about it. You better raise your hand, talk with your manager, solve it in your own if you can, or we will help you and we will try to solve this problem as a team. Okay? That's for me. It's very, very simple. But people have to understand that this will take a lot of time. That's the key. That's the key for me. People need to understand that it will take time like that. The example I gave you a few moments ago. Hey, you won't be a body builder in two weeks. No, it's impossible. You will not be a tree or problem solver expert in one month. No, there's no way. No way. There is no shortcut way to shortcut to do this possible.

Hey, I want to circle back real fast. I'm curious to get your thoughts. So with Salesforce or, you know, it's just, it doesn't have to be Salesforce. There's many different CRMs out there. We also use Salesforce here again by Academy. So I'm very familiar with it. And one thing that that is I get you. I want you talking about visual management. So obviously within Salesforce you can create a million various dashboards, right? So way more dashboards than you would ever need. Have you found? Have you found? In fact, it can be counterproductive at times. It's like, oh my gosh, you know, somebody gets excited and next thing you know, they got 82 dashboards. You, what are we supposed to look at here? But I'm curious, have you experimented with true visual management, meaning physical, like on a wall somewhere at the Gemba? Or is most of your visual management Cues inside the computer.

Look, I know that if we want to respect and follow the basic TPS principles, we should try as much as we can to do our business management in the plant, in the walls with a tree reports, with board, a giant board. It's okay to, I wouldn't like to say waste money on paper, but I think will be very helpful to send a message to the people that, hey, you can. You have. You need. Actually, you need to explain your team in a basic A3 report. How's the performance of your process going? Okay, but we are moving to another site. Okay. We. We will be working from. Yes, from one or two months in a new site, a new area, and we will be working in a building. Okay. So it will be quite difficult to have a lot of papers on board. So actually there is like a paperless culture that our C suite wants to implement. Hey, paperless. Be paperless. Be paperless. Try to be as much digital as you can. So we have to adjust to it. Okay. Of course, Salesforce helps a lot because I know that fake most of the operation. You know, the projects management, the service managers, they don't interact the whole time with Salesforce. You know, this is more for customer support, sales, marketing. But it helps a lot because you can track your bids, you can track the quotations, you can track the time of the. Maybe, for example, you can send a message in the dashboard, hey, you have 10 quotes. That will be. Its expected award date is in two weeks. Yeah, you better take care of those management and so on.

Yeah, it circles right back to, you know, our earlier conversation on, you know, the difference between focusing only on results versus the process. So in that example for the salesperson, you know, the result is, you know, converting this to an opportunity and then closing the opportunity as a closed sale. So the closed sale, if you. All you did was watch the dashboard on sales, closed sales, then you know, you're missing out on a lot because you have to back up as I. Okay, how many leads do I have? How many, you know. You know, when's the last time that I called that lead? Oh, it's been five days. You know, I need to call them again or something like that. So. So I think it's a beautiful example of what you talked about earlier about building these dashboards that focus on the process, not just the results. Now, sure, we do need to know what the final result is. We got to keep that score. But that's the score of the game, if you will. But how are we playing the game is very important. Right. So yeah, that's a great, that's a great example.

Yeah, we help you Cypher helps a lot with actually that base the visual management principle needs to be preventive. Cannot be reactive.

Yes, should.

Shouldn't be reactive. Shouldn't tell you, hey, you have 10 leads that you haven't called in the last two days. Yeah, no, it should tell you, hey, Elite has just wanted to contact you. Please contact with him or you have 10, like I have said, you have 10 quotations which will expected. Our date is in this week. Yeah, so it tells you, hey, you have to focus on this otherwise you will have. You won't have good results at the end of the month.

Exactly. Beautiful. Well, this has been fun, Christian, thank you for coming on. Maybe to wrap things up, why don't you share some final words of wisdom to maybe those folks who are out there working in a service environment or maybe there's someone out there that's similar to you in age and experience. Maybe give some words of wisdom for these folks that are listening.

Oh, of course. Well actually first of all, thank you so much, Ron, for you for this opportunity. I love this space with you. Interacting with experts for me is very enriching. It's very, you know, I love to learn from the people that really knows the basic concept of TPS and links. I really appreciate this opportunity.

No, you're welcome.

And for the rest of the. Of the guys, you know, there are 26, 20, 25, 27. Hey, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. Kishiro Toyoda Taishi. Oh no. Were men's practice, men of actions. Practice, practice. I know this may be some quite difficult in. In this Covid situation, but practice, try to practice even in your room. Try to implement 5os in your desktop. Try to implement 5s in your laptop. Try to help your mother, your grandma at the kitchen. Trying to calculate. I wouldn't say calculate. Attack time.

I was gonna say gotta be careful. No, I don't try to do it. If you're married, don't. Yeah. And if you're married, don't. 5s your wife's, you know, pantry without her permission. This is not good. Not advised. You know.

There'S always an exception for the rule.

Yeah, no, but you're right. Take care of what you can control. I love that attitude. And practice, deliberately practice. I would add, you know, be very intentional with what you're trying to do. Make a prediction. What do you think is going to happen? See what actually happened and then compare, you know, what actually happened to what you thought was going to happen. And that's where the learning comes. Right. And so, you know, maybe to close, we talked about philosophers earlier and I think the thing that I take from all Philo officers, whether they're Eastern or Western, is learning to think. Right. This is the most powerful gift that we could have is how to think, think and think critically and to learn and continue to learn and grow and keep helping people. Right. And serve people. If you do these things, you know, all the good that lean and just really the goodness that humanity can bring to one another, you know, will truly reach its potential. Right. When we learn to think and when we learn and yeah, just help each other. It's fantastic. Great. All right. What's the best way for folks to connect with you, Christian?

Well, they can connect me through LinkedIn. Okay, okay. They just have to type my name, Christian Goizueta. Maybe anyone can find me there. I will be 100% open to answer some questions, to interact with the people who wants to ask me anything or maybe people who want to just interchange, exchange information, books, knowledge. So of course people want ask me to give them some advice. Of course, if people want to give me advice, great. Okay. I'm just very happy to keep learning and by, you know, like by deliberate practice, learning from our failures. It's not so easy. No, not so easy. But I think that's the only way. Yeah, we have to be mentally strong all the time. You know, maybe some good days, bad days. It's okay. It's part of life. Taichi Ono took. It took taichi Ono almost 20 years to master his kanban. And just in time. A principle. 20 years. 20 years. It's incredible. It took Sakichi Toyoda almost 20 years as well to complete his automatic loom. You know, the one that stopped automatically.

When you found a defect thread broke. Yeah.

20 years. It's amazing.

Yeah, yeah. There's no get rich.

How do you do that? Very patient.

Yep. In practice.

Long term vision.

That's right. Fantastic. Okay, well, and we'll link to everything in our show notes. So this is episode 350. So go to gembapodcast.com look for episode 315. We'll link to Christian's LinkedIn and all that good stuff. So again, Christian, thank you for coming on. This has been a lot of fun. I know you say you are young, but you have a lot of wisdom already, I can tell. So keep learning, keep growing, keep practicing deliberately. Keep deliberately practicing. And I think great, great, great things are going to come for you, my friend.

Thank you. Thank you, Ron. I love your words. Yes. We, the youngest, have a lot of work to do. We have to improve our country. We have to. I know. This is not so much for the money, for fame. This should be for our country, for helping people, helping our society.

Absolutely. All right. Thanks again, Christian. You take care. Okay.

Okay. Thank you, Ron. Have a wonderful day.

Okay, bye bye.

Okay, bye bye.

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