GA 379 | Leading vs. Lagging Indicators with Tracey and Ernie Richardson

Investing in people. Going back to some of the quotes from the Toyota family, I think it was Sakichi. Toyota people are the most important asset of the organization and they're also the determinant of the rise and fall. And so we have to invest in that.

Today. I'm excited to welcome Tracy and Ernie Richardson back to the show. Now, as you'll hear, Tracy and Ernie have an incredible amount of experience with Lean. In fact, both of them worked at Toyota and that's where they sort of learned their way about this whole Toyota production system and thinking production system, as we'll talk about later in the episode. But the thing that I really appreciate the most about Tracy and Ernie is even though they are so, so knowledgeable, they are extremely humble, extremely kind, curious, and they're always learning themselves. That's what I appreciate the most about them. Now, the thing about Tracy and Ernie is they've been at this since 19, so that's 33 years of learning. So if you double it with both of them, that's like 66 years of leading and learning about Lean, about people and about how to make things better. Now, along the way, Traci Nierny also authored one of the best lean thinking books out there, which is called the Toyota Engagement Equation. How to Understand and Implement Continuous Improvement Thinking in Any Organization. And we didn't spend a lot of time talking about the book in these, in this podcast, but I would definitely encourage you to pick that book up and have it in your library if it's not one that you've, that you've read before. And we'll go ahead and we'll link to everything that we talk about. And we talked about a lot of things today. We talk about leading and lagging indicators, we talk about standardized work and then we talk about the importance of people as it relates to everything that we're trying to do with Lean today. So again, show notes for everything that we talk about, including all these links can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 379 again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 379. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Tracy and Ernie, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Hey Ron, thanks for having us again. We're doing pretty good.

Hey Ron, it's good to be back with you.

Yes, sir. Yeah, so we were looking before we hit record that when were you guys on last few months ago and well, ends up it was January 2018. So I think We've had a few things happen in the world tracing Ernie since we. Since we last chatted.

Yes. If we would have chatted then on the what if. What happened in 2020, we would have been a totally different podcast, because I don't think any of us were totally prepared. Right.

Golly.

No way. No way. So. Well, anyhow, I love having you guys on and. And love following you on. On. On LinkedIn and just living vicariously through you guys. You're always out and about, and so. Yeah. Well, before we get into what's been going on and with. With Tracy and Ernie, you guys know we do like to sort of kick things off on our podcast with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one that you want to share?

Yeah, I do. It's a John Wooden quote, and it always has resonated with me, especially when we're with clients or speaking in different arenas or genres, business. But it kind of fits. It's. You know, if we don't have time to do it right the first time, when are we gonna have time to do it over? And it's always a great lead in for the rework discussion. So that's. That's one of my favorites.

Yeah. Mine actually kind of relates to the subject we're talking about today, and Mr. Ono says data is very important, but I prefer facts. Hmm.

What does that mean to you, Ernie?

Well, as we get into discussions about leading and lagging, you will find that always data. Sometimes we track things that we want to see, not things that we need to see. So sometimes the data is not totally accurate and shows the picture the way that someone might want the picture to be versus what reality is. Yeah.

We can sometimes make data the way we want.

Yeah, it's that. That thing called confirmation bias.

Right.

You know, we sort of got a story we want to tell. Let's go find some numbers that tell our story.

Right. Yes.

Manipulation of the upper and lower control charts.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. All right, well, good stuff. Well, hey, listen, before we get into this leading and lagging indicator kind of conversation is something that. That we started a week or so ago, and you guys have been kind of talking about it. That's the direction I want to kind of at least begin with, but let's just catch up. How are things been going with you guys? We've obviously gone through a pandemic and continuing to kind of come out of it and catch us up on what's been going on with Traci and Ernie over this last year or so.

Yeah. So back I guess going back in February, March of 2020 ish we were going really, we were actually overseas on our last trip and we were coming back wondering if we were going to get back. And with everything that it kind of went one miles an hour to zero and it's like wow, it's kind of punt mode. But we're actually had been doing some local work here with the college. They actually got a federal Covid grant and Ernie and I have been helping a lot of local businesses kind of improve their skills in many ways around people development, problem solving, kind of visualization and standardization. So we kind of were in person back in person as early as late July and August of last year of course with all the guidelines that we needed to follow at the college and just helping folks there in that way and we did some online. But honestly Ron, what we do and as you know we're kind of in person people and do things at the campus. So we tried to minimize that but we tried to help at the same time but we didn't want to make that our full time process.

