GA 397 | Lean Leadership, Respect for People, and the Military with Michael Austin Giles

So you have to be able to humble yourself, listen to feedback, build consensus, and just try to get people to understand that, hey, like, I might be leading this organization, but I need you in order to be effective at it. I need your input. I need your counsel.

Today I'm excited to welcome Austin Giles to the show. Now, Austin is a operations analyst with the U.S. army. And so today what we do is we sort of talk a little bit about his personal journey with Lean and Six Sigma and how that's working with him in the Army. Now, he's, he's only, as he mentions early in the podcast, he's only been at the whole continuous improvement thing for, for a few years. So he's still learning a lot as he goes. But it was really interesting just to hear his perspective on how things like, you know, some different Lean and Six Sigma tools are, are adding some value for the, for the Army. And then later in the episode, we get into more of a leadership discussion on just some leadership, Lean leadership principles and, you know, perhaps harmonize or even conflict a little bit sometimes with military leadership. So it was really interesting podcast. I think you're going to enjoy it. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 397. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 397. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Austin, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm doing well, Ron. Hey, thanks for having me on today.

Welcome, man. You're welcome. So, Austin, I know you've listened to the show before, and we do like to get things going with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a bit of a Trekkie sci fi nerd, so I'll share a Star Trek quote for you. This is from Captain James T. Kirk. He says there's no such thing as the unknown, only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood. And I really, I love Star Trek for just, you know, all the lessons that the show brings on leadership and problem solving and managing teams, but this one really has stuck out to me just from the perspective of problem solving. Like, hey, it's. It's an iterative process and there's a lot of learning that has to happen, so. And you kind of have to learn on a starship if you're going to live.

Yeah, for sure, man. I used to watch a lot of Star Trek back in the day myself, man. I loved it.

Yeah, well, we might have to do episode two. Of just. Just getting deep in Star Trek.

Yeah. You know, and this is episode 397, approaching 400. And I'm pretty sure we have never had a Star Trek quote, so, man, you broke ground today. Hey, how about that? That's awesome. All right, well, hey, let's just jump in. I'm curious to hear a little bit about your background, Austin. Just tell us a little bit about how you got started in all this continuous improvement stuff, and then tell us about what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so I am a West Point graduate. So for those that are or are not familiar. So it's a service academy. You have Annapolis on the Navy side, and West Point is the army service academy. So I've been in the army for about four years now. I'm a captain over here at Fort Campbell, a military police officer by trade. And I've. Goodness, I've done every job imaginable in the MP world at my level, but it's been a real blast in terms of just leading and learning. And I didn't really start studying continuous improvement as a discipline until last year when I started to have to ask myself the question, well, the military is a temporary thing. It's going to be over eventually. What do you want to be when you grow up? And I started, I was looking at some professional certifications. I was looking at PMP and agile and different things and just trying to find something that aligned with what I thought I was interested in at the time. And I picked up this Lean Six Sigma black belt training program. And I was like, huh, I'll give this a shot. This sounds cool. And just all throughout, you know, my, my journey, learning about Lean Six Sigma, I was like, having these aha moments where I was like, you know what? We do that. We do that all the time. You know, go into the Gemba, you know, being an engaged leader, practicing standard work, like we do it in our own way in the military. And so I just have all those sorts of aha moments. And then as I continue to grow and read more, I was like, you know what? This is? This is probably where I want to be. I want to be in a place where I can coach people, solve problems and, and just be an outside of the box thinker. Um, and I think the continuous improvement space is a really good fit for me in that way. But yeah, I've been a shift supervisor, you know, doing law enforcement. Led our K9 unit here at Fort Campbell that was worked with the goodest boys and goodest girls. The army has to offer.

Nice.

So it's been a real blast. It's been a real blast. And right now I'm an ops analyst for the Directorate of Emergency Services. So basically I help the organization move the big rocks and tackle the complex problems that face our first responders, whether it be, you know, fielding new capabilities on the police side or fireside or security side, but just solving problems and trying to help our community out every day.

