GA 507 | Navigating Leadership Development Behaviors with Rick Foreman

Hey there everyone. This is Ron Perera. And before we get started, I know we're just a few days out from Christmas, so I do want to wish everybody a very, very merry Christmas, a safe and blessed and prosperous new Year, and really do appreciate everyone who checks in, you know, to the podcast. Some of you listen every week and some of you just check in every so often, but no matter the frequency, I really do appreciate each and every one of you and also want give another shout out just to our team here at Gemba Academy, Greg and Jessica and Natalie, and so many people who make this podcast happen on a, on a weekly basis. It takes a lot of work. I always say that I've got the easiest job of all. So just in and out. Really thankful for everybody and I'm especially thankful for today's guests. So I'm having Rick Forman back on the show. Now, Rick and I actually recorded this early in December, but I wanted to schedule this one right up right, right around the Christmas time. Just because Rick just means so much to me as I've known him for so long and we've been such good friends over the years and we were able to just share with each other, you know, on and off the microphone. And today was just a really, really awesome conversation. We kind of, we get into just the whole idea. Well, we talk first of all, we talk about his current company, where he's at, and they're newer to, to the whole lean movement. And so we spent some time kind of talking a little bit about what they got going on. They're going about it. Rick had a really tough start. They actually had to let some people go right out of the gate, like almost like his first day. And so you can imagine being the lean guy coming in and having to make that announcement. So really some really rocky things that he had to sort of navigate through. But things are going much better now. And so we talk about that. But then I guess the majority of the conversation is talking about some leadership development behaviors. And this is really interesting stuff. Like we get into the whole idea of what's the difference between cooperation and collaboration? What's the difference between being nice and being kind? What about management versus leadership? And then lastly, accountability versus ownership? So we spent quite a bit of time talking about those because as continuous improvement folks, we've got to be able to, you know, understand people, we've got to be able to work with people. Because in the end, lean and continuous improvement, it's a people based system. And so if we're not good at that stuff. Doesn't matter how good you are at 5s or how good you are at value stream mapping and. And so forth, if we can't get other people to work along with us and together we're going to. We're going to really struggle. So that's what I appreciate about this one. And then Rick actually at the very end, shared a. Shared a second quote and we had a good time. Involves two rabbits. That's all I'll say. I'll give a little sneak peek. Involves two rabbits. So any stuff. And I appreciate Rick, and again, I appreciate all you. So again, merry Christmas and hope you enjoy the show. Rick, welcome back to the studio. How's it going?

Awesome. Great to be back.

Yeah, man, I always appreciate you. I reached out to you a week or so ago, said, hey, man, it's been a while since we chatted. Let's do a podcast.

Always willing. Part of the family, right?

Yes. 100%, man. 100%. All right, well, you know the drill, Rick. You've been on a number of times. We like to get things going with a quote. What do you got?

All right, I got this quote. I've been following Jason Lippert from Lippert Industries, and I really like his leadership approach, but he has this quote, when we pour into our teammates and help them grow and develop as human beings, one of the things that happens is that all of a sudden they start leading themselves better, they become a better teammate, and their life gets a little better. And that's continuous improvement, right? Yeah. So it kind of fits. Continuous improvement in every area. Right. Not just processes or anything, but it starts with us and can we help our team members improve? And if we start with that, grow the people, grow the business, everything kind of starts from there. And that's been a little bit of my story over the last year as well. So I thought that was a good quote to start with.

What do you think it means to help someone grow as a human being?

I think, you know, for us, we'll go back to my favorite book. You know, there's a plan and purpose for each of us, and I think if we can help people realize that purpose they have at a little deeper level or a more knowing level, then they feel fulfilled as a person. And so they grow. And then what do they want to be? Who do they want to be? I mean, whether it's in manufacturing or anything else, how. Who do they want to become? What does that look like? How can we help them grow so that they can realize the purpose they were created for.

What if they're from a fire? Some fastballs at you. What if their purpose that you perhaps help them explore and potentially identify doesn't perfectly align with the role in the company that you're dealing, that you're working in or, you know, they're just for whatever reason, it's not a fit. Like, what do you do then?

