GA 449 | Firefighting, Docility, and the Top-Down Approach to Lean with Mike Thelen

Well, I hired you as the director of Lean. That's your job. Create my Lean culture. No, man, I can coach you, I mentor you, but Lean Culture is every one of us. Everything you do, every step you take, every action you take is creating culture. It's either creating a good culture or a bad culture.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Mike Thielen back to the show. Now, Mike and I have known each other for a long time, and I managed to gather him up and do a podcast live at the AME Conference right there at our booth. And today we talk about Lean culture and what that means and how to go about developing one. So I think you're gonna like this show. Mike's fantastic show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode four. 49. Gembapodcast.com look for episode 449. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Mike, what's up, man?

How you doing? Good to be back.

All right.

Yeah.

The room's about the unlevel code here at the AME conference or the keynote, so we got to keep it down. Some European guys in there talking about AI or something. I don't know what he's doing in there, but. Yeah. So, hey, man, how's it been going?

Oh, it's good. It's so good to be back live again and back face to face with people. You know us Lean junkies, right? You don't like to be stuck behind a computer. So, yeah, man, it's been exciting to be back around people and see people I haven't seen for two or three years.

I know, right?

How's this?

Great. McDougall. Did you see that guy? My gosh, I interviewed him earlier. Podcast probably came out previous week for regular listeners and lost £150. Insane, man.

Insane.

Well, hey, man, before we jump into the meat of the episode, you know the drill. We like to get going with a quote. So what do you got?

So, you know, we're going to talk about culture because culture is so huge right now. It's been huge for years. I've done this presentation, this material for longer than I can count, in all honesty. But I think companies are really starting to come around now and realize that culture is a big thing. And it's not just go implement 5s and go implement standard work. It's understanding. You got to get deeper. And so a quote that I actually use in my day to day material, and I've used IT for probably 10, 15 years, and it's from Professor Edgar Schein from MIT. I'm not a big MIT fan, I'll be honest. You know, I went to that small, cheap school. I didn't go to those expensive, nice schools. Right. But, man, Professor Shine just erected resonates. And I really preach this when we do our leadership training in the company I work for. And his quote is, the only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. And what a dynamic thing to think. Because, you know, so many of us are. We're promoted because we were good at what we did and not good at leading, and all of a sudden you're this manager in this new role, and, oh, I still got to do those things I did. Right. And no, you have to change your mentality. Right. Our goal is when you get promoted to manager now is your tribe and culture. Everything you do is creating culture, whether it's good or bad. And so I just, I. I end my presentation on culture within the company with that quote from Shine and that, hey, guys, this is it. This, if you're a new management, you know, new to our company or just new to management in general, this is the concept I want you to remember so well.

Okay. I want to dive deep into this whole culture topic. But before then, in case folks haven't heard the previous times you've been on the episode on the podcast, tell us a little bit about who Mike is, about your maybe your background and how you got into this line of work and what you're up to these days.

Sure. So, you know, I'm that kid from nowhere, South Dakota. I went to that nice little beautiful.

Part of the country, by the way.

