GA 448 | Planning an AME Conference with Gregory MacDougall

Behavioral change, habitual change. The really important things here are that you need to understand that it's actions, you know, for you to change behaviors. You better start and understand what your attitudes are and what your actions are. Make those actions that support the behavioral change small enough that you can enact them.

Today I'm excited to welcome Greg McDougall to the show. We are live here at the AME conference in Dallas, Texas, and standing at our booth and super excited for this interview. Greg's one of the key folks at AME and we're going to talk a lot about AME and then also maybe some other topics that are very interesting that Greg's been involved with over the last year or so. So this is episode 448. You can check that out@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 448. Greg, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm fine, relax. Enjoying it. It's been a good, good start out so far and I really like Bhavna this morning when she did her talk and spot on. And so I'm very energized. Yeah. Very energized.

Yeah. Well, my gosh, when was the last in person was two years ago.

It was 3. 219, 29 and 2019. I was the chair of the conference that year and it was fabulous experience to, you know, to meet up everybody. And where was that?

I know I was in Chicago. I was in Chicago.

In Chicago. And it was at the Hyatt and we had the governor, Governor Pritzker there.

That's right.

And it was. Yeah, it was fabulous.

Yeah. Well, this is, this has been good. And I feel like the energy is good, you know, and it's just great to see people walking around face to face.

It is, you know, conference is a struggle this year. There's a lot, you know, obviously coming out of this, you know, with the conference theme, embracing disruption. I think that, you know, the whole team, the whole core team understood that. And I, you know, seeing what's happened to conferences and getting people back to their lives, for us to have 1100 in people here, that is incredible because a lot of the different organizations have struggled.

Yeah.

And then you throw in virtual capacity, but another three or 400, we're pretty close to 14, 1500, and that's not too far off Chicago. So I'm very encouraged by what I've seen. Yeah, for sure.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So I know you've listened to the show, Greg, right out of the gate. We like to have our guest share a quote. So do you have one?

Yeah. You know, I think that any, any person doing the work that, you know, I've done as a lot of my colleagues, as business improvement specialists, I think that Henry Ford, you know, and we were talking about obstacles. And obstacles are those terrible things that get in your way and prevent you from achieving your goals. And if you think about that, I mean, it's. That's, it's pretty poignant. And we've had to learn that, I think, and I certainly, I know from my relationship at Cogent Power, when I worked there as the, as the quality manager and the Director of change with our CEO, those are the things we had to do. There's a lot of obstacles, whether it's people.

So what's the quote?

It's. It is understand and what those obstacles are and how they, how they can affect you and get in your way and then the things you need to do to understand, to overcome them. And it's very important.

Yeah. One of my favorite books, it's not really lean related, although there's many parallels to it is the Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. And it just talks about, you know, it's more about stoicism and that sort of thing, but. But it just talks about, you know, hey, the things that are in front of you that are blocking you. It's probably the way you need to go. Right.

This conference has been a lot of obstacles, a lot of obstacles overcome. But, but that's what a core team is working together on.

Right.

They understand that. So.

So tell us, tell us about your background, Greg, for those that don't know who you are and, and you know, how you, how you got into, involved with Ame and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, you know what? I'm retired now. I run my own consultancy, but I'm winding that down now. I retired back in 2013. I've always been involved in the quality field. I was a quality manager and then moved on to a corporation in Chicago. I'm from Canada. I live outside of Toronto, and I love my country. I love being there. But I had the opportunity to move into Chicago and spend time as a corporate director of quality management over 28 companies. And it got me around the world. And I started working a lot, implementing some black belt strategies as well, and then understanding that there was more to business improvement than just working on that front. And then when I moved back into Canada and went to work for Core Steel in their Cogent Power division in Burlington, Ontario, we decided that we would start looking beyond what we needed to do to overcome some of our obstacles. We were moving into a new facility. We wanted to. We had operations in US And Mexico. We kind of wanted to centralize them. We built a very significant plant in Burlington, and then we looked to maybe introduce some lean thinking. And what that really did was open up my eyes in terms of what we needed to do to make the changes and obstacles around. There was a lot of obstacles. So I think from our end, and what I learned was that there's a lot of different ways that you can approach things. But. But the thought of lean processes was something intriguing. The AME was an organization I reached out to, and I. I always say this. The AME is like a bank. We go to that bank when we need to borrow money. I went to the AME to get help, and I started attending some conferences, and I started learning, oh, my God, this is terrific. All these professional people, all these. And they're willing to help, and they're there and their hands out for you. And I took and embraced a lot of new thoughts and processes. For example, in San Diego, I remember this clearly, in 2009, we wanted to engage our people more. And so I brought back a concept called Lean Apprentice. John Deere was doing it lean at Lean Deer. Sorry, was. They call it the Lean Intern program. But what I really liked about it was that we could take people from our floor, young people that maybe, you know, didn't finish their college education, would have wanted some opportunities. And we take them under our wing for a year, right out of their manufacturing roles, and we would put them through a very significant module, a series of modules for training to help them better understand, to become business improvement change agents. And I think I trained about 12, 16 of them over a period of time. And that is good because, number one, you've got a group of people that are very focused in the organization, and you've energized them and given them an opportunity. So now with the ame, especially with what we've learned and how successful we were in making the changes we did at Cogent Power, it's returning me back to the bank and what can we do to pay our loan back? And our loan is, I started volunteering. You know, I did presentations and things. I started volunteering, and, you know, I've worked on workshops and tours and keynotes and the like. And then, you know, obviously, I had the opportunity to chair a conference in 19, and it's a great. This is the organization, and the people here are the Most wanting to help. Yeah. It's a fabulous group of people.

