GA 440 | Engagement, Education, and Recognition with Tom Hughes

So if you don't get engagement, forget it. If you don't get education, if people aren't getting educated to see waste, forget it. If they haven't got a feedback loop that reinforces that behavior with recognition, forget it. You won't work.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Tom Hughes to the show. Now, Tom and I have some mutual friends, namely the good folks over at Seating Matters, Ryan and the crew there doing amazing work in Northern Ireland, and also Paul Akers, who Tom has been heavily influenced by Paul Akers. And so today we had a really fun conversation. You're gonna hear Thomas full of energy and passion about all things Lean. And today, I suppose the main topic was standardization, just the importance of standards, what they are, how to go about getting the culture kind of prepared and ready for standardization. And so. But Tom's a natural storyteller and he's written a book, and it's a free book. In fact, we're going to link to it here in the show notes. And he walks through some of the key principles for his book. In particular, one of them that I really appreciated was the importance of candor, of being candid, which doesn't mean being mean or ugly or anything like that, just means being, hey, this is how the Lean train, if you will, is going to be moving. We want you to be on board, but if it's not the right fit for you, then let's figure that out. So some really important discussion there. So I think you're going to appreciate this episode. I know I did. Again, Tom's got all kinds of energy and he was super fun to talk to. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 440. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 440. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Tom, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm great, Ron. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on today.

Yeah. Where are you calling in from today? Not Iowa. Right.

A little town called Tomb in Northern Ireland on the banks of the River Ban. And Northern Ireland is like, we're jockeying to be the new Japan of Lean over here.

Yeah. Yeah. So we've got a mutual friend over there, the Seating Matters crew.

Right. Yeah, we absolutely do. In our little pre the show chat. Yeah. With mutual friend and Ryan Tierney. He's played a crucial part in my own Lean journey about really changing my perception of what Lean was really for the better. And since that moment, things have been really different.

Yeah. Well, Fantastic. Ryan, I know you're going to be listening to this one. So rumor has it you guys have made a few improvements since we Gemba Academy visited there. My gosh, it's been several years now since we were there to film Gemba Academy live. And so maybe we need to come back, man.

We have a plethora of places for you to go now. You can do Northern Ireland tour.

Hey, man, Exactly. We do our own, like, what they call it Kaikaku tour. Right, To Northern Ireland. Right. Forget Japan, we don't need Japan.

In Japan. You can do one in Northern Ireland.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Hey, don't laugh. You never know, man.

Stranger things said in jest.

Yes, well, awesome. Well, hey, I know you've listened to the show before, Tom. We do like to get things rolling out of the gate with our guests sharing a. So, what do you got?

So my quote is from Taiichi Ono. Without standards, there can be no improvement.

Yeah.

And one of the reasons I like that is because it's quite controversial. I've seen a post on LinkedIn and stuff and people have different visions on that. And for me personally, why I like it is because we've all been there. We've all, wow, we've made this great improvement. We're all excited about it. We go back out into the shop a couple of weeks later and it's like, where is it? So, you know, without standards, very often your improvement is just another variation and it's just a source of disappointment. So one of the things I'm really passionate about is changing that, where up until the last year or two, I've seen very good, very few really good standard implementations where they're living and breathing, useful tools for people doing the work. So that's what I've got really passionate about. And so we'll talk about that a bit more today.

I love it. Well, we've already learned a lot about you. You've got great friends and you live in an amazing part of the world. But tell us a little bit more about your background. You know, how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and then what you're up to these days.

