GA 497 | Navigating Generational Diversity with James Newell

The question I often ask my leaders is what is more important, the results now or legacy of sustainable growth? Who are your legs to your legacy of being known, of having sustainable growth?

Today I'm excited to welcome James Newell back to the show. Now I think this is the fourth or fifth time James has been on the podcast and he's a fascinating guy. Tells a little bit about his background here early on, but he's a American guy who was in the military and then he was in Germany and then he decided to stay in Germany and, and that's where he lives now. And. But he's, he's all about continuous improvement, about lean and, and today we talked about a really interesting topic and I don't think we've ever talked about this on the podcast, but just the whole idea of generational diversity. So we have all these different generations and there's four or five of them that are actively working together today. And so what we talk about is like, how do you go about that? How do you go with folks in different generations, how do you do knowledge transfer back and forth? And so it's a really, really interesting conversation and I think you're going to get a lot out of it because even if you weren't into lean, you're definitely working with other generations and we need to learn how to work with one another and cooperate with one another. So show notes can be found@gemba podcast.com look for episode 497. Lots of links in this episode, so scroll down there and you'll see all the links. James actually does a German speaking podcast and he's working on some other one. So we'll have all that linked up then keep scrolling down. And thank you for everybody leaving us five star reviews. We really appreciate that. If you don't mind doing that and you haven't, please do. That helps us a lot. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. James, welcome back to the show. How's it going, man?

Hey, thanks. It's been really, really good to be back. Ron, how are you doing?

Good, man. My favorite American turned German. Perfect. You know German perfect. English, I don't know. You're like this interesting guy, man. One of the most interesting gu guys in the world.

James. Yeah, I've just been here so long, I've, I probably, I speak more German. I do English. So I'm sure I'll, I'll slip in a few word German words this time as well, like I do every time.

Yeah, I mean, what an advantage you have with like Tack time, man.

You know, it's like, it's actually harder sometimes to figure out what the English words are when I talk about kugelaga, which is deep, deep groove, ball bearing. Now, okay, you know, like a bearing. Deep groove, ball bearing is a huge word in German. It's kugelage.

Okay. Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, hey, man, we've already let a little bit out. So this is, I think your. What did I say? Your fourth time or your fifth time onto the show. So, man, it's great to have you back. I always enjoy chatting with you. But for in case folks didn't catch any of the previous episodes, tell us a little bit about, about who you are, James, and your background, how you wind up over there in Germany and what you're up to these days.

Okay, real quick. Actually written a book about it, but I'll make it real quick. It won't be a book. I've been here since 1995, came over at the military, stayed here and went into basically into the sales and sales leadership and eventually got into industry and was in, I was actually startups, one of the first startups in Germany, before startups were even popular in Europe and eventually got bored of startups and sales and moved into industry and then basically walked into lean, realizing I've been lean for many, many years, just didn't know all the technical terminology. And I started my lean experience in the military because from getting your boots, doing push ups, everything's le. So in the last 20 years, I've been basically adapting lean methodologies and leadership methodologies and combining them together and helping German speaking, not only German speaking, but also around the world, how to communicate and engage their people by using these tools. Because a lot of lean implementators, they know that, they know the technical usage of the tool perfectly, but they forget there's a human element of fear and not a very high regard for transparency. Everybody knows transparency is painful until it, you know, until it's actually have some solutions. So I've been helping leaders engage their people with the tools, lead them with tools, with the lean tools. And now I'm basically coaching coaches and how to do the same. So more of a scalable business at the moment.

Okay, Okay. I know you thought you're getting off the hook with your quote because I normally open with that, but we'll do it second. So what do you got for your quote, James?

I think my quote, it's one of my mentors, John Maxwell. You can't. People don't. People don't care what you know, until they know how much you care.

Yeah. And that's a, you know, not to give our lean world a bad, you know, rap or anything like that. But I think that might be an opportunity for many of us in our, in our movement is to really step back and we talk about respect for people, but I think these are just words that have been said so many times that it's kind of like the ads that appear at the side of your Internet. You're just blind to it now. Right. And I'm not so sure that sometimes we feel, forget, you know, some of the basics of what we're trying to do when we, when we respect people. So that's a, that's a great one.