Yeah. So I am curious. So you. One of your main roles for this particular Dallas conference is all the keynote presenters, Right?

Keynote presentations this year.

So talk a little bit about that process and like, how do you pick keynote presenters and you know, that sort of thing.

Yeah. And this is just a challenge this year too. I mean, in the past, you know, we, you know, the pandemic has affected so many things. Right. I mean, we all know the recessions and we're talking about the, you know, all the, all of the things that are going on, the supply chain issues and attracting talent and retaining talent, et cetera. But it works the same from a keynote standpoint. You know, the budgets were less limited to us at this particular time. I'm fortunate. Throughout my career, I've built up a lot of connections and so I reached out to a lot of individuals and, you know, obviously with an embracing disruption theme, we wanted to build around that. And there's a half a dozen tracks, you know, whether it's leadership, whether it's supply chain, environmental issues, sustainability issues. Right. So really, you sit down, you kind of structure and look at what are we going to do to start identifying the type of people we want to bring in. And then you just. It's grunt work. There's a lot of, a lot of behind the scenes stuff. And you just learn, this is my sixth time doing keynotes. And so once you have an idea and you start laying out your plan and then you start understanding who I want to get and then start. You look at a lot of video. I really like TED Talk speakers. You know, you really get a sense. So for Bonna, for example, who was on the stage here today, she did a wonderful TED Talk, New York Water street, back a few months ago.

We had her on the podcast.

You had her on the podcast. Oh, my God. And you did a great job. I listened to that podcast a couple of times.

Yeah.

You can't watch enough video and learn enough about the people you're dealing with. I'll tell you something else that's very special. I've learned forge relationships with your keynotes. Bhavna, when she came in today, said, thank you very much. I feel so much a part of the ame. I feel very relaxed. And I think that's important because you want people to understand that this organization has a mission and it's about people, it's about culture, it's about all of those things. Because she'll transcend that. The word will get out into the organization she's working on. So, yeah, I think for us, I understood what we needed to do. And then, and then we want to get a mix of different levels of people. And I think that, for example, Larry Culp was closing off the conference and I think there isn't a person here who's been associated with the AME doesn't understand what he did at Danaher Corporation. Right. And then obviously taken through the ge. So I like the mix of the people I brought in, brought in a few more senior leader types this year that may be thought leaders and I think that's good. I think that these are people all embracing disruption right now. Yeah, the thought leaders are good and they have a good understanding of maybe what we'd like to hear from them. You know, they might be their focus. That's what they do for a living. They just come in and they're motivational speakers and that. But at a time when you're looking at disruption, the opportunity to bring in business leaders that don't.

Me personally, I'm just one person. N equals one here. But I, I really appreciate, you know, these folks that you've brought in because, yeah, it's cool to hear, like you said, the motivational speakers and the, the Boston Philharmonic guy, you know, I mean, it was. Those are great. Right? No question about it. But at the end of the day, it's kind of like, no, man, I want to hear what Larry Culp's got to say.

Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? And Michael Lamarck today. Michael. Michael's gonna be here this afternoon. And I think you did, you did a session. You know what I loved about that? Authentic leaders.

