GA 385 | Transcending the Artifacts of Lean with Robert Stone

Even if it doesn't feel like you're getting the acknowledgement that you need to feel good about what's going on, just know that when lean tools are applied, it's going to make work better. It's not going to make you have to work harder, but it might be different. And different is always uncomfortable, but it's not always bad.

Today I'm excited to welcome Robert Stone to the show. Now Robert has been a longtime listener of the podcast and apparently it's helped him a lot over his career, which really humbling and nice to hear. But Robert's got a really cool background. He kind of started as a welder and he worked for some really strong lean thinking companies that basically allowed him to immerse himself into a really strong culture. And then he's actually moved on to some different companies where they might be practicing lean, but maybe that culture wasn't quite as strong. And so we sort of talk about that journey of what makes a really strong culture and lean thinking culture and some of these attributes and then what might be lacking from a company, even a company that has what we would call the artifacts of lean. So we see the Kanban and we see the 5s and all that, but just the artifacts in and of themselves aren't sufficient. We do need to have leadership, commitment from the top and flowing that down and we gotta make sure that we're not doing lean to people. So those are the kind of things that we talked about. So it's a really, really interesting episode, I think. Gonna like it. So show notes for this, for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 385. Also, we talk a lot about Kaizen. So if you want to learn a little bit more about Kaizen, we've got a really awesome course called the Kaizen Way. It's one of our older courses. It's actually the famous course of my daughters who are now, you know, 18 and 16 years old, but they were little girls and they were emptying a dishwasher. And I remember I was the videographer back then and I was in my kitchen recording them emptying a dishwasher. So this, this, this Kaizen dish dishwasher video is pretty, pretty popular. So that's over on our website. Go check out the Kaizen way course on gembacademy.com and I think you'll enjoy that one. And finally, one thing that I don't often ask, but I really would appreciate if you finding value in this podcast and you like It. And you listen every week, like Robert. Or maybe you just listen every once in a while if you are finding value in it on your app. Whatever you're using, especially if you're using the Apple podcast app, just sort of scroll down on the Gembek Academy. Like when you're listening to this episode, if you just scroll down, there'll be a review section, give us five stars and put a little. A nice word or two in there. I appreciate reading those. But also, it does help the show, apparently, with. With the algorithms of Apple podcasts. And we want this show to reach as many people as possible, even folks that don't even know what Lean is, because, you know, obviously, if we can spread that word, you know, Lean will change the world. I really believe that with all my heart. So, anyhow, I appreciate that. That review, if you don't mind. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Robert, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going great. How are you today?

Yeah, I'm doing well, man. Doing well. So well. Hey, man, I know you've listened to the show and excited to have you on. So let's. You know how the drill, man. We like to start with our guest sharing a quote. So do you got one?

The quote that I definitely want to share with you is really your quote. It's Lean is all about the people. I've heard that on so many. Many of the episodes that, you know, it's. It's always stuck with me, and it's always been your quote. And so I just. I try and take that with me every day into work and share that with everybody so that they understand that it is all about the people.

Yeah, I love it. Thank you. Well, I don't know if I can lay claim to that quote. I'm sure somebody said it before me, but I do say it a lot, so there you go. It's the truth, though, man. It is about the people, so fantastic. Where are you calling in from today, Robert?

I'm calling in from sunny Orlando, Florida.

All right, all right. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Well, hey, man, tell us a little bit about your background. Tell us how you kind of first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff. And I know you're at an interesting point in your career right now, so kind of give us a. Give us an idea of what you're up to these days or maybe starting next week, whatever it is.

All right. So I started out in high school. I took some welding classes and then decided I liked it and went on to tech school and got an associate's degree in welding and, you know, first job in welding. They didn't have any kind of a, you know, lean culture or any kind of process improvement. They were just doing everything the old way of just batching and queuing and making stuff as the orders came in. So my second job as a welder was with a company called Link Belt. They make cranes and that's in Lexington, Kentucky. And their proximity to Toyota gave them a really strong background for them to work with. You know, they had a lot of people that would come and go between the companies. And so we had a full department just for continuous improvement. And I started out just as a welder there and got into some continuous improvement projects there. Management kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, you know, you have a, you have a propensity for this stuff. Let's see if we can get you further down this road. So I continued welding there and over 10 years I moved from welding into inventory control, ran Kaizen events, and I was able to participate a lot. We had internal certification for lean, so I was, see, I got my yellow belt and I was working on my green belt with them. It was just an internal certification, but it meant that I had to lead certain Kaizen events and, you know, show progression through my knowledge. So about six years ago, moved down to Florida after graduating with a bachelor's degree and started out just as a, you know, in the meantime kind of job, got a job as a welder again. And the company that I'm in, they work with, you know, we build recumbent tricycles. And the owner of the company came up through Chrysler, so he had a background in lean and production improvement and making sure that everything was flowing through the factory. So, you know, they had gone through all the basic processes using the tools like spaghetti charts and, you know, identifying wastes and removing them and having a few Kaizen events here and there. But most of the employees don't really. Didn't really have a lot of the culture instilled in them. There's definitely a top down lean. Okay, so that's where I'm at now.

