GA 462 | Fort Collins’ Lean Journey with Roland Guerrero

Really intelligent folks understanding that there is a way to make this process better, but not having the time to do it. So like, I know this takes a long time, but I don't have the time to sit down and really run through like a methodology or even a traditional problem solving to kind of help understand that there's a better way to do it.

Today I'm excited to welcome Roland Guerrero to the show. Now, Roland works for the city of Fort Collins in Colorado, and he's part of their continuous improvement movement there in the city. And so today on the, on the episode, we sort of just talk about the journey of the city of Fort Collins and how they kind of got started with continuous improvement and they are more on the lean side of things and how do they get started and, and sort of what, what are they up to these days and what's their program look like and, and maybe some examples even of some improvements that they've made at the, at the city level. Towards the end of it, I, I dropped the same question. I've asked a few folks here on the past few podcasts on this. The whole idea of contentment, improvement and can they coexist? So I had a nice chat about that towards the end. So really, really good episode. I think you're going to enjoy it. So show notes can be found over@gemba podcast.com look for episode 462. And also, hey, listen, if you are a regular listener and you're finding value from the podcast, please do me a favor, scroll down on the app that you're on, especially if you're on the, the apple one. That, that one seems to really be powerful. If you could leave us a review now, if you think we're great, five star, you swell. But hey, you know, whatever, give us what you think we, we deserve. But apparently that does really helps our show sort of spread throughout their little algorithms. And that's what we, what you do this podcast to, to reach people and just kind of introduce the whole idea of continuous improvement and. Yeah, so that, that would be really great if you could do that for us. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Roland, how's it going?

Doing well, Ron. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, man, excited for the, for the, for the conversation. So where are you calling in from?

Fort Collins, Colorado.

All right, all right. We're here in Texas. So how much snow did you think like that?

Well, surprisingly, this morning was a shock. I went to take the kids and the, the snow has fallen again and I had to clean it off real quick before I took the kids out, but yeah, it's. It's nice and white here.

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's a beautiful part of the country. So.

All right.

Well, hey, man. Yeah, I'm excited to hear about what you guys got going on there in the city of Fort Collins with. With your continuous improvement program. But as you know, before we. We get into things, we like to start with a quote. So what do you got?

My favorite quote, and it resonates a lot with me lately, is, so I was in the military for 23 years, and Chief Robinson came in, and I think he yelled at us about something. But what he ended with was that what interests your leaders should fascinate you. And I googled it, like, probably a year ago just to see if he stole that from anybody. But I think somebody had something that was similar, but the brief version is kind of from him. But what interests your leader should fascinate you. And it's kind of resonated with me a lot lately with trying to install improvement programs and such here at the city.

Very good. Well, hey, tell us about your background role and tell us about how you got involved personally with continuous improvement, and then. And then that maybe that'll launch us into. Into your journey there with your city.

Sounds great. So, yeah, I started my lean journey began in 2010. So I had completed some. Some education and my. My master's and black and bachelor's, and someone had sent an email to us that said, anyone interested in greenbelt training? But it was like a one sentence line and to reply back, and we'll get you signed up. So I fortunately understood what that was because of a supply chain management course I took. And so I signed up and took that class in 2010, got certified through the Air Force in late 2010, and then I eventually took their black belt course in the Air Force as well. But that's kind of where I started. My journey was 2010, did some process improvements, and then I ended up going to headquarters for a while. So my background, I was in physical therapy, military, 23 years. And then eventually I got to. To do this full time. I got out of my career field and went into headquarters for the Air Force on the medical side and got to train and facilitate much of what I do now in the Air Force. So that was pretty fun.

And. And so now you're. You're working with the city of Fort Collins. So what do you. What do you do there?

So I got hired on in 2019, and I got initially as an improvement specialist, and now I run the program. Later in 2019, I got promoted to run the program. So the Prosperity program here at the city of Fort Collins is ran by me.

Okay, well, let's just jump in a little bit. And you know, there's seeing more and more, you know, various agencies, you know, at different levels of the government really starting to practice continuous improvement, which is obviously fantastic. A lot more to go as with every everywhere we need to keep improving. But I'm curious that, you know, when we start talking about your journey there with the city of Fort Collins, were you the one that got it started from. From the very beginning, or had there been some stuff before you?

