GA 361 | The Role of Entropy in Lean with Luciana Toda

What is important is to have that one word or that one concept that you can always fall back with your teams. As soon as you see them sliding back to the status quo, you can point that out. And that's kind of like an easy way from day one, starting explaining concepts and starting pointing out, like, look, maybe we're going back to the same ways of work. And it's an easy way to being back on track, if you will. So that's kind of how I see it.

Today. I'm excited, excited to welcome Luciana Toda to the show. Now, I've known Luciana for several years. We've crossed paths at some conferences and just have interacted over the years, talking all things about lean and continuous improvement. And so today, she came onto the show when we talked about one of my favorite topics and that it is the second law of thermodynamics, namely entropy. And we talk about the role entropy plays within a lean system, or really any. Any system. Just a lean system, but any system. And we talk about its role and how it is constantly pulling on our systems and trying to really create havoc and disorder. And so we. This really brought us into the whole, how do you sustain improvements? How do you keep things from backsliding and. And all that? So a really interesting conversation about maybe some pitfalls to look out for and even some best practices. So, yeah, I think you're going to enjoy the show. It was a lot of fun to record and. And show notes for this episode will be over@gembapodcast.com. this is episode 361, so again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 361. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Luciana, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm doing fantastic, Ron. Thank you so much for having me here.

Oh, you're welcome. Where are you calling in from today?

Yeah, I'm calling from Raleigh, North Carolina, and I'll tell you, it's a cloudy day, so not a beautiful day, but, you know, cannot complain.

Right, right, right. Okay, well, good. It's cloudy here in Texas as well. Maybe it's cloudy everywhere. I don't know. So. Well, listen, we've known each other for a while. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. You know, I. I miss seeing everybody over at conferences and all the rest of it, and I think that's probably where we got to spend, you know, most time chatting was at different conferences and. And what was it? Ame and maybe. Well, I think you were at Katakan as well, but. But yeah, it's great to have you on the podcast. So I listen. I know you listen to the podcast, or at least you've listened to a few episodes, or maybe all of them. I don't know. But we like to begin.

Almost every single one.

Yes, I know. Thank you so much for that. We like to begin with a quote, as you know. So do you have one?

Yes, I do. So one of the quotes here, that is probably some of our guests already mentioned, but I don't think it's ever too much, so. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And one of the reasons that really resonate with me is that there are so many ways that you can really show people that you care. And I kind of. I want to bring, like, one story here that happened to me. So back in the day when I was trying to get into the lane, there was this lady that worked in the company that I work right now that she was, in my mind, very powerful, and she was the head of the lane department, if you will. So I want to give her a call and say, look, I want to be part of this. And long story short, she wouldn't answer my emails, like, as fast as I wish, you know, like, she actually had to postpone our meeting a few times. And needless to say, I was a little irritated about it. And then when we finally were able to have that first meeting, the first conversation, the first thing that she told me, she was like, luciana, I apologize, but I'm actually going to need to postpone our. Our meeting. And I was mad, you know, and then she. Right away, she said, look, there's some personal things happening in my life. This is what is happening. And I have. And I want to make sure that when we have this conversation, I'm 100% present here. And for the first time, I saw her as a person. For the first time, I saw her as. As an equal. I don't even know how to explain, but she showed me a part of her, like, she was vulnerable right there. That at that point, she built a level trust with me that to this day, I know that if I have any problem or if I would need you, like, she's not my boss anymore. She had move on to greater things in life. But I knew at that point that working for her would be great because I knew that if I would ever had a family issue or anything happening personally, she would understand. Right? So that that was a great way to show people that you care. You know, she was vulnerable. So, yeah, it was just a good lesson for me.

You know, it's so interesting that you brought that up. Today I was doing a kind of a kickoff meeting with a new Gemba Academy customer, and we had a bunch of people on this kind of zoom call sort of thing. And one of the questions from a young lady, she had been through a lot of our training already, and she was talking about, in one of our courses, Culture of Kaizen, we talk about the difference between ethos, logos and pathos. And she said she was kind of an accountant by training, so she's into numbers and graphs, and she says, I'm really good at logos, you know, even ethos, which is sort of like your credibility and all that. You know, she's like, you know, I feel good about that, too. It's not an issue. She said, it's this pathos, you know, this. The one where we talk about emotions and experiences and even. Even suffering. You know, sometimes this is the Greek word pathos, can be. Can mean suffering, you know, and. And. But it's really this empathy and these emotions, and it's so hard sometimes to show pathos or to practice pathos. And kind of what you did described to me was a great example of, you know, eventually there was this. An experience and this emotion that came out of it, and it can be very powerful.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Great. Great example as well.

