GA 400 | The Gemba Academy Journey with Ron Pereira, Kevin Meyer, and Jon Miller

Just humility, knowing that we don't know some things and wanting to learn more and being humble enough to ask questions and that we're wrong. We've had to find better ways. And the best way to find better ways is to admit that there is a better way.

Hey, everyone, this is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy. And, well, today is episode 400, which I'm not sure why we make such a big deal about these sort of century marks, but we, we do. We've done some fun things over the years in episode 100, 200, 300 and so forth. But today for episode 400, we're definitely changing things up a little bit. And Jennifer Scott, who is one of our team members here at Gemba Academy, she's our business development manager. So she runs our sales organization. She actually served as the host, and she interviews me, my business partners, John Miller and Kevin Meyer, so the three founders of Gemba Academy. And while it was a fun journey, this interview, we had no idea what Jennifer was going to ask us, and we sort of wanted it that way. And so Jennifer did a great job just sort of navigating through many different directions. We talked a lot about sort of the beginning of like, hey, how did this whole thing of Gemba Academy get started? And a little bit of the origin story there. But then we dive into some. Some pretty fun conversation, really, on just leadership and some of the things that John, myself and Kevin, what we've learned over the years, some of our successes and even some of our failures, and what we've learned along the way. And so, yeah, it was, it was really fun to do. It's always fun to be sort of on the other side of the microphone. But, but, yeah, as it relates to episode 400, I know there's many people out there who have literally listened to every single episode that we've ever released. And, and that, that, that really, really means a lot. I mean, to me personally, because I've obviously been involved with this podcast since the very beginning, and so I really do appreciate the. The folks that listen. Even if you don't listen to everyone, you just listen every once in a while. We do appreciate that, and that's why we do it, is to, to help people and to really to spread the, the news that is Lean and Six Sigma and try to try to reach as many people as possible. So show notes, which will have links to everything that we talk about, including our social media links. If you're not connected with, with me, Kevin, or John or Jennifer, please, please check it out. But that's episode 400. So go to gembapodcast.com look for episode 400. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show.

Thank you for having me on. This is the first time that I've actually been on the other side, so I've got some big shoes to fill. I've never been on this side of the podcast, but I thought maybe we could start out by talking a little bit about how you started in Lean Six Sigma. Maybe, Kevin, you could go first. How did you get started in Lean Six Sigma?

Oh, boy. That started way back in the late 80s, early 90s, maybe. I was working for a large medical device manufacturer, Abbott in Salt Lake. Moved there and taken over a 247 molding operation. One of the things they didn't tell me beforehand was that we were six months behind schedule, supplying to a whole bunch of other Abbott plants, and the operation was running 24 7, 365, six months behind schedule. Everything, all the 60 or so heavy presses maxed out, and so I didn't know what to do. And that's when I. Not sure exactly how I found them, but I found Ame and talked to some of the people there and they turned me on to 5s, a quick changeover. And by the time we had some new presses on order, by the time those presses came in, we had already freed up a lot of capacity and it almost caught up. So that was my conversion and just started using that from that point on.

Very cool. No turning back from that point, huh?

No, no. I was sold.

Okay, good. John, talk to us a little bit about how you started in the Lean Six Sigma world.

Yeah, it was in 1993. I graduated from university and was living with my parents in Indiana, and my mom was doing a PhD at that time in, I think, Asian literature or something like that. She was living her second academic life in her. I don't know where she would have been back then in her 60s or 70s, but she was going for a PhD and her professor, who was Japanese, contacted her and said somebody contacted the professor looking for bilingual people who will be available to work as interpreters and translators for Japanese consultants coming over and teaching. Teaching what? They didn't call it kaizen at that initial request, but what turned out to be, you know, Lean Six Sigma kind of things. And so she wasn't interested, but she said, you know, John, you don't have a job. You want to do this? And I just freshly graduated, and I said, why not? So I became a. The Japanese English interpreter for the Shingijutsu group of consultants did that for, gosh, probably 10 years or so. And in the course of that got really interested, really involved, learned a lot, Learned everything I kind of needed to know to feel that this is something I wanted to spend a lot more time doing. So I eventually took it further and got into consulting and training, eventually Gimbick Academy. But yeah, it was kind of an interesting, I have to say, you know, lucky introduction. It wasn't something that I went out and looked for at all or was in the field of study for. So just have to thank my mom.

