GA 520 | Applying Scientific Thinking in Untraditional Contexts with Michael Lombard

Hey, you know, it's going to be okay. Let's get our act together here. Once I kind of calmed down, I realized, why am I straying from, you know, lean management system? You know, these are applicable tools. You can't solve every problem with it, but you can. You can start to make progress.

Today, I'm excited to welcome my good friend Mike Lombard back to the show. Now, Mike's been on a few times, and, man, we always have a lot of fun when we reconnect. In fact, we did the interview, which was, I don't know, 30, 35 minutes, and then we stopped the recording. We ended up talking for another hour. So such a great, great guy and a great friend. And so, anyhow, Mike's got a really deep, lean background, and he's also deeply embedded in the Toyota Kata community and has been practicing scientific thinking, really, for as long as it pretty much existed. I mean, he's one of the OGs, as we would say. And so we had a lot of fun talking about how he's applying scientific thinking and this framework of Toyota to some unusual situations. I say unusual. Most people aren't applying Toyota Kata to this is what I mean. But so Mike actually homeschools his kids, and actually, so do we. So my wife and I, we also homeschool our kids. And so we. We talked about how Mike was using this framework of scientific thinking and many lean principles like visual management, that sort of thing, to learn how to homeschool and learn how to teach their kids. And Mike also coaches youth soccer. And come to find out, so do I. I have for many, many years. And so he also talked about how he used many of the things that we're doing in the Impregna Kata, Cochin Kata, to teach kids how to play soccer. And really good conversation on things like deliberate practice and the importance of that and the difference between, say, deliberate practice and just random practice. So what's so fun about this episode is that these things that we. That we teach and we do on an everyday basis as continuous improvement people, you know, in. And they apply to all areas of our lives. So whether it's, you know, teaching your kids or coaching a sports team or any other activity that you're involved in this framework of scientific thinking can, and I argue, should be involved. So really good stuff. Now, Mike is also leading up a, what we call a Toyota Kata school in Florida, and so he talked about that as well. So be sure to scroll down on the show notes today and go connect with Mike. He's. He'll have His. We'll have the. His. His Cotta school link there in the show notes and also his LinkedIn link. So please go connect with Mike and. And tell him that you listen to the show now. Last thing I'll say is, and we talk about this a little bit in the episode, but this is episode 5 20. Well, and we've done 52 episodes every year, and we've never missed. And so that means that this is the sort of like the 10th year of doing this podcast. And I couldn't think of a better guy to do it with because, again, Mike's been a friend since the very beginning of Gemba Academy. Really. And we did some early stuff together when Gemba Academy was just a tiny, tiny little infant. And so how appropriate was to have Mike on during episode 5:20. But anyhow, thank you to everybody that listens to this show. We really do appreciate you. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Michael, welcome back to the show, man. How's it going?

Hey, Ron, I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to be here with you, buddy.

Yeah, man. So what is this number three, number four? Something like that that you've been on. I didn't even look before, but I.

Believe I'm in the three three timer club now, I think. First time in a while, though, so it's great to be back.

Yeah, man. It's always fun. Always fun. All right, well, you know the drill, Mike. We'd like to get started with a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, I think there was a lot, lot that I wanted to go with, but I'm gonna keep it simple. The quote is the map is not the territory. And this was a quote that was first presented to me by an instructor named Richard Carr. But doing a little research, it seems to be attributed to somebody named Alfred Korzybski.

Okay, what's it mean to you, though, that quote?

Yeah, so I think as a practitioner of teaching, you know, lean and performance improvement methodologies, I was always kind of thinking about what was the right way to do things on paper. And when I heard this quote, it made me really realize that the. What's on paper, what sounds right out of a book, you know, is great, but what actually is going on inside people's heads, what's going on at the Gemba, you know, that's the real territory. And so for me, it kind of. It turned my practice of lean from being like a kind of a 2D thing into a 3D thing. I really started to think about from A human centered perspective. What's going on inside of people's heads. How can they, you know, traverse whatever territory they're trying to cross? Whatever challenge they're trying to solve is going to look and feel a little bit different to them. It's not going to be cookie cutter. It's not going to be according to the map. It's more like navigating with a compass with frequent pivots as opposed to blindly following, you know, a GPS or something like that.