What's the coolest story you ever had with one of the canines?

Well, I would say maybe it's not an individual story as much as it's just something we do all the time. So we're a super high op tempo, just fast moving organization. Dogs are always in demand. And you know, we would juggle in one week we would juggle supporting like a presidential Secret Service security detail, you know, hosting, providing security for the Democratic National Convention or RNC and you know, just support operations worldwide, like in combat zone. So, you know, just being part of a crew that, that realized like every week was going to be crazy, nuts and crazy busy and somehow we would find ways to, you know, put brown pegs into round holes and square pegs into square holes. You know, we just make it happen every single day. So that was, that was kind of the, the weekly flavor of the military working dogs. But it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, yeah, I suppose I could ask you all these detailed questions. You'd be like, well, I could tell you, but yeah, yeah, at least you probably couldn't publish the episode, so I'll keep it. Yeah, yeah, I got it, man. I got it. All right, well, let's dive back in a little bit about, about lean and in the military. You know, we've. Gemba Academy's had a lot of long history with different, you know, Air Force, Army, Navy, everybody, you know, in one way or another over the years. And it's, it's been fun seeing how lean and Six Sigma is being applied in different ways because it is very different. Like even the, like a long relationship with the Coast Guard. You know, I mean, I, I think pretty much every military branch that I know of is, is practicing some form of continuous improvement. But obviously you've got, I guess most of your experience with the army, but, but talk about, about lean in, in the military, just for folks that aren't familiar with it.

Yeah. So lean, the idea of lean really meshes well with, with the army. Like we are, you know, at our core built around being a learning organization. So, you know, whereas in a corporate environment, I guess you're you're trying to generate, generate revenue. That's your bottom line. Ours is, is readiness. How, how prepared is your equipment, how well trained are your personnel. And you know, we have learning cycles, I guess, where, you know, you're training on certain tasks throughout the year. You're continuing to try to refine your training plan and build upon it and improve it and really just, you know, being agile with the real world missions you're having to deal with on the side too. Like, you know, you have to be a learning organization in order to make missions happen. And you know, in the army it's extremely true.

So. And again, I know you can't, probably can't share specific stories or examples, but I mean, the military has always needed to be ready. Right. You know, long before Lean or Six Sigma or anything was a thing. So you mean, has Lean brought or in discontinuous improvement, Lean, Six Sigma, has it brought anything different that wasn't there before?

Yeah, I would say, you know, not just the tools, because I've found incredible value in a lot of the Lean tools. And you know, let's take swim lane process maps, for example. Like, I'm sure that existed in the army in some form, but you know, I started using that habitually to try to help people visualize problems and see how we can do better on a whiteboard and people were blown away by that. I was like, I didn't invent the whiteboard, man. I just introducing a new way to convey information. But yeah, I guess I would say Lean adds a lot of value in the military space just in terms of coaching leaders how to deal with failure. Because I think so often, you know, we as leaders being so focused on the mission, we, we, we see an issue or we see a problem and we want to. The easy answer is just blame somebody for why something didn't go right. But you know, in the lean space, you have to look at failure as just an opportunity to learn and grow. And you know, I can, I can share a brief example of that. So, you know, so back in July I went to a training on active attack, Integrated response AIR for short. We love our acronyms.

Just like it sounds cool, man.

Active Attack.

I would.

Oh yeah, sign me up. Yeah, bring a friend too.

Right?

