GA 370 | Improving Quality of Life with Lean with Rick Foreman

I'm making a difference. For somebody who's a part of our team, that's much more rewarding to me than, okay, I just have to 5s this area or take waste out. So it's a real driving thing, I think, for real continuous improvement.

Today I'm excited to welcome my friend Rick Forman to the show. Now, Rick works for a company called Federal Heath. And I've known Rick for many, many years. In fact, when we started Gemba Academy back In March of 2009, Federal Heath was one of the. Well, not one of. It was actually the very first company that we ever visited with video cameras. Just sort of showcase and do a little case study on how they were using Lean. In fact, that footage today lives in our Kaizen Way course where we're teaching you how to run Kaizen events and different things like that. So Rick and I had a great time just kind of catching up on what's been going on in really both of our careers. And Federal Heath has continued the Lean journey for the last 10 years. And so we just, we talk about that journey, we talk about the things that Rick is doing. Rick is a fantastic leader of people and you'll just hear it in his voice. He genuinely cares for people. He genuinely cares about continuous improvement and really that just can't be faked. And Rick is one of my favorite guys. Now, the thing about when Rick and I get together and we start chatting, it can go on and on and on. And so I looked up during our interview and we were approaching an hour and I thought it had been 15 minutes. So this is a little bit longer of an episode. So, you know, listen, listen to it on a few drives into work if you need to, but it's a really good one and I would encourage you to listen to the whole thing now. Show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 370. 370 again. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 370. Also, before this episode goes out, I'm going to do my best to unlock a couple of the videos in that Kaizen Way course. So folks that aren't subscribers to Gemba Academy, I'm going to really encourage you to go and watch a few of the videos in the Kaizen Way course so you can just see rick back in 2009 and just really hear their journey. And they were doing some great stuff back then. So just because it was a while ago doesn't mean it's not Valuable. That's still one of our most popular courses, even though I think it's probably officially the oldest course on our website now that hasn't been, you know, refreshed. We often go back and kind of redo older courses. But that's also the course where my daughters, my two oldest daughters, and they were very, very young back then. They were emptying a dishwasher. And in fact, that video is free of charge. It's the first video in that course. So it's called kind of a. Been a pretty famous video on YouTube. And so my. My daughters are now 18 that are in that video, but they're little girls emptying a dishwasher. And we were leaning it out. So that's a really, really fun course and is dear to my heart just because they're involved in it. So, anyhow, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Rick, welcome to the Gemba Academy Studios. Thanks for coming in.

Hey, no problem. Thanks for having me, Ron.

Yeah, man. So we've, I think since we've been in the building here, we've only done three or four in person interviews. Jamie Flinchwell came in and we did one, and Billy Taylo was here, you know, when we shot some videos over here. But we don't use it that often because a lot of people don't live here in the Dallas Fort Worth area, you know, so. But it's great to see you, you know, and not over. Not over Zoom or Skype or anything, so. But hey, Rick, I know we've been friends a long time and I know you've listened to the show. We do like to begin with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Sure. I'll go to the standard damning quote. You know, it isn't necessary to change because survival is not mandatory. And I think that's a big one for today. Change comes pretty quick. If we don't adapt and do something else, then we may not survive.

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Rick, we were reminiscing before we hit record that, you know, we've known each other for a long time and really, truly, for as long as Gemba Academy has been alive, we've known each other because I don't know if you remember, but back in early 2009, well, we started the company Gemba Academy in March of 2009. We turned the web website on and one of the earlier courses that we did was this Kaizen Way course. And I, you know, we had known each other even before then, and. And I knew you were Local. And so I think I showed up at your facility. It was just me back then as far as me, Kevin and John, but it was me kind of. I was the video guy. I was the editor. I was the everything. And I remember I showed up with my little $200 mini DV tape camera. Remember that thing?

Oh, yeah.

I had a. I had a tripod. So I think I was pretty high tech back then. And yeah, I remember the microp. You know, it was one of those. You know, it was a real microphone that clipped on your shirt. But it had a big old cord. Had a big stretch of cord across the place and. But boy, we made some cool videos. I actually went back and watched them today. It's called Real Life Kaizen. And then you're sitting at your desk and I'm asking questions and, you know, you're answering it. And I was kind of proud. I had some cool B roll of you guys in there working in the federal he sign shop there. So, man, we've come a long way.

Yeah, technology's kicked. Yeah, that's where it started. I mean, that was truly for us even Gemba Academy Live, like going this aspect of the name of the company, of how important to go to the Gemba. And so it was really cool to be a part of that. Our guys look back and watch that now too, and they go, wow, what was going on? You know. But they enjoy it too, because it's more of a point Kaizen, which fits us. But they look back and some of the guys that had worked at the company 40 years are on some of that video. They see pictures of it too. So they get pretty pumped about. About it. Really?

Yeah. In fact, what I'm going to do, I'm going to talk to Tony, who's our IT director. And we have the ability to like, make videos, certain videos, like, open to the public. And it's that third. It's actually the fourth video in our Kaizen way course. It's called Real Life Kaizen. Boy, your hair has changed a little bit.

There's a slice of it.

Mine has too.

Okay. Yeah, less hair for some reason.

Goodness gracious. But anyhow, it looks. Looks good. It was a fun video and appreciate you, Rick. But hey, anyhow, tell us a little bit about your background for folks that don't know who you are. Tell us how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff. And then tell us a little bit about Federal Heath and what you guys got going on.

