GA 501 | Reducing Chaos with Brandon Brown

I see a lot of people, supervisors, lead people coming to work almost as a place to get away from either their chaos in their personal life or chaos that's going on in the world. And they're trying to focus on their work.

Today I am excited to welcome Brandon Brown back to the show. Now, Brandon was actually here in the training center and then came over to our studio here to record this podcast. Brandon was here helping teach one of our two day Toyota Kata experiential workshops. And so Brandon is a plethora of knowledge on all things lean and kata and twi and, and so when I, since I had him here in the building, I was like, hey, let's go do a podcast. We'll do it face to face. And we came over to our recording rooms and we had a really cool conversation and I said, I asked Brandon before we sat down and what do you want to talk about? And he said, I want to talk about chaos. I said, oh, chaos, okay. And so that's what we talk about. We talk about sort of the chaos in the world and then how that chaos can sort of come into all of our lives, in our professional lives and it can negatively impact us. And then, so then we talked about how we can use things like scientific thinking, but most importantly how to engage human to human and how to really try to understand, maybe even show some empathy to, you know, what's going on with that particular person, what's causing that person chaos and then finding ways to sort of counter that. And anyhow, Brandon shares some really interesting, cool stories. Very inspiring stuff. Brandon doing some great work all over, all over the country. So I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode. I know I did. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com and this is episode 501. Hopefully, hopefully everybody was able to check out episode 500. It was a, it was a fun episode to put together and I hope, hope everybody liked that. So, ok, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Brandon, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm great, Ron, how are you doing?

Good, man. It's good to have you in the studio. And thanks for coming, man, for the last few days, helping teach the folks kata. How did it go? I was in and out and I know you were in and out a little bit with some coaching calls and whatnot.

But yeah, we had the kata domino exercise and then couple that with Tito's kind of dojo that he came out with this first time I've put Been a part of putting them together.

Okay.

And it was interesting to see people go from an awareness level with the dominoes. Yeah. To learning the storyboard, then the next day being challenged to coach. So really made people think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome. Well, hey, man, I love doing in person interviews. It's, you know, I mean by 98% of the ones that we do, we do, you know, just over. Over the interweb kind of thing. But it's always fun to folks in here looking face to face. So you've been on the show while you were just on what, 494 episode? 494. We talked about TWI training timetables. That was fun. But you know the drill. We like to get going with a quote. What do you got?

I've got a quote. I. We're in the middle of a lot of chaos right now worldwide and I just googled some quotes on chaos and that's really what we do as improvement people. We try and reduce the chaos at work. Right. So this is from Deepak Chaparral or Chopra, I'm probably not pronouncing that. He's an Indian writer and a medicine, a body mind medicine doctor. And he says all great changes are preceded by chaos. The disruption we see in the world is the prelude to emergence. Let's all commit to more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and happier world.

Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean there's a lot of chaos, that's for sure. I think we're going. Well, let's explore that in here a little bit. But just just as quick reference for folks that who might not be familiar.

With who you are.

Brandon, give us a little bit about who you are and your background and all that kind of good stuff.

So I'm a lean practitioner. Background is in engineering, manufacturing, mechanical by degree, industrial as well. Worked in supervision, mechanical design and supervision, then manufacturing, engineering, operations management, started a couple of plants. And then around 2012 I met Mike Rother and I'd been doing a lot of continuous improvement work and it was just like this guy's been following me around and I've been pulling my hair out trying to get people to improve and follow up on Kaizen events and everything. And I started really reading and corresponding back and forth with the kata community and started practicing on my own with Arkansas Manufacturing Solutions and with Beth Carrington and some of those early folks, you know, Bill Constantino and really started learning the kata method and then also TWI and some of the roots, like the roots of Lean. Where did all this come from. And so that's what I've been doing really. In 2014, 2015, I started continuous coaching commitment. We did mainly manufacturing from 2014 to about 2016, 2017, and then was approached by Skip Stewart Baptist Memorial Healthcare. And that was my first introduction to healthcare and lean, lean health care. So it shifted 90% healthcare, 10% manufacturing for 2018, 19. Then covet hits and you know, then we trying to, we're all remote, we're working from home and everything. So that's kind of my life story now. I'm back now doing continuous coaching commitment and working with others in the, in the leaning community and trying to work with people to help do what we just talked about, reduce chaos in the workplace and.