Well, I grew up here in Northern Ireland in a farm in the middle of nowhere. I went to university in Birmingham, England, which at that time in the late 80s, was the heart of the UK automotive industry. So I was very lucky to be there at that time with the Japanese transplants just ramping up production. The Nissans and the Toyotas and the Hondas. I was very lucky to get A job in the sector straight out of college, literally sweeping floors. Got to be a quality inspector, got to be a quality engineer. Then I was an SQA guy. Then I was a quality manager. And yeah, I had a good time, hard, hard environment, a tough school. And I was a quality manager by 25 in automotive, which was really young. I was a sourcing director in non automotive for like a 400 million division of Alstom. That was my first non automotive role. When I was in my early 30s. I came back to Ireland, did an MBA at Trinity College. Don't shoot me for it. I'm not a typical mba. That's fine there. I got in a boatload of debt and had to take the first job I could get that would pay the bills, which was back in manufacturing. I was a supply chain director for a hydraulic company that wasn't working very well at the time. Happened to be private equity backed. We did a management buyout on that. We grew it to be a $200 million company with 16 geographic locations. The final five years I was commercial director. So I switched from the gamekeeper to the poacher and we exited that fairy tale exit. I joke with people. I used to be a millionaire and then I got divorced, so I'm not a millionaire anymore. And yeah, so the last few years I'm back in the real world and I got back in the industry and I was doing a company transformation here in Northern Ireland. And the famous, it's now become an infamous little incident where the very first day I turned up to do that turnaround, I thought I was doing a strategic reposition of the company, but they asked me, can you implement Lean? And I was horrified. And the reason why I was horrified is even with all that exposure like Lean, before it was really even called Lean widely I had this image of Lean as being this dry analytical thing that was done to people. It was like very much pushed into an organization, very hard to sustain. It was all effort audits and flip charts and workshops and basically words that don't enthrall me coming out of my mouth. And fortunately for me, I came into contact with Ryan Tierney within a couple of weeks of that incident and everything changed from there. Wow.

And what are you up to these days then?

Well, since that I've been working with bunch of companies, helping them with their 2 second lean implementation. I'm sitting here in Lumen Electronics. I'm an equal partner in this business. We're an electronic engineering and manufacturing company. I've written a book called Improvement Starts with I Which you can get@imPROVEMENTstartswitheye.com for free and audio and PDF. And thousands of people have been using that book. It's brilliant. It's a set of stabilizers for people wanting to build a lean culture. And we founded a software product called gembadox, which helps people make standards living, breathing and good. We're very proud of it. We have hundreds of companies all over the world already using it, and so I'm interfacing with them on a daily basis. So it took something I was already quite strong at. And now because I'm working with so many different people, I'm getting to see how you do that. Right.

Love it. Love it. Well, so the topic of the day, Tom, is standards. So I thought maybe we could just start with, you know, not, not assuming anything. Our audience does all different levels of experience with Lean. But when we, when you say standards, just define what. What are you talking about? Just so we can level set?

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question because people have so many different academic views. For me, it's really a documented and agreed way of doing something. And the key words there are documented and agreed and understood. I should add that as well, because we can get into, is it a standard work instruction, Is it a sop, is it a this, is it a that? And even from what I now seen, and interfacing with so many different people, there's so many different perspectives. But for me, if we just boil it down to that, it's a documented and agreed and understood way of doing something that we can train people against and that can evolve. That's what a standard is.

Got it, Got it. So, I mean, it's not easy, right, for a company that perhaps doesn't have a good culture of standardization, for lack of a better phrase. If we, if we're trying to gain that, trying to create this culture that, that respects standards. Like, how do you go about that?

Well, the two words that don't often go together in the same sentence are culture and standards. So for me, it's a common problem in Lean, full stop, is that people take the tools and the techniques like standards, and they try to apply them without understanding that you need to have a culture that can receive them. And if you don't do that, if you don't build the culture in tandem with your tools and techniques, you're going to fail. So what I did with this whole approach, it ties in nicely with what we did with the book. So the book is about building a culture. So we focus on that, that you've got a culture that can say for the standards and the tools and techniques can hang on to. And then you've got a hope of doing it like the. The book is really simple and straightforward. I have five C's in the book and they are Candor, commitment, coaching, consistency, and continuous learning. And it's a simple step by step approach.

Talk about Candor. What do you mean by candor?

Candor is the big one and it's the one that I get the most feedback on, and positive feedback as well, because I am very candid in that chapter. Actually, Paul Akers is a good friend of mine and Paul was one of the people who originally saw the book. He was one of the first people to see it. He was adamant that I get asked every week to write a foreword and I never do, so don't be offended when I don't write yours. But anyhow, he read the book and the introduction. He loved Candor chapter. He said it's terrible, you need to rewrite it. So credit to Paul Akers. He told me to rewrite that chapter.

