GA 485 | Lean, Change, and Reflexivity with Bruno Pesec

Companies transform when people in companies change their habits and change their way of work. Therefore, the way to actually fulfill transformations, etc. Is to change hearts and practices of people either because of their own volition or help. Whatever, it doesn't matter.

Hey everybody, it's Ron. Today I'm excited to welcome my friend Bruno Pesic back to the show. Now Bruno was back on, oh gosh, it's been a couple hundred episodes or so ago but boy, he, he really, really delivers today. This is a fantastic episode. So the, the topic that we explore is the idea of reflexivity. So it's sort of like reflecting on your reflections and there's some sort of mind bending conversation that occurs in here a little bit. But that's going to really challenge you and really make you think. Boy, it's really made me think. And just reflect if you will on how I go about this. Who process of reflection and wow, it's just so good. So show notes are going to be over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 485. Also please be sure to connect with Bruno. Just scroll down in your app here, whatever you're listening to this on, and we'll have him on LinkedIn. He's a fantastic thinker and just a great guy overall. Also go to gemba events.com. something I'm super passionate about is we're doing this live instructor training and now here obviously we're known for video based training and all that and that's still the core part of our company. But we're doing these live instructor events now. We're doing them both virtually and here in person in our Keller Texas Training center. So everything that you need for that is on Gemba Events.com. okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Bruno, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Excellent. And so happy to be here again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were just chatting before we hit record that you are back on in episode 338. So we're at 485 now. So we've had a few, a few things happen in the world since we last chatted, I guess. Right?

Just a few.

Hasn't been boring, that's for sure. Absolutely awesome. Well, how have you been?

Well, you mentioned some of the changes. Unfortunately they haven't been pleasant changes, but I have been fortunate to weather them in Norway. I really cannot say compared to how some others had it. Norway had both economic stability and safety during the whole period. So I was really blessed.

Yeah, that's great. Great, great. All Right. Well, Bruno, before we get in, as a reminder, I'll have you tell everybody about your background and all that, but, you know, we like to get going right out of the gate with it with a quote. So what do you have?

Well, honoring recently passed Masaki Mai, I would like to share a quote from him that he shared with me in person, and that was Tame the Baratsuki. And he told me that, and then I had to go and look up in the dictionary. What is this Baratsuki? And my understanding was that it is a specific sort of variation or variability and kind of when we look at the processes, there is good variation, there is bad variation. Good variation is, you know, the creative chaos coming up with good stuff, the messiness that's required to come up with valuable things. While bad variation is, once we establish processes, well, we want them to perform at a specific level. We do not want them to worry. So the quote I want to share with everybody from Masaki, my Tame, the Baratsuki.

Nice, Nice. I like it. I like it. All right, Bruno. Hey, in case people don't remember back from episode 338, maybe they don't remember, tell us a little bit about your. Your background. I know you're in Norway now, but I don't sound like. Doesn't necessarily sound like a Norwegian accent, man. No offense or anything. Maybe tell us a little about Bruno and. And how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff.

Happy to. Happy to. And I'll give just a brief reminder, we will not turn it to Life Story episode. So, Bruno Pec. Absolutely correct. Although I live in Norway, I'm a Croatian. I started my career as industrial engineer. I loved the Toyota production system. Lean heard about it and never looked back since then. And I got to start in defense industry, got to work on some really challenging projects that some of them failed, which was a great kick in the butt to actually look deeper into, you know, what makes continuous improvement and innovation work. And somehow I ended up spending the last 10 years traveling the world working with large companies, helping them create value.

Nice, nice. Very good. Very good. All right, well, so we have an interesting topic today that I'm excited to explore with you. And it's maybe this relationship between Lean, which everybody listening to is very familiar with change, which human beings are, you know, for good or bad, familiar with, and then this thing called reflexivity. So maybe not everybody is so familiar with this reflexivity. So maybe, maybe let's just start with, like, what is that reflexivity? And then what's the relationship between it and lean and change.

