GA 432 | “Lean” versus “lean” with Martina Kuhlmeyer

Every culture is different. It's nearly like a DNA of a human being. Right. Everyone is unique, and so is the culture of Danaher, Toyota, ge, Textron and all these other companies. And Lean is very often started as a program that helps to shape culture.

Today I'm excited to welcome Martina Kuhlmeier to the show. Now, today, Martina and I dive into the whole topic of culture and how lean, in particular, a lean program, how that might play into a company's culture. And so we spend quite a bit of time just talking about the whole idea of a culture in and of itself. Like, what does that mean? And how do you, how do you see and touch a culture? Because it's not always easy. And then when we talked about what we call sometimes we talk about a lean culture, Martina has a really interesting take on that. And the way that she answers is determined on whether you're talking about lean with a capital l or lean lowercase l. So really interesting take on that. I think you're going to enjoy that one. So Martina is a lovely lady and full of energy, and I think you're going to enjoy this episode. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 432. Again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 432. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Martina, welcome to the show. How are you?

Thank you. I'm doing very well. Thank you for having me, Juan.

You're welcome. Where are you calling in from?

I'm calling in from Needham, Massachusetts, and that's the suburb of Boston.

Nice, Nice. All right. Beautiful. Part of the country, so part of the world, really. One of the top, really.

We have it all. We have the ocean, we have the mountains. So it's a good place to be.

It sure is. It sure is. Well, I'm really excited for our conversation today, Martina, but as you know, we do like to get things going with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have anything?

Yes, of course. I have my favorite all time quote, and that is culture eats strategy for breakfast. And it has been around for a while. It's from Peter Drucker, but I think it's incredibly valid and I've been reminded of that pretty much every day I went to work.

Yeah, Love it. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a fantastic quote and so much you could spend an hour just talking about that, you know, culture eat strategy for breakfast. So good stuff. Well, hey, before we jump into this whole idea of culture and things as I think was going to be a lot of, a lot of conversation around that. Tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us about your background, how you first got involved and all this continuous improvement stuff and, and then what you're up to these days.

Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, I've been working in continuous improvement for 25 years and I kind of got into it by accident. I came over to the States working for manufacturing company and ended up in the quality manager there for startup production company. That was fun. And you can imagine if a company ramps up real quick, right. Lots of things fall to the wayside. And so after three years we started a Lean program. And that, that was my first experience with Lean. And then coincidentally I ended up in GE's Six Sigma program in their capital division. And that really started a long career where I went from business to business and helped with their Lean transformation, their continuous improvement programs. And throughout that starting literally this frontline process work. Like most of us, I then evolved over time to really help influence culture and leading the program, the overall programs.

Got it, got it. So talk a little bit about culture because you know, this a big word, you know, we, we talk about, we talk about a lean culture. Sometimes you'll hear people say like, what's your take on that? Like can, is there such a thing as a, as a lean culture? Or what's your perspective?

Yeah, that's such a great question. So it depends if you spell lean with a capital L or small L. So when we think about. Yeah, see, I'm very particular. But if you think about lean, a lean culture with a capital L and lean as a noun, I would say there is no such thing unless there's a company that is called Lean. Because every culture, every culture is different. It's nearly like a DNA of a human being. Right? Everyone is unique and so is a culture of Danaher, Toyota, ge, Textron and all these other companies. And Lean is often a program, very often started as a program that helps to shape culture. Right. It is an attempt to improve the culture, improve capabilities and the culture of an organization. And so lean as an adjective, of course there is an innovation culture, there are relationship cultures, there are risk adverse cultures, and then there are lean cultures. Of course, agile culture. Agile is the latest great thing now, right? So as an adjective, I absolutely think there are lean cultures, but it describes just one aspect of the overall culture of an organization. But generally I would say that each culture of an organization is very unique. And the Lean approach, the focus on eliminating waste the focus on innovation is one critical aspect that help to describe the culture.

So, okay, talk about culture. Now I'm just curious. I mean, one of my favorite, I don't know who even said this, but is culture happens when no one's a company's culture is what happens when no one's looking. What do people doing when no one's looking? So what does culture mean to you?