Okay. Well, I've been in manufacturing for this month. Actually this week is 43 years. And I started out in the shop floor, machine shop, cleaning the floor and then going to deburr into machining and then into management. So aerospace, telecom, sign industry, the last 14 years. So been in manufacturing pretty much my whole life. I started when I was 19, which kind of gives away my age, but really just grew up in manufacturing. And early on in the aerospace company, Boeing came in and they started doing accelerated improvement workshops. And some of those guys had been trained at Toyota and so it was very similar. And so we kind of kicked off with that. Fortunately or unfortunately for me, my mind's kind of wired like that anyway, so I just fit right into it. And then after that closed down, I went to a place where a guy was over lean and he hired me as a general manager of machine shop and he had trained six months in Toyota. So we were. It's kind of always been a part of who I am in the manufacturing environment. And then worked for Malcolm Baldrige award winner for a while and then came to Federal Heath as Dunlean full time, which was really the first time where I got to just focus all my effort on it with the team and stuff and kind of develop what we're doing with Lean from scratch. They kind of had total quality management and some of that, but it was the first. We're really dedicating a resource to that. How can we pull it together and really just develop it from scratch and put a program together?

So now, what year did you join Federal Heath?

2007. Okay, January 2007.

So you'd only been a couple years when we were crossing paths there. Yeah, very good, very good. Well, tell us a little bit about Federal Heath though, because it's a real cool company.

Yeah, Federal Heath's a national sign company and really does exterior signs. We do internal now. We do print, we do media, we do even digital content. So whatever that image or that thing that the customer needs to kind of get their brand out there consistent, then we're somebody that does that and brings that to them. And so we have six manufacturing plants now since I think we just had like three or so. And when we talked, and so six manufacturing plants and 15 offices with sales and program managers kind of around the United States. And so our focus is really helping bring that brand to life, whatever it may be for customers. And we've been in business for about 100 years now.

Well, you guys have done some cool signs too.

Yeah, actually 120 years now. Started in 1901 is when the company Originally under Federal sign kind of started. So yeah, we've done the Paris balloon in Vegas that was designed by hand. The designers did a lot of that by hand back in the day. And so arches over city highways and different things like that.

And so what was the baseball you did? Wasn't it like Boston?

Yeah, we refurbished the flag behind Fenway up there one time, which was a big project. So it's pretty cool to be involved.

In a lot of restaurants too, doesn't you?

Yeah, retail restaurants, things like that and, and petroleum world. And it's kind of cool because our sales and our approach is really divided up into value streams and that's kind of how we approach it. They're different. There's some really high end custom type work we do that would take eight semis to ship it on. And then there's some things we ship out every day that could be a decal or one small crate. So we've really divided our project teams and sales and really most of what we do in the company into value streams. So it fits with the strategy and the lean and all of that kind of goes together just how it's structured.

So give us just a quick elevator pitch on Federal Heath's Lean journey because I want to get into some, you know, culture type questions and all that, but I thought maybe to level set us like give us a little, pull the curtain back a little bit on how y' all have gone about lean.

Yeah, before I got there, they were really digging in and they'd gone to a lot of TQM type courses and things like that and sent managers to it. The safety manager was leading part of our initial lean efforts back then. And so there was that focus on success and quality for sure and getting things right the first time. So that happened several years before I got there. The journey of just going down that path where the operations person or somebody else would kind of try to take that lead on that. Maybe not necessarily so much in the office side of Lean, but certainly in the manufacturing plants. That was an approach. Previous CEO and current CEO been trained, gone to several seminars, been to Tennessee and been to visit Newmni, you know, in California and several places. So they're very, very involved. Even before I started with lean, getting exposed to that and seeing what so really taking several steps, you know. And then when I started it was that, okay, how can we develop a system and structure? You know, how can we kind of bring it together with a dedicated resource? And so that's kind of where I started in 07 is bringing in, what is this going to look like? And then our connection with Gimba Academy is with so many locations and growing, how do we put a system or structure together where no matter where you start in the company, we can kind of onboard you with this Lean thinking. So from that in 2010 we added the office side and brought them in and we really started with developing a Lean Champion group group. And so now we have 34 lean champions throughout the company. They all have full time gigs besides Lean or we view it. Everybody has a full time gig with Lean, you know, culturally.

Yeah.

So I kind of coach them and direct them and we have monthly calls and we rotate them around a little bit into it. I, I divide them up into cross functional groups. And so they kind of take our learning and our growth and they take that out to their teams. And so it kind of spreads by that and they kind of hold up the banner for this culture of change. And it's, you know, what happened good today, what didn't happen good today, can we make it better tomorrow. It's really just basic having that mindset of how can we get better tomorrow? Everybody and everybody every day. And the reason we really haven't, you know, got this big Lean department, it's really just me and then coaching because we want it in our culture for everybody. So we're more focused on that as grow. So we developed that and turned into Federal Heath Lean University. We need to put something together and that's really just three basic structures. One of them is GIMB Academy. It's a great resource. We use it because we're so diversified and all over the place. We needed something that was common with a common message. Good training, consistent and easy access. And so we have GIMB Academy. Another thing we use a great deal is book clubs or masterminds. And we've been doing it since I started with the company and even so today. So we had Federal Heathen University 1 level 1. Level 2 isn't any harder than 1, it's just more. And then we have level 3, which is for leadership and it's a lot more and it has a Gemba Academy portion in it. A lot of the Gemba Live and some of the interviews webinars, but it has eight books in there. Oh wow. That's on leadership specific and it's really on developing that leadership of how are we going to connect, engage and influence our people. And so to make Lean really work in an organization, I think it falls back on leadership. John Maxwell, one of my key mentors, says Everything rises and falls on leadership. Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. I'm a firm believer in that. And I think we are as an organization, so. So we take people, especially the way we're designed. We're all over the country, so 95% now of every book club we do is from people from every function. So it helps us collaborate, helps us communicate, helps us feel like we're one team. And so it's really worked out well. And now some of the lean champions facilitate those.