Well, and there becomes the value proposition. Right. If you're doing it to grow the people in that, then I think that takes care of itself at times. I mean, not everybody is going to be a fit. And some haven't come in in that revelation. Or they might find, hey, I'm doing this and I find something that's different. We would hire people in and they may come in and say, hey, I'm going to run a brake press or I'm going to run hardware or do something like that. And you find out, well, I really had this experience in inventory and I like driving forklifts and all of that. And you might find, oh, by the way, I used to be a project manager and I like doing that. And people are at different seasons in their life. But what is that, you know, for us? I think at times I've said too, is what do you find joy in doing? What makes you feel fulfilled? Part of what I'm doing right now is what makes me feel fulfilled or helping people grow and develop and serving others is kind of my jam. So when I do that, I feel good. Some people come into that realization. We, even at our current company, we know we may just be a stopping point and we're there to grow and develop people and get into it a little bit, but honor the labor. And then there may be a different season and a different place for them. And we're okay with that. Yeah. And you know, sometimes you need that experience. You train somebody. You invested in all of that. But for everything, there is a season. Right? Right. It's not the same. I've been in a different season for the last year, as you know.

Yeah.

So.

Well, let's talk about that. But before even this last year, just in case folks haven't heard previous episodes, just give us a little bit about your background, Rick, who are you?

And.

And then talk about what you're doing.

Well, I just finished my 46 year in manufacturing. Wow. And so, yeah, started when I was five. Not really. Yeah. Yeah. But I've been in a manufacturing environment for 46 years. Started out sweeping floors, cleaning bathrooms in an aerospace. And so I've just grown through that different Types of manufacturing over the years, different levels of leadership and ownership tied in with Boeing several years ago, accelerated improvement workshops and kind of was eventually mentored by somebody from Boeing that had spent, you know, a half a year or more at Toyota and stuff. So the lean thing really was natural for me and I just kind of, kind of a magnet to that type of thinking. Yeah. And so I eventually left a company and went to do lean full time at Federal Heath previously and teaching and developing leadership. And so that's been my journey for 46 years, is just growing through that, growing up on the floor. Literally 46 years on concrete, working with people in a manufacturing environment through different levels and different aspects, whether it's the management side, operations side, but really big focus the last 20, 25 years on the lean and the leadership aspect of it. So.

So what are you doing now Rick?

Right now title wise, I'm the director of operations or lean operations for a manufacturing company north of Dallas here and I'm doing exactly what I did at the last place. Kind of new in manufacturing for what they're doing in that. But we're growing and building a team to develop. We have some product, a lot of telecom power, a lot of sheet metal manufacturing, some sub assembly and stuff like that. But I have a very close friend who is like a brother to me and him and his co owner were talking about their growth and what they had in front of me. Like we need somebody to help us develop people. And the day they were having the meeting was the day I became available. Literally they were having the conversation at the same time I was a part of finding out I was going to have a new opportunity. And so we connected and it was good timing to go up there. And as I was hired as to grow and develop, people certainly know a little bit about the manufacturing environment over the years. But the main thing is to go in and assess an organization. Where are the people at, what's the conditions, current state of an organization and how do you kind of wrap your arms around that whole thing and move it forward? So.

So I'm curious to hear, I mean like how's it going as far as, you know, like what are you doing and where are you in that journey and how's it going? Is it, you know. Well, having some success and failures? All of the above.

One year in. Actually last Monday was my first year there and going through it.

Wow, that's right. I remember when you started there. My goodness, time flies.

Yeah, time's flying by fast. But talking to the people running the business and all that and asking them, so what do you guys think? It's literally a transformation. It's 180 degrees from where it was and to the point of adding new product, new customers and such and that. But it's really a significant turnaround. I would say from some of the data I heard this last week, probably about a 75% improvement from a financial point of view per month, what it was before I started and positioning to where you probably had three customers. And some of them were iffy on their, you know, how forecasts can go back and forth depending on how the world's gone to now probably having eight to 10 customers that are solidified. So being able to add new customers, adapt to that. We've made a pretty definitive investment in capital equipment and growth to help take care of that along the way. Growing and training, developing the people that we have to grow into those roles and help us, lead us. But most people that you would ask in the company, because I ask, what do you think? How's it going? Is it better? How do you feel about it? It's transformational.

So what was it like day one? Just like frontline worker level. Where were they open to the ideas of improvement or was there resistance?

Yeah, there's all. And some people don't know what people don't know.