So. So, Luciana, I know about your background and where you work and all that, but why don't you tell everybody that's listening, tell us a little bit about how you first got involved in all this continuous activity, and. And maybe tell us a little bit about what you're up to these days.

Oh, absolutely. So. Oh, my gosh. So I'm actually a agronomist by training. So, you know, working the field, all the corn stuff, all that.

Yeah.

And. And my first. In my first job, I used to lead a team of people, and. And it's very interesting because what we did there was very much. If you. You can compare that as a corn manufacturer, if you will, because, you know, you plant your pollinator harvest and you move on, and then you plant again. So there's the cycles. Right. And back in the day, I always thought that I was always a good person. I thought. At least, I always thought that I was always improving my cons. My. My. I was always improving my process. But cycle after cycle, things never got back better, and I didn't understood why. And that's when Lane appeared in my life and all of a sudden everything made sense. I understood that I didn't know the voice of my customer. I didn't know how to. The change that was making my process was actually creating more bottlenecks. And from that point on, I just saw Lean feeding agriculture perfectly. And from that point on, there's no turning back. And oh gosh, that was about, I don't know, like 2015, I want to say. Yeah, so that's kind of like how I got into Lane I and what I'm doing nowadays. Well, I work for, I should work for the same company. It's called Syngenta, It's a biotech agriculture company and I'm located in Raleigh, North Carolina.

So, yeah, Great, great, great. Well, listen, I'm excited for the topic today because, you know, it's a topic that, well, we talk about a little bit in some Gemba Academy videos and maybe you saw some, some of that as well. But is this. The topic is the second law of Thermodynamics and its name is entropy. And it's something that is very important for Lean thinkers to understand, to recognize, and ultimately to battle. We are at battle with entropy. Right. Because entropy is, is, is disorder. It's trying to pull our systems apart constantly. And so I want you to tell bit more in your own words what, what is entropy and how is it correlated to, to what we're trying to do with Lean?

Yeah, absolutely. And Ron, I'm, I'm shamelessly certainly need this for you because that was the first time that I heard about this concept.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. And we don't need to get into the whole physics of it. Right. But one of the things I want to say is that the way that I look into this whole thing is that if, you know, let's say if you put ice in your coffee, at some point the ice is going to melt and the coffee is going to get colder. Right. And if there's no intervention that's done to the ice, stop melting, etc. The temperature will get to the equilibrium at some point. Right. And the same thing happen in a sustained phase of a project. If there's no hard work, you won't be able to sustain the change because the process, your ways of work, it's so ingrained. And that is like entropy. Like you're always fighting back, you know, so it doesn't go back to the old ways of work, doesn't go back to that equilibrium. Right. And the funny thing here is that, you know, some people hate when they Say entropy. But at the end of the day, whether you want to call that concept entropy or finding the status quo, at the end of the day, I personally don't care whatever word you use, but one of the things that I always tell people is that what is important is to have that one word or that one concept that you can always fallback with your teams. As soon as you see them sliding back to the status quo, you can point that out. And that's kind of like an easy way from day one starting explaining the concepts and starting pointing out like, look, maybe we're, we're going back to the same ways of working and it's an easy way to turn the being back on track, if you will. So that's kind of how I see it.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So let's keep going a little bit. Give me some examples of what you think we should be doing as lean thinkers, even maybe even at the beginning of these continuous improvement journeys. Maybe with some people, it's their first time learning about all of these concepts, like, what can we be doing to better set ourselves up for success?

