GA 516 | The True Meaning of Clarity with Jim Vaselopulos

Knowing when the right time to do something is and then being patient enough to be aware of when those right times are and to wait for those right times. And if you kind of nail all those things, you end up having a lot more clarity about the situations you're in and the ability to kind of work less and achieve more.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Jim Vasilopoulos to the show. Now, Jim has written a book called Clarity Business Wisdom to Work Less and Achieve More. And we had really fun conversation. So we dove into the topic of clarity pretty deeply. It's a big word, you know, that gets thrown around a lot in the business world. And Jim does a really nice job sort of breaking it down on. On what it means to him and, you know, how things like distractions can play a, you know, a really critical role in our ability to not have clarity. So a lot of good discussion there. We also had a pretty cool chat about the difference between business symptoms and business problems. So I know. I enjoyed that because there's tons of parallels between that and what we're doing in continuous improvement. And finally, we did sort of talk about sort of parallels between what he was writing about in his book and just continuous improvement. For example, we talked about, you know, like, the Gemba walks and, like, how a Gemba walk, you know, plays into some of the things that he was writing about. So he does have a background in manufacturing and things like that. So he's all about lean and whatnot as well. So I think you're gonna really enjoy this show. I know it was a lot of fun to record. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com. just look for episode 5, 16. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Jim, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Thanks, Ron. Appreciate it. Things are going great today.

All right. Where are you calling from?

Louisville, Kentucky.

Oh, okay. Are you getting dumped on with snow?

No, a lot of rain.

Okay.

But, you know, I feel, you know, we're supposed to get some snow, but I think I actually have to drive up to Chicago tonight, so I think I'm going to go through some pretty nasty stuff tonight.

Yeah, I just got off the phone with a guy in Wisconsin, and he was. He's, you know, poor guys in Wisconsin, they get it. They get it hard. So I'm in Texas now, where, I believe it or not, we're going to be down into, like, the 10 degrees next week. Like, for us, that's like insanity, you know, but, yeah, that time of year all right, well, hey, Jim, I'm excited to have you on, and we talk a little bit about your book and, and get into all kinds of interesting things. But right out of the gate, we like to have our guests open up with a quote. So do you have one?

Yeah, I do. Buddy of mine, Frank Reardon, years ago, gave me a little piece of advice, and I'm sure it wasn't his quote, but I'll give it to credit to Frank. He said, only do that, which only you can do. And it really was a big game changer for me because, you know, I was one of these capable guys that did a lot of stuff. But then as I elevated in what I was doing within my companies and the role I was playing, it really changed the game for me because, you know, I, I, it just got me to lean into delegating more and building stronger teams below me and really letting go. And I thought that was a pivotal point in my development as a leader.

Got it. Well, let's hear a little bit about your background, Jim, like how you got involved in this kind of work and what you're up to these days.

Yeah, I mean, right now I do executive coaching and business advising and things like that, and I've been doing that for a number of years now. But I started my career in manufacturing. I was one of those geeky kids that wanted to know how everything was made and sat over the shoulder of any repairman that came to the house. I always wanted to know how things worked. And so I got an engineering degree and got a job up in Cold Milwaukee working for a company called Alan Bradley at the time. And, you know, it was, it was great, you know, formative years for me, for my education, for my development. And, you know, really enjoyed being a, early on, a designer of automation equipment, then got into manufacturing management and really kind of developed a career there. And, you know, fortunately, through some random set of events, got involved in the Internet because we were connecting up machines to the Internet before it was cool, you know, started some tech companies after that. And that's where my tech journey took off and spent a lot of time in tech and then sold some of those and then started helping other people, you know, run the playbook we ran. So that's a bit of my journey.

Okay, well, and you're also an author, right? So you've written a book called Clarity Business Wisdom to Work Less and Achieve More. So why do you decide to write a book just because everybody needs a book or what?