Ron, tell us your. I know, I know you've probably answered this question a few times. You've been on the podcast, but.

Couple times, yeah. So, um, yeah, I guess my journey like first started at, at Motorola. That's where I worked out when I got out of school. And I worked there as a, as a, in the beginning building cell phones. You know, we were making the startac, remember that Motorola cell phone back in the day. And I. Motorola obviously is sort of the, you know, where Six Sigma originated. And I didn't actually, interestingly enough, go through their formal Six Sigma training, but it was just sort of how we all did our jobs. You know, I was running around doing control charts and design of experiments and, you know, just really trying to optimize the processes because, you know, every second counted they're building, you know, thousands and thousands of cell phones. And so that's just. I just figured every engineer work like that, I didn't know any better. And then after that I went to Nokia, which is, you know, back then, Motorola's big competitor. And there, that's when I actually formally went through some training. So green belt, black belt, master black belt. And so we were very pretty, Six Sigma heavy there back in the day. And I knew that I learned a little bit about lean back then, you know, 5s and the 7 weights, that sort of thing. Enough to be dangerous. But I knew there was more and so back then I just started searching the Internet and I stumbled on this website and some guy talking about lean and seemed pretty smart and they did some consulting and well, that's how I met John because the website I found was John's blog back then, I think it was called Gemba Pantare, if I remember right. And that's how I, I first bumped into John. And so we brought John's consulting company, Gemba Research, right back then into Nokia to teach us. We actually, I remember it was a, it was a value stream mapping workshop, you Know, learning to see the value stream mapping book had just come out and so that was sort of all the rage. And, and so one of John's consultants came in and ran a week long basically Kaizen event with us. And I remember John coming in and, and I was like, who is this guy, this young guy, you know, we're about the same age, but John, John ages very well, you know, and he looked like he was like 19 or something when he first came in, but he was this super smart guy. And, and anyhow, so John and I, that's how we, we met. And over the years after that, you know, I think Gemba actually did get a nice little contract with Nokia then, way back then. And, but, but, but John and I just were sort of communicated over email and he was always really kind to answer my questions and I was like, and I, you know, wasn't paying him, you know, and, but he would reply and back and forth and so we just kind of became friends more than anything. And then yeah, that's, that's kind of how I got into it and, and how I met John really.

Okay, so with the three of you, that's, that's a lot of experience if you add that together, a lot of knowledge that you brought together. So that kind of brings me to 2009 when Gemba Academy was created. John, maybe you could start by, take us back 12 years ago and where were you? What were you doing? What made you decide Gemba Academy was the next step in your career 12 years ago?

Yeah. So Gamma research and consulting and training kind of in the traditional way. And I think just had the thought that this ought to be available online, that that's the way to reach more people rather than have to, you know, back in those days before everything changed, you know, we would physically get in an airplane and travel hundreds of thousands of miles and go face to face to train people thing and teach people things and consult with. That's that still happens. I, I realize but it's last couple years it' less common but it seemed like a unsustainable, unscalable way to teach more people the goodness of continuous improvement and respect for people and all the good things that come with leading Six Sigma. So we thought okay, how do we turn this, how do we get this online? And they didn't have a concrete idea, they didn't really know how to do it. It's just a wish. And the blog and putting things online was sort of a very low tech, low key effort at that. And then I think it was the. Like Ron said we met Kevin was already doing some of this, some really interesting things with, with his venture Super Factory in terms of putting really great content online and making it widely available at a low cost. But I think over the course of 2008 maybe Ron was at a point where he wanted to, to do this and, and we were talking about it and we sort of said, hey, let's do this. That's how I recall it anyway.

Yeah, you have a different take on that, Ron?

