GA 404 | Leading in a VUCA Environment with James Newell

At the end, when I showed them the A3 report, they were like, aha. It was a whole different engagement of the people. And now they're Lean. Afene and Lean, lovers of Lean, because they learned it in their own pain.

Today, I'm excited to welcome James Newell back to the show. Now, today, James and I talk about a pretty interesting topic, and that is how James went about building a team of Lean thinkers, an organization that knew nothing about Lean and what he calls a VUCA environment. So this is. And if you're not familiar with what VUCA stands for, it's volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. So we touched a little bit about that a little bit more in the beginning of the episode as well. But James then goes on to just kind of explain how he went about building this team and then how they went about learning about Lean. So it was very interesting. And obviously, in this day and age, we're all in somewhat of a volatile, uncertain environment. So I feel like the episode definitely applies to, really, anyone who's trying to practice Lean. And even if you've been on the journey for a little while, I feel like there's some value in sometimes we've got to reignite the flame, if you will, or we have new team members coming on that we got to bring up to speed. So lots of really good things in here to learn. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gemba podcast.com. just look for episode four.04. Again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 404. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. James, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Good, good. Thanks for having me back. How you doing, Ron?

Hell, I'm doing well, man. Doing well. Thank you. Thank you. All right, well, yeah, I was just looking at my notes here before. Before we hit record, and this is the third time you've been on, so we'll link your previous two episodes here in the show. Notes. You were on episode 224, how to apply Lean in different countries, and then in 322, tailoring the Kata model. So, yeah, some good stuff there, James. So you know the drill. We do like to get things kicked off right out of the gate with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

I have actually two. Could I break the rule and give you both? I couldn't choose between one or the other.

For sure, man.

Okay. My first one comes from Peter Drucka, which is whatever products and services you supply to your customers. The main Purpose of your business is to train and develop your people. And the second one is a good mentor for me and also one of my who I learned a lot from the last 20 years. John Maxwell Leaders become great not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.

I like it. I like it. Good stuff. Well, James, tell us a little bit about your background and you've got an interesting situation with where you live and where you're from and all that kind of stuff. So maybe if folks didn't hear the first two episodes, give us a little insight into that and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Okay. Basically, I'm an American from New York, been here since I've been in Germany since 1995. Came over the military, learned about lean in the military, getting my boots and my clothes, the military lean way of distribution of everything. And then came into the business world in Germany in 2001 learning German in a kata style, I would call it, if I really knew what kata was learning by doing and practicing and experimenting and making a lot of mistakes. And now I speak quite fluent German and been on the German market since 2001. From startup companies to own company, developed European watch group. A few things I've developed myself here in Germany and come actually I live actually in the area if anybody any of the listeners out there know of Hogan's heroes. I live six miles away from Stalag 13.

Wow, that's cool.

And currently I've worked in different companies, worked in different fields of business from startup as I described, to industrial working with auto manufacturing suppliers for auto manufacturing to building of elevators from scratch. I would call it a middle company. I don't know the word in English any longer. The middle Constance on familia family owned. So I'll probably throw some Denglish in there, which is German and English together. And I'm currently working for a international cable company. We develop cables for industrial communication to the big cables that run throughout the waters and provide the world with electric and from LAN cable to robotic cables. And I'm there responsible for. I'm the head of business process excellence, operational excellence and a lead a team of lean six Sigma black belts and lean professionals as we develop the culture into a lean culture, developing the leaders with the lean mentality. Lean the lean holistic mentality of application. And so learning through application.

Nice. Got it. Got it. All right, James. Well, hey, I'm excited for the topic today because I think it's an interesting one and I don't know if We've actually ever addressed it on the 403 previous episodes that we've done. And that is building a lean team in a VUCA environment. So V U C A environment. So I thought what we could do to kind of get things going, James, is in case folks aren't familiar with this, with this V U C A or VUCA environment, what is it? Vuca, what does that stand for?

VUCA is V. Volatileness, volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. VUCA Voltality. It's funny, I can't spell, I can't pronounce American words.

Volatility, perhaps.

That'S it, yeah. Uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. For example, corona is a VUCA environment.

Ye. For sure, for sure. 100%. 100%. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about, about, about trying to practice lean and in a volatile, uncertain environment, which like you said, many of us can relate to, because that's pretty much the world that, that, that we've been living in over the last year or so here. So. So, so talk about your experience with building a team of lean thinkers.

