GA 442 | Getting Decisions That Stick with Kurt Neubek

How do people make decisions? Let's just discuss or understand the psychology of decision, decision making archetypes, what kind of information people need to make decisions. Because there's not just one style or one type. And even the different ways we learn, the different learning styles impacts this. So it comes down to you have to give people all the information they're going to need the first time if you want a decision to stick.

Today I'm excited to welcome Kurt Newbeck back to the. Kurt came onto the podcast just a little while ago, like four years ago, I suppose. When Kurt told me that, I couldn't believe it had been that long. But Kurt is an architect and he's a great lean thinker and he actually took the drive up from Houston, Texas to Keller, Texas, where we're located here, and we did an in studio interview and it was a really fun episode. I think you're gonna enjoy this one. So Kurt is again, as I mentioned, is an architect. So he's been applying lean for many, many years, his work as an architect and just lean construction in general. And so we talked about a variety of, sort of, variety of topics of how he's applying lean to his role as, you know, in that architecture world. But more importantly, we got into some really fun discussion on like during the pandemic when, you know, many of us were working from home and that sort of thing, how they kind of continued their lean thinking process and their collaborative process, you know, building a building and how they did that over things like zoom and how they kept it fun and engaging and really how they didn't miss a beat. And so it was a pretty eye opening conversation for me just to hear that story. And then towards the end we got into another interesting topic. So Curtis got this, It's a training program and it's also a talk that he's given on this thing called, he calls it getting decisions that stick. So we talked about how, how terrible a situation it is when people aren't able to make a decision and then perhaps they make a decision and then they change their mind down the road and how damaging that can be and from a lean perspective, you know, rework and that sort of thing. And so Kurt's got this process that he's been following and that he's been teaching on how to, how to make better decisions and how to be able to make decisions again that stick. And so some really good conversation about that. And then we wrap the show up with Kurt just kind of speaking to those folks who might be new to Lee or Just thinking about practicing lean or maybe they've started, but they're not sure you know how to go about it. Kirk gives some really nice advice there. So I think you're going to like this show. I know I had a lot of fun and I appreciate Kirk coming in. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 4, 42. Again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 4, 42. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Kurt, welcome back to the show.

How are you? Thank you, Ron. I'm, I'm great. And it's a pleasure to be here with you.

Yeah, when you say be here, you're literally in the studio. So we're doing a face to face interview. So we don't do many of these. We do most of them over zoom or whatever it is. But appreciate you driving all the way up from Houston, what is it, about five hour drive?

Yeah, just shy five. Yep.

So people listening. This is commitment to the podcast. They drove five hours to be in person, but we had a nice lunch, so that was nice catching up that way, Kurt. But excited to catch back up with you. So you know the drill at the beginning of every episode, we like to get started with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you have?

So my quote for today is, you cannot speak of ocean to a well frog.

Whoa.

You cannot speak of ocean or the ocean to a well frog. Meaning that when you're talking to someone or. Yeah, any kind of conversation, if they've lived in a well all their lives, you cannot ask them. It's not worth having a conversation with them about the ocean. Don't ask them, tell me about the ocean. If they've never been to the ocean, I think it's important to bring it up because I think it's important when we're working with people that it's not fair to ask them a question they're not prepared to answer. And so often people will ask questions when it's really not a fair question because you don't know the ocean. And I see that certainly as an architect in consulting and people asking the client, well, what is it you want? And I think that's part of our job, any consultant to bring to the client, here's the ocean, here's the world of what's out there, what's possible. And yes, you might have a very good client who's also worldly and knows all about the ocean. But typically users or many people who you're dealing with they don't know the ocean. So part of our responsibility, I think, is bring them that knowledge, expose them to all that, then you can have an informed conversation.

I love it, man. I have never heard that quote, but it's fantastic.

I love it.