Yeah. You know, I've had chances to move away, and I've moved back and moved back, and I'm back in South Dakota now. I moved back in late 2019. You know, grew up on a farm, went to small college. What kind of farm? Just your standard, you know, dairy farm? No, no, regular, Regular agricultural. My dad quit farming when we were. It was the early 80s, you know, when things got tight. Yeah, yeah. And we got out. We kept the land, but got out of the business. And, you know, I went into college and looked around and went, geez, I don't want to be a farmer. No money there. You know, I went to be a teacher initially. I went chief. No money there. So switched my major in college to business management and, you know, got into manufacturing, actually did sales and sales manager for like 5 years and then went into manufacturing. So I went from blaming manufacturing for not having What I need to sell to. Blaming sales for not making, you know, not selling what I'm making. Right. And jumped into lean in 1998. We were actually talking about it yesterday with a group of folks who were sitting around chatting and I said yeah, 98. We read this thing in this, in this magazine about Kanban. And so we started Kanban. Oh, we're doing this thing called Kanban. Everyone's going, what is Kanban? I don't know but it was in this magazine so let's try it. Yeah. And that was the beginning of my journey. You know, Kanban and SPC and, and getting flow and building design, you know, flow to cellular design and, and about mid 2000s, still in manufacturing I was had lived in Minneapolis, moved back to South Dakota. One of the many times I've gone back and forth and met my mentors from Toyota. We hired a consulting firm in, had two mentors from, from Toyota. One was the North American VP of logistics and the other was a manager at Toyota supplier support center. And yeah, they'd walk in the plant and in like five minutes they'd see stuff I never saw. And it's just that is so much growth. And I tell people all the time I thought I was an expert from 98 to 2006. And in 2006 I realized I was like grade school beginner and it was start all over. So worked my way through. I've been in manufacturing for about 25 years. It was June of 2020, right in the middle of COVID when I switched and joined the company I work for now called MYR Energy Services. We are a division of MYR Group. MYR is a, it's kind of a pseudonym for Ellie Myers. Ellie Myers. When they started buying other companies they created this umbrella. Ellen Myers and MYR is actually roughly the second largest electrical contractor in the United States. I work heavily with our solar group. That's the business that we started in 2020. And so I was one of the first five or six employees hired to run the business, start this business. And so we build utility scale solar fields. So 100 megawatts or larger kind of stuff, big stuff. Our first project was Battle Mountain, Nevada and it was a little over a square mile of solar panels, 300,000 solar panels, 30,000 posts in the ground, you know. And the great thing was when they hired me, they said well you know, we want to do lean. We know this lean thing. We've read the Toyota Way. All three of the executives that interviewed me led Toyota Way. And they said this Makes sense. We've played with this a little bit at some of our other companies. We want to go to the next level. We want to get. Really want to be a lean construction company. And I'm like, awesome, let's. Let's do this. Let's rock, right? And we got rolling. And I'm thinking, okay, I've been in manufacturing 25 years. Can I bring this into construction? You know, I dabbled in consulting, as you, you and I both know. I used to work for Kaizen Institute. And like, okay, I. I've done hospitals, health care, mining, you know, strike construction. And when it got down to it, 300,000 solar panels, they all go on the same way, right? It's just six months of assembly.

Right.

So. So that's where I am today, working for MYR group, for the, you know, the energy group underneath myr. But yeah, as we all know, right, you kind of get stretched. You get asked to come over here, go over there, do different things. So. So leading the quality and lean initiatives for a solar field implementation company, for the most part.

Very cool.

Yeah, very cool.

All right, well, let's jump back into culture. And it's going to get noisy. I think that the keynote just let out, so got a lot of people walking around here, so it's kind of cool. Yeah. So, I mean, Lean culture, the word culture is a big word, you know, and everybody wants a lean culture. Like, what is a lean culture to you? Like, if you were to have to just kind of define it out of.

The gate, you know, I'm going to steal from those above me. Right. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and it's everybody, everywhere, every day. Whether you're a Bruce Hamilton fan or a Tracy Richardson fanny. I know both of them, folks, and, and that's the mantra. It's everybody everywhere, every day, and it's understanding.

Mr. Amai.

Yes, Masaki. You bet. You can't disregard him. You can't disregard him. I'd get all sorts of grief if I disregarded him, you know, and, you know, it's that. That mindset that we have to overcome. And in the. In. See, I started 98. It's almost 25 years now that I've actually focused on Lean. And even today, still, there's the executive leadership teams out there that are. Well, I hired you as the director of Lean. That's your job. Create my Lean Culture, right? No, man, I coach you, I mentor you. Right? But Lean Culture is every one of us. Everything you do, every step you take, every action you take. Is creating culture. Yeah, it's either creating a good culture or bad culture. Right. And that's our challenge, in my opinion, is getting, you know, the janitor, man, I can talk to janitors all day long, and they love it. Right. They understand this. They think the respect for people side, they're really into that. It's the leaders getting those leaders to. To transfer their knowledge, their experiences of traditional leadership, where I'm the manager now, to know, I want you out on the floor. Why don't you out there, when you see something on the floor, pick it up. You're building culture with every action you take or not take. And so getting them to see that they have to change the way they behave, that's the challenge.