That's a great, That's a powerful. It's one of the things, it's one of the quotes that always drives me to reflect. Am I about to share a lean topic? I'm about to share a lean leadership methodology. I'm about to apply something and realize I have to ask myself, does a person know that I care about them? Because if they don't know that, it's gonna be hard for them to accept anything that I say if it's outside of their comfort zone.

Yeah, you know, I want to explore this one a little bit. Just, I know it wasn't, it's not really our main topic, but I think it's, maybe it ties in anyhow. You know, I've worked with some folks over the years that have been, you know, obviously everybody's got a different personality and different styles and whatnot. And I've worked with some brilliant sort of lean thinkers who are just brilliant. I don't know what other word to say, but maybe their, their bedside manner, their, their people skills just for whatever reason just aren't great. And it's. Sometimes they'll even, I don't know, portray that. Ah, who cares? It's not important. You know, I can work with people and I can get these results and, and so forth and they do. Maybe they get some good results, but could they get even better? Like, how do you navigate that when you come up against folks who, they're not bad people, it's just not in their style to show empathy or to. It's not that they don't care, it's just not how they're wired. Does that make sense?

Yeah, definitely. It's a, it's something that I deal with actually. I would say in German speaking Europe, 75% of my days working with leaders to have to help them have a New perspective of how much, how important it is to actually engage your people, that they know why you're doing something, you know why they're using a tool. It's basically all about sales. You're selling the tool, you're selling the methodology, you're selling the benefits. And if people, if these leaders, they're getting triggered by their leaders, which actually ties in very well to our topic with generational differences. Ties in perfectly. They're being led by their leaders and their leaders are expecting results. Results. But the question I ask a lot of my leaders is like, what would you rather have results? Because people do it because I have to and then get. Eventually have. Have an inner quitter. They say at some stage those results will go. Will be expected. I'll be expected more and more and more. My boss will never stop asking me for more or I have to get the. Another two or three points of oee. And in reality, at the end of the month and the year, I've got more sick leave than I have anything. I've lost all of my five or 10 points that I've gained in OEE. I lost it in one month because half my team's sick because I burnt them out.

Yeah.

So it's all about creating. The question I often ask my leaders is what is more important the results now or legacy of sustainable growth? Who are your legs to your legacy of being known, of having sustainable growth? And those legs to your legacy are the people you scale with these methodologies, the people that you train and teach and motivate to engage. They're the legs to your legacy when it comes to these tools. So if you can multiply yourself with your beliefs as far as your tools and why you stand behind the tools, you can. If you're by yourself, great. If a leader is at the top and he's alone, you know, leadership is actually not a lonely thing. It should be. Leadership is you're leading a group of people, leading a ship. I like to play in words, leading a ship of people. The question is where and how.

Yeah.

And you know, it's all about scalability. It's all about, I would say also ties into our topic knowledge retainment, knowledge expansion. You know, we know we have, every day we have what, 10 million people going in retirement. All that knowledge that we've established in the last 20 years is going out the window because it's not being transferred to the next generation because most of you just don't know how to do it.

Yeah. Okay, well, let's jump in. So we've already sort of hinted at a little bit. So knowledge retainment as an opportunity when leading generationally diverse teams. It's a mouthful. What, first of all, what do we mean by. Or what do you mean by generationally diverse teams?

Okay, great question. I actually have here some general facts. Generational diversity is basically at the moment, we have five generations working together. The generations are. We know, we know the terms like Gen Z, Millennials, Busters or Gen X. The boomers and builder generation. In a builder generation 29 to 45, it's a 1945, they're still in the workplace. There are certain. There are still people who are in that age group maybe sometimes, right?

Yeah.

Or even we call them forced on board of directors. They're or the ones that are there, they oversee the board of directors and make sure all compliance topics, they're sitting back and just giving their. Their 2 cents to all the youngins, as we call it, your boomers, you know, 6:46 to 64, you have your Busters or Gen X. Now, Gen X was, is a new name, but Busters is the old name. Because the same year that Busters were born, the Buster generation started. It's also the same year that the birth control was established. That's why it's called Baby Busters.