All right, well, Kurt, man, 2018 was the last time we formally talked on the podcast. A few, few things have happened since then, I guess, you know, in the world and all the rest of it. But before we get into what you've been up to these last four years, just in case folks didn't listen to episode228.228, and they don't remember who Kurt is, but tell us a little bit about yourself and, and how maybe how you first involved in continuous improvement and architecture and all this kind of stuff, and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Yeah, okay. So I started. My dad's an architect, or was an architect. And so I grew up around it. And I was exposed early on to decisions about. I would ask dad things like, well, how do you know what that should be? When he's designing a bench or something, Is there some way you look that up? He said, no, just build a mock up. Just build something and test it out. Try it. And then working in the workshop with him and doing woodworking with him, it was always about, well, if you're going to build something, a lot of these, the first thing you do is you build the jig. You build the tool. To build the tools, you want that consistency. So it was introduced to me very early on the idea of, well, I love that, the concept of a jig, I use it out of context, meaning, or I use that more generically. The idea of, well, let's make sure we're establishing something that will allow us to do this in a repetitive way. Kind of been a tool maker in that sense, in the most generic sense, whether that's even developing a spreadsheet template or something like that, let's make something. To me, that's the jig. That's the equivalent of the working jig. Make a template. So we're always doing it the same, make it easier to have some consistency and standardization. But so that's early on. And then as a young architect, I was exposed to in the 80s and 90s about work of Deming and Duran. And I was doing a lot of work in consulting in early phases of design, working with clients to talk to them, helping them think through what are their requirements before we start designing, what are the expectations? And they're Documented or they're known requirements. And then we would work with them to help them describe the full suite of what it is they're expecting and the needs separate the needs from the wants, things like that. So along the way there that I got exposed to again what was Lean and well, it wasn't called lean but the early Deming Duran and things like that and quality process improvements, improvement quality process alignment and all those things. And then, oh, I don't know what it was six years or so ago I said, I just really, I really believe in Lean. And I said I really want to just dive right into this. And so that's when I said, well I looked around, said I'm going to get the black belt with Gamma Academy. So went through that process with you and that was great. So that's how I got essentially to a few years ago and then more recently I've been also an instructor for the Lean Construction Institute and an instructor for the Construction Owners association of America which teaching lean for owners for companies that have design and construction divisions, essentially that's what they consider a construction owner, helping them understand the owner's role in a lean project. And then I just skipped right over. I'm also my full time job, I'm an architect with a firm called Page or Page Sutherland. Page, been there for almost 28 years now.

Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. You told me that at lunch and I was like what, 28 years? You don't hear that very often anymore. So that's fantastic. Like as far as your, I'm curious, like you're within your day job at Page, are you actively practicing Lean and thinking that way, Is it helping you with your work and influencing your work?

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. So and there's two different levels how we apply Lean and design and construction. One is when we're working with clients at the very beginning in what's called architectural programming, helping define the requirements, but also in the planning before you're actually designing the building, you help them essentially design what's the flow that we want. Whether that's a flowchart or then that becomes architecturally what we call an adjacency diagram or bubble diagram that says based on the flow, these are rooms that should be near each other. And so you're trying to optimize that the flow for whatever functions are going to happen in that building. Some buildings don't have a specific flow. If it's an office building, there are some things you want the bathrooms to be central and the stairs need to be A certain distance apart. But other building types are like a hospital, very process driven and you have to understand the processes and you want to minimize the steps and the travel distance and you want to increase the throughput and reduce the turnaround time. So there's a lot of those kinds of lean thinking about helping, not helping the client, not only with the process, but how do we optimize the building to help them optimize the process.

Yeah, you know, we were talking about Gemba Academy. We built a building here a few years ago and you were asking me about the construction process and all that. And I was thinking about when you first asked me, I was like, yeah, it was pretty smooth. And it was really with our builder and the architects and all that, it was pretty good. The problem for us. And I didn't even share this with you yet, so I'm hitting you new with this here live on the podcast. And I don't want to trash my nice city here, but my gosh, the, the city folks that we're working with, you know, for the permits and whatnot, they had like a hundred percent turnover of their staff since when we started the project to the end. So like, you know, we would be working with one city engineer and getting oh yeah, that looks good on your plans and all the rest of it. And then that person's gone. And a new person would come in and be like, wait, what is this? And we're like, well, yeah, last guy said that was okay. Yeah, no, it's not okay. And so boy, we had a of a time just within our, our poor architects and, and construction folks were, they were really trying their best. So I'm curious, like from a lean perspective, how do you like think about that? Like and because you don't really have control over that city, you know, engineer or whoever it might be.