It's a fair question. I mean, I always kind of thought I wanted to write a book someday. That was always in the back of my head. But in recent years, in doing the kind of work I do, and then also doing a lot of work on podcasts, I've got a leadership podcast. People are like, jim, you need to write a book. You need to write a book. And I'm like, there are a lot of leadership books out there. There are a lot of things out there. I wanted to kind of find something that was unique to me. And my clients were all saying, like, listen, you help us see the world clearly. And I thought, you know, I should probably think very carefully about what I do and see if I can't capture some of that value in a book. There's no need for it to kind of rest with me. You know, it's something that has been useful to me, useful to my clients, and let's make sure that it has a life of its own.

Yeah. And so throughout the book, you've used fictional stories. So what was the reasoning for that?

Well, you know, stories are what we remember, right. You know, I can't tell you the number of people, you know, I've spoken with through the years. And you don't remember really, like, the acronyms they used or, you know, the methodology that they put forth. It's always like, oh, my God, that story about the Bacon wars or that story about this or that. You know, you remember that stuff. And so I just wanted to make sure that as I was putting a book together, I didn't put together a textbook. Like, I've had enough textbooks. I don't know about you, but, like, the last thing I want to do is go read another scientific journal or textbook or something like that.

Yeah.

And so I wanted to put these lessons together in the form of stories. And when I was in business school, I thought case studies were fun. They were always kind of really focused on, like, one thing. You know, it was really obvious. It's like, oh, we're dealing with, you know, scaling issues, or we're dealing with, you know, growth issues, or we're dealing with, you know, some other type of crisis. And I thought, I want to put together these rich stories of these fictional characters to really show people what really happens in business, like how it really works, and to make it a bit entertaining. And so, um, you know, the early feedback from people who've read the book is they always come back and say, man, I love it when Diana did this or when Sam said that to Simon, that was so cool. Yeah, I was like, that's how I know it worked. That's how I know it. You know, the stories were the right way to communicate.

Yeah, well, I still remember. I don't have. You've read the Goal.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You know, it's like Alex Rogo, man. Like, this is burned in my brain, right? Old Alex, you know, so that's the OG right, Of the business novel.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. And so, you know.

Well, I'm going to circle back though, to. To clarity. I'm curious to get your perspective. Like, that's a big word, clarity. And thrown around a lot in the business world. Like, what's it mean to you? Clarity?

You know, I think it dovetails a little bit with kind of that quote I started off with, which is, you know, only do that, which only you can do is really only focus on that which matters most, you know, and so with clarity, what you're trying to do is kind of strip away the things that distract us, that get in our way of seeing the world around us clearly. And, you know, it starts. It's kind of like an onion you're peeling away layers of the onion. And that's kind of the way the book is written. In the first section, we talk about symptoms that often distract us from real problems. The next section, we go a little deeper and talk about problems and what makes them unique and how we kind of need to look at them. And then we go a little deeper and talk about how our human frailties, our human proclivities get in the way of seeing the things around us clearly and try and get into a lot of those things, like our emotions, our imagination, the way we favor making assumptions and things like that. And so really talk about that. And then there's another section that takes the layer of the onion a little deeper that talks about how time is really one of these really important things. And time is. Don't think about it in terms of time management. I like to think about it in terms of sequencing, timing, and patience. It's like doing things in the right order, knowing when the right time to do something is and then being patient enough to be aware of when those right times are and to wait for those right times. And if you kind of nail all those things, you end up having a lot more clarity about the situations you're in and the ability to kind of work less and achieve more. And that's really the secret sauce I figured out. And it's like, it seems unrealistic, but literally I was doing a 60 hour a week job for Years on end, Decades, really. And once I really leaned into this, I got it down to where I was doing my job in four to six hours a week, and people were like, how are you doing that?

And that afforded me all this extra.

Time to kind of learn new things and, you know, do all kinds of extra stuff I never imagined I could. But it's really only by being very intentional about what you pay attention to and trying to strip away the things.

That just distract us and tend to.

Not really even matter.

Yeah, maybe I do want to circle back to distractions in a little bit, but you. You mentioned in sort of your review there, the whole topic of symptoms, business symptoms in business problems. I'm wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about what's. What are the differences between business symptoms and business problems?