Heard the word Busters before, I got to be clear. I mean, that actually makes a lot of sense though.

Yeah, Busters and then the millennials, 83 to 2000 and then the Gen Z. Right? Yeah. And the Gen Z, you know, we call them 2001-2015. So these generational diverse workplace, we have it. We have five different generations, five different mindsets, five different paradigms or narratives. They have different views of authority and they have different ways they look at the market. So this is what's coming to the table at the workplace. And the question is, how do we leverage. How do we as leaders leverage this? Leverage the advantage that we have here versus lose it over the next 10 years? Huge ability to take, I would say the fluid intelligence that's now very fluid and help the leaders who are going towards crystallized intelligence moving into an older age group. That's the Busters and Millennials. How do we the next 10 years leverage that? Because we don't. We're going to lose it. And that's going to end up creating much more strife and issues for the future.

You know, what's interesting about these different generations, and I'm guilty if I just did it a little while ago, is there's oftentimes people Poking at one another. Right. Like, there was a. I got a little family group chat thing on our phone, you know, with my kids and some of my, my, their uncles and aunts and all that sort of thing. So it's a pretty big chat. And somebody sent a funny little meme about making fun of some generation. I can't remember who was being made fun of in this particular one. But, you know, it's like friendly name calling back and forth, right? Oh, you boomer or you this or that? Like, what is that all about? Like, what do you think that comes from? Is it just like a sense of fear or. I don't know, like, what do you think? Like, the poking from generation to generation. Like, where does that coming from?

Well, it comes from a different mindset. If you think about what was happening in the boomer generation, it was, you know, the boomer generation before the builder generation, it was 29 to 45. So we're talking war. So the life paradigm, the. The people then had the attitude of basically, be grateful you have a job.

Yeah. And you're alive.

And you're alive.

Yeah.

You know, compare that to the millennials. Life is a cafeteria. They can go and choose a little bit of Buddha, a little bit of Christ, a little bit of whoever, and then they can mix it all up in like a cafeteria. They can go and, and pick out what's best for them. That's, you know, that's the millennial way of looking things. Because there are. There's a huge marketplace out there to choose what you want. It's a huge buffet. So you have, you have. Where it comes to jobs and the marketplace and the mentality. And, you know, there's two, there's different mentalities. It means you've got people who have an attitude of, hey, just be thankful you have a job and pull your hours and be, be, you know, take the authority and just accept it. Because be thankful and grateful you have food on the table to where, you know, you got Starbucks at every 30 meters, depending what city. So this mindset is prone to also have a different view on things. So they, they take punches at each other. For example, the Met, there was like in the memes, like in Twitter or the tweets, the hashtags, there was a comments coming from the millennials to the boomers with called Boomer removal, which was a play on Covid, because Covid took, you know, the COVID hit a lot of the boomer generation. And there's a very hardcore statement, boomer removal. But it's A punch at the difference between the boomer mentality and the millennial mentality. Yeah, so it's a whole different. Also the attitude of authority. They have a different view on authority through the different five generations. So these different views that people have deplet how they look at things and how you look at things. Also you take fun, you take, you know, you take a punch at people or, you know, they say, what is it? I think 50, more than 50, 50% showed that the colleagues stated that it's unlikely to get along with someone from another generation. It was a survey done and 50% of those people said, I'm not sure, I don't think I'll get along with it by the other generation. So, you know, get along, you know, how do you get along with different mindsets, different views.

Yeah. The other challenge, like, so I have, you know, teenage kids and my oldest daughter's 21. And so this, this generation, you know, they're growing up with technology and attention span is very, you know, tick tock and it's quick, you know, and they're very technologically advanced, you know, like showing mom and dad how to work the phone and you know, that sort of thing. So that many advantages. But then obviously we see the, you know, you know, your work ethic or you're selfish or you're, you know, maybe probably the same things that our parents were saying about us, you know, when we were growing up. I don't know, but exactly.