How does the book club work? Like, do you, like, read a chapter a week or a month? Or go, like, what's the cadence of review?

And we don't want to overwhelm people. We want that consistency. So we have Gimba Academy. Then we have this book club, and we really just tried to shoot for maybe 45 minutes or an hour. And it's now it's a gotomeeting or a conference call once a month. And I do it a bit different. You read the book. We have the whole book. No, you read a chapter. Okay, read a chapter or two, depending on the length of the book, whatever might fit that. And so you got a month to prepare. You read the book. But the other thing, we've prepared questions. And so you read the book, you answer the questions. Questions are kind of. There may be 10 questions on average. Five questions are, hey, what do you think about the author when he said this? How do you think that fits you and what you're doing? And then five questions are probably really key lean principles that we should all know. What's the definition of value added? You know, what's the eight waste? We do the factory of one, and we'll say, hey, we want you to do a customer value map. We want you to do a time. So then you meet. And so we believe that by the time you read it, you answer the questions. And then we get in there and we have round tables like us right now. You grab a cup of coffee and you talk about it. You have a facilitator, you know, worst case scenario. Some people would be a little nervous. And when I first started, they were doing some of this. Some people would be a little nervous if they had to prepare. Just wasn't something they were natural to. So whether you had a PhD or felt comfortable or not, the questions kind of leveled the field where we could get more value out of the discussion, which is the gold than being nervous about talking. So we still, hey, what'd you get out of this? What do you think about that? Or what'd you get on number two? Anybody else have any other insight? And so it gives you that opportunity to draw people in, to be engaged about what it means to us and what it means to them. Then how do we build on that? And so depending on the book, you know, typically we'll do like a factory of one. I'll do it in four or five sessions. We'll watch the webinars ahead of time on Gemba Academy and we'll have a discussion about, especially on the front side of the business, if you come in, that's the first book you're going to do. You're going to do that with me. It's kind of the intro to Federal Heath and Lean. And on the front side of the business, if you're sending emails and dealing with information, you're going to be in that book club. And we try to do one book a year. We don't want to. Once again, it's not to overwhelm people. I think HR standards are trying to get that 40 hours a year. We probably have about 20 hours of lean that we can work in that at average, you would finish level one in a couple years, maybe level two in a couple years. And level three is much more. And it's, it's more for a reason to get that leadership level. So that's kind of how we're structured now. One of the key things we do, to kind of pull everybody into it and be engaged with it.

Got it. So I know you're a big culture guy, Rick, so people listening right now, everybody wants, you know, this so called continuous improvement culture, right? That seems to be the. What we're aiming for, what we're striving for, what do you believe are some keys to, you know, transforming. And then once you maybe get close to it, maybe never quite achieve it, but you're getting close to it, you're doing better. How do you hold on to it? How do you sustain it?

Well, you know, you got to stay engaged back to even the quality aspects back in the day. What gets measured gets sustained or improved. And if you're not measuring, how do you measure it? You measure it by the number of times you touch people. You know, I don't know if there's ever been a time, and we talk about this a lot lately, is the Gemba is where it's at. You can use the Japanese word or whatever word you like, but you have to be where the people are and you got to be connected to them and not to wear out my Maxwell connection or Values. But he says something that I think is probably so profound today, and he says, we need to walk slowly through the crowd. And, you know, there's the O used to say management by walking around. I have a different view of that. And it. It's leadership by being engaged. And that engagement is asking your people, hey, what's going on? What's your biggest frustration? What's just kicking you in the shin? What can we do to take that constraint away? How can we help you? If we could fix one thing for you today, what would it be? What are you running into and showing you care? And, you know, that's another thing he says, you know, people don't know you care unless you show it. And it's culture. If you're an organization like us, where it's not as automated, there's a lot of custom, it's a lot of labor, and people focus. And so you got to stay connected with the people and you got to be there as a leader. Certainly you can go out and look at the boards that are up and have conversation about that. But. But so many times I've seen people walk by leaders or managers walk by things without truly connecting with the people. And I think that's real critical. You can just go out and have the leader. I'm not saying it's wrong, but you can go talk at the board. You can have the person leading that area come talk at the board. But as a senior staff or leaders in a company, to walk by the other people and not just go up to where they are. And I think we believe a lot of companies or organizations, this culture thing, we're open. We feel like our people could tell us whatever they really think and all that. And I think that's a misnomer. I think people aren't as open as we think they are, whether it's titles or whatever it may be. And so we teach a book, we put it in level two now called Crucial Conversations, because I wonder if our cultures with lean and continuous improvement aren't sustaining or moving forward because it's the things that aren't being said. And do we really have a culture where people can speak up and be authentic? I tell my lean champions all the time, I said, you're welcome. Say, hey, Rick, I think we're off on this. That makes no sense at all. Just say, that's not working. We need to change, you know, or, you know, and just be respectful. But at the same time. So if you can consistently do that as a leadership group, and it's Hard right. If you're managing a manufacturing plant or a project management group, it's easy to get distracted by a hundred emails, which is why we teach the factory of one. How can you manage that? I think another thing, today we're so caught up in getting things done. It's not a time management issue, it's a priority management issue. And if your people aren't one of those priorities on your list, I think it's going to hit your culture. So I don't know a lot of some of the lean leaders or folks I know doing it, the people side may not be their strongest suit. You know, they're just not wired that way. So that's one of the reasons we teach the leadership, we teach the coaching habits, crucial conversations is even being a person of influence, you know, Maxwell and some others is using those resources is how can we connect with people? Because we believe people. If you go out problem solving, I mean they're the experts. So the more we can connect with them, the more your culture is going to sustain.