All right, man. Well, good stuff. So. Well, dude, it's been a while since we, we've connected, so I sort of know your story, but for those listening, tell us a little bit about your background, Mike, and how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and what you're up to these days.

Yeah, I'd love to, love to share. So thank you for the opportunity. I started, you know, not a non traditional path of never a, you know, an engineer or any kind of trained PI professional. I was actually grew up in the home building business and then had a great leader, Mike Draper was his name. He sent, he wanted me to learn about, you know, improvement methodology. So he sent me off to get some training and supported that and I used that. I really kind of fell in love with, with lean and continuous improvement and ended up being able to pivot into healthcare right around 2010, work for some great health systems out in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And that's where I was. Got to be friends with folks like yourself and Mark Graban and other people who've been tremendous influences and mentors for me. And then actually, you know, you know, I never had planned to work in healthcare, but I just absolutely loved it. And within a couple of years I found myself in a role where I was the CEO of a small hospital in middle of nowhere Louisiana. It was called Sulphur, Louisiana. And it kind of, you know, was struggling a little bit. It was a kind of a turnaround opportunity and it was my first opportunity to really take all of that, you know, lean training that I had received in practice to really apply it to a turnaround and operational role. And we had a lot of success with that. And then that led me to working out in, on the west coast for a large prestigious health system named Kaiser Permanente. I think that's really where I started to see more of the kind of the human side. Saw it less as an act of trying to re engineer processes and more of an act of really investing in people's mindsets. And the fact that I had been Exposed to Mike Rother's teachings with Toyota Kata was a huge benefit when I kind of started applying that and a more kind of human centered approach to doing performance improvement. And then recently been working for a great primary care organization by the name of Chinmed. And very soon, I'm excited to say I'm going to be actually becoming an entrepreneur. I'm going to be working on expanding my family business and also opening up some consulting services. And probably what I'm most excited about is the new Kata School of Florida that I just created. Yeah, it's part of our Kata worldwide school network to really be able to spread scientific thinking far and wide.

Yeah, man, that's so cool. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's been fun just watching your, your career sort of, you know, take off. And I remember how proud I was when I saw my gosh, you CEO. You know, the thing I think was so great about that opportunity that you had there to be CEO, it's one thing to throw down as a lead thinker, practitioner, we're out here making things better, blah, blah, blah. And then you got this thing. What there's a profit and loss statement, what there's a balance sheet, like what's going on here, you know, like, and like running a company, man, that's a different level of lean thinking.

Right.

And like, what was that like for you when you went from, you know, practitioner to the leader?

Well, you know, you know, it was extremely tough. I'm going to be honest. At the beginning, you know, I was almost, in the beginning, I almost said, oh my goodness, you know, a lot of the stuff that I've been teaching people now seems frivolous. It's like the issues that I'm dealing with are, you know, so and so is bickering with the other person or you know, should I have my parking lot spot be better than anybody else? Like stuff that seems like, so mundane and like this isn't what I was taught in my lean training or whatever. And at first I was kind of like, oh my goodness. You know, but then I, I was starting to freak out. We were like. I said it was a turnaround job as a hospital that was really struggling and we thought it was going to be shut down and I was basically just there to get some experience and. But then I kind of had to have a moment where I hit, hit rock bottom, you know, and had to take a big deep breath and I had some really kind people that, that kind of, you know, patted me on the back and said, hey, you know, it's going to be okay. Let's, let's get our act together here. And once it kind of calmed down, I realized, why am I straying from, from, you know, Lean management system? You know, these are applicable tools. You can't solve every problem with it, but you can, you can start to make progress. And so we set, you know, we set up a big visual board in our conference room that became the, like the, you know, the master brain of the, of the whole hospital. And we could manage our daily huddles and all of our visual management through that. And we started applying just rigorously all of the tools that we had been taught. And then I became a, you know, even more true believer of improvement science than I had been before. I had gone through the, those travails and that kind of hit rock bottom. I came out of it with a refreshed appreciation for improvement science, but also a more, I guess, human centered version of it.