He was candid, right?

Yeah. He is the epitome of Candor, that guy. So anyway, the main thing in there, it talks about building a culture of speak without offending and listen without defending, which is something I really learned at Old Laird. We were very conscious about telling people that was the culture we wanted. So we wanted to surface problems. We wanted people to be able to be open about them, respectful about how they communicated them, and not be defensive when they received that feedback. So that's one part of the Candor chapter. That's something that requires effort and consistency every day. But the bit that people really latch onto is the change the people, change the people part of that chapter. So in my experience, organization change fails most often because of this point, is that people fail to get alignment within their leadership team. So they can't get people lined up. There's one or two people that really won't get it, that's not dealt with by the leadership team. And they try to proceed with that misaligned team. When you do that, you will fail. So what I say, and change the people, change the people, is that leadership needs to deal with that, with Candor. So you have conversations about it. Hey, buddy, you're not getting on board. The train's going, you're not on it. It's up to you whether to get on or not. And eventually, if it doesn't work out, they have to go, right? So the Candor element is about that. But please don't misunderstand. The whole thing about improvement starts with I as a book is that it's a pull system. So you, as an individual and as a leader are improving what you do every day. You're practicing lean. You're not the typical carpet walking senior executive who tells people to do it and supports them with a budget. You're it. You're embodying the change. So that's the tone of the whole book. But Candor is a crucial chapter.

I love it.

I enjoyed writing it.

How I love it. It reminds me of who was a pogo Said. I think, I think it was more like an environmental thing way back in the day. But he's. Yeah, I love the phrase I have found the problem. And he is I. Right?

Yes.

You know, and it does, you know, so many times you'll hear people, oh, my. My manager doesn't support me. Which may be true. Okay, got it. We'll work on that. But what do you control? Right. Yourself, Right? Yeah.

Your span of control. Wrong. And it goes back to, I'm not joking, the very, very first interaction I had with Paul Akers. So I've talked to Ryan Tierney on the phone. Ryan tells me, you need to read this two second lean book. I'd read it within 24 hours and I got it immediately. And I wanted to do 2 second lean, but my ownership team, they did not want to do two second lead. So I wasn't in corner office, right? So Ryan told me, you can reach out to Paul Akers. And I was like, this dude sold like half a million books. He's just going to answer some randomer from Northern Ireland, some heck, 100%. So write him the wall effect in WhatsApp. Right. How do I persuade the management team to do this? And his first message back was, hey, what a great message, but who are you? And the next thing he goes on to say, right, Tom, once he got my name, was that it's pull, not push. It's pull, not push. You will never persuade, you will never push anyone into doing this. You have enough waste for 15 lifetimes. You focus it getting rid of your waste. You be a beacon of excellence. You will magnify, you will magnetize people to come with you.

Yeah.

And that's how you do lean properly.

Yeah.

And by the way, this is controversial. I'll say it in your podcast. He also told me, and if they don't get it, leave. So I applied that to the letter. I took his book and I took the team on Lean Tours. I took them to seating matters. I took them to several other companies. I, right from that day became an overnight lean maniac. I was practicing lean. I was doing little corny cheesy videos. All this is in my book. Improvement starts with I. I was bringing it into all my stand up meetings. So let's talk about waste. All the eight wastes are up there, guys. Well, are we solving the. Getting to the root cause of the problem. I was building up vocabulary into the organization.

Yeah.

Have you read the book yet, lads? And no joke, six weeks later we were doing morning meetings and I had the team bought in and we were rocking and rolling.

Nice.

And it did work.

Nice. I love it. I love it.

Well, that's the candor part.

I love it, I love it, I love it. I love it. Because you don't, you don't hear that. I don't think you hear that enough. Right. The importance of being direct to being candid. It doesn't mean being a jerk, but also.

No, it does not just means, hey.

This is the reality of the world here, right? We're going to, we're going to, we're going to improve or we're going to perish. Right.