Yeah, all right, well, let's talk about chaos. I mean, tell me what you mean. I mean, chaos can mean a lot of things like describe what, what you're experiencing and what you're seeing and feeling.

You know, everybody has, you know, as much as we want to say, you know, leave your personal life at home, this is all about work. We want you engaged. There's a high number of people, percentages or probably 50 or greater that are just disengaged, you know, from work. And I see a lot of people, supervisors lead people coming to work almost as a place to get away from either their chaos in their personal life or chaos that's going on in the world. And, and they're trying to focus on their work, but you've got turnover and you've got, you know, try people trying to get them to improve and, and make improvements and stuff. And so they got problems at work and people leaving and trying, trying to train people. And my boss is trying to get me to do this and that. And so, you know, I just, I feel like that what we should be doing as, as improvers, as, as, as lean practitioners, what I've tried to do is make that personal connection with that supervisor manager and say, okay, I know you've been given these goals, you've been in these challenges at work, hitting these numbers productivity wise, or maybe it's in healthcare, trying to get infections down or whatever it is. You know, tell me a little bit about yourself. What about what's going on, you know, in, in life in general and what's important to you at work that would get you back engaged at trying to make these improvements and use these systems, these processes that we've, we've talked about, whether it be lean tools or whether it be the kata process of small steps toward a bigger challenge or twi, you know, job instructions, the four step method or the problem solving method or the job methods, job relations, all those four step methods and stuff. And many times I can pick out something like for example, I'll give you a supervisor worked with. In 2017, Bill Cross and I were working with a company, it's a gear, a gear manufacturing company, a tier one. And we did a value stream mapping. And then we started our first three challenges in three storyboards. And there was a supervisor there, I'll just call him Bob. Real downtrodden. Say Bob, how's it going? And everything was like, man, we've worked every Saturday the last year. We haven't had a Saturday off. I've probably been up here half a day on Sundays. Okay, well what's, what's, what's the problem, man? The material we get in from the other departments, bad. And we have to reject whole lots. 20,000 parts got rejected last week. And so we know that means we're going to work Saturday and everything. How does that relate to, you know, your challenges and everything that we just found out through the value stream mapping event and everything. And I could, I could sense that he was just stressed, overworked and wasn't really engaged in it. We started doing just small improvements and giving him the learner role and finding obstacles and, and trying to improve his machining line. And it wasn't three months until his production started going up from 4, 000 a day. 4, 500, 4800. And the challenge was to get to 7000. And by the time I came back about the fourth month or fifth month, they were hitting 5000-500050-06000. I said, hey, hey Bob, how's it, how's the Saturdays going, man? We're not working Saturdays anymore. Oh, okay. So they finally got up to like 7, 500. And we're able to take 20 more business in from their competitor. And this was about the six month mark. And I came back and for another coaching business. Hey Bob, you know, how's it going? Oh man, last weekend, you know, we went to the baseball or basketball game on, on Friday night or whatnot, or I think it might have been a baseball game or basketball game Saturday. We left out that morning for Dallas, you know, only a five hour drive, you know, to Dallas. He said, we caught a Rangers game, me and my son, my, my wife and their, my daughter, they went to the mall shopping. It was a, he was a totally different person. I mean his whole attitude toward coming to work plus his home life, it completely Changed and, you know, that's kind of stuff that gets me out of bed. And I could go on with other examples of people that have taken these processes and I'm just trying to make that personal connection to reduce work chaos and then maybe home chaos or.