I had a chance to build a team at a company just recently, a few months ago, moved from. I built a team there, had a chance to build a lean team. This company is very, very old, 160 years old company and a lot of we call in German gewachsestructure or very old ways of doing things. Looking to develop new ways of doing things, new thinking and to increase their productivity in the production lines and also do good connection to the indirect areas like hr, IT engineering, and not only the production world. So I built because of that situation, because of the desire to develop a internal meta value stream. I was tasked to develop a CIP team. That's what they're, they're still called CIP team today. The CIP team was a mix of all departments. I had engineers, I had people from, we called application engineering, people from industrial engineering, I had people from production. I also had people from research and design, R and D. And this team had virtually no lean experience whatsoever. So I would call it a greenfield team. And we had the chance to. I had a chance to develop the lean mindset from the get go from the beginning. And in this environment of uncertainty, because it's a new field, people are leaving their field of expertise and coming to a lean team or a CIP team. The way I did it, the way I engaged them to join a team and how I chose them and what we did as the next steps as far as how we built a Team from five different departments into one functioning, high functioning, high productive team was key and that was for me a real huge experience and I'm grateful for this day, for the learnings that I got. And the team is very productive, still very productive and I really enjoyed doing that. There's certain steps I went through.

Well, let's talk about it. How did you get going? What were some of the first steps?

Well, I use, I'm not sure if there's right word in English but I used a systemish systemisia approach based on two meta principles and four levels of progression. So what I did is I basically established belonging. I did a team workshop. I first engaged the people I'm looking for. I set out, I would say like a pitch pitching the why we're looking for a team or certain characteristics of what type of person we're looking for. It was kind of like an advertising to join the team. This is our goal, this is our direction, this is why we're looking to build a team. What we're going to be doing and who I'm looking for professionally and personally. And if you meet these characteristics, please click here and join the join the zoom call or join the meeting next week in person and learn about what this team is going to be doing. And through that, that first step, engaging in presenting with what I believe is lean, the holistic approach of lean and the goals and the purpose of this team, I found out and saw those little shining eyes people saying oh, that's interesting to see who might be potentially fit for this team. Second step, I asked for recommendations or I asked for, I would call it, you should submit an application to join the team. I'm translating my head, sorry to submit to apply. Not everybody gets a slot. So based upon the professional and the personal characteristics I'm looking for and also the professional skills I was looking for this team, we had quite a few applications and then I basically went and did one on one interviews to find out do I fit well as their developer? They're a lean developer. I see myself as a servant leader, which means I serve my people, to serve my customers or serve our customers. And I have a basic mission which I made very clear at the beginning is my mission is to make myself obsolete in that I engage those who work for me or with me to learn how to learn through failure. And that mission that I hold dearly to, and that's what I've been doing the last 20 years, is making myself constantly obsolete. And I have no challenge doing that. I enjoy it and it's engaging for those who are working with me, knowing that I'm going to pour everything I can into them and then we're going to add value for, not only for us, for our team relationship, but also for the company. At some stage, I make myself obsolete. That's totally okay. So finding out who fits to me, do I fit to them? Can I serve them? Can they serve me? Can they serve each other? After those interviews are done, I basically put the team together, invited them to a kickoff. And that kickoff was the team wasn't actually finished being built. I was figuring out through the kickoff, through the interactive kickoff, finding out, does that team, can that team be productive? Can we find a purpose? Can we find a belonging within the team? Within the first few hours of the workshop, that's the first established level of progression, is to establish belonging. And I did a workshop where they basically just presented their private, on their professional, introduce themselves privately and professionally. Even though they might have known each other for years, it's interesting that they learned in these two or three hours things they never learned about each other in the last 10 years working together. So I was able to see a dynamic starting to build in the team. And as the team started to present what they do professionally, the question was, to the people who are listening, what did you understand? Where can you confirm their skills, which you've witnessed on hand from a practical application. If someone presented their skills or professional skills in the company, it wasn't just active listening, it was also feedback, saying, where have I witnessed those skills in my work? Or how have you influenced through your past position or the position where you're now? And through those interactions, through those interactions I was able to see, do we have a possible feedback culture? Do we have a possibility to establish? What I call the first meta principle is transparency through trust equals teamwork. If I can establish in the team dynamic a feedback culture from the first couple hours, who can give feedback, who can confirm in a verbal sense where they actually reflected on their interaction in a professional sense, I was able to find out how this team could look like in the feedback culture. Because in a VUCA environment, it's very important to have each other's back. That sense of belonging has to be there because you need to be in a VUCA environment, you need to know that you've got each other's back, they've got your back. And regardless of what happens, you're a. You're one team, one heart, one mind with the personalities, but it's one language. Knowing that things might Be tough out there in the real world, in the Vuca world, but inside we're safe. And yeah, that was in the workshop. And then the second day was basically their requirements on their developer, which they call their boss at that stage and what they expect from me as a servant leader. And I explained to them what that meant, my servant leader, my mission. And if you know James is like an English word for servant, you know, you see a lot of James besides James Bond, a lot of, a lot of servants, or what do you call the guys in the castles in Germany serving all the drinks and dinner? James, can you give me a beer? So, interesting enough, they drew a picture of their requirements as a developer of a guy in a servant's outfit holding a platter of lean tools. So if you imagine a guy sitting with a servant leadership black coat, they drew it as a team pulling out a silver platter and lean topics like 5s and, and hosh and Connery, which they actually had no clue about. They just heard about it in the, in the pitch deck from me and basically saying, we would like you to put these tools on a silver platter that we can learn them, adapt with them and apply them in our business set, in our business sense, in this environment, in this team. So it was a really interesting result. And the team was then established. Then afterwards the team developed, we developed a, I would call the third level of progression. We started to develop team immunity. Team immunity is a third level progression, which means we converted our team understanding into a purpose, that purpose into a vision, that vision into a mission that drives us and then the mission drives the team and I act as a guide. And in the end, the synergies to the mission and the synergies to the company, what the company needed for a mission and vision were the same. So it's interesting that the company, that the team, sorry, the team created a cascaded objectives, cascaded vision and mission that the end matched where the company wanted to go. So we had a Hoshin Kamri indirectly trained without even them knowing about the method. And seeing that allowed me to know that the team would be productive if they can actually connect the method of Hoshen Connery, even though they had no idea what the method was, that was engaging, that was engaging my mind to know that the team would be productive and was very, very hopeful and that basically develop the immunity. Because when a team knows their team has a purpose, has a clear vision as a mission, knows how it's going to get there, just needs to be let loose and let loose and do their thing. And my job is to guide and assist them and develop them as we go along. Real play in words. I use the word leadership. There's two types of leadership. A leader can lead a ship or a leader can engage the people on his ship to go in the same common direction. The leadership leads his ship like a top down manager style versus a leader who leads his people in a ship to a common direction. It was kind of playing sounds even better in German.

