GA 358 | Lean in Higher Education with Thomas Lencki and Dagmar Vlahos

Individuals that are looking to change how they do their work sometimes cannot see the forest through the trees. Right. They can't really see what it could be. So this perfect day concept is really where we're asking those participants to think about what does a perfect day look like.

Today? I'm excited to welcome Dagmar Vallejos and Tom Lenski to the show. Now, Tom has actually been on the Gemba Academy podcast in the past. He was on episode 251 where we talked about lean in New Hampshire. As you'll hear, Tom has a long background working for the state of New Hampshire in various roles. He was in the police department for many years and now he's working in higher education, which is where he and Dagmar began to cross paths. And so what we're going to talk about today is how lean is being used in the New Hampshire higher education system. So there's a few colleges and some universities there, New Hampshire, who are really, really wrapping their arms around the whole idea of lean thinking. And they're using it to improve all aspects of their offerings, everything from how folks sign up for classes and how students are interacting with the various systems. So we really kind of get into that topic, but then we really got some fun concepts and some things that really stretched my own brain, to be honest with you. And one of them that we talked about was this idea, this concep of a perfect day. And this is a way to kind of come up with a future state that benefits, you know, the internal customers and the external customers. So you'll have to hear about how they go about that. But I think that's going to be a really interesting thing. I'm going to personally be playing around with that here for Gemba Academy, and I think that you will be as well. So even if you are not in higher education, there's tons of value in this episode. And especially we talk about, you know, virtual training and how to. How to engage folks on a zoom call, and they've got lots of tips and tricks that they've been using. And I think that's going to benefit everybody because just about everybody right now, due to Covid, is doing some things virtually. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 358. Again, we've got a lot of stuff linked in these show notes. So GembaPodcast.com go to episode 358. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Dagmar and Tom, welcome To the show. How are you?

Excellent. How are you doing? Thank you for having us.

Oh, I'm doing well. Dagmar, how are you?

I'm doing fantastic, and we're super excited to be here today.

Thank you. Thank you. So where are you guys calling in from today?

We are in the beautiful state of New Hampshire. We're actually at our location in Manchester, New Hampshire, at the UNH University of New Hampshire campus.

Nice, nice, nice. We were just talking before we hit the record button that you guys have T shirt weather, right, in New Hampshire today.

Yeah, it's about 32 degrees, and we were located in Manchester. We're actually like what they call the mill yard. So a bunch of brick buildings. It's historic and it's beautiful. Sun is shining. And like you said, T shirt weather. It's like 32, 33 degrees. So it's warm for us up here today.

Yeah, well, in Texas, you know, 30 degrees is like, you know, batten down the hatches and cover the pipes. Everything's going to freeze. You know, it's an emergency.

So.

Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. All right, well, I'm really excited to have you both on to kind of talk a little bit about lean and higher education. So as you both know, and Tom, you were on back in episode 251 where we talked about again, some. Some. Some lean topics there in New Hampshire. So f haven't listened to that one. That'll be a fun one to go back to and pull back into the Archives 251 and hear that. But we do like to begin with our guest sharing a quote. So, Dagmar, do you have one?

Actually, I do. So the quote that I really resonate with is from Gandhi, and it says, be the change you want to see in the world. And the reason that I like that quote so much is my mantra is not to wait for someone else to identify change or to look at making change or to either within your own self or within your organization, but to be that person, to be able to take that first step forward, to say, you know, we need to look at how we're doing things and make that change. So I think it starts with one as an individual and then permeates out to everybody else around you.

Yes. Physician, heal thyself. Right?

Absolutely.

I love it. I love it, Tom.

So mine comes from John Shuck. This was a tough one for me. I looked around and there's a lot of great quotes out there. But what I really like about this one from John Shook is lean isn't Lean if it doesn't involve everyone. So coming from my past life as a state trooper and now with the university system, a senior process engineer, we really need to get this positive culture going. We need everyone. We need to involve everyone. Everyone needs to know how they fit in this big lean picture. And really getting people to take that first step towards their Lean journey, I really believe that if we involve everyone, more people will take that step. So that's why I chose this one.

Yeah. Oh, I love that one. Yeah. Everybody, everywhere, every day, right?

Yeah. That's one of the quotes that we do on our LinkedIn. A lot is lean all day, every day.

Yeah.

And, yeah, we really live by that.