Yeah.

And part of it, the work had somewhat slowed. Key customers changed forecast drastically. I mean, one customer had a forecast of like 26, 000 units and it's going down to 1500. And so the impact. And there was a couple of shifts and. And honestly, because of the way it was and the stuff and the growth and the transition a little bit maybe back some of those companies we read in the past, they had too many people. They kind of had a weekend shift. And so the productivity aspect was you look around and you go, it's unfortunate. They had a fairly large temp base, but they had too many people. And so it was really funny and not funny. You know me, I like to throw the. I want to be real about the challenges we run into. So they have a plant manager, Something's going on, his family has to be out. My second day at the company, we're having the company group meeting with the shop floor and he's not there. And the first thing I get to announce is we're closing the weekend shift because of our workload and stuff. And so how did it start? It started by a pretty good large group of people look at me and said, oh, they brought this guy to Be the cut guy. Yeah. And so that's, that's how it started. And so, and nobody, there's probably five people I'd work with before even the guy helping run the company. I'd hired him at one of the previous places, but very few people, if anybody even knew me or knew of me. So my first thing is, okay, we're shutting down the a weekend shift. And then due to the workload we, we had to trim quite a bit and quite pretty heavy. And so it started off really rough to build trust and confidence about what are we doing. And so it started off shocking. Like, okay, well this is how it works, right? You bring in somebody new, we cut this, we cut that, and I'm one of the people getting caught. How does this guy even know what he's doing? Why did they bring him here? And so day one, you got to come in and you got to look around, you say, how do I build trust? How do I connect with the people? How do I show them I'm here literally to serve them and not to throw them all out the door and say, hey, it's not working. We're going to start over a different way. And some of that was just happened to be where it was as an organization. And that was going to happen whether I was there or not, unfortunately, or fortunately, I was the face of that change per se. And so we worked through it and it didn't take us long, a couple of months where, you know, sometimes people are looking around, probably asking, why didn't this happen earlier? Why didn't we adjust earlier? Why weren't these decisions made that should have been made? And for. There's lots of reasons why that happens in an organization. And people are tied up, a small group trying to manage a lot of change and growth and different things, which is the reality. You end up with a group of carriers, maybe 10 people, trying to carry an entire organization and build it from scratch. So it's in reality, it was almost a manufacturing startup. Some people with vast knowledge and experience taking things they probably project managed more through outsourcing, manufacturing and deciding, hey, we're going to bring this in house and do some of this. So how it started out was pretty rough. Yeah. On the workforce. And so it started out like that. And then you got to sit around and say, okay, how do we build this trust back? How do we give a plan? How do we show people we care? And you know me, it's like people don't know we care unless we show it. So how do we show that, that we're not just here to cut everybody and be a taskmaster, but there's a plan behind it. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. So as we were preparing for this podcast, Rick, we were chatting quite a bit about some leadership development behaviors and different things like that. I wonder if we could just maybe sort of transition into that now, keeping in mind all the things that you just said, because I think all things that you just said perfectly align with, with some of this stuff. So let's start with like the topic of, of like collaboration versus, say cooperation. Like what, what do we got going on there with collaboration and cooperation?

Well, in any organization, you have engineers, you have project managers, you got a plant manager, you got a lead team lead on the shop floor, you have people in different departments and everybody has amount of pressure or something to get done a task. And it's like, well, so. And so if purchasing would only buy this material, we have asked, or if engineering would have done this like this, or if that other group would have done that. The project managers are never out there. It's never like this. So one of the things was assessing the current state of the leaders or that. And leaders meaning even a senior team member or people that interacted between groups. I'll say of what to do and just say so of it. People would come and say, hey, I have this problem, this going on. You know, I need this and that. And so I've really switched my brain a lot off of that and immediately is like, yeah, I could take what you told me and I could go talk to this person and come back, talk to you, and then we could work through it like that. But one of the test in the, in the growth step is to immediately say, well, tell me what you did on that. How have you interacted with them? And no different than me in my life. I've been more conflict avoidance and all of that and probably same. Probably have four doctorate degrees in people pleasing. And so I'm not a fan of conflict and doing all that. But what I've learned is we can cooperate and it might be okay, it might even be good. But if we want to get to the best and we need to grow each other, we got to take this company and grow it now. I mean, we got to start pulling the thing together. Then collaboration is going to be part of that glue. Whether it's not comfortable, kind of like the rose bush, you got to prune it for it to grow. And so some of the team members tell you, I'm big on it. It's like how did you work through that? How did you talk to them? That person didn't talk to you the way you thought it should be done? What was your follow up? How are you going to do that? How are you engaging with that person? So, and I would just say I want you to go sit down with them. I want you to understand that this challenge that maybe you don't like right now, you will face again in three months, six months, eight months, either on another situation or another department or something. So what I want you to do first is I want you to dig into this and see what you can do to collaborate, to come up for our company. And I'd say, what's the best way for us? Us being all of us. There's different thoughts and all that, but. But if you had all of it, what would be the best way for us in this? And so that takes collaboration over. Well, maybe my ideal isn't the best, but what's your thoughts? What are you running into versus what I'm running into? And how can we work this thing out to better the best, to be the best thing for us? And that's a different mindset for a lot of people. And it was for them, to challenge them, because I've been through that road and it's never been comfortable for me, and it certainly wasn't for many of them, so.

