GA 360 | The Importance of Being Intentional with Brandon Bartel

Well, I was thinking about it, and the best way I can put it is to be. Be intentional about the results that you want, be mindful of the results that you're getting, and then learn and experiment accordingly.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Brandon Bartel to the show. Now, Brandon and I first connected back in March of 2020, really kind of when the beginning of the pandemic really started to kind of take hold. And. And so we had postponed the interview, and one thing led to another, and finally, well, not quite a year later, but almost a year later, we. We made it happen, and I'm really glad that we did. Brandon was a. Was a pleasure to talk to, and we had a really interesting conversation on the whole concept of being intentional about what we're doing as it relates to continuous improvement. And Brandon will go on to explain he's actually listened to every single podcast that we've, so he's learned a lot from our past guests. And you're going to hear some of the past guests, you know, kind of come to life through Brandon. You mentioned Katie Anderson, Paul Akers, and a few other folks. So really, really good stuff. Enjoy the conversation. So show notes are going to be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 360. Again, gembapodcast.com look for episode 360. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Brandon, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Fantastic. Brian. How are you?

I'm doing well, man. Doing well. So, yeah, we were kind of chatting before we hit record here that you and I had first kind of crossed paths or planned to do a podcast in March of, I guess, 2020. And then I was like, hey, I saw. I was looking through the email chain. It's like, hey, yeah, so with everything going on, you know, we're going to kind of go home for a little bit. Let's reconnect and. Well, I guess it's so nearly a year later, so better late than never, I guess, right?

Yep. Perfect. Perfect timing. Today's my birthday, so I would just figure this would be a good day to kick it off.

Well, fantastic. Happy birthday, man. Happy birthday.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

Yeah. And thank you, and thanks for the opportunity and thank you for all the value that, you know, you and the Gimba team and all your guests have brought, you know, brought to us over the past.

Yeah, well, our pleasure, man. We love doing it. We love doing it, so. All right, well, Brandon, you know the drill. I know you've listened to the show. Do you like to kick things off with our guest earning a quote? So do you have one?

I do, I do. I had a hard time picking my favorite, but this one's kind of been with me for a while that I like. And it's resolve to perform what you ought perform without fail what you resolve by Ben Franklin.

What's that mean to you?

Just about kind of resolving to do and achieve or act upon what you want to accomplish or what you should accomplish, what you need to accomplish, and then performing that without fail. So never giving up on taking those actions to do what's necessary.

I like it. I like it. Brandon, tell us about yourself. Tell us how you first got, you know, introduced to all this continuous improvement stuff and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so I'm from Michigan, Jackson, Michigan. And I first, I think my first exposure to anything lean or continuous improvement was I picked up two books at a garage sale. I think I paid maybe a quarter apiece. And one of them just happened to be Kaizen by Masaki Amai. And then the other one was Lean Office from Don Tapping.

Okay.

So both great books that got it got me at least thinking about it. I've always, you know, looked for a better way to do things when I'm working and just trying to find an easier, better way. And I've always asked a lot of questions. So I think that has helped me, you know, jump into this as soon as I was exposed to it, you know, headfirst. But I read those two books and then at a previous employer, I had the opportunity to do some like, Kaizen events for like cycle time improvements, even to like doing some robotic programming to decrease the cycle times as well as kind of like operator load cycle times to, you know, decrease the amount of movement the operators had to do for each cycle to kind of improve that way.

Yeah.

And then a couple years ago I got the opportunity to do a lean Six Sigma green belt training, which really kind of got me involved deeply. And then my first, like project ownership of a few projects. And that was when I really just. It kind of. I think that's about the same time I got onto Gimbal Academy and just, I think, I think you might have been at episode 100 or something at that point. So I listened to every episode every week and then backfilled, you know, all the, all the other previous episodes.

Wow.

I. I had a two hour dry or an hour drive every day. So you're. You're what I listen to.

Oh, man. Thank you. That's awesome, man. I appreciate that.

Yeah, it was good. Good value, for sure. So ever since then, I've just been kind of plugging away and, you know, using what I know and learning and reading anything that I can to kind of better equip myself to help improve the processes and systems around me. And currently I'm at Big Steel Rack. It's a sheet metal storage systems, and it really kind of plays well with continuous improvement because we help companies improve their material flow and their material storage. So I'm looking at utilizing what I know and what I am passionate about for lean and continuous improvement and helping, you know, many businesses do that, a small segment of that within their business.

Nice, Nice. I like it. All right, well, let's jump into the topic of the day, Brandon. I'm really excited because this is a topic that I'm also very passionate about. And really, I guess the topic, if we were just kind of name it, would be sort of how to focus on our intention, you know, as lean thinkers, as continuous improvement practitioners. But before we kind of hit record, we were talking about a few different things. And, you know, back in the day, I know, like, you know, you've been listening since the very beginning, we used to always ask our guests, you know, what does respect for people or respect for humanity mean to you? And I think that might be a good way to open up this conversation because that might lead us right into this whole concept of intention. So. So what do you think? What does respect for people, respect for humanity mean to you?