So if you're visiting a company, not a federal heath business, you're visiting some other company, could be anywhere or any industry and you were walking around, how could you. Would you be able to spot. Do you think you'd be able to spot a strong continuous improvement culture or is it too hard to kind of see by just walking around and interacting with people?

I think I can see it fairly quick. Maybe the people side is stronger for me than the lean side. Maybe my.

So what are you looking for?

Well, I think the mannerisms of the people, right how they carry themselves. You know, if you. Maybe not everybody's joy ink, right. But I think you can tell, you can get a sense. And are people open to share? You know, I've been in some tours where people are just excited in the area and so I mean they want to share what's going on. They really don't care about the boards. They're. They're so excited. I mean some of the videos you guys have done with some of these companies, people are pumped. They're like. And I think that gets it going right is people are truly bought in because they've seen it and been a part of that. I think you can sense that when you're going in. If it's just process focused, execute, execute, execute. I think people can have their heads down and working and maybe you don't get a sense of that, but that's how I think you get a sense of the people. Do people really working there?

I Agree. I almost feel like it's sort of like that whole contrast between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. And you can almost see when people are intrinsically motivated, Right? I mean, they just genuinely are, you know, excited, I think, to get up and go into work, you know, because they just, they, they're bought in and there's maybe there's a purpose, you know, start with why or whatever it is, right? They, they're behind the cause, right? They're part of something.

And therein lies the challenge. How. How to get it from there, from the other to there. How. How do you. How do you pull people into the why? How do you pull the people into the why for them, the why for the team? That's part of the strategy of. And it's a tough road. And it's like you're just. You have to consistently pitch that. You have to consistently model it as a leader. If you're not modeling it. Most people are really geniuses, so they'll see it if you're not modeling it.

So let's role play a little bit. I'm a brand new employee. I'm just, I'm, I'm not even that experienced, you know, with, with, in the. Just in having a corporate job. I may be a younger person, something like that, out of school, or maybe I didn't even go to school. And now you're going to try to sell me on this whole idea of Lean, of continuous improvement. What is your why? What are you going to tell me? You know, this is why you should do it. Like what, what, what's your pitch? Like why Lean? What sell me. I'm. I'm brand new. I don't even know, like, why short. Short of not losing my job, maybe, you know, but I might, that one might be my mindset. I better do it. I'm going to get fired. You know, like what, what, what's the why?

Well, I think for us, it's one of our core values. And so if we're bringing you into the company, I mean, hopefully we've had this conversation with you before you got there.

Yeah.

Okay. Because it's not, it's not something extra.

Right.

It's one of, it's one of the three core values. So it's got to be part of the conversation up front. And that's one of the things we've done with Lean that has really changed since the beginning is it is in the interview process now. It is in the onboarding now. It's in your HR quarterly reviews and conversations. Now, I mean, it's everywhere.

Yeah.

And so that's another reason it's in our culture. We didn't wait till you showed up today and for me to explain to you why it's important. Yeah, okay, got it. Those conversations are held a little ahead now in the manufacturing side, much smaller version than Toyota. Our work can really vary at time, workloads and types. So we'll utilize some temp agencies on that. And that is a little bit harder pitch. But I'll just tell you a story on that. So. So we were having one of our Gimba Academy classes this last week. We had a guy that Covid. We slowed down some and he went to another company and came back and we were just going over 6s and we got to the end and says, well, what does this mean? And this guy goes, well, I went to this other company and he said, man, I had to look for a pallet jack. I had to look for this, I had to look for that. He goes, it was so frustrating. He said, here, you guys got it marked. I know where it is. I can go get what I get. I need it. I can do work on the value added work to get the job done. This is somebody that's been with us just a few months. Right. And hadn't even really been to the training yet. But the culture of the people around and what he saw in contrast helped tell that story. Now for him, it made his job easier, made his job less frustrating. And we have that on the front side. I've had sales guys tell me like, I cleaned out all my files and one of the best stories I've ever heard on this. And so you start getting these wins because it becomes practical. And part of that is selling is, hey, if improvement could take away some of your frustrations and you didn't take that home, would that be a good thing? Most people like, yeah. Do you think we can get better as we grow in this company together? Well, sure. So you start hitting with people on just a very practical aspect of where they are and then where we are, and then you find that connection and you pull them towards that. For me, I always want to add value to people, so I know my why. And so I'm looking for that connection with them to pitch it. So I had this one guy, he was on the office side, he was a manager and he dealt with everybody. You had to deal with numbers and he went through the factory of one and they were kind of a little later to the game to get involved after you and I Met and all that. But they came in there and he was on the Lean Champion team for a while. So we went through the factory of one and he retired a few years ago. But he sent me this email and it blew me away. He said. He said, you're not going to believe this. He said, my wife is a superintendent of a school district in one of the surrounding suburbs of Chicago or somewhere, big district. He said, she comes home every night and she works on emails, two hours every night. Monday through Friday, 10 hours of her home time is working on emails every night. He said, I shared with her what we were going through about handling information on that like you were teaching us in the factory of one. He said, we're down to 15 minutes a night now. So they added nine hours a week, 36 hours a month back into their family time from a Keeling principle that was taught at work that impacted the quality of life at home.