Nice, nice. So let's talk a little bit about, I don't know, just curious to, you know, you sort of rose up through the ranks. Right. Kind of frontline employee who happened to be at a company was practicing lean is what it sounds like. Right. Early on, yes. So talk about those early days. Like, what was it like when you first heard about lean as a frontline Employee. Like, was it interesting? Was it sort of a scary, was it annoying? Or what were you feeling on those in those early days as a welder, hearing about this lean stuff, if I.

Had to pick a word, going from a company that had background in lean and no experience with the tools, you know, everybody starts with 5s. But to go from a company without any of that inclination to a company that was, you know, pretty mature in their journey with Lean 5s and having a clean shop to work in where everything had a place. We had shadow boards. There's, you know, there's no material laying around. Everything is flowing through the factory with one piece flow. As soon as you're done with one product, you're moving on to the next one. And you know, preaching to the choir here, I know on this show with that. But it was astounding to see the difference that applying the lean principles to a manufacturing process, see the difference that it makes in everybody's lives and the employees and the safety in your ability to deliver. That kind of set me on fire as far as wanting to continue in that, in that realm and continue to build my career, not just in welding, but in manufacturing and, you know, continuous improvement.

Yeah, I'm interested, I don't know a lot about welding, you know, but I'm interested to hear how lean and welding kind of go together because obviously I suppose you could just, you know, do a traditional weld a bunch of stuff in a big batch and then move it and, and whatnot. Is that kind of the. Like, how is welding done poorly in a non lean way versus doing it in a, in a, in a lean sort, one piece flow way.

It ends up boiling down to. If you're, you know, as a welder, you, you won't end up just doing one weld over and over again like you would maybe on a production line in Toyota where you're building.

Yeah.

Hundreds of parts per shift, you're going to be building maybe, you know, 10 to 20, maybe 40 parts per shift. And so lean in that environment, you're removing all of the wastes of looking for tools or turning around to pick something up and you know, getting all of that time and movement out of the process more so than trying to do anything with the welding per se.

Got it.

Though. One of the work centers that I started at in my current position, there were tools on top of the welder and you had to turn around behind you and grab the tools, turn back around, use the tools, then turn around, put the tools back and then turn around and Then you can weld and then you turn around and grab some more tools and you know, it was just, it was like if you took a sped up video from the top down, you would see this person doing a dance. Yeah. With every part that they made. And so just in, you know, just do it. Style improvements, I went through and made holders for the tools where you use them so that you just pick them up and move them a few inches, use them and set them right back down where they go.

Yeah, yeah. I love that example because, you know, we talk about the seven ways and motion obviously is what sort of what you're describing. Turning around and bending over and reaching and all that kind of stuff. And it's staggering and how powerful, reducing a little bit of motion can be over the course of a week, a month, a year. Right. It's staggering how much productivity can be improved. And to your point, you know, set up a video camera someday and just, you know, record yourself even for 30 minutes, you know, you could just set your iPhone or your whatever, smartphone up and turn a camera on and just record yourself. And it's shocking, you know, how much inefficiency we have in the movement of the human body when it comes to a manufacturing environment. Right. And yeah. So I really like that example and appreciate it. Walking is another one. Right. I mean, golly, you know, I, I remember we were doing a Smith event way back in the day and, and you know, recording it and all of a sudden, oh my gosh, where are they going? You know, and so you're like chasing them down the. You know, and like, golly, man. And then when you come back and you watch it and you. Man, do you have to walk that far every. Yeah, yeah, we got to go across the way to get the fixture or whatever it is, you know, and it's like, man, how about we just move it right next to your work area, you know, and.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. No, that's great. That's great. How did you, how were you taught?

Were you.