So, I mean, how do you go about it then? Obviously, you have to start with the leadership.

Is that what your approach, you know, it's twofold. Right. We always talk about lean is bottom up and top down, both. I'm working with that janitor finding better ways to do his job, get him connected, feel like a part of it. Building employee suggestion systems. You know, Shingo, how he's talked about it. And then, of course, Norman Bodak, who's. Who's no longer with us now. But Norman was big on idea generator system, right? And it's that employing engaging those employees at the lowest possible level and listening to their ideas and get them in place, and boom, you'll take action right away, and you're building the culture at that level. But then at the same time, I'm coaching that janitor. I got to be coaching you, Mr. Executive, that, hey, when he has an idea, you need to listen. You need to be down there on the floor to hear it. You can't expect him to come up to your ivory tower and come with his idea. He wants. He wants you to come down there. Let me show you what I'm dealing with here on the floor. So you have to do both. You have to start at the bottom and get the janitor to buy in, but you got to be up here coaching. So, you know, I'm there with the janitor at 9:00am in the morning, and at 1 in the afternoon, I'm over there, the executive go, okay, your turn. Right? Both sides of the coin. So that. That's what you have to. You can't choose one path or another, one executive or another. It's, you know, when I. When I set up gimbal walks with my. With my organizations, it's all the leaders. And a leader, the leader from every department is on that walk. And if you can't make the walk, you designate someone to be on that walk that goes back to your department and says, okay, here's what I saw. Here's what I learned today. Yeah. Because as soon as it's okay for a department not to attend that daily walk, then it's okay for them to not attend at all. And then the culture is, oh, yeah, that finance group, they're too haughty, too high and mighty to tend to walk and learn. That's what we don't want. That's the culture we don't want.

Why do you think it's so hard? Because this is not easy.

Right. Well, if only it were easy. You know, I'll get in a lot of trouble for saying this.

That's all right.

You're always in trouble. I'm always in trouble. You know, as managers, we seem to. As we move up the chain, we think it's right to delegate. And, you know, when I talk about leadership with my leadership teams, and when I talk to leadership at conferences like this, I talk about we have to lead from the middle. You know, we can't laissez faire. Hands off leadership. We can't micromanage because we'll drive people insane. The challenge we have is that leaders want to hand off and delegate this culture building to the lean guy or to the HR department, another popular one. And the reality is you can't do that, and you have to put in the effort. I remember. So a company I used to work for, and I won't say who. We're walking the floor one day, and I pick up some.

Everybody's on your LinkedIn right now.