No, it's very. Yeah, I mean that's all accurate. I mean I was working at a company called Flow Server at the time and I was looking for videos like truly like I was looking for Gemba Academy and there were some Six Sigma oriented online training back then, but really not much a lot about Lean. And so, you know, and plus at that time I was, as John mentioned, I was getting sort of burned out with. I was traveling a lot back then for my job, you know, at Flow Serve. And it was a great job and I loved it and teaching people and all that. But you know, saying goodbye to my family for every week was starting to get old. And so yeah, I just had the idea of maybe we should make videos and sell them. That was the, that was the idea.

Yeah. Jumping on a. I'm going to date myself a three way conversation or three way call or a chat. I mean, did you guys just come together and say let's just jump in and let's see what we can do?

Well, I approached John first because I knew Kevin. I knew of Kevin from, you know, as John mentioned, he had this evolving excellence was his blog, I think and Super Factory was his website that Kevin had that he sold these PowerPoints on. And so I knew of Kevin, he was sort of this famous Lean blogger guy that I knew and. But I didn't know him personally and I had only, I'd only met John, you know, a couple times. But as I said, I knew him better. So I approached John and then he and I had the idea of kind of thinking about it but bringing it online. We had no clue. And that's where you know John, I guess John knew Kevin. You guys knew each other better back then, I guess than, than me and Kevin did. And, and so that's how we wrangled Kevin in because he had this knowledge.

I remember walking through an airport someplace in Europe with Kevin on the phone, trying to get him on board. And I think the sales pitch was something like, you know, we've got this Gemba content, the Gemba brand. Ron's got the time and energy to do this kind of, you know, in his, in his spare, spare garage, bedroom, whatever, on nights and weekends. What we don't have is the savvy for the, for the technical back end stuff. And how do we. I'd started, I'd started, you know, LLCs and businesses before, obviously, but I wanted to do this, needed to be done a little bit differently. And so, you know, said Kevin, this is, this is kind of what we're thinking. And he said, yeah, I'll get involved in that. So that was kind of.

I remember that phone call, actually. I know exactly where I was standing because I was like several years into a different medical device company that I was working at and I'd always, as John and Ron mentioned, been putting these PowerPoints on a website just to try to spread the word. I thought of video before too, and I knew nothing about how to do a video though. But I thought that was the next game changer. That phone call was perfect timing and exactly what I thought would be the next step.

That's awesome. Like I said in the beginning, here we are 12 years later and incredible things here at Gemba Academy. You have some seasoned employees here at Gemba Academy. And as an employee, it says a lot about the leadership at Gemba Academy. So maybe, Kevin, I can start with you. Let's start by talking a little bit bit about company culture. What does a successful company culture look like?

I think first and foremost it's understanding that there's a lot more in the brains of employees than just what they do with their hands. And I think that's something we've always wanted to respect. It's a core foundation of Lean too. There's a lot of untapped value in the brains of people. And if you respect that and you help them understand that and support them, there's a lot of value you can bring out of people. And I think that's how we've always operated as we brought on our first person. I think that the stunning thing to me was when we had someone celebrate a 10 year anniversary already and it's like, oh my gosh, it's been a long time.

Yeah, that's impressive for sure. And I know autonomy is a big thing too here at Gemba Academy as an employee and having the autonomy to be able to do our jobs and help create and make decisions. But John, this one's for you. Do you feel that an autonomous culture is important at Gemba Academy?

Autonomous culture? Well, clearly it's Important. I think people need autonomy. I think it's been written about in books and it's been proven, shown, whatever through research that people are happier, more productive, just better people in general. If you have control of your own life and some power over your own circumstances and if a business exists to, to help the individuals do better at not just their job, but feeling good about what they're doing. I think autonomy is a. Yeah, so I can say it's positive from two sides. Right. It's selfishly from an employer standpoint. Autonomous people require less management and handholding and so forth because they're happy to be autonomous and kind of work towards the company stated objectives and so forth. But I think also very important is that it relates to, or it results in, or it contributes to happier people. When you take away autonomy and when you take away the ability to control your own destiny, it's a bad thing. I mean it's not a good thing. So I think it's one of those things that it's like air and water. You can't take those things away and still have healthy people. Right. And so I think that's where people that worry about well, how much autonomy or autonomous will people make the right decisions. That's a leadership issue. By that I mean it's a communication issue, it's an expectations issue where if you're creating order takers and creating people who just don't want to make mistakes or call a culture of people who just don't want to make mistakes and don't want to be autonomous. It's, it's sort of self fulfilling. Right. That you have to, you have to recognize that this is like air and water, that it's something people need. So you have to open a window and make sure it's possible.