It's really the, like, the guiding. I look at it as, like, the guiding principle to all your actions, not just business improvement or process improvement or continuous improvement or lean, you know, just your. Your guiding actions in general in life, but specifically to focusing on your intentional improvement efforts. Respect for people kind of needs to drive that and be that guiding principle to help guide your improvements, intentionally guide your improvements with the thought of respect for people and keeping, you know, your team, your family, their family, your team's families, your customers, your suppliers, all of that in mind when you're thinking about the entire process or the entire system improvement.

I like it. I like it. So talk about intention, like, maybe just as a starting point. How would you define intention?

I think the aha moment for me around intention. And I was kind of preparing for the first podcast and going back and listening to some of the previous podcast, and I remember listening to Katie Anderson's story around creating the business card with the Japanese kanji for intention and how impactful that was. And the meaning of the heart direction like that. Intention is the power behind that intention. Your heart's direction, I think is what is necessary to drive and sustain and guide your continuous improvement, improvement efforts.

How does it. So then tie it in, you know, as Katie kind of did, but tie it in with lean and continuous improvement and maybe how it's, how it's impacted you personally.

Yeah, so I've done, you know, I've been a part of a few improvement efforts where, you know, they were either rushed or, you know, half, only half supported by management or focusing on the wrong metrics, you know, all of which caused teams to. And those people that really add the value to the. And services to be like disheartened. And the intention or lack of intention in those, how those projects or efforts were initiated, you know, followed up with or carried, carried out, I think is maybe the leading cause or the driver of that. Those disheartened or disengaged, you know, team members that have seen, you know, improvement efforts with a focus on, you know, say, increased output, where the operators looked at the target as a negative because they had limited control over the system and the process. And you know, if the management team or the improvement team had considered that whole process or the system as a whole and understanding that the operators were not going to be able to necessarily have that much of an impact on the system as a whole, you know, a lot of that downtime, you know, downtime was one of the leading causes of that, you know, limited output and the operators had limited control over the downtime. You know, most of that was equipment issues or, you know, other variability in the process. So they were being expected to improve the output and being measured to the output of the process. But they had, you know, only so much control of that over that process.

So, so tie intention into that. Then like, where does it, what, what, what role does an intention in play in a situation to where, you know, you might be asking folks to do some activities that, as you said, they don't have full control over or full, full ownership over. So where, how does intention play into that formula?

So the intention of the, of the management team or the improvement team to make sure that, you know, again, the respective people of pulling that team in and having, making sure that their input is considered and taken into effect into the overall goal, the overall vision of the project or the improvement efforts and the intention to make sure that the goals and targets. What I've kind of found, and I would prefer, I prefer goals that are tied to improvement Efforts or actions versus you know, the say the output, the output metric, increased output, you know, the, in setting the metric intentionally to kind of foster engagement and foster improvement efforts versus you're measuring the output of that process. I think that intention truly drives that engagement and gets that buy in. That team buy in to where they're excited to come up with, you know, like Paul Acres 2 second lean, like his whole team is excited every day to, to come up with some improvement effort. That intention of setting the goal, the requirements, the expectations of the team really dictate how engaged or how passionate they are about the improvement efforts.

I feel I like it. So what I'm hearing is, you know, it's very similar to, you know, how, you know, like, you know, Nick Saban in Alabama football, which, you know, I mean, you're a Michigan guy. I don't know you Wolverine fan or what's going on. Be careful here.

I'm agnostic, I think is the word. Okay.