Yep.

You know, you talked about authentic leadership and I never forgotten that from your podcast. And when I actually did the write ups for the app, that was the first thing that hit my mind. Authentic leaders. And because our chair, Dan worked for Michael for a long time, what a wonderful opportunity for him to do a fireside chat with him. This will be intimate and I think that that adds another level of, you know, that atmosphere. Right. So I'm really, I'm energized, looking, you know, looking for that talk today.

So, Greg, I know you didn't necessarily have this in your notes, but I can't, I can't not have a conversation with you without mentioning that, well, I've known you for many years.

Yeah. Yeah.

And if it wasn't for your little AME name badge, I'm not sure I would have recognized you. Do you want to Explain. This is audio only, so folks, can't. Maybe we'll have some pictures on the show. Notes. But what's happened here, Greg?

Well, it's interesting. I've been retired for a few years. I mean, I did a lot of corporate work, and I don't think people really understand sometimes what it requires of an individual when they're traveling a lot and you're separated from your family and that. And I'll be honest, you know, you, you don't focus on yourself. And my. I put on a lot of weight. I was losing my, you know, my energy levels, all the rest of it. And so, you know, I just ballooned more than I wanted to be. And then I made a decision after I retired that, you know, I was going to try and do some things to change that. And up and down. I think anybody that's overweight over their life, you find that they're successful, they fail, they're successful, fulfilled. But you learn from a lean process, thinking that you have to learn from failure. And it's a continuous process. And so anyways, I made the decision that I would, I would change. And I've done it before, failed. But as I said, I tried to understand it differently, I think where people fail. And so losing weight, I lost about 150 pounds over that few periods, you know, the last two, three years. And in the past, I've lost weight 50, 60 pounds. You try to do too much too soon. So I thought you're a change agent. You work with people and you help them change their organizations and their cultures and working on those types of aspects and cultural change, habitual change. I started to think about it and think that's what I need to do. So I started to practice what I would do with the client. And so, but then you have to understand habitual change has a process. And, you know, you've been around here, you've met Mike Rother many years ago. He was in here. We talked about Cata, Toyota, Cat and Cata, thinking kata for us Americans. And Canadians. And Canadians. But, you know, but the point on that is it's about step change. Yeah, it's incremental step change, setting your targets, moving forward, forward. And so I decided that I would do it differently. And I set this up in a way that I could set up a series of monthly goals. I set up my target, knew what I wanted to do. Then I had to understand where I failed and I tried to do too much too fast. And so let's start looking at this from incremental Change and then understand what I need to do to build that. If my goal was to lose £100, it was £100. I thought, I'm gonna get back.

So at the very beginning, did you have a goal?

I did what? I said, I'm gonna get back to my weight. When I got married, I thought that would be perfect.

Okay.

And so that was my goal.

Did you have a time frame?

Can I lose £100? You know, that was my goal, right. And I said, can I do. I don't know how, what the time will be, but probably it's gonna take me a bit of time. But I didn't put a deadline date on it. Okay. Because those are, those are the things I find that get you in trouble. I just knew where I wanted to be. Then I decided, from a cata standpoint, set a target condition and understand what prevented me from achieving those things.

So what do you remember back then?

Like, what was one of your earlier target conditions? Well, yeah, Target condition for me was health number one. I want to be able to not feel tired. I wanted to get my energy levels back. I wanted to be able to go into a store, men's store, and I had to buy oversized clothes. I want to buy regular clothes. I mean, I just had a custom suit made. I've never done that in my life. Okay. So I think that was important. And I, I, but, but I guess.

What I'm getting at, Greg, is like the beginning, you know, you say, okay, yeah, maybe a year, two years, whatever. I want to hit this thing, like, over in two weeks from now. I want to be. Did you, did you set goals like that?