Right? Yeah. And Ron, I guess to summarize, how would you say you describe the culture here at Gemba Academy?

We have a lot of people who deeply care about the company. Right. They deeply care about our, our mission and what we're really trying to do and you know, which is to, to really help the world be better. And so, you know, passionate, you know, is, is something that I would. Passionate about the company and passionate about our customers. And I don't mean that just like a big sales pitch because I'm sure every company would say that. But I, I really mean it. You know, we sometimes it sounds odd but like if the, our website very rarely ever goes down or have any kind of technical problem or anything, but if it does in a way sometimes I'm like, oh, this is actually kind of good because I know it won't be long. And then I know that we'll have the opportunity to, you know, take care of our customers and respond to them extremely well and make it a, make it a positive thing in a way. Not that it was positive that the website went down, but that, you know, we care deeply. And so I don't know that, that and for sure we have, you know, autonomy, mastery, you know, that sort of thing. I feel like we do try to practice that aspect of respect for people.

Absolutely. You do? Yeah. I couldn't agree with everything you guys are saying. It's just, it's spot on. And you do have a team that really care about what we're doing, how we're improving, how we're helping customers. So yeah, I agree with you on that. So when you stop learning, you stop growing, says Kenneth Blanchard. So, John, what, what are some things that you do to continue to grow as a leader?

Gosh, not enough. That's something that I've actually, it's been on my mind lately this year. So what do I do so as a leader. To grow as a leader? Yeah. I don't know in my current role to what degree I'm really functioning as a leader other than kind of a lead as lead by example or I develop content and design courses and things. So I'm leading that effort. But I feel like I'm more of a subject matter expert and less of a. Less of a people leader in that sense. Yeah, I don't know, I don't go, I'm not, I don't go get training or read books or anything. I think it's more just be self aware and reflect on what didn't work and how much of that is me and what do I need to do differently. It's just continuous improvement. I think that's. It's having the will and desire to get better and having some very simple, simple PDCA process. So perhaps I need something more. Maybe I do need some outside coaching or some structured learning or development around that. I don't want to be complacent in that regard, but. Yeah, but it is an area where in, in the past years, either because of getting out and traveling more and encountering other environments and other people and other leaders, or because the nature of my work is more people facing, customer facing in the past, where currently it's more content facing and inward team facing. I felt like my. Maybe I haven't grown as much as a leader, but yeah, I'll leave it there.

Got it. No, absolutely. I mean, I know when we talk about rolling out new content, I think you immerse yourself in studying the particular concept or topic. So I mean that's certainly another way of learning and growing. Especially like Agile we released this year that that wasn't something that we had. You had to, you know, take the knowledge that you had and then also like I said, immerse yourself into it and learn that. So I wouldn't, I would give yourself more credit than what you're giving yourself for sure. So, Kevin, a little bit different take on it. How would you say that you help grow your team yourself, your team professionally here at Gemba Academy?

I think it's, yeah, I try to break us away from the standard ways of doing things and we've put in some nice, from the areas I'm responsible for on the financial side and the IT side and we put in some really nice systems, some are homegrown, some we've invested in and purchased and so forth. And I think it's really asking why at each stage of the process there's various, I'll tell you one that we're working on now is the year end processing. As we're coming up at the end of the year you've got a whole set of financial activities you go through at the beginning of the year and really looking at that and I guess in effect practicing what we preach and doing what in effect mounts to a form of quick changeover of what are we doing doing that we can do now, what can we convert from external to internal and vice versa and to improve the processes and just helping our team, always asking why, respectfully, we're doing something. There's an exercise we go through on a company wide basis of brainstorming what we should stop and what we should start. And that's always intriguing to me and I'm really looking forward to it this year with a couple of new people that haven't been as immersed and what are their initial perspectives after just a few weeks of why are we doing something? And we should be able to explain that. So I guess to answer your question, it's how can we streamline, how can we minimize, how can we improve outside of the status quo and the standard ways of thinking and always pushing those kinds of concepts.

