GA 459 | Dealing with CAVE People with Adam Lawrence

Getting people to participate in that way. If you can turn things into direct benefit, financial benefit, customer benefit, etc. People really get it. If you're vague about benefit, then it just all sounds good.

Today I'm excited to welcome Adam Lawrence back to the show. Now Adam's been on a number of times and we sort of joke about that at the beginning of the episode, but I love having Adam on because he's full of great stories and knowledge and experience. You know, he's a, he's one of those, he's a consultant, as he'll explain and, but he's really just out there making it happen at the workplace, at the Gemba, you know, where things are actually going on and he's right in the middle of it. And I just love folks like that who are, who are just knee deep in all that is lean. And so today we, we sort of circle back. We've had, you know, some episodes where we dove deep into what he calls the wheel of sustainability. And so we touch on just highlight level what it is we're going to link to what previous episodes. If you've never listened to those previous episodes, you should go back and listen to a few of those as well. But Adam's learned a lot since he's, he wrote a book on the whole topic and, and he's learned a lot since he's written the book. And so we sort of explore what, what are the, the aha moments that he's discovered. Like some of the things that he thought were going to be pretty straightforward for people to understand weren't. And so there was some enlightenment there for, for Adam. And so we go into that and then I just had some general curiosity. Adam, one of his main things that he does for. For companies is help them run, you know, just your traditional Kaizen event. And he's really good at it. And so I just started picking his brain on, you know, how he runs his events and what, what do you do when you have what we call cave people, citizens against virtually everything, you know, because if any, any of you have run of an event, you've, you've probably had folks who didn't seem to be super happy to be there on Monday morning. And so how, how do you go about that and what do you do with. And how do you, how do you leverage their. Their skills and their abilities? So Adam talks about that and then just some really interesting things. Like, you know, one of the things Adam does with his teams is the Kaizen event teams is on Monday night they, they Always go out for dinner. And I'm like, well, why is that? I said, we talk about that. You know, so some really interesting stuff in this episode. And as always, he's full of stories and excitement, and that's what I, that's what I love about him. So show notes can be found over@gemba podcast.com look for episode 459 again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 459. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Adam, welcome back. How are you?

I'm doing great, Ron. Happy New Year to you and your, and your listeners. Thanks for having me back on again.

Yeah, man. So we were just. I know you're very competitive and, you know, you want to beat Karen, you know, and this is number eight. Number eight on the podcast. So you, you, man, I don't know if that's number one. I have to do the, do the, check out the, the Vanity Metrics later.

You know, Lucy, I can't, I can't help myself. I just. Right. I want to be up there at least in the top three.

Yeah, no, you're doing great, man. I appreciate you coming back on.

Okay.

I appreciate you coming back on. So anyhow, obviously you, you more than know the, the, the flow of the show. So you know the drill. We like to get a quote out of the way. What do you got?

Okay, so this is one for the theme of today's episode. So when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. And if you look for the attribution of it, what I remember as a child was on the Odd couple in the mid early 70s, if anybody knows that TV show, what shocked me because I was young, that Felix Unger in court, said that to the judge and my mother turned off the television right there. But if you look it up, it gets attributed to a bunch of folks a little before then. And then there's an Oscar Wilde myth that he said it, but I don't know. But all I know is Felix Unger said it in the Odd Couple.

Got it. Got it. I like it. I like it. All right, well, hey, gosh, let's see. Last time you were on was episode four. Is that 424 talking about the, the launch? Was that the launch?

That was the space telescope.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So that was a fun one. So in case folks didn't cat or the previous six before that, who's Adam? What are you all about Adam.

Right. Okay. So I am a solo Entrepreneur. I'm a consultant. I help businesses solve complex problems in a sustainable way. I am known for a system I've created called the Wheel of Sustainability. And my focus is typically on short burst Kaizen events around critical business problems. And by the end of the week, we have implemented the solution with no homework. Everything's done and implemented.

Nice. Nice. So, Wheel of Sustainability. What is again, we've had previous episodes. We'll link to them all below here, but give us a high overview of what it's all about.