Yeah, I like it, I like it, I like it. You know, one thing I wanted to ask you while just almost circling back a little bit, why would you describe that, that group or that company or that organization as. Or that industry perhaps as Vuca?

Well, this team was built in the Corona situation. We had a huge issue with steel. We had issues with. We couldn't build the product into the area. We had problems with production. We had to split up our teams. We had backlog in deliveries. We were in an environment where it was very uncertain, the market was uncertain, and this team was there to basically be the backbone and to find ways to adapt in that environment. Coming from Corona, coming from basically everything, the effects of Corona were huge. Or still are.

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure, for sure. Now do you think that if we were not in a VUCA environment that you would have approached anything differently?

No, actually we are. I believe we're in the VUCA environment. We've been thrown into the whole VUCA environment with Corona to become a trend word. But we've been in a VUCA environment for the last 20 years, 20, 30 years. We have a whole new style of learning today, which is cram everything in your head and expect to learn it and expect to keep it. So that's a very, you know, people losing their jobs, leaving their jobs, changing their jobs. The Vuca environment isn't only because of Corona. We've been in this environment for the last 10, 15, 20 years. Just, you know, but stability and building a team regardless of the Vuca environment. There's no, there's no I in team. I think it's a great old phrase of. Old phrase in the US there's no I in team. But what does that really mean? What does teamwork really mean in today's world of Facebook and all the other things out there? Influencers, everybody's up. Copsen in German we call it everybody's, you know, creating their own teams. I'm a team. I'm me. You know, there is me and team, but there's no I in team.

Yeah, my Smart like son. Always reminds me. Yeah, there's me, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff, good stuff. You know what was interesting when you were talking about those kind of the early phases of bringing the team together and, you know, selecting the team and make sure that you were a good fit for the. To lead the team, it reminded me of. I don't know if you're familiar with Richard Sheridan and the team at Menlo Innovations. They're. They're based out of Michigan here in the States, and they do something called extreme pro interviewing or. Well, they do extreme programming. They're software developers, but. But. Or a form of extreme programming, but. But they did this interviewing process to where they're bringing these people in and they actually have them work together in like a little game or something, a little simulation or whatever. It really has nothing to do with the work that they're going to do, but what they're really watching for, they tolerate is whether these people have kindergarten skills, you know, like, how well do they work with one another and, you know, are they listening to each other? Are they trying to take over and, you know, that sort of thing. So it actually, a lot of things you were describing sounded very similar to what Richard and his team are. Are doing when they're trying to select team members for their company. So it was pretty cool.