I wanna, I wanted to talk about the, maybe even the personal chaos side of things. You know, obviously confidentiality and all that. But, but what about. I mean, how well do you have to sort of know the person? If you saw Bob for the first time, would you go up and start engaging at that level of that personal level, or would you, you know, set the earner, learner at ease, so to speak? You know.

Yeah, I think the first thing you gotta do is set, Set them at ease. You know, the basic, you know, prepare the worker.

Yeah.

Job instructions and things like that. But find out what they know and, you know, all the things that are on. Yeah, that part of the card, I kind of use that same same thing and relate it to what it is. The, the company or the plant manager, the director, the vice president has asked us to come in and, and help improve and just, just ask them and say, okay, well, what do you know about this process? And, and you can tell if they're engaged or if it's being done to them or being done with them is what I try and pick up on. And if it's being done to them, then I, I don't do it on like the first session, the first coaching session that we've been at. I can usually pick up on it after about whether they're engaged in the process and they're doing what I'm asking them to do. They're, they're, you know, they're, they're making improvements or identifying obstacles, changing the work pattern, doing tests of experiments and everything. And, you know, if they're disengaged and checked out, I want to use the job relations part of that. Okay, is there a problem? Is there a way that I'm coaching that's not, you know, am I approaching this the wrong way? Tell me more about you and yourself. And then that usually is when comes out that there's a people problem, whether that's with another co worker, whether that's with a subordinate, whether that's with their boss, whether that's like, in Bob's situation, it was just work was just interfering with his home life. And so I tried to tie the improvements to getting him more time at home indirectly.

Right.

Not by just coming out saying, hey, this is my goal for you, Bob. I want you to spend more time at home with your family.

Right? Yeah. So what about. So, like, let's say someone has personal issues. They've got teenagers or whatever, you know, and, and they're coming in and with heavy hearts and all that kind of stuff. Like, how do you approach that? Because then, then that's that sensitive thing. Is it my business, you know, to talk, ask you about your teenagers or whatever? I mean, like, how do you do that?

Well, I think it's in that, in that introduction, I, I try and offer my own, you know, who I am. I try to be, you know, as authentic as I can be. You know, we talk about chaos. I can personally share some stories with, you know, my, my wife's a breast cancer survivor and, and 18 months to two years later, she's a medullary thyroid cancer survivor. And, you know, my, I've had issues with, you know, with knee surgeries and stuff. And everything. And so I just kind of open up and talk to them about some of the challenges that I face, you know, as it might relate to some of the things. And I'm not really probing and asking personal questions. I'm. I open up first, you know, to have a friend, you got to be a friend. Right. So I just try and open up and, and explain, you know, why am I here? Well, I'm not just here to teach you a process so that you can hit a number for somebody in the corner office. I'm here to kind of help you think differently about the work that you're doing. Think differently about improving the work you're doing. And then how can that affect you and make it. What, what's in it for you? You know, no one's going to hand you a $50,000 bonus. Probably saved a hundred thousand dollars on an improvement or whatnot. But, you know, I try to open up and say, okay, what is it that really gets you ticking here at work and get you engaged? Because I, I can sense usually in those first three or four coaching sessions if someone's going to engage in this process or this is another flavor of the month that's coming along. Yeah, yeah. And then I'm usually coming back and spending that first five minutes of any coaching session saying, well, hey, Lance, how's it going? Do you go fishing this weekend? Or did you, you know, what you do with the family or whatnot? And so then we've got a little bit of. A little bit of a personal relationship going. And I'm not just this guy coming in from outside saying, you do it this way and you do it that way and you're doing it wrong on this.

You know, what role do. Does personality come into it? You know, like we, several of us here, Gamma Academy, did that disc profile assessment, you know, D for dominance and all the rest of it. And the I is like your schmooze factor, like how good of a schmoozer you are, you know, that sort of thing. And so, I mean, everybody's different, right? You might have a, you know, on a Myers Briggs, like a hard introvert versus an extrovert or whatever. Like, how do you see personality playing into this sort of thing? Because I got to imagine it could.