So yeah, so the course was basically geared around the idea like, hey, active shooters are really complicated, messy events. And you know, when police go in and they neutralize a shooter, there's still the possibility that there are other shooters. So you're in a kind of ambiguous security environment with Some risk that is just really unknown. And a lot of, you know, EMS and fire folks, they're not going to go into a situation like that where the risks are unknown. And hey, you can't blame them. It's hard to save somebody when, you know, another shooter pops out at you. But the air class essentially, you know, tried to get everybody to understand, like, hey, there's, there's a way around this problem, okay? You can put police with your fire and EMS folks and mitigate risk to some degree, because otherwise, if you're letting casualties just sit there while you're trying to clear out an entire building or structure or area for other potential threats like that, shooter's kill count is going to continue to rise. And that's, that's completely unsatisfactory. That's, that's not, not what we want to see. So, yeah, so we went to this class. I had. There were two fire department training officers who were with us. A whole bunch of local police agencies came out also. And we had one of our police department leaders. And, you know, we were just all fired up and we wanted to do this, we wanted to make this happen for our organization. So really we, we used a lot of lean tools to just get people to understand, like, hey, let's, let's view this big upcoming annual exercise that our higher headquarters is going to host as an opportunity to kind of test a proof of concept for the rescue task force. And we, we got all the chiefs on board, all the leaders in a room to see, like, hey, where. What are the reasons why this couldn't happen? Do a lot of process mapping on the communication side, on the personnel movement piece to see, you know, how we can get everybody trained up on this new concept in a short period of time. Um, and then we did it. We did a functional exercise to just kind of walk people through the process. And boy, oh boy, I thought this, this, this whole project was going to go belly up because there were a lot of folks who were not comfortable with, you know, the idea of operating in an ambiguous risk environment like that on the fire department side. And, and I couldn't blame them. But we, we had to give them a form to speak and share their concerns. And, you know, eventually we, we got everybody to just have a conversation, learn from each other. And then we went out and we experimented with different ways to execute this new model. And, you know, after a couple runs, everybody was throwing the thumbs up high fiving each other. They thought we could do it. And then we did it for the, for the Big exercise. And we learned a lot about ourselves through the whole process. But really, I think we just demonstrated our ability to learn and work together as a team across departments and do so pretty effectively. So that was, that was a lot of fun.

Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. In fact, so strange as timing works, I have a good friend here in Texas and he's a former SWAT member and detective, you know, street cop. I mean, he's done it all over the years and he started a. His own business and it's a, it's a kind of a guardian response. And he's actually working with a lot of different churches in our area, kind of preparing, you know, church community people to be, you know, ready in case something bad happens. Right. In a. Inside of a church. And we were having a conversation today just about, you know, more about business and anything like that. But my whole, my message to him was to, what you're just saying is, you know, don't try to, don't try to pretend that anybody has the answers to how to do something. You know, as far as, like running a business, what we've got to do is we've got to experiment and see what learns, see what works, you know, and that's scientific thinking, right? Make a, make a plan, make a prediction, see what actually happens, see what you learned and just keep repeating that over and over. So sounds like that's exactly what you guys did there was, was practicing almost scientific thinking pattern, right? More than, more than pretending you had all the answers. Right.

So absolutely. And, and I think really that that's a facet of my leadership style that I've really been lucky to grow up with and have mentors kind of build into me, like, hey, never, never be that new lieutenant who thinks he knows everything, because you're going to turn everybody off so quick. So, you know, and going down to the canine unit, when I worked there, I got maybe 30 seconds of classroom instruction on how to use military working dogs, you know, for operations. And that's, that's not good enough to come and lead the organization with all the military working dogs for the organization.

Right.

So it was really, you know, that's a character trait you have to have out of necessity in the military, especially being an officer, because you're thrust into positions of leadership and responsibility that are beyond, you know, what you know and what you've seen before. So you have to be able to humble yourself, listen to feedback, build consensus, and just try to get people to, to understand that, hey, like, I might be leading this Organization, but I need you in order to be effective at it.

Yeah.

I need your input. I need your counsel.

Yep. So I'm curious, do you guys do, like, any sort of, you know, I don't know, like, Kaizen events or projects or how is that working? Is there any kind of formal effort or is it more just fix what bugs you day in and day out?