Right. So, thanks. So many years ago, you know, I was helping teams solve problems. I'd fly in from corporate, you know, the corporate seagull, help them do some work. Three months later, you know, we'd solve the problem. Everybody's excited. I'd go away, I'd come back three months later, and problem comes back. So what I realized is I gotta do better than that. What's. What's the deal? So over many years, I developed an approach and a system, and it eventually got a name called the Wheel of Sustainability. Now I've learned my way through it in a way that I can help people understand it in a simple enough way that they can apply it. So it has nine elements. Eight spokes in one hub. Looks like a Amish wagon wheel. And by applying all of those elements, the change has a really good chance of being sustained.

What are the nine? Just list them out.

Right. So the hub is leadership commitments. So obviously critical. If you don't have. If you don't have leadership committed to the changes that are about to be made, everything falls apart. And then the other eight are notification, training and review. Visible evidence, all tools available, clear benefits, layered audits, accountability and recognition.

Got it.

Got it.

And again, we've done some episodes where you dove deep, deep into each one. So again, if folks want to go back, we'll link those up below. You know, you obviously you have a book on the topic. Why did you write the book? I mean, obviously it's good marketing, I suppose, for a consultant to have a book and all that kind of stuff. But I know there was deeper meaning for you to do that than just marketing.

Yeah, you're right, Ron. So there are two real main reasons. One was I was doing this and I understood it and I finally codified it in some way. And I realized, well, this is not just for Adam. Right. Other industries people want to solve problems and sustain the solution. So let's write. Let. Let's really challenge myself to explain it in a way that you could actually take the Book and do it yourself. You don't need to call Adam. So it's a nice marketing idea. It's my $5 business card. Right. But what it really is. All right. If this really works and I should be able to explain it. So that was my challenge, that was the experiment that I tried and I wrote it during the pandemic. So there's a couple of reasons for that. One is I am an on site consultant. I love working with teams. I like to be there with them. I could do it virtually, but that's just not me. So I love the on site. So during the pandemic, everybody basically shut their doors to me and that was fin. I had to do something. I wanted to do something, what I thought would be of value and also stay out of my wife's hair. So every morning I'd write a little bit and try to move it forward. If I was ever going to write a book, this was the time. So that was reason number two.

Yeah. So I'm curious. Writing a book's a big endeavor and going back. And if you're going to go back and do an update, maybe you will one day. Is there any aspect of the nine that you're kind of like, I wish would have done that, said that a little bit differently, or maybe you would have changed it all together or are you completely, you know, content with what you've got?

Well, I've only written one book and I pretty much intend for it to be just that. But what you learn is you could edit yourself forever. So there comes a point when you just say enough. Right. So you just said, enough. Okay, so what would I do differently? Certainly I wanted. I could have made it even more obvious and simple to follow and practical. I tried to make it in as plain a language as I possibly could. I tried to do everything to not use industry specific terms. There's a lot of basis in lean principles, but it's. This is not a lean book necessarily. You don't have to be a lean practitioner for this. So some of my examples might not have been as clear as they could have been. The steps to, you know, you could always do better. And there was one story in a chapter where I named the same person two different names. So, you know, it'd be nice to fix that. But. And certainly what I've learned recently is the application of it with teams. And what we're going to talk about today, I could have easily added that, you know, you know, version two. Right. Printing. Yeah. I just, you know, I think at some Point. You just got to say, okay, that's enough. Move on.

Yeah, no, I got you.

I got. So I.

So I am curious. Like, okay, so you wrote the book and you've been practicing, practicing this for a while now. What have you learned about the wheel after writing the book and continuing to practice it with your clients?

So it's not as simple as I thought it was. Okay, so what's happening is I introduce the wheel early on in any of the Kaizen events because we're going to utilize it throughout the event, and by the end of the event, we're going to use every aspect of the wheel to lock in any of the changes. But when I introduce it, my team acts like they know what I'm talking about. They do a nice job. They'll even, you know, ask some really good, deep questions and try to do it. And what I've realized is as simple as it seems. Well, of course it seems simple to me because I built it. Sure, it seems simple to me. So it's not quite as simple as it appears. And what I've learned about it is I need to be able to not just speak of it. I need to. And not assume there's that word again, that people understand it. I need to actually demonstrate it. So that's really what has changed in my approach in the last year to two years.