Yeah, for sure. Oh, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. All right, well, hey, man, I'm excited to sort of dig into a topic that pretty sure, you know, we have not touched on in this, on this podcast in 519 previous episodes, which, by the way, this is 5:20, and we've done 52 episodes every year. So this is the, in theory, 10th year episode, right. By calendar year, it's a little bit weird with leap years and all that kind of stuff, but. But yeah, man, There's. We've done 52 every year and we never missed. And this is.

I've always been impressed by your consistency, your presence. You know, you always, you come up with a plan and you are quick to, to pivot, but also very steadfast. And that's something I admire. And I look.

Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, man, it's been a blast. I mean, this is, I mean, there's a lot of things I love about Gamba Academy, but man, this podcast is right up at the top. Guess it's just so fun, you know, just get to talk to different people and I'm learning on every episode and it's, it's such a blast. So anyhow, so all that to say is pretty sure we've not talked about applying sort of scientific thinking framework to something that you and I and our families share in common, and that is homeschooling children. And then also, I understand that you are a youth soccer coach, which I am as well. And well, and I never played soccer. I can't remember, I don't know where you were on the whole soccer thing. And. But I. I did not grow up as a soccer player. But yeah, I got a daughter plays college soccer now, so she went all the way through from low rec teams to club teams to college now. So. So where are you at, Michael, with this whole homeschooling thing? And let's start with that. Homeschooling?

Yeah. Yeah. And by. And by the way, we'll. We'll focus on homeschooling in the beginning, but soccer coach is a very generous term for me. I am like a wannabe soccer coach. I've had a lot of help, but. Yeah, we'll get to that later.

Okay.

Yeah, homeschooling. I mean, another thing, just like working in healthcare, I'd never planned on it. My. My wife and I, we. We were married for, like, 10 years before we decided to have kids. So we were just getting used to the idea we're parents now, and then all of a sudden they're going into kindergarten, our daughter is, and we're like. We had this kind of, like, idea that we may want to do homeschooling. And this was actually like a year before the COVID pandemic happened, and a lot of people started homeschooling out of necessity, so we were already in there. Yeah. And, you know, I think it was just the idea that my wife and I, we both love to. To teach and be involved in. In the curriculum with our kids, and we wanted to just have an opportunity to really give them the best possible learning experience and in the comfort of home. And, you know, and there's some great programs out there that we were able to tap into that. It was so. It kind of, for us happened almost, you know, without us even planning it. We just kind of fell into it and ended up loving. I'm not sure what your. How. What your route to get to homeschooling was, but for us, it was just something we thought would be neat. We thought we'd give it a try. We thought we'd tried as an experiment and ended up loving it.

Yeah. Yeah, we're very, very similar. I mean, I have. I've got seven kids, and, you know, two of them are in college now. And I got a junior in high school. I got a what if she. I should know. Sophomore. And then I got three younger ones. And so, yeah, I guess similar thing. Like, my wife had thought about trying it. And so when we had our first daughter, we just. And she was ready to kind of go to school, so to speak. We. We just. She just started and her. Her mom has a, my wife's mom has a, she's a teacher, you know, like an education background and all that. So she was able to help a little bit. You know, just sort of coaching and mentoring my wife and, and, and yeah, we, same thing. You know, so many, there's so many different forms of curriculum out there and all that that you can latch on to. So you don't have to necessarily invent unless you want to. There's some people who go that route.

But yeah, that's probably one of the like big mis. Misconceptions. A lot of the questions that we get is like, how do you, how do you do it on. And it's like, no, we were part of, you know, stride K through 12. They provide curriculum and teachers and book and laptops and all these amazing resources. Not, it's not like back decades ago where you were truly just right, isolated, doing homeschool.