Because I'm really trying to wrap my mind around this. So when we say we, if I collab, if you and I collaborate together on a task versus you and I cooperate with one another on a task, what's the difference?

Cooperate is we got to get this done. It's your responsibility to have this material, this machine, for me to run it. Mm. Collaboration might be okay. We normally keep that over there and that's how we do it now and to just cooperate. I'll make sure I keep what I need here. Over here where we normally do.

Yeah.

And you can come get it over here. Yeah. Or we could say, how much of that material are we using, how often are we using it? And what if we put it at point of use and what a point of use look like? And how would that help my team and your team to come up with the best for us now? We got to cooperate. It's my job to get you the material, the hardware, whatever it may be.

So they're not at odds with one another. Right. Like cooperation and collaboration. They could. Could they be. They could be and probably should be in harmony. But I would if I were to draw it out. It Would seem collaboration is greater than cooperation.

It could be. I have all this stuff on my plate and Ron's given me quite a bit today. And you're going to come and you're going to say you need this hardware or something like this and we already issued that hardware to you. What are you doing with it? Eating it or whatever? Well, what if we take that hardware and put it at point of use and we have the vendor manage it?

Yeah.

Well, now we just save this time for everybody and stuff like that. And some of it could be frustrating is I'm not walking in those shoes. There is a challenge still of the big go and see. Go to the Gemba.

Yeah.

Go out there and see what they're facing. And that was a collaboration. Cooperation is I ordered you what you need. Collaboration is. I went to the Gimba to see how it's impacting you.

Yeah, good stuff, man. What about a lot of, I don't know, just over the last few years it seems like the whole idea of kindness and being nice and that sort of thing has really come to, to the, I don't know, really been amplified for whatever reason. What's the difference between kindness and being nice? Or is there?

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Sign up@gemba events.com that's gemba events.com. what's the difference between kindness and being nice? Or is there?