Talking about me. I'm gonna call him when this is done. Yeah, we're walking the plant floor, and there's. There's nuts and bolts on the floor. Hey, I'm a mechanics kid, right? I know there's a home for everything, right? And I reach down, I pick up the nuts and bolts. I turn to the manufacturing manager who's on our nuts manufacturing, the facilities manager, the maintenance manager who's on the walk with me, which is a cool thing. And I turned him, I said, hey, what are we gonna do with these? You know, what about these? And he says, I'll just throw them in the garbage. And I stopped, and we're in the middle of. We're not at one board or another. We're in the middle of walking from board to board. And I stopped and I said, wait, you want me to just throw these away? Yeah. Yeah. They probably just fell off one of the maintenance guys carts as he is pushing the cart through the plant. What if they came off that machine where they were literally right next to when I picked them up? Yeah. And on and on. If they came off the machine, we'll find them. We'll figure it out later. And I turned to the plant manager and I said, there's your culture. There's your culture. Don't stop and fix the problem. Don't figure out what's going on. Don't engage the team to see if anybody knows what happened in respect for people. I mean, we just blew contingent respect for people right out of the water in one foul swoop. Yeah. And so that was the. That was one of the big kickers is that's how easy it is to screw it up and why it's so hard. Hard to do. Yeah. Because what I needed that maintenance manager to do is stop the process, stop our walk and say, okay, why it. Let's all take a quick minute here and look is there anything missing on this machine? Let's grab that group leader, see if he's noticed anything. Because you and I have been around machines enough. We know you hear it, you feel it. Right. I can feel vibration in a table, that kind of thing. So we should have stopped and said, what's here? What's not here? What do we fix? And okay, if we don't find it, let's reach out to the main, you know, the local. Whoever's the maintenance guy handling this department. Okay. Have you been walking through? Let's, let's figure out that this nut and bolt come from. And it was not a. Oh, wow, that's never happened before. There it is. It's a. It was a regular occurrence. The common practice was pick them up, just throw them in the garbage.

Yeah.

And you know, so I got all that culture and then I've got the culture of simply. I just threw nuts and bolts away that weren't ruined. They were good.

Right.

I mean, I can tell a good money. Yeah, it's money. It's inventory. I just threw away inventory. So that's why it's so hard. Because that one minute where you just go, ah, let's just blow through it. That has a bigger. I mean, of all the things we did well at that company, I was there for a number of years. That's one of the stories that sticks with me.

Yeah.

I don't think of all the stories of all the great things we did. Right. And that's the same thing for the operators, they don't remember all the great things. They remember those, those two times that you were wrong. Right. You know, so that's the challenge. It's hard to always do the right thing. Yeah, yeah.

Something you said earlier also, I keep thinking about. You mentioned just the whole idea of sometimes we, you know, promoting with within, which is great. Fantastic. Unfortunately, in some places I've seen the folks who are the best at, say, firefighting, you know, they get, they get promoted to senior firefighter and then a vice president of firefighting and senior vice president of firefighting. And, you know, and, and so then you have this culture of firefighting.

Yes. Right.

And so I'm wondering, like, if you have any thoughts on, like, how do you break away from that?

You know, we had a great discussion yesterday. I taught problem solving here for an eight hour problem solving session yesterday here.

I got good feedback on that. It was. Had lunch with some guys that were in it.

Oh, that's good. It's always good to hear. You know, we're sitting there, we're having a guy.

It's a little funny looking, but.

Yeah. Yeah, thanks a lot. Can we edit that part out, Greg? Let's make sure we cut that part out. Right? Yeah. You were sitting there talking and I'm sharing stories just like this. Right. About firefighter. And we talk about leadership in problem solving and, you know, talk about firefighters, and we promote good firefighters instead of promoting good leaders.

Yeah.

And then we wonder why they don't lead with a darn. And we end up firing. I mean, literally, I've watched my own company promote somebody because they were good at what they did, not good at what they could do.

Yeah.

And then six months later, we fire them. Why? And it's funny because we're sitting in the room, you know, having this conversation and one of the guys in the room, you know, we're just sitting there and it's just, just, you know, rugby's pretty laid back and pretty casual. And the guy says, man, it's like you're standing in my plant. We all do it. Every company I know promotes good firefighters, not good leaders.

Right.

And heaven forbid we take a good firefighter and move them into a leadership role, which is already bad. But then we don't have any programs to teach them the culture. We want to teach them how to be a better leader. We just expect you, because you're a good firefighter, to go be a good leader now.

Right.