Right, right, right now for sure. Now that to say we take it year by year. Like my, my oldest, him and his mom were about to kill each other. So he's in the public high school now, you know, and it's, and he's doing great, you know. So like, you know, we're not like anti go to, you know, traditional school or anything like that. And my oldest daughter actually did both. She went, she homeschooled and she went to public school and then she finished her last year, I think homeschool or what, you know, so, so it's just. And two of them are in college now and they're doing great. And, and so yeah, it's been, it's been a good journey for us personally.

And same here. We're not, you know, absolutist or you know, homeschool fundamentalists or anything like that.

Right, right, right, right.

You know, we've debated, you know, maybe when we get to middle school, maybe my daughter, because she's, she's extremely social, kind of a butterfly, you know, she might. And now we, we make sure we, we have great after school programming, get the kids involved in lots of activities, but my daughter kind of would be the one that might want to go at a later stage. And so yeah, we're again, we're just like, we treated it as an experiment when we got started. We look at every year as kind of another test of that hypothesis.

Yeah, my, my, my younger ones that are that homeschool right now, they go to a co op. So it's one day a week they go to a place and there's teachers, most of them Are, are moms, but the mom who has got the chemistry degree. Right. So she teaches chemistry and. And so forth. And so they go to that. And so it's kind of a university model. And so then they'll get a lot of their work and then they submit it online and they have a teacher they can reach out to if my wife obviously is there to, to support him. But that works well for us, especially when they get into high school and stuff. And you know, man, you know, not everybody can throw down with calculus if your kid's into that. Right. So you, you know, that's tough. Yeah. Yeah.

I like that co op concept though. I've actually been thinking about it wanting to, as a way of giving back to the community, wanted to do something like that myself through. Through Cottage School Florida.

Yeah, man.

I mentioned earlier because I think, you know, not only doing what some of the other co ops provide and other kind of support groups provide, which they do wonderful things, but adding that extra element of the kind of the Toyota Kata methodology in a way that has been proven that can be taught to students of any age.

Yep.

I think would be really cool. I think that little extra, the little extra teaching around, you know, what they call that meta skill of, of the improvement COD and the coaching, I think that could be a great enhancement to help. Help kiddos really strive to be their very best.

Well, there's this little thing called cotton, a classroom you may have heard of, Mr. Lombard. And I actually did it with a big group of homeschool kids. It was about a year or two ago and it was blast. You know, they're all in there, we had the puzzles and they were getting after it, man. So I got a.

Put in a plug like for Ron, you know, you not only have done that, but I also saw you do a masterful job of doing that Kata training for a group of executives at Kaiser Permanente out in California. That was, it was probably 300 people in the room or something like that.

And that was intense, man. Yeah. And it was like, oh, yeah, there's a chief of staff or oh my God, that's great.

There's like high ranking people that had their eyes opened. Yeah, they, I was an employee at the time of that organization. I'm telling you, they, they were impressed. And then to see that same exact exercise also have an impact on elementary school students. Homeschool. I mean, it is truly universally, you know, applicable and it's powerful, man.

I forgot about that Kaiser training. That was wild though. I remember when we did the picture and like, we had everybody hold up the puzzle or whatever. I'm like, hey, I get. We gotta ask Mike, man. What's the biggest group that's ever done it, man, that has to be up near the top. That is.

That might be. I did one. I was. I was kind of like, competitive. I'm like, how did Ron get to do that big old thing? And I didn't get to do one. So a couple months later, at a different part of Kaiser Permanente, I did one that probably had about maybe two thirds the size of that one. And I was like, dang, it didn't quite get there. You know, the competitive were helping me, though.

I remember, because I was like, dude, I can't do 300 people people by myself, so you're gonna have to be running around the room. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not always competitive. Sometimes we're also very supportive of each other. We are competitive. I think goes back to the. Was it 2006 national championship games?

Stop it.

The Gators and the Buckeyes. I mean, you've been giving me non stop jive about Urban Meyer. You know, I regret ever publishing that blog post, trying to extol his virtues now that we've discovered he's not as great as we once thought.

