GA 510 | The Role of Questioning and Curiosity in Leadership with Scott McDuffee

I love that idea of as a leader, sharing your intention and then asking for feedback, what should we do? And again, that goes back to what you were saying earlier about humility. It's a connection, it's a form of respect, I think, to say I'm going to share everything I've got, but be humble enough to know I don't know every answer. I need your help along this way.

Today. I'm excited to welcome Scott McDuffie to the show. Now, Scott actually is one of Gemba Academy's live instructor trainers. We've been able to work with quite a bit this past year. So it's been great getting to know Scott. And so, yeah, Scott flew in for this interview and we recorded it in person here in our Keller, Texas studios. And we had a great chat. We spent quite a bit of time just talking about how leaders in particular can go about behaving and what some of the best practices they can be demonstrating in order to have a successful continuous improvement program. We spent quite a bit of time talking about asking questions and not just like, hey, what do you think? You know, just. But really being curious and how can leaders really engage with their teams to get the best out of them? And Scott is a really interesting guy. He's got a. He's got a strong continuous improvement and leadership background. But interestingly enough, Scott is also an artist and so he does like abstract painting and different things like that. So really interesting guy. And we talk a little bit about that and what lean has to do with his art as well. So that's also super interesting. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 510. Also, if you want to learn more about the live instructor events that we're doing here at Gemba Academy, we started them this past year in 2023, I should say. And. And we're going to be doing a lot more of them in 2024. Just go to gemba events.com that's the shortcut. Gemba events.com and you can see what we've got on store or got in store for our live instructor events. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Scott, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm doing really well. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, man. Thanks for coming into the studio. It's always fun to. And you. This is like legit coming to the studio. Like you. You got on an airplane to come here.

I made a trip here. This is really exciting. Wanted to do it in Person wanted to connect with you, and I have a lot of respect for you and this organization.

Well, thank.

Great to come here.

Yeah. And so Scott has been. He's done a lot of our live instructor training classes, and so it's been great to see you in action there, teaching kata and boot camp and everything else in between. So it's always fun to see you here in Texas.

Thank you.

And you have been in Texas before, right?

I lived in Texas for 14 years in total, 10 in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and then some in Houston. So this does feel like home again. It's a great experience. Excuse to get here and see friends and connect.

Right. Fantastic. All right, well, Scott, you know, at the beginning of all of our episodes, we like to start with a quote. So do you have one?

Yeah, one. And I've seen this pop up a few times. But the idea, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And I think it's an African proverb, but it just really resonates with me. It's kind of like in a parallel to efficiency versus effectiveness. And so thinking of leaders, building the capacity and capability of people as they go, not just trying to get just the result, is a powerful thing for us to emphasize as we're leading transformations.

Right, right. Good stuff. All right, well, hey, Scott, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background and how you got into continuous improvement and what you're up to these days.

Okay, super. Yeah, it's really interesting. Often when I'm giving workshops, and I just did one on behalf of Gemba Academy related to facilitating 5s, there was somebody in the audience taking notes of all the different jobs I mentioned as I was telling these stories. So, yeah, I have a varied background. Office furniture manufacturing, oil rigs, transit buses. And then I was a director of process excellence and NCI. So I had, like, 15 different companies that I was coordinating activities with. So lots of variety, and I kind of came up through the factory, human resources training and development. So a lot of varied background that makes that helpful and useful. Today, I'm independent. I do some work for Gemba Academy, many different organizations, just driving lean, getting people engaged. Really focus on the people and culture side of lean.

And you're an artist?

Oh, yeah. That's kind of an odd mix. Right. A lot of the people that do what I do do, what we do have engineering backgrounds and are kind of black and white and very, very structured. And I'm actually an abstract artist, so I get playful in some Ways. It's problem solving. It's solve the problem of a blank canvas, solve the next compositional issue. And so I see correlations to kaizen and improvement and a lot of rapid experimentation and rapid learning, like we talk about with the kata workshops. But, yeah, I'm an abstract artist who also does lean. Wow.

That's so cool. I don't think there's anybody else that I know that might be a rare combination.

Yeah.

Yeah, man, That's.

That's.