Got it. We kind of started back as Tracy talked about working with the local Daytona State College here. And while we're doing that we also started getting some pull from clients I think probably last September and we started going. It was close enough to drive to the clients that we're working with. So we actually started in process with clients back in September of last year. And it's gradually grown and it's going. It's funny going from what we went through last year and now the pull is really strong.

We started back up as fast as.

We stopped I think schedules kind of crazy now all of a sudden. So. But it's okay. It's, it's been really interesting to see the dynamics of companies maybe shift a little bit during this.

Yeah, well, it's, it's super interesting. Just even things like, you know, hear about inflation and all this kind of stuff. Everybody's like wanting to spend money now and all of a sudden we're trying to plan a little mini vacation to go to like to Florida and we're like oh my gosh, you know, look at how much it is to go stay on the beach somewhere. You know, it's like it's, it said it's come back, you know, with a vengeance in a good way I guess, you know, for folks.

So.

But yeah, good stuff, good stuff. Well, hey, let's jump into to this whole topic of leading and lagging indicators. Again it was a conversation that you know, we had over email. And I know you guys have been talking about it on LinkedIn and different things like that and teaching about it as well. So let's just begin at the beginning. What is the difference between a leading and a lagging indicator?

So I'll start and I'll let Ernie talk as well. We both got similar but yet different experiences within Toyota and externally. But you know, I try to make it as simple as possible. Leading is kind of predictive, proactive type indicators to prevent something from happening. And lagging is kind of the after the fact. I'm getting the information. For example, if somebody had a safety incident, I'm documenting it after it happened. It's more historical or reactive in nature. And we find that a lot of organizations over many years that we've worked with are a very, very high percentage. I would go on record probably saying anywhere from 90 to 95% lagging indicator tracking. You know, that's what they're looking at is something that's historical versus something that's more predictive up in the process and preventative. So we can actually make a difference in that lagging.

Yeah, it's kind of the way we talk about it in class, in our training and Also on the LinkedIn conversation we just had. It's talking about managing the process to get the result versus reacting to the result to change the process. And the beauty of it is if we have the right mix. I don't think you ever get to a point where you have all of one and none of the other. But if we get the right mix, the lagging indicator becomes less important because I can manage it through the leading indicator, KPI. So it really does help, you know, kind of what we talk about with companies when we visit is it does. Is the indicator managing you? Are you managing the indicator or. And say it in a different way, are you managing the process? Are you reacting to the process all the time? And that's kind of where we talk about the need for leading indicators versus the lagging indicator.

One of my favorite continuous improvement quotes, and I can't even remember who said it now, but it goes something like this. It's like trying to manage a company via, you know, lagging indicators is sort of like driving a car only looking in the rear view mirror, right? You're gonna crash into something, right? You better get your eyes forward here or you're about to crash.

Right?

So yeah, it's a good way to think about it in that regard. And you know, people say, well, what. What is a leading indicator? Look like, you know, if I were to use something in everyday life that always kind of hits home with folks, and I think I talked about it in that thread, is, you know, everybody kind of sees those signs on bridges, on interstates or roads. You know, it has the height on it and most of us aren't paying attention to that, but that's there for a reason. And similar to parking garages, you have the little stand well away from the garage with a little plastic, you know, I don't know, piece that if you hit this, you're gonna hit the garage. And so it's, you know, telling me before the process happens upward, you know, there's going to be a problem if there's a problem here and it prevents me from hitting. So if I didn't have that at all and I wasn't aware of the standard, then I'm going to potentially have a gap, so to speak. And so those are good examples. You can use those. Ernie can talk about one in sports in everyday life. There's so many in our everyday life, but it seems difficult to translate into work.

Well, let's go through a couple examples. I think that would be fun. Like, like a sports analogy, but then also maybe a manufacturing example and then maybe a more of a front office type, service type example where we have leading and leading and lagging indicators. Because I think it is difficult to really put your finger on these leading into leading indicators in particular.