Yep, I'd love to. So to define reflexivity, let's start with a more familiar term, and that is reflection, or being reflective. Hopefully, to your listeners and lean practitioners, this isn't an alien term. And when we talk about reflection, we are basically talking about thinking about the difference between intended actions and outcomes versus actual actions and outcomes. So I plan to do something, but I actually did something else. I plan to achieve following results, but we actually achieved something else. You will often in lean circles, you will hear about Han Se, which is related term. What is very important when we talk about reflection is that people usually only reflect when something goes bad or something goes amiss. But the thing is, whenever there's discrepancy between what we thought would happen and what has happened, there's a trigger for being reflective in order to understand why the difference. So we can try to repeat or avoid if it was a bad thing. That is what we talk about, reflection. When we talk about reflexivity, it is basically a matter reflection. It's taking a few steps back and looking at all those processes when you thought and you reflected and trying to catch patterns in that to make this, let's say, less abstract and more tangible. Imagine a theater. If you go on the stage and you act, play and act, that is doing things. Now imagine that you're sitting in the audience and you look yourself, perform, and you're trying to see, okay, what I actually wanted to do was this move. Or maybe say that sentence with that intonation, but I actually use different intonation. Or maybe some small slip or I step differently. That would be reflecting, but reflecting would also be looking at the audience sitting next to me. Okay, that was a comedic line, so I expected them to laugh. How much? How little? So all of that is reflection. Now imagine that you're not sitting in the audience, but you're sitting on the balcony. And you. And you look at yourself looking at yourself on the stage, and you're trying to see, okay, how is that guy thinking about the guy on the stage or lady or whatever else? That is reflexivity. So it's basically layers of critically thinking about what we do, what we hope to do, what we achieve and what we hope to achieve. How is that landing? Is that making sense?

That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, the thing that pops in my mind is like, from like the Toyota Cotta movement. You know, one of the things been popularized is the whole idea of a coach. You know, there's a coach for the learner. And then. But then oftentimes we'll have a second coach. And the second coach, their job is to sort of, not every time, but to monitor and just sort of observe the coach. And so together all three of those people in this example, you know, are, are able to sort of, you know, reflect on, on like you said, like what, what we thought was going to happen, what actually happened. Because maybe the second coach thought they were going to be able to help the, the primary coach in a certain way and maybe that didn't go well. So the second coach has opportun. So we're all sort of learning as we go. I don't know.

That's.

That was the thing that immediately popped in my mind. But that's a really interesting perspective. Thinking about you watching yourself watch yourself. That's really a deep, deep thought, you know, to really ponder that it's not normal.

It'S not a regular practice. Definitely it is a little bit of a mind bender. But in my opinion and experience, this is what is necessary to really become like a master or even a grandmaster of a specific craft. Because you cannot. Shortcut requires time, it requires composting. Like you cannot do an improvement today, Think about it tomorrow, bam, you're done with it. Like you need to be continuously observing, watching, thinking. If you go back to Taichi on a circle, you know, chalk circle, go watch there. That is a bas, basically observation and reflection exercise. But reflexivity exercise would be going back and thinking about 10 chalk circles you did and trying to see a pattern between them and might sound very, very abstract and challenging. Luckily, the practice is relatively easy. It's more disciplined than necessarily the, the difficulty of the practice itself. But you ask me a question that I want to get back to because you asked define reflexivity. But what's the connection between lean change and reflexivity? Yeah, besides what we briefly mentioned about improving lean practice, we have to go back, or rather I would like to challenge a notion about lean transformations. When we talk about lean transformations, we say Wirebone transformation or Danaher transformation or, or Toyota transformation, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing is, companies are dead. They do not change their artificial constructs. Companies transform when people in companies change their habits and change their way of work. Therefore, the way to actually fulfill transformations, etc. Is to change hearts and practices of people either because of their own volition or help. Whatever, it doesn't matter. When we try to implement lean practices in established organizations, we have to be aware of our exchange agents relationship to the people that we are trying to help, to the people that have asked for our help because they might not be the same. Imagine all the cases where you have a plant manager or a CEO asking for help and kind of maybe even being a little bit derogatory. You need to teach my people. Really get this thing. Yeah, I need to teach you as well. Yeah, but kind of we have to be aware of how we impact all these people, how we impact their ecosystem, but also how they influence us. Because whenever we come exchange agents, or especially trying to help other people, we shape them, but they shape us in return. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. The only way to become aware of that is to repeated reflections and being reflexive. That is thinking about this long term process. And I'll give you a personal example. So I've been working on a specific project for almost three years and everything was going fine. Client was very happy, we were getting the results, etc. I didn't think about it twice. Then I started reading my reflection notes over the last three years. You see on camera, your listeners will not. But behind me there's a bunch of notebooks. So there's like a whole desk shelf of notebooks. These are my reflection notes. So I take all the notes when I, when I work. And I started reading through them and I noticed I changed my behavior over the last three years. I could see it in my notes. I could see that I became less patient with people, with operators, with frontline, etc. I could never notice that in the moment. I would never hear that feedback because I've been working with this client for three years. For me, I knew it was very important to change my behavior. There was no other way I could have spotted this because as I said, the client didn't see it. I did not see it. Working on it every day, being there. But my data was not lying. And once I read it, when I reflected and was reflexive about it, I realized, oh, this change happened. And it was luckily for me, relatively trivial to shift back to, you know, behavior I wanted to espouse. Because it's a lot of these small things that accumulate over time that suddenly make us different, you know. And to me, criteria number one is that I wake up in the morning, I have to be able to see my own reflection in the mirror. That's the only thing I care about. Not money, not anything that talk about your.