Excellent. Yep. Yeah, I agree. And so Ron, your question's a little bit different, but maybe you can give us some examples of how we practice continuous improvement internally.

So scientific thinking has been a big part of what we've been trying to practice your team in particular Jennifer, on the sales and customer really development side of our business. So learning how to just really think as like running experiments, you know, we're real big on that. Right. Like trying things and seeing what we learn from that and being okay with not knowing the answer. And so I feel like we've come a long way on that end of it on the content development side, which is where I also, like John, spent a lot of time. You know, we're currently trying to, you know, figure out how to. We've made huge improvements. We know we're practicing using agile kanban boards and things of that nature. Really trying to understand how, how, how our courses are put together and, and signaling different functions within the company. So we're really big on that. But overall I would say it's just really having that the, the mindset of an experimenter is what we're trying to do. Of course, you know, in our certification programs and whatnot, our coaches, we are all using scientific thinking as we navigate our, our candidates through either DMAIC or Lean or whatever it is that they're in. You know, we're, we're obviously practicing that as well.

So.

Yeah, I remember three plus years ago when we started the Toyota Kata in scientific thinking and how difficult it was to wrap our minds around it. And you were very persistent in just having us do it on a daily basis and then it just became part of our daily everything.

Well, and also like your team and then a customer success team, the way that you guys use leader standard work is very, very good. I don't so much do that personally. I mean I do in some ways, but not like you guys. I mean you're really plan out your weeks in literally 30 minute increments, right? Absolutely. And I feel like that's been a big, big benefit for your teams.

Yeah. Helps build in that structure and making sure you have time for everything that you need to accomplish for your day. I want to talk a little bit about leadership. I know we touched on it a little bit earlier, but Kevin, I'll start with you. Maybe you can talk a little bit about some important attributes among leaders. Like what are they? What do you feel are important attributes?

That's a good question. One that comes to mind a lot and I think we're pretty good at practicing it. Here is just humility, knowing that we don't know some things and wanting to learn more and being humble enough to ask questions and admit we're wrong. As we've developed a company and as we've brought on people that are in many ways smarter than us, we actually want that now. We've had to reflect on some things we've done and find better ways. And the best way to find better ways is to admit that there is a better way and there might be one, and we need to find it and that we don't have all the answers. So I think that's really something we look for. The other one is being able to. I guess it's along the same lines of everyone being able to share and having a very safe environment where we can just talk things through. And that's between Ron and John and I and also between all of the people that we have working with us on our team. There are so many great ideas we've come up with, so many things that we've sort of had to figure out among ourselves. But we do that in a very respectful and open environment. I think that's very important to us.

Yeah, that's huge. I think so. I mean, you, you hear a lot of companies that it might be a little scary, too, to, you know, open it up and let employees give their input, but it's, it's been a, a huge benefit for Gemba Academy to be able to share that, all of the employees be able to share that. So appreciate that. Let's see. So, Ron, talk about maybe the hardest thing it is to be or the hardest part about being a leader at Gemba Academy. What's the hardest part of leadership or.

Just like, hardest part of, like, being a leader at Gemba Academy sort of thing?

The leadership part? Yeah, the leadership part.

Well, like, I guess the things that like, sort of keep me up at night, so to speak, are just like, wondering about from the company perspective. Like, I don't want what happened to Blockbuster to happen to us.

Sure.

You know what I mean? And I mean, a pick on Blockbuster, but like that industry, right? Like making sure that we're aware of what's going on in the world with technology, with what's going on, just with, you know, how people are interacting with one another and all the rest of it. So just really trying to be mindful of that and not get comfortable. Right. Like, you know, so I feel like that's the demise of a company is when you, you think you're all that and, and that you're, you're, you're set and nothing could ever touch you. And I mean, Jeff Bezos or whatever, Amazon talks about how Amazon one day is going to go out of business. You know, like that that's mind blowing to think about maybe, but he's probably right because who would have thought Sears or you know, some of these other companies that were monsters back in the day or you know, basically cease to exist now. So those are the things from like a leadership perspective. Just always thinking forward and not getting so trapped in the day to day that you're never looking forward. And that's why having a great team is so important. So John and myself and Kevin can, can look forward a little bit and, and you know, make sure that we're doing things the right way.