Right, right. No, as well. What you described is a kind of a perfect storm, you know, in a bad way that, that you. It's already. You have to plan, you have to work with, find out from the city how long is permitting taking nowadays and work that into your schedule. And then very often if that approval time is very long, then many municipalities or other what we call authorities having jurisdiction. So that might be a state agency or something like that, other people who have to approve it, that if you work with them sometimes they have a fast track or short term process or you can give them a certain amount in order that will allow you to get started. So for example, you might do on a project like yours, if you know it's going to take a long time, then you might start splitting out the scope. So can we at least get a demolition permit? Can we at least start doing some site permitting in order to get things going while identify what's on a critical path and what else can we start getting off of the critical path to shorten that amount of. Even if you can't shorten the total time, at least shorten the amount of time that you're dead in the water.

Yeah, yeah. If there's no value being added, man, it's like we're in a bad way. Yeah. Awesome.

Now, I mentioned that there are really two ways that we use lean in design and construction. That was the first way about process flow and things like that. But the second is in the broader sense of the design and construction team. I know you've interviewed many people talking about the design during construction and a lean construction institute. And so there's the broader sense of how do we use it in the whole design and construction community or as far as the way the team is going to work. Now, you may know many projects are what's called design, bid, build. We design the building before you know who's going to build it and then you get to take bids. And then only after the building is designed do you know who's going to be building it. That's still used in many, many building types because at least theoretically you get the lowest cost if you use that approach. But many projects, especially if they're more complex, then the idea of intentionally overlapping and bringing the contractor and getting them involved during a design process allows you to have better collaboration. Just like in manufacturing, where you're getting the engineers and the manufacturing people to work together from the beginning. So it's kind of a broadly leaner process in that way that you're reducing a lot of waste and increasing the value. Because respecting that, well, the contractor has a lot to add as far as the designers know, understand the process flow and how the buildings go together. But the contractor has a unique perspective about adding information about, oh, the constructability or availability, materials or sequence of how they want to build things. Or they might say this particular thing is there's a really long lead time, especially since COVID There's been like, well, we can't. Yes, conventionally, certain kind of ceiling trusses, for example, roof trusses have been the lowest cost way to do things. But you can't get those right now. You just can't get them. Or it takes two years or something. Well, that means we have to start Design it around a completely different system, and then what's the next one that's most cost effective? So that kind of sensitivity to what the marketplace is doing is one of the great advantages of having contractor involved from the beginning. So once you have that, then you're talking about a lot of ideas and processes to get them, or let's say techniques and tools and techniques to get them all working together. And so that there's a whole suite of lean tools associated with that.

Yeah. You know, within a manufacturing environment, this design for manufacturability we'll talk about. So same kind of concept, right? So now it's interesting. It's like, do you have, like, is there a. A movement within the construction world and architecture world of design for inflationary impact or something like that when you're thinking about, you know what I mean?

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. Because that's the awful reality right now is things are costing so much that perhaps there's other more affordable ways, like trust us, can't get them, so we got to go this other direction. So that's really interesting when you think about that.

In fact, even the term in. In construction and design, and construction is a term that we used, fast track has been around for probably 30 years. But that term came about during a very high inflationary period where they said a particular design firm, a design and construction team, said we need to find a way to deliver this much faster because if we can shave six months off the total design and construction time, that's a lot of money. And so that's what we now call fast track, meaning, well, how do we split this into packages so we can, for example, get started on the site work, just do what's called the corn shell, the outside of the building, it's.

Quick changeover for construction.

That's exactly right. That's right.

Yeah. That's wonderful. That's so good. Well, you've mentioned Lean Construction Institute a couple times now, and so I understand at their most recent annual conference, I believe it was, you did a talk on the Texas Children's Hospital where you went involved and Lean was involved. So what was going on with that?