Well, you're not. You're a good firefighter. So what you end up doing is being that firefighter is a leader, which you might make your line look really great because you're able to keep it running, but you're not solving problems. Your team isn't getting any better. Right. And that, to me is the kicker, is that we. We don't necessarily hire. Right. And we certainly don't promote. Right. We don't promote when we're in a lean or when you're trying to become a lean organization. You should be hiring and promoting based on people's ability to leak. And if you. And I'm not saying don't take the firefighters, don't take the good employees, but the example I shared yesterday was I had some folks, you know, in a machining environment, so they're running machines, and had a guy that was a really great machine operator and a really great machine troubleshooter. And there's a discussion of what to do with this gentleman. Well, luckily he was smart enough to know he didn't want to go into management. That's not his field. And instead of taking the promotion so that he could get the move up. Right. He stepped back and said, this isn't where I want my career to go. And it was great because it opened a door. And I said, hey, let's create a little department that will kind of report to the CI manager. And I said, we're gonna create this. This little group moonshine. Right. You've heard the moonshining term before. And I said, we're going to move these guys. They're going to get to move into there. And it might be lateral pay wise. It might. If I can squeeze out the money from the budget. Right. It'll be a pay raise. Yeah. But I'm going to take you off running that machine eight hours a day and put you in this moonshine department where now you get to go and create all the fun little toys and tools and ideas that you have to make that machine run better right now. He felt that he loved it. He worked for me for two years before I actually left the company before he did. I'm not even sure he left the company. He probably retired from there. But it was great for him because he didn't want to be a supervisor. He knew he didn't want to lead people because he liked the machines. Right. And, man, that's. That's how we should be hiring and promoting people. Put them in the job they really want to do and really should what their aptitude is.

Well, and I also think it's probably doing a disservice to the word leader, that means that you have to lead people. I guess by definition, you know, a leader has followers, right? But I feel like if you're an individual contributor, like that gentleman, you know, you can still lead, right? He can lead others by their actions and by, by their witness, by their, their attitude and their character and all those kind of things, right?

He was an informal leader, right? I mean, people, people saw what he did and he was so enamored with the Lean program and how it respected him as an individual and what he was able to benefit from.

Right.

Man, when you sat down at lunch, it was a union shop. So he sits down in the shop at lunch with the, with the other rest of the shop guys and he loves his job and he's talking about how great it is and he's talking about how this man, this lean manager listened to me. You know, I got respect, I got all those things that make my job fun to do, right? And it was, it was absolutely that he was an informal leader that helped build my Lean program there. Because, yeah, man, look at this guy. Look at how this works.

And who knows how much influence, positive influence that gentleman had on so called leaders. Like leaders of people who are watching and, you know, they're absorbing, you know, because you can lead up, right?

Absolutely.

You know, by, by, by showing a good example.

Yeah, yeah.

Hey, so a tough one here. So what happens for the folks listening right now? And they're like, yeah, I get it, I get it. They might not have that leadership, you know, at their company. Maybe they don't have that, that executive who's, you know, bought into this whole CI thing. Is it hopeless for them or what do you think? What's the honest, hard truth?

Oh, man, you know, it must be about 20 years ago now, trying to think of when I wrote, I used to write some articles for Quality Diet. And I remember writing a series and I wrote about that and one of my series of items was, what do you do when you're that guy and there's no support?

Right.