Give me an example of maybe an aspect, one of the nine or something where a team, you're great at telling stories where don't have to name names, obviously, anything like that, but where something was, was tough and then how did you overcome it?

Right. So one of the aspects is called layered audits. Okay. So the person doing the work is going to audit the work that they do. Okay, that's fine. So what, what are the key elements of that then? We want supervision to audit that work with some frequency. Then we want to go up another layer and have another, another group audit with less frequency. What wasn't really working for a while was auditing. People didn't see it as an engaging, interactive activity. Right. So some of the traditional auditing is I'm going to watch you do your work and I'm going to tell you when you're wrong. Okay, that's not really helpful. You know, I'm going to stand 10ft back, watch, I'm going to write little notes and so on. So really what I've had to do is demonstrate what a good, engaging, interactive learning type audit is. And also that the best audits are five minutes or less and they've got to be on the most critical. You don't have to cover everything. You just have to demonstrate through your leadership commitment that what we're doing is important from a safety, productivity, quality, customer service perspective. So I really had to kind of get the teams to understand. So I've had to demonstrate what does an audit look like? So we will stop and we will role play each element. And that when. When I. When I realized I needed to do that, stop assuming they understand it and basically help. So the facilitator takes the facilitator's hat off and acts like a participant for a short period of time.

I'm curious just to dig into this auditing one a little bit. So obviously you said that the. The team member audits themselves assume to, like some form of standard work or something like that, right?

Correct.

And then perhaps their supervisor comes once a week or. I don't. I'm randomly picking a time frame there. And then the plant manager may swing by once a month. Something maybe some people might call it more like a commission by audit system or something like that. So where were you seeing the. Or are you seeing the struggle? Was it with the team member and themselves or the supervisor, the plant manager, or all of them?

Yeah. So that manifests at all levels. So the first thing, you know, one of our episodes, I talked about our welders, the Weld Shop 5s that we did this is many moons ago. I can't remember how long ago that episode was. So the reality was the welders did not want a paper audit. They did not want paperwork of any kind. But what we were able to get to by creating a significant emotional event with them is create the thing. What are the 10 things that if we do these well every day, it'll make our jobs easier. That was their lair audit. Perfect. So, okay, so we're gonna have this piece of paper. We're gonna have it at the entrance to your weld shop, and you are gonna sign off on it. That way you will know and you can verify that you did it because you said, I put the tools back on the toolboard. I can actually see that. Great. Easy, but important because I don't have to chase my tools down. So they had difficulty seeing the value of that until they realized, if we just get these 10 things right every stinking day, then the shop's gonna run well, and I'm not gonna be frustrated and I'm not gonna get as grumpy as I normally am. Okay. So that's at their layer. So you Create the layer audit to their level where it's the most value adding, most meaningful.

Yep.

Okay. And you don't create one owner for, you know, Monday it was Ralph, and Tuesday it was Mary, and Wednesday it was George, etc. But there was one owner of the entire area. Now, at the next layer, what's the supervisor supposed to do? You can come by and make sure they did their audit. That's not really helpful. What you should do is you. I like to say show me. Show me questions. Not yes and no questions, but show me questions. So show me the toolboard. How's that going? Have you had any issues with anybody not playing by the rules? You know, so. And toolboard looks good. You say you did all checks. Thank you. So when things go well during a layered audit, we want to recognize that fact. So thank them when it goes well. Help them when it's not going well. Okay. So teaching that behavior to leaders, because they're just used to saying right or wrong. That's not what this is. So the audit takes five minutes or less, meaning leaders can give that time. If it took an hour, forget it. No one's going to do that. So as you go up levels, all you're doing is you're supporting and emphasizing the critical things in those areas. The critical standard work, the critical visuals, the critical equipment condition, whatever. The thing is, that's what I'm helping the teams build. So it's got to be meaningful. And everything comes back to leadership, commitment, and the why of what you did. Why does the tool board matter? It helps us respond to difficult downtime calls in a much safer and faster fashion. Now, the message in the audit needs to be aligned. So the behavior of that is so different from the yes or no. You get a red or you get a green.