Yeah, yeah. So John, a little bit take on leadership, A little bit different take on leadership. But what would you say is an invaluable, lean concept for leaders?

Invaluable, lean concept? Yeah. I guess it depends how you define concept, but let's say. So I can get as much in there as possible. The, the three. The three gen principle, the Gemba, genbutsu, genjutsu. So the idea that you go to the Gemba, you go to the place, whether it's getting face to face with customers or with your team members, or in the hospital floor, wherever work is happening, you look at the actual product information, patient situation, whatever it is, and you get the facts. You, you pursue the truth with integrity and curiosity. And that's a big concept. But it's more than just sort of scientific thinking because you can do that with data and reports from an ivory tower far away and draw conclusions and make proclamations. It's much more show up, get your hands dirty if it's appropriate. And that's not easy to do because humans are evolved to be lazy. So we might conserve energy by not doing that or it might be hard to actually go to the Gemba in every case. But I think a leader has to keep those things in mind and strive for those things and structure their processes and their leader standard work, their checks, their daily management system, et cetera, et cetera, to make it possible. Because it's not just important for the leader to do that, it's important for that to become the tone, that example, the culture. Because if a leader is doing that but the rest of the organization isn't, then you don't have people who are capable of showing up in their work process, Gamba, whatever, and detecting opportunities and problems early and taking corrective action or taking forward action. So I think that's, and I wish there was a better, you know, a better English conversion of the 3 gen principle because it's. Gen is from the Japanese words and you Gotta remember what it means. And if you have to explain the whole thing, it's like three sentences. But, yeah, that's what it is.

Yeah. No, I think that's good. I mean, I know the audience here is probably curious as well, because, you know, we get that question all the time, like, what, where should we focus and what should we do? And I think that's a great way to explain that. So switching gears a little bit, we talked about leadership, we talked about culture. Another part of growing is also failing. And maybe we can spend a little bit of time. I'll ask each one of you different. So, Kevin, let's start with you on your lean journey. What has been a hurdle that you had to overcome?

I think it's a hurdle in both. A failure that taught me something at a past company was just how to implement the lean tools. And then that gets into, are they tools or it's a way of operating? And it goes far beyond tools. But I went through that phase where I really just understood them as tools and not as a operating and thinking system. And, you know, a big failure. And it's. It's fairly embarrassing to even say is I. I had a goal at one point when I was running an organization of we're going to implement two lean tools a year, you know, and. And boy, we did that for two or three years. You know, we just chose, you know, we chose the 5s for value stream mapping and. And, you know, to our credit, we did get pretty good at those, but. And because there's quite a bit of initial value you can get from that. But then I think it must have been like year three or something like that. We had, like, we developed here at GIMB Academy a very safe environment for people to push back on the senior leaders. And I remember clearly that I had a QA manager that came to my office and said, why are we doing this? And that sort of took me back and I had to figure out the why. And we eventually we got everyone together and went through a whole, why are we doing this kind of thing? And what are our problems? And then let's find the appropriate solution. But there have been some aspects, some things like that, that have been difficult things, especially when you reach a senior leadership role to confront that you have failed and you need support and you need to maybe go back to score one and rethink things.

Right. No, that's. That's great. It's humbling, I'm sure, to, you know, to experience what you experience and fail and then face that. That Failure, but know that you're growing from it. You're learning from it for sure. Ron, talk to me about a failed experiment in your career and what you've learned from it.