Yeah. So I would say it's. It's a little more on the informal side. But, you know, I have been, as I've been going through my studies, just trying to take different approaches to problem solving and integrate that with the methods that the army uses. So let's take, for example, just a decision briefing. So that is a doctrinal product in the army where essentially we're presented with a problem from a decision maker and we have to do some fact analysis, generate some evaluation criteria, and develop options for that decision maker against those evaluation criteria. So, you know, like, if we're looking at buying a new truck for operations, you know, what's the cost? What's the benchmark? What are we saying is good or bad, and just trying to look at that problem from an objective standpoint as best we can. So in army problem solving, what we don't do a good job in is applying scientific thinking to problems. We like to use a lot of assumptions and, you know, operate in gray space. And while in a lot of tactical situations, that's fine, but when you're making operational and strategic decisions that have large impacts on the organization, you have to be able to use data. And at least at our level, that that's something that we really don't do a good job at. We don't try to use numbers as much as we should, but not. Not for the sake of just using numbers, for the sake of using numbers and checking the box, but for the sake of sticking to facts and sticking to what's real, instead of just relying on our own past experiences, emotions, perception. So that's really been my focus is, you know, trying to integrate data into army problem solving. And on the law enforcement side, specifically, we were given a new policy we had to get compliance for, so new law enforcement standards that everybody had to meet in order to be, like, certified to police the installation. So we didn't really have a means to assess whether or not our folks were trained in law enforcement yet. And it's. And it kind of sounds crazy, but there's a weird dichotomy in the military police world in that, you know, we, A lot of our systems and our. Our Training is geared around supporting the wartime mission and stuff that we would do, you know, supporting combat operations. And there's not a lot of infrastructure to support the law enforcement training side. So our digital systems, for example, to track training, compliance, they have all the tasks that these law enforcement officers need to do, and they're in the system, but they're grayed out, and you can't even click on them. So we can't create any metrics off that. We can't track it digitally in, like, the program of records. It's just crazy. So we had to build something locally to where we could start pulling data and identify trends and see what areas we needed to grow in. And, you know, just to get people to admit right off the bat that, hey, there's a. There's a capability gap there. That was. That was a big step for a lot of our leaders. But eventually, over time, you know, they couldn't. They could argue with the first or second batch of numbers, but they couldn't argue with the third and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth iteration.

Right, right. So, Austin, obviously, within the military, leadership is very, very critical. And I mean, leadership is a very big term, and it's a broad term, and it really depends on the situation. Obviously, you know, if you're in war, leadership means one thing, and if you're just, you know, running a afternoon workshop, it means something totally different. But when we think about lean leadership is a huge aspect of the things that we're doing, you know, in lean leadership, there's many different aspects to it as well. But I'm curious, you know, as you've learned more about lean, and I know you're, you know, still new on the journey and. And learning yourself a lot, but have you seen any. Any parallels or any. Or is there harmony or is there conflict, perhaps, with what we call lean leadership and. And the leadership within a military environment?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the idea of lean leadership does really mesh well with, you know, the values that we're taught to have as military leaders. And, you know, I'd give one example and really hone in on the respect for people aspect of lean leadership. So, you know, in the. In the army, we really pride ourselves on the environment that we create, the command climate that we create for our employees, our soldiers. And, you know, without having respect for people as a foundation for the organization, you can't build trust that you need when you go into those stressful kind of critical incidents, either a wartime mission or in law enforcement. But if you're going to operate in a team, you need to have trust. And respect is really one of those prerequisites for building trust in the organization. And I would say that there's some aspects of respect for people that the army could learn a lot from Lean kind of in a private sector environment, and that, you know, explaining the why to people. I'll give an example from some of my training back at West Point. So we were. I can't remember how long it was. I don't think I want to remember how long it was. But we were doing a ruck march with a big, heavy pack, lots of people, on a hot summer day in New York up in the Catskills. And, you know, just. We just kept going and we just kept going and we just kept going to what seemed like no end. And I had one leader in the organization who kept just coming by and giving us a compass check, telling us, hey, what's going on, what we're doing, how much farther it is. And that kind of reassurance showed that a my leader cared about me enough to walk all the way back in formation to go check on me, make sure I'm good, and also just let me know kind of the why behind what we're doing. Why are we just marching to march? Because if you don't have that compass check, if you don't have a leader who's willing to take the time out of their day to explain what's going on and why you're doing what you're doing, you're not going to see the value in it. And I think in some tactical situations, like, you don't have time to share the why, but when you do have time to share the why, that makes a world of difference in people's perception and their buy in to what you're doing.