What about that plant manager rolling in every so often? You know, I find it interesting. There's where I've seen. I've seen angst in multiple levels there. Obviously, the team member can be nervous, but I've even seen that supervisor, right?

Yes.

Also feeling a little anxious. Like, what's going on with the big boss rolling in here? What have you seen there?

So if you get that alignment and commitment and you. You want them to be help. So obviously for the supervisor, manager, all the way up to CEO, I've had CEO participate in these audits also, it's got to look like help, right?

Not just look like be help.

It has to be help, right? But sometimes you got to practice looking like help before you are help because you know I got four pieces of paper on a board. The Daily Audit, the Weekly Audit, the metric trending, and a picture of the area owner. This is in a 5s area. I always have a photo of the area owner with their name and contact details and their expectations. And it's gotta be help. You've gotta be there to support that area owner so that they actually want you to show up. And if you get that, it's amazingly powerful. Yeah, yeah.

Something that was popping in my mind while you were talking, imagine there's someone listening right now who says, this all sounds wonderful. You know, we got this fancy wheel with this amazing leadership in the middle and all this kind of stuff. But what happens if someone's listening and they don't have amazing leadership in the middle? Maybe they don't have a, a supervisor or a manager or a CEO who is bought into all this lean stuff, all this continuous improvement stuff. They just want to sell stuff and ship it. Right. Like, what's your message to that practitioner who, who's trying, you know, or maybe sometimes the worst is they get a little support enough for them to exist, but that's about it. Like, what's your message to that practitioner?

So obviously that can be really frustrating to the practitioner. Now part of that responsibility is on the practitioner, right? Because our jobs and I was a lean champion for a large company for many years. My job was one of influence. I had nobody working for me. So if I needed resources, if I didn't have influence, if I wasn't providing help value, then I was done. Right? Nothing was going to happen. Okay. So for a practitioner that has, let's say there is some leadership interest, maybe not perfect. Nobody's got perfect. Pick a, pick a winning opportunity. Pick an easy winning opportunity. So 5S is a really easy way to get a wow result when done well. Okay. And I've seen some ones that just knock my socks off. Right. They're just amazing night and day kind of stuff. Now we've got to design in those wins in every aspect. So when, when I run my events, the leadership commitment gets. The start point is at chartering, not at the event. Four weeks, six weeks before. We're building the whole experience and we're talking to leadership, I'm talking to leadership about what the expectation of them is. Now I'm far enough along in my journey that if they don't have it, I don't have to work with them. Okay. That's kind of nice to be able to say no, but I'm testing it. When we're Chartering. Chartering is kind of challenging for some folks. We did an episode on that. Very simple, but very powerful. Is this truly a business problem that, when solved, will be high value? So if it's worth $2 million, which some of my events are known to be worth that in a week or less. So we sometimes we get on some really good stuff. Okay. Are you willing to stop by once every two weeks for. For five minutes? Will you start? Will you show up at the Kaizen event three times, kick us off, Come on, lunch, go to the team dinner. You know, if you're not willing to do that for $2 million, then what else you got? Maybe you got something bigger going on for five minutes of your time, but most of the time we don't. Right. And I've had, you know, you've. You've heard a lot of my stories, but getting people to participate in that way, if you can turn things into direct benefit, financial benefit, customer benefit, etc. People really get it. If you're vague about benefit, then it just all sounds good.

Yeah.

Right?

Yep.

Yeah.

You know what's got me excited about, you know, we're recording this year in early 2023. You know, there's all this uncertainty in the world as far as the economy and recessions and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And to me, it's.

It's.