No, there was stuff before me. So what how it occurred? We were born in 2017 and I'm the third program manager. We were born out of an opportunity for improvement from the Baldrige Award. So the year we won Baldrige, they said you need someone to help you look at your processes. And that's where through government, there's funding involved and offers. And we finally got approved and funded in 2017. So we hired on someone that started the program, they moved on, they hired someone else to continue it. And then actually the last person and I kind of like, she left and got promoted down at Denver, and I kind of backfilled and became the program manager after her. So we kind of collaborated towards the end of her. Her reign there. So we kind of went on the trajectory we are now.

All right, well, tell us about the program. I mean, like, you know, and I know you weren't there at the very beginning, but, you know, if you look back on the history of the program, how did it start? Maybe like, what were some of the. What would that first year look like?

Yeah, so it's an ad hoc type of. Type of program. So you have an issue or a problem in the city or a process taking too long, errors in the process, customer service, what have you, you just reach out to our program called FC Lien, so Fort Collins Lane, and we would go and help you facilitate that improvement. So much like a consultant would do. Just we're part of the city, so that's kind of how we are majority right now. Like, I'd say 90% of what we do is ad hoc. Now we're transitioning as you evolve and. And things of that nature, we're transitioning to more of a systematic approach to problem solving. So it's more of a, like a Toyota production system or lean daily management healthcare. We're trying to Transition to that. And that's where we're kind of piloting a program to help us with that one.

Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about some of the ad hoc improvements. I mean, can you give us maybe some examples? I mean, I'm sure some of it's. Lots of it's confidential and whatnot. But, you know, is there anything that you can share, some stories maybe?

Oh yeah, there's some great stories. One of the big ones was pretty interesting. We as a city took on broadband as a utility we wanted to provide to our community. And in doing so, what you don't think of like the downstream effects are locates division the people that go out and like look for lines electrical so when you have to dig, you don't dig up something and hit something and hurt yourself. Well, that between the normal work that they normally have plus the construction that was occurring with this broadband and having to. To bury the fiber, create a. Create a lot more work and was going to be projected to have a lot more work. So we got in with those folks and we kind of looked at a way to streamline it so they were consuming. And after we measured it like 16, 16 hours a day. And I'm not. This is not hyperbole. It's not grown over time. Sixteen hours a day, over eight people was spent on administrative things like printing out the things in the morning or designing your routes, sketching the actual lines mark and then all the other stuff. But there's like 16 hours of administrative duties that was associated. So what they did is they kind of looked at that, reformed the process, incorporated a software that helped. They could take pictures instead of having to write stuff down. That software that kind of helped navigate them in the most efficient routes. All things that were done manually turned into a more efficient electronic type of, type of approach. So it was pretty fascinating to. To see them do that and just gain those benefits.

Now are you guys sort of like actively trying to, you know, obviously you try and make everything better, but like are you measuring like cost savings or, you know, that sort of thing we.

Do in that one specific instance we had, we do a soft cost analysis on. On those processes. So 16 man hours, you know, multiply or staff hours multiply by a standard number that we use. But also in that case, I had more. Had a lot of overtime associated with it. So there was some hard cost savings that was reduced. Now they got super busy, so the overtime is still there. But you could imagine it being a lot more had they not made that process More efficient. So they're able to handle a lot more volume now than they were in the past. But yeah, no, we do, we, we use a team's mnemonic and how we look at a process and we kind of brainstorm through that like a time time kind of metric, either lead time or touch time. Then we have an errors kind of metric. So if you have a process had a lot of errors, we kind of brainstorm, see what we can get from that. We have amount. How often are you doing that process? We have a cost which is the money piece of it and we added a sustainability about a year and a half ago as we keep evolving. And that's more of like our social and environmental type impact, so. Or is the process equitable throughout the city or even to our community members or are we consuming a lot of resources? Like in that situation we're consuming probably a case of paper a day. We eliminated that. So that was a way we could reduce our resources.

What about then like how do you go about, you know, training people and introducing them to lean to six Sigma? Continuous improvement in general?

Yeah, so we strictly go lean. When we created a class called Lean Basics and it's our flagship, our introductory course and that basically takes people through our problem solve methodology. We use something a little different that we created. We were kind of on a trajectory for like problem solve fix. I mean ours is problem solved fix but it's much related to the practical problem solving method and a three thinking. So we walk them through what the wastes are, we walk them through how to use that problem solve fix, how to really slow down and understand your current state, how to do root cause analysis. And after that how do you select the fixes to help you mitigate those, those root causes that you came up with. So that's kind of, that's our introductory class. We do a webinar version now. This year we're actually doing the webinar plus some in person kind of mixing. Mixing as the appetite of in persons coming back.

