GA 466 | Problem Statements, Ideation, and Coaching with Jamie Flinchbaugh

People really feel when it comes to problem solving, they feel a bit stalled, hamstrung, shackled, whatever, without their tools. And the gap between using a tool and not using a tool is a chasm that I'm hoping the book continues to help close. But I'm not sure I realized how big the chasm was Today.

I'm excited to welcome Jamie Flinchbaugh back to the show. Now, as longtime listeners know, Jamie Flinchbaugh's been around the lean world for quite a while, and one of the, I would say one of the original pioneers of our movement really. And he wrote one of the, the best Lean books that I ever read called Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean. And, well, as it turns out, Jamie's written another book called People Solve Problems. Well, back in 389, if you've been listening that long or, or longer, I had Jamie on. It was actually even before the book was released and we sort of walked through a little bit about, hey, what are you going to be talking about in this book? And, and anyhow, it's been a year or so now since the book's been. I asked Jamie to come back on to give us an update on what he's learned. And then we actually, we dove in because I've since read the book now and I was able to actually ask a few really specific questions about some, some things. He has a whole section on problem statements and a whole section on what he calls ideation, or some people would call brainstorming. And then an entire part of the book is on coaching. So lots of, lots of really good, deep discussion on those various things. And I just had some general question and Jamie, he spilled the beans, man. So, like, stuff straight out of the book. So that's what I appreciate about Jamie. He's always, he's always giving. So I really think you're going to enjoy this episode. And again, if you've not read Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean or People Solve Problems, you really need to pick those up because they really should be on every bookshelf of a continuous improvement practitioner. Show notes for this episode will be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 466. Also, whatever podcast app you're on, just scroll down and we're going to link to People Solve Problems and Hitchhiker Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean. So you can pick those right up from the, from the show notes. And finally, if you keep scrolling down like I've asked the last few episodes, please give us a. Give us a review. And you know, if you, if you like the show and we add some value, five stars would be. Be fantastic. Final plug is here at Gemba Academy. We're actually starting to do in person workshops now. And so what we're going to do is I'm going to link to a page that shows all the various workshops. These podcasts are evergreen, so I'm not going to talk about specific dates because you could be listening to this two years from now. So. But yeah, we'll link to that as well in the show notes. So. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Jamie, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I am great. I'm glad to be here. Good to see you.

Yeah, good to see you too. For those that don't know where are you calling in from?

From my home office in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half north of Philadelphia.

All right. We're doing this interview in early February, so I guess probably what, about 78 degrees out there right now?

It's. It's a 40 something, but a little same thing.

Is 78, 40 something a little warmer.

Than it should be?

Yeah, yeah, we, we had our. I don't know if it'll be the last one. Probably won't. But we had our annual ice blast here in Texas a week or so ago and there was a funny little meme somebody sent over to something about Texas said, hold on, hold my beer. I'm gonna get this winter thing over in three days. Because it's like, it's back to like 65, 70 degrees over the weekend.

It's like, yeah, I know it doesn't last long, but it also means Texas is not well suited for it. I. Oh, no. Talk to a factory manager in the middle of that. They're like, yeah, not many people came to work today.

No, no. I mean, you know, annoys me with people down here is like some people would be like, I'm from Chicago and this and that. I'm like, listen, I lived in Chicago. I grew up in Ohio. No one, no matter where you're from, can drive on solid ice. I'm just telling you, no matter what.

You have to deal with your environment. I remember being in Jerusalem when they got snow.

Yeah.

And there's still some roads that are very, very old and they're not made for snow.

Right, right.

You got these narrow streets and city walls and, you know, just a tiny little bit of snow in Jerusalem is bad for everybody.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Anyhow. Well, Jamie, You've been on the show. Let's see episode 83, 314, 389. And, and now here we are on 466. So in 389, actually, we were, we were talking about your book that we're going to dive even deeper into. But before we get in all that, you know the drill. We like to get things going with a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, so I'm going to give you a quote, more of a scene extraction from a show. I used to love the West Wing, and my daughter and one of her college roommates were binge watching it over the holiday break. And the reason I'm sharing this is it's a theme that's been in my head quite a bit lately. And there's a conversation happening where President Bartlett and Toby are talking. I think there's some others in the room. And, and President says, you know, never doubt what a few people can do to change the world. And then he says, you know, you know why? And then he turns to Topi and says, because he knows that Toby knows the answer. And Toby says, because it's the only thing that ever has. And so, you know, I look back on hundreds, I've been reading a lot of history lately, and you go back hundreds and thousands of years and look at how often sometimes just a few people have come together and changed the world. And, you know, as we have plenty of change needed to have happened and there's a lot of people out there feeling like, you know, we might be headed in the wrong direction or the world's getting worse. There's plenty of people out there that are going to roll up their sleeves and change the world. And so I use that as a sentiment for hope and progress.