I love it. Very good, Very good. All right, well, let's hear a little bit about both of your backgrounds. I'm curious to hear about how you first got involved with Continuous Improvement with Lean. And then I suppose you guys can both tag team what you're up to these days. But, Dagmar, do you want to start with just a little bit about yourself and your background?

Yeah. So my lean journey goes back to about 2004, where I worked in an institution that was very customer service orientated. Worked for Fidelity Investments at the time, and they were starting with Six Sigma and the methodology about utilizing Six Sigma. And typically when you hear Six Sigma, it's normally in a manufacturing environment. So taking that methodology and applying it into a customer service environment was very exciting for me. So I started right at the ground back in 2004 with my Six Sigma White Belt, just getting that introductory and was super excited about it, was able to progress through the entire program and proceed forward to receive my black belt. So I am a Six Sigma black belt and really utilize that in that customer service environment. Throughout my career, I've brought that with me. My background is human resources and payroll. So everywhere that I went, I brought that methodology with me from position to position. About nine years ago, I was asked to come and interview at the University of New Hampshire. And so came in. Not having any higher education experience other than being a student myself, I was able to come in and to articulate how we can transform this methodology into an environment within higher education. So about nine years ago, I started at UNH and I am both a Six Sigma black belt and a lean black belt. I view myself as a mentor, a trainer, a facilitator, and a change agent. And so brought that in and brought that into higher education and have been within the university system ever since that time.

Yeah, I love it, you know, and what I really appreciate about. About your story and Tom will be the same way. Is that so. Sometimes in the academic world you'll have folks up there talking about lean Six Sigma or whatever, but honestly, they've never done it. I mean, they can teach it and they understand it and they might be good at teaching it, but in the end, do they really believe? Because have they ever seen transformation themselves? Sometimes? No. Many times, no. But you, on the other hand, you've done it, you've practiced it. So that's what's exciting about hearing folks like you and kind of getting into the academic world and the higher education world, you know, practicing what you've. You've already done, you know, or preaching what you've already done.

Right.

So that's really cool.

You know, you just bring up a really good point. I started off as a practitioner and then transitioned into the training component of it and kind of have a good mix between the two. So I appreciate the fact that you kind of bring that in.

Yeah, yeah. So in a couple years ago, when I did 251, kind of described how when I first got promoted in state police, it was 2012, I jumped right into a lean project within our lean black belts and kind of really got my feet wet with lean and realized, hey, there's a lot of things in law enforcement, especially in recruitment and training, that we could lean out. So brought the idea, made this transition of training come to fruition. And after that it was like, hey, you should go on to yellow belt, you should go on to green belt. And then, hey, we're building a bench strength. You should go on to lean black belt. And as Dagmar and I have really done some training this year and really been able to reflect back on my past experience, I didn't realize that I was doing lean back when I was in the Marine Corps. So I spent four years in the Marine Corps prior to becoming state police and just using like the 5s, if you, if you will. I didn't realize that the Marine Corps was having me do lean right standardized. My foot locker needed to be a certain way, my uniforms needed to be certain way. But when I needed to go get something, whether it was my rifle, if I needed to get a certain thing like a tourniquet or something like that, I knew exactly where it was on me and all my other fellow Marines. And just looking back, it was something funny that kind of clicked. And I said I was doing lean back then when I was 18 years old, I just didn't have a name to It. So fast forward to state police. I really fast tracked and became a lean black belt. And I got to do lean throughout the state of New Hampshire. I got to meet a lot of very great individuals. That's where I met Dagmar. We're both part of the lean Executive Committee together. And I got to do not only just law enforcement for state police. I got to do cities, towns. I got to help them realize where we could find efficiencies. And I know we talked about this on 251, but the troopers leaning out their trunks. Even though I'm retired now from state police in effective June of 2020, I now work for the University System of New Hampshire with Dagmar. I'm her partner in crime, if you will. The troopers are still reaching out and saying, hey, can I send you a picture? Does my trunk look leaned out? So I'm very proud now to look back and say that's kind of lived on. Even though I'm gone, they're still caring about am I set up for success?

Yeah.

Very cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, well, let's kind of jump in to lean in higher education. So talk a little bit about how it is. I mean, how lean is working in higher education there in New Hampshire.

Yes. So, Ron, I want to bring us back to when lean started. Lean within higher education is not something that you normally hear. And I have many other higher edge organizations that reach out to me and say, hey, how are you doing it? How did you get started and what are you doing? I thought I would share with the audience today a little bit about how we came about to where we are today and to bring you a little bit through that journey.