You mentioned journaling. I'm fascinated with this concept. It's something that I've, that I've tried, I've gotten in good spurts. And then I fall off the wagon. And then I go back and I haven't honestly been super transparent, found a consistent rhythm with it. I actually try to do it more from a spiritual perspective. So I'll sort of, you know, just write about how my day has gone. Just not necessarily work, but just life. Right. Which includes work, but. But, yeah, I haven't found a good rhythm. So what do you do for. For your sort of journaling?

Yeah, well, as you mentioned, there are many different types of journaling and the benefits of doing it physically. So as I said behind me, bunch of notebooks. I do not do journaling digitally. I do not type it or dictate it on the phone. I know it works for some people, but for myself, it's very important to have this physical aspect of it because there's the whole field of what we call embodiment and embodied way to know, feel, sense. Because then you put yourself in that hand and sometimes your hand is faster than your mind. So you get the subconscious things that you manage to write before you even get to think about them. And that's very valuable. What helped me is I don't beat myself about it. Like, I don't do it like some people religiously do it. Every morning, you know, you wake up and you journal about what comes to you. I specifically journal only about my professional practice. So, for example, if I have something that I observed at the client site, or I'm preparing something, preparing a workshop or whatever, I might actually try to imagine, okay, I want them to learn this. If I do that, what might happen? And then I write it. I just write it. And since I know nobody is going to read it, I don't stress, you know, is it perfect English? Does the sentence make sense? Is this publication ready? No. Nobody cares. And the only thing I care about is that I can read my own writing. When I go back to it, the simple structure I always have is kind of. It's a five. I don't know, in. In usa, you don't have a format, but you have letter. So imagine half. Half of it. Yeah, yeah. Half of that I simply put a date. I put literally what I have observed, what I literally did, kind of moved, said, breathed out. I saw Ron frown and cross his arm and exhale. That's the kind of notes. And then I write my interpretation of it and then some additional thoughts. So I always separate, like, think almost about data interpretation and kind of result, outcome, whatever. That's. That's it. Because I know that the biggest value for me isn't necessarily in. In that note. In the moment, but later, maybe a year or two, five years later, when I take it out and I start reading all of that and then noticing patterns like, oh, this is repeating. Why is that repeating? Is that Bruno, that I want to be. Is it good for my practice? Is it helping me be a better lean practitioner? I basically ask questions of that journal.

So how often are you doing it? I know you mentioned it's for your professional work. So is it like literally, if you're at a client site three days in a row, are you going to have three journal entries at the end of that week or is it more or less talk about that?

Yep, it really depends. If I'm at a client, it might be simply, well, journal entries. It might be multiple pages per day, but I try to break them into specific things. If you imagine that you're helping a client with, let's say Kaizen event, and you spend with them three days and you're just working with a fixed team, helping them, etc. Then I would open that on the date and I would just write everything. Does it take me 1, 2, 5, 7 pages? Who knows? I wouldn't really care. I wouldn't count. What I can tell you is when I break it, I try to break it in discrete events. So for example, I had one to one with Ron and we were discussing about X. Why were we discussing about X? Why did Ron approach me? How was Ron behaving? How was I behaving in in return? What did we try to achieve? What we actually did? What was the conclusion of the conversation? So that would be like one discrete entry, how many pages? Who knows now what, what is tricky and what I noticed. And that is maybe also not necessarily a warning, but it's very different if you manage to take notes in the moment versus taking notes, let's say afternoon or the week after. And I always take a note of that. Like if it was. If the note was made in the moment as the thing was happening or if I made the note after the fact. Because sometimes, you know, emotions or.

Yeah, well, yeah, I'm very curious about that. I was going to ask that because like, let's say that you and I had a difficult. Let's say I'm a difficult client and I'm frustrated because I'm not getting results and you know, ah, you know, and it's just, you know, you're frustrated with me because I'm not doing what you encourage me to do or something like that. So your journal entry, like then at mo that moment could be Very emotionally driven. Right. You could be frustrated. Maybe that's important, to capture that essence. But then perhaps you calm down later on in the day and come back and say, okay, well, you know, and then maybe I calm down and I. I don't know, like, so maybe one. One piece flow. Right, Right. Absolutely.