Yeah, it's a fair question, because most of the time, the things that I would characterize as symptoms, people look at business problems, you know, and I'd say, you know, let's just take something that probably exists in every business. Like, there's a level of conflict. Conflict is a symptom, like a medical symptom. It's like the pain in your left arm before a heart attack. Something bad's gonna happen. You've got conflict. Something's brewing, but it's not the pain in the left arm that's the problem. The conflict isn't the problem. There's a root cause that's beneath that. And what I find so interesting is that the manufacturing world is so good about driving down to root causes, yet when it comes to the business world, we're so poor at that, and so we don't even apply the same methodology and thinking to get down to the root cause. Conflict is a symptom, much like alignment or accountability are symptoms of deeper problems. And what you need to do is drill down a little bit deeper and find out what's really going on. And the common theme between anything that would be characterized, the way I define it, as a symptom versus a true problem is symptoms are outcomes. Okay? They're an outcome. Conflict is an outcome of other things. Being too busy is an outcome of other things. Culture is an outcome. You know, if you have a poor culture or a weak culture, it's an outcome of decisions you're making on a daily basis. It's not necessarily. The culture doesn't exist as a thing. And so I think the big difference when we're looking at symptoms versus problems is symptoms are outcomes. Problems actually are where the use need to start digging A little deeper.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's good. Yeah, you're right. I mean, just human behavioral things, like getting to root cause analysis on that is. It's not done very often. And, well, humans are fickle, Right. Since we're all involved in it. And that means that we may have to peel some of our own onion back on ourselves as well and our own bias and. And whatnot. So, hey, I'm wondering if we could circle back. I'd be interested. You know, we're recording here in early part of 2024, and, you know, everybody's got New Year's resolutions and all this kind of stuff, and I want to circle to back to distractions because you. You mentioned that earlier. Like, I mean, most obvious distraction is like your smartphone for me or whatever, right? Like. Like what kind of other description. What do you mean by business distractions? I mean, is it things like that or. Or there are more specific things that you're. You're talking about?

Well, I mean, so, you know, there are so many of these things, like, the symptoms are distractions because they're really just, you know, it's like treating a fever. Like, you know, you can spend time treating a fever with aspirin and stuff like that, or acetaminophen and. But the reality is the fever isn't the problem. There's an infection. There's a fever's helping you, actually.

Yeah, yeah.

The fever's just symptomatic of something deeper. And so that's the first layer. But I think most of the distractions that really jam us up are, you know, kind of our head trash. And, you know, some of those things that really kind of get in the way. We did a project years ago where we were doing a bunch of reporting for a client in one of my IT firms. And, you know, this is a story that's bandied about. And people, you know, urban legends say people have done this, but I. I've actually seen it done a number of times where people are asking for more reports and more reports and more reports. And you can spend an endless amount of money on reports. And, you know, the best way to find out what really is moving the needle within your organization is just to stop doing all the reports and seeing who complains. And you'll find out that very few people complain. There's always the one report that everyone looks at that's like, oh, my God, you got to turn that thing back on. And so now, if you think about it, you might have, let's say, 40 reports at your Disposal. And you only really look at one. I'm not saying that's right, but the reality is it's kind of like that's the one that matters. Everything else might actually be a distraction. And it's kind of like if you're in college and you get into some semester and, you know, if you're a freshman and the professor puts out a syllabus and says, oh my God, you need to do all these things. And then, you know, you get into your second class on your first day of college and you're like, oh my God, I'll never have time in my life to do all this stuff. But, you know, the jaded senior who's in the back of the room or the experienced junior is just like, yeah, you don't need to buy that book. Don't worry about that. And as long as you ace the quizzes, you're probably going to get a decent grade. So, you know, in the grand scheme of things, you know, experience will tell you what matters and what doesn't. But we don't always see that. And we don't even take the time to really think about it. You know, there are all kinds of emotional things that we do, shortcuts we take. One of the biggest ones is, you know, we get distracted because we take assumptions as fact a lot of times. And so I had a position in probably at least three different companies where I was kind of the corporate fixer. And people would say like, hey, Jim, we got a problem client, or we got a problem with this part that we're manufacturing. Can you help sort this thing out?