Nice.

And so there's the why, if your quality of life could be improved, the quality of your family life could be improved? If the quality of the community could be improved or our customers, the value, all stakeholders, would there be value in that? If you were less frustrated, if you could get more done without being frustrated, hunting for this or doing for this or waiting on the information. I mean, if we made it better, would you feel better about work every day? 99.9% of the answers are, well, sure, yeah. So those are some of the things we've ran into where at times we'll get more feedback from how people are doing it at home, where you never thought the principle was really connecting. Yeah, but it is. I mean, I had a guy tell me once that his wife had like 30 Christmas tubs and it was out in this shop. He's like, oh, honey, go get me the red lights or go get me this or that. And he said, you know, Christmas was a burden for him. It was a joy for her. She liked putting it up. But he would spend four weeks just pulling things out and putting them up. So he sends me this picture of his workshop and he's got 30 tubs lined up with a label on the outside. And he knows exactly where the white lights are, the red lights are, this is where these ornaments are and that. She says, next year comes around and he goes, long term employee, didn't buy in at first, but then started cooking. And he goes, she goes, hey, I need this here. He walks straight out to the shop, he grabs that one tub, he brings it in, he's done in five minutes. When he puts it all up. It takes an hour or two versus two weeks. And so, you know, it works if you work it. But those are the things where you're engaged. That's how the culture, you know, it's getting in your culture is people are taking it home because they see how it truly improves the quality of life. Not, I'm not organized just to be organized. I'm not structured just to be structured. Although those are good and improve productivity. But when it impacts you personally in your personal life. Yeah. And that's driving improvement. It's real. And so I get excited about those stories because they're real. Taking the principles. And sometimes you may not think it's even in your culture at work to the degree you would like, and you start getting all these stories of how people are using it at home. Some shocking that you never thought you would hear.

Well, I. Even in that Barry Windmiller, where they're talking about, like, divorce rate and their company went down, you know, like, over the years as they continued, because the same thing, people weren't miserable at work. So they were. They were happy at home.

Right.

Whereas in the past they were miserable at work and they brought their misery home and yelling at everybody and, you know, and it's not good, you know.

No, it's hilarious, too, because my wife stopped me one day and she was watching me put on my shoes and socks one morning, and she goes, and you got to have humor in this, too. And this is a part of it. Be real with people, connect with people. This is real life.

Yeah.

This is real survival. Back to the Deming quote, really today's world. But she goes, wow, if you're such the big lean dude, why are you doing sock, sock, shoe, shoe instead of sock, shoe, sock, shoe?

I go, touche.

I go, wow, touche. You know, so you stop and you reflect and think about that. But even her, where we don't have a lot of conversation about that, obviously the culture that I'm engaged with, she's recognizing. And so that influence that you have to continuously improve. And I'll take it for us another step further that I think, especially for leadership, because to me, everything rises and falls on leadership. I don't think you're sustaining. I don't think you're ever going to get where you want to get as an organization unless you. The leadership is being developed. And I think one of the key things is as managers, as we get older, we've had our education or whatever, I don't think we believe we've arrived. But we get busy and caught up, and we're just not doing at the learning, at the pace that maybe we even think our people should have. And continuous improvement begins with the leader. If you're not growing, you're dying. If you're not continuously improving yourself and educating yourself, then how can you pour into somebody else if you're not pouring into yourself first? Yeah. And so I think leadership development begins with you so that you can help develop the other leaders around you to be better than you. But I think that's another misnomer sometimes in the lean world is we want everybody to work on these projects and get better. We're not studying anything ourself. We're not reading any extra books. We're not not going the extra mile ourselves to grow as a person, as a leader. Yeah. So when I'm engaging and helping them and serving them. So I think that's another big deal from, from our perspective.

Okay, so let me change the direction a little bit. Somebody's listening to this right now, and they aren't a senior leader, frontline employee, engineer, something like that. Okay. And let's say that they're, they are in the unfortunate situation to where their leadership above them may not be completely bought in. Now, maybe they are a little bit and they got enough. They do some lip service and, you know, you've seen it, but, you know, they're pushing on a rope a little bit, so to speak, these folks, you know, frontline folks. What advice do you have for them? Like, what can they do if they don't work for Federal Heath and they don't have, you know, top leadership, you know, really getting after it. What, what advice do you have for them?