Okay, yeah, I'll give you one. On coaching a failed experiment, I'll give you one. So in the beginning when we launched our green belt and black belt program, I was the person who did, did most of the coaching and I used to have this thing where it was like, hey Jennifer, welcome to the black belt program. You know, good to have you. And, and hey, so listen, the way that we do coaching around here is it's, it's pull based mentoring I thought was a kind of clever poll or is good and lean. Right. We pull, we don't push, you know, and, and so poll based mentoring. So you just, you let me know when you need help and I'm going to be here. And, and I was, if you needed help, I was there. Thing is, if you aren't really motivated, you may not be pulling as often as you should. And I'm like, wait a minute, it's been four weeks since I've talked to Jennifer. Maybe I should sort of reach out to her and try to reel you back in. So what I learned was as good as that sounds, doesn't necessarily work. So I changed and said now the conversation would be like, hey, welcome to the black belt program, Jennifer. Jennifer or lean practitioner or whatever. And hey, here's how it goes. Every week we get a talk. Okay, Is that, does that sound good, Jennifer? Every week you good? Yep. Good. In fact, I want you now to go schedule your next five coaching calls. Go get them on there. They're only 15 minutes. Not a big deal. But every week. Okay, Every week. And yeah, I get them every week. And so now we, all of our coaches are talking to our candidates every week. I mean we really are. And if it's not, it's sort of a big deal and we're communicating electronically if we're not talking. So that was for sure a failed experiment. Like I thought that maybe the right being, hey, let, let people pull when they need help was going to be the way to go, but it really wasn't.

Okay.

So yeah, yeah.

So giving them the autonomy to schedule their calls wasn't necessarily it. You really have to encourage them to.

Right. And you know, it's funny you mentioned that autonomy, you didn't ask me about that earlier, but I had like, as good as autonomy is, it also can be a little bit of a problem because there's certain times where people, you know, they don't even know what they don't know. And you know, so if I just, you know, sometimes people want some help. Right. But they're, oh, I have autonomy. I'm not supposed to ask for help. Right. And so it's sort of a tricky one, right. You know, that you gotta, sometimes you gotta be a little bit, hey, this is what I think we should do. What do you think? And we can still have that conversation, but the leader doesn't necessarily need to just sit back and say, go run everything, because people may get to a point to where they do need help.

Right? No, Yeah. I think autonomy is definitely a part of it, but being accountable and showing up is the other part of it.

Yep, for sure.

So it's not a solo siloed event.

Yep.

How about you, John? Do you have any failed experiments or any part of hurdles that you've had to overcome here at Gemba Academy?

At Gemba Academy? This may be a different way of answering the question, but I think that I've probably only been sort of really explicitly thinking about things that I want to do or my ideas as experiments fairly recently. If you consider whatever 25, 6, 7, 8 year career, I was certainly experimenting the whole time. I didn't by any means always know the outcome of my actions, but I was fairly, and I still am fairly certain that I did know and it wasn't always right. So I think maybe not viewing work as a series of experiments and it's not always, sometimes it's just to do it, but there are opportunities where perhaps I could have invested less time, energy, money, etc. Had I viewed it as an experiment, treated it as an experiment.

No, no, I think that's good. I. I mean, the idea is that whether it's an experiment or, you know, something that you've done is. Is being able to reflect on what you've done and you know, see, could you have handled it differently? Could you have done something differently? So. No, I appreciate that.

Yeah. And I think maybe to make another point is related point is if or why do you make decisions or take actions or commitments or whatever, investments, and you treat it as an experiment, it forces you to have a hypothesis which is, I think because of these assumptions, doing this will result in X. And so then you can test that, Then you can say, how do I test that and how do I. What would disprove that? Because you can always prove that you were right or argue that you were right and get emotional or twist the data or what have you but if you're trying to disprove or trying to see am I wrong? Let's see if I'm wrong. Let's see under what conditions this really strong belief or idea or thing that I want to do is not right. And that's kind of an odd way to think about it, right. If you're a business person or if you're any, any kind of professional person, you want to do something and have it work. So to think about looking for failure modes and testing out the limits and limits of your knowledge and so forth. Yeah, I think I haven't been as deliberate in that until fairly recently.

Yeah, so, got it. So maybe we can share some advice. And Ron, maybe I'll start with you, but what recommendations would you have for somebody that's just starting their lean journey?

Go to shugembaacademy.com no skin.

You're not wrong. Yeah, there's pretty valuable information there.