Were you. I mean, I know you said you went through kind of some, some training, green belt and on all the rest of it, but I got to imagine a lot of it was sort of on to job training as well. And those early days, is that right? Or like how were you introduced to this stuff? I mean, you were immersed into it, sort of like a fish in water, Right. It was around you. But is that how you learned about it, like on the job training or. Tell us about that.

So starting at link belt, I was working in One of the lines that they were going through and having Kaizen events for a new process, they were buying a new laser to have a 6 axis laser, cut the tubing at the beginning of the line. And I ended up running the project where we designed and built the carts to take the material to the work centers from the lasers. And you know, getting involved in that and moving forward and having the opportunity to work through the Kaizen events and seeing what that was all about, getting exposure with the front office staff, so to speak, you know, the. The multifunctional groups that are involved in Kaizen events to get the fresh eyes and the fresh perspectives, getting involved in all of that and seeing how powerful it is just to improve something and see how much better you can make a process in just a week. Their maturity in their lean process and their continuous improvement structure. They had, you know, the opportunity for employees to go through certifications. You know, they use the belt system so you could get yellow and white, yellow and green belt certifications by participating and then eventually leading Kaizen events. And I was working on my green belt when I moved from there and would have finished that and probably still been in the continuous improvement department if I hadn't left. But I'm really glad that Link Belt offered those opportunities to the frontline employees and they were willing to take the employees that were excited about it and give them even more opportunities to improve the work around them, because that creates the cheerleaders that are going to spread it to the rest of the front line. Everybody that I talk to as a frontline employee, I'm telling them how amazing it is that I don't have to do these things that I used to do. We've made the process better. My day's easier. I'm getting more work done, which makes them happier and me happier too, at the end of the day.

You mentioned Kaizen events several times now. So, you know, some. There's some. I don't know, there's some folks out there who are just. Well, they like to criticize everything. But. But one of the criticisms might be that of a. Of a Kaizen event approach is that we go around. So, you know, there's, you know, there's two different types of Kaizen. We often talk about what we call a point Kaizen, which is like, hey, let's go improve that changeover on that machine, or let's whatever, you know, let's improve the 5s over here on this machine to improve our productivity.

But.

So these are point Kaizen events. One of the Criticisms of that approach is that, yeah, you make a lot of like little local improvements around the way, but you don't really ever impact the overall system. So like, system Kaizen might be like, you do a big value stream map and you identify, you know, areas of opportunity to improve the whole system and then you go do your point Kaizen, you know, accordingly. So I'm curious to hear, how did that company go about identifying their point Kaizen events? Was it part of a larger system or was you just walk around and fix what bugs you kind of thing?

It was absolutely a part of the system. We had full value stream maps for each one of the lines. There's 14 different manufacturing bays at the Link Belt factory in Lexington and they were going through each bay systematically and basically running continuous improvement through the whole factory.

Yeah.

So they weren't doing point events. They were going work center by work center through the line from the beginning to the end with each value stream.

Nice.

Again, that's just a testament to their maturity in their, you know, their lean journey.

Yeah.

You know, they had a steering committee that had the vice presidents, manufacturing and all of the managers and business managers they would go through. And you could see it from the top down, all the way from the executive suites through the management, down into the front line workers that are getting involved in the Kaizen events. So I think that's where most of their success comes from is the fact that they went for the full lean transformation across the entire company.

Right.

You know, offices weren't even off limits. They ran, you know, Kaizen events and lean transformations in the front office areas too.

That's awesome. Yeah. And so I feel like that's. That's something that I would wanted to re. I have. I figured that was going to be the case, especially with their proximity to Toyota. They're going to be doing it the right way. But. But it is a something that I feel everybody listening should, you know, really think about is because you can fall into a point Kaizen trap, you know, where you just walk around and make like. And. And it's not bad. Right. I mean, like doing a pint Kaizen event over here to make something better is not bad, but if it's not, say, the bottleneck of your system, you really haven't improved anything. You know what I mean? Yeah. You made that person's job better and that's good, you know, but the overall system, at the end of the month, if you will, you know, you might not have, you know, impacted anything. So, yeah, it's great that now, what about, you know, so far you say everything's great at this company, right? They're amazing, and Toyota and this and that. But was there any sort of resistance? Was there any who weren't excited, as excited as you were to, you know, be part of an event, or was it just like completely, everybody drank the Kool Aid and we're all on board?

I think that it was that maybe the culture has just been so ingrained there. You know, there were some people that, you know, you get your usual suspects who will be resistant to it, but there was no active resistance to it. It's like, you know, I don't really want to change my job. I know what I'm doing, I like what I'm doing, and then, yes, this is better, I'll go ahead and do it. They're not. They're not actively resisting. They're not actively trying to push back and go back to the way things used to be.

