GA 375 | Ending Human Suffering with Process Improvement with Kyle Kumpf

And so everything we do at work is part of a system and processes are part of that system. And if we create better processes that make it easier for people to do their work, to do what they do best, and people become happy and joyful and they are better versions of themselves at work, at home and in their communities. And I want to help create a world for my kids and others where that mindset is more mainstream.

Today I'm excited to welcome Kyle Kampf back to the show. Now Kyle, as you'll hear, has got an interesting background. He's got engineering background, but now he works in the banking industry. So we, we actually spent a lot of time talking about a number of diverse topics. So this is not a one size fits all episode. We, we, we did spend some time talking about how that transition from more of an engineering background into a more of a banking related environment, how that worked and how that transition went. We also spent some interesting time talking about. Kyle's got this Tagline on his LinkedIn about ending human suffering as it relates to process improvement. And that been intriguing to me when I've seen that. And so I asked him about it, like what that means and why he has that on there. So that was a fun discussion. And then we kind of finished up with just a review of what he's been learning over the last year or so as we've been dealing with the pandemic. And so he kind of touches on a personal story and then also a more of a work related situation. So really interesting conversation and I enjoyed having Kyle on. I think you'll like the episode. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 375. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Kyle, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

It's going great. How are you?

Oh, doing well, man. You know, it's so funny. Before we hit record, I was like, hey, what was the previous episode that you were on? And you were like 219. And I'm like what? Two night? No way. And, and sure enough, man, it has been June 14, 2018. When we last had you on, I was like, goodness gracious, time flies. Because I was thinking it was like a year or two ago.

Well, we're almost right at three years.

Yeah, it's bizarre, man. Time sure flies, man. I guess we've had a few things going on in the world since we last talked, right?

Yeah, there's been a lot going on.

Yeah. Yeah.

For sure, for sure.

All right. Well, Kyle, as you know, we like to get things rolling with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

I have two, actually that I've been following for a while that have kind of been guiding what I've been doing for a while. So the first one is the true cost of leadership. Privilege comes at the expense of self interest. That's from George Flynn. And I read that in Simon Sinek's book the Leaders Eat Last. And I like this one because it sets the standard that a good leader, a real leader, can't truly lead if they are in it for themselves, if they're in it for some kind of recognition or accolades. And it tells me that if I want to be a servant leader, I will have to make decisions against myself. I will have to protect the interests of others, even when it might adversely affect my own. Got it. And then the other one is from another book that I read by Dennis Rainey and the quote is, our children are the messages we send to a time we'll never see. So as parents, we are raising kids that are a reflection of us. So what other people see our kids do and hear them say after we are gone, we'll tell them a lot about what we were like. Wow, that's been very, very powerful to think about that. And it's changed my understanding of what it means to be a parent and the importance of being present in my kids lives. But both quotes complement each other, I think, because as parents we need to lead our kids just like we need to lead others at work. In both cases, it's not about us, it's about those we are leading and the example we are setting for them to carry on when we are retired and gone. So I think this aligns very well with the whole respect for people thing and has helped me articulate my personal why here more recently.

Yeah, say that second one again because I had never heard that.

Our children are the messages we send to a time we'll never see. Wow.

Yeah, That's a deep one, man. That's one you need to put up on the wall, put on a post it note and stare at your monitor all day, you know. Oh my word. Good stuff, man. All right, well, hey Kyle, tell us a little bit about your, about your background, how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and then what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so for me, this all started with a book and I bet you can probably guess which one it was in. Three guesses or less. So if you want to try for that, go for it. Otherwise, book started, started for me, but.

It'S, well, machine to change the world. Lean thinking. I don't know.

Lean thinking. There you go. You got it. Lean thinking. Okay, got on the second guess.

Okay.

So I was a few weeks into my first job at a college and an engineering manager gave me a copy of that book. And that moment essentially set me on the path that I haven't left since. So I took it home, started reading it, and I actually couldn't put it down. I read it in a little over a week and came back, talked to him, was like, oh, yes, this right here, we need to do this. And in that particular role I've been hired for, we were combining a couple of large fulfillment centers. I'm like, yes, this, absolutely. Let's take this stuff. And so we used, used the tools and the thinking in that book to set up the new fulfillment operation. And it was great. I remember the first day we were shipping live orders. Like our goal is to be able to ship 400 orders. And that was a big deal. And by the time I had left there the capacity, or they could ship about 35,000 orders in a day. And that wasn't just all this stuff that we did. It was through a lot of the whole system. But it was really cool to use that type of thinking to help set up the operation, to ramp it up like that so quickly. And then from there, I left that role, that company, and ventured out on my own as an independent consultant in the continuous improvement fields. Got a great experience working in a variety of industries. Manufacturing, distribution. I got the healthcare, pharmaceuticals. So got exposure to lots of cool things and cool people. But then that had me living on the road quite a bit. And my wife and I were talking, she's like, maybe with the second kid on the way, might want to come be home a little more. And then I kind of say I accidentally found my way into financial services and working for a bank holding company. But I truly think that experience as the independent consultants kind of accelerated my learning curve and prepared me for that jump. And so I was able to get a job here more locally than at a local company, and I was able to continue practicing, you know, continuous improvement type type of work. Yeah, so I've been doing that ever since 20, 2015. I like to say I'm. I've been a bank. I'm an engineer that works for a bank.