And I developed a reputation at three different companies of being really good at this. And I was like, why am I good at this? Because I had imposter syndrome.

I was like, I have no idea why.

I can go figure this stuff out pretty quickly and get people to be.

Like, oh, okay, that's cool.

And after a number of years, I figured out it was just because I was really good at spotting assumptions. And assumptions are. Once you're aware of it, this is one of the little tips and tricks out of the book, is they're really easy to spot. Anytime someone says something like, it must usually generally, in most cases, most of the time, anytime someone says any phrase like that, it's a rock solid guarantee that anything that is said immediately after that is an assumption. And assumptions are where you need to dig because assumptions are usually where we make the problems. You know, if I go back to my engineering education, it's like, you know, list out Your assumptions. You know, we have these techniques to solve problems. We just don't apply them in the business world, you know, for human type problems. And so that's really, I think, where, you know, I've tried to help people see, hey, if you can strip away, you know, your problems and get to the things that matter, that's really gonna help you get clarity on a situation and only worry about the things that matter. Because so much of what we are inundated with, whether it's through our smartphones, from our email, from, you know, all the way too many meetings that we have, most of it is just chatter that doesn't matter and it doesn't move the needle.

Man. You mentioned a smartphone. I've. I've done this over, over the years that I try to do it more often now, turning my phone to grayscale, which makes it black and white, basically, and. Because your brain doesn't light up, right? Because these damn phones are, are designed to light your brain up every time you look at it. So, yeah, I have a little shortcut. All I gotta do is hit the side three times and it goes gray. So, like, that's one way, practical way that I use to try to, like, stay focused, right, and get off, off of my smartphone. Because, my gosh, for me, that's probably my Achilles heel. Even at home, you know, I should be playing with my kids or whatever when I'm dad, go play ball. Hold on, I'm scrolling on my stupid phone. You know, dad of the year, you know, so, yeah, distractions are, are a killer, man. So, hey, I want to dive back into your book a little bit. I know it's not like you're like a traditional, like, lean book or anything like that, but I see a lot of parallels between our two worlds. Something like a gimbal walk. Like, where do you see, like a gimbal walk and what you're writing about sort of playing well together?

You know, I think people buy into the idea of a Gemba walk. Let's walk around the plant, let's talk to people, let's, you know, figure things out. And I've seen them done well and I've seen them done poorly. You know, when you're just going through the motions, I mean, that's like, whatever. I mean, it's. It's not really having an effect when you see a Gembawk really having substance is when people are asking good questions. And I think one of the missing components of, you know, kind of what makes someone wise is not what they say it's the questions they ask. And so a really functional gamble walk is. Got very good questions embedded in it. Instead of just like, you know, hey, let's go out and do the report and go through the motions and say, you know, here's where we were on safety, here's where we were on quality, blah blah, blah, you know, that's nothing good is happening there.

At the same time, it's such a.

Good concept that, you know, people neglect it on the human side, let's say in the office part of the business. It's like we used to have this term and I think it was like back in the 80s or 90s was like management by walking around. And that's essentially was to some degree a gamble walk within the office. And people just don't do that anymore. They'll slack someone. It's like, get out of your freaking chair and talk to someone and see them face to face. Now it's harder today because we are working more remote and so we have to be more intentional. But that's where, when we are more intentional, that's where structure something like a gimbal walk where it's like, hey, I just want to kind of walk around the room, do a standup meeting at the beginning of a day with all the people in accounting or finance or manufacturing management. Just say what's going on? Ask some good questions and make sure that we're very intentional about like polling people for what's going right, what's going wrong, where do you need help? And you know, these are such great concepts in manufacturing. They work really well and we don't apply them to the other half of the business. It's like, why not? I mean they were. They're really good ideas.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, so I know you've got a tech background, so last week I had a gentleman on the show and he was more in the software tech space as well. And we had a really interesting AI conversation which, you know, comes up in pretty much every tech conversation these days. And I've been really pondering it. It's like one of my statements that I made to him was my fear with AI and you know, Bard and ChatGPT or whatever it is, these types of platforms out there. Is that that I wonder if we're going to lose the ability as human beings to. To think, you know, like what is your thoughts, you know, as it relates to technology? Obviously you're not anti technology or anything like that, but what are your thoughts on that?