Yeah, so that's a, that's a really good example. I mean, we. You asked me how's it affecting how lean in sort of daily life, and that's a perfect case study that on that project, from the very beginning, the client didn't insist on taking a lean approach, but they had already. But they were already doing a lot of things were frankly very lean. It's a great client. They're very experienced and they're very team oriented to begin with. So they had already selected us and the contractor to do this project together with them. And so then we got together with the contractor and some of the other major consultants involved and said, I prompted and said, let's put together a list or approach for what's the best way we all know how. We as an industry know how to deliver a project and it was basically lean. And so we put together a presentation from the client, a joint presentation for all those people and said, look, this is the best way the industry knows how to do it. Some of these approaches might be, some of these you'll recognize. You might not have been calling them the industry word, but you've been doing this to a degree. And other things are new ideas. And which of these are you interested in doing? Because sometimes clients say, oh, let's just start with baby steps, let's just bite off those three because it's a new idea. But this client said, well, no, if that's the best way to do it, why would we do it any other way? So we said, okay, great. So the first thing we did, we trained everybody about all these various lean tools and approaches and about a big impact on focusing on the team, building the team, obviously, respect for people. Well, the other really interesting part about this particular story is we interviewed for the project, I think it was December 2019, and then in January we were awarded the project. February, we had the first in person meeting and then. And then everyone went home. Yeah, yeah. So we said after one in person meeting, we said, okay, let's figure out how to do this whole thing virtually and still have the same kind of team camaraderie, respect for people, all those things. And it worked amazingly well. Shockingly well. People from within our company were from all different offices were hearing, what are you guys doing? Everybody who's working on a project loves that, what are you doing? And I mentioned to the client one, I said, my answer was. And I mentioned to the client, I said that yes, clearly all these things we're doing are great, but I also have to give credit to, we have a really good owner too who understands this and has bought into this. And the client said, well, yes, thank you, but we're working with other architects too, and those projects aren't going as well as this one. So then we turned to the contractor and said, well, is it you? And they said, no, we're hearing the same thing. People from all around the company are asking us what are you guys doing on it? What's the magic? And it's this, it's the lean. It's having a focus on. We first of all started with obviously respect for people. Let me back up a little bit in the Lean Construction Institute definition of how do you know if you're doing lean? What is the introduction of lean in construction? It's because I've taught this course many times. It's a simple paragraph or a couple sentences, which is if you're creating a culture of respect for people where you're adding value, reducing waste and continuous improvement. If you're doing that, you're doing lean, it doesn't mean you have to do a 3 or 5s. If you're doing those things, then you're doing lean. And I love that because it puts the focus first of all and create the culture. And we did that on this team where we, we trained everyone. We did just, literally just some live training about this is lean, introduction to lean, sorts of things. But then we had team building exercises and we did cliftonstrengths to do or strengths finders sorts of things so people would know more about each other. And we had someone from that organization or some other consultant tell everybody, this is how you use this and why it's important.

But this is all being done virtually all virtually Zoom or whatever. It was teams or something like that. Yeah.

And then. But then we also developed what we called CFOs chief fun officers. So there was a CFO, at least one from the owner, architect and contractor each, and then that team of people. It was their job to make sure this is fun. So at the beginning of every, for example, we have a standing weekly meeting, that's big team meeting. And hundreds of other meetings in the course of a week. But all on Zoom. But on the big one, there was always a playlist. There would be music playing as people were signing on and folks could send in to the project manager, here's some of my favorite songs. So you knew when your song was coming up and it was just a lighthearted way to get things going. There was also a particular software that we use that when for pull planning. We might talk about that again. But while we're doing the pull planning, if someone did a poll or did something or saved a lot of time or even just met a big deadline, then the software can rain down confetti on the screen. And people love that. And it seems like a gimmicky thing at first, but that became part of, hey, come on, Joey, we need Some more confetti or Calvin, we need some more confetti. That was worth. And people just. It became part of the culture of that team to celebrate even the small wins.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think if. I don't want to gloss over that, because I feel like there's a lot to learn there on the importance of celebration and maybe more importantly, recognition. Right. I don't think we always do that enough. And, you know, everybody's different personality types and, you know, that sort of thing. And some people don't like to be recognized, you know, but some people really love it, you know, and so I feel like giving that opportunity to, you know, recognize that hanging is something we, as a lean movement, could do better. I really do. I think we always talk about respect for people, and most of us are trying to do that, but I feel like that piece right there, whether it's confetti on a digital screen or just say in the morning meeting, hey, Kurt. Hey, man. Thank you for that. You did a great job. You know, and just meaning it's. And yeah, I don't want to gloss over that because I think it's something that we all should be doing a lot more of, myself included.