Well, I, I think it goes back to my, my Maxwell quote, which I love. And his perspective is leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. And, and I reference Dan's book a lot on the factory of one. But I, I believe the reason that he has you kind of go through that customer value map is not necessarily to think, wow, I have a lot of people I'm really interacting with. But I think it's to set back and think about what is the difference I can make within that customer value map, which is probably 90% internal and 10% external, frankly. So you can influence change, you can work on waste, you can work. I mean, I encourage people like we go back to, because there's a lot of frustration. You know, people are trying to get stuff, take care of customers and all that. Well, I can't get them to do a five. Why with me, we can't do this, we can't do that. And I was like, well, what do you control? What do you control? And to sit back and think about that. And I think one of my favorite books, it says one of the steps is to be still and know and seek first and fine. And I don't think we're very good at either one of those. I think sometimes it's just be still, just set back, be still for a moment, and reflect what I control and what can I influence from a lean perspective to get better? I think we'd be surprised. And it's not five things, it's not 20 things. But if you just will get still and reflect on what I control and what can I influence? And then seek first and find what's. What's one thing, what's the first. What's one priority that I can control and influence to drive continuous improvement. And I think if we pause and reflect on that and kind of let the frustrations and the busyness of our worlds today, which is respond, respond firefight. If we'll sit back, just be still, kind of really know what's going on, what's the real current state, then seek first, not seek second, or seek 10 things. Seek that first thing and say, okay, what. What is it I can do? I'd be surprised. I've never talked with anybody yet. I've spoke at a couple of conferences and things like that, and people have come ask me this question. I've never really ran into anybody that said, well, I don't think I can do that. Well, you can do something. You can do one thing. You can influence one thing. Are you a parent? Are you a brother? Are you a sister? I mean, if you have influence, you're a leader and you can influence, you'd be surprised. Once again. I get stories of things where I think, you know, I would hit my head against the wall like, man, I'm just not getting there where I want to get. And people bring me a story like, hey, I got 30 tubs straightened out in the shop. And you're like, I didn't even think you were listening, you know, and coming that. And so we may be underselling ourselves on that level of influence and what we can do, but you can start where you are and you can influence the next person in the value stream. What if you went to your next person that you extended information says, how can I make this better for you? Is it too much information? Is it over, over, over production? Is it not enough information? Are you Having to wait on me. How often is it incorrect? What could I do to make this better for you? Well, I don't need the vice president or CEO or anybody else. I don't think in many organizations to empower me to do that. Maybe. I'm sure there's some out there, but I think for the most part I'm empowering. Hard to go to somebody that I pass paperwork or emails to every day and go, hey, I just want to double check with you. How can I make this better for you? Yeah, well, you've just started the road to continuous improvement. To me, instead of saying, this is what we do, this is what you have to do. I even use the phrase, and we got to work on it, too. It's continuous improvement all the time. But Lean's done much better with you than to you. Oh, yeah. And it's this culture thing of how can I help you? You're my fellow team member here. We just went through last year, a lot of us working from home, part of the office. We went through a study on teamwork. We did this book, it's real short, called you are the team, Kind of like you're the factory of one. Well, you are the team. And maybe you're not meeting right now, but if you're the team, how can you influence your team when they don't report to you? You. How can you be a better team member? How can we improve what we're doing as a team member? And like crucial conversations, there's some, there's some tough reflection in there. We do leadership with Maxwell and he has some of his books. There's a lot of tough questions that make you stop and reflect. And I think that's another thing that's brilliant for us in the lean world, but I don't think we'll do it unless we get stiff still. We need to be still and know. Seek first and find if we can connect that reflection on how. How can I add value to the next person in. In this flow?

But what's interesting about it is, and what I love about it, Rick, is that you, you've. You've said right there in that scenario, how can I make the next. It's about you improving. So my question was, well, they're not being supported. And you turned it around, rightly so, to say that it's almost like, what was it Pogo, you said a long time ago, you know, I have found the problem and he is.

I.

That's it, right?

Yeah, I am. I look in the mirror and I Go. Oh, so it's you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're the problem, Rick.

Congrats, Rick.

Just like I'm the problem, right?

Yeah.

And yeah, if you take that, that mindset and you're out to serve, hey, Rick, how can I make it better for you? You know, you're right. Continuous improvement will start because it'll probably take some back and forth. You know, you're going to have to give me a little bit. I'm going to give you a little bit. Next thing you know, the ball is rolling.

And yeah, I mean, and sometimes people go, what's up with them? Right. You know, it's like that's. But you know, the process of change, right. It's. It's got to take some action, it's got to take some consistency before it turns into behavior, before it turns into this is what we do. And then this becomes who we are. And that's a journey. And if we have so many people coming into an organization or any organization, their past, their past where they worked, their past culture there, the cultures they were raised in, of their understanding of that. And so, you know, part of the thing with Lean is even Mark Craven and I have talked about this numerous times is like, in theory, unless I'm on the six sigma side. In theory, Lean is really simple. In theory, execution, terribly difficult, we deal with. There are so many variables, and I think that's the challenge. Our environment, manufacturing, there's a ton of variables, but you have people, you have personalities, you got geographical locations, you got past management practices. If you're acquiring a company or somebody new coming in that's going to manage. There's so many variables on the people side and I certainly believe in tools, but if you don't have the leadership and I'll, I'll say emotional intelligence has probably never been more important than it is today. Do you know who needs what today on your team? Yeah. And do you realize that might be different next week? The COVID thing we went through. Do you know how to connect with your people? Do you know where they are? Do you know who needs the thank you note sent to them personally versus just saying it over the. I mean, do you know your people? Do you know how to touch and engage your people? So I think emot the people side depending on your business, unless you're 90% automated is probably just so critical in my opinion today. And that's why we teach a lot. I mean, our HR team is. The director of HR is one of my lean champions. And they're 1,000% on board with us on developing this leadership. And how do we have good conversations? Because if we don't challenge the status quo, one thing I always say is we can change or be changed by the change, but change is coming regardless.

Yeah.

And so it's kind of up to us as leaders. Back to Jamie's book, the Hitchhiker Guide to Lean Leaders Pull people forward through change. And that's why leadership, I think, is really important. But I went way around what you asked there from a culture point of view. But I think lean has a degree of. I don't like the word accountable as much as I like the word ownership, because if I can get you to own it, I know you'll be accountable. Accountable because then you'll understand the why behind it. So if I can get you to own that, it starts with you, and you own some degree of that and influence of what you can do. And the more people we can get to understand that, that ownership aspect, then the more the culture is going to solidify. And as other people come in, they'll gravitate to that more than if it's just accountable. Here's the thing we have to do. In my opinion.