Yeah. I love it. And I would even go so far as to say is if people are complaining or this and that, it's like, well, you could be one of the people to, to change, to make a big change. So get after it.

You don't have to be, you don't have to be just a victim in the system.

Yep.

Because again, a few people have changed the system over and over and over again. Yeah, you could be one of those people.

Yep. Love it. Love it. All right, well, Jamie, first of all, congratulations on the, on the book. It's, it's fantastic. And I, I thoroughly enjoy reading it.

So I appreciate that. It's, you know, I, I, it's when we met last or did the podcast last. We were, I think you only had an outline of it. It Wasn't even in a pre, pre print version yet. And, and it's, it's been out for a little more than a year and you know, I, I don't know how many people have bought it. I don't even, I don't do it for the numbers or the profits because it's, you know, it's not a great way to make a living. But the receptivity of people who have really read it, you know, has been great. There's been plenty of people where this has changed their thinking, which is really what I'm after. So.

Yep, yep. Hey, tell us a little bit about your, just your background. High level folks haven't listened to the previous three episodes that you're on. Who is Jamie and what do you, what are you up to these days?

Yeah, so I guess I have over 30 years in, in sort of a lean evolution, I'll call it from, you know, participant to leader of organizations to consultant. And today, you know, a lot of what I do isn't even about lean, but I still apply lean thinking as an advisor and I call it a collaborative coach, for lack of a better term. But I work with a lot of executives in a range of different companies and I'm there on their thought partner, advisor and part coach. And most of the time lean isn't what we're talking about, but lean is informing how we talk about it. So I try to be a lean thinker, you know, spent over 30 years trying to be one and just try to tackle tough challenges, whether they be short and acute problems or big amorphous strategic challenges and, and help, help be a good partner for a lot of leaders out there.

I'm curious, like from a customer perspective for you, when you mentioned like these executives that you're working with and I know there's, I'm sure many variations of it, but are the majority of them have some lean experience or would you say the majority of them don't have like lean experience?

Oh, it's, it's pretty varied. There's some that, you know, I, if I had a consulting firm, which I don't anymore, I would hire them as a, as a consultant, you know, any moment they asked. They're such good, good thought leaders and, and excellent lean practitioners and lean leaders. So there's people I work with that, you know, that's, that's the category I'd put them in. There's others that I'm not sure they've read any books on lean, maybe including even mine. So I, I don't really quiz people to see if they. I should quiz people to see if they read mine. But I, I don't, I, I, Ultimately, it's about whether it's helpful to them. So it's, it's kind of all over the map, but there's at least a. The direction they want ahead is, is inherently consistent with lean thinking, whatever they want to call it, wherever they looks like when they start describing the challenges they want help with, there's, there's a clear fit with lean thinking. And so if somebody says, I want to build an organization just based on shoot from the hit and gut instinct. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not the guy to help you with that.

So, yeah, I'm gonna ask an unfair question now. Like, pick your favorite kid. If someone, if you have to give someone a book, Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean or People Solve Problems, which one are you gonna give?

Oh, good. It's, yeah, it's a tough question, but.

I would say Jamie's written both of them. By the way, in case you don't.

Know, I have written both of them, co authored the first one with my partner, Andy Carlino. But if somebody was in a lean practitioner role, especially if they were brand new to that role, you know, it's which I have talked to people like that even in the past week. They're like, hey, they put me in this role. I'm in charge of continuous improvement. To that person, I would say go read Hitchhiker's Guide first to experienced lean practitioners. Or I'll say general, you know, leaders. In any role, I, I would probably recommend people solve problems first.

No, we don't share the video here, so folks can't see this, but I can. I do notice that Hitchhiker's Guide to Leans got a little bit higher level on the bookshelf behind you. And people solve problems one level up. So I don't know if that's a subconscious tell or I, I, I don't.

Think so because, you know, I also, you can't see, you know, out of frame on the other side. There's, there's two copies of People Solve Problems. Okay.