Well, and then there were lots of other things that we would do that were just specifically for that team building. Not only at the very beginning, we had a meeting where we talked about when we asked everybody who's in the meeting again, for owner, architect, contractor, consulting, engineers, et cetera, when projects go well, what do the other participants do? So if you're the owner, when a project goes well, what do the architects do or what do the contractors do? And then from the contractor's perspective, when a project goes well, what does the owner do? And then he asks the flip side. When projects don't go well, what is the owner doing or not doing? What is the architect doing or not doing? And so we essentially came up with a list of when projects. These are the things we're going to commit to do. And here's a list of the things we're going to commit to not do. And it included simple things like. And this is just kind of baked into culture from the beginning, never make someone else look bad. Because in architecture, engineering, architecture and construction especially, it's, again, in design, bid, build, there's a part of the architect's role is to observe. Is the technically the contractual word, observe the construction and to look for errors and problems and point them out. And then the contractor is traditionally, or maybe stereotypically looking for ways to say oh, the drawings aren't complete here, so there's an opportunity for me to get a change order. So there's a little bit of intentionally the way, again, historically, that they're put at odds with each other. And when you're working together, you have to drop that. And even if people have been doing it that way all their career, they have to realize, no, on this team, you don't do that. We never make the other person look bad. We're all pulling in the same direction. And we have. It's been fantastic. Really terrific crew. And then some of the other simple things we would do. You mentioned Zoom earlier. We picked Zoom over some of the other ones. We tried several because, again, in the early days, we were all trying to figure it out. But Zoom has the ability to do some markups on the screen. So someone's showing a floor plan, just. Just the ability to circle something and say, what about this? Can you explain what this thing is? And the fact that anyone on the call can circle it? And we would have. Literally, we might have 60 or 70 people on a call. And that's one of the things the owner said, this is better than doing in person because we couldn't get 60 or 70 people around drawing before. And the ability to zoom in on something and explain something. But in order to get people comfortable with that, we would play games. Like we would play Pictionary and pit people against each other just to practice using the markup tools in a fun way so that people were never. Well, I shouldn't say never. The intent is to overcome any timidness or people's inability to know how to mark up. We would just encourage them. And if we get somebody new who wasn't good at it yet, it was like we'd walk them through it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I assume you're. You're doing a lot of stuff back in. In person now. But, you know, it's always interesting, this dynamic between virtual versus in person. Many people, all of us in some cases, were forced to virtual there for a while. But have you. Have you kept any of that. Any of the virtual stuff?

We have. We've kept most of it because it has been so effective for us and because amongst. Again, you can get 60 or 70 people if you need to. Most meetings, of course, are not that big, but you couldn't do that in a regular meeting room. We also have people in three different cities working on this project, and so it allows them at a moment's notice or nearly to be on a call. We don't have to worry about travel time and flights and hotels and all those things. So it gives us all much more flexibility. Also the ability, if a meeting is run a little bit long, there are times where particularly certain times of the, or phases of the project where people know, yeah, okay, well this meeting might run a little bit long, but if the owner's willing to stay long, then we'll all stay long to get it done. And again, we can do that on Zoom, I think easier than you could if everyone was in person, because I got travel time to get home to pick up.

Yeah, I gotta get out of the airport and all that. Yeah, right. Hey, so I know that you've also been working on something. You've given some talks and written some things on a topic. I think it's called getting decisions that Stick.

Yes.

What's that all about?

I speak at a lot of conferences and have for many years just at architecture conferences and health. Again, I specialize in healthcare, so many of them are the healthcare facilities conferences. Someone counted up once. I've spoken over 100 different conferences and so of course I'm always rotating the content to topic and, and one day I came up with that and something about that like really struck a nerve. And now I've given that probably 20 times. And every time I present it, someone comes up afterwards says, oh no, why is no one else talking about this? You have to, I have another group. You have to come and present this to this other group. So. And it's since been on another construction podcast. It's been a four part series on a blog.