I like it, I like it. Well, I'm, I'm from Ohio, so you can tell where my allegiance lies. Yeah, we had a painful, you know, occasion, you know, a little while ago here in national championship by Alabama. But, but, but what I appreciate about Nick Saban, even though I wish they would lose every game, but they, you know, they don'. But, but they. He focuses on the. So called the process. Right? And so, you know, when his players come into their system, it's like we're gonna, you, you enter into the process and the process for, for them and a lot of other sports teams have kind of copied this is, you know, focus on perfection at every moment of every day. And then the, the, the national championships and the, you know, SEC championships and all the rest of it. That's a result, you know, it's an output, as you say, of that process. But we, but the intention, I would say for Nick Saban in Alabama and even other expert, you know, performers in sports or, or anything is they are, they are intentional about the process. And you know, as Paul would say, Paul Akers, you mentioned, you know, fix what bugs you. Right? Like that's a, that's an intention of, on the process and that, you know, he told me one time a long ago, he's like, yeah, you know, the money and the success that will come, right. The profits will come when you focus on what bugs you, you know, and you know, fix what bugs you and all the rest of it. And yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a different mindset. I sometimes find myself Telling people that I'm coaching, you know, don't even, like folks that are going through, like, our green belt, our black belt master black belt program, you know, there's some videos to watch, right? Let's be honest. That's what we primarily sell here, is videos. So it can be overwhelming. And they would say, you know, each week was kind of like, what's your plan for this week, Brandon? You know, it's like. And you might come back and say, you know what I'm going to watch, like, I don't know, five videos or ten videos or whatever. And I would say, yeah, that's okay. That's an output, right? I said, what I'd rather you focus on is when are you going to watch them and for how long. Right. That's an intention of focusing on that process. And then we can measure at the end how many videos we get, right, Just as we learn about our speed and our cadence and, you know, maybe, you know, each week is a little bit different. But that's kind of what is that. What you're saying is, you know, sort of being intentional about the process and then the results will happen.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. To use your example of watching the videos, being intentional about what you hope to learn by watching the videos, or that, you know, just being intentional on, you know, the process of learning, you know, focusing on learning versus focusing on the watching.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Can you give me, like, I mean, you don't have to name names or companies or anything like that, but, but I love hearing stories of, of these things coming to life. And you mentioned those operators and all that, but can you think of any other examples to where maybe someone got it right and perhaps they even got it wrong as it, as it relates to being intentional about that process?

Yeah, a lot of times what I, you know, what I've seen, my experience has been just the disconnected. Like that example, the specific example that I'd given before was like a fully autonomous line. You know, everything was automated from, from the start of that to the end of that. The operators were there to, you know, do certain things at certain times, changeover stuff like that. But for the most part that that line ran fully automated. So that one was a little easier to see the entire process as a whole. And even then it was disconnected. The, the intention or the goals or the targets were disconnected. Other, other improvement efforts and companies I've had where every phase of the process is completely disconnected, you know, the departmentalized and there's no, you know, necessarily complete flow, and then it's extremely difficult to have that intentional focus on the improvement efforts and the actions or activities required to get to that ideal state, that future state of, you know, either one, you know, one piece flow. Just having every connected process connected. It's extremely difficult in those segmented processes to kind of get to that state.

Got it. So someone's listening to this right now and they're like, yeah, that sounds good, being intentional and all the rest of it. And. Or perhaps they feel like they're not. They're not intentional enough or their organization is not intentional enough. What advice do you have for them? Like, is there a starter guide or starter kit that we can throw out there? Maybe some principles to think about as you work to become more intentional. What do you think?

Well, I was thinking about it, and the best way I can put it is to be intentional about the results that you want, be mindful of the results that you're getting, and then learn and experiment accordingly.

I like that.

So you can kind of. You can kind of be intentional, you know, about your communication. You know, that that's where a lot of that respect for people starts, is that communication, you know, questions and listening. Are you asking. Are you asking any questions? Are you asking, you know, good questions? Are you asking, you know, questions to everyone that's involved or everyone that could be affected? And then are you listening? Are you truly being intentional about listening to the process, listening to the people in that process? And then again, you know, just that main focus of focusing on the process and the system as a whole that really, you know, helps drive the improvements that management wants, but in a way that engages, you know, and empowers the, you know, the operators or the, you know, everyone in the whole process.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. So we're going to go old school a little bit here because again, I know you've listened to all our past episodes and, you know, over the years we changed the show up a little bit, you know, just to kind of keep it as fresh as possible. But I want to go back old school. I'm curious to ask you a few questions that we always used to ask our guests. And one of them was one of my favorite ones that I used to ask a lot was, you know, if you could go back in time to that, you know, today. And you had 15 minutes to spend with Brandon at the very beginning, maybe that day at the garage sale, right when you pick up Masaki and Mai's book, Kaisen and Lean Office, you got those books. And by the way, you got a heck of a deal on those man for 25 cents or whatever it was. But you got like 15 minutes. You can't give yourself any stock market advice or anything like that, Only continuous improvement, business related advice. What would you say to yourself back then, now that you know what you.

Know, read that book immediately. Okay, Read that immediately and then put it into action. I think the biggest thing that I've learned over the past few years is really, you know, I'm pretty good at inputting. I'm less equipped to implement or action, you know, put things that I've learned into action. So, you know, buying that book, reading that book, putting that book into action and then repeat, you know, that's why I love, you know, kind of the Toyota Kata is that experimenting and cycles forward and it's action driven, you know, intention and action driven results, you know, from kind of doing that. So I would say that learn, continue to learn as much as I could and implement as much as you could.

What about this one? Oldie but goodie. What's some of the best advice you've ever received? Hmm, could be from grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, old coach, teacher, lean podcast. No, I'm just kidding.