Nice, nice, nice. That's great. Hey, man, on your LinkedIn headline, there's some. It's an interesting headline. What's it mean?

Yeah. And that's actually relatively new. So I will, like I said earlier with those two quotes, they've helped me articulate my personal why. And so that first opening line there of ending human suffering as it relates to process, like, that's my personal why. That's what I want to do in life. It's a big goal, probably won't ever be accomplished. I surely won't do it on my own. I want to create others and gather others to help me do this. But it was really only recently that I was able to articulate what that means. I really need to credit this person I'm connected to on LinkedIn, Angela R. Howard. I've listened to some of her stuff and read some of her stuff. It's really helped me articulate. What does ending human suffering as it relates to process really mean to me? What it boils down to is people spend a large portion of their days at work, and organizations can't tell us how to spend our time outside of work, but they can certainly influence how much time we do have outside of work. And so the focus of companies should be to produce happy and joyful people. Have you read any of Richard Sarah's All About Joy? So those people produce quality work and they contribute to society through their talents and things they do outside of work. However, when work takes more energy from us than it should, not only do those people suffer while at work, but they also suffer outside of it. And then that stress comes home and builds with the thought of going through it again tomorrow and again next week and for the next decade. And so everything we do at work is part of a system, and processes are part of that system. And if we create better processes, processes that make it easier for people to do their work, to do what they do best, and people can become happy and joyful, and they are better versions of themselves at work, at home, and in their communities. And I want to help create a world for my kids and others where that mindset is more mainstream. Yeah, that's what that means to me.

Well, you mentioned Richard Sheridan because he obviously his, his tagline, as I'm sure you know, is ending human suffering as it relates to software. Right.

And.

And so, yeah, I was, I was curious if. If there was a parallel there between what Rich and his team were up to and what you're. What you're going for.

Absolutely. I've, I've messaged back and forth with Rich, read his books. I've taken part in some of the Menlo's workshops that they have. And so, yeah, once I kept hearing that when they say end human suffering as relates to technology, I'm like, I'm a process guy. I'll just change technology to the process. And that's, that's me. That's what I'm trying to do. That's my part of what I'm trying to do.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you think about it, I mean, it really is the, the angst in the world. I mean, a lot of it comes down to a process, right. And if we could just improve all processes, then a lot of, maybe not all, but a lot of the problems that we experience as human beings would. Would go away.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very, very good. Very good. You know, I'm curious to explore a little bit. Wasn't necessarily in our notes here, but I just want to try this. You know, you mentioned your engineer kind of working in banking. And it's very intriguing to me, you know, seeing people move into different industries from, you know, which they, you know, probably, you probably never intended to end up working in a bank. Right. You know, and when you were kind of in school and all the rest of it and in your career. But I'm curious, what was that transition like? You know, like that first, first week on the job sort of thing. Were you like a fishing out of water or, or was it easy to just sort of fall in and see that, hey, there's processes in here just like there are in a manufacturing or something like that. What was that like, that transition?

It was, it was eye opening because obviously I'm walking in first day to, you know, offices and cubicles and I knew nothing about banking other than I have checking savings accounts, you know, gotten loans before. So I knew banking from that perspective as a customer, but never what goes on behind the scenes. And so I was just trying, my head is on a swivel, trying to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could and get involved in as much as I could early on. And thankfully, the person that hired me now, he was also not from banking. He had come from automotive industry. And thankfully there were a couple of values, they call them value stream projects happening. And they let me jump right in day four on the job and just kind of see what was going on. And I do recall in my second week after, I had kind of thought through some stuff and done some observation and I remember going to a small group and saying, hey, you guys may not be building cars here, but you are building loans through some processes. Here's what I've been able to observe and what they look like and just that moment there where they're like, oh, yeah, you're right. There are people moving information from point A to point B to point C, and at the end of it, customer gets a loan. So it was kind of opening for, for them and me as well just to see that. Yeah, everything is a process. Every company has them. Even if you're not building a tangible product, you're still going through a set of steps to deliver some outcome which is a product or a service.