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. All right, well, so what I wanted to talk about today, Scott, was just really. I don't know, you got a varied background, as you said, and. And you've got a lot of experience in. I'm wondering if we could sort of, you know, just begin with, like, what kind of challenges have you experienced as you've been trying to roll out lean and, you know, just continuous improvement in general.

Yeah, I. I feel like there's a lot of technical challenges, but one of the biggest challenges, really, I feel like leaders underestimate the amount of engagement, commitment, and involvement they need to drive it, particularly executive leaders. And so I find some of the root cause of what holds people back is they feel like they need to know all the answers. They need to know the complete vision, and many things you just don't know early in the process. So we've got to figure out how to navigate the gray area, help others with change. And I really think the difference is leaders that know how to ask really good questions. Mm. That can often be a challenge. Right. People get promoted, they move up in organizations because they might have been the answer person. But farther and further into transformation and change, we need to get people asking great questions to draw that out, to develop the capability and capacity of people to do it themselves. So it's not all on the shoulders of those executives.

Do you have any examples?

Yeah. There's so many wonderful questions that I ask. And many of our audience today will know David Mann of Creating a Lean Culture fame. I had this lucky opportunity at Steelcase to have him as a mentor for years and years at a satellite plant here in Texas. And it's really funny if you can picture this. And I know our listeners might not be able to see me right now, but I'm this. I'm big, I'm loud, I talk with my hand. I'm usually really Energizer, an Energizer bunny. And David is a smaller, professorial, kind of quiet, reserved, very, very smart. But his approach is much different than mine. And we would go on these walks. He would come down from Corporate, from Steelcase in Grand Rapids, and there would be these walkthroughs and there was always great actions that came out of those and insights. One particular visit, I remember trying to flip the script of my own notes. So instead of like capturing the action items and the to do list, which wouldn't be normal for being the lean host at the plant here in Grand Prairie, Texas, I started taking notes of every question that he asked. It was really, really powerful how much of the next steps and the insights came out of other people's mouths. And I feel like that was a click, a thing that really clicked for me about ownership and commitment. It wasn't you shall go do this. It was very pointed and, and he would walk up to an area and say, what do you see? And he might ask questions about the visual boards, the metrics, the lean management visual controls, as he would, as he would describe them in his book Creating a Lean Culture. And he would say things like, you know, what's your biggest problem? Who's working on what by when. To learn more about the problem and solve it and just really drive into questions, how would you make this better? What are we going to see the next visit? And I learned so much about, there's the old kind of joke that we've got two ears and we have one mouth, we should use them in that proportion. I'm not always very good at that. I tend to be talk and visual and I want to give some answers. And sometimes I feel like we can gain so much more if we don't have to be the smartest person in the room or we don't care who gets credit for the answer. And so that facilitation skill of asking those deeper questions, I learned a lot from David and even positioning, we emphasize gimbal walks a lot. I remember no matter what we were looking at or what process we were discussing or what improvement, he would always physically position himself. So he's observing the process. He would always see what's going on and then that would lead to more questions and direct observations. And for many of the people, it was some of the rare moments, some of the, particularly the executives to get out on the floor, get in the process. They're so caught up in the numbers, the bigger things, the customer facing aspects. And he would really emphasize with them through questions and they would have some self discovery that they needed to be out there more, they needed to be asking questions, they needed to be more connected to the, to the Value adding processes.

What role, you know, you mentioned questions versus telling. What role does, like, curiosity play, you think, for a leader?

Yeah, I love that. In fact, I think that's one of the. That's part of the secret sauce. So many leaders are maybe reluctant to go out into those processes where they're not maybe technically strong. But that idea of just going out, David would say, go to the process, talk to the people, embrace problems. And he thinks of it as, you know, be curious. And then also it's a way to calibrate expectations. It's an opportunity to teach again through Socratic, through a lot of questions, and to also get things done. So go be curious is just a great approach and think of that and let it dive deeper and let people tell you about their process. Let them tell you about their problems, their challenges, and let that evolve into improvement. That's actually developing the people. And sometimes they just need to hear it out loud with you, listening to say yes to give them the authority to go do what they know they should do.

Yeah. Because I gotta say, like, when people hear, oh, go ask questions and Socratic, you know, approach and method and all that, great. It could be done. I think it can be done. And this is better than not doing it at all. But it can be done in a way that it's just sort of a. A crutch.

Yeah.