You should write a book. It starts with you.

There's your.

There's your title. Right, I got it.

Yeah.

Put me in the credits, in the back, you know, back page.

Remind me of that after this so I don't forget. And I think another one sometimes is this phrase has been going through my head, you're closer than you think. And so some you're one step away from, I can change this today. I do own that. I can. You know, Karen Ross is educating us on kindness. And I believe, believe humility, kindness, gratitude are superpowers. And in a world where sometimes it can be super engineering based because it's so technical, and what it can be, the people side of it, of how we treat each other, is really going to determine the culture way more than the tools will.

Well, especially in a world that's divided, let's be honest. You don't have to agree politically or whatever, but you don't mean you have to be a jerk, jerk, you know, to each other. And that's a big chasm, you know, right there.

People don't know we care unless we show it. Yep. It's as simple as that. And that's why I like the phrase because sometimes you got to walk slowly through the crowd. You know, I'll have people reach out to me and send me a text with things going on in Their family because of that connection I've made where they probably wouldn't share it with somebody else. Of just saying, hey, hey, just heads up. You know, it could be for prayer or anything to be. And it's just like, you know, so that doesn't happen overnight. You got to build trust. But you get. People have to know you care. Like you said, it's a very. A lot of things going on in the world. You just throw. Yeah. All the changes. And that's a part. I think that's the leadership is how do we bring that team together? How do we.

What's emotional intelligence?

It is. Right. And the. And where is that taught in the lean world.

Could be taught more.

I think it's a. I think that in leadership is a missing link. Yeah. I, I think those things together are huge. Yep. Because without this resounding why behind this and this ownership of that why of who we are, why would I even want to do this? Well, you know when you say, well, okay, you can make more money, your insurance. But really, I mean, I can go through a list of stories like I told you of thing after thing after thing where it's impacted people at home, where they're utilizing these principles at home. Some hilarious stories. This one lady, her daughter moved off to college. She's a program manager, one of our best ones. She's down in Florida. So she's sitting in the room that her daughter left and she's making it into a craft room. And she says, I'm sitting in the floor. And she said, I'm labeling these little tubs and stuff like that. And she said, I just stopped. And she goes, oh my gosh, Rick Foreman is in my head. I'm in here. But. But it made her craft room more enjoyable. Yeah. And so she got more enjoyment out of what she was doing in that room because she organized it.

Yeah.

And where did she get that? Even as a program manager, account manager. Where did she get that? She got it from the principal at work and because she saw how it could make an impact beyond just her work life. And so, you know, I have a ton of those stories, but it makes you think is real people doing real work that have real lives too. And so how can you add value to them that transcends just their time at work that it goes with them? Because to me, I think that's the long term thing of lean and continuous improvement. It. I'm a firm believer that my role is to help people have a higher, better quality of life because of the principles we Teach and because we serve them. And that's going to go beyond work. To me, that's a higher level of contentment and satisfaction that I'm really helping someone's life. I'm not just, okay, we got our ROI up or ros or, you know, we're more profitable or whatever, but I'm making a difference for somebody who's a part of our team. Yeah, that's much more rewarding to me than, okay, I just have to 5s this area or take waste out. So it's a real driving thing, I think, for real, continuous improvement.

So what about. I know everything's not easy, even at Federal Heath, and I know you guys have challenges just like everybody, especially over this last year or so. Right, right. I mean, the world has faced challenges like we've never seen and, you know, hopefully, God willing, we never will again. Right. But maybe talk about some of the challenges that you've experienced, you know, at.

At.

At yourself or company wise.