Yeah, well, you want flow, right? You want flow, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And when you get those mapped out and you know, in a back office environment, the process isn't so clear. But if you throw it up on the wall with some post notes or even a process map of you and busy or something, then at least helps you visualize here's what's happening and who's doing it and when. And helps people collaborate and see how their job interacts with someone else's job and helps you create those connections towards work can flow instead of moving through in large batches.

Exactly. Got it. So has there been anything over. Well, I guess. What has it been? Three, three year? Almost. Yeah. Three years since we last talked. So, like, any big, big things going on in your life outside of the pandemic? Maybe we'll talk about the pandemic separately. But, you know, have you been learning anything over the last three years or what's been going on?

Oh, I've learned lots over the last three years. You know, in that time, I. I took on a different role in the company and managed part of operations for a while. And that gave me some great experience where I kind of got to go be the leader of a group and then practice what I preach with this continuous improvement stuff and deploy it and help others learn it and coach them on it. But more recently, I've really tried to make an intentional effort to focus or move my focus from what I'll call the CI tools to the thinking that's required to learn our way through solving problems. You know, tools play an important part in that, but if we don't know the substance behind the tool, then we can misapply it and actually do harm. And so I really become fascinated with the improvement kata, even though I still consider myself very, very new to it. But that's something I've more recently began to. To look into and study and even practice. And what really fascinates me about it is it's Simplicity. It's get the direction or challenge, grasp the current condition, establish a target condition, and then experiment your way towards that target condition. But I think in that simplicity, also, there's a lot of difficulty, because to do that, it requires so much discipline and patience. That's just something we, as people aren't real good at. But I've been using it, really, to improve my golf game. And through that, I've come to learn more about how powerful it can be in the business world.

I'm curious, talk about the golf game. How's that working? Give me an example target condition and some obstacles that you're working to overcome.

Exactly. As most people know about golf, you know, lower scores are better. Lower score win, lowest score wins. So obviously, my goal is to. I want to. I want to shoot lower scores so I can, you know, win in league, win club championship and all that kind of stuff. But that doesn't just come by going out and playing a lot and hoping you just naturally shoot lower scores. A lower score comes from hitting more greens, hitting more fairways, because golf is easier when you have a clear shot to the green, don't have a tree in your way. So building your way back to. Well, then that starts with the tee box. So if I'm on the tee box and I want to hit the fairway, what do I got to do to do that? And so one of the things I've been working on a lot was with my. My driver, for example, what do I got to do to hit the fairway with my driver? And part of that comes. There's. There's lots of stuff, as you may or may not know, but the golf swing can be kind of complex. Um, so I've just. I've just focused on going to the range and saying, all right, let's first practice making solid contact. And there's some tape you can put on the front of your club face, and you can hit, and then it shows where the ball hit on the club face. Um, so I can get some instant feedback. And that's all I'm doing, is just getting up, setting up, taking swings, looking at the tape to see where the. Or I'm hitting the ball on the club face. Well, let me.

Let me jump in right there, because this is fantastic. Because, you know, what folks don't understand or they miss so often when we talk about scientific thinking is the role of deliberate practice, right? And we hear those words, deliberate practice, deliberate practice. And it's like, yeah, whatever, and roll your eyes, but no, no, no, no, no, this isn't. I was. I was. I was going to go there, but you already went there, like, and I was curious if you had a coach or somebo you helping you and all that. But here, you know, even if you didn't have a coach, you have a piece of tape right on this, on the. On your club, and. And you're deliberately striking the ball and then looking at the tape for immediate feedback. And this is what makes it deliberate, right, because you could just stand up there and whack balls all day, right? And that would be. Okay. That would be some practice. But I wouldn't necessarily call it deliberate practice, right, because you're just literally whacking balls and seeing where they go. But the fact of putting that piece of tape on there, that's what makes it deliberate. And I feel like that's a wonderful, wonderful example, like, I use. When I'm training people. I talk a lot about my. One of my daughters, she played soccer at a pretty high level when she was younger, and she used to kind of practice her penalty kicks, you know, and. And she would, like, literally. And we didn't even know it was deliberate practice at the time. It was just sort of like we accidentally did it. But, you know. All right, Brenna put five in the bottom left corner, you know, of the net, and she would boom, boom, boom in the bottom left corner. All right, now put five in the bottom right corner, you know, and just kind of getting in, and she was better at one side than the other. And, you know, and you start to identify weaknesses. But that's. That's also deliberate practice versus whacking balls into the net, you know, randomly. So, yeah, deliberate practice is so, so important. And that's what. That's really what the improvement kata really affords itself, if you. If you do it correctly.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, through that. So you get down to hitting the ball square and then assuming it's going straight, because obviously the club base is open or closed, the ball is not going to go the direction you want. But then you get that feedback, and then. So you're hitting it square, but it's still going left. Okay, so now what do I got to do? What's the next experiment to correct the left and get to go straight? Um, and just keep doing that, and then you're hitting more fairways, and. Yeah, and then once you're in the fairway, it's okay. How do I make sure my irons are hitting them better? So here's another. Another little tip out there for. For Golfers looking to get better, better hitting irons. On the practice range, you can either just use a chalk line or, you know, spray some spray deodorant. And it creates a white line. Put the balls just in front of that so the iron you want to hit down and hit ball first. And so you hit the balls and you should see your, your divots should start just after that white line. If you're taking out some of the white line, that means you're down first and you're, you're not hitting, you're not hitting the iron. Solid. So again, you get that immediate feedback to know how your ball striking is with your irons. So it's all very, very, it applies everywhere, whether it's golf, other sports, music, art, the kind of applies everywhere.