I mean, it's scary, for sure. I mean, you know, we're both business owners, right? And so there's uncertainty on that end of it. But being in the jobs that we're in, if you can get folks to understand the only thing they really can control is, you know, their cost. You know, you can't even really control what you sell. Something for the market really dictates that. Right. But if you can control your costs, get them under control. And I don't mean lay off people, lay off people and all that. That's just. You start doing that, you're. You're pretty much sunk anyhow. But. But, you know, being able to go in and. And help that company, you know, reduce their costs by $2 million, you know, because when we say save million, $2 million, you know, just like some accountants out there, it's like, what do you mean hard savings? Is that on my P L. Or. You know, so I guess that is an interesting question that I'd like to pose to you. When you say there's a $2 million opportunity out there, you know, if you're speaking to a cfo, what does that look like?

Yeah. So that's great question that. So it's hard savings most of the time. You know, very specifically, if I am not, you know, I'm making X amount of scrap or I have this percentage of returns or changeover takes a certain amount of time. So capacity losses. Right. So, you know, I got fined. One of the early stories I told was about Amazon finding a company $1.3 million annually because they were late on delivery Amazon and after the Kaizen was over, they hadn't been fined ever, ever again. Yeah. So right off the bottom line, that was $1.3 million annually that they recouped. Now my joke is I'm not smart enough to take a percentage, but that's not what I'm in this for. I love helping teams figure out stuff they couldn't figure out just without some help. Right, right. They could have figured it out. I mean, honestly, some of the things we did were like, really? Are you sure you couldn't have done? Yeah, you know, you needed me to show up, but sometimes you need the outside set eyes. So when we charter, I'm looking for hard savings. Now there is fear, hey, if we say it, they're going to hold us accountable to it, maybe. Is that wrong? Why is that bad? You're delivering to your company and why not hold yourself accountable? Then it'll put more attention on it and help you sustain it versus just, well, let's just hope for the best and see what happens. Let's not do that. Let's help each other.

Who's nervous about that in a charter? Is it the, the team leader, this continuous improvement team leader, or is it the plant manager, like, who's nervous about committing typically?

Now I'm not doing a lot of manufacturing these days. I'm doing a lot of distribution and some other back office stuff. But it's typically whoever's in charge of the site or the office because, you know, they've got their, the, they've got their standard costs and their budgets and you know, they've committed to saving X this year and now this is here. Oh, maybe they're going to get us to commit even more. You know, I can't, I can't help them with that. I say, but listen, we're, we're, we're going to do our best. If we deliver a million instead of two, that's still a million more than had we not done this.

Yeah.

And truly the investment is not in the consultant. You know, I get paid and that's fine, but it's the intense focus of a Team off of their jobs for my events are a week or less. So we know they're not allowed to do a thing during the Kaizen unless there's a family emergency or the facility's burning down. Yeah. Other than that, that's all we're doing. That's all we're doing. If you're in, you're full 100%. That's part of the leadership commitment test as well. Yeah.

I think we've, we've chatted about this in the past, but I want to ask it again. Everyone that's listening to this, that's done a facilitated a kaiset event has interacted with at least one, what we call cave person, which is a citizen against virtually everything. You typically spot them. You come in on the Monday morning, if you're going to do a little training session on the topic of the, of the event and that person will be sitting in the back row, their arms are going to be crossed. Yeah, you're doing it. They got a scowl on their look and you know, just not happy to be there. You know, it's been my experience that they end up sometimes, not always, but many times being one of, if not the most valuable team member on the whole group because they often come with a lot of experience and all the rest of it. But I'm curious to get your thoughts. Adam, You've. You've run a lot of events over the years. What, what, how do you handle the cave person?