Got it?

So I think that's, again, just another testament to their maturity.

Now, after that, after this company, you went. You went somewhere else, right? Were they on as on fire with Lean as your first place or talk about your second journey?

So the company that I'm at now, they have been. They're about 20 years old. The founder of the company did his engineering, and he came from the Chrysler Corporation, and so he understood Lean and he knew a lot about Lean. He set up the factory with value stream in mind. Flow, one piece flow. Making sure that we use. We use hijinkas, we use shop walkers to keep one unit all together at once as it goes through the manufacturing line. We have Kanban systems set up. So we have, you know, when you're looking at it, you can see that it's been set up to operate in a lean way. But there's. The level of employee engagement is very low. So through that, you know, there's just. There's no real Kaizen events. It's very, you know, Lean is pushed down from the top. This is how we do things. So go ahead and do it this way. Instead of educating and engaging the employees and giving them the opportunity to understand why we're doing what we're doing. Without that engagement, the employees just see it as well. They're telling me to do something different again. And you don't get that excitement. You don't get that fire. And I've been able to disseminate some of that from my position. Managing the employees and seeing where their problems are and doing a lot of fix. What's Fix what bugs you. Paul Akers. Yeah, that's, that was, that was inspiring. You know, giving me the verbiage to, oh, that's what I'm doing, I'm fixing what bugs me. Let me help them fix what bugs them. And it gets them excited about it and it's, it can be very difficult to, you know, keep people excited about it when they are excited and they bring suggestions that they know are going to make their day better and they're minimized as not the thing that we're going to work on right now. And so it's disheartening to see people lose that faith in the fact that Lean can make their life better. And it just get brought down to a point where it's just something that happens to me. It's something that the office does to me. I'm just a frontline worker. I'll get up on a soapbox and preach about that. I can't stand when I see employees getting disengaged because they're, you know, their value as the expert doing the process is not acknowledged.

Okay, so it sounds like you got, you know, there's a, there's a bit of a contrast between your current company and your, your, your former company. So maybe just talk a little bit about that. I mean, both are practicing Lean. Both have the, so called, what we would say the artifacts of Lean, the things that we can see, hey, Junka and Kanban and all this kind of stuff. But obviously artifacts in and of themselves aren't sufficient. Right? Because we can go and copy Toyota's, you know, artifacts. We can go set up a Kanban system. But if, but if the, the hearts and minds of people aren't brought along, right. Lean is all about the people, right. If, if we're not doing that, we might have some challenges. So I don't know, maybe contrast a little bit between where you are now and where you were.

And I don't, I definitely don't mean to bash the company. They are doing great things. They're an amazing company. They build an amaz that helps so many people with, you know, mobility issues. A recumbent trike. You can, you know, people with Parkinson's can get out and get around with them and get exercise. But no, I only intended to compare, you know, the different levels of maturity where Link Belt was fully mature. They have a culture where everything is ingrained and people know what to expect. My first company that I worked for, they no longer exist. They had no process improvement and no Lean. It was all command and Control batch and queue. And so with the company that I'm at now, they're just, they're not as mature as link belt and they don't have the culture built in. They're still growing. They're experiencing, you know, phenomenal growth with the bicycle market exploding over the, you know, the COVID times.

Yeah, yeah.

They're a fantastic company.

Well, yeah, and sometimes it's the hardest time to practice Lean is when your company is doing well. You know, when the company is doing well, they're making tons of money and all the rest of it, it's like, well, what the heck, man? You know, we're killing it over here, you know, leave us alone. You know, so that, that is a challenge. Right? And sometimes, you know, a crisis is when, I mean, that's what happened with Toyota. I mean they had a crisis. The whole country of Japan had a crisis after the war. Right. And they had no choice. If they wanted to exist and not go out of business, they had to adapt. So. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. So like, if you have, let's say you're in charge now of your, your, your current company there, like you're the boss, you're calling the shots, like, what would you do differently? Like right now, because it's easy to cast stones, right? But like, what do you, what advice do you have for your own company? And then, you know, even back to yourself as a, as an employee of the company, like, what do you think, you know, you can do to, you know, help bring that cultural aspect of Lean and you know, make it stronger?