All right, all right.

So if People Solve problems, gets plenty of prominent views.

Yeah, I got you. Hey, so what have you learned since. Since writing the book that people saw problems?

Well, the thing that I kind of knew but probably didn't really appreciate is how dependent maybe is the right word people are on the tools. You know, I wrote the book to be tool agnostic. I, I encourage people to use Tools. It's kind of like in the beginning of the book, I say, it's not about tools. Then I say, but tools. Right?

You do need them. Yeah, yeah.

But I actually worked pretty hard to make it tool agnostic. But I've had people, I still remember this conversation. They're like, okay, I'm reading the book and you're very clear, tool agnostic. You know, not about tools, but, you know, what tool should I be using? What, do you have a template you can send me? And I'm like, no. They're like, really? You're not going to give me a template? I'm like, no, I can point you at some templates, but I'm not going to give you a template. And they were half joking with me about it. But with numerous interactions and conversations, people really feel, when it comes to problem solving, they feel a bit stalled, hamstrung, shackled, whatever, without their tools. And the gap between using a tool and not using a tool is a chasm that I'm. I'm hoping the book continues to help close. But I'm not sure I realized how big the chasm was.

Yeah, yeah. I've lost track of how many times I've been asked for an A3 template, you know, and I'm like, well, you just get this piece of paper, it's a little bit bigger than that. And at top, you write background. You start writing the background of your problem, you know, with a pencil, by the way. But, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, it's tough. I mean, because I get it also, though, I mean, if you think about it, I mean, you know, they're. They're. They're wanting to practice. Right. And, you know, if you want to hit a baseball, you got to have a bat. Right? And. And so, like, what bat should I try? Jamie? You know, and, you know, so, you know, yeah, pick up any bat and then just start swinging it and then try a different bat and see if you like that one better.

Right? Yeah. And you can learn to swing a bat with any bat. You know, I mean, golf might be a better example because people think they need the best clubs before they play, right? Yeah. But if you can't swing the club, it doesn't matter how good you're gonna be. It's not gonna help you.

Exactly, Exactly. I wanna. In the book, there were several. I mean, I just. I really did appreciate the. I mean, there were things in there that, I mean, I knew a lot of what you were talking about, or I'd said it in maybe slightly different ways. But you did bring, you know, some fresh perspectives to things that I like, I necessarily always thought of. But there's a few things that I wanted to poke at. And then I just have some more general questions on the, on the book. But the first one is in chapter four. You, you're, you're obviously very passionate and this is early on in the book, obviously chapter four, talking about problem statements. And, and yeah, this is something that I've also seen just people just really, really struggle to write a good problem statement. And the thing that you had talked about, and I'd never really thought of it this way, so I appreciate it, was that you said to think of a problem statement as a vector. And I wondered if you could maybe expand on that a little bit for the audience. What did you mean by a vector?

Yeah, so vector has direction and magnitude, right. And for those who watched Despicable Me, right, There's a character in there called vector and he would always say direction and magnitude. So it just comes to mind immediately. But you know, as an example around just the magnitude, a lot of people have struggled with inventory lately, right? It's been a, been a challenge is between supply chain disruptions and more lately, demand shut off. You know, how do I manage my, you know, my inventory? And so just in terms of, you know, magnitude, it's like, well, are you trying to solve a one quarter problem? Like, how do I get rid of some extra inventory? And, or, or am I, am I trying to get better at how I manage inventory? No matter how fast it's going, you know, up or down? Those are two very different versions of the same problem statement. So people would say, oh, we need to, we have an inventory problem. Let's talk about that. I'm like, well, you know, again, are we talking about the 1/4 version of the inventory problem or the 3 year version of the inventory problem? Because they're very different magnitudes, very different degrees of freedom, what you can include what you can't. And, and so, you know, I think a lot of people in particular, you know, don't, I don't say don't reach for the stars, but they, they aren't as bold about how big a gap they are actually trying to close as they frame it. So, you know, the point around direction and magnitude is also that, you know, you just want to get started. You know, you want your problem, your first version of your problem statement to be directionally correct. There's a, there's, there's probably a recipe for it to be perfect. But I'll even go see people's slides where they will develop slides on creating problem statements. And then they'll say, here's a bad example, here's a good example. And then I'll pick apart the good example because even their good example isn't perfect. Yeah, right. So get it directionally correct. That's the, the, the, you know, direction. Think really clearly about how far you really need to go. Are you just, you know, trying to solve today's problem, the big problem, the massive mega problem, and, and then modify it as you go along? Right. Then you have, as you said, write it in pencil. I always like to say, literally or figuratively, write it in pencil. You know, because you want to modify your problem statement as you learn things, as you come up against, you know, reality, as you learn what's really behind it. And the problem statement might, might end up a little different along the way.