Yeah, if you, if you, let's just use the sports analogy really quick because I think it is the best example of how leading indicators help you be successful. And if you think you pick any kind of sport. I don't really, you know, I follow basketball, college basketball, but if you look at what the coach is doing during the game, obviously there's a standard that they have coming into the game that says this is what we want to do. However, during the game, the opponent actually gives them something different. And so they're looking at the score, they're looking at the data, number of fouls, the number of timeouts, all this data. And they're making changes constantly during the process to predict the result, which is at the end of the game. And so it's no different when we're, when we're in processes anywhere. We should be managing just like the coach is managing the basketball team of looking at the current situation in order to make changes, in order to predict the transfer, the outcome. And so it's the sports analogy, I think is really, really good to be able to kind of give you A simplified version. Now we know. And here's probably the. One of the biggest downfalls that people run into with leading and lagging indicators is they'll go pick a leading indicator and just make that the leading indicator for the lagging indicator. And my experience says that you have to really search to find the one that's telling you what the lagging indicator is going to be. It's not the easiest one us, and if you're not looking for it, it won't pop up.

Yeah.

And so it's, it's crucial that you make sure that the leading indicator is telling you something. And so what we would kind of always do with my, the people I work with at Toyota, and even after Toyota, some of the companies we work with, is when we get the leading indicator, I'd ask them, what is it telling you? What does it mean to you? And, and if it doesn't mean anything, then we will go search again.

And if you think about, in a safety sense, you know, everybody obviously wants zero incidents, nobody gets hurt, come to work good. Leave work good. And, you know, they, they had a process they developed called Early Symptom Investigation. ESI program at Toyota. It really changed what you would consider the lagging indicator of the incident rate. But it was called how's your process? And if there was an issue from the group leader perspective, asking every day, that was charted on the visual board for the team, how's it going? Basically, how's your process doing? So it was an X or a check, right. And so it gave you the ability to say, hey, everything's going good from these questions I'm asking from my team members. So somebody can't say, well, this has been going on for three weeks. We would have the data to go back and say, well, we asked the question. So it helps to say, hey, if I got a little bit of a twinge in my wrist due to X in the process, then the ESI team can come down and look at what's happening with that piece of equipment or that drill or whatever they may be using to get it before that twinge in my wrist becomes something worse. So you're intervening before an incident may happen. So that was a game changer from a safety perspective, that I think is a good leading versus lagging on the safety side.

So maybe just give you a couple other quick examples. For an example, process KPI, you know, when we're looking at manufacturing is, you know, obviously the end result is the profitability to the company. That's the true lagging indicator. For everyone is to make money. However, we do that through reduction of scrap, reduction of waste, reduction of making sure we don't have quality defects. And so then we go back to the process. We'd say, what in this process is contributing to the company? Lagging indicators. And then we would go into what do we need to track in the process? And some examples could be like, if we're measuring thickness of the product and it gets too thick or too thin, then we can start measuring the actual thickness and see what's changing, what changes that variable. And so as we start looking at the process, it'll make us look back at what's the contributing factors to the changes to that process. Even like torque wrenches and impact guns and all those things would all be leading indicators that we can control the output of the process. And so there's many. In reality, if you have a leading indicator for the process and we can collectively control the processes through the whole organization, I don't even have, I don't even worry about the lagging indicator because the reality of it is I'll be much better than the lagging indicators requirement because usually the lagging indicator, when processes are controlled in the company, it's a percentage of improvement, not based on the capability. And so that really helps.

And you also know, let's say, for example, you're waiting for the quarterly report. If you have good leading indicators, you already know what that report's gonna say.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, do you guys have a, any suggestions on sort of the balance between leading indicators and lagging? I know you said, you know, you know, if our lading indicators are all dialed in and working perfectly, the lagging indicators are going to take care of themselves. But in the real world, you're always going to have some lagging indicators. You're monitoring. If you're a publicly traded company yet you're, you're legally obliged to do that. Right. So like, is there a balance? Like what kind of percentage of leading versus lagging should you have?

You know, I think that's a difficult question to answer. However, what I will tell you is for every lagging indicator, I can find a leading indicator. So at worst it should be 50. 50. Right. But what I, what I think is if we're in the controlling processes and using KPIs in the process, it's going to probably more like, you know, 70, 30 or even 80, 20. We always need to use the lagging indicator to confirm that our leading indicator is correct. Yeah, if we're getting, we're getting Good results and leading indicator and the lagging indicator is bad results, then we don't have the right leading indicator. And so we always need that confirmation. So, so I think, you know, I think if we, if you're, if you're truly a, I'll say this, if you're truly a firefighting company, it's probably going to be a really high percentage of lagging indicators. If you're a problem solving, it's probably going to push you because the reality of it is when you get into problem solving, you're going to need process KPIs then and so it'll push you more leading indicators. And so I think it's, I think it's at least 50, 50, but I think healthy is probably somewhere higher than that.