Well, there's a big difference. Kindness is a bit more authentic. I might come to you and say, yeah, sorry about that on the hardware and stuff like that or something. You know, I know you guys are really trying to do what you got to do and all that kindness might not be as, you know, for the last two months we've been short of this hardware. We really need it and authentically to not have the conflict. I may only share 75% of my frustration or what, how it's fitting and I might leave out the 25% to not go over kindness to being a little more authentic and transparent. Example, had a guy come to me, been in the business a while and he had a tendency to maybe get grumpy with some of the fellow Team members. And so have a conversation with him and all of that. And he. He goes, wow, you're really good at talking with people and stuff like that, man. Do you think you could help me? And so we literally had this conversation every two months for eight months. And I said, I'll just use Bill as not his name, but I'll. I'll say, bill, I can't. I. He said, will you help me? And I said, no, I won't. And he had the face that you just showed. And he said, what do you mean? I said, I can't help you with that. And he goes, well, why can't you help me with that? He said, you're really great at this. He said, I've watched how you're talking with people and interacting, engaging with people and all that. And I said, he said, I can already tell you really good at this. And I said, here's the difference between us. Yeah, I can help you with that. And if you'll just watch and do this and all that, I think that'll help. Kindness said this. The reality is you already know what to do. Because after we have these conversations for the next week or two, you do exactly what you know is right towards your fellow team members and you nail it. You actually crush it for two weeks in a row. I mean, so is the question you don't know what to do, or are you just choosing not to do it? You're so for me, I'll be authentic and transparent with you. You've shown me that you know what to do. I can't help you choose to do the right thing with your fellow team members. Nice. Would have left that last thing off. In my opinion. Kindness goes to extra and it's a little more authentic and transparent and it kind of digs in a little deeper to say, or, hey, you're really doing a good job today, or whatever. Instead of saying, you know, the target we ought to give be getting 10 of these five. Tell me what you need to help you get there. Training, paperwork, whatever tool or whatever, but we really need to get to 10 or something like that. Or we excuse something that maybe was okay because these other things went well. We don't go that extra step to have an authentic conversation about what the standards are or to get there now I'll say Bill name wasn't Bill. We have these conversations the last time he came up to me. I literally shared this earlier today at a business launching with somebody. And this is real rubber meets the road for lean and continuous improvement in my opinion. But he came to me one day and he said, hey, are we good? And I said, no, we're not good. He said, we're not good. I go, no. I said, I heard about the conversation you had with a plant manager and another leader or something. And I said, it was really disrespectful, in my opinion. He said, well, do you want to hear my side of the story? And I said, no, I don't. I said, because I've had people share it, and every two months you show me this exact behavior, so I really don't need to hear it. And he said. He said, so, are you. Are you going to fire me? And I said, oh, no, I'm not going to fire you. And I'm not mad or anything. I said, no. I said, I'm not going to fire you whatsoever. I said, you're going to choose to leave here on your own, or you're going to choose to fire yourself, but I'm not going to fire you. And he said, well, what do you mean by that? And I said, once again, you and I will have this conversation today for two weeks. You'll do exactly what you know you need to do as a respectful fellow team member. You'll be efficient, you'll be productive. You'll be respectful to people beside you. You'll be kind to your team members as well, and not just be grumpy because they didn't do it the way you wanted. I said, but you've shown every two months. So it's a behavioral deal. I can't choose that for you. But our culture and how we are, this is the expectation and this is the standard. So I said, you're going to choose to not be with us. I said, you'll either choose that and leave, or one day we'll choose and I'll. I'll walk you out. But you'll be firing yourself. I won't be. Yeah, I. Nice is kind of just hitting the top surface of those things and moving on. And then six months, eight months, year and a half later, you're still dealing with issues like that. Kindness is coming back and having a conversation or somebody comes to you because you have leaders that don't agree on something the way it should go. Yeah, kindness. I can just be nice and kind of superficial with it and kind of overdo it and try to make it, or I can get down to collaborative level and say, hey, here's some things I'm seeing and what I need you to work on.

Yeah, man, you know, it just Ran through my mind, you know, thinking about your favorite book. And my mind as well is, is when Jesus said, or Peter we talking to Peter. He said, do you love me? Do you love me? And he's asked three times. And it was three different words for love, as I know you know, and the last one was agape. Do you agape me? Which is like deep, deep love versus. Was it filial love? Like, was one of them. Which is like more brotherly love. Like Philadelphia, like brotherly love. Right. So that's. There's a deepness. Right. To that type of love. So even like when you think about this kindness and nice, there's like depth to it.

Right.

Whereas if you agape, like that's deep, deep love. Right. And where it's just, you know, we're just brotherly love. Right. Still good and very nice and good. But it's not agape.

It's. Good morning. How are you? I hope you're having a great day. Yeah. Like, hey, I noticed something's going on. Are you okay? What's really going on with you? How could I help you?

Yeah.

One is, I said good morning. I did all the greeting and all the nice stuff.

Right.

But I see you every day and I noticed something's a little bit different today. Kindness would take it another step.

Yeah.