Well, so what I do is I set up, I decided to go monthly. I set up some monthly targets. And I knew from what, you know, I did a lot of reading on it as well, and I wanted to make sure that I was setting realistic targets that I could hit and then hold myself accountable to it. Right. So I started, like, at about 7 pound, 8 pound intervals in a month, and I'd work on that. Then I break it down into, into weekly, and then I'd start weighing myself every day. The thing is, you got to have. It's a process. So you, you want to have some KPI measures. So I, you know, I looked at what are the things that, from a healthy standpoint, So I suppose my blood pressure, my heart rate, all those types of things. And so I started tracking those and then weighing myself every morning the same time. If I had issues, that's okay because we all have these Ups and downs. And I understand why. But then I started getting serious a few months as I started going through this and understanding salt, sugar, carbohydrates, there's more to chemistry. You better learn about how they affect your body. So I started educating myself on that. I talked to a very close friend of mine, he's a four time Olympian and Dave was a swimmer and water polo player and he really helped me understand what goes in the body, how it, you know, how it reacts, and helped me set up some training programs as well. In the past, I'd either just like work on physical stuff but not do the food side or the other. You got to do them both. And then once you start focusing in and then you've got, like I said, a series of targets that you can work on and then understand what's, like I said, the key thing, what's preventing me from achieving that target in that timeframe. And so if I was struggling, I'd go back and talk to my doctor, I'd talk to Dave or another friend of mine that was there that I would bounce ideas off of and they would, you know, help me explain what did you eat? What did you do? And then I then found that there were things I needed to do. Salt especially can really cause issues for you. I had to stop alcohol for a while too. I mean, carbohydrates are big. And then you have to understand how your body is. That took me to a different, a whole different thinking process about me. Now. This wasn't about just losing pounds. This was about changing who I was and why. Once that clicked in, it became easy. The other thing is on behalf, behavioral change, habitual change. The really important things here are that you need to understand that its actions, you know, for you to change behaviors, you better start and understand what your attitudes are and what your actions are. Make those actions that support the behavioral change small enough that you can enact them. And a good example is if you got, you hop in your car, you put your seatbelt on, right? If you do that enough, you do it every day, you don't think about it, you don't think about it. That's a simple action. But if you try and do too much and you know, I got to get in the car, I got to turn on this, I got just too much. So break it down into simple actions. So I did that. Very simple actions like get up at 6 every morning, have the bike, get on the bike and do it habitually. So I get up every morning. Even my wife will say whatever you're going to do, I know you're going to ride your bike. Why don't you take, you know, take this in with you, read it over while you're doing that. I get my, I get my phone, I'll go over my emails, all of that. It's done. It's just part of my routine now. I've made that a routine and it's now become part of my life. I don't even think about it. It's just habitual. Once you break it down into those bite sized, actionable items, it becomes much easier to manage. Right then I started taking over the kitchen. That was an interesting discussion with my wife. But I took over the kitchen because I needed to understand what was going in my body. So I started looking and changing recipes out and I have my own recipe book and so many friends that come to me all the time asking me, but yeah, take out the salts, take out the sugars, modify, take out the preservatives. I don't eat canned foods, things like that. And then, but gradually when you do it and then you start taking, I do the grocery shop and all those types of things that support what I want to get done. It becomes very easy. It does. And somebody who used to eat greasy foods for breakfast and love McDonald's, I'm a fruit, fruitaholic. I mean, and then you know what, I enjoy it because I put myself in a position where I really have learned to enjoy these foods and I think that's what's important. Important. So yeah, what happened over time was I hit my goal weight and I thought, well, this isn't enough. I'm not, I don't, I want, I want more. So I thought, well, I'm going to go back and then reset to my college weight. And I did, I hit my college weight and I said that wasn't enough. I thought maybe I go to the BMI index for, for a 70 year old man that's, you know, 5 foot 10 and then hit my, my BMX, you know, hit the BMI index, which I did. And that's where I am and that's where I want to be. And I've been, I've sustained it now for a year. I feel really good. I've dropped a lot weight. I realized that. But for anybody that's doing it, I think what's important, I know that Paul Akers wrote a book and I never really did read it. You cannot do this unless Shika said, you accept the fact that Bob just said today really, really hit me Understand your weakness. What's your weakness for food? Your, you know, you gotta eat.

What's your weakness?

I love carb. Carb food. I do, you know, give me. I used to love beer. Give me a beer and some, you know, some salt. Do you not drink? I don't drink beer at all anymore.

Wine or anything.

I do, I. Yeah, because, you know, whiskey, I love, I love single malt whiskey. You know, I'll have a couple of shots of fact, two weeks ago, I was with my buddy up north and yeah, we, we. We probably drink a half a wall of scotch. But, yeah, it was. But then I'd come back to my routine. Yeah. You know, so. Yeah. And it's just, it's second nature. And people ask me all the time. I said, it's just part of my life. It's very secondary. I just go about doing what I, you know, I would normally. What's normal for me now.

So what's it like for you walking.

Around the conference now?