Great.

Back in 2008, the state of New Hampshire had tremendously cut the funding to the University System of New Hampshire. So the University System of New Hampshire is comprised of four. Granite State College, Keene State College, Plymouth State University, and the University of New Hampshire, as well as a University systems office. So funding was cut and leadership looked at it and said, we have a deficit here or a gap in between the funding we received to the state and our operational cost. So what they did was the leadership team made the determination that they want to bring in somebody with a Six Sigma background. So we're going to bring somebody in with Six Sigma that's going to really help us evaluate how we do our work and help us to decrease that gap that we're no longer receiving from the State of New Hampshire. Long story short, went through the interview Even not having any higher education background was able to articulate how Six Sigma methodology could be applied in this organization. Leadership was very engaged and embraced bringing in a Six Sigma black belt to come in and start looking at the organization. However, the staff was not ready for such a transition. So I would have to say the first few years were difficult. Coming in and evaluating how people are doing their work, I got a lot of resistance. Why are you here? Why are you looking at what we're doing? What are you doing? And so just started to go through it. And we quickly found that the DMAIC methodology within Six Sigma really wasn't fitting the culture of higher education. And to me, I think that's really an important component, is to make sure that when you're bringing either Lean or Six Sigma within your culture, you really need to be looking at, is it a good fit? How can I make this work? So fast forward a little bit, and I heard about the state program, the Lean program. So despite being a Six Sigma black belt, I went up to the state of New Hampshire and I started right at the basics, right at the beginning with their intro class, and worked my way through to the Black Belt program. And I started to see the commonality between the workforce within higher education and state employees and the similarities between the longevity of how long they've been in their jobs and how they really focus on the customer and wanting to do everything to make sure that the customer, whether it's the community or students, really, really worked. So I brought back the Lean methodology, and we started to get a little bit of adoption to it. But I was still not seeing that connectivity between my passion and excitement of this methodology and the employees within higher education. So I went to my leadership team in 2014, midway, and said, we need to start to educate our employees. So Jay Shetty has a really good quote that says, fear comes from the lack of knowledge. Accelerate your learning, eliminate your fear. And that's really what we needed to do. We really need to start to educate our employees. So we began a program in January of 2015 with an intro class. And from there, it kind of just had this snowball effect. People were able to start to connect with this Lean methodology and how they can apply it to their work. And so we started to get that excitement. And then we started to build out a lean yellow belt program, a lean green belt program, which is around facilitation. And we started to see that increase of what they're trying to do. And so we look back now, and Since January of 2015, we've had over 900 employees go through at least our Intro to Lean class. So I wanted to kind of bring a little bit of background as to how we got to where we are today and how by educating our workforce, then help build that culture of lean within higher education and then to build.

On that just a little bit. So Dagmar and I, like Dagmar said, there is Granite State College in this university system, this Keene State College. There's Plymouth State University, University of New Hampshire, and then we have the system office, the University System of New Hampshire. So Dagmar and I are based on the Durham campus. However, we provide lean services throughout all of the University System of New Hampshire. And that's pretty cool because whether you're based out of Plymouth, you're based out of Keene, or you're based out of Granite, or even, unh, we can provide the lean services. So if you wanted to do an actual lean event, if you wanted us to come and actually facilitate your groups, or if you were looking for training, that all falls within our wheelhouse. And that's pretty cool. And when you talk about the culture, and Dagmar definitely built this awesome culture here at the university system. And we have recently, with that transformation, really seen a big spike in different universities now realizing that they're part of this family, one family, one team, and they can be part of getting the assistance from Dagmar and I. So we, especially Plymouth State and Granite State, we have definitely seen a huge uptick in request for a training. They'll ask for ideas from us or what do you think about this? And then we get pulled on different projects as well.

So I wonder if you guys could give me an example of, you know, how lean is being applied, you know, to make things better, like what kind of problems are being addressed or what kind of opportunities are being, you know, sought after. I mean, is it like professors trying to be more efficient in their way? They're teaching a class, or is it, you know, front office folks or everything in between?