Documented, yeah. What. I completely agree with you. And this is. This is advanced technique. So if. If you have an established journaling technique, there is a specific advanced technique. It's from Torbert and other researchers. It's something called four territories of experience. So they were specifically looking into, you know, how to distinguish different forms of what we personally experience by ourselves and others. And they propose that there are four different things. So one is what is literally happening around me. So as I said earlier, like, Ron is being angry. I would not necessarily say Ron is being angry. What I would write is, what is Ron actually saying? Because being angry is me making a judgment. Because what I think angry is might not be what you think angry is. I know sometimes because I'm a loud and passionate guy, sometimes people tell me, oh, Bruno, you sounded so angry at that. And I'm thinking to myself.

Yeah.

Yeah. So there's this, what they call first territory of experience. Like, literally what we have seen, noted, observed. And then second territory is what I was literally doing, saying, moving, behaving. And then we're moving to third territory, which is actually kind of, what have I been thinking? What have I been feeling both for myself and for the other party? So we kind of. We distinguish these three parts, and then we have a fourth territory, which is very difficult, which was kind of almost like animalistic intuition, kind of, you know, what was I actually intending in that very moment? What. What did I try to achieve before even thinking of it? You know, think defense mechanisms. Think about intuition, gut feeling, what people call, you know, it's. It's not witchcraft. It's not dark magic or any.

Almost like limbic brain versus prefrontal cortex, which was. Which is speaking. Right. Like, is it your lizard brain or are you thinking critically and clearly? Right, so.

Exactly. Exactly.

Wow. Super interesting.

Yeah.

I'm wondering if you have any practical tips, maybe for.

For. For me.

And I'm super interested. I'm just being selfish right now because I'm talking to you, so I got to speak on behalf of the listeners as well. But, like, maybe practical tips for, you know, how we can practice, I suppose, reflection initially, because if you're not doing any sort of reflection, you can't do reflexivity. Right. Like, there's a Prerequisite for reflexivity. You have to reflect. And so, like, where do we start? I assume it's. But I don't want to. I think it's to start make sure you have a consistent reflection process first. Is that fair?

Absolutely, 100%. I keep nodding and I keep forgetting that your listeners cannot see us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, same.

So absolutely, I will give two pieces of advice. So if you already have been journaling, making notes, whatever, I suggest, you know, dusting off those journals and just start reading them and try to notice, you know, have you changed as practitioner? If yes, how. What, what did you used to do? What are you doing now? What has stuck with you? What hasn't stuck with you? That's how you can immediately jump into reflexing. If you haven't been doing any sort of journaling or other reflection practices. Yes. Then the easiest way to start is to buy yourself a notebook. Doesn't have to be fancy. You do not need to invest in a hardcover moleskin with leather protection cover. Just go and buy plain notebook. It's a work tool. Like you want to be able to scribble in it, rip it apart. Maybe somebody spills coffee on it. You have to be ready for that and then start. Just the easiest simple start is whenever you have something to do. That's my proposal is for work practice. Of course it can be personal, but always write, okay? Intended action, intended outcome before you do it. Once you did the thing, grab your notebook and write, okay, this is what I actually did and this is what actually happened. That's it. Don't stress more than that. You do not need to write essays. You're not reporting anyone. This, this is just for yourself and for later. It can be few bullet points, fewer sentences. Just think of your future self that you can read and understand what has happened. Take a date. That's it. That's the simplest, easiest start. So if you're a lean practitioner, helping others, take notes of that. If you're a real lean professional in your own organization, running improvement events, working with other people, try exactly to write down, okay, I'm going to that and that person. We are going to be doing this and that. This is what I'm hoping to achieve. As simple as that. And once you did it, grab your notebook and write down, okay, I actually did this and this is what has actually happened. If it's the same, ah, even better. Nobody cares. What's important is stick with that for a few months and then look at all of those entries and see what shows up.

Okay, So I wanted to ask you about that. How often do you practice reflexivity? Do you do it weekly, monthly, doesn't matter. Varies. How often do you do that?