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How do you see personality playing into this sort of thing? Because I got to imagine it could.

Yeah, those, those types that I can pick up now after doing this for a decade or so, if the person is approaching it like. Well, the way that we implement. Not implement, we deploy improvement kata coaching. Kata is we start with like a manager in reverse order, and so they're the learner first, then they're the coach, and then they're their second coach in the reverse order. The frontline person or the crew leader is moving in from coach to coach and they're going to end up in the learner position and they have to humble themselves and admit they don't know. You know, that's a whole part of kata. What do I not know about the process?

Don't be so sure.

Yeah, and we're trying to navigate in this uncertain world, you know, toward this challenge challenge. And we're setting target conditions to try and get there incrementally. And in those first few sessions, if there's a lot of talking and not a lot of data on the board, and I know that this guy's really going to be kind of trying to bluff his way through this as we start to talk about some of the, maybe the metrics or maybe the parts of the storyboard, or maybe it's the going and watching the process, going to the gimba and Watching the process. What's that person doing? What's happening over there? Help me understand that I try and break down that wall. That type of person. Then you've got those that are, they're just waiting on making some change. You know, they're, they're the extroverts like you're talking about. They, they really want to engage in the process. And I would say they're probably. Sometimes they're a little easier to coach, but then those are a little bit more difficult to go back to. The analytical side.

Yeah.

You got, you got to get them looking at data and starting to do some charts and Paretos and some things.

Yeah.

Because they're, they're all about talking and all about going, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think is. I'm curious. I mean, because you've, you've been at this for so long, Brandon, and, and Kata twi. Lean, whatever you want to call it. What do you find the most difficult part of the work that we do?

That's a good question. And I probably, I probably go over in this nightly or with my wife, either if I'm on the phone or from at home doing remote coaching or whatnot. And it's just. If that person is not engaged in.

The process and in the process of. You like. Or just their process, the process of making improvements.

You asked, okay, what's the difficult. What's the hard part about it and frustrating part about it is if I come back or I have a. Another coaching session next week, or we have another coaching session the third week and they just, they didn't do anything. Yeah. One of my good colleagues, Steve Medlin, says, you know, I, I can coach mistakes. I can coach where you're not really in line with the Cotta corridor, you're not in line with the lean thinking or whatnot. I can't coach nothing.

Yeah.

And so if you come back and there's been no experiment or the last test of change doesn't happen for a week, well, then that's not getting to. What Rother put down is what he found Toyota doing, which was, how quickly can we get a quick change going? And that to me, if, if they're disengaged, if they're. We've been going a month, two months or so, and they're not trying and putting forth the effort. For me, I feel like, well, I'm spinning my wheels here and I would rather work with the willingness then drag along the ones that are kicking and screaming. Yeah.

What if they're dealing with chaos. And that's part of the problem like that.

And that's what I try and do is I'm trying to. If they're disengaged or if they're not, I try and say, what are the obstacles to you performing the improvement cost. What happened last week? We left the last coaching session, you were going to do an experiment or you're going to try a test to change, or the machine was messing up or whatnot, and you had a quality issue. And what data. You want to gather some data. Well, this kept me from doing it or that kept me from doing it, you know, so trying to try and dig into what is that work chaos that they're dealing with. And then if I can turn that into, how can we make that better for you and then make therefore make your job easier? What. What would it take to get you engaged in giving this a try? Yeah. And so usually get them to doing a couple of tests to change a week, and then we can get that flywheel going. You can get them turned. At least. At least that's been my experience in most people, not all people. Sometimes you have to disengage. And I've been hired myself. Sometimes I said, I, this isn't for you. And I think Bill Costantino said it caught a contest. One or two or something like that is caught as a process. That may work well for you, but then again, it may not. It might not be for you. And for those people that. That aren't going to humble themselves and say, I don't know and. Or I want to address the chaos. Whether it's the safety we got, you know, safety's going rampant and recordables or quality is going terrible or whatnot. Okay, let's. What can we do to put that fire down? I'm trying to show you a process that can maybe help reduce this. This chaos. And that's the personal connection I'm trying to make. And if I can do that with also sharing some of my personal information, you know, whether that be about what my hobbies are or what my life experiences have been or, you know, what it's like with my family or talk about my kids or something like that, Try and break down those silos to make that. That connection. Find out what's the obstacle from keeping you from engaging in. In what we're doing, what we're trying to do.