So I would say our biggest, we'll call them customers, are the operational departments. So our admissions office, our registrar's office. So we have all of these offices and departments that are coming to us and saying, hey, we want to be more efficient on how we do our work and how we deliver our services. But then also on the flip side, Tom and I have also introduced this concept of not only do we need to enhance things operationally internally, we also need to look at the student journey, right? So let's think about this to add, drop a class. You know, students will sign up for courses, they need to, you know, maybe they want to drop a class or they want to, you know, add a class to their curriculum. You know, the registrar's office really looked at that as very time consuming manual process. So they came to us and say, how can we streamline this? Previously somebody was manually filling out a piece of paper. It was not either complete or it was incorrect. They had to walk it around campus to get signatures. And you know, you really think about this Covid situation where we're now all remote, our students are remote. We can't be walking forms around campuses anymore. We need to be transitioning to electronic signatures. So the projects are vast and they're mainly focused towards student facing operations and operations internally. From bringing on new hires into the university, to student facing activities, to looking how we execute and deploy our technology. So there's a vast number of projects. I guess I would answer that question to say, what aren't we working on? I think Tom and I are a team of two. We're really looking and we continually work to build out our bench strength so that we can get more lean practitioners across all of the campuses. And we're really tackling all of those types of projects. I would say from a professor standpoint, we've had very limited interactions with professors in the work that they do. But we do have things that are indirectly tied to our faculty and professors and the work that they do. So we're really streamlining their work and their interactions with students.

And just to build on that. I would say as the culture grows and it becomes more positive up here we have winter weather. So curtailed operations, business transformation, more people are realizing now that we are university system wide. It's like Dagmar said, what aren't we working on? It's anything and everything. And especially now with that student journey or the customer facing, how are we making it better not only for us, but for our customers. People are really grabbing onto that and saying there's room for improvement and they are knocking down our doors.

Yeah, boy, I can really resonate with what you're talking about. I'm not going to name any names here, but we have, I have some kids that are even. We've, we homeschool our kids. And so in high school, my older daughters started taking classes at the community college, you know, as like juniors, you know, in high school. And, and so, you know, we're pretty familiar with our community college here. And I gotta tell you, my wife every Time she had to, like, sign them up for something or whatever it was. She was not happy, you know, by the end of that experience. And so it's staggering. Like, you know how. And I guess part of it might be funding or whatever it is, but like, gosh, the systems that, at least in our community college, it's pretty archaic, you know, And I'm like, come on, people, you know, this is 2020. So it's great to hear that, that you're really focused on that experience because it's not great all over the country, at least.

Yeah. And, you know, we've been working, Tom and I have been working on a project for a few months now on one of our campus when it comes to admission and really recruiting students. And so for us, it's been, how do we, how do we recruit these students remotely and how do we attract them to want to come to our campuses where people can't do campus visits these days? And so we've really had to take that and think in a different type of methodology. You know, Henry Ford said, it's not the employer who pays the salary, it's the customers who pays the salary. And if we aren't getting students signed up to come to our universities, we're not going to be an organization going forward 10, 15 years down the road.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. So let's pivot a little bit now to, you know, we've mentioned Covid a few times here, talk about how that's changed, you know, just the pandemic itself, how it's changed lean in higher education there for you guys.

Well, let me bring you back to March of 2020, when we were told on campuses, take home your monitors, take home your computers, you guys are going to go remote. And we don't know how long you're going to go remote for. We kind of packed up, they sent the students home, and we had that uncertainty, just like all the rest of the organizations that are out there across not only the United States, but the world. Being a lean practitioner, I kind of looked at it and said, wow, how am I going to do lean methodology remotely? I began canceling classes that we had set up. I was fumbling through and trying to determine how am I now going to provide lean services in a remote atmosphere. I'm so used to face to face whiteboards, flip charts, having everybody in the same room, collaboration, and all that goes away. And I do have to admittedly say, as a lean practitioner, I was not practicing what I was teaching. I do have to honestly say that. And As a change agent, I should have had the ability to be able to be flexible and to change. But I think that fear overcame to say, wait a minute, how am I going to do this remotely? How am I going to get people to interact? What tools am I going to be able to use if. If I can't be face to face with them and really had to sit down and take a look at it? So we needed to send our students home. We needed our staff to be at home. Everyone is now working remotely. But more than ever, we need lean methodology to help us transition into what is going to be the new normal going forward. Then I'm going to fast forward to June of 2020, and here came Tom.