So I do it annually for all my notes, and then I might do it specifically for some elements if I'm doing a very, very tricky project just to make sure that I, for example, do not get bent out of shape by the organization I'm helping. Especially if it's a Larger organizations, you know, larger organizations have the uncanny ability to change our value systems and to, in general, subtly tweak our habits. It's, it's not evil or sociopathic. It's, it's simply when there's a system that is big, you know, it, it has this reality distortion field. And in order to, to check myself and to check that, hey, I'm still Bruno as I want to be, then I make sure to check my notes, let's say every few months.

Few months. Okay. So there's some time that passes, though it's not necessarily a weekly thing or something like that.

Yeah, you need time to compost. Like, first. We discussed it earlier about, for example, calming down or something. Like, you need distance to really have a good reflexivity for reflection. It's happening all the time as you're taking your journal notes. It's happening all the time. So if we think about, for example, PDCA loops, reflection would be small loops, reflexivity would be big loops. So it's kind of rolling slowly while reflection, like a lot of small PDC loops. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Yeah.

Wow. So cool. So cool. I, I, I'm, I'm re. Reinvigorated to get back to trying to be better at journaling and, and, you know, one of the things that I struggle with, it's embarrassing. I can't believe I'm about to admit this on the podcast to everybody, but I have, like, terrible handwriting, you know, and it's not just, it's not that it's terrible to, Because I, you can read my handwriting. If I write something for you, you can read it, no problem. But I'm like a fourth grader, like, writing, you know, like, like, if you try to have me, my kid, My kid, My kids have this beautiful cursive handwriting. My wife makes them. We homeschool our kids. And so my kids have beautiful handwriting. They always have, because they've read writing cursive since they were little. I didn't do that as a child, you know, and so, like, if I have to write in cursive, I look like I'm in second grade or something.

So I.

You know, it's one of the struggles. I've been almost committed to buying one of those workbooks, you know, where you can learn how to write or something. You know, like maybe calligraphy or something. But that's actually an obstacle for me is in my journaling. Is that my. I. I doubt myself, first of all, and I just really struggle. You mentioned about sometimes your hand moves faster than your brain. Oh, no, not for me. It's quite the opposite. My hand is so slow that my brain's like, really? Let's go, dude. What do you think about that? Like, what should somebody do there?

It is also a practice. So the more you do it, the quicker it comes. I don't. I mean, I've been taught cursive in school, but I think most of the time when I hand write it is some sort of pigeon cursive or block. Block letters? Yeah. What. Whatever is. Is quickest, but it is a physical practice. The more you do it, the quicker you will become. And again, you just have to be able to read it. Nobody cares if it's messy or whatever.

Yeah, maybe get an AI to do your journaling for you right now. Don't have an AI. Do your journaling, people. I was joking. Somebody's gonna pull that out and use a sound bite. Oh, Ron. So good. Well, hey, man, any final thoughts or advice or inspiration for the folks listening?

I think, Ron, you asked very good questions and very good concerns. What I just want to reiterate is that this is, in essence, a very simple practice. It's just all about discipline. Think about small investments that will greatly pay over a longer period of time if you share concerns like Kron had. Hey, I write slow. My handwriting is ugly. It is a practice too, and I think it is. It is worth investing in. Worst case, Absolute worst case. Use Dictaphone.

Yeah, yeah. But even that is better than nothing, right? Yeah, better than nothing. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm gonna. I have a. I have a. I do have a. Also embarrassed to admit I did buy a fancy moleskin thing. It looks beautiful. Nice pan. You know, you gotta have the right equipment, Bruno. Come on. But, yeah, maybe I should just not worry so much about the notebook and start writing, you know? So. Good, good, good. Hey, if people want to connect with you, Bruno, what is the. The best way?

I'm available on LinkedIn, Bruno. PEC. Other than that. On my website, www.pesec.no. you will find a lot about lean innovation, reflection and reflexivity practices as well. Ron has my contacts. Any questions, anything you like to discuss, I'm happy to.

Yeah. And we're gonna have everything linked there on the show, notes, people. So just scroll down on your app and you'll find links to Bruno there. Let's go connect with Bruno now for your consulting work, do you primarily work in Norway or is it. Do you all over Europe, America, where do you go?

I work globally, so it's roughly 70% of my clients are Europe base and 30 are rest of world, North America, Australia, Southeast Asia, etc.

Nice.

I mean, we have seen in the last three years that it is possible to do any work from anywhere. Yep. Yep.

Well, hey man, next time you're in Texas, you need to come, come hang out and we'll go have some Texas barbecue or something, you know?

Would love to.

All right. All right. Well, hey, Bruno, this has been a lot of fun, man. Thanks for, for adding a lot of value today. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

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