Wait, you did another podcast? Cheating on us. Kidding.

And so there's something about it that has, has just really caught on. And so what it is, it's all about. I one day recognized that I've been on so many projects over the years that sometimes you get really cracked Team. Everybody knows exactly what they're doing. They may be executing perfectly, but if somewhere along the line someone is either unable to make a decision at the right time, or worse, they make a decision and then later they come back and reverse it. The amount of waste that's built into that is enormous. In fact, after I had come up with this, there's a trainer that I just know only through LinkedIn, Jun Nakamura. And he said that the inability to make decisions is actually the highest form of waste, especially in a, I think he said a boardroom or something like that. But it's not one of the recognized 8 waist. But I think calling it the 9th waste seems a little bit, 15th waist. But it's so fundamental once you start looking at the potential downside to either again, inability or worse, changing it. So I started documenting. Gosh. Well, what are some of the best practices I've learned over the years to help people make decisions that will stick? And so there's a whole. It's a 45 minute presentation, but the gist of it is essentially you have to. The presentation talks about how do people make decisions. Let's just discuss or understand the psychology of decision, decision making archetypes, what kind of information people need to make decisions because there's not just one style or one type. And even the different ways that we learn the different learning styles impacts this. So, so it comes down to you have to give people all the information they're going to need the first time if you want a decision to stick. And to illustrate that, I do an exercise where we have live polling on the big PowerPoint screen in the conference room where I ask a simple question. Right here you're going to pick your lunch. Here's three different lunches. Here's a club sandwich. A is a club sandwich. B is a burger, shake and fries. And C is a salad with salmon. Which, which lunch do you want? Let everybody vote. Comes up on the screen, you get a little bar graph. Show up on the screen live as people are voting because they're voting on their phone. And then I say, okay, great, so everybody got that? You lock that in. And then I say, oh, by the way, or a week later we're going to have a meeting. And now I'm going to tell you how much those cost. And so then we show them the cost and say, all right, this club sandwich is free, burger, shake and fries, $11. And the salad with salmon is $22. Does that affect your vote now that you know what it is and you know the costs, now vote well. And as you might guess, a lot of the votes change. So then we say, all right, what about the time? So here's another bit of information. This sandwich is available now. Now, this burger, shake and fries take 10 minutes. This salad with salmon takes 25. And you only have half hour for lunch. Does that affect. So then the votes change, people vote again and they start realizing, oh yeah, as I get certain kinds of information does affect my ability to make an informed decision or for my decision to stick. And then, so we talked about scope, schedule and budget. But then we talk about those qualitative aspects and I say, like, all right, the reason this club sandwich is free and Available now is because it's leftover from yesterday. So it's stale sandwich. Now, I didn't mention that before, but that's why it's free. So in the burger, shake and fries is 2,300 calories and the salad with salmon is the only heart healthy option. Does that affect your decision? And very often it radically does. People will completely reverse what they were thinking. And then we do one more qualitative question about, well, what if the store that you're buying or the owner is a friend of yours or you designed that building or something. So sometimes that affects it. So the relationship. So the point is it brings home to people right away that wow. And people come up to me afterwards and say, I never thought about it that way. And for me to just like to be caught up in the middle of it and realize how much getting decisions, getting information trickling in is horrible. If you just told me the cost, schedule, budget and the qualitative pros and cons from the beginning, I could have made one decision and then that's all.

That I would need.