Yeah. Sometimes what's also difficult when we're coaching people, I often think, and you know, just the old TWI saying, you know, student hasn't Learned teacher hasn't taught. So I'm like, okay, well, if the learner has engaged, then I haven't coached. Right, right. So, you know, you can take on that weight also, which, you know, I mean, I suppose there's maybe there's some truth to it, but to your point, I mean.

Well, I've gone away disappointed a lot of times from coaching sessions where I feel like, what. What did I do? And I've even asked other. Other coaches to. To set in on a session or two or something. Help. Help me. Is there something I've said or something way I've approached somebody that's turned them off. I had that two weeks ago. I had a person that he was a know everything about the process, and he wouldn't put any data down because he knew everything. He grown up from a team leader to a supervisor to a line manager to now he's sort of an operations type role. He knew everything about the process. But then we started asking for numbers. Show me a number. Show me in the data. He realized he didn't know as much about the process, and he started collecting data and started learning. And so in a matter of about three weeks, not just me, because I've asked internal coaches to. To this process, we're teaching this coaching process internally to talk to him about, you know, this is a process about admitting what you don't know and not being afraid to admit that. And this week he's got graphs and everything all over his board and he's got his optical parking lot. And the storyboard is almost. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close to textbook out of the practice guide. But we didn't get there in the first two weeks. It's taken three to four weeks, you know, to get there. But, you know, when you get someone that doesn't want to engage, you know, a lot of times my wife says you shouldn't take it personally. You don't know what they're dealing with. You don't know everything about, you know, what's going on.

Yeah, yeah. It's hard, though. I get it. Hey, I want to pivot a little bit while I got you in the.

Chair.

Onto some TWI stuff. So Junior, you know, is my favorite. I don't know. I love Junior. I mean, JI jam great, too. No disrespect, Jij, but I just love Junior because. And I feel like it's. It doesn't get enough.

Use.

Doesn't get enough. I mean, I don't know, man. It's like ji is like the 5s of lean, you know, just go, do ji. You know, great. Yeah, I agree. Ji is great. And do it. But we don't have the people side. And especially with chaos and all the rest of it. And if there's conflict or any sort. Any kind of interpersonal leadership style issues, it's. It's got to be addressed, man. You know, and I just wish more practitioners would do that. And I look myself in the mirror as well. I'm not by any means perfect, but, you know, that whole get the facts and all the rest of it side of it, so easy to read, you know, and now there's your little bullet points to follow. But I struggle with getting the facts sometimes, especially when you're in this heated sort of moment. And, well, they said this and that, they said that. And you're like, oh, emotions are going like, what do you do in those moments of chaos, if you will? And you're trying to just calm everything down to really get the facts. Like, what are some strategies that you use for that?

A lot of things in the foundation you'll talk about. You know, let's write it out. It's just free, right? Free writing exercise. Let's go for. Let's go for a minute, and you tell me, you know, exactly what are your frustrations with this person or with this incident? What's it caused you? You know, let's get the facts. Just start writing.

So you're writing and they're talking.

They're writing.

They're writing.