Right. Like, I can just go out and go, like, I don't know, what do you think? You know, and that's kind of okay. That's better than just me blabbering what I think as a leader. But. But I think if you're genuinely curious, like, your questions are going to be not, what do you think? You know, it could be like, wow, that's really interesting. Like, when I. When I see that, you know, you know, like you're adding little thoughts and be like, but then what do you think? Like, that's different than just, what do you think.

Right, right.

Because what do you think can just be a crutch when you're sort of lazy and you don't know what else to say? Right. But if you allow yourself to be genuinely immersed in a situation.

Absolutely. Natural curiosity, cookie cutter or check the box. You want to come out there with authenticity.

Yeah.

And be genuinely curious about those processes.

Yeah.

Good insight.

Yeah. What about, like, we had a gentleman on. It was last week's episode, Mark Braun, and he was talking about the. The importance of being coachable as a coach, but also, you know, being humble, those sort of sorts of virtues or whatever. What do you think about that as it pertains to leadership?

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 he.

Was talking about the importance of being coachable as a coach, but also being humble, those sorts of virtues or whatever. What do you think about that as it pertains to, to leadership?

Yeah, I think it ties to what you just said too, about being authentic, but coming out there and just having that curiosity and humility to not feel like you have to give all the answers and give direction. I remember a technique I used when I was doing my own leader standard work as a director of operations for a transit bus factory. It was my standard work to go observe startup meetings. Every day, 6:30 in the morning, the hourly team leader was bringing the team together to go through their metrics. And I would just sit with and scribble things on my little sticky notes and think of things that I might want to speak them. But instead of, you know, instead of just asserting, hey, you should do this, I would try to be humble and I would, I would ask questions like, what do you think you did? Well, another question might be what could you have improved? What might look different the next time I come here? And those sound really generic. But when you get people talking about that and reflecting and debriefing on a session, it gives you just a great opportunity for them to see ways to have more engagement. So a lot of times I'll work with team leaders and all the way through organizations and they're like, yeah, we have these meetings, we have these, the metrics. But I just, when I ask questions of the team, I, I get crickets. And so we often talk through how do we ask more purposeful questions. Like you said, don't let it just be a crutch or check the box. But to say, you know, related to a situation I saw yesterday, maybe you even captured it in your leader standard work. What specific things can we dig into related to this safety or other potential?

What are your thoughts on assuming you know someone and just open up with things like, how are you? Like, how's it going like, like general questions like that, just to sort of open the door a little bit. What are your thoughts on that?

I think, I mean, many questions are useful and that's sometimes a way just to get a pattern going and get some openness started. I find it really interesting in organizations that have a very high level of, of maturity with lean management systems that when you walk up to people and say, how's it going? They don't tell you about, you know, the, you know, family visitors coming in for the weekend or the sports of their kids, but they actually quickly relate to the status of the process and what the issues are in connection. So I think those questions are great. One of the things I do as I work with plants on lean management systems startup meetings is to kind of have them set the tone that way. So if people are as they're walking up before the official meeting starts, they begin some level of engagement like you're speaking of often that allows it to become more conversational. People feel comfortable talking in front of even small groups. Mm.

What other. Are there any other sort of areas or key, key points or things that we need to be thinking about as, as it relates to everything that we're talking about for to be successful? I mean, we've talked a lot about asking questions and that sort of thing, but what else?