Later on in, in that same chapter, you then kind of got into some of the various failure modes. Can you think of just maybe a, a couple that, that are common that you see folks struggling with as it relates to problem statements?

Well, the most common is assuming a solution, you know, especially when it comes to software. And so, you know, some cases, they're, you know, they want to implement that software and it has benefits. And like you're really making a proposal, not solving a problem. So make your proposal. Don't, don't disguise it as a problem. Make your proposal. You say this software will have these benefits. Say that. Yeah. Don't pretend, pretend you have something else. And I think as we already talked about, you know, not being clear about the magnitude in the problem statement is, is common. And what I'll see people do is when they don't have good metrics. Right. And they should, Right. Theoretically, you should have good metrics before you try to solve problems. Of course, practically you can't live that way. Right. Sometimes you have imperfect measures and you have to start with a problem statement. What I'll see is people are like, well, we don't have good measures, so we don't really know where we are and we don't know where we want to end up. So we'll just say what needs to be better. And I really encourage people to say, no, it is currently X and it needs to be. Yeah, and write it X and Y or put a little dash and make it, you know, make it a fill in the blank because it'll remind you that you have work to do to figure out what X is and figure out what Y is. Right. So you'll take a process, an internal customer process, and it's like, well, we need this to be faster. The internal customer is complaining. Well, great. Do they need a response in one day, three days, five days? They don't know. They just want it to be faster. Okay, well, that's bad. We have to go figure out why they needed to be faster, what they really needed to be. Because if we go deliver it in a day and they don't really need it for three days, we did bad work. We did bad work there. So I encourage people to write it as X and Y so that they, if they don't know what the gap is, they're reminded that they have to go figure out out the gap. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, because if you don't know where you are and you won't know if you ever make it any better. Right?

Yes, absolutely. So, yeah, and, and you, you do again, magnitude. You don't, you don't know if you got a, a 5% problem or a 50% problem. And, and until you do some work, you know, you can start studying the problem and along the way learn how big the gap is.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to jump forward a couple chapters. Chapter seven, the old school way. We would call it brainstorming. You had a fancier word for it, ideation, which is kind of cool. You know, sounds kind of Matt Mayish. We just had Matt on the podcast. You know, he's the ideation guy. So talk about your thoughts. Just generally speaking on, on brainstorming. And then we could, we could get into. You had a section in there on the. The role of conflict and disagreement. And I thought, cool, so maybe touch on those points.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think so. You know, the reason I call it ideation is because brainstorming too many people, it's not what it's meant to mean, but to many people feels like you're sitting in a room with a bunch of post its and that's not a bad way to work. But you know, you sitting alone by yourself and generating lots of ideas is, Is also brainstorming, but it's not what people think of it. So I try to use ideation A, to broaden people's thinking and B, because some people have very, I'll say PTSD from their brainstorming experience has not gone well. And. Yeah, doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing this. But, but to me, the, the number, the two. The two best practices that I would advise people to think about. Ideation, brainstorming, One is volume. Volume is always better. One, because you don't know when you're going to find a gem. And two is you sometimes have to push through what we call the obvious and the impossible to get to the creative. And you can't just jump and end at the creative. A lot of, oh, I'm creative, I'm going to jump to the creative. No, you got to push through the obvious and the impossible for the creative to be unlocked. And so there's just no shortcuts to that. That's where volume helps, you know. The other piece of advice I really like to give is to, you know, really put some extreme conditions on that and just examine, you know, what are some extreme ideas. You might not do them, but a, they'll make the hard but best idea seem more palatable. If the best idea is the hardest idea, it's like, yeah, I'm not so sure I want to do that. But if there's five other harder ideas on there, maybe the best idea is more palatable. But there's also sort of gems you can glean from that. And can I back off this really hard idea and take just a piece of that and a piece of this other thing and put it together and I have something good. So I encourage people to examine those sort of pathways, you know, a little further and see where they might take you. Don't, don't over index to what's pragmatic right away. You know, be divergent, come up with crazy ideas and then, and then you can be pragmatic when you select an idea, but don't be pragmatic when you're coming up with ideas.