And that's, that's the key thing is it's, it's the lack of, the lack of, of, of understanding that person's point of view. I would say the, the leadership empathy.

Yeah.

Or team empathy. And the leverage, you know, that's, how do you, how do you leverage these differences? Because you've got young movers, young thinkers who like you said, are extremely a fiend when it comes to Internet and computers. Whereas, you know, older guy like myself, I'm a, I'm a Gen Xer. It takes me three times longer to solve a problem than they do. So it means who's more effective? The question is, how can we leverage that as leaders? How can leverage that as team members to say, hey, how can I learn baby boomer? Or from, from a buster or whatever, from a Gen X.

Okay, so let's, let's jump into that then. So just thinking about knowledge retainment, I think everybody can, can come to agreement that it's important that, you know, knowledge and information from the older generation is passed down but also back and forth. You Know, maybe the, the whole catch ball conversation that we do with Hoshin. Right? I mean, just, you know, back and forth, we can learn from another. So, but for sure, before the, you know, the older generation moves on into retirement and so forth, you know, we do need to make sure that that knowledge transfer is done. So, like, what, what are your thoughts on, like, how to go about that? You know, what's the best way to go about that, especially if people are poking at each other.

Are you ready to take the next step in your lean journey? Now? You can. During one of our premier in person Gemba Academy workshops held at our training center in Keller, Texas, our certified instructors guide you through the process of taking your lean knowledge and applying directly to your industry with real actionable steps that will benefit you and your organization. Whether you're a seasoned lean practitioner looking for inspiration or just starting out, we have the perfect workshop for you. Sign up@gemba events.com that's gemba events.com.

What'S the best way to go about that? Especially if people are poking at each other?

Yeah, that's, that's the biggest challenge. A lot of, a lot of the things I do with groups is try to find small methodologies, small tricks, tips and tricks, or small exercises to get the group to get the group or this team. If I have a generationally diverse team. So I, you know, how do you go about that? Well, knowledge retainment is important because if we look at a team and a team is developed from either I'm taking over a team or I'm developing a team new, I look at it as like, what can I compare it to? Like wet cement. Now, you put your foot in a wet cement, you leave your mark. Now you can form that in the first half an hour, maybe an hour, hour and a half, you can fix that. You can, you know, you can adapt that. But once two or three days goes by, the only way to adapt what you've established is with a jackhammer. So the knowledge retainment is about what's already been. We have two choices. We can either get that we can pull the knowledge out of the people who are leaving, or in the next five or six years, leaving for retirement. We can do with a jackhammer. Because it's been cemented into their brains for the last 20 years. They've learned it, they've applied it, and they hold to it. The baby boomers and the baby boomers and the busters, we hold on to this knowledge. It's like we need it. This is our verification. Who we Are we put in 25 years of work into it? We either willing to give it up, maybe at a price? So how do you break that? It's just like the cement, you know, how do you break that? If you try with a jackhammer, it will never work. They'll give you a very low quality of knowledge, or the knowledge be so superficial and so unattainable that a millennial with a whole different Gen Z, with a whole different way of neural pathway, of how they learn digitally, how they learn, they learn a lot faster than we did it 35 years ago. So it's all about finding ways to engage that group onto a level playing field to where all have the ability to show their superpowers. It's called an exercise. Ditch the niche. Get the team together. And coffee, you know, pull the whole thing. Get, you know, coffee, whatever you want to do. The different. Different generational desires, whatever, get them together. And then everybody starts sharing their superpowers. Ask me about my superpower. And then you get the team to start discussing what their strengths are. And the second step is you ask the team, other team members, to confirm what they're. What they're conveying. So it's interesting. You see, what happens is people then start to learn how to listen. They share, they repeat what they understood, and they confirm, yes, that is your superpower. And what happens is it breaks my experience. It breaks all the barriers, because everybody feels valued, regardless of their skill, regardless of the superpower, because everybody has a superpower, and Gen Z has a superpower. A baby boomer has his power of knowledge and wisdom. The question is, how is he trained? Communicate that. That a Gen C or a millennial will understand. And do they even listen? Because what people hear and what people understand are often two different things. The exercises communicate back what I heard, and to confirm that's what I understand what you just said. That's your superpower. I agree. I understand it this way in this situation, and I confirm that is your superpower.