Ron, I think an example of sometimes things can be confusing. A lot of times people say, well, a near miss is a leading indicator to an actual incident. In reality it can be. But also we have to stop and ask, well, the near miss still happened and where do we go where we start to audit for specific things. So that we already talked about, there's always a leading for the lagging. Near miss is a leading for potential. But we have to still look at the near miss happened. We just got lucky and now we have to go back in the process and look at potential things that what we're auditing and then that goes back to asking how your process is. And so there's always, we kind of do an exercise in some of our sessions and we give people about 50 different indicators and we ask them, would you put that as a leading or a lagging or could be one leading for the lagging. And just like that example. So it really sparks a lot of good conversation and it allows them to think and reframe how they might look at how they define each one of them and it really turns into a great discussion.

Yeah, I like it. So, you know, on a slightly different, but it's also related point, I want to maybe turn our conversation towards the whole idea of a standard because, you know, indicators can be forms of standards in a way, right? Like we have things that we consistently do, but when we just think about standard, standardized work, standard work, what do we want to call it? What do you got? What's your opinion on, you know, are they suggestions or, you know, is there a level of accountability that for folks to follow? Let's begin there. Like, what's your take on standards?

Yeah, it's a great discussion there as well. And we're finding ourselves in that swim lane quite a bit, so to speak. Because if you go back to the TPS house, it's kind of the foundation, the Toyota production system house. And so it really allows you to measure well if you have a good standard. So I'll define what I think a good definition for standard is and it's the best known method at this moment. So kind of like thinking about best practice at this moment that we create together, we have accountability for it together in consensus until we improve it together and notice together is stranded through there that I'm not trying to sell tell and convince people that this is what it should be, I'm engaging with them. And then if we don't have the accountability to your point, it does become a suggestion. And we use an example of speed limit signs. You know, it's kind of a suggestion to a lot of us. They didn't ask us how fast we think it should be. Now we know that there's laws, but when there's an officer sitting by that sign, we have an intrinsic response to break. And then secondly look up in the rear view mirror, we kind of know we're not following the standard, but it's kind of a suggestion if there's not accountability. And that would be the officer we know there's not enough to be at every sign, right? So then that's where we have to have the buy in for it and build that together as the best practice. And so we want that saying, you know, what do we do when people aren't looking type of attitude so we can make sure there's accountability and what we call in the book the discipline and accountability, the DNA.

Yeah, Ron. I think to add to what Tracy said, I think standards are probably the most under, most misunderstood tool because people look at standards as a negative thing. And when we go to companies and they say, well we have standards, they're up on the shelf and they've been there like eight years, then what we're explaining is that's really not a standard because the purpose of the standard is to control a specific output of the process. And it's not to tell us when we're doing a good job. It tells us when abnormality happens. Right? So what? When something happens, the biggest fault that companies that we see that we work with is that we want to over standardize stuff. We want to make it so complicated that it's really difficult to follow. And, and so what we're encouraging folks is to only put in the standard what has value to the process. And if it doesn't have value, then you have to question why we even put it in there. And it needs to be easily understood, easily developed, easily trained. And here's the other piece. It has to be easily changed. And with companies we have this training we talk about, you know, the president, company does not need to approve every standard change or also if you do that, it's going to be so complicated that people won't actually change it. And true continuous improvement means really the standards should be changed every time we can find a second of waste and find change. And so we're really encouraging folks to understand standardization to be controlling the output of a process and not really making it so complicated, it's almost impossible to follow. And then you gotta have a system that allows change to happen rapidly and frequently.

So let's tie it back to our earlier conversation on leading and lagging indicators. And so what's the role of standardization in that? Is it, you know, we standardize our in our processes so we can dial in our so called leading processes, leading indicators that then lead to a good lagging indicator or what do you think?