I'm getting them to write. Okay, because the way, like, the situation you just explained is that, like, there's the chaos going on everywhere, and they got this problem, and he said that. Okay, well, let's just back up. Let's rewind the tape up, and let's just. Just write that out. That sounds important. I use it a lot in Cotta, too. That sounds important. Let's write that on the board. Let's write that on the obstacle or experiment list. So I kind of use the same thing with Junior. You know, it's part, you know, the fundamentals is to take the emotion out of it and get them to get to the facts and then carry on with questions. Okay, is that absolutely true or what do you think caused that particular statement that you just wrote there? And, and taking them then through the process. You know, there's. There's skill building. You got to start at the beginning. They've got to know the method, the four steps and everything. And if you can get past that, if there's still that problem with, you know, chaos and unrest and things like that, you know, getting the right it out, then tell it back to me. I've used the old. A blinking thing about, you know, writing a letter to somebody that you're upset with, and he would write a letter to one of his generals to, you know, tune them out and then he throw in the trash can. So type in. Type in.

Type the email. Don't send.

Type the email, but don't hit sin. You know, I was like, what if you write. Write a letter to this person, you know, what would you tell them? You know, get it out. And so some of it's just with job relations is just that therapeutic of getting. Getting them to focus on, like you said, facts, data, information. And what was the source of that, was the true source of that getting the other side to do the same thing. Comparing the two a lot of times that's the therapeutic part of it, I think. Mm, yeah, for sure.

For sure, man. So what's up? What's down the road for 2024 for you and what do you got cooking?

Well, 2024, 2023 last in the next couple of weeks, I'm going with the AME conference.

Yeah, I'll be there.

Yeah, yeah, so we'll hook up there. And so I'll be doing a TWI and KATA workshop and I'll be repeating it again at Katacon and DWI summit in April. Yeah, for the. April 8th, the big eclipse day. Yeah, it's going to be in near Indianapolis that Jim's hosting up there and just. Just trying to expand and reach out to folks that, you know, want to. Want to work to improve their processes and are frustrated they don't have a system. Maybe they got their peoples are disengaged. And that's the type of conversation I like. I like to get to that conversation. The best deployments I'll say that I've ever had of any lean, any cotton, tw, any. The best deployments is when I've been able to engage that plant manager to vice president and even C level above. If I can talk to them about what's frustrating you about not being able to get this company moving in the way that you want them to move, then we can start to lay out a plan for how we're going to introduce improvement processes into the everyday person's life. And if we can help start reducing some of the chaos in the manufacturing or healthcare world or in. In the person closest to the customer, that's going to allow you to Move your needle where you need it to be on your metrics and stuff. Yeah. Because you got to get it done through other people.

Yeah.

At that level. Yep. For sure.

Good stuff, man. Well, hey, thanks for, for coming in this week here for the workshop and helping out and thanks for, for taking time for this podcast. If folks want to connect with you, Brandon, what's the best way?

My website, continuous coaching commitment.com LinkedIn. You can see Brandon Brown and you have my first initial out there, but we also have a continuous coaching commitment. LinkedIn site. We've got a X now. Almost said Twitter. We've got an X site. Continuous coaching commitment. Excited. You can, you can search up email is always brandon@katamastercoach.com all one word. Okay. And of course my phone number is. It's always out there on my website and 479-856-1919. Okay. And as far as 2024, hopefully we can do some more stuff together and, and maybe you do some more live workshops.

Yeah, we're gonna have you back in here to run some more workshops, man, because it's a lot of fun. I love doing the, you know, we're new to the live instructor thing. I mean we're known for videos and all the rest of it, but man, I just love the energy of just seeing people in here, the smiles on their faces. And even this workshop, it's a two day workshop. You know what that day one was the sort of improvement kata dominoes thing. And I remember thinking, interesting group. Everybody was a little bit stoic and kind of quiet and you know, I was like, wasn't bad. But it was just like, what's going on? And then, boy, every time I came in, they're just, just energy and talking and everybody's going after it. And so it was really fun just to see, see the, the change, see the light bulb go off.

Right. They were acting their way into new way of thinking. Yeah. Thinking their way to new way of acting. Right. It's Jerry Steinen. I think power, positive deviance. I think he quoted that originally. It's been recorded a lot of other times, but that's the original. Yeah.

Fantastic. All right, man. Well, hey, you be well and we'll see you in, in Cleveland.

All right. Looking forward to it. All right, take care.

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