Well, for me personally, I'm a Gamba guy and you know, we have a couple of plants that are larger than the others and some are smaller, but two fairly large plants with large value streams and a lot of new people in there, new plant managers as well. So. So normally I would be one week a month in each of those plants. Well, I haven't been in a plant since the first week of March last year. And so we have to think about how are we going to do that differently and still make an impact and support our team. So one of the things we've done is we have surface tabs. And I mean, actually started out with one of the ops managers and, and my lean champions in Oceanside, California, where he was setting up a new line. They were going to do something new and it was like a Saturday morning at 6 o'. Clock. He was there at like 4 there. But we were going over that line on FaceTime on our phones and he was walking me through how the line was set up and we were really bouncing things back and forth on, okay, that. What's your thought there? What does this look like? And that. So we did a, in my opinion, a really cool Gimba engagement off our phones. I was 1500 miles away in his plant and we just. And then we started doing that more. And so I'd say, hey, I know you guys are starting on this. Why don't you walk me through that? And so we have surface pads that we're using and if we get stuck or different things depending on what's going on, depending on who it is. We'll use our phones and Facetime in or I'll use my iPad. IPad as well. But what we found is even some of the newer team members in Ohio, I can be out on that line with them. We had to overcome things like sound is like, okay, we're probably going to need some earbuds because the sound of the plant and then you know, just are we going to use Skype? Are we going to use GoToMeeting and some of those things. But fascinating enough, those guys were really excited to show what they were working on on but I couldn't go there. So how do you go there if you can't go there? And so we're using technology. We're doing virtual and digital gimbal walks and it's really kind of neat. And then you know the other because we have a structure in place with our training. Gimba Academy is available everywhere. And so we have that in our plant. So then I can follow up with the Lean champions I have in those locations. Okay, what are you running into? What's going on? How's this working? And so we rotate most of the Lean champions. Sometimes we'll use a theme like one month we'll say, hey, bring up, bring us an example of something you're working on. Waist walk 5 y a 3 you pick it. It's your choice. You and your team are doing something with lean and we'll just do there's 10, 11 people on a team. We get on and hey, share what you guys were, hey, we did this waistwalk. This is what we saw. We did this 5 why we developed an SOP for this. And so they bring that. We do a roundtable discussion about it. And if people have questions, the next month we may do well, we were doing on the five dysfunctions of the team or we were doing Lencioni's the ideal team player we built off. You are the team. So one month we might work on a principle and the next month we talk about lean. So we have those every month. And that's helped us because that structure never went away. And so we have those conversations. Then out of those you get this sense of follow up or if you know, projects. So we use the digital and virtual. But then the structure of the monthly meetings I have, I had four last year, four teams this year I have three. So you know, there's one Tuesday from 9:30 to 10:30 Central Time. Three times a month jump on there we send invite Many times part of our senior management group jumps on there as well and listens in, sees what we're doing and supports us. But because of that, we have that connection and engagement to say, okay, what's going on? And then we have continuous improvement task sheets where the plants will log what they're improving on this sheet. And so I have access to that to see what they're doing there. And that helps me follow up a little bit with more intention. Specifically, hey, that was awesome. That did that. Or hey, I noticed you guys kind of falling behind on this what's going on kind of resources. So we've had to adjust. The digital and virtual I think has helped, but I think some of the structure for the lean champion teams we had in place helped us kind of through that. Yeah. So I don't think in one way we didn't miss a lot. Yeah, but there's nothing like being there in person. Yeah, certainly I could see what's going on, engage with like the team lead or different people there. But I love just walking around, talking with the people and say, hey, how's it going? Yeah, what, what improvement you made? What are you running into? Yeah, you know, if you could fix something, that one on one connection with everybody in a facility is of huge value. So certainly we miss that. But we've adjusted, I think in a good way so that the principles and tools and everything that we're working on hasn't lost what we're doing.

Yeah, absolutely. Wow, Rick, what a conversation, man. I'm sure we could go on here for the next three, four hours if we wanted to, but maybe let's wrap this conversation up. Is there any kind of like final words of wisdoms or anything that you wanted to share that you haven't said yet just to kind of, kind of wrap things up?

Well, I would say this, it's a tough time, but a couple of things. One, you matter. If you're involved with continuous improvement. Whether anybody reports to you or everybody does, you matter and you can make a difference. As a leader, I would encourage you to walk through the crowd slowly. Listen for what's not being said and slow down. Be still. Be still and know. Then seek first and find. Simplify. Make sure the priorities are the right one. And you can't do that if be still. It's easy to keep running the race and sometimes we just need to set back for a moment and reflect. And I'd say, you know, our people probably need us to walk through the crowd more slowly today than ever before. And so just be aware of your people and what's going on and listen to what's being said. And it's a tough thing because, I mean, I think there's days probably where, like, you can't do it with COVID like, they need a virtual encouragement hug. And then there's days too, where you got to push and pull a little bit to say the status quo isn't okay. That's a fine balance. But if you're walking through the crowd slowly and you know your people, I think that's something. Be still, know and walk slowly through the crowd, I think that'll make a big difference. I love it.

I love it. You know, one thing I'll, I'll throw out there as a challenge for everyone listening. And you, Rick, I don't know what you do, but I know you're a person of faith, as am I. And not everybody is. But one of the things that I personally do is every morning, morning at 6am I just sit and I get a cup of coffee and I go into my living room. No lights, everybody's still asleep. I sit down and, you know, I've got my own personal routine that involves, you know, some scripture and prayer and all that kind of stuff. But the end of the day, it's basically 30 minutes sometimes, depending. I might even get up a little bit or sometimes I'll go for an hour and I just sit in the dark. Man, man, you know, and sometimes I'm like, I'm not reading, I'm not thinking. I'm just sitting there and I tell you. Then after that, I go wake up my son, say, time to go. We got to get to school, you know, this or whatever, and then we start. But, man, that time. So I would encourage everyone, you know, no matter what your beliefs are, you know, spiritually or anything like that, but take time and just to your point, be still. You don't even have to think about anything. Just sit there, you know, and for me, I love it, being in a dark cup of coffee, you know, and it works for me. But I would really encourage people to give that a try. If that's not something that's in your routine, try. Start with 10 minutes, you know, start with five minutes, you know, and just go there and just be still and just be quiet and. And just, you know, sometimes amazing things will happen.

Agree?

Absolutely. Hey, Rick, if folks want to connect with you, I know you're all over LinkedIn. Are there any other ways besides LinkedIn for folks to connect with you?

If you want to reach out to me at work, I'm at rforman f o r e m a nderalheath.com and we love being a part of the Lean family and sharing what we're working on. We're challenged like everybody else, but feel free to reach out.

Yep. And Federal F E D E R A L I guess. Right. H E A T H. Right.

Like the candy bar.

Yeah, I love it. Federal Heath. And we'll put that in the show notes. This is episode 370, so go to gembapodcast.com look for episode 370. Rick, let's do it again, man. There's no excuse, man. You drive by. Don't you drive by like all the time?

Yeah, like three times a week I drive literally right by your front door. So I'm like, wow, they're really close. Look at that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's do it again, man. And this has been a lot of fun.

Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Ron.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years, or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 lean and 6 Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.