Yeah, so I jumped on. I retired from state police and I joined. And to go from every day, basically in the midst of everything, to now working remote, that was a huge culture shock. And as Dagmar and I collaborated every day virtually, we started getting these requests in. And she had created the 2020 training calendar. So there was trainings out there on the UNH Lean website. And employees were reaching out, saying, I'm interested in intro, I'm interested in green belt. So we really talked about this. And like Dagmar said, the classes unfortunately got canceled due to Covid and an experiment. Right. I love saying, let's try something and see if it works. Let's. I tell her, like, we're going to push you off. I flew in helicopters in the Marine Corps. We're just going to get pushed off into the water and we got to figure it out. Let's take that jump. Let's just take that jump and see what happens. So I said, let's together. We looked at the training program and we said, let's do intro virtually. So what we did is we built the class and we said, all right, I think if we do this virtually and we looked at the content, we can make this happen. So we. We stood in Manchester and we were together socially distanced in a zoom room at the UNH Manchester campus. And we had nine students virtual. And we were able to put in some different online tools. They were able to see us, we were able to see them. There's different things, like they can raise their hand, but it's a three and a half hour course. And we did this experiment. Would this work? And we were pleasantly surprised at the end of it. And our boss was actually in that first training program. And he said afterwards, he goes, that was an excellent training. He's got a little understanding of lean. He said, that was an excellent training. And you never would have known that this was your first training class. It was like you guys were teaching this for years. And it literally was our first one. And then just fast forward. That was like the stepping stone to say we can do this, we can build on this, we can expand on this. And we did a few more intro classes. A couple. So our first one was in September. We did a couple in November and December. And then we actually did a three day green belt facilitator training, all virtually as well. And it was, the results were far beyond what our expectations were. People were engaged, they were excited. Whether it's three and a half hour training or the three basically eight hours of training each day, people were engaged. They're looking for this and there's different ways to keep them engaged. So we're pretty excited that we took that leap of faith and we were able to pull it off. And people were engaged and they're looking for more. There was one class that filled up, we had to extend our numbers a couple times and they asked for a different class in December. So we had to come up with a whole different class. And we had almost 25 participants in that class.

Oh, that's so good. That's so good. I mean, obviously Gemba Academy, we're kind of big on virtual learning as well. You know, we've been doing it for over 10 years and I mean, I've obviously been sold on the whole concept and I, we tell customers that, no, really, it's going to be okay. You know, we can do this and we've figured out ways and I'm going to ask you about engagement, you know, but we've got some tips and tricks to where I would argue that, you know, I can make a virtual engagement or training session or whatever it is in some ways better than we could do face to face. Because there's certain things that you can do virtually that you really just can't do in person now. Yeah, you can't go and high five each other because you're not together. But, but I think we limit ourselves a lot when we think about virtual learning and virtual training. And really there is almost, almost no limit aside from physical touch. Right. You can't do that until we figure out holograms and all that, you know. But, but, but let's talk about engagement though, because whether it's a lean training or, you know, any other kind of virtual type of an engagement, I mean, zoom fatigue is real, right? I mean, people can get beat down by bad presentations done over zoom sort of thing. So. Or teams or whatever, you know, software that you use. What, what. Talk about. About how you guys keep engagement high during your training sessions.

Absolutely. So one of the things that we've done is, you know, we have all. We have access to all these tools. We're in higher education, so let's utilize tools that we have. So we have pre work that needs to be done before any of our classes. So there's videos that people watch information that they get, and they can consume this information during their own time at their own speed. Right. So it really. Especially for our Intro to Lean class, the introduction piece of it talks about. We have videos on there about Lean in higher education and why lean is important and what is lean and all of these kinds of things. So Tom and I have them do all of these prep type of courses. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how much time they want to do it. And it just starts to get them engaged and we do that. We also utilize Zoom breakout rooms, especially for our Greenbelt facilitator training. We have our teams that will be. We break them out into two teams. Tom and I pick who's on what team and we let them practice their facilitation skills. And so they're practicing being a team member and they're practicing to be a facilitator. So they kind of shift back and forth. So the technology that we used was the Zoom breakout rooms. And we broke these guys out into teams. We gave them a real life case study, each team a separate case study, and they were able to get instruction from us as a full class and then break out into their breakout rooms. So we sought our. A lot of engagement there. You talk about zoom fatigue. We also have to think about all of those other, excuse me, distractors that are out there. Right. We've got kids that are at home now all being remote and having to worry about having smaller children at home and doing class. We have the prime guy that shows up at our door with a delivery. We've got the barking dogs and the cats that show up. You know, you've got all of these distractions. We've got people who are not equipped to have an office at home, so they have to do a makeshift office in their kitchen or in their basement. So you have all of these other kind of distractors. So Tom and I want to make it engaging and fun. So we use the Zoom breakout rooms. We use a lot of videos that we think are pertinent. Some of them are funny. Some of them, you know, talk a lot about skills. We also bring in other people, greenbelt panels. So we had a green belt class, and we brought in existing green belts and black belts into the class to share their stories. And so that our students, our lean partners, as we call them, can also learn and hear stories from other people and ask them questions.