Yeah, so I think it's really hard to have a good solid leading indicator without a standard. Now obviously you can measure stuff, I'm not saying you can't. But in order to understand is remember the purpose for the leading indicator is really to control the process, right? To control the output of the process. So I know a couple things about the process. I don't want to know the DNA of the process. It tells me one, is the process stable? And two, can we perform it accurately? And three, can it control safety and quality? And so when I'm looking at those things, then I need a standard to be able to measure the output. And so the real benefit to having that the standard is now I can understand my process capability, but the second benefit now is I can start predicting in the future. So I can look in the future and say if this happens, what do we do? If this happens, what do we do? You may have heard the term change point management to say it's saying when we have abnormality, here's the steps we need to take to address that abnormality. And it's kind of without standardization, it's kind of just reacting. And so we really do encourage simplified, effective standardization to be able to have good KPIs, leading indicators to be able to predict the lagging indicator. So I think it goes definitely hand in hand.

And the measuring aspect of that is crucial because a lot of times people go in and change, change, change and if we don't have the baseline, you know, we use a couple analogies. If I'm going to take a trip and I'm giving everybody a Garmin, and then I wave at everybody and say, I'll see you when we get there, everybody's looking at me because they need the destination to know the distance, which is the gap. If I never give the coordinate to the coordinate, then I can't measure where I'm going. And so everybody's looking at you. And it's kind of like another everyday analogy is if I'm sick and I get three scripts to go to the pharmacy to feel better, and I take all three at the same time and I feel bad, I don't know which one may have reacted badly with me. So I have to measure each one, each change, in this case, each medicine that I take to feel better. Otherwise two could be interacting badly at the same time. So we always need to go back to the standard, look at each change, measure the improvement, to say based on what the output that we want the standard to be that we created together. Any change, we can measure the effectiveness. And, you know, if we're doing it 10 different ways with 10 people, it's really difficult to know, you know, based on any change or improvement, how do we really know it was effective? And so we try to separate the two and going back to the leading, to be more predictive in nature.

Yeah, we gotta be able to detect that signal from the noise. Right, the signal from the noise. So, hey, so maybe to wrap things up, Traci and Ernie, I know you guys are, you know, real big on the people side of Lean of tps. In fact, TPS might have a few different meanings to you if my hypothesis is right. So let's maybe wrap things up a little bit talking about the people side of continuous improvement, because the tools are very important. Obviously, we've been talking about standards and this and that, but in the end, if our people aren't working in harmony with one another, all the standards in the world don't really matter. So what's your take on the people side?

Yeah, so, you know, to go to the TPS, and I've posted a couple of times on LinkedIn the evolution of TPS. So, you know, obviously Toyota production system is where a lot of tools come from and a lot of the things that people know from a 5s perspective and those types of things. But I remember one of my trainers, as Toyota was evolving and growing, he said, you know, we can call this the thinking production system. Because really we're thinking in how we're doing our processes, how we develop people, how we look at standards and all those things. And, you know, it's kind of like to me, that was generation two of tps, the thinking production system. And as I evolved and oftentimes my. Our clients are the folks we are blessed to work with. They evolve us as we learn with them. And so we kind of went to Gen 3 with TPS to say, you know what, it's really about thinking people, systems, you know, that's really what we're doing. And it resides around how do people think in their everyday work. No matter what genre of work they're doing, it can be in any industry. If I have people, I've probably got problems. I'm aligning to a purpose and I'm creating outputs for processes, whether it's a widget, whether it's invisible. It's really about investing in how people think. And Toyota used the term space to think. We must give space to think. And I'll add to that. We must give space to fail. We need time to have an experiment, and space to think and fail allows us to be creative. And so I think, you know, that part of investing in people, going back to, you know, some of the quotes from the Toyota family, I think it was Sakichi Toyota, you know, is people are the most important asset of the organization, and they're also the determinant of the rise and fall. And so we have to invest in that. So, Ernie, I know you got.

So, you know, the companies that we worked with and see the most success are companies that are in developing people to the tool. And what I mean by that is they're developing, is they're working with people to be able to understand the reason why the tool's important. And even at Toyota, you know, it was every person there has a development plan. And that's the same thing that when we see highly successful companies outside of Toyota, but it's almost always that they've got a development plan for their people and then they're able to take them to the tool. What we see sometimes is we bring the tool in and try to force it to the people. And we know that the tool is just the tool. If the organization is not ready for the tool, it's going to be really difficult to be successful with it. And you can't just bring tools in and see a culture shift. The culture shifts from developers we always talk about in the class. You know, people come to work for a company because of the money, that's the reason they get them in the door. But they stay to work for the company because of the development and the challenge and being able to see a career path. And if we don't provide that to them, we're actually encouraging them sometimes to go elsewhere and look. And that's not what we want, obviously. And so the highly successful companies that we've seen will have a development tool for the people first and then bring the tool in to help them achieve the company goals and objectives.