So that's really the bottom line of that presentation is if you want to get a decision to stick, you have to get all the information that people will need. And that means it takes a little more work to. And it's kind of like doing an A3i. You know, if you do a thorough A3, it addresses this because you're establishing, I mean, you know, but you know, establishing the goals or the target, you're establishing what's the gap background. And then you're getting into what are the options and you should be including. And this is why I bring this up because I find that too often when I see a 3s, people will go through the format and then they do option A, B and C and they may have a little table or something, something. But it doesn't get to all the information we need to make informed decision. If you're not covering the quantitative. Do all the functions work the same in architecture? For example, they might say, well, here's three different options to put this building on the site. Let's say you're looking for a 100 bed hospital. Here's option A, which is 100 beds. Here's option B is 100 bed. Here's option C. It only has 80 beds. Well, that's. So don't even put those side by side because you got an orange in there. So either make it comparable or don't even put it in there because if it doesn't meet the Basic criteria. So you get the function. Definitely gotta have the dollars. The schedule can very often be a driver. But then as I said, often all those are pretty comparable. And the qualitative things, the. Whether it has to do with certainly in architecture it's the form, the design, the aesthetics. But being a good neighbor or nowadays what sometimes people call the optics, you know, if it's a county facility, they don't want it to look too expensive. It might be expensive. They don't want to look expensive because that becomes important criteria. What, don't make it too nice.

Yeah, yeah.

Even if it's cheaper.

Hey, what about. So something that I struggle with and I think human beings, if we're being honest, struggle with is bias. Our own bias. We are all biased. I'm biased towards one political party versus the other political party. You know, like as a just. I'm a bias towards Ohio State football versus. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like you have your or favorites or whatever it might might be. Like how do you, when you're making decisions, how do you guard against your own bias?

Well, it's a certainly good question. I think the short answer is you have to get the person, whoever's developing the pros and cons or the team of people that they just have to take an objective, neutral view. And I find that many times people who, who facilitate a lot of meetings, they know how to do that. There's naturally they don't have a dog in the hunt and so they're just going to lay out the facts as best they understand them. Now as you said, there might be still some cognitive biases they're not aware of. But in a broader scope, as far as all the people in the room, they're probably the most neutral and good at that. But it's a very good point that if someone, especially if someone is trying to sell something, then you have to be aware they're probably building in some bias. And you know, that's just natural, especially in any sales situation. But certainly design and construction, especially if you have designers and contractors and everyone's working together, we're saying this is our best information. And you know, these are projections, these are forecasts about well yes, this building's going to cost a little bit more, but it's so much more energy efficient that it should pay for itself within three years or something. Just as an example. Well, that's the other thing about a 3 is that so often I find that people are just doing first time dollars and that's horrible. That's a Horrible comparison. Because again, it's just like finding out later that, oh, you got us to pick this one. But what you didn't tell me is it's actually going to be the most expensive option for me in the long run.

Yeah. So that's, to me, that's deceptive and irony in that. And I've seen it myself with the A3. The irony is that lean thinkers, we're supposed to be long term thinkers, you know, but we can get trapped into that short term. You know, you're not looking like teaching my son to drive right now. And one of his biggest problems, he's getting much better, but it's still a little scary from time to time. One of his biggest problems is for the longest time he would. All he was watching was right in front of him.

Oh, yeah.

He wouldn't look, look up, down. So I said, son, you gotta look down and you gotta have both. Yeah, you gotta see right in front of you, but you gotta get your eyes up and look at that headlight or those taillights in front of you. And when they turn bright red, you gotta get ready to go bright red, you know, stop. And yeah, we do the same thing though, don't we? Sometimes we don't look up, you know, we're too worried about what's right in front of us.

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why I think it's so important you have to do the first cost and pick some number that people agree. If this is the 30th building or 100 year building, at least pick 30 years or at least 10 to look out that far. And maybe the owner will say, I'm not. As if here's a kind of a stereotype. But if it's a developer who's planning to flip this, build it and then sell it within the first two years, then they might only really care about the first cost because they're not going to operate it. But still, I think it's the responsibility of the team to at least run the numbers so everyone is aware. Because then even if they were thinking short term, if they realize, realize, let's say option B is going to be much more cost effective in the long term. They might say, oh no, that's really good. We can use that as a selling point that can differentiate us in the marketplace by this lead accredited, blah, blah, blah, so are certified and so things like that. And there are developers who recognize that.

I want to swing back to something you said earlier. I got to know more, Chief fun Officer. So you Play music. What else? What are some of the other things that Chief Fun Officers are doing to make these calls better?