Well, culture is really the operating environment. It's how people collaborate to get work done. It's the unique written rules is the behaviors that are expected and taken for granted. And to your point, it's the behaviors that nobody needs to require or supervise anymore. It's just how things get done around here, wherever that here is. And culture is something, I believe that the people who work in a culture can't tell what is and isn't culture. It becomes most apparent for someone walking into the outside. So from my perspective, right, Years ago when I worked for my first American company, I recognized, well, this is different than working for a German company. But the more companies I had the privilege to experience, the more sharper the concept of culture developed in myself because I experienced how places were different without having an explanation for that. They were just different. Each place was different in how work got done. And that is what I understand the label culture.

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned, say, like from someone with a German background, coming into an American company might have a, a reaction versus an American moving to Germany to go work for a German company. What, how do you, how do you see like things like, you know, where you're from or how you were raised or, you know what I mean? Like, how does that play into an organizational culture?

Yeah, I think it first is a recognition that that something works different around here and that people have to either embrace it or align or determine that they are not a fit. Right. We often hear the terms cultural fit, right. Or when we hire people, we often say, you know what, the fit, the personality fit is important. And that is a fit to the culture of the organization. And that is what we experience. Now me coming over from a German very traditional technical company over to G Capital, right, that was more a feeling of, wow, everything is so cool here. Everything is more relaxed. Generally the experience I had back then of American companies, but they are more easygoing, more relaxed, more casual than the German company that I had experienced. But it's not even coming over to, from Germany to the US that's now way back when. And I still try to convince people that this is my German accent. But somehow everybody picks up that this isn't. Is something else. But you know what? I never forget from a cultural perspective? I first lived in Illinois, and in the two, three companies I worked at in Illinois, people always would gather and go out to lunch together or go together to the cafeteria and have lunch. So that was like a fun happy hour in the middle of the day, moved over to the east coast. That suddenly stopped. So I will never forget going to my first company here on the East Coast. Everybody would pick up their lunch and then eat their lunch at their desk. And I will never forget when I first got there, I said, oh, my God, did you already tick everybody off? Do they not like you? What am I doing wrong? Right. And it took me a while to recognize that everybody was doing the same thing. It's not that everybody went out and I was the only one sitting at the desk. It was just a cultural difference. And so in all the. I had worked here now at three big companies on the east coast, the same pattern that there is a tendency where people eat lunch by themselves or go out with two people. But I will never forget this culture shock, literally, that I totally felt excluded, even though there was nothing they excluded me on. It was just the way the company was operating.

Yeah. Isn't that so interesting? Because you could have chosen to be harmed, right. In that moment when they.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh. Like you said, they didn't. They don't like me or. And that's so dangerous when to have that initial reaction, when you don't have all the facts. Right. You don't know. You're unconsciously incompetent almost at that point. Right. You don't even know what you don't know. So, yeah, super interesting. I'm wondering, Martina, if we can maybe circle back a little bit. I'm sorry for the tangent there, but some really interesting things popping in my mind. So let's go back about Lean now and thinking about Lean, and we sort of talk about the difference between a culture and a program. So let's talk a little bit about if we can agree that. Let's just go with more of a Lean program, which obviously a program can end, you know, if you don't can. Or if you hit some milestone, you say we're done, you know, But I don't think that's what we mean here. But if we're talking about a Lean program, how do we build that into someone's culture?

Yeah, that is a great question. And I've experienced good and bad along my career So I have good examples and not so good examples. And you are right. Lean starts as the program. And in some experience it was like this shall also pass. Right? That was the attitude from some members. They just think they can sit it out and they could. When the Lean program at one point in time was duped as completed and all that would happen is that the resources like black belt Lean Consultants, all of the people that help with that transformation were then, let me say, operationalized, let me put that in quotes, right. And that would be the end of it. That is the situation as in programs, they fade away. The new way of working or the continuous improvement is then at risk of being swallowed up by the culture that was in place before. And I have had other experiences where from the get go, while Lean Six Sigma or however a company chooses to call their transformation program, it starts as a program simply because it needs focus. It needs a highlighted effort to let people know, hey, this is something new, pay attention and you guys need to learn, but quickly. In good examples, there were efforts made to integrate it into the management system. And the management system is a key driver of culture. In my mind. One example, I really enjoyed working there. First, the C suite was very involved in this transformation program. And they also were very serious about strategic alignment or the goal deployment process. And so what I think they did a great job of, they rewrote the vision, a long term vision for the company. And that provided constancy of purpose. Underneath that vision was then the top KPIs of the goal deployment process with measurement for the financial performance over the years, for the customer loyalty measurements and expectations over the years, for employee engagement over the years, and for the operational excellence program. So by putting the whole program with all our Lean practices, concepts and tools, the problem solving efforts, the Kaizen events, the whole approach to continuous improvement was now anchored, permanently anchored in the top agenda of the company. And that helped to integrate it and it helped to have a role in the management system and be more than a program with a start and an end.