Right.

So respect for people is really something. I would hone in there to say that we. We do that well, but there's also some areas maybe we could grow in.

Yeah. So everybody's. I've never been in the military myself, but, you know, we've all seen, you know, movies and whatnot of the. Of the drill sergeant, you know, yelling at the. At the new, you know, person in boot boot camp or whatever it is. And I don't know how realistic that is. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But how do you balance, like, sort of that toughness and the accountability that the military really needs, you know, in order to be successful with respect for people? Because you could. You could probably take the, you know, screaming and Yelling a little too far from time to time. But also I would think it's important, you know, in certain cases that, hey, man, this isn't the Cub Scouts, man. We're defending freedom here and we got to get after it from time to time. So how do you balance that dichotomy?

Yeah, I would say that it's, it's not really something you have to view as a balancing act, really, Because I would view the accountability piece as another way for a leader to show that they care about somebody. And this comes down to the individual leader and the words they're using and the tones are using. I'm not saying that, you know, as a drill sergeant, we need to start dressing up in purple uniforms, giving hugs to everybody.

Right, right.

But, you know, there's a way to go about giving criticism and holding people accountable to where they realize that you're not attacking them as a person. You're. You're trying to help them grow and learn from maybe a mistake or something they could have done better. So I wouldn't really view it as a dichotomy, but I think that depending on the personal flavor of the leader, it can take that form. And that is one area that I would kind of, in my junior years, I was more of that type. And I quickly realized, like, hey, people don't like being called buttholes or whatever word we're using today. They want to be treated with dignity and respect.

Yeah, well, yeah.

And that doesn't mean I don't hold them accountable.

No, exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, I coach football. I coach high school football here in Texas and it's a pretty big deal. Right. You know, maybe it's too big of a deal, I don't know. But, but you know, it's the same thing. You know, we'll get after these boys, man, but we're never, you know, we're more of a Christian based kind of coaching unit. So we're never going to be swearing or anything like that at the boys. But, but we're still, you know, we will get after them and then, you know, if they make a mistake and they keep making the same mistake, it's really going to intensify. Right. But it's more of a teaching experience. Right. And then at the end, you know, we'll let them know that we love them and that God loves them, you know? You know, and that we're training them, you know, to be better football players, but ultimately better young men. Right. That's our biggest hope. Right. But, but yeah, so there's There's. I feel like a lot of times we get in this thing where it's like, oh, everybody's gotta, you know, like you said, hug and, you know, hold hands and sing Kumbaya. Well, not.

No, not really.

You know, even in a company, you know, I mean, there's got to be accountability. Right. If you're supposed to do something, you don't do it. Yeah. We may not scream at you, but, hey, what's up, Austin? You're supposed to have this done on Friday. Now the customer is upset. What are we gonna do about that? Right. So, yeah, it's. Yeah. Respect doesn't always mean that we're just going around and, you know, you know, holding hands and singing hymns.

Growing up out of an environment where, you know, everybody was very directive and, you know, a little. I don't want to say hostile, but a type in the way that they would correct problems. Yeah. So I was. I was leading a movement from Fort Campbell out to a little place in Arkansas called Fort Chaffee. And it was, you know, about a 5, 600 mile road trip. And, you know, I was leading this convoy out. First day went off without a hitch. Second day came around, and one of our trucks went down on the highway. And Humvees do not move very quick, and when they don't have any oil inside of them, they don't move at all.