Yeah, I'm thinking of a couple scenarios where this, the power of question comes through. One is, and I connect to, and we often talk about respect for people as one of the key pillars and I think of respect for people as we, as many of us do is, oh, there's the politeness and there's the, you know, general respect and inclusion and access and a bunch of other things. But using questions around really, really challenging people and stretching them to me is one of my, the most exciting things about Lean. I remember working for a plant manager again here in Texas who came to me and said, Scott, if you could lift the roof off this place and come up with a one year block plan. And he knew me well enough that I would speak to the people and materials, you know, think about the flow, proximity to some of the major milestones. So he's challenging me to come back with a one year block plan. I project a factory layout on a big dry erase board, draw it up, sketch it, play with, you know, paper cutouts and everything to try to figure it out. And when I brought it back to him, his next question was, what would it take to, to do the. What you said you would do in one year? In one Month. The power of challenging and asking and making these requests. And I love that question. What would it take to blank? And it just helps people think differently. What would it take to cut this inventory in half? Oh, there's, there's all these obstacles. I do more reliable suppliers. I need this, I need this, I need this more accurate forecast. Those questions help drive thinking, stretch people's comfort. And in that process, as leaders, we're developing people's capabilities to repeat and think differently about change. Another one that I think of with the power of questions. This was an example where a plant manager up in Grand Rapids at Steelcase was consolidating two major plants like huge facilities and so big, big change to the people there. And he would say, I love that. He would have the philosophy like we think of inventory and lean as little bits. More frequently he thought of communication that way. So he wouldn't wait until he had a fully baked plan, a description of the vision. He'd say, here's what we know so far until disclose as much as they knew, not necessarily fully big. And he would ask the question, what do we need to do to get this right? I love that idea of as a leader sharing your intention and then asking for feedback, what should we do? And it's again, that goes back to what you were saying earlier about humility. It's a connection, it's a form of respect, I think to say I'm going to share everything I've got, but be humble enough to know I don't know every answer. I need your help along this way. And so those questions and respect were really powerful in doing that. And just a fun aside, they were getting really creative. They were sending the lean person out dressed up in a disguise that looked like the plant manager and interviewing people as feet on the street. They just made change and learning fun. And I think that's. That can be huge. There's a. There's a place for some play, particularly in culture change, to help people think differently, see the world differently, and then connect to these questions as a way to draw them in and get their commitment along the way of change.

I know you're for familiar with cave people, citizens against virtually everything. You know, we've all experienced, you know, the Kaizen event week or whatever that you're facilitated and you walk in, there's a individual in the back row with their arms crossed and scowl on their face and not happy to be there for whatever reason. Like what's your approach when you're experiencing someone who is clearly not on board with the whole improve thing, for whatever reason.

Yeah. So it's. Those are really tricky in the moment, particularly when you're. You've got a group coming together. And one of the things I try often and often recommend is what I call the meeting outside the meeting. And often those folks need to have vented or talk about what they're jaded about from the past and just work through that. The HR person in me, which I had that in my career as well, would say that in every communication there's both feelings and facts. And if all we ever connect to is kind of the facts or the technical task at hand, it's really hard to move forward. So sometimes we just need to hear some people out, acknowledge that. Yeah, I would be frustrated too, if I went to a previous kaizen and it fell apart or you felt like your ideas weren't being listened to. So usually if you talk through that, respect it, value that perspective, whether you're agreeing with it specifically or not will start to draw them in. And if you make a specific request, hey, can we try this again? I'd like your feedback. As we go through this process. Let's figure out how to do this better going forward than the struggle you might have had in the past. That usually gets them there.

Yeah.

And, you know, there's opportunities, I think, to. As you facilitate the group and ask for inputs, it's also useful to recognize the naysayer to say, hey, you know, Ron, can you tell us what would make this not work and value that opinion. We need that kind of devil's advocate in the room often to say, oh, if we're going to overcome that and do it differently, let's understand what went wrong there. And everybody put on their critical hat and then ask, now that they've been heard often we can get them to flip the script and get into the positivity and creativity.

Yeah. I mean, and everybody's situation is different, obviously. So I don't mean to be making broad statements that are true for everybody, but oftentimes it's been my experience with those folks who are sort of resistant initially, they have been sort of harmed or wronged in the past and maybe they haven't been listened to or whatever it might be. And, you know, if people are heard, you know, even if, even if you can't do what they say, at least you heard them.

Right.

Right. Like the problem with him, the old employee suggestion box where you dropped your idea into the wooden box and then nobody ever, you know, came back, like, no more ideas from you Right. So yeah, then that's really, you know.

And I think, you know, that's, that happens at the operator level. It happens in Kaizens if people, and people might be jaded from a past boss, they might have spoke up all the way back in school and they were, you know, they think there's one right answer and they, so they won't tend to speak up in groups. And so we have to create that comfort. We have to build on it. And I think a big part of that's knowing your audience, knowing the people as leaders and sometimes, you know, speaking up or commending them in public is thought of as a good thing. But to some, some individuals that's embarrassing and they won't say anything again. So knowing that person, helping them, you know, kind of work through that. Yes, it's very, very helpful.