Right.

Oh, my word.

Yeah. Well, hey, so. But getting back to the homeschool thing, because I know you've been using scientific thinking, that framework during this process. So talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, I'm a believer that, you know, striving in a good, rigorous, scientific way and developing good, strong reflexes for decision making, you know, and overcoming our fight or flight or, you know, those kind of inherited traits. I think that that's applicable to, you know, whether it's a patient striving to improve their health or a business leader trying to improve performance, or indeed a family, you know, trying to work through the inherent issues of elementary school education, especially homeschooling. And so, you know, it's not like, okay, don't get me wrong, I have sat down with my kids and said, here's what kata is, and shown them all of the cool images and graphics. And we've done some of that stuff, but we've also more informally applied it in various ways. So one is, you know, the good old fashioned daily huddle. You know, it's tried and true thing that we do in factories and in, you know, hospital units everywhere. But it was amazing how just throwing up a sheet of paper on the wall and putting down my son's name and my daughter's name and then saying, okay, here, what's the target, you know, for today? What are you doing? What are you going to try to accomplish today? You know, and what are the obstacles that you think are going to get in the way of that target today and let them, you know, they're the ones, you know, writing it down. You know, a little bit of it's programmed. You know, they have certain homeworks that they have to do and that sort of thing. But, but they also get to choose and kind of customize what their target is for the day. And then most importantly, like, what are the obstacles that are going to prevent you? What, you know, what's going to distract you today, guys? What's going to maybe cause you to get wore out and not want to keep, keep, keep to it or whatever. You know, we talk through that and they come up with a plan for it and we, and we come back and we review it, you know, how did it go? Good day, bad day, that sort of thing. And we track it over time. And, you know, it's like we kind of gamify it a little bit. We say, how many smiley faces did you get this week? You know, smiley face represents you. You accomplish what you sought out to accomplish or you, you learned something significant that day, you know, even if you didn't meet your goals. And so we tracked that and you know, it's called the, the Lombard family awesome tracker. You know, to try to add some human centered design. You know, we added emojis and, you know, each of us has our own little icon that, that, you know, avatar that represents our mindset. You know, my daughter with the big sunshine or whatever, my son with a fighter jet or whatever. He loves Top Gun, you know, so like, so we, we do that. So, you know, human centered kata practice, you know, at home using visual management. That's one way we've done it.

Do you, so have you been able to work in just the whole idea of, you know, sort of make a plan and make a prediction and then see how it plays out and what you learn?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I'll ask them. I'm like, okay, so how many, how much homework do you think that you'll be able to do? How many modules, you know, actually make a numerical prediction, write it down and come back and compare and see what we learned, whether we achieved it or not. And oh yeah, we absolutely do. So we're very deliberate in trying to start to sprinkle in.

Yeah.

That scientific thinking as we go in this kind of informal way.

Well, just the visual management aspect of it is huge. Right. In just. I find that not, you know, every kid's different, but boys. And it's been my experience with, with my kids, I can. I got two boys and five girls. Okay. But my two boys, you know, they're very visual and, and very. It's important for, for at least my, my two boys to have like, structure, you know, like, it can't be too sort of freestyle, whereas my daughters are just fine with that. But the boys need structure. So my whole visual management, I think that's super, super helpful and important. And, you know, when they get out into the real world one day and they gotta. They'll have those, they'll have those abilities built into them, burned into them almost.

Right.

And, and what a gift.

Yeah. And you're right, like, personality differences, you know, My son, he's definitely more of the, you know, if I had to guess, probably be some sort of engineer or something one day. You know, he's got that structure and he loves that. And if you don't follow the structure, he'll call you out on it. And then my daughter, she's very much like this kind of artistic type, and she's just really more about the colors and how does the. How do these emojis look? And kind of making it fun, making it a great experience. And it's interesting though. I try to try to find that balance where we can mix them both and make it very, very a good experience. So they want to keep coming back and doing it over and over again. It's not a drag. I don't have to beg them to come and do the, the family huddle in the morning.