I was teaching, doing a leadership webinar with 25 behavioral child psychologists. Goodness. And my daughter was in the group, the leadership group. Okay. They deal with autistic children. And we had this discussion and what came up was amazing because all of them were leaders over groups and most of them were struggling just having monthly reviews and just sit downs with their people because they wouldn't be authentic about what was really going on and they wouldn't address it. So they would just kind of soft serve it and be nice without realizing the kind comment is not giving the other person a chance either to react to that and to improve or do what's necessary or to have some type of feedback that might be meaningful as well so that they both grow or the organization grows. But there was a handful of them. We had, we had quite the roundtable on one entire session over nice versus kind and how that's different. And so be authentic and be transferred, be respectful and all that too. But it is, it's a little bit deeper and some of that could be uncomfortable. Well, we need to go ahead. If we're going to get better and grow people and leadership or continuously improve. We're going to have a little bit of that rose bush thing. Going on and have to cut some things off and it's uncomfortable and that's it. Even though there's this big focus on kindness, you know, we see everywhere, if we're really doing it the way we should, there's going to be some discomfort involved.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's what bugs me a little bit about the movement out there. It's all like, yeah, just, you know, no matter what it, you know, just be nice.

Well, here's my, here's my opinion. What you just said. You just said it. There's a movement on. They're labeling it kindness, be kind, but it's really be nice.

Exactly.

It's mislabeled. Yeah, there's a movement on, but it really isn't about kindness exactly. It's about being nice.

Yeah.

And. And I think when we're making everybody.

Feel good no matter what.

Right. Yeah. And. But then people never have the opportunity to know, even them. We talk about lean stuff. Right. What's the current state of your team members and your leaders have the conversation.

Yep, yep, yep. 100% leadership versus management. What do we got going on there?

Well, all of Rick's previous podcast kind of said on this management, you got to do the daily stuff. And on that leadership kind of pulls you past the status quo, makes you think at things different. You got to lead, you got to model it, you got to have the behavior. Leadership is having that conversation with somebody about being kind and authentic, say, hey, here's what we're looking for. You know, I've had several sessions and a lot of people growing, some people just new into it and you say, okay, where are you now and all that. Well, sometimes as a leader, you got to sit over here and it can't be an us against them mentality. You got to sit over and go, what's best for the team? How do I lead? Am I doing it the kind way? Am I doing it the right way? Does it align with our values? Does it align with our culture? And sometimes you have to assess the current state. I've noticed this too about leadership. This is real fascinating. We saw somebody like last week, haven't really got in deep into the lean training whatsoever. But point Kaizen coaching and doing stuff, really the whole place is changing. We built a 50,000 square foot new building. There's new people, new equipment, a lot of growth. Things didn't change there. One comment I made was, it's very hard to do Kaizen and lean in an unstable environment. Even Toyota and all them would tell you you gotta have some stability. We have everything in flux. So we do a lot of point kaizen of opportunities to coach something. We had an Aryan mask or whatever and we had some hot parts and we were moving them. And a couple of people came by carrying these parts and I saw somebody, they looked over there with a horrified look like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe that's being done. It's gotta be the dumbest thing ever. And I said, I said, look at that. That's amazing. I think that's the leader in me saying that's amazing because here's what I knew. People who would have never thought about flowing something, instead of waiting till the next 10 came to them, they understood the urgency and they went and grabbed them. So they were thinking in flow. We've done no lean training, but they were one on here too. The next one, they were moving beyond accountability to ownership. So they saw a need and they reacted to it off where they were. But it was kind of neat because they were improving flow without the training. And so what happened? We're working as a team, developing our thinking, therefore we're developing the people, therefore we're developing the processes, therefore we're changing the culture. And I think a leader, a manager's like, I can't believe we're doing that. That's the dumbest thing ever. Do this, do that. Here's what you do. Get this done, get that done. Leader sometimes says, man, I wonder why we're doing it like that. You could say, well, we've done no training. They've never been in manufacturing in their life. So what do we do? Can't train at all today. Not going to be able to throw down a 5s course today and hope it works out. It doesn't happen like that when you have to take an entire organization and kind of move it forward. Even my friends, you know, he's been asked before, well, what's the plan? What's Rick's plan? And he kind of jokes at this and he said, rick's the plan. And he says, and the reason he said, rick's the plan is you have to assess it first. And you got to kind of look how you move this thing forward as a whole. And so you look at these leaders and you say, hey, I need you to go talk to somebody, collaborate. And you look over here and say, well, maybe we need to do this instead of that. So. So. So this is a. The leadership steps back and doesn't necessarily say that's good or that's bad. It says, here's the current state. What can we do differently? And how do you step through that? Yeah, because it's a journey, it's a transition.

Learn your way forward.