Imagine that we were able to perfect this time machine and you were at the program controls of the time machine and you were able to dial in a date that was when you were 21 years old and you were going.

To get to go with you so far.

You were going to spend, you know, an hour with yourself. You weren't allowed to give stock market advice or anything like that. Okay, so take that out.

Rats.

Yeah, but any other piece of advice that you could give to your 21 year old self, knowing what you know now, what would it be?

Yeah, I think along the same line I would tell myself to be able to step out and get closer to processes and use this kind of idea of question questions to drive it. There's many times that I would feel overwhelmed and maybe spent too much time in my office instead of out on the floor. There was times where I might not have taken the risk and jumped into things at the level that I could have. And I think it's. Yeah, just have the confidence through listening to others involving yourself. And back to what you said earlier on being humble and just use that engagement to go ahead with ideas before they're even fully baked. I think that the comment of the plant manager that says here what we know so far, here's where we want to go. What can we figure out together? I think if I would have known that at 21, I might have had even more impact and more connection in the ability to influence organizations and successful change.

What are you most proud of so far of your, of your lean journey?

I would say the work that I did in Texas with steel case and taking a plant that had like a 20 day when the schedule went to the floor until a seating Unit a chair went into a box. We took that through hijunka and pull signals and some wonderful lean tools and really employed everything and took that 20 days down to about six hours.

Wow.

And that required factory layouts, required lots of improvement, cell design, variable tact, time design for standard work. And probably as important as that technical change was all the lean management system that went with it. So group leaders that were daily doing multiple time studies of their own standard work and making adjustments, it was so active, it had scribbles all over it. We had hour by hour tracking leaders visited the process all the way through leadership would sign off and ask the leader your question, how's it going? And we just had a really high level of problem solving, engagement, visibility and the energy and momentum that comes from that just makes it really, really rewarding for the people.

Yeah, well, I love watching you trade and I'll peek in there every so often when you guys are going at it. And just the genuine like excitement and the, and the true passion that you have, like, you know, that's. And I don't mean just like just to prop you up because I'm talking to you. But that's, that's really encouraging to see in, in the, you know, I've seen it in other folks as well, but just when you see that, boy, they really get it. They really, they are genuinely curious. Right. And they're genuinely invested. And yeah, that, that really can't be taught. You know, some people, I love the.

Storytelling aspect in with facilitation because these concepts, you can't just go, go through bullet points on a slide and have people get something out of it. As, as you emphasize here at Gemba Academy, it's we, we learn things by doing things and we do a lot of hands on.

Right.

Our workshops.

Right.

And stories make things come to life. Yeah. We can all become better organizational storytellers, I think.

For sure, for sure. Good stuff. Hey, do you have any sort of parting thoughts or parting pieces of wisdom or some practical advice that folks can, can walk away with? You know, we're releasing this here in the sort of beginnings of 2024 and all that kind of stuff. Like any, any good advice for folks out there?

Yeah, I would just say, you know, just get out there and start asking questions, be curious, engage people. If you share your intent of where you want to go and the vision drawing them in, understanding how they're thinking by asking open ended questions can bring you together and be very, very successful and have effective transformations that can be sustained. We just need to care enough to be there all the time and keep driving things forward.

Yeah, good stuff. Scott, if folks want to connect with you personally, what's the best way?

Probably through my email. I have a Gemba Academy email, scottembaacademy.com and also scottamcduffiemail.com and McDuffie's with two F's and two E's.

Like coffee or just remember Scott, @gembaacademy.com that works. That works easier. Yeah. And your LinkedIn as well.

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn as well. And then on the art side of things, which you brought up earlier, like on Instagram, I'm Scott McDuffie and so I have a lot of videos and process things and fun.

Do you have like a art website or anything like that?

I do, yeah. Scott McDuffie. Art.com is where my art lives.

Well, we're gonna, we're gonna link it all up here on the show notes. And so we need all the lean people to go crash that side and go see what, what a lean artist.

There's crossover and a lot of artists are lone geniuses and I kind of try to bridge the gap and get them thinking strategy and business. I'm pretty excited about bringing lean concepts to the art world.

That's pretty cool, man. Maybe that's the topic for our next podcast.

That could be a good one.

All right. Hey, thanks for coming in. I really do appreciate it, Scott.

Thank you.

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