And the one thing I love about the lean community is how open they are to share information and collaboration. And I were on a call with Patrick Adams, and he showed us, this was a while back, how to just do Zoom Annotates, right? So for the intro class, we throw up a picture with, you know, some images. Are you sad? Are you happy? Are you excited? Are you nervous? And right away, we begin with the Zoom Annotate. We show them, click on Annotate, click on the stamp, click on the heart, and basically show us, how are you feeling to be in for this class? And you can see the interaction from the people. They're excited to do something new. A small percent might have seen the Zoom Annotate, but for us up here in higher education, a lot of the employees have never seen that. So right away, we start with the Zoom Annotate. And then as we go on with the class a little bit, we do play the 5s games. We explain 5s. We show some before and after pictures. We really walk through that and get a good understanding of it. And then we throw them into the 5s game. We play the 5s game, and after we show the numbers and we have them pick 1 through 49 or how far they can get through, we pull up this tool called mentee.com and they're able to use their phone and they're able to log how many numbers they found on their shift. Right? We're actually doing A5s through the process. And right on the screen, as they enter in how many numbers they found, we can see the numbers displaying. And if five people found numbers one through five, number five gets a little bit bigger and they get excited. And we do that a couple times as we work through the 5s, and then that's something that we share with them. At the end, when we present our PowerPoint slide, we put those slides that we captured those numbers right in there. So the minty.com is a real exciting tool. And then one from my LinkedIn network that I found, there's a woman's name, Fernando Suto, from Brazil. She was talking about MyWorld.com, an online collaboration tool. And basically her post said, if you don't know about this. You're already behind the eight ball. So I said, I don't like being behind the eight ball. So that night I jumped on and I figured out how to work this collaboration tool and it was really exciting. And the next day Dagmar and I were going to work on the 2021 training calendar for the university system and something happened and we weren't able to virtually or meet in person. Here at UNH Manchester, we were going to use a whiteboard. We were going to socially distance and we were going to basically lay everything out and we weren't able to meet. So I had this myroad.com up and basically I said, dagmar, we can do this virtually. So I allowed her to have rights and she jumped in and basically we had this whiteboard with stickies and we had everything that we needed to schedule Intro yellow, green. We have a couple new training programs that we'll talk about in a little while, but we were able to lay that out. She was able to move some stickies. I could see her moving stickies or rewriting things. I could do it. So those online collaboration tools to get people engaged are very exciting. And now just last night we were working with a group. Dagmar brought Vizio up real quick and as people were talking, we were able to document and basically show them. And I know I are very visual people as like most people, and as everyone saw what was being displayed, the ideas just started flowing.

Yeah.

We also find that when people are on or off camera, our engagement levels are a lot different. So we find when we work with teams and not that everybody can be on camera, not everybody has the ability to do that. But we found when people were on camera, we got better engagement and better collaboration than when people are off camera. So we found that that was helpful as well. And by making things visual, as people are talking, they can actually see it come to life and be able to see what's happening. And they go, oh, okay, now I get it. Let's really work out. Because what we were basically doing was building out a new org chart and we were saying, how are people going to fit in the space that they're in? And that's what we were doing.

I love. We're big Google Suite fans here at Gemba Academy, so we use all the various Google tools. And one that I had discovered late last year, or maybe the middle part of last year, was jamboard. I don't know if you've ever played with that, but that's another one where you can just put like these virtual post it notes and I'm looking at one right now. Our team, we just, we did it like a swim lane map and in on jamboard and we're just moving post it notes around and you can see it real time, you know, can see the post it notes moving around. So if your monitor is big enough, gosh, it feels like you're, you're looking at a, at a virtual whiteboard. Right? So, yeah, there's a number of tools out there. What I'm going to do is we're going to link, I'm going to have Dagmar and Tom, I'm going to ask you to send me a link to all these various tools that you've talked about. And because folks may be trying to write them down or whatever, and we'll link them in the show notes so then everybody can go click on them. We'll put jamboard in there as well. So this is episode 358. So folks, just go to Gemba, podcast.com, look for episode 358 and all these virtual tools that we're talking about, we'll link them up there for folks to go check out themselves. But listen, I want to kind of maybe wrap things up here a little bit. And we talked a little bit about some of the improvements that you guys have been working on. And really I think the answer is what are you not working on? Might be a better way to ask that. But I do also, I want to get to something that I'm really interested in. And you talked a little bit about before we hit record about this concept of a perfect day. And I wondered if you guys could maybe expand on that a little bit. What is a perfect day?