Oh, we would do things like several times a year throughout the year. They would just be a theme to the call. The most obvious one was Halloween. It was a Halloween costume party. And everyone not only came dressed up, but then also setting your background to different things. And then we had people, you know, we had a contest and then there were. Was some. A little bit of meeting involved in there too, I think, but most of it was about that. And then in Houston during the annual rodeo, so we had again a rodeo themed meeting and people wore their cowboy hats and their boots and all those kinds of things. So anytime they took an or could find an opportunity to celebrate something. And some of the Halloween costume was hilarious because some people came dressed up like you expect, but some people were really over the top up as a penguin and they had a background of Antarctica or something like that.

So good. Yeah, that's so good. Well, architects, you guys are all creative, right?

Well, yes. And that was the contractor who did that one too. So.

Yeah. Yeah, look at that.

So it gave a good opportunity to see the, the creative side of the whole team.

Right? So cool. So cool. Wow, this has been great. Kurt, I'm wondering maybe you've been around for a while and, and practice Lean and, and, and you've taught a lot of people and like you said, a lot of talks. What are maybe just a few. Let's say there's somebody within the architecture world or construction world that's kind of just getting started with Lean. Or they're. Maybe they're not even started. They're. They're thinking about it and they stumbled on this podcast, like speak to that person. Like, what advice or what thoughts do you have that you want to. Want to say to them?

Yeah, yeah. So I've done a lot of. Someone asked me once at a conference, conference, I was talking about Lean, and they said, how did you get your whole company to be lean? And I said, well, I didn't, first of all, I didn't. And I explained, no, lean is a journey and everybody's on a different part of the journey. And so my job is to get people. Well, not my job, but one of the things I think first of all is get people started on a journey. So I do a lot of just introduction to Lean and design and construction. I'll do like a one hour lunch and learn webinar sort of thing so people from around the company can dial in or not just within the company, but there are. In a lean construction institute, they have a lot of courses that are available online for members or for some fee. But then there's also a big group they call their Communities of Practice, which are like local chapters. And those people are just volunteers who come together periodically to have to learn from each other. And so that's another great opportunity. If you're in a city or in a region that has those, just start getting exposed to it. So the first step, as I said, is exposure, learning about some of the vocabulary, which you can pick up from webinars and podcasts or online courses, etc. But then the best way is get on a project that is using Lean. And even if it's only a little bit, and even if the whole team hasn't committed to doing can be a grassroots thing where someone can say, hey, can we just start doing this on this project from now on? And especially like the example I gave, where the whole team, including the owner, commits to no, let's do it. Well, then that whole team is now, they're incredible advocates for this. And you can bet as they move on to other projects, they're going to carry that expertise to spreading not just the word, but knowing how to do it and have fun with it and keep improving. Because of course, course, even though it's a big team, it's been going on for a couple years of the whole suite of things we could do. Even though we said let's do all of it, the reality is we're doing some of it incredibly well. And then some things we're just kind of touching on, which is, okay, it's very successful, but maybe next time they'll learn some of the other techniques or pull them out of the toolbox once they know more about the. But. Yeah, so the short answer to your question is get exposed to it. And then as much as you can, hang around other people who are doing it so you can experience it, see what it looks like in practice.

Yeah, practice. That's the key word, right? Practice. Yeah, practice. Very good. Hey, Kurt, what's the best way for folks to reach out to you, to connect with you?

Yeah, probably LinkedIn. So it's knewbeck@LinkedIn or on LinkedIn. And again, I'm an architect with Page, Paige Sutherland. Page, so you'll see me there. And very active on LinkedIn. I keep up with it regularly and active. A number of Lean organizations or subcommittees and some things like that on LinkedIn and other groups.

Podcast superstar. Love it. Thanks a lot for coming in. Kurt, it's been awesome.

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you, Ron. And thanks so much for everything for the Lean community. That's the other thing I do tell people. Listen to this podcast. Look, there's all kinds of stuff you can learn just about the vocabulary and it's for free. Just get on here, click on this and start getting yourself exposed to it. And I mean that sincerely. It's really a great service here.

Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, well, thanks, Kurt. Take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 lean and 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.