Yeah, I think that. I think it's, like, also maybe the first step, though. James, what do you think about, you know, before we sit down, three or four generations sitting in a room, having a cup of coffee. I think everybody's got to be open, right? Like, can we all agree to just be open, to be pliable, to be, you know, just willing to listen? Right? Because if you go into it with a mind of I'm superior, you don't. You can't teach me anything. You know, I can't learn anything from you. If you have that sort of barrier to begin with. Wouldn't it be hopeless?

Definitely. If there's no desire to change, no desire to listen, it's gonna be very difficult. And sometimes you'll have that. I mean I have that often in my groups that, you know, I have a baby boomer sits there, he's been with the team for a couple of months. He's watching the new guys beat him up on computer all day long. He's, they're all 10 times faster than he is, but his quality is much better than their quality. You know what happens? They're faster, but the quality, he's quality over quantity, their quantity over quality. And it comes down to basically prepping those people who are participating by, you know, I do it, I do, I use a methodology in the start of the workshop, at the start of the meeting and ask, you know, what's the added value expected today? Yeah, what would you like from our meeting? Not what problem we're solving because a lot of meetings start their way. I back ended saying, what is going to be of an added value today if we were to achieve it? What do we want to achieve as the added value? An added value for everybody. And I write that on the board and then people open up and say, well, for me, I'd like to be listened to. For me, I'd like to understand why his point of view. And if that environment's established, if a leader can establish that environment, I'd call it a safe place, a safe zone. Then you have a shot. But you'll always have one or two bad apples. It'll always Pareto principle. You'll never have 100%.

Yeah. Wow. It's super interesting. Yeah. Just because I think about TWI training within industries, you know, developed in World War II, you know, time frame and so Rosie the Riveter and all the rest of it, you know, but you see it, you know, sort of went away a little while, for a little while and earlier on movement, but now over the last five, 10 years or whatever, you know, it's, it's sort of regaining some, some, some legs. But even that is being, it's not really being changed. And we all have the twi, you know, people that you can't change it. You got to read from the manual and you know, this and that, but you have some folks who are sort of adapting to, to modern day, you know, environments and maybe using a little bit more technology to sort of document things that that technology didn't exist back in wartime. Right. And so, so that's an interesting one there. Like thinking about how something that originated many, many, many years ago is now sort of seeing a resurgence and maybe just a modification and so that's. They can get on board with it. Yeah, okay, that's cool. I understand the history of it. But we can use this way to record our job breakdowns or whatever it might be. So what do you think about that?

That's, that's actual. That's actual the key, the key is that we know I would, you know, if any, if any believers are out there. Ecclesiastes says, you know, there's, there's nothing new under the sun. You know, the old in German, Ecclesiastes and the preacher. There's nothing new in the sun. Those things twi. Those are, that's, that's not even twi. It was established hundreds of years ago, even before we were talking about, we just coined it and just coined it differently. But these things, how people learn and how the brain learns, the neural paths, how they're built, has not changed. It's still the same way. It's just how we, how it looks, how we do it, how we actually get things done. But how we learn, that hasn't changed. So what happens is, the question is how do we take those old standards, those, you know, I would say the old baby boomer standards, and put. And engage the gen Gen C, the later millennials, who are extremely a fiend. How do we engage their knowledge to make those standards, those ways of training, much more efficient or much more scalable? Back then we didn't have click on demand training.

Yeah.