Very good.

Wow.

We've covered a lot of ground here, folks. We went from leading and lagging indicators to standards to people and thinking people systems. I love it, man. So good. I love talking to both of you guys. You're very inspiring. And the thing that I appreciate about the two of you, Tracy and Ernie, is just, you know, obviously your background is incredible, right? Working at Toyota all those years. But I would, I would, I would guess that the, the amount of learning that you guys have done after Toyota has been, you know, as big, if not bigger than the things that you learned at Toyota. What do you think about that?

Yes, absolutely. To watch how we learn, you know, making cars, it really, we kind of tell ourselves all the time it really had nothing to do with cars. It's just how we learned the thinking. But the thinking can be translated. And we've learned from so many folks in all the different areas. And, you know, many times it's not manufacturing, it's service, it can be it invisible processes, it all translates and it resides in the people understanding why, why am I doing this and how does it relate?

And we.

That line of sight, and I think we've talked about that as well on LinkedIn, is creating how does my work give me direction to connect to the company? So I feel I'm adding value and that really means a lot to people. And as Ernie said, they have that internal challenge and Toyota did that for us. But I think any company has the capability to challenge and develop and foster that with people. We just have to have that space to think in there and give that, you know, area for just the ability to create and think.

Yeah, Ron. And now I'll try to be quick on my response, but, you know, I can tell you, since I left Toyota and started working with Tracy, the learning has been astronomical for me. As most people who know me know, I love to go see processes anyway, and so to see all the cool processes and what's going on is just been unbelievable. But just an example of learning. You know, this last week we were with a client, we had mirror classes. We teach the same thing in the morning and then a second group in the afternoon. And I kept telling the second group every day you're all getting a better training here because we're learning so much from the first group every day. And so even just in the day to day like last week, we were learning as every day as we go through and hopefully we're able to give them the best product we possibly can using that learning and fitting it in their environment. So it's meant huge, that's all I can say and really blessed to be able to get to do it, honestly.

Yeah. All right, well, hey, Traci and Ernie, if folks want to connect with you, obviously you're both on LinkedIn. Is there other places? And we'll link to you. We'll put your LinkedIn on the show notes page. But are there other websites or vehicles that folks can reach out to you guys on?

Yeah, we have, you know, the Toyota Engagement Equation book is kind of our, our 30 year journey story from being in the hiring process all the way through, kind of developing how to look at sharing the doing part of the cultural side of Toyota and then how to sustain it. We have the Toyota ee, which is kind of the Toyota Engagement equation but shortened but so the Toyota EE all1word.com that kind of has a little bit of info about us and you know, but we filter a lot of things through, through LinkedIn especially me and you know, love to lead and learn with others on there and talk about best practices and just, you know, how we can share wisdom. Especially through the last 16 months, it's been a really great way to talk with folks. That's, that's how we kind of get, get our communication out.

I tell you nothing I love, you know, I don't spend a whole lot of time on LinkedIn, you know, because you can get really get sucked into that. But you know, kind of my routine is in the morning I get a cup of coffee and I'll log on and I'll just sort of scroll through LinkedIn in and, and I tell you every time I see you post something, Tracy, and it's always some picture of a flip chart or something that you've drawn up and I'm like, oh yeah, here we go. I'll click on that bad boy. And I just sit there and stare at it for, you know, five minutes and just really take it in. You do such a good job with, with the way that you guys communicate. So, so thanks for all for all you do for our movement, really.

So we enjoy sharing.

Alrighty. Well listen folks, if you're listening, you know, go to GembaPodcast.com this is episode 379. If you are not connected with Tracy and Ernie on LinkedIn, please remedy that. And then also if you haven't read the book, you know we're going to link to it as well. That's a must have for anybody in the Lean movement. You must have that book. In fact, I've got like 10 copies on my, on my shelf because we bought a bunch of them a while back and gave them away. So if you, if you need some, you need a copy of it, hit me up and I'll send you one because it's, it's must read. So anyhow, well, thanks again Tracy and Ernie for coming on. Let's not wait two years maybe before we have you guys come back on, but yeah, sure does. All right, well you guys take care. Keep up the great work and thanks again for coming on.

Thanks for having us, 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 Six 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 as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.