Yeah, yeah, well, and also you touched on this later on in the book. I remember exactly what chapter.

I won't either, off the top of my head.

But you also talked about the importance of testing and experimentation, you know, because. So I feel so often when we're in these ideation sessions, brainstorming sessions, whatever call it, sometimes there's debate on who's right. Well, the fact of the matter is nobody really knows when we're sitting around who's right. So quit debating on who's right. This debate on what experiment are we going to run next, or first and second and third and what do we think we're going to learn, you know, and, And I feel like that's a much more better use of our time instead of arguing with Prideful, you know, Absolutely.

It's, it's. And a lot of people put experimentation and testing as a step at the end of problem solving. Verify your solution. And sometimes I'm like, well, test your problem statement. How do your problem statements. Right. What's experiment can you run there? And to your point, yeah, you could have two ideas that are competing and we could argue and there'll be a winner, but it won't be the idea that's the winner. It'll be a person that's the winner. Right. And who's advocating stronger than the other? And why can't we go to go do two experiments? Let's go test this, test that, or just what tests can we do to, to learn more? Which of these ideas is going to be best?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, so the last kind of book question I have was fast forward to later on in the book in chapter 17. Well, you have like a whole sect on coaching and some really good stuff in there. And in particular coaching through self discovery. And so you talked about coaches creating experiences for their learners. Let's just call them, for lack of a better word. And also, well, let's just start there and well then learning cycles. That was the other one. You know, experiences and learning cycles. Why don't you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, so my, my back when I was a soccer coach, which I'm now retired from, one of my favorite experiences was to create design a practice, not tell the players what it was about, just, just run the drills. Just, you know, here's the practice, here's the experiences I'm going to give you. And at the end I would then quiz them. What do you think the theme of this practice was all about? You know, was it, you know, and they, you know, was it creating space or was it closing down space? Was it, you know, creative overlapping, what, you know, whatever, what do you think the theme was? And you know, if, if they could identify the theme without being told the theme, having already experienced it, well, then I probably designed a good experience for them because the lesson exposed itself.

Yeah.

And so, you know, that to me is the coach is, you know, whether, whether you can literally design what somebody's going through. Like I would design a practice or simply design how they experience it. Right. Meaning, and what I mean by that is the front end, what are they thinking about as they go into that experience? What are they paying attention to while they're in it? How do they reflect on it at the end? So sometimes you can actually create the experience. Sometimes you're just shaping the experience, but you're helping change how they experience life. One of, one of my other favorite quotes, which I've probably used on the podcast before, which I. So I. But I'll share it again, is that experience is not what you've been through, it's what you take away from it. And so that's, that's what, you know, there's. People can go through the same thing and take very different things away from it.

Yeah.

Or nothing away from it. And so, you know, it's really about the coach making sure that they take, you know, something from, from their experiences, but also the right things away from their experiences. And the repetition is just to make that granular enough to get enough repetitions of that. We talked about a baseball bat, like the swings of the bat, the batting cage, or the swings of the golf club at the practice green. Getting enough swings of repetition that they can, that they can accelerate their learning.

Yeah. So as a, as an author, I'm sure you always read through your books and. Well, I don't know, I don't want to assume. Maybe I know some authors second guess themselves. They're like, oh, if I could do it over again, I would do that. Is there anything that you feel like that you missed or that you wished you would have put in this book that you didn't?

Yeah, because I went through. I don't reread my books very often, which is why I can't remember what chapter or something. Something is because I. Same reason I don't watch myself on videos. I just hate it.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'd rather go create new content. So. But you know, I had, if I had written everything I had initially ideated as, as topics I could include in a book on problem solving, it would have been a, a very large book. And so I, I got, I got to cutting topics pretty fast. But, but something that I think I probably could have included, whether it's a future book, a future white paper, or just, you know, a second edition of the book. I'm, I'm always surprised at how narrow people's view of problem solving is. Right. And what I mean by that is they, they see it as just fixing a performance gap. Right. A gap to performance standard. But I look at almost all strategic decision making as problem solving. Right. Our market shifted, our customers shifted, our competitions kept up. How do we build a moat? How do we build an advantage? Great. Those are all gaps. Right. That's all problem solving. And whether using a three or not, you still have to view it as problem solving. To bring all those practices in, to bring in ideation, to bring in intuition, to bring, bring in good problem statements. And I think I expected as people would read the book, they'd see that connection better. And so, you know, probably a sixth section of the book, if I were to write a second edition, would be, you know, big, complex amorphous problem solving, you know, centered with, centered on strategic decision making, strategic problem solving. Because all the, all these same things in the rest of the book apply. Right. It's just a different, it's just a different point on the spectrum of problem solving when you have, you know, less, you know, fewer standards at play, a more of amorphous problem, you know, fewer boundary conditions, usually a longer time frame, it changes. It's still problem solving though. And so I think helping people make that connection better would be, it's certainly something I end up doing in my coaching and, and probably would have been a useful addition to the book.