So we were.

We were dead in the water on the highway. And it's all good because we bring our own recovery capabilities. We've got toe straps, tow bars. All that stuff's, you know, standardized in our SOPs. Like, we always pack it out. Well, me as a new lieutenant, I didn't check to make sure we actually brought that stuff. And I could see my boss's boss's boss coming up from the back of the convoy marching at me. It looked like she was about to just nuke me in place.

Yeah.

And she said, austin, I was mad, but it took me a while to walk up here, and I just want you to tell me what you learned. And I was just, like, blown away because I expected to get nuked in place. But the way she looked at failure was, hey, this is a brand new lieutenant. He's a new leader. He needs to have the opportunity to learn and make mistakes. And if we don't create a culture or an environment that allows leaders and people to make mistakes, people are never going to want to learn, never going to want to take risks.

Right, Right.

So I was pleasantly surprised by some of my early experiences after I Got out of West Point.

Fantastic.

Taught me to deal with failure. And I think that idea meshes well with Lean as well.

I love it. I love it. Hey, so what's your plan after the military?

Yeah, so I'm still trying to figure out the answer to that question. What do you want to be when you grow up? Because initially, you know, I thought I would make the military a career, go out and make colonel or general or whatever, and this would be my life. But, you know, over time, I just. I wanted to explore different options, and I feel like I'm going to learn a lot more. Taking the deep dive and getting into a new industry or new environment and. Yeah, you know, just. Just from the perspective of my family, I think that, you know, getting out of the military is probably what's. What's right for me right now. Yeah, I got it.

Like, continuous improvement, though. Do you want to kind of keep working in that area, you think?

Yeah, absolutely. I've been really impressed with just the caliber of leaders and people in the continuous improvement space. So, you know, a buddy of mine I went to school with introduced me to your podcast, and then I started just following you, reading some of your literature from Gemba Academy. I was like, you know what? It's a pretty refreshing group of people to be around, people that are always just trying to do better and be better.

Yeah.

And I think that at my core, that that's who I want to be and, you know, industry agnostic in a way. You know, you can practice continuous improvement anywhere. So, yeah, I'm open to whatever form that takes, but. But I want to be in a position where I can set the climate of the organization for the sake of, you know, not being in a position of authority, but for empowering people. And I think being in the continuous improvement spaces.

Well, you just did a big. You said a big job interview on the podcast, so somebody's out there listening. And you guys want to hire Austin, contact him on LinkedIn and we'll. We'll get it all set up. And that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, speaking of LinkedIn and connecting with you, if folks do want to reach out, what's the best way?

Yeah, I'd say LinkedIn is probably the easiest. My username is real short and sweet. Ma Giles G I L E S. And then my email, Michael A. Giles 32 mail. Would love to just, you know, connect with more leaders in the continuous improvement space, learn from folks, and ultimately really just get a mentor to see, like, hey, what opportunities are out there, because I think that, you know, anybody that's a veteran is already going to appreciate lean leadership and the ideas and the systems and processes that come with that. So I think that that's where I want to be. But I want to learn from somebody in the space on, you know, where can I actually do that and where have they grown and got mentorship and coaching? Because for sure I'm not perfect. I'm still new on my journey, but I want to learn.

Yeah, well, we all are. We're all learning, man, no matter how long we've been on this journey. So that's awesome. Awesome. All right, well, we're going to link to everything your, your social media and everything in, in the show notes. So folks can go to GembaPodcast.com this is episode 397, so we'll get that up. But Austin and it might say Michael as well, right? You like to confuse people by like Michael and so does it say Michael giles and like LinkedIn or is it Austin Giles?

It's Michael Austin in quotation marks.

Got it, got it. All right, so look for either Michael or Austin and that's be the right guy. All right, well, hey, thanks for coming on and thanks for your service, man. Really appreciate you and all the men who women out there doing what they do for our country.

It's been a pleasure. Ron, thank you for having me today.

All right, you 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 a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.