And the speak without offending, listen without defending is critical. Yeah, it's the tone of the candor that you want. And also what I write about in the book is that, you know, when you've got a critical, you're trying to build a critical mass for change and you have one or two people that maybe in three lifetimes are never going to get this waste thing. They're generally some of your best workers. The people who were really profiting from the old tribal system that were the king firefighters. And now you're building this egalitarian culture where we're all going to respect each other and we're all going to be equal. Very often it's that individual who struggles and often what I've seen is that they don't get fired, they leave. That's what happens. It's like you're lifting the level and some people just don't want to come with you.

Right.

But, but ultimately, as a leader, if that person openly opposes the change consistently, you can't tolerate that. I did a turnaround in France years ago before 2 second lean and I was very lucky that we were in a terrible situation. Awful industrial relations. I was running the factory. I had two French directors like in their 60s counseling me that were very, really valuable advisors for me. And they used the term and it comes from the French Revolution, when they were using the guillotine and they used to say it's to encourage the rest. And I was advised we had a couple of really vocal opponents to the change we were making. Back then, it was just basically we wanted to be a good team. It wasn't two second lean. We just wanted to have an effective organization with the team that worked together properly. There were a couple of people who were really opposing it. And yep, we had to do that.

Yeah.

And what you do, when you do that, you show the rest of the organization these guys are serious about this. And it's not fear. It's really not. That's not the tone of what you create. You create. The guys that are coming on board feel supported. If you don't do that, what happens is they fall to the lowest common denominator over time. Like, I'll give you another little story, Ron, because I know you like it.

Yeah.

So whenever I had my very first automotive job, I was straight out of college. I didn't, I wasn't. I didn't get a job as an engineer. I was working on a production line, building sunroofs, and I was full of enthusiasm. The little student guy really wanted to make an impression. I was doing everything because I really wanted to get a proper job. An inspector, an engineer, whatever. I was there for six months and I didn't know if that was going to be it. Is that going to be my life? I went to college for nothing. It was a recession on. The guy beside me had another better degree than me and these guys did not care. And I'm there, the young enthusiastic guy. And after a while you look at the guy next to you who's getting treated no differently from you, and you go, why am I bothering? I'm doing all this extra stuff and I'm not getting treated any better than he is. And I. That stuck with me. And that's like over 30 years of my career. But that was such a valuable experience to understand that if you don't differentiate, you're doing your people a disfavor, especially the ones that are coming on board. Yeah, yeah. We kind of drifted into a big tangent, but no, it's good.

Yeah, it's so important.

Culture is what everything rests on. And when I. The feedback I get from people reading the book is that it's like looking in a mirror is the most common thing that people say.

Right.

I can see myself because I talk about my weaknesses. I don't pretend to be perfect. Yeah, it's hard. This stuff Isn't easy.

Right.

Nobody likes those conversations, but they have to happen or you're not going to succeed.

Yep. No, exactly. Well, and the whole idea of making sure people are on board and if they're not, they can get off the train, so to speak. You know, the only, I think the reason, one of the fundamental reasons for that is we want people to be intrinsically motivated to do the work. And for that to happen, they've got to have, they've got to align with your purpose. Right. With your purpose of your organization. And if they don't, with their heart aligned to your purpose, there's no way they could ever achieve intrinsic motivation. You know what I mean?