Well, just to bring you up to speed, everything I've learned, anything I do currently in leading, I've either taken it from previous people who've been in business and leading people like the Chinese, they can copy anything. I've learned to copy anything, adapt it and implement it in Germany. And I read Joy Ingra when it came out, and that whole idea. I've been. I've heard all the podcasts from sharing, all his books I've gone through. So that's one thing. I take something like a sponge and then I adapt it and adapt it to the setting and to finish your thought or not finish your thought to add to your thought. My interviewing, I interview the person first. Half an hour for my new team employees, half an hour interview, and then the second interview is with the team and I'm no longer present. And my, My. The goal as a team has to figure out, can they. Can they work with him because they hire him, not me.

Yeah.

If he gets through my door, they have the second meeting and then the third meeting if we need to do practical skill tests or figure out can he, you know, deliver any challenges. You know, I want to see something, but I'll put the. I'll put that person into action with the team and they actually will do a small workshop shop for management. They'll do something to see and test the skills in a real life setting. Just to figure out if I need a third interview. Usually I interview half an hour. I can sense and feel through my experience that the person has real skills and then the team hires him. And that's something also new here in Germany. That's not usual but it's very, very attractive because the team feels very value added. Very. They feel important that they're hiring their new teammate which was, which is great for the team environment.

Now how does it work? I know I spent some time in Germany some of my previous lives when different companies I worked at had facilities in Germany. And I remember there was various certain things that I had to adjust to if you will, due to the work councils and whatnot. Is a little bit different. Right. Than what we might have in the States in some cases. Is there anything going on with that or how do you handle work councils if applicable?

Yeah, and we have work councils like for example the higher end fire storms we have in the US. You know, you work for a company 20 years and you can basically from one day after the next be put through, put at the door. That really can't happen in Germany because after your six month start, initial six months, you have the ability to within two weeks leave the company or they can tell you you don't fit well, you can leave then you lose your. But after those six months are up, you're basically locked in and what we call unkun ba which means you are not. It's hard to fire you. I mean you can't really lose your job.

What if they should be fired? It's like a tough situation. But what if they're just. They steal or they do something bad or they're not showing up for work or something like that. What do you do?

Well, that's the thing. Those, those things stealing anything like that, you can lose your job quickly. But basically you have to have a reason like stealing. You have to have. You're not showing up too late. Three times you get, you get a warning then you get a first written warning that you second written warning and by your third written. By your third warning they can put you at the door.

Yeah, okay.

But they have to go through a process of warning. Two written warnings, for example late and offer you support. Maybe you have a problem with personal problem, who knows or whatever. Family problems they do. No, I do engage to figure out why. Why are they Late before I give them up.

For sure, for sure.

But in Germany, to fire somebody just because they're not producing, if you can't prove it, if you haven't set clear KPIs and clear goal statements in their contract, year for year, yearly goal statements, if they're not clear, you'll win as an employee, every case.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. So maybe to wrap things up here, James, I'm curious that maybe we could talk a little bit about, you know, we've got this great team and we've gone through this vetting process, but now they got to learn a little bit about lean and, you know, some of the tactical things, like what is 5s? How do you do a value stream map? And how did you go about that?

Basically, I took. I took those who are interested and looked for application within our own team. For example, we wanted to develop new file systems. We needed to document our work. And I used those situations to sensibilize the need for 5s and had them start thinking about tracking. How much time does it take them to find a file. Just kind of like indirect 5s. And through that reflection, say, hey, you know, how does it feel? You know, what does it look like? You know, how much time, how effective you are. When you're looking for stuff that he's producing, you have no clue where it's at. So I coach them through their own pain of realizing what 5s is on their own, you know, their own pain. And then someone said, and I can remember the situation, someone said, yeah, but I read something about in the application about, we're going to learn about 5s now. What's this 5s? And I just have to smile and took that and said, well, if you were asking about 5s, give me. I'll give you three hours. Do a bit of research, go to certain websites, I give you a couple and just research what 5S is, apply it to our current situation and present it next week to the team with a possible standard that we're going to test for a couple weeks, see if it works. And at the same time, I was showing them pdta. So interlocking through the trainings, through the, creating pain, creating transparency in their own daily business of their own pain, saying, I'd be a lot quicker adapting 5s through 5s, showing them what PDTA is. And after three or four months, I brought in a. A3 report and they're like, well, this is what we've been doing the last three months. I'm like, yeah, you've Gone through an Ishikawa. You've gone through A five. Why you've gone through all the problem solving tools that is on this A3 report. Now we're just going to document the A3 report. So they put all of their learnings. They didn't know the names. I didn't want to scare them with names.