Well, I always get them. We just call them healthy skeptics. Right. Or grumpies. But I've heard cave person as well. Yeah. So how do you handle it? First of all, you engage. First of all, they're in there because it's a topic that's meaningful to them. Okay. So some of the errors I've seen in the past was just throwing people randomly on these teams in topics that they don't care about. High risk, don't be random, be purposeful. So the other thing I'm known for is not just the wheel. Sustainability is how I facilitate Kaizen events. And very recently I've come up with a three day training where some of the techniques that I've learned over the years I actually am demonstrating and getting people to participate in. So it's kind of a new thing, a new experiment. Right. So because I think it's all about engaging people in a way that they feel like they're part of the solution. So these cave people, like you call, they've been complaining about issue for years. Right. And what they think when they're sitting in the room is. We're just checking the box. They're in the room. So what I've done is I engage them from the second minute they're there. Well, actually the first minute. And I use post its. We talked about that. How I go around the room with everything. So everybody participates. But very recently, very quick story, maybe with my main client and. Yeah, there's no such thing. That's Adam's oxymoron. Right. Quick story. This gentleman hourly employee was Mr. Skeptic. And the team picked three things to work on. So I had a team of 12, I think, so we had groups of four working on things. This was to reduce incorrect orders within an inventoried area. I'm trying to be intentionally vague. Well, this guy, he got on a team to basically do a 5s in his area where they store all these things that were getting lost. He basically said, there ain't no way we're going to be able to solve this. There's no way. We don't have enough time. We've been working on this for years. It's impossible. Well, two of the folks on his little group of four were so into it. They stayed over. They came in early. He started. You saw him. He turned into the most excited person. He became the area owner. We started bringing people over to see them in other Kaizen events to show what was possible. And two or three months ago, I was taking a group in there. He said, let me show you something. He shows me an area that was a total disaster. It wasn't even in our scope. Total disaster. And he's like, what do you think of that? And it was just in the moment. I gave him a hug, and he was. And he. And he is. You could just see him beaming. Not for. Not for the hug, but just how proud the guy. Mr. Skeptic, Mr. Caveman. Now, this is his area. You don't mess with this area. This is. This is my. This is working. I mean, they not only 5 SD area, they put in a barcode inventory system. They put in all this ordering stuff that. And they did it in a week or left. Now they did a little homework afterwards. And you know, because they were so into it and it wasn't done and they're not supporting me well enough. And I walk in there and I go, oh my God. This thing is thousands of times better than it was. Yeah. Prior to the Kaizen. And five times better than when we left.

Yeah.

And you're still not satisfied, which is awesome. You know, So I said to CEO, who, you know, got a good working relationship, I said, you gotta go see him. He goes, well, I visited with him. Nope, let him give you a tour. Let him and just tell. And so CEO comes back, he goes, oh, crap. It's not the area. The area is great. It's the guy. Yeah, right. So we did something that mattered. We blew past his expectations. He was part of the solution. It was done in a way that helps him. He's so proud of it. So how do you get that? Well, I have to be honest, I didn't always get that. Don't always get that. But I'm focusing on where's, what's going to help these folks do their jobs. Yeah, we're not doing it for management, we're doing it for them. They're the ones that create the value. And if we can help them, then of course it'll help management, help the customers, help the other employees.

Yeah, I think. I know I've told this story before on the podcast, but it's hard to do when you have 460 episodes.

Hard not to repeat. Yeah, right.

But the most powerful Kaizen event story in my mind is many moons ago, you know, I was running an event in Sulphur Springs, Texas, at a nice plant up in there, and there was a gentleman who was not happy to be there. And, you know, my style was always to just gently kind of involve them, but not push them too hard. And especially in day one, just kind of, you know, respect them. And. And then, hey, by day two, hey, what do you think about that? You know, and, well, you know, and then they'll. They'll rattle off their things. Oh, that's good. And then just do it.

Right, right.