So has it all been easy or have you had some bumps and obstacles along the way or talk about that, the education piece?

No, a lot of people, you know, the city's great like the, the folks here are very self starting organizations. So a lot of people want to know more and learn more. They take a lot of the continuous improvement or a lot of just educational improvement opportunities that the city offers. So like I'm teaching a class this week and I had 20 signed up which usually towards the end of the year I get around seven. So everyone's super excited and sign up. So I. The challenges here are not so much the education piece, it's kind of the after. Right. What's the intent of the education that we offer? And the intent we want is someone to use the information to improve something at their level. And that's kind of been our barrier which we're solving with the four columns improvement system, which is hopefully those supervisors understanding what they're looking at and driving that success and driving the accountability that's needed to, to achieve those outcomes.

So what, what if you know somebody else is listening right now and perhaps they work in a city or maybe some other government agency that's not necessarily affiliated with an actual city but like, and they want to get going with, with, with a lean program. Like what, what sort of a tips or advice do you have for them?

Well, we consult with a lot of municipalities that reach out because it is still young in this space. And what we typically find and what I typically gravitate to tell them is that find a methodology. There's so often where we start speaking to folks and they're new to process improvement. Maybe they don't have the education that some folks have that understand all the different DMAICs and you know, PDCA or practical problem solving method. They don't understand those methodologies yet. My first ask is pick a methodology that you know, that you like that helps guide those folks. Because we'd had a situation where I came in and we were, we didn't have methodology just yet and someone was really excited about a root cause analysis. They did. And I asked, oh, let me see your process map and how you kind of came to that, like oh, we're going to do that next. I'm like, okay, well these, you know, process map helps helps you understand the current state so you can better have a root or you have a better root cause analysis. And it's like we just need better buckets to help people understand and guide them through an improvement versus like here's all the tools and then use them in any way you see fit. So we, so I say methodology is typically the first thing I, I kind of emphasize that they incorporate.

Have you guys experimented with any sort of Toyota Kata scientific thinking, anything like that or.

No, we haven't got that deep. I mean we, we do pretty much when we educate. It's, it's basically, you know, the eight. The eight wastes really how to do like, like our tools are specifically process map tick sheets or we call y'. All. It's called Pareto charts, Spaghetti or handoff diagrams. Those are kind of like specifically what we teach them. And then the root cause analysis, we only give them a few things like a fishbone and a 5Y analysis to help them through stuff. And in our fixed phase we do some quiet brainstorming and teach them how to use a pic chart. But that was another thing I usually tell municipalities is kind of we got more scripted. And now I'm not sure like your education when you went through, but whenever I got to an education or took a class or a certification, I felt like I was in dated with all these tools. And the one thing I got out of it was like I was confused. I don't know what to do next. I don't. Where do I use this? When did you use that? And what typically happens is you don't use enough or you use them all and you're just paralyzed anyway. So we got really scripted with our education to say this is what we use 90% of the time. Let's not confuse them with all the other stuff that you may or may not use.

So that's really good. Yeah. My personal situation, you know, obviously pre gambling academy, I, you know, I went through more of a traditional training, you know, two weeks for, you know, on the Six Sigma side, two weeks for a green belt, two weeks for black belt and you know, another four or five weeks for some astro black belt stuff or whatever. And, and you're right. After each one of those classes we would leave. I have them in fact in my office, big binders full of PowerPoint slides. Remember those? And you know, it's like, what the hell do I do with all these PowerPoint slides now? And you're like, you know, so that's part of the reason we, we created Gimba Academy is because you're not going to remember it all. So go back and watch a video when you need it, you know. But, but no, that, that makes a lot of sense. Like so you, you mentioned things like picture and Prado. What are some of the other things that are must haves, must teach for, for city of Fort Collins?

Well, those are the, those are the staples that we use and kind of want them to gravitate to. We think those are like your basic knife and fork. Right? And then there's a whole bunch of other things you can use, but we don't really get into that. We have a lean leader class where we start getting a little more statistics, things that are applicable to service area. Not too crazy with the stats part of it, but we, we give them more tools at that point because they're going to be armed to facilitate medium scope projects. Yeah, we want them to have a little more tools under their belt, but the basic stuff we just want them to get really good at. Hey, we have a whole bunch of things. Let's put it in a picture and see what's high impact, low impact. We want you to categorize those. If they can do that, I think that it would have a tremendous impact.