Learn your way forward. And everybody's at a different point. And understand, if you have a hundred people, you have a hundred people at a different point.

Yeah.

And you can't move them all the same distance at the same pace and get where you. So you really, as a leader, you got to step back and kind of assess that. And so there's some emotional intelligence, awareness involved in that that says it's not as simple as a manager. Here's the five things we do. We go do this. It works that you're in some environments where continuous improvement. Leans will work in any environment. But you have to assess that culture and organization and where they are and then say, okay, here's a toolbox. What do we use to get there?

So, last one, ownership versus. I don't know if it's versus, but ownership and accountability.

Yeah. And I'll rephrase that on these. Cooperation isn't bad. I just think we can get deeper and drive improvement if we make sure we get in more collaboration. Yeah, nice isn't necessarily bad or wrong, but kindness is a deeper level of improvement that pulls us forward. Management is necessary. Leadership is critical, and it's like anything, a continuous improvement. Accountability. Management, nice. And cooperation aren't necessarily bad, but they're not necessarily the best. Yeah. And if we don't move the other ownership is. Accountability is. Hey, we'll just say that masking example. Hey, we got to get these parts done today. You're responsible to get this done or whatever. They're due tomorrow. Ownership is if you create people to see the need and do it, they're going to move ahead and start taking ownership of that without me having to come by and say, hey, we need to be working on these three things. They already see it. They see a need and they start engaging that need. Versus, well, I'm accountable to get these things done. This goes back to probably the first podcast we ever did talking about, do people know their why as lean leaders? Do we explain why we're doing that? Why would we need to reduce conveyance? Wasted motion. Why does quality pay say, well, it's a bad part. Well, why is a bad part bad? How does that impact things? Which ways? How many different ways does it impact it? What if we made it better? How would that impact it in a positive way? Ownership. People see a need and they get it done. It's not like, well, I have to do this today. Well, this is on my list today. And not everybody gravitates toward that. But I'll just say in each of these, especially from a leadership, as you're trying to grow an organization into a mature organization, the more team members that you can gravitate and pull towards these things will make a more emphatic impact on the overall organization and sustain it for the long term versus just another thing we're coming in and doing every day. Yeah.

Oh, so good Rick. Man, I, I, yeah, I wasn't sure the direction of this when we were kind of planning, but man, I really like how this has turned out and just, just the flow of and, and I love how you summarize those like and I wanted to maybe even re emphasize that cooperation is not bad, but collaboration potentially is, is a stronger, deeper action. Yeah, right. Being nice isn't bad. In fact, it's great be nice. You don't need to be mean. Right. But kindness is deeper and being kind sometimes means giving tough love. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and because it's hard to be nice and you can still be nice when you give tough love, but it's a, it's more fleeting. Right. Yeah. So I think I really like how you've set these up. Management versus leadership, accountability and ownership.

Yeah. You're probably not going to get to ownership if you can't get the kindness. If you can't have the tough conversations or the uncomfortable. We'll just say uncomfortable conversations where people know. I mean it's a. Manufacturing can be fast paced. No matter what you're making, it's challenging. You've been in it.

Yeah.

There's too many assumptions that it's intuitive that people will look around and somebody that's been there while and that's what it should look like. But people were grew up in an environment, raised a certain way, worked at a previous place and never been in an environment like that. And so to assume it's intuitive that oh, that's what it looks like and I'll just start doing that is a bit of a false premise. People don't know unless we have the conversations. We're not at a place yet where we've got all these sops down because things have been moving. New product products went out, new products came in, people went out out, things are moved. New equipment's in growth. And so it's hard to put all the sops in place and do the training and dot the I's across T's and Say, okay, we're all done would be nice, but we're not there. So then you have to have these conversations. But you're probably not getting to ownership unless you're kind enough to have the conversation with somebody to understand what ownership looks like beyond accountability. So they all connect with each other, in my opinion.

So I know that you've worked up a closing quote for us here, Rick. So what do you got?

I love this. I use it almost every day. If you chase two rabbits, they'll both get away.

What's that mean to you and how's that relate to everything that we've just talked about?