And you know, 20 years ago, I don't think my opinion has probably changed a whole lot in 20 years. My mentors from Toyota had a phrase that they loved using. You either change the people or you change the people. And while the directive on that was, if I can't get you to become lean, to think lean, to start seeing the transition, then I need to phase you out, you know, move you to another area where you're not as, as detrimental to the process and with hopes that eventually you choose To. To move on. I've had. I'll be honest, I. I've had some hourly folks who, when we started, we told them, you know, hey, a year from now, I'm going to be in your area doing a Kaizen event. We're going to make some improvements there. You're going to be part of it. You've seen what's happening over here on the left. Now you're going to do it on your side. And I've had, literally had guys who wanted nothing to do with lean, so they retired. I had a guy retire a week before the event was supposed to go on in his area because he is absolutely adamant he was not going to do this lean stuff. And I had a leader, a member of leadership that we. We moved out of a direct role and moved him into a direct, indirect role. We kept him as a leader, right, but leading an indirect department so that they would be you. We didn't want to lose their 30 years of experience and knowledge, but we realized that they were not helping the growth, and so we made that decision to slide them over. I have kind of used the same approach for the lean folks, right? You change the people or you change the people. If I can't get this plant, this company, this business to change, then the only other option is for me to change. And that's a hard decision. You know, I've left. I've left a few places in my life. You know, I don't have 30 years at one company. I don't have that kind of seniority. But it's a tough question. You know, I spent four years, four or five years beating my head against the wall in an organization, and they decided that they. They came right out and decided they weren't going to follow the lean path anymore. They're. They're going to go a different direction. They're going to cost savings. We're no longer concerned about lean cost improvement or in project improvement. We're going to do cost savings for the business. And that was a pretty clear signal that, okay, I. I can't. I can't change that ship. That ship's sailing and there's nothing I can do, right? So I changed. It's tough, though, as. As a lean leader, especially me. I. I have an ego, right? I mean, who doesn't? If you're in leadership, you've got an ego to some degree, and I have an ego that I can change anybody. I've stuck with things probably longer than I should have, thinking I can get them to create. I can get them to see this. I can get them to see the vision. And. And then finally it's like, okay, I guess I'm not gonna see the vision. So, you know, yesterday, guy was asking me about, man, your company must. It's just great. Your country company has you to work for him and all this knowledge. And I said, you know, you can never be a prophet in your own land. You know, in my company, my boss and his boss, they're fantastic, right? I mean, I literally. I remember when I interviewed for the position, we. It was back in Covid, right at the beginning of COVID so everything was. Was teams calls and video call, and here on all of their desks is the Toyota way. And all of them have read it. All three guys that were hired that started the business had read it, and they. They. They believed in it. And so I was in a great environment. And if you actually, If I gave you my VP's number and you called him and said, hey, I want to talk to you about Mike, first thing you'd say is, oh, yeah, yeah. The guy that interviewed us, not us interviewing him. That's his favorite thing. He sells everybody when we're out with customers is, I interviewed them. You know, I'm at that point in my career, right, where I want to make sure I'm working for somebody that believes, that wants to make the journey. And early on in my career, I thought I could. I could get people to go to the journey. I can convince you this is the right way to go. And now I'm at the point in my career, like, okay, when I interview for a job, I talk about a job. I'm listening. What do I really. Even if you don't know, lean, if you can't spell the word, I can pick up. Do you have the concept? Do you have the understanding? Do I think I can mold and merge with you and get you to see how this is a value? And. And I go that direction, you know, and I'll lean that way. I was lucky enough, even in Covid, I had offers on the table, and this was the company that the leadership that I met with had the best root of what I thought I could bring. Lean into an organization and not hear that we've always done it this way, right attitude. And so, yeah, you know, that's a big thing, and I look for that now as we're hiring people, we're just like everybody else out here. We're in a pinch for employees. And ours is. Is not hourly as much as it is leadership, engineers, managers, Right. And so, you know, we've made a few bumps in the road. We've been in a pinch. We were supposed to have two projects active as a young company. We have five, you know, 50 to $100 million, and instead we're almost $200 million in two years. So we've had to hire some folks who had the skills, practical skills that we needed, and we've hired some of those folks and learned our lesson because they didn't have the soft leadership skills. Oh, yeah, You've been a project manager for a construction company for three years. Cool. Come work for us.

Yeah.