I would absolutely focus on the culture, focus on, you know, being consistent with letting people know that they're the experts in what they're doing, that we need their expertise, get their buy in and make sure that they're, you know, their voices are heard and you know, don't, you know, don't have lean be something that happens to people, involved with people. Because it is all about the people.

Yeah.

You know, I would, you know, we're talking, you know, having a weekly meeting where we go over things, having a suggestion box that isn't just a black hole and, you know, showing where people can find what other people are working on and get it involved, get people involved as a community of people making each other's jobs better. Just, you know, it's a team building exercise and you're going to get more value for the customer and value for each individual customer in each value stream through all of those opportunities to grow the, you know, the lean culture. In the company.

Let's talk a little bit about the suggestion boxes because that's a, that's an interesting topic. And I have, I have slightly, I don't know, I have in. I'm a little indifferent to the suggestion box. You know, the traditional box on the wall with the padlock and drop your little piece of paper in there. I've not seen them work very well. Often I've seen them work, you know, in some companies. I'm more of a fan of what we actually have. In our, in our Kaizen way course, we have a, a video with Mike Robleski. He's like really prolific lean thinker and he teaches something called Simple Kaizen. And like in, in this, in, in these two videos, it's, it's like Batesville Casket and some of these other really prolific lean thinking companies. This is what they do. And it's literally just a piece of paper. And, and so like, say you're a welder in your area and you have an idea to make something better. So you grab this little piece of paper and you feel it's sort of an A3ish type format, you know, like, what's the problem? And all that kind of stuff. And then you fill this stuff out and then you go immediately to your supervisor. You don't wait, you don't drop it in a box. You go to immediately your supervisor and you talk with your supervisor. And by the way, on there you have ideas of what you might try, you know, some experiments you may run or some countermeasure that you want to experiment with. Something like that. So you, so you identify the problem. And these are not, not huge problems, right? It might be like, hey, my, I gotta turn around to get my tools, you know, all day long, you know, and I wanna, and I wanna improve that. And so you would outline that on your piece of paper. Your supervisor looks at it and more often than not the supervisor is gonna be like, yeah man, go for it. Now obviously, if there's something crazy and you gotta spend a lot of money, that might be a different type of process, right? But, but then you, then you go and you do the work. You move your material back at a point of use so you're not turning around and all the rest of it and you snap some pictures of it and you, you kind of summarize the benefits and then the form at that point is done. And then here's what's cool about it. You take that piece of paper and you put it up on the, what they call the Kaizen Wall of Fame. Okay? And, like, this company, Batesville Casket, they got thousands of them along the walls of their hallways, right? I mean, like, they run out of wall space. Okay. And that, my friend, is like, I've. I've had several Gemba Academy customers do this. And I had. In fact, a few years ago, my friend Ted from NFI Industries 3PL in California, he called me up and he said, man, I got a problem. I'm like, oh, that's not good. You know, I got a problem. And he literally said he ran out of wall space and he didn't know what to do. And I said, holy smokes, dad. What a freaking problem to have, my man. You know, and, you know, so we laughed about it. And I was like, I don't go buy some white boards or something and start sticking them on there. And. But that I'm curious to see your opinion on, like, the suggestion box idea of just dropping it in and waiting for someone to do something like, have you seen it work?

I have. And, you know, that. That takes me back to link belt and their maturity. Part of the SQCD boards that they have in the work centers, there are. There's a corner of the board where current problems are, and anybody can come by and look through those current problems. You know, things people want to get fixed. And if they have an expertise or an idea to fix that problem, they can take a copy of it and talk to the people involved. Just like you were talking about with sort of a simple A3 type of sheet, you're able to show where the problems are. There's a common place that's not locked up like a little lockbox where everybody can see what the problems are, because we don't hide the problems. We look at problems as opportunities to improve.

Yeah.

And so that. That's where I've seen it work. Just like you're talking about with Mike Robleski and you know his approach to it.

Right, Right.

So that's. That's absolutely something that I would do. And on the subject of A3s, and you know, the value that you, as Gemba Academy podcast have provided to me, you go all the way back to the early days where you and John Miller were talking about A three thinking game and that series of podcasts. I saved those, downloaded them, and I went over and over and over them again. And that's part of what I used to. I know that's where link belts, JDI sheets come from. And yeah, before I listen to the. One of those people that's New to it. I'm like, what's it? Well, let me look for a standard A3 form online. Well, I can't find one because there's not a standard A3 form. It's a process.

Yeah, yeah, just get you a piece of paper, man.

Shout out to you guys for providing that value.

Oh, that's awesome.

Over the podcast.

Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that. Yeah, John's amazing, man. You know, funny thing about John is, you know, he's my business partner, one of my best friends, you know, the whole world. And I, I, you know, I'm biased because he's my, my friend and my business partner, but man, I gotta tell you, I mean, I feel like. And he will never, he hates it when I say this, but I truly believe, like, like I'm walking the earth right now. He is one of the greatest, deepest lean thinkers alive. You know, he is just so incredibly smart, you know, I mean, he, he learned lean by translating for these original Toyota, these Japanese guys who didn't speak English, you know, so he's traveling around these Shinsuitsu guys and, and he's translating, you know, as a 20 something year old kid. And that's how he learned lean, you know, translating for these original guys, you know, and, and yeah, I'm so, I'm so thankful to, to have John and. But it's funny, every time he comes on the podcast, you know, it's just kind of, you know, he's laid back, he's sort of, you know, not the most charismatic guy. Right. And he hates getting up in front of people and all the rest of it. And I gotta basically twist his arm to come onto the podcast. But every time he does, man, it's like things go viral, you know, bring John back on and we'll get a bump in numbers here, you know, so, yeah, I'm really glad I remember that series. It was sort of like a practical problem solving A three kind of thing. You know, where we, we went through that. Yeah, we'll link to those in the show notes in case people want to go back into the archives there, so. Good stuff. Well, hey, Robert, let's maybe wrap things up with, I don't know, maybe you have some, some final words of advice or maybe some specific advice for that. Maybe speak to the frontline worker who might be frustrated because they might not have, as you described, this strong leadership culture, driving the bus, for lack of a better word. Like, what advice do you have for that person? Because that can be a very frustrating, disheartening situation. Is there Any hope for those types of situations or what do you think?

There's absolutely hope. And when you're having something done to you and you try and see it from other people's point of view, just try and keep your eyes open for what they're trying to do. Because you work at the same company together to get to the same goal of providing value for the customers. And, you know, you both have to be working toward that. Even if you're just working for a paycheck, you're able to. You're the expert at what you do, and you're able to help make those products for the customer. You have everything in you to be the expert at what you're doing. And even if it doesn't feel like you're getting the acknowledgement that you need to feel good about what's going on, just know that, you know, when lean tools are applied, it's going to make work better. It's not going to make you have to work harder, but it might be different. And different is always uncomfortable, but. But it's not always bad. Yeah. So give it a shot. You know, the. The tools are tried and trusted. They work and just, you know, go with it. Don't. Don't fight back too hard.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big. I'm a big fan of the, of the. I think it was Pogo or somebody who said this, you know, long, long time ago and said, you know, I have found the problem, and he is I. You know, and so I feel like sometimes we're our own words. Worst enemy, right? And what's real easy to. To blame others and all the rest of it. And sometimes the blame is. Is it justified? But it is what it is. So to your point, like, control what you can control, right. Which is how you react to a stimulus. You know, you can't control the person cutting you off on the highway, but you can control what you do, right. You know, do you get mad and honk your horn and drive like an idiot yourself, or do you be like, whoa, man, maybe that person's is rushing to the hospital to be with their dying child. I hope they're okay, you know, and you stay calm. Right? And so, yeah, in these situations where we're not being led maybe as efficiently as we could, you know, can control what you can control. Can you make your work better?

Right.

And then, you know, I'm a big believer in, you know, try to make your boss look good, even if you can't stand them. You know, try to make them look good. Because you do that a few times and that, you know, the boss is more than likely to be like, huh, that's pretty cool. You know, once you do some more of that.

Right.

But as easier so than done.

I get it.

But, you know, I don't know. Yeah, but that's not some good advice. Hey, Robert, what's the best way for folks to. To connect with you?

They can connect with me on LinkedIn. It was Robert Stone. Nice, easy name to.

Yeah.

Find on there. Yeah. I'm down in Orlando. There's probably quite a few Robert Stones on there. So look for Link Belt and Catrike.

Okay. Yeah.

There to connect with anybody who wants to ask me more about my career and where I'm headed. Yeah.

So this is episode 385. So folks, just go to gemba podcast.com look for episode 385 and we'll, we'll link to Robert's LinkedIn there and all that good stuff. So, yeah, man, thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. It's been fun.

It has been fun. I appreciate you guys more than you guys can, you know, really ever know. So thank you for being there for the Lean community.

Yeah, well, it's our pleasure. We love doing it and we appreciate the kind words. All right, well, take care, Robert.

You too. Thank you.

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