Got it?

Yeah, that really worked. And then another example that I had, it's amazing. Every company has a different approach, which kind of also the fun of it, right? Another example was where there was really, really a concerted effort from the human resources function to understand the leadership behaviors that are required to keep a continuous improvement culture, a lean culture, alive. And they really put effort in to study what the current state of the leadership behaviors are, what they had learned to be successful with in the past, and how that was different from A lean culture. So as an example, that leadership bench was very strong. Pacesetters, goal setter pacesetters and leadership styles, like visionary leadership styles or the coaching leadership styles, they were not as strong in those arenas. So the great news was then to really collaborate with HR to together help build these relationships. Excuse me, to build these leadership styles and help to make the connections. So it was really operational excellence and age coming together to drive changes in leadership behaviors. And that was another great example.

So those are great examples. But unfortunately it doesn't always work out so good. Sometimes we have some struggles and sometimes this. It doesn't work out for whatever reason. So I'm curious, like have you seen or maybe you've studied situations to where things haven't been integrated? And it's not, hey, this is, it's not part of our DNA. How do you spot when things aren't right?

Yes. And so these can happen along the way. So what is a red flag, so to speak, is when, when we hear debates over the lean system and our business system. Right? And that when the debate is, well, what do we want to do from a business system? But then we have this lean program here that tells me clearly the debates, right. That it is not yet one and the same, that the lean program stands in isolation with all the, the great practices that it has to offer. But then the general way of doing business that is understood as a business system is still separated from that. And we had that situation and the way we addressed it then in this company, we found a resolution to that. That's a good thing. We started again at a very high level with the values of the organization and the behavioral expectations. And we were able to influence them so that the value of, for instance, we continuously improve and innovate or we treat people with respect or we seek excellence where then anchored through the values and behavioral expectations into the fabric of the organization. And that made a huge difference. Again, it's a lot of work. Then that the lean program collaborated very well with the human resources function and the internal communication function.

Yeah, right.

And another one is what I came across is that the lean program was viewed as something only for Frontline. No, it's good for Frontline. Give them the tools. That's awesome. They should solve problems. But no, for higher management, that's not the right thing. And I always had to then reflect why did that happen? Right. It is because in this particular deployment we over emphasize the tools. So we started with the tools and the tools are very nice thing because they are so real. It's so easy to grab a tool and try it out and work with the tool. Whereas when we then start about well, what can leaders do to encourage this environment? What's their role in it? It's getting less concrete and it requires more and more behavioral change. And so with that situation where leaders thought it's just a frontline thing, I mean we had to point fingers at ourselves like the people who started the program. Without a doubt when we started with frontline thinking they are the most and there are the low hanging fruits, which is correct. But then the way we positioned lean was going down south from the get go. So we had to do a lot of unwilling and correcting and convincing to help people see that it's really a management system where everyone in the organization top to bottom is a part of.

Yeah. What's your perspective or thoughts on like policy deployment? Hoshin Kanray, whatever you want to call it, where we're, you know, the leadership is setting some really high level objectives and then we're cascading that down through the organization. Do you feel like that can help?