And he's like. And so anyhow, that in that particular situation, that event, that gentleman, by the end of the week, and again, it was like a four and a half day event, something like that, you know, Friday, kind of final report out, you know, to the big leadership team and all that. He, the operators, always, the people who'd ran the event, always. I had them report out and I just sat in the back and. And he. He got up and he literally, he literally this grown man, he literally wept in front of that whole room and he said that. No, nobody, no team has ever listened to me. You know, like, it like chokes me up thinking about it. No team has ever listened to me. Like, this team listened in the, I don't know, 30 years or whatever it was. He had been there a long time, you know, and So a lot of times I feel like these, when we, we call them cave people or whatever, but it, it's sometimes it's not always, but sometimes it's a failure in, in us and our leadership that we're not invoking the best. We're not getting the best out of the folks that we have out there. We're not listening to them. We're not, you know, involving them as much as we could. I mean, sometimes you get. Someone just got a bad attitude, you know, but, but, you know, but in this case, you know, yeah, he, he genuinely had. And he did. He brought it. It was a smed event. I remember it was a quick changeover event and yeah, and boy, we smashed it and, and he was instrumental and I'll just never forget that, you know.

So those are the best moments. And so what I've tried to do is I've had similar experiences and so I was trying to figure out, how did that happen? How can I help others? I don't want them to feel bad about what they had done in the past, but I want them to get the experience that's that meaningful to them now. I would say you and I have different approaches. I'm not gentle at all. They call me intense. And that's a nice term. Okay, 30. 30 minutes in on day one. Everybody's deeply in it.

You kick them out if they're not.

No, they, they don't have to be kicked out. They're playing, they're, they're laughing. They're doing. Now we're not deep in the work at that point. All I'm doing is I'm getting their minds open and loosen them up because I. One of the, one of my principles is teams that are having fun get more done.

Okay.

So, yeah, I mean, it's just a thing. And I like to have fun too. I do a lot of silly stuff and it's. Some of it's extreme. But what I've realized, it's the only thing that holds us back is us. Right? Yeah. People do amazing stuff and the sooner we get them there, the better. So I'm trying to get them into project work. Day one afternoon. Even though there's training, we'll do all the training, the Gemba walk, the mapping, pain points, opportunities, prioritization, project development or project definition, and actually get out into your work groups by late afternoon. Day one.

Yeah.

Because I want them actually to think about their project overnight and at the team dinner, first night. Nice. And so if I'm able to get them there and There are some shortcuts taken, but think about the fact that you can't teach them everything anyway. This is not learn lean. This is all about. Learn some ways to make your job better. And then we're going to actually do that. We're going to use it.

How often do you guys go out for dinner?

Curious. Always. Night one. So if you follow Adam's process, you are going to have a team dinner, and it's going to be the first day.

Okay.

Okay. And that's. There's very. There's purpose behind that. We do. For my client in Florida, we always do a happy hour on Friday after the report out. I'm the same way. I don't. I'm not allowed to report out. I'm sitting in the back. I'm like the proud daddy. I'm clicking the slide. They're doing their thing. They're telling their story. You know, I built the report out for them, and then they just deliver it in their words, in their story, in their time and. Yeah. So if you start working with me, you're gonna have a team dinner Monday night. You're gonna. Food matters. You're gonna have a happy hour Friday after the report out. If we're finishing on Friday, leadership is invited to both and is expected to attend. Not everybody does, but our sponsor always attends. Always. So they better not blow it this next week. So I've done that. That's kind of the standard work. And really, people haven't pushed back on that. Now, one of. One of my groups said, well, we need a budget. All right, Seriously, you want to skimp on this? They're going to save you $800,000 this week. You're telling me you want to save 100 bucks on food? Yeah. Seriously, you want Happy Meals? What are we doing? So we talk like that. If you work with me, you get exactly what you're getting right now. Ron, this is. This is who I am. So there's no real neutrality on Adam. I'm an acquired taste, and I understand that, but at least I'm the same way. So we're gonna have fun. We're gonna. We're gonna give the team the best opportunity to have a winning experience. And that in my Kaizen facilitation training that I've been doing, food is actually a small section of the agenda that's important.

Yeah.

Because I realized you should never skimp on those little things. Show up, recognize, have fun, feed them well, make the environment is conducive to, you know, learning. And then the last piece which goes back to the wheel. Every single thing they do, the answer has to be yes. Drop what you're doing and help them if they need to spend a couple of bucks. The answer is yes. Can I change the standard Rorke? The answer is yes. The only time the answer is no is if it violates company policy, safety, or the laws of physics. Other than that, it's all good. We're gonna do it. And that. That's part of the prepping that I do with leadership as well. If we're gonna do a Kaizen event, the answer has to be yes. And you have to let them know you have their backs at all times. So show up. Showing up is a way to do that. Keep. Stop. Hey, what you guys working on? Can you show me?