I love it. Very good, Very good. So what about the, what about the pandemic? Has there been anything that you've learned and, and I mean, we've all learned a lot, obviously, but curious to get your, your insights on it?

Yeah, there's lots of things I've learned through the pandemic. So maybe I'll talk about one thing more personal, one thing more work related. But I would say one thing is that work is not the most important thing. And I don't say that to mean that work is irrelevant. Jobs and careers provide us with purpose, structure, camaraderie, and the opportunity to do things that we couldn't do on our own. However, that all shouldn't come at the cost of our family, friends and hobbies. And over the past, well over a year now that I've been working from home, we had a son that was born in November of 2019. So I actually got to watch him grow up in a way that I never got to watch the other kids grow up because I was in an office every day, five days a week, and they were at daycare or something. So I just really one thing, learned how important family is and how important it is, like I said earlier, to be present and in those moments whenever I can, even if it's just going upstairs and taking 15 minutes to eat lunch with the kids. That's been very helpful for me and I think a lot of other people have found a benefit in having that ability to do that. So that's definitely a positive that's come out of the pandemic. But on the work side of things, you know, when the, everyone, you know, the country moved to shutdowns and people transitioned to work from home, I had a department of 20 people that reported up to me, that had worked their entire. I mean, their job was very paper based still somewhat. Even though it was knowledge work, that was stuff being keyed into computers. So now it's like, okay, I need to work from home. How do we change our processes to allow us to work virtually? And we don't have six months to figure this out. We got to figure this out in a week. So I think that really taught me how to leverage the knowledge of my team. All right, guys, you know your work, you know the ins and outs of it. I don't. Here's how we currently do things, and if we're going to move this to now, you're going to do this job from your living room, couch, kitchen table, dining room or kitchen island or wherever, or an office at home. How would you do it? And then worked backwards to mesh those together. And it was a pretty amazing thing. We were able to do it. And people started working very effectively from home, even more productively than in the office. But there's been multiple studies out there that you've probably read that show people are more productive from home or can be, you know, and we experienced that same thing, but it didn't come without some struggle. And it obviously wasn't all on me. It was primarily on those, those people I was charged with leading and caring for and asking them for their input and saying, all right, guys, how would you do this? If you're going to do it from your house, what's the best way? How would you like to do it? Don't leave it to me because I'll probably come up with a process that makes absolutely no sense for you, and then you're just. Me more frustrated.

Exactly. Good stuff, man. All right, well, hey, Kyle, it's been a lot of fun. We've, we've been all over the place, but I think it's been a, it's been a fun discussion. Maybe let's wrap things up. I don't know if you have any final words of advice or wisdom for, for folks who, out there who are in the continuous improvement trenches, but if you do share those and then definitely tell folks how they can connect with you over social media or any other way.

Sure. So for final thoughts, I think just, just going back to the brief cut of discussion we had, you know, find that one, one challenge you want to set for yourself, whether it's you personally or for your department. And, you know, it could be at work, could be in outside of work. Just set that challenge for yourself and start establishing, you know, establish what that target condition is. So if you're a golfer like me, you want to your target conditions, I want to get to a four handicap experiment way towards that. If your thing is art or some other sport or something like that, set that to our condition and start experimenting your way towards towards achieving it and learning as you go. There's no perfect plan to get to some desired result. I found that you get better outcomes when you're open minded and just learn your way forward. Pick that target condition and move towards it.

Exactly. Good, good stuff. And what's the best way to connect with you?

Yeah, I'm best way to connect to me is on LinkedIn. I'm very active on there. Feel free to shoot me a message. Love talking everything continuous improvements. I try to answer all messages and yeah, feel free to reach out.

Very good man. All right, well Kyle, it's been fun and let's, let's not wait three years before we come back on.

Sounds good. Yeah, we'll keep in touch and I look forward to being back on in the future.

All right, take care.

You too.

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