100%. And Ron, a word you used there that I think is not used enough in business and in lean circles is heart. Because lean is, it's too often perceived as a head based analytical set of tools. And that was my miscomprehension prior to understanding this 2 second lean culture building activity. And really what it is, is if you can get engagement, and I talk about this in the book again, the critical recipe that you need with your daily system, your daily weekly monthly system. You need engagement, you need education and then you need recognition. You need those three things. So if you don't get engagement, forget it. If you don't get education, if people aren't getting educated to see waste, forget it. If they haven't got a feedback loop that reinforces that behavior with recognition, forget it. You won't work. And the last two parts of that jigsaw are improvement and results. And what people who don't understand this are always way too impatient. And they want the improvements and they want the results without the first three. And that's the problem. If you focus on getting engagement, making people curious, making people fun and make it a fun process that people want to be part of, you're a huge part of the way there's. And then it's educate and then you get the improvements happening, you bring them back into your system. Recognize Ron for his great improvement today and the team go, yay, you're cooking on gas. And that's what it's about. And I heard a great quote from a really good lean friend of mine, a guy Brannon Burton at Sunrock Corporation in the US they're stellar at leaning construction. Like unbelievable. There's been an AME tour a couple of months back. Will blow your listeners minds if they go and look at it. It's not Brannan's quote, but it's him. I heard it from there are very few principles in Lean. There's only a few principles. There are hundreds of tactics. And for me, those principles of engagement, education and recognition, that's all you need to worry about. How you do that is about your organization's existing DNA and how you get your. It's like, honestly, I look at it like a Rubik's cube when I'm helping people do this, right, because everybody, it's a bit different. It's a puzzle. How do I work this one out? But that's all you need. It gets a lot easier when you realize that's the only three things I need to do. Get them engaged, get them, get these people interested. Education is quite easy. You've got Gemba Academy. I used to use your videos all the time. And that's no joke, I told you before we started. And then we go into the recognition part and everybody feels good about it. Improvements come, the results follow.

Yeah.

And even that, Ron, I can tell you, comes back to one of my very first literal exchanges with Ryan Tierney. So I have it on video and the video is on a QR code in the book. So picture the scene. I've been to the morning meeting at City Matters, blown away. I'm corporate Seagull guy. You know, I used to run a 200 million dollar company with 16 units. You know, hey, Ryan, what are your key performance indicators? And it's great. He looks at me like, what's this guy talking about? And he goes, no, we don't really worry about them. All we do is focus on growing and developing the people. And we find like the rest of that just comes, all that quality and lead time that just follows. And my jaw literally drops as he tells me this. And those are the crit. Like I've covered a couple of the key Satori moments. The Paul Akers worry about yourself. And the second one is worry about growing and developing your people, because that's the cause. Yeah, you see what people worry about. People are constantly trying to manage an effect when they worry about their improvements and their results, especially the results. The cause is the people.

Yeah, well, and especially in this environment today, I don't know how it is in Northern Ireland, but here in the States in particular, it's, it's tough, man, you know, getting folks to, you know, stay on, get on board with your company and then stay on board or to go next door where they're going to make a few bucks more or something like that, you know. So, yeah, investing in our people.

For me, this is the antidote to that problem.

Right.