Yeah.

So that those are the best. When leadership shows up like that, it's very, very important.

I've even seen, you know, it's been in my experience, you know, back. Back in my corporate days, when I would be running these events with different folks. The. I remember one time there was a vice president of operations, you know, and he was a former, you know, not former lean guy, but, you know, wasn't practicing as much as he was at that point. He was an executive at that point. But he rolled in one day in his blue jeans and, and. And this and that, and he was rolling around on the floor. And, man, these operators are like, who's this guy? Man, we just saw him on, like, he was just talking to the CEO of the such, you know, on Wall street. And now he's here, right, working on our. That's our smart event, you know, and boy, you get buy in like that as well.

So. So let me take us back to the. The real topic that I. That I thought I was going to talk to you about, because, you know, we could do this all day. Oh, yeah. So what I learned about the wheel, and we actually touched on this a couple times. Like I said, I assume that they got it. They did not. So what I'm doing now, somewhere in about day two, two and a half, okay, they know what they're working on. The little projects are kind of starting to move forward. So what I'll do right after lunch, I think typically day three, is I'll get a volunteer from the team. They don't even know what's going to happen. And they become the employee, and I'm going to now take them around the wheel on their exact topic. So we're going to role play, and I'm going to introduce every aspect of the wheel based on the thing that they're in the middle of developing to show them how to implement the wheel around their change. So I'm going to do the notification. So the idea of we made this change, this is why we made it. Not what we made, but why we made it, why do we think it'll help you be safer, more productive, etc. Here's how I'm going to train you. Let me show you how to do it. Now, please show me how to do it. And we're going to have that conversation. Here's the visible evidence, here's the signage. So I'll draw pictures. Say here, here's the toolboard. See, that's where the wrench goes. See how that works? And if you're using it, that's great. But if you're not using it goes on the board. Don't leave it somewhere. Why? Because if you don't have it, you can't do your job. And people chase it down and they lose time and they get frustrated. All tools available. So these are the tools. It can be standard work, it can be visuals, it can be specific tools. So I'll take each aspect and I'll do it like improv. But I've been living with them. I call it a four day road trip. Right? You're on a journey with these folks. You get to know everything that they're working on. Even though I can't see everything at all moments, but you're paying enough attention that you can play the entire wheel with them. What I've noticed since I started doing that is that their solutions become a lot more practical and impactful. So it was on me. It was my fault. I was assuming there's that word again, that they got it because it's so simple. There's just these nine elements. The reality is, well, I wrote the dang book. Of course it's simple to me.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Good stuff, man. Well, Adam, we've done it again. Almost 40 minutes. Here we go. That's why I love having you on, man. It's just time flies. Well, hey, if folks do want to connect with you, learn more about, you know, your services, your three day training class, all that kind of stuff, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Right, so I have my LinkedIn profile, Adam Lawrence, or my Process Improvement Partners company page. I do have a YouTube channel. There's 51 subscribers, so you could be 52. And certainly my website, PI-partners.com and you know, reach out anytime. Love talking about stuff. I'm. I do a lot of coaching, you know, off the cuff. I'm happy to help anybody. You know that there is no charge for that. Love, love. Just helping folks. That's what we're in the business to do, you know. And then certainly the Kaizen events are the most fun of all. Love doing that. Yeah.

Awesome. And we'll link everything up in the show notes as always. So this is gamma podcast dot com. This is 459 episode 459. Well, maybe about, I don't know what about 480, 490 or something like that. We'll go for. For what? Number nine or something like that.

Number nine. All right, we got crazy eight. We had lucky seven Crazy eights on. I don't know what nine is, but we'll figure that out. All right. All right.

I appreciate you, Adam. You take care, man.

You too. Good talking with you.

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