I've always thought about maybe one day if I ever slow down at Gemba Academy and I'm bored, I'll make a rent at my little city council or something like that to support my city here. But like what's, what's going on in your city? Like with, with maybe, I don't know, you put you on the spot here. They're all listening. What are you gonna say, man? You know, you know, but like what's the activity with like, you know, some of your city leadership, you know, and city council and stuff like that. So if we're having problems, are they, are they calling on you to come in and help or you know, are they just flailing around like 90 of the other cities around the country?

Well, our, and this is something I didn't. My background is, you know, business, mba, all that type of degrees. But my co worker is more of a MPA I think, I think. But I don't have a business, I don't have a government background is what I'm getting at. And what we have here is apparently a city manager mayor form. So some places have mayors that kind of dictate a lot of stuff. And we have a city manager that acts like our CEO and in doing so our city council kind of that city manager is hired by the council and they kind of have their priorities but for the most part we're run like just think of like a business and our top person, CEO. It's like a CEO and we call them a city manager and they're. And they're great. They're fully supportive in everything that we do. Process improvement. They do a good job of echoing as things come up. As CEO would say, hey, you know, reach out to FClean and they contact us. But that's really the ad hoc method that we, we still do. Obviously we'll take anyone that needs or wants help, but we're trying to transition to that more systematic approach to identifying and resourcing improvement opportunities.

Yeah, I mean I think it would be cool to see, you know, the government and Cities and our, our federal government, you know, especially, you know, thinking about, like, the whole concept of, like, Hoshin Conry and policy deployment and like, what are the breakthrough objectives for the United States of America? Like, in three to five years, what do we want? Where do we want to be as a nation? Nation, and then start cascading that down. You know, can you imagine, you know, if we had leadership at the federal level who understood these things and practice them and never, you know, forget about, you know, you don't have to worry about bipartisanship anymore. It's like, well, no, these are the things that hit the. Hit the X matrix or hit the A3 or whatever it might be. And. And we just start cascading that down across the, across the whole country down to this, you know, individual cities, you know, and, you know, at Fort Collins, you're doing these things because ultimately it cascades and reverses back up to the parent level, you know, matrix at the federal level. I don't know. That would be incredible to me.

Yeah, it sounds daunting, but, yeah, that would be incredible.

You know, I asked the. I think this might be a question I start asking folks more often on the podcast. We used to always ask in the early days, hey, what does respect for people mean to you? And we got, like, hundreds of answers. It's really cool, you know, because it means something different to everybody. But I posted something on LinkedIn a few weeks ago where I was. I don't know why I was thinking about this. I think I was thinking about contentment, you know, and like, thinking about, like, my kids, you know, and they're like, dad, I need a new iPhone. There's an iPhone, X, whatever, you know, and I only have a 12 or 11 or whatever, you know, they're never happy, never content with what they got right, always want more. And I was thinking, I was like, huh, I wonder, like, how what role like, being content plays with, like, continuous improvement. Like, can contentment and the whole idea of continuous improvement coexists. I saw. I actually put it out on LinkedIn and just a lot of people had different opinions. So I'm curious to hear from you, just as a practitioner, like, what do you think about, like, the concept of, like, being content, but yet knowing we got to continuously improve? What do you think? Can they coexist?

You're asking me? So my boss makes fun of me because I'm like that super bowl winning coach that's still unhappy with how their team played, and I'm never gonna be happy. So to be content with. With stuff is kind of a hard question, but what, what you said earlier about your kids wanting to like, want something. It's funny because in that, in the government's sector, that's kind of how things are usually it's like, hey, I want this, I want that. But it's usually from traditional problem solving. So here's a, Here's a problem, here's a fix they think is going to be solved with this thing that they want. And if they could just replace that with a methodology, what they typically want may or may work, but you would be more statistically the outcome might be achieved if they could really think down the root cause and think about things. Not sure if that answers your question completely, but it's just a way to know.

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. Another way of. Some people were answering it to the effect of we can be content with that. We're constantly trying to find better ways, you know, but you know what I'm saying, it's something, it's almost like contentment can play a part of it. You know, even though we know tomorrow we want to get better, but we're sort of, you know, you know, maybe even gratitude comes into play. And you think about, you know, if you have a team, they go off and they make something better with those, or the example with the broadband, you know, like, you know, we made a big improvement, you know, can that team feel any happiness, any gratitude, any contentment? Even that, hey, we did a great job here, you know, and use that as a line launching board to be like, okay, what can we do better now? Where else can we go? And you know, so I don't know, maybe that's where they. There's an intersection. I'm still searching myself for the answer. That's why I keep asking people, well.