Huge. It's critical. Right. That is really their role in it. Right. I always say through strategic alignment and it's called goal deployment, hosting planning. But it is so critically important to get buy in into the strategy. It does that. It creates clarity for the organization where the organization is going and it channels the problem solving energy of everyone towards what's really important. I have seen and heard many experiences myself and also heard in talking with peers that often we have so many problem solving ideas that are not aligned to strategy and then the manager is in this predicament at a huddle or at the problem solving event to tell to say this problem is not important to solve and that is a downturn for the employees who were just told, hey, we should solve problems. And in my opinion this whole thing can be, this whole situation can be prevented if strategy alignment or goal deployment is thoroughly done so that everybody is cued into what's important to accomplish and that will automatically focus people's attention on issues that they are getting in the way of achieving. Strategy.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Fantastic. Yeah, fantastic. So Martina, I understand you also have power up your team. I'm wondering, this is your, your, your. Your company, right. Your, your, your, your. Your firm. So tell us a little bit about it and why you decided to, to start it and, and who you work with and that sort of thing.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. I started my own business recently which is called power up your team. And here, here's why. Throughout my career, I got to two convictions. The first is the team is the most important asset of every organization, large or small. And the second one is that the CEO creates culture, period. Nobody else. And I also believe, and this is what Jonathan Jones said in episode 368 of your podcast. He says culture is easier created than changed. And he is so right. So out of all of that, I said, you know, I want to work with small business owners and help them build a management system so that they can grow and scale their business with confidence and ease. Because I believe the principles underlying Lean and Six Sigma or the Shingle principles, take those for instance, they apply to a solopreneur shop, to a company with two people, to a company with 30 people, and to a company with 30,000 people. The way it's implemented may be different. However, I was thinking I would love, or I love to work with business owners and help them take a lean thinking approach as they scale their business so that they do it right the first time, so to speak. And so that's why I started Power up youp Team and Work with I market specifically towards women. And simply because the number of women businesses has skyrocketed since 1972, it went from something around 4% to over 40%. But the number of employees and the revenue has not. So that tells me that they are an overwhelming amount of small women led businesses out there. So I thought I'll market to women business owners who want to scale and grow their business and could use a thought partner in that process.

Nice, nice. Well, very good. I'm wondering, Martina, if someone's listening to this right now and let's say they're just getting started, you know, with their Lean journey, or perhaps they're entertaining the idea of starting this program to hopefully influence their culture. Right. As we said, is there any practical advice you have for that person?

Yes, I think the most, what I would say the most important thing is to create clarity for themselves where they want to be in one to five years and then engage their team in creating the. The approach to get there. That is in my mind, the best way to engage the team and get on a road where everybody is engaged in helping to achieve and solve problems along the way.

I love that. Yeah, you got to have a vision and then you got to be able to keep score. As you to see are we winning or are we losing. Right?

Yes, precisely. Precisely. Right. That's where it starts. And usually see when the CEO himself is not sure and doesn't have this longer term trajectory, it's very tough to get on a highway towards that goal. Right. So that's why that would be in the first sessions where we would discuss then. And then there are other things where we discuss what does it mean to step into leadership. There is this pivot for small business owners where they need to get out of the doing into achieving through others. Right. And that's a big leadership component.

Well, and it's hard also for, for small companies, you know, it's hard because the leader in the beginning, he or she was the one doing everything Right. They had to because they were small. Yeah.

Yes. And so there are small steps where I can help them to create a new awareness. Right. And new tools, how they can engage their team better. And then of course, you know, for every management system, there's a component of how do you build your HR structure, how do you make sure people process and technology collaborate well. And there's work around governance, procedures, norms, org chart and then the process side, of course, what are the key processes, what are the moments of truth and where are measurements required, leading and lagging so that the CEO so the owner can step with more confidence into a leadership role and doesn't have the feeling they need to be involved in every detail base.

Yeah, Love it. What's the best way, if folks want to connect with you, Martina, what's the best direction you can give them?

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. My website is www.powerupyourteam.com and on there is my email address. That's martina@powerupyourteam.com and they can get in touch with me right from there.

Got it, got it. Are you on LinkedIn and everything else?

Of course. Yes, of course on LinkedIn, it's just Martina Kuhlmeier. Thank you for the tip. Martina Kuhlmeier on LinkedIn. I'm there and I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn as well. Of course.

Wonderful. Yeah. And so this is episode 432. So just go to gembapodcast.com look for episode 432 and we're going to link to everything that Martina just mentioned. So, hey, thank you for coming on Martina. This was a lot of fun.

Yeah, thank you so much, Fawn. Same here. Thank you.

All right, you take care.

You too.

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