You were also micromanaging annoyance at your company for three years because that's the way that company runs. Right. Not a lean thinking company. And we've had to let some of them go after bringing them on because they're just not fitting the mold. Right. And ironically, we had this conversation and I think only even a week or two ago as a leadership team for the. For the organization, saying, okay, what. Why do we have turnover? What's going on? Why do we lose some people? As you'd expect, right? We have a traditional manager who cost us four other people for the people that left the company, who were good people that left the company because they didn't to want, like, working for that person. Right. And, you know, the discussions we've had, okay, this is our lesson learned, is that no matter how much of a pinch we're in, we need to hire the right people. We need to hire that mindset of continuous improvement, respect for people, engagement. Right. Leaders have to be hired with that purpose in mind. And we'll teach you how to manage a project or how to. How to deal with supplier issues, that kind of stuff.

Right?

So that's been a big lesson for us is hire the right people. Don't, Don't. No matter how busy you are, no matter how under the gun you are, no matter how much firefighting you're doing, hire the right people, because you're better off hiring the right people at the right mindset. So, you know, look at. I won't name the company, but I was up at Northeast Lean's conference here a couple weeks ago. Bruce Hamilton, right. The GBMP Group. And somebody was talking about a company that used to be a good, lean company and that we probably all have mutual friends that used to work there and how it's no longer a good, lean company because the leadership changed, executives left, and the executives that came in or moved up, whatever, didn't have the same mindset and so that's what makes this lean culture so hard is that when you've got it at the top, it permeates. When you don't have it at the top, it doesn't permeate. And no matter how good you are building that janitor up and making him happy, if it's not coming down from leadership above, you're gonna hit roadblocks.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like a characteristic of companies and in leaders, an important characteristic that doesn't really ever get talked about. I don't think within our community, our movement is just the whole idea of docility, like being docile, which isn't weak.

No.

You know, but it means that, you know, you can be formed, you know, like one of my, my, my. I have a daughter in college and really just a lovely girl, you know, young lady. And, and, and we've always said that she's just always been docile, can be strong headed and can, you know, this and that. But she's, she's, she's a good athlete. So all her coaches have always loved her. You know, she's a good player, which helps, but she's very coachable, you know, and, and, and, and just you see that I see that in some of the best leaders that I've been around is that they know their stuff, they're brilliant, but they're also, they're open, you know, they're humble enough to know that I don't know it all and I could learn, you know, and sometimes from those under me, I can learn from them, you know. And I don't know, I feel like that that whole idea of being docile is underappreciated within this whole leadership topic.

Culture is servant leadership. Right. It's servant leadership at learning how to ask the right. Why not just ask why? Because we all, we all can ask that why of. Hey, Ron, you're feeling good today, aren't you? Well, what's your answer gonna be? Absolutely, sir. You bet. Because I love my paycheck. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Yeah. And learning the right questions and that's one of the things that I love to teach in my problem solving stuff is ask the right questions. You can't ask a leading question as a leader because you're a leader. Right. You ask a leading question, you're going to get the answer you want. Because no one wants, no one likes to celebrate red. We used to talk about in Kaizen Institute, I celebrate red. Yeah, that's a great thing. Yeah. You found an opportunity to get better. But we don't Lead that way in traditional. It's okay. I want to make sure that he's not going to be mad. I'm not sure I want to get fired. I want to get a raise. So, yeah, everything's green. I love it, boss. Love working here.

Yeah. Vanity metrics, you know, all the rest the of it.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, that's a big thing. Servant leadership is huge. And you know, servant leadership is so not a new concept. Right, right. But, you know, and even the asking the right why comes from Socratic questioning. Well, Socratic, after all, what are we talking about? Socrates? So not exactly new science here, you.

Know, Been around for a while.

Yeah, but we don't do it well. Yeah, and that's a killer because when you think you know everything, the people below you know, you think, you know. Right. And that gives them a certain attitude, and they, they don't want to ask.

You or even if you do know a lot and your people respect that you know a lot, and then they're not willing to think, yes, what do we do?

Give me the answer. Feed me, spoon feed me so we can move on. Yeah, no, I'm gonna ask you questions and make you figure it out. So that's, that's huge, man. That's a great leader that can do that. And, and you know, I, it's funny because I, I, I'd like to think I'm good, but every time I think I'm good, I catch myself doing that exact thing. Right. Not asking the right why.