Yeah. And, yeah, there's lots of things we can do. Right. But I actually want to talk a little. Well, before I give example, I want to talk a little bit about this whole concept, because a lot of time, in a lot of lean initiatives, it always started with that 5s, right? Let's start cleaning everything. A lot of times there's not a reasonable reason why we're starting with 5s, and therefore, a lot of times we ended up stopping at the 3s or 4s, if you will. If you want to start a lean initiative, people need to start asking the question, like, what problem you're trying to resolve. Right? So let's say if the problem they're trying to resolve is a surface, safer place to work, or if they say, like, you know, I need to make my flow, my value flow better in the system. Maybe you can start with 5s, but unless people understand what problem you're trying to address, you're never going to be able to sustain whatever change you have done there. Right. Because you basically have given in the fish and not teaching and how to fish. Right. So I started with a little bit of intro before I give example, because this is actually something that happened in one of the teams that we were working. We were working with the team that, you know. Yeah, we did start with the 5s, but the reason here is that they want to improve hsc. They want improved productivity and the overall employee Morale. Going back to the concept of working with sustainability. At day one, when we started with the 5s, we actually flipped the roles with the leadership. We actually asked the leadership to come to the shop floor and actually do the work. Clean, clean the warehouse, in the dust, in the hot, in the heat, in the dirty workplace. And we actually invited the crew members to the nice conference room and we start teaching them about a three, about five wise. And the idea here was really like empowerment of the ground crew. So we want to equip them to solve their own problem, while we also want to humble the leadership to be able to actually do the hard work. Well, there's many reasons we ended up doing this way, right? But the key thing here is that once people understood why we're using 5s, why we're using the different tools, most likely we would be able to sustain that knowledge. Because after the leaders spending hours cleaning the warehouse, they were much more inclined to be able to sustain that. They were much more inclined to say, yeah, the value is not flowing this area here because X, Y and Z, they were more inclined to evaluate the work. And for the ground crew now, they felt that, okay, if I can structure my problem solving in this way, it's much easier for me to bring my ideas up to the leadership. It's much easier for me to test out countermeasurement, right? So they felt empowered. And with that, it was something to help us being able to. To start, like sustain. Sustaining the change right away, if you will.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. From the very beginning you're thinking about, it's almost like beginning with the end in mind, right? You already know where you want to be. And so you're setting that up from the very beginning.

Exactly, exactly. If I can even mention, like one more thing here that we have done that. Help with the sustainability or fighting that entropy. And this is like something that I learned from a good friend of mine, Marcelo Del Made. So he, he said, like, you know, Luciana, you, one of the key reason you're doing the 5s is actually to improve HSC. So instead of like the leadership leading, or instead of you leading this with the leadership, why don't you invite the hsc, the HSC manager to co lead this whole thing with you because at the end of the day, right, like you need to be going through the five different assets with that safety in mind, right? Like with that in mind. So that actually worked really well.

I love it. I love it. What was the initial response of the HSC manager when you, when you asked Them to co lead with you. Were they hesitant? Were they excited? What was the reaction?

Oh, you know. So we will use this approach with some different sites that we worked. You know, it's a mix and match but oftentimes they're not as excited because you know, 5s it's a tool that it's widely used but it's in a lot of place that we were going. They already have tried that before and it had failed. Right. So at first they were very hesitant. But again I do think that using that approach of explaining teaching why you're using the tool and being able to flip some of the rows with the whole concept of having the end in mind, it helps the agency like understand why we're doing and you know, it didn't work at all well, but it would have to happen at the beginning.

That's great. That's right. You always start with why. Right. Why are we doing this?

Yeah. Beautiful.

So let's talk a little bit more. Let's keep going on sustainability. I'm wondering if you can maybe share what you've seen. Maybe some mistakes that, that folks are making that makes sustainability more difficult. What should we be avoiding?

Yeah, so many things like I can, you know, we can start listen putting a list together here. But usually like anything in my mind that is too short term, it's usually a pitfall. You know, they're working for entropy and against sustainability. So short term journey, like short term vision, if you will, that has a short term goal in mind. Like for instance, let's train X amount of people by the end of whatever year. Let's save X amount of dollar by the end of the whatever. You know, all those things that it's very short minded. I think it's usually a pitfall. Right. Because again like you, you don't live but you just looking for now and not the sustaining portion. Right? Yeah. And in Rome, like I'm not trying here to kid ourselves, right. Because majority of us we work for for profit organization where saving productivity are important metrics. So I'm not saying that those metrics are important. However people can smell when something's not authentic miles away. So if you're trying to sell that idea that you're deploying link because you want to shift the way to work but your only emphasis is the praising for the amount of dollars saving amount of people trained. Right. No one's going to believe in your vision. Right. So that's one of the things that I think like it's a pitfall or something. We see Often.

Exactly. So I also. I know we were talking before we started recording. I know you're a big Simon Sinek fan, so he teaches a concept as well called infinite. Do you want to. What's that all about?

Oh, oh, yeah. You know, I love that you mentioned this because that's also like part of the reason, you know, I was talking about having that too. You know, short term go that short term mind, short term vision in mind. It's usually a pitfall. Right. I love that book from Simon Sinek because he does introduce that concept about infinite games. And I know we already talked about a quote here, but I need to, if I may read his quote here.