There's definitely plenty of those. I was gonna start keeping a quote log of all the quotes that I loved from.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of them. Them.

Yeah. The best advice, I don't know, I really just, I love the, the experiment, experimenting forward like that. That advice to just, you know, continuously experiment towards what you're trying to accomplish. I think that, you know, it's simple, it's not, it's not profound, but it's, it's actionable and it's effective. It works, you know, time in, time out. No matter what the process is, if you're intentional results that you want and you take consistent and sustained action towards that, eventually you're going to end up in a better place.

When you think about, so thinking about the whole idea of scientific thinking and looking forward. So, you know, we're here sort of the beginning of 2021. When you look at your own personal goals as it relates to continuous improvement, is there like a skill or an area of this movement of ours that you want to get better at and if so, what's your plan?

Great question. So my plan is to kind of implement and do kata. So I've been trying to have an established or a consistent kata where I'm making, you know, doing experiments and experimenting towards a, my goals, my vision and you know, overcoming obstacles and I haven't been able to do that on a consistent basis. And I'm kind of looking and, you know, I would love to, you know, any, anybody that's willing to do that. I have not found a. Someone that can be my kata coach. And that would be a huge value to me to, to have someone to kind of guide me through that. And, but that's my, my plan for this year is to make sure that I have that built into my schedule and execute on experimenting towards some future states.

Yeah, well, I know there's a lot of folks listening right now that are practicing and learning about kata, and so I bet you you'll have some folks reaching out to you. But I'll tell you this one tab, you know, I'd be happy to help you and work with you so, you know, we can talk offline about it, but we're, you know, because anytime you help someone else, you're learning yourself. Right? So that's what I would, you know, as we say in the cottage community, you know, find a coach and be a coach. Right? So you can, you can play both roles. You can play learner and coach, you know, and at the same time, maybe not with that same person or that same situation, but, but, but, but, but practicing both sides of the coin, if you will, there's a lot of value in that because no matter what you're, you're always going to be learning. So even you think you're an amazing practitioner of scientific thinking, you're still going to have more to learn. Right. And we always do. So. But, yeah, no, I think that's a fantastic goal.

Yeah, I like it. I read a book. It was perfect kind of link between, like, kata and strategy execution. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it, but it's four disciplines of execution.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Fantastic.

I love that book.

Yes.

And I just found so many parallels to kata that it just, it really fit well, because I think I read both of them really relatively close together because I was trying to do both, you know, at the same time. And, you know, they're wild important goals, kind of related to the target conditions. And then the acting on lead measures is the experimenting in kata. And then their scoreboard and the kata board are very similar. And then the cadence of accountability and the coaching cycles all mesh really well together.

Yeah. Well, you know, Mike Rather would be the first to tell you that, you know, Toyota Kata, scientific, It's not new. Well, there's nothing new with it. But in fact, if you walk around Toyota and say, hey, do you practice Kata. They would look at you like, what? No, I mean, nobody uses those words or whatever. But what Mike and his team did was that the gift that they've given to our community is taken those underlying principles that were happening at companies like Toyota, and there's other companies, there's other people who are practicing aspects of this, but kind of just built a framework, built a model that we can kind of wrap our arms around and then practice. Right. Because speaking of being intentional. Right, like deliberate practice, that's intentional practice. Right. And that's what we're doing when we're following this framework. Framework. So, yeah, there's tons of examples, even classic dymaic, Six Sigma, Dimaic. I mean, the underlying principles behind it are scientific thinking. It's just a slightly different framework and a slightly different roadmap and all the rest of it. But many of the same principles, experimenting, forward, learning as you go. They're all in there. So, yeah, good stuff, man. Good stuff. Well, hey, man, this has been fun, Brandon, chatting with you. It's going to be weird for you to listen to yourself, episode 360 here, but you're going to have to give it a go and see how you did if you listen to every podcast. But maybe let's wrap things up with maybe some final words of wisdom that you have for the folks and then tell people how they can connect with you.

Yeah, final words of wisdom is just dive in. If you're not already in head first to lean and continuous improvement, just dive in. And if you're passionate about making things better for you, yourself, your family, your community, your company. Company. You know, dive in and learn. And everyone can reach me at LinkedIn. Brandon Bartel. And yeah, you can text me or call me anytime. 517-745-4263.

Nice. And Bartel is B A R T E L. Correct?

Correct.

Okay, Brandon Bartel. And we'll put, we'll put links to everything there in the show notes. So yeah, this is episode, let's see, episode 360. So Gemba Podcast.com, look for episode 360 and we'll get you over to Brandon. And you just don't text at like 11:00 clock at night, you know? Yeah. That's awesome. Well, hey, it's been fun. Brandon, thanks for coming on, man.

Right. I appreciate your time, sir.

All right, take care, man.

Bye bye.

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