Now the question is, how do you engage a Gen Z, with his affinity for videos in efficient manner to do workshops and, and you know, I get people to film the workshops I do now. And I don't care about how pristine everything looks because it doesn't speak to millennials. They want to see purity. They want to see just how it is. They don't want to see a stuffy old guy in a suit, you know, playing a game. Yeah. So I can do both. The question is, if I'm engaging them to re video chord me, they're learning interesting enough, they're learning much quicker and faster. Even though they're adapting and videoing at the same time. They're, they're absorbing the material the brain still absorbs the same way. We learn the same way. It's just the neural pathway is being addressed differently. And if I think we can get leaders to understand the benefits of those young thinkers, those dynamics and engage that will be much more scalable and lean will have a whole new face, a whole new way of efficiency because you engage them and with their efficient ideas and how to raise effectiveness through those tools. Because I let them do it for. They'd be done in three days. It'll take me three weeks.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Wow, Good stuff, man. Hey, so before we hit record, you were telling me about a little project you have going on with a German speaking podcast. So I don't know if we got any German speakers listening to this right now, but maybe we do. So what's that all about, James?

Yeah, basically, to be honest, our, our initial podcast is what inspired me. Talking about lean topics and you know how you, how I. You invited me and you know, it was for me as a great experience and I said, you know, why not? My passion is to help. My passion is to make myself obsolete by engaging people to learn how to learn.

Yeah.

And so I thought about with my partner, him and I do the podcast together and we talk about learning how to lead with value. You know, value based servant leadership. But not just theory. We talk about practical methodologies, practical ways of doing it. We talk about our experiences, good and bad, the failures that we have as a leader. Because that's what a baby boomer doesn't generally talk about failure, about self failure, but it's exactly what the Gen Zs want to hear. So millennials and Gen Z's want to see a reflective baby boomer. So it was very interesting to see that we started talk about value based leadership and we do every two or three weeks we have a, we have an episode. I usually teach on a topic, leadership topic or. Yeah, Mason. And then usually we talk about application, practical application. And there's often so in a handout that is available they can follow along. And it's been very interesting because we've had unexpectedly a lot of downloads. I mean I don't know what is. But we're, we're high four numbers. I mean for nice eight, nine, ten, ten episodes, I think. I mean okay, that's great. The averages.

What's the name list that. What's. Is it a German name?

Like it's actually together for Success.

That's the name of it. So if I look up together. But it's in German, right?

Yeah, together for the number four success. But we are doing a. We are doing a summer surfing leadership podcast because I was surfing in Gran Canaria, which is the Canary Islands and now surfing with me is get to visualize like a seal on a Board.

Okay.

A seal and a neoprene on a board, you know, like a sea lion. That's me on a. That's. Yeah, let's get the picture. You know, that's like a big line on a, on a big board. So I was learning how to surf, actually surfing, and they only speak English. But the story of his leadership and the story of how he built this surfing school on the island of Gran Canaria. Gran Canaria was so inspiring. And then another guy who was actually a surf teacher, he is a old professional tennis player from Hungary. So I said, well, leadership and making decisions about what's important in life and the whole surfer thing, I'm like, this is a great podcast we will have in a couple months. We'll have an English speaking podcast about surfing leadership. You know, how to lead a group of surf teachers and.

Oh wow, I can't wait. Yeah. So anyhow, we're gonna, I'll get you to send me all the links and everything. We'll put them in the show notes so people to scroll down and the links will be there by the time you're listening to this. So it sounds super, super fun. And then. Best way to connect with you, James. LinkedIn of stuff.

LinkedIn is perfect. It's where I'm mostly, mostly active and now I'm doing and doing active activity in English and German. Before it was almost all German and then I actually got a lot of requests to, to, you know, articles, things I'm doing also in English.

So Great, great, great, awesome. Well, hey man, as always, it's been fun having you back on and I know we'll do it again down the road. So keep on the great work and man, I appreciate you.

Hey, thanks for inviting me. Thanks for the opportunity to speak and to share the story and just want to wish all the listeners think about your generation, look for ways to connect and distinguish between preference, expectation and demands and those three topics, preferences, expectations and demands. If you as a leader differentiate between those three, you'll often find a way to connect your five generations and quit.

Making fun of each other people, myself included. All right, man. Hey, great job and thanks again, James.

Thank you as well.

Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over over to gembaacademy.

Com.