Got it, got it. Well, it's continuous improvement, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Or just, or just, you know, next products.

Right, Right. Exactly. Well, good stuff, man. Well, people solve problems. We'll have a link to, to Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean and people solve problems in the show notes. So just scroll down on your podcast app, whatever you're list and we'll have, we'll have it linked up there and then we'll, we'll link to your, your LinkedIn. Jamie, I know you're, you're very active on LinkedIn and I always appreciate you in your comments. I actually appreciate sometimes, you know, I don't know, I don't go on all, but you feel like threads will pop up with people you follow in their comments and so yeah, you're a great interactor there.

So I try to be. I, you know, I want LinkedIn to be a place where knowledge and dialogue advances and so I, you know, I, I can't do that if all I'm doing is posting and waiting for other people to comment on my stuff. Right. I do try to find stuff and, and, and, and be thoughtful in my comments.

Well, yeah, and the thing I appreciate is even if I can tell you don't just you don't agree with them, you're not a jerk. You know, and like it's such a annoying turn off for me is when really smart folks out there in our community just get on and complain and bellyache and you know, it's like I don't want to listen to them even though I know they're super smart, but.

You know, it's like I'm capable of being a jerk. But I, I will tell you this. I'll give you this little behind the scenes secret is there'll be times where I'm starting to write a comment and I realize I'm just being a jerk. And I just, rather than try to reshape it and rewrite it, I'm like, nope. I, I'm clearly in my head, I've already decided on this, I just hit delete and I move on. Yeah, I'd rather not comment than, than be a jerk. So I, yeah, there's times I'm almost a jerk.

Yeah, yeah, well, we all are, you know, but I appreciate that though. All right, well, any final thoughts, Jamie, on problem solving, Lean the world, Chat gbt, anything?

I don't know, you know, I'll just, well, I've, I've, I've played around with Chat GPT and I've, I'll, I'll, I'll say this since you, you gave me a prompt like that. I' is, you know, facts still matter. And you know, I, I, this is a great experiment you can run. I, I, I told it to write a 400 word bio on me and it got so many facts wrong. I'm like, Because I, you know, at least I'm an expert of myself. Yeah, at least I know what the facts are. And yeah, got a lot of facts wrong. And so, you know, you know, know, Know your sources. Yeah, know your sources, whether you're doing research, you're doing problem solving, you're doing, you know, you're writing an essay and using Chat GPT. Know your sources, know what's true or not.

Well, I asked it the other day. I said, write a article or something, explain. I was just trying to see how smart it was, you know, it said explaining the difference between CP and cpk, you know, like statistical process capability, and it butchered it, it got the formulas all wrong. And then the very next day I said, how do you calculate CP and cp? And then it got it right. So, but when I asked it to write an article about it that completely had it completely wrong, like, not even close, like the formulas or I'm like, I don't know where they got that. But then when I just flat out said, how do you calculate? Then it got it right. So I don't know, man. I think it's got a ways to go, you know, but it's interesting, you know, it's fun to play with those.

But, you know, I used to have a CompuServe email 30 some years ago, so, you know, things improve and I'm not going to judge it in its earliest form. I'm going to. Wait, no, wait. I'm going to watch and observe.

Yeah.

Watch it evolve and see where things go. Like, like many other things.

Meanwhile, you got these physicists out there with these supercomputers creating wormholes and they're like, what? You know, it's like, you know, there's.

A lot of great science yet to be discovered and yet to be applied. That's right. Still a strong advocate for entering the sciences and engineering. Yeah.

100%. 100%. Awesome. Well, Jamie, thanks again, man, for coming on. Keep up the great work and I look forward to having you back on. I'm sure we'll, we'll connect again down the road.

I appreciate it. Thanks so much. All right.

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