Because first time people have seen you in years and I imagine you're getting a lot of like, me, like, whoa.

They'Ve walked past me, didn't recognize me. And I, I thought I was ready for that when I came here, but it's taken me a little while. The psychology of this thing is just starting to settle in on me. And I mean, because if you're not.

Careful, pride could come in and, you know, ego and look up me, I'm so gray. I'm talking about on a podcast now. I know it's not you, but.

No, but it's true. It could. No. If anything else, though, it's probably helped me more with, you know, I've always been a bit inside myself, you know, and a bit introverted in that respect. But no, I feel, you know, you have to build that level of confidence around yourself and that with it too. But yeah, I didn't like to talk, but I was a little reluctant there to talk about this. But no, you know, I don't mind. Because what I have found is a lot of people now start seeking me out and asking me how, you know, they're very interested. And that's enabling for me when you can help other people because you've challenged and fought that all your life, right? Yeah.

And it's not just weight. You know, some people have other issues. You know, they don't. Whatever they. It might not even be health related to other habits in their life that they need to change. They watch too much sports, they're addicted to sports, or they're addicted to something else or something like that to where you've got to, you've got to break, you know, your way of living and form new habits. Right?

Yeah. And I'm fortunate. I think as a business improvement specialist, I think that's beneficial because when you start to really rethink about it, you know, it's, it's very commonsensical stuff. Right. And like I said to anybody, I would say break it down into bite sized pieces, understand and overcome little actionable items as you go through, then start building this collective of that. Yeah, but I still do this. If you were to pull out, I pull out my phone and I show you every day. I can't do it this. I don't have a weight scale. Every morning I weigh myself to same morning at the same time. I do a series of things that are my daily management KPIs and things that I do. My blood pressures and all the rest. My blood pressure I think dropped from about 150 over 110 down to about 105 over 70. I think my heart rate came down from about 105 down to 64. 65.

What about sleep did you work on.

Your sleep was a problem? Sleep was a problem, yeah. Insomnia is really a side effect of this stuff. But now I'm starting to sleep better. Had a great sleep last night. I sat down with a few people come in the room, we sat down, chatted and I just, it was so relaxed. And so I'm starting now to be able to, you know, to adjust around those types of things too. But yeah, for anybody out there, it's true we become addicted to everything in life but you can't just change it. There's a process and you really have to go through that process. Right. So yeah, I encourage anybody. You can do anything you want if you really want to put your heart mind to it. And, and, and I also say you need a support team. I work for my doctors, I said and I have some friends. You need to bounce things right. Because you're always going to go through this kind of stuff. I feel good. That's awesome.

Greg, if folks want to connect with you, what's the best way? LinkedIn or.

Well, yeah, I have a LinkedIn. I'm, I have a good following on LinkedIn, LinkedIn and I mean obviously through my association with AME, but they can reach me on that. That's, that's one of the, I think that's one of the good places that you can reach me. I've shared you know, I'll share, I've shared with people, you know, my own emails and things like that. If they, you know, that you want to get a hold of me.

Okay.

But yeah, through LinkedIn for sure. You can reach me on that. Awesome.

Well, thanks again for coming on and thanks for all you, you do here for, for the ame. It's a blessing to all of us and this movement is important to a lot of people and you know, for sure.

And I guess the one thing I just want to just to say to everybody is that really enjoy and embrace this particular conference for what it is, you know, about getting back into maybe some more of our normalcy. And I hope that everybody here enjoys the keynotes. We have a really good platform of people coming up here at lunchtime today is Torbor Netman, Professor Netlin. And I think he's probably that one of the next, you know, one of the next bright academics that understands lean and Industry 4.0 activities and that blend and taking us to the next level. And I think that's important for people to hear. So I got a good mix. I hope they enjoy the conference. It's, it's. I can feel the energy. Oh yeah, you can start to feel the energy. Oh, it's great to meet up people. It's real, you know, the interesting thing too and I very apprehensive, you know, being in Canada especially because we've been in lockdown for this mask sits in my pocket a lot. I probably, I, I've worn it a fair amount but I feel a little more confident coming out now and I think that's important. We still have to be cautious, right? But yeah, I think there's a great vibe. Yeah, there really is.

Well, thank you, Greg.

More than welcome. I've really enjoyed this and I think this is great, great opportunity, great time. I really enjoyed that time.

All right, well, take care.

Okay, thanks for listening.

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