In some situation it does. So that breeds. So our word of mouth advertising is probably the best. Right? So as we do improvements and we get these like 10 or 12 folks in an improvement opportunity and we facilitate them and they're like, wow, that was amazing. Then that breeds more, you know, opportunities for them to say, I'm gonna put this pro, this opportunity through this process so I can have a better result as well. And that kind of. So like utilities, it's like a big player. I have repeat customers. It was utilities that just kept coming back because they saw the benefits of having some facilitated events occur. So that's kind of. Yeah, that happens.

Yeah, well, yeah. And that word of mouth, you know that there's excitement there, right. People are like, wow, we're proud. You know, we feel good. Look what we just did, you know, we made this thing better. It's going to help our city, help our city. Everybody in the. In the. In the community. It's benefiting from this. And. And so that sort of excitement, you know, is what. That's your best marketing. Right? You can't fake that. And then other people want to get better. So perhaps that's kind of. Maybe that was a backwards way of what I'm getting at. Like, if you're sort of content, you're happy with that moment in time, but not satisfied. Like your sports analogy with like, I love it. Like, was it.

I'm.

I'm Ohio State guy. So, you know, Georgia got lucky and we missed a kick, you know, but, but. But like Kirby smart, after he won, you know, he's like, literally the interview of the. That night, he was like, yeah, next year we got to reinvent ourselves and this and that, you know, and it's like, yeah, can you just be happy with a national championship? But.

But that's.

Those guys are wired differently. You know what I mean? And there's a reason.

So our biggest hurdle recently, or just in general, is really intelligent folks understanding that there is a way to make this process better, but not having the time to do it. So, like, I know this takes a long time, but I don't have the time to sit down and really under. Like run through, like a methodology or even a traditional problem solving to kind of help understand that there's a better way to do it. And that's been. My biggest hurdle, is to try to say it doesn't have to take a long time. Yes, I want to have a little more structure because I want you to have results quicker, but I don't want you to try it 10 times and finally get it right on the 11th. I want you to get a good, substantial savings on that first run. So it's hard to. To do that because they. They recognize it. Like, I know what you're asking me. I know you're telling me you're trying to help me save time, but I don't have time to save time. And it's just the weirdest paradox.

Yeah, well, boy. Or, you know, you often, you'll see, you know, I'm in meeting after meeting after meeting, talking about making stuff better, but we're always in meetings. We can't ever make anything better. You know what I mean? So it's sort of like we're our own worst enemy, you know, even our little GABA Academy, you know, 20 some employees. You'd think we got, you know, like, my God, so many meetings we need here, people.

Come on. I always wear that. That cartoon where it has a guy with a wheelbarrow and has that square front. I think it's pretty popular in the lean community. And it has that square wheel. Oh, yeah. And the guy's behind him, like, I have this, and I don't have time for you, and kind of like just running away from them.

Yeah, we're running away from the wheel. Yeah.

Circular wheel.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. Cool, man. All right, well, hey, this has been fun rolling. If folks want to. If sounds like you are open to. To hearing from folks and other parts of the country, perhaps even the world. You know, we got international audience, you know, so, you know, some folks in Germany listening to us right now and saying, we need this, you know, in our. In our area. So is it okay for folks to reach out to you?

Oh, definitely. Yeah. I love sharing our stories. I love sharing our learning curves. I think that's how we get better, is just try to learn from each other. We have a bunch of connections already throughout the country. But, yeah, I love. Even if you're doing this and you've done it longer than me, please reach out, because I'd love to pick your brain.

Yeah. So what. What is the best way for them to connect with you, Roland?

LinkedIn is. Is great. You're probably gonna ask me what that is right now. And I don't know off top of my head, my email address. You can just do R Guerrero, which is G U E R R E r o@fcgov.com. that's probably the easiest, more efficient way. Just email me and I'll set up some time to kind of have a discussion with you and we can chat about it.

Yeah, and we'll link. We'll find you on LinkedIn and put that in the show notes. So people, just scroll down on your podcast app right now. And Roland's Rolando, I guess, on LinkedIn, probably make your mom happy.

Said, yeah.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, we'll get all that linked up. And. And, well, I appreciate you coming on, and maybe if I'm ever out in the Fort Collins area, I'll look you up and we'll do a little tour of the city.

Heck, yeah, man. Come on out.

All right. Okay. Well, thanks a lot.

Take care. All right, sir. Take care.

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