Yeah.

So I basically showed them by doing. And then at the end when I came up the aid, when I showed them the A3 report, they're like, aha. Like it was a whole different engagement.

Yeah.

Of the people. And now they're lean. A fiend and lean lovers of lean. Because they learned it on their own.

Yeah.

Pain. I love it, man.

I love it. We actually homeschool our kids. We always have at my house. And it's very similar. What you're describing, driving is. I would say that's how my kids, many of them have. Have learned different things. It's like, here's a. Here's the topic. Go read about it. Practice it a little bit. We're there to help them and guide them along the way. And now they go to like some of the community colleges or whatnot for some high school classes and whatnot. You know, so they are getting more formal teachers for, you know, higher level math or something like that. But there's, there's this, there's something powerful I think about learning how to learn. Right. And not having everything spoon fed to you. You learn how to think. Right. You learn how to problem solve and yeah, it sounds very similar what you're doing.

If you imagine as you imagine as I finished, as I finished probably about five months into the, into the team development, I wanted to show them what the improvement kata is and the kata coaching now, what they didn't know at the time, as I was using the method the entire time from the beginning of the team through the purpose and the mission and the mission and the vision development. But as I gave them the workshop, through a kind of workshop, when you did the cata training and improvement kind of training and the whole setup, it was like fireworks. They started realizing this is how you started the team. So it just clicked with them. It was like I planted seeds. You planted seeds, watered the seeds throughout the last four or five, six months. And now you've got, you've got. Sometimes you get. You expected flowers, but you got carrots. For me, I don't care if I get carrots or flowers right. As long as I don't get weeds.

Yes, exactly.

I love it.

Oh, this is so good. So good. Really interesting. I'll be cool. I mean, and I know you, you have moved on from that organization, right.

Since.

Since they've done it. So how's it been going for them since you. Since you've left?

Right. Good question. I actually created a VUCA environment again. I surprised them because I was offered a much bigger position and had to make the decision to leave the team in the middle of their development and put them into a VUCA environment. And I left the team. And to be honest, it was one of the best choices I made for the team and made with the team because they're a lot stronger today. They are developing each other and the team is even more productive, actually just as productive as before. They're closing projects faster than their partners.

What do you call?

They're a small team. They're closing projects faster than a team twice their size. So they're extremely productive. And the team still has no leader, which means they've been leading themselves through the Sambuca environment because the team was so foundationally set on stone, on granite, not on sand. They're still together, the team is still producing. They've optimized certain processes already and now they are mentoring and assisting other departments to be multipliers and other departments of what they've learned in the last six to eight to 12 months at the moment. And we still have contact, I still do mentor them once in a while. We have very strong contact. But it's encouraging to see that everything we established has either been improved on, they've improved the process of project management. So for me it was a. What do you call it, encouragement to see that what we established is stable. And in this environment, me leaving, having no leader showed that my whole idea of making myself obsolete, in that I engage others to learn how to learn through adaptation actually was proven.

Yeah. And reminds me of, you know, the old saying, you know, catch a person a fish they can eat for a day, teach them how to fish, they'll eat forever. Right. And that's exactly what you've been doing.

So, yeah, there's so much. And that's that for me it's just. I get chills. I mean, what do you call it? Goosebumps. Yeah.

Yeah, we do.

It's really encouraging. And one of the team members actually took on a new position. He also left the company and now he's into a semi leadership position. He was able to move up in the paychain and because of the fact that he was able to communicate what he learned lean, it expanded his Horizon and he is now productive in his new company and he's actually taken what we developed and implemented in that company, for example, project management. That's great to see someone take something that learned and then apply in a different company. Let's even I would call a little bit of legacy. Those are things that really encourage me to keep on going.

Yeah, well, it's like the old school twi, the multiplier effect. Right. You know, and you know, just teach a few people and then they teach a few people and next thing you know it's, that's everybody everywhere. So. Yeah, fantastic. Well, good stuff, James. I really appreciate the story and thanks for coming on. Maybe let's wrap things up. If folks want to connect with you, what's the best way?

I would say LinkedIn is probably the best way. LinkedIn, yeah. LinkedIn, definitely.

Yeah.

The two podcasts are there as well and yeah, LinkedIn is the best way.

Yeah. And so we'll link to your show, to your LinkedIn profile in our show notes. So this is, this is episode 404. So go to gembapodcast.com, look for episode 404 or just scroll down on the app that you're listening to this on and you'll probably see it right there. So James, thanks again for coming on. It's always fun and I know, I'm sure we'll do it again down the road sometime. So keep up the great work.

Thank you.

All right, take care.

You too. Ciao.

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