You may, yes.

Infinite games like football or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed and the endpoint is clear. In infinite games like business or politics or life itself, there is no defined endpoint. And that's something important, right? Because when you're truly trying to deploy a lean journey, there's no winners and losers. Right. There's not end game in mind. So what happened after I saved extra amount of money? What happened after I say I trained X amount of people? Right. If there's nothing actual, if there's nothing beyond that.

Yeah.

You haven't done a lean transformation. You haven't changed the ways of working. Right?

No, I love it. I mean, it's like, you know, we talk about continuous improvement. You know, I Sometimes I think we say the words but don't realize what they mean. What does continuous means? It means it never ends. Right. And so, you know, I also reminds me, Luciana, when we talk about, you know, focusing on. Focusing on the process. Right? The process, you know, instead of the result. Because if you're focused relentlessly on improving the process, the results will come. The results are the output. Right. Of those inputs which are the process, the variables in the process. So, you know, just relentlessly pursuing perfection, even within the process is going to. Obviously you'll never be perfect, so that's why you're always in pursuit of it. But. But this is going to help us. I leave with what you're saying in sustainability because in the end I always say, and I know you've heard me say it, that we really can't ever sustain anything. Or like when we're talking about Damaic, you know, in Six Sigma, we talk about control, you know, in that last phase, I hate that name, control. Because you can't control anything. You can either it's either getting a little bit better or it's getting a little bit worse. It's your choice. Right. And so really, you know, I, if I had to write Damaic over again, I would say even in our training we say it, say it's of kind may. Some probably call it control, but I call it continuously improve. Right. Just make it a little bit better every day and then you don't have to worry about it backsliding because it's always getting a little bit better. Is that, Is that what you think?

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, you explained so much better than I did. Like that control thing, the control phase. I agree with you. If we could just change that.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh, it would make so much sense. Yeah.

Yep. Well, even when some people will call control charts process behavior charts, I actually think that's a great term. I mean, I still call them control charts. I'm. I'm too old school, I guess. But. But calling them process behavior charts is another wonderful way to look at those. Because, you know, all we're really doing is we're studying a process and trying to understand how is it acting, how is it behaving, is it common cause variation, special cause variation, whatever it might be. But in the end, again, there's control limits, if you will, on there. Just helping us understand what kind of variation. But yeah, in the end, controlling is. It's really for fools. You can't control anything. You can only make it better or it's getting worse, though.

Yep, I agree completely.

What about some. So those are some pitfalls to avoid, but what about some. Some best practices on the flip side of it, what are, what are some of your ideas there?

Yeah. And oh my gosh, I'm gonna need to bring another book here. So there's a book that I absolutely love. It's called Leading Change by John Carter. And he not only described like, you know, eight stage follow to lead change, he also gives some practical ways to achieve that. And you know, I'm not gonna go into details because, you know, obviously we can link the book right here or people can read. Right?

Yeah.

But I want to mention, like some of this stage that I do things are very. It is best practice in a nutshell. Right. So he started talking about like establishing a sense of urgency. You know, it got to be important for leadership. He talks about communicating the changed vision, empowering people and all that. But there's one of this step that it's empowered, broad based action. And this particular one talks a lot about the education portion, the training, which of course is important, but it doesn't mean that. But one important Thing is that it doesn't mean that you need to spend time only in the training portion. Training is just one level of the education. And one of the things that I feel like when we go to, we just follow step by step a methodology we ended up forgetting because what John Carter actually is inferring here, it's more of like training with the coaching. Right. In one of the things like I feel like we need to do more in this community is that focusing in the coaching. There are so many great training out there, including yours, you know, yours included.

Thank you.

Yeah. There's so many videos out there. Yeah, but so you can teach people, you can teach people with so many diverse training out there, what you cannot substitute is that real coaching? Right? Is that the hands on coaching that will allow you to go from what you have just learned to the practice to the actual hands on experience? Right? Yes. And so I don't know like that's in terms of best practice, like it's hard to replicate. Right. Ro. But it's one of the things that when people say like, oh, I want to do this link thing, it's all about that coaching piece, all about asking the right questions.