Right. Well, I mean, in all sincerity, you do need to have a base level of knowledge, right? But even before you get that knowledge, you probably need to answer the question of like, why are we doing this? Like, think about a company, like an organization that, that's brand new to it, or they've heard about it, but they've not really ever practiced it. They need to. The leadership has to sort of assess, like, why do we want to go on this? Why do we want to attempt it? Like, what problem are we trying to solve? Right? And they need to clearly articulate that as a leadership team. And then they need to keep doing it. Don't ever stop communicating the why right to the organization. So then once you have a good understanding of why we're trying to do it, then I do think you do need to get a base level of knowledge. You know, you can't build a house if you don't know how to swing a hammer, right? So. Or you have to hire people that, who can help you do that, right? So whether you go out and hire some folks who have experience with continuous improvement and then they come in and, and help you, but you've got to get that base level of knowledge. And then. I know, I hate to keep saying experiment and learn, but that's what it is. You have to learn. You have to, you have to go out and actually do it. And you know, we talk about deliberate practice, right? Like in the. And that's so important. And like, you can learn something. Like even videos, you can go watch a video. And that's great. I mean, you watched a video, but what have you done with what you just learned?

That's the first step.

Yeah. If you don't go out and actually do something and practice something in a deliberate way. Deliberate meaning you probably have a coach or somebody who's there to sort of walk with you a little bit, you know, especially early on and, you know, get out there and see what actually happens. Right. That's because that's when the real learning is going to happen. So. So yeah, figure out your why, get some knowledge, and then practice deliberately.

Okay.

Kevin, you have your take on any recommendations you would give someone that's just starting their lean journey?

Yeah, I was thinking about that as Ron and John were answering that the most powerful thing I've found is just a practice of intentional reflection. And it ties in a lot with the experimentation. You have to develop that hypothesis. You run an experiment, but then the most critical part is then. And really thinking about what happened, that can be an experiment of what you're going to do today, or it could be a larger thing organizationally or technically. But taking that time to really think about what happened and did what you expect happened or not is very powerful because it sets the stage for the next experiment. I think that is skipped too many times. You might just say, oh, it failed, and I'm going to try something else. But really thinking through what happened and how you're going to make changes and how you're going to do the, you know, the how and so forth after the why is very important.

Excellent. Well, we're reaching the top of our hour podcast here, but I just wanted to check in and see if there's anything you want to give us, a sneak peek as to what's coming.

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't. This will be releasing what in a few weeks here, so, you know, but we got lots of stuff coming down the pike. We were working on some. Some. Some more KATA material. We've got some more. We've got some tpm, total productive maintenance stuff that's going to be coming down.

That's a big one.

That's a monster. Right. So it's. That's going to be coming out in phases over the next year or so.

Okay.

What am I missing, John?

Yeah, there's lots of little things. Lots of things we're working on. I think maybe from an ambition standpoint, it's not so much about what specific topics are coming out, of course, that's what's interesting to the listeners and customers. But I think what's coming down the pike or what's different, hopefully or better is that we are able to in the future engage our customers and people that are on the journey and listen to what, what and how everyone needs to learn, wants to learn. Because we've, we've had a pretty good idea. We built the, built our product or learning library and so forth with a certain, certain vision in mind. And we still have ways to go to build that out, but to really hear from customers like, okay, here's how we find it useful or not useful or here's what's missing and to be able to turn that into. And some of these things we're working on now are specific requests of customers, of course, but I think that's maybe something that in a sneak peek, maybe we'll somehow be able to collaborate more with our customers in terms of content or learning experiences and so forth. And yeah, so it's not completely a pull. There's some push elements to it, some parts of our plan that we're going to work on, but maybe incorporate more of a pull and so forth.

Yeah, that's exciting. So, speaking from the team, I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to interview you. I think you guys have some extremely valuable knowledge that I think the audience is going to appreciate hearing and learning your journey of not just success, but failing and how you overcome that and how you lead. But thank you for giving me the opportunity and from our entire team, we really appreciate being part of your team.

You're welcome. You did a great job interviewing. So I mean, if I ever want to retire from the podcast, I think Jennifer got a job.

That's fun. Yeah, I don't know about all that. I'm going to stay on the sales side for a while, but.

All right, well, now I'll wrap everything up. So for folks who are listening, we'll have some show notes with links to John and Kevin's LinkedIn and Jennifer and all that. So this is episode 400, big 400. So yeah, go check it out. Thanks. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 lean and 6 Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.