It's a really good question. Time Will tell, of course, but I always kind of look at this back at. Because I do have some fears. But I remember sitting in some of my engineering classes and I was never the best student. Honestly, I thought I was smart until I got to the University of Illinois. And then I realized I'm pretty dumb. And then every semester I got dumber. And like, I landed that plane on fire with no landing gear, you know, But I got out, you know, okay. But there was always like some professor who'd say something in class and it's like, well, you know, if we increase the pressure and the velocity, you all know what would happen. And like, there'd be a few smart kids in the front of class and be like, oh, I know what would happen. And I'd be like, I have no idea what would happen. Like, I actually have to put the numbers into the equation and calculate it then. And then I'll know. Because I had a limited understanding of how things actually worked. Yeah. Now, did that keep me from being effective in my career? No. But I certainly didn't understand things at that deeper level that those guys did. And I always kind of, you know, for as much as I probably made fun of them when I was drinking my beers at the bar, I kind of envied their understanding of things that just were too tough for me to comprehend. I think that's going to happen more and more. And I don't think AI is going to necessarily replace people, but I think people who use AI are going to be able to replace people who don't leverage AI. And so I think it's an enormous competitive advantage. I do have that same fear as yours that says we're going to have just more people that don't understand the equation or we get into a point where there's more single points of failure where, because we're all relying on this one person's understanding, if for some reason the person who set up this kind of understanding had a flaw in their logic, it gets propagated that much faster. Which is why, like, if you talk to any carpenter, like, you know, you don't measure from the last measurement, you know, you measure from a point of truth. Otherwise you're propagating an error a bunch of times and you get what your tolerance stack up so you can get into problems. And I fear, like, we're going to run into a bunch of those types of problems because we're going to be lazy and we're not going to do things right. The only reason carpenters are so effective at doing that and machinists are so effective is because they learn through the years. Don't do that. Well, we're at the very infinitesimal level of AI. We're going to make all these mistakes, and it's probably going to take 50 years for us to learn. Hey, don't do that anymore. So get ready for some fun and some craziness, and hopefully it doesn't become, you know, destructive craziness.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Hey, so I know you've got a saying, Jim, that you like to leave folks one inch taller. What's that all about?

Yeah, I think it's just a nice way to think about yourself, the effect you have on other people with every interaction. And I know people listening might not all be leaders, but everyone really, to some degree is a leader in the world of the people you influence, the people around you. And I think the goal should always be with every interaction you have to say, ron, after we talk today, I'd like for you to walk away feeling one inch taller, you know, a little straighter, you know, the way you're sitting up or standing, a little more confident, your stride a little more positive about the day and the challenges in front of you. And if you enter every conversation with the mindset that says, I'd like to leave that other person feeling one inch taller, a lot of good things are going to happen in your life. A lot of good things are going to happen around you. If you go into these conversations feeling like, I want to make myself feel better by making you feel smaller. The world's not a fun place. There's a lot of crisis, a lot of conflict, and I just think that's a great credo to kind of live by.

Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. I agree. All right, well, hey, man, this has been a fun conversation, Jim. If folks, I guess the book's available anywhere books are sold, I assume. Is that the. Was there a. Yeah, I mean, place to go get it?

Yeah, Amazon's probably the best place, you know, but you can find it online at, you know, Walmart and Barnes and Noble and stuff like that. But okay, you know, the best place to find anything about the book or me or whatever, anything I said interest you is probably businesswisdom.com, that website, wisdom. So businesswisdom.com is a good website for me and for all the stuff that I do and, you know, maybe I struck a chord with someone listening, you know, and that'd be great.

Yeah, well, yeah, I. I look forward. I haven't read the book yet personally, and I plan on ordering it and getting it because it sounds really interesting. So. So yeah. Hey man, thanks for coming on. This has been a lot of fun and maybe we'll do it again down the road sometime.

I appreciate that Ron. Thank you very much and keep up the great work.

All right. Thanks Jim. Take care.

Thanks man.

Thanks for listening.

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