Right.

That was a huge thing for me. I remember my mentors saying they hated the terms lean experts. They hated the Six Sigma black belts and mass black belt and sensei and all that. And Mike, my mentor from Toyota, he's like, dude, don't call me sensei. Don't call me Sensei. I'm Mike. Okay, cool. I can deal with that. You know, and, and that was a big thing, is that you're always a learner. And if you're not humble enough to ask why and always be a learner, that's what puts the limitations on you. That's what makes you go from being a good, lean leader to that traditional ad manager. Yeah. So.

Exactly. Awesome. Well, good stuff, man. Hey, if folks want to connect with you, Mike, what's your Snapchat or whatever you got?

You know, I'm old school. You know, I haven't made that big transition yet.

Me either.

Yeah, yeah. LinkedIn is my Rolodex. Yeah. And I'm horrible. Business cards. And we're at A conference. I don't even. I think I do have a couple business cards with me, but I tell folks if you give me your business card, that's great and I'll try to send you an email right away. But your business card isn't even going to leave the hotel.

Right.

So connect with me on LinkedIn. You know you can find me. It's just Michael d. Teelin on LinkedIn. T H E L E N have.

To make it difficult.

Yeah, I know them old German words of the H is silent. Right, so. So yeah, find me on LinkedIn. Connect that way, I think. I don't know if you guys usually post my email on the podcast.

Well, necessarily put the email, but we'll put your LinkedIn. What is this, 449, Greg? Yeah, 449. So go to gamblepodcast.com 449 or just scroll down on your little app thing that you're listening to this on and it'll be right in there. And then while you're doing that, hit the five star. That's fifth star. That's the one you want to hit.

And yeah, the one that missed. The one that makes Ron keep me. Come on. That's what I want.

Mike Thielen was so amazing.

You know. Matt, why do you guys keep bringing that guy on this podcast, man? Exactly. So I got to throw this punch in there and I want to make sure I'm looking at Greg because I want to make sure he doesn't edit this punch out. Okay, so we had a, a great conversation yesterday with some old school guys that remember the early years of, of Gemba Academy. So I got to throw this one out there, the old 12 video set that's on my list to go home because I know I've got that DVD, the old original 12 videos, man. I'm gonna find it. Cause I gotta get. I gotta get the old shower. The old bed sheet drop.

Yeah, it's a little secret. Not everybody know. We haven't told the whole world. But yeah, our first 12 videos that we launched a company with in March of 2009 were shot in a spare bedroom of my house with a gray bed sheet stuck to the wall.

That's how we started. Yeah, but look where you are, man. Congratulations on. You know, and I know this will come out way after the fact, but congratulations on the change in career here as you guys have been have kind of. I guess the correct term is you've been bought by someone, right?

Yeah. Way to announce it on the podcast.

Like I said, by the time you. By the time you publish this, everybody else will be like, yeah, that's old school news, man. We heard about that a year ago, so. Yeah. Yeah. But congratulations. Thank you. It's really great to see. It's been fun to be a. You know, even to be on the sidelines watching you guys grow and.

Thank you.

Oh, man, it's just. It's been a fun journey. Yeah.

Yeah. And the fun continues, man. You know, we're still getting after it, so we're having a good time and. Yeah. Appreciate you, Mike, and. And all you've done and. Yeah, you've walked with us for a long time, so keep it up, man. It takes a whole movement of people to, you know, for a company like ours to go. It can't be just us.

You know, it's always great to be here. You guys are great.

Thank you.

Appreciate all that you do and. And, you know, just be honest, right. We've been a subscriber of your Academy videos ourselves, so. Yeah.

Well, thank you.

It's been used.

All right, man. Well, thank you.

Yeah.

All right, take care.

All right.

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.