I couldn't agree more. You know, I mean even again, the academy, we're constantly preaching that, yeah, we've got a lot of videos. We have a lot. And they're important, important. You do need to have the knowledge, you know, people have to learn the basic concepts here. But in the end it's coaching partnered closely with practice or deliberate practice. Right. Taking these things that you're learning, whether it's in a video or a book or a, you know, in person class, it doesn't matter. You get the information in your head hopefully as quickly and in and with least amount of waste possible. Right. And then you get on with practicing deliberate practice with a coach. And you really need a coach in order to deliberately practice something because that's the kind of the big mistake I think Malcolm Gladwell made in his book Outliers, you know, when he introduced the 10,000 hour rule, I mean he, he, he stole it from, you know, Kay Anders Erickson from Florida State, he's the original deliberate practice guy. Right. But, but, but Gladwell got it wrong and he misled a lot of people when he said, oh, you just gotta go do something for 10,000 hours and you'll be well, I can just pick up a guitar and start strumming it for 10,000 hours and I'm still not going to be able to play the guitar after 10,000 hours of strumming it randomly. Sure, I might accidentally stumble into a few things, but it's not until I have a coach who's teaching me, hey, Ron, put your fingers this way, that's this chord. Put your fingers that way, that's that chord. Strum it this way. That you know and you know. So now I'm practicing deliberately, right. And then that is when improvement is going to occur. But it can't just be random practice, right? You need some guide to help you along the way. So. Yeah, I totally agree with you.

And one thing that's interesting here is that like some people are also very married to that idea that it got to be a link coach or gotta be like somebody that have done a certification and all this and all that. But at the end of the day, like, sometimes a lot of those things is more about asking the right question. You know, the whole thing that we talked before that, you know, you need to teach somebody to fish and not to give them the fish. Yeah, it's there, there's. It's more about being able to ask the questions, lead people to the right direction then just like, you know, how many certifications, how many belts you have, how many books you have read and all that. So I recently got the Flow System by Nigel Trullo. And the reason that. Yeah, and the reason I want to bring here is like, I don't know, like best practice or recommend, book recommendation or something, whatever you want to call is that. One of the things that I hear often is that it's something that was done in Japan back in the day. It's nowadays we have a different system, things are too complex. Those things doesn't apply for. The modern world per se. Right. And it's interesting because, as you know, of course applies. Right. Things having the same concepts apply. But this really presents like a more modern version sustainable for this complexity that we have nowadays. Right. So it provides some answers like how we maximize volume for the customers in the new system that is so complex. So nowadays we have AI and we have automation and we have all those other things that it's technically making the flow runs better through the process. But again, the same concepts apply. And I just want to mention this because it opened me a new way of looking to complexity system thinking and how we actually tied back into the old concepts of lean.

Yeah, I love it. Fantastic. Luciana, this has been fun, talking about entropy. I like it. So maybe let's wrap things up. I don't know if you have any final words of wisdom or Maybe some advice that you want to leave with everybody. And then I definitely want you to tell people how they can connect with you over social media or any other way.

Yeah. Thank you, Ron. And I'm not sure if it's a word of wisdom here per se, but. So when I started working with Lane, so as I mentioned before, I'm an agronomist by training and there's not a whole lot of information Lane in agriculture, although there's a lot of people that is currently using lean agriculture. There's not like a book, like a book or something. And when I started my journey, I felt like, oh, I just don't have enough information out there to learn from others. And one of the things I want to mention here is that the concepts apply for every no matter industry. As you talk here many times, the fact that one of the things that I've done was just like, well, I cannot find a book in Lane in agriculture, but I'm gonna read all the other literature out there. I'm gonna try to network with all these other whoever people would talk to me. And that was a very good learning because it was up to me to be able to translate those concepts into my industry. It was up to me to try to understand, like how it applies in different system and all the information is out there. We just need to go seek, you know.

Great. All right, well, what's the best way for folks to connect with you?

Oh, yeah, I guess. I guess LinkedIn would be the best way. Okay, so Lucy. So it's Luciana Toda. I can spell that. You want to make a spell that out?

Well, yeah, we'll put it in the show notes as well. So we'll link to it there in the show notes. So. So folks. But yeah, go ahead and spell it if you'd like. It's fine.

Yeah, so it's just L, U, C, I, A, N, A, last name toda, T O, D A. And also like if anybody want to connect with me via email, in case you don't have LinkedIn, it's my first and last name, lucianatodmail.com so easy peasy easy.

All right, well, thank you so much, Luciana, for coming on. It's been fun talking about this topic. I loved the topic, obviously, so great job. And. And maybe we'll have you on again down the road we talk about something else. How's that sound?

Absolutely. Always up for that. Thank you so much.

Okay, take care.

Take care.

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