There's about a thousand things that could be improved. I mean, maybe everybody's arrived at the five star Toyota, Max it out, crush it level. But mid manufacturing, mid level manufacturing is the backbone of America. There's a lot of 10 to 50 to 100 employee businesses that are in manufacturing. I've never gone into one of them that you didn't look at the opportunity. Gimba Academy's been in the many organizations and you look at it and you go like, it's almost. Where do we start? There's lots of, you know, I'm at Toys R Us, let's go. The thing here is pick something, get it done, focus on that. If you focus on everything, it'll muddy it up and it can be overwhelming to people, especially if they're not. If they've not been exposed to much of this. It can be like waterboarding. Yeah. They're like, oh my gosh, it's too much. I don't even know what. You're talking a different foreign language to me. So now a lot of coaching I do with some of the team leaders and people like that is, hey, here's one opportunity. Why is this like this? Hey, we clean this up, we mark this. But now we got extras here. I wonder what the root causes on that. How can we get the root cause of this one thing? Let's just work on that today or tomorrow. What's this one thing? Or let's organize this one shelf and get it organized and let's try to sustain that for a week. Let's see if our labeling makes sense for what we got going on. We got a pretty big project, high volume and conversation about a Kanban system to bend True Confessions, probably a value stream map and using it the right way, probably not my strength. I'm a big sticky note guy. Let's just put the stuff up, what they're doing and see if we can make it Better Kanban and figuring out what the quantities need to be and all that. I'm not an engineer, I get it though. But some conversation this week of oh, that's a two bin system. No, not really. It's a one bin system. What do you mean it's a one bin system? I said, so you got one bin over there and you got one bin here. When that bin's empty, you come over here, then you find out that bin's empty. Well, there's two bins involved but it's really a one bin system. And two bin system would be you got two here and two there. As soon as you empty one, when you start on the next one, you take that empty one or a card to the other and you go, hey, we need to do a pool system them. But once again, people don't know what people don't know because they haven't been taught. But one thing is just this week is like, well, let's just work on this. There's four different areas for this and it was one of the high volume things before I ever started there and then it died. And so we almost have to rebuild the thing because it's changed a bit. So we have to put something back in place that maybe wasn't even built to what it could be to begin with. So you find yourself rebuilding things. Well, let's just work on rebuilding this one thing because we could do this. We turn around the corner, there's a ton of things. Do a lot of first article things for new projects and you can get distracted and pulled in a lot of different directions. So instead of chasing two rabbits today, we're going to work on this one rabbit over here. Let's see if we can tie that up and get that closer. Then tomorrow we'll work on or even if it takes two or three days, we'll go work on a different rabbit then. So I think that's the thing. At times there's so many opportunities. We have insane growth, insane opportunities, which means we have a lot of new stuff, a lot of first articles and a lot of things that are hot and it's new, it's almost like R D. So you don't even know what you're going to run into. Do you run into it? You hope the engineering's right, but even from the customer and stuff, it's new things happen. It's part of manufacturing life and R and D and new things, it's new. So you're probably going to run into some bumps and you do so a Leader steps back and goes, hey, I can't overwhelm my people. I can't waterboard everybody. If we create a team of 10 or 15 people that are just crisis firefighters. You know, I've said before, you don't want to be the captain of the fire department and manufacturing. You want to start putting things in place from leadership. Lean, continuous improvement. Put things in place so you can enjoy a little bit working with each other and not be fighting fires all the time. You don't want to be the captain of the fire department holding the hose where every day you're just fighting fires. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's what this means.

I love it.

Wow.

Good stuff. Rick. Hey man, if people want to connect with you personally, what's the, what's the best way?

Well, you can still connect with me. Message me on LinkedIn. I'm on there quite a bit. And you can go to Rick Forman and I'm on there if you want to email me rick.formanbcglobal.net also rickongreninternational.com I've been helping some people out here doing some Lean webinars and doing some digital Gimba engagements where you get on the, the, you get on the laptop or you get on your iPad and you do a virtual Gemba. Just go in with somebody and say, hey, if you got a deal, show me what you were going through and all of that. So I've done a couple of those. It's real neat to pop into a new environment. Hey, show me what you're running into and talk through it and say, well, here's some things I think and you kind of do the catch ball thing back and forth and see if you can come up with something different. But yeah, love it. That's a way to reach out to me. Awesome, man.

Hey man, thanks for coming in. It's always a blessing to reconnect and I know we'll do it again down the road. So keep up the great work and until next time, thank you.

Right, thanks.

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