I'm really glad that you asked that. So Patrick Adams, who works for PA.

Consulting, well, by the way, Patrick Adams, you don't know yet because it hasn't been released yet, because we're back in time. But we actually did an interview with Patrick and he's episode 354. So folks, we've mentioned Patrick a few times. He's wonderful, full, lean thinker. So folks, if you didn't hear 354, go back and listen. And that's Patrick. So go carry on, Dagmar.

Sorry, I'm so excited to hear that. But we had Patrick Adams come speak at one of our Lean Summits and he has been a great resource tool for us and we do a lot of collaboration with Patrick and he started when Covid started. He started these every Friday, like LinkedIn learning session type things where he would interview people and they would talk about tools and all different things. And so I attended those and he had someone on there that talked about the perfect day. And the perfect day concept is something that I really resonated with because I think individuals that are looking to change how they do their work sometimes cannot see the forest through the trees. Right. They can't really see what it could be. So this perfect day concept is really where we're asking those participants to think about what is a perfect day look like, Right? So let's give you an example. We're working with one of our institutions around the admissions process for them to get into the university.

Right?

So let's look at a perfect day from the university standpoint. So a perfect day would be they're able to connect with students that are a great fit for their university. They fill out all their paperwork on time, it's accurate, and they give their deposit and they show up for the first day. Right. They were like, that would be a perfect day for us. We would be so excited if that could happen. Then you think about it from a student journey perspective. A perfect day for a student would be to find the right fit of a university to know where they are in the admissions process. Right. Did I submit everything I was supposed to on time? What am I still missing? What do I need to do? What do I do when I show up to campus? I really want to be excited about that first day. So the perfect day concept is to have teams really look at how a perfect day would play out in their mind based on the process that you're evaluating. Right. So looking within those bookends and really saying within there, what would that perfect day be? Now also understanding by taking the lens of the operation or the organization and a lens of, for us, it would be the student or your customer. You'll see as you compare the two of them. A perfect day for an organization to have paperwork filled out 100% correctly is not really a goal and objective of a student. A student wants to make sure that it's streamlined, intuitive and easy to do. And the result of that is perfect paperwork filled out. This, to me, energizes a project team to see what it could be. It gives them that view and that vision of the future and what the possibilities are. And Tom and I find if we do this with a group at the beginning, when we're first engaging with project teams, we have that energy and excitement and we can constantly bring people back to remember Our perfect day scenario, how are we going to get there?

Yeah, we've incorporated that into our charter. And that really gets them thinking right from the very beginning that maybe if you've done as an example, like process mapping in the future or you're building out future state, it's really looking at it from the lens of flipping it upside down. And does this work for the customer? The person who is paying for these services, Are we keeping them in mind? And like Dagmar said, people are really energized and as you build stuff out, you're really looking at it from that different lens and we're really making sure we're creating the best value for the customer.

Yeah, and that's such a powerful concept because if you think about it, how many times, you know, like, say like you mentioned process mapping or value stream mapping or whatever, how many times we're developing this ideal future state, if you will, that it is all internally focused. It's like, how can we be the best company or higher education institution or whatever it might be, but. But you forget that what's for you might not be best for the customer. So maybe finding a way to have harmony there right between the needs of the internal customer and the external customer. That's a fantastic way I've personally used for years. I've always called it, I called it the ideal day and perfect day. Same thing. But I remember before starting Gemba Academy back in 2008, timeframe, I was going through my mind, what would be the ideal day for me having my own company and all this rest of it, and what would that look like? And to this day I have the piece of paper that I wrote, you know, and there were some silly things in there, you know, like I'm gonna work at my computer and shorts and no socks and no shoes. You know, like, that was like something in my mind that I envisioned, you know, and, and now, I mean, I have, I'm at an office and I have, I have socks and shoes on. So. Okay, you know, but. But it's, it's having that, that dreaming a little bit, right. About what you want to see happen and then setting a plan to make that happen. Right. I think it's a wonderful exercise, whether it's for your own personal growth or for the organization or everything in between. So I think it's fantastic that you guys are doing that.