Because we have that problem globally. Like, I'm in all kinds of link groups, literally friends and contacts globally. And everybody has this issue. It's not local. And the only way you can deal with it is by having an exceptional work environment. That doesn't mean getting a sauna in your office or a massage person to come every month. Those things are nonsense. What works is people come energized. I use it when I talk to. I don't really. I don't do coaching as a core thing, but I love doing it. I do it as a paid guy sometimes. And I joke with. I don't. The image I give to customers is, do your people come to work tapping on their fingers on the steering wheel? Would you like them to? Because that's what this is about. It's about. And I think. And what I've done and seen, that can be done with great leadership and a simple system. And it's not an overnight thing, but it takes me into the next part of my c. So we talked about candor, commitments, the next best. Because it's not easy. This is not easy. I don't paint this picture of, you know, I'll just follow the thing and you'll all be there in six months. No, it's difficult. And you need to make this whole culture thing your number one priority, which is very, very difficult for most leadership teams to do because. Well, I can't make it my number one priority because what about my results? My results are the number one priority because if I don't deliver the next quarter, I'm out. Right. So I'm from that world. I know what that world looks like. But ultimately you need to get more of a priority on your culture and how you can build that amazing, stellar work environment, which is not complicated, honestly, with the way that I advocate and know lots of people are doing. You've got that commitment of you being the change. And again, most carpet walking directors don't want to be that. They want to buy their lean. And it's impossible. I use the analogy of there is literally nothing worthwhile in this life that you can buy. You can't buy relationships, you can't buy your health, you can't buy fitness, you can't buy wisdom, you can't buy skills. You only get that through your own effort. And it's the same with your lean culture. You can't buy it. You can buy advice, you can buy a personal trainer. Like, those things are possible, but you have to do the lifting. I actually consulted with a company making sports equipment here. And the analogy I use with them is, look, you can go to the gym and go to seating matters, for example and you see somebody with a six pack of abs if you know what they are not like that world class physique. But you decide, oh, you want that and you get the best personal trainer in the world. But at the end of the day, only you can lift the weights and only you can decide not to eat the cheeseburger. And it's the same with your lean culture. You can read the best books, get the best advice, but the leadership team themselves have to do it. And that's where the commitment comes in. And people need to understand that it's the leadership team. And also everybody through the organization needs to understand that. And when you can get that buy in and responsibility, you're really starting to move. Because when you look at the problems people have building a lean culture, it's generally, here's a little anecdote, right? The amount of times I've heard this in my career, why won't they do X? You know, why won't they make improvements every day? Why won't they keep the housekeeping properly? I know I last people, well, are you doing it? And the answer is invariably the same. No, I'm not doing it. I'm telling them to do it, I'm expecting them to do it, but I'm not doing it myself. That's them, they do that. So when you realize that, you fully understand it, you're being a total hypocrite. And whenever you start to go, right, I'm going to make the improvements, I'm going to be this embodiment, I rob a Paul Akers term XXX leader, exceptional, extraordinary example. Every day when you can say that to yourself, if you're a senior leader in an organization, I'd put money on with you that your organization's coming with you if you can do that. And that's how you do it. So you commit to be that guy or girl and you're going to go far and you also know that it's going to be difficult and this is a priority. That's what commitment's all about. And yeah, so I also go into why or you know, some of the things you commit. Because people look at two second lead and go, oh what? How can we take a half hour, an hour, a day out of production? That's a common. I had that problem when I first came on this path. So it was like, ah, how do we do it? And A French colleague of mine from the old lair days, I was telling him about this challenge, and he told me, all you have to do is get 15% better and it's there forever. And in that first lean implementation, we got 26% measured productivity improvement within five months, including taking an hour out.

Yeah.

And that time's with you forever. You can use that to get better forever. So the commitment's there, but I wouldn't worry about the financial commitment. Typically, you'll get that back in three months, so that's nothing to worry about.

Well, I don't want to give away. We're not going to give away the whole book. I'm going to. You said it's a free book.

It's a free book.

Okay. So we're going to link to it, and I'm going to have everybody. I haven't read it myself, so I want to go read it and listen to it. Do you narrate the audiobook or.

I do, yeah. It's on the Lean Play app. Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, we're going to link to it and have everybody. As soon as they switch this podcast off, they'll go. They'll go start the audiobook.

So. And you can reach all my contact details. There's an improvementstartswithi.com website. Got my personal details on there. People can reach out. We've already have a signal group with more than 20 people on their lean journey on there. It's the most vibrant signal group in the world. It's so, so proud of it. Yes, it's great.

Yes, fantastic. Well, man, it's been fun having you on your, Your, Your. Your passion is. Is evident and contagious, even. So keep up the, the great work and the energy and. Yeah. And keep. And tell Ryan that. Yeah. That Gemba Academy needs to make a trip back to Northern Ireland. I'll have to drag my wife along. You know, she hated having to go to see. She never travels with me ever. But when I told her that we were going to Northern Ireland, she's like, I'm going with you.

So the funny part is, like, we started this podcast. We're going to talk about standards. We haven't even talked about them. Maybe you'll have me back and we'll talk about.

Oh, yeah, well, we. We can. We can have you back on, no problem down the road. But more importantly, we'll get. Get you on video when we come out to Northern Ireland.

If people are interested in the software we develop for that, that'll be handy. It's Gembadocs.com and it's part of that process is to give people easy ownership of standards. So instead of pushing standards in and making them handcuffs, this is about democratizing standards. Let people easily create them and update them and access them and it changes the whole tone of how standards get done in an organization.

Love it.

I'm really proud of it.

Love it. We'll link to that as well in the show notes. So good stuff.

All right, well here, Ron, I had an absolute ball. Thanks for being such a great interview.

Well, thanks for being a great interviewee. It was fun. All right. You take care.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Ron.

Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.