Yeah, it's been very well received. At first we get looks like I'm not really quite sure about this, but then when they start do it, you can Kind of see people light up and really talk about what, wow, it would really be great if we could do this. And, you know, we're hiring employees, and that's something in a higher education that that has not been, you know, so adapted very well.

Yeah.

And so we're seeing this empowerment employees. We're getting the positive output from that.

And one of the things that we explain this, we actually use the doctor's office, which everyone can kind of relate to. Right. So we talk about the doctor's office wants you to be there on time. They want all their paperwork filled out completely and correct. They want you to have your payment right there. And then we flip that upside down. And from a patient's perspective, we don't want to wait for the doctor. We don't want to fill out a whole bunch of paperwork. So it's looking at both sides and saying, what's the best? Like you said, the harmony. But it does definitely flip it upside down. Think outside of the box, and it makes you think, like, all right, what is the best way for the customer? Because at the end, like you said, the customer is the one who is paying our bills. So we want the customer journey to be the best that we can be within our limitations.

Yeah. Fantastic stuff, guys. Well, this has really been fun. I've really enjoyed this. And we've covered so many different topics, everything from how to engage as zoom call to your perfect day. So we've covered a lot of ground. Maybe we'll wrap things up if you. I don't know if either of you or both of you. That's fine. Maybe have just some final words of wisdom. Maybe talk to someone that's listening to this right now that maybe they work in higher education, and maybe they're scratching their head like, huh, this sounds pretty interesting. I wonder what this is all about. Maybe speak to that person. What advice, what wisdom, what encouragement do you want to say to that person?

I would say to that person, take that first step. Be that first person to take that first step. And that goes back to my quote, which talks about being the change in the world that we want to see and start doing some research and reach out to Tom and I. We are open. We love collaborating with any and everyone. And to talk through this, do some research and start bringing this methodology within your organization and saying, hey, it's working over there. It can work here too.

Yeah. And I would just build on that. Even. Even when I was in state police, I was amazed at how many people, how many different agencies reached out to Me, it's taken that first step and it's not being afraid to ask for advice or ask questions. Like I said a little while ago, the Lean community, Unbelievable. The amount of sharing, collaboration, willing to help you out. I have never dealt with anything like this before in my life. The Lean Community is amazing. So we're here to help. It's taking that first step, whether you're jumping off the diving board or whatever, it's not scary on the other side. And there's so many people here to help you along the way. There's so many resources. Don't wait any longer. Take that step and start that lean journey today.

Fantastic.

And don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. We have plenty of stories we can share about lessons learned and we're happy to share those to make sure that other people aren't falling down as we were and to help them get to where they need to at a faster pace.

Yeah. A few episodes ago, I was asked, the interviewee turned the tables and asked me some questions. And one of the questions she asked me is, what's one of the biggest lies in life? And I said, fear. Fear. It's a liar. Right? So, yeah, I couldn't agree more. Don't be afraid. Fear not. So listen, what's the best way for folks to connect with you? And we'll link it up in the show notes. We've got a lot of things in the show notes, folks. So go to gembapodcast.com look for episode 358. There's going to be lots of links and we'll link to Tom and Dagmar's social media. But just for folks listening, what's the best way? Is it LinkedIn, Twitter? Tom, I know you're a big Snapchatter, I'm guessing, right?

We would say LinkedIn is the best way to do that. We do a lot of posting out on LinkedIn. We're very responsive on LinkedIn. We do have a, unh. Twitter site. So it's. It's Unhlean on Twitter. And then also we have a lean website, unh, Eduln, which provides a lot of information as well. So those are the best ways to get in touch with us.

Great, great. Again, we're going to link to that everything in GembaPodcast.com, look for episode 358. So, Dagmar, Tom, thank you again for coming on so. Or spending some time and it's really, really fun. Let's try to maybe set something on a calendar and we'll connect, you know, six months from now, a year from now or whatever, and hear some more stories of your newest escapades and all the things that you're learning.

Fantastic. Thank you, Ron, for having us today. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you, Ron. Being the second time, this was awesome. I feel honored. This is a great platform to build that Lean community. The amount of contacts I got last time on LinkedIn was unbelievable. And we're here, we're excited, and once again, thank you very much.

Fantastic. All right, you guys take care. Thank you.

Take care. Bye.

Bye. Bye.

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