Yeah, yeah. All right, let's pivot a little bit. What about soccer? So what's going on with that man?

Real quick, though. Actually, before we pivot, I wanted to mention one other thing. Just like with the, with Toyota Cotta, we have the improvement caught. We also have the coaching car. We have, you know, the, we would create this chain of. Where you have somebody that's the improver and they're being coached by a coach and. And then that person maybe has a second coach. Well, you know, my wife Mariana, who, just so the listeners know, Ron knows her very well. Mariana used to work at Gemba Academy way back in the day. And, and she's a, she's a go getter type. Like, she's a very much a doer. She can get incredible amounts of work done. But she was new to being a learning coach. And so it's been a really great opportunity and a very big challenge for me to step back and become that kind of coach's coach and use some of those techniques that I learned from the coaching kata and try to impart those to my wife, Mariana. And it's just interesting to see her start to kind of fine tune her coaching skills. And I encourage anybody who has been a coach to try to do that, try to step back and be a coach's coach someday and to see how you're thrown right back into the sensation of being the beginner all over again. It's kind of crazy, actually.

Yeah, well, and then obviously that's your wife, man. You know, so it's also. That's a different dynamic there. Right? It's not like just rolling over to your colleague at work and, you know, telling them, well, hey, let's. How did that go through? Wife could be more interesting, perhaps.

Oh yeah. And Mariana is definitely a. She's a very strong woman. And so I've definitely. It's been coming upon me to be able to read the room, be able to understand the emotional, kind of. Emotional intelligence side of.

Yeah.

Of coaching a coach and, and that sort of thing. And I think it's just made me a better husband, honestly, in addition to being a better coaches coach. Nice. Nice.

All right, all right. Soccer.

What's going on with that? Yeah, so, you know, we signed our kids up for this really great program through ayso. Don't even know what that acronym means, but it's a great program. And my 7 year old son was first time playing soccer. And I, you know, I grew up playing baseball, football. I had no clue about soccer. And they were, the league was asking for volunteers to coach. And I said, well, I can't, I can't be, you know, really a coach because I don't really know anything about soccer. But I'd be happy to be an assistant coach and maybe learn on the job. And they're like, no, no, no, you can do it, you can do it. We don't have anybody that can be your assistant coach. We're just gonna. Can you just be the head coach? It's easy. I'm like, oh, okay. You know, I'm just nervous and felt like kind of the first day I went to work in healthcare after working in construction. It felt like a fish out of water. And like, my goodness. But then I got really lucky in that last minute. They did add an assistant coach who is this like, incredible. He's like a trained, you know, certified Coach. He's from. He was trained in Europe in soccer, football, you know, and he's a really knowledgeable. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't do it full time as a coach because of work commitments. And so he's like, I can be an assistant coach and I just won't be there sometimes. And it was such an incredible experience because just like I mentioned, you know, a few moments ago about that chain of coaching, it kind of created this scenario where as a coach, I had a master coach to be there as my second coach. And it made just a tremendous difference. And that was kind of how it started was, you know, he and I kind of started that relationship where he was mentoring me and kind of helping point out a few things to me. And then we started applying that with the kiddos and kind of treating each week of practice as a target condition. Okay, you know, what are the skills that we want to try to accomplish this week? And then we would kind of run the experiment, which would be beginning of practice, to kind of. We let them scrimmage, which was also kind of part of a human centered design. We wanted to get them excited about coming to practice because they would know that right at the top of practice, just right after they got their warmups in, they were going to get the scrimmage immediately. And it would only be for like five, 10 minutes, but they knew they were going to get that little treat right at the beginning. They were going to get to play, and then we would go into drills. But the when they would do that first little scrimmage, that would be like a little experiment we'd be testing. Okay, you know, do they have the skills that we're targeting for this week or where are they deficient on those skills? And we would observe and watch, and then we would go into the next section of practice with a customized whatever we learned from those observations. Wherever we saw the gap, we would then apply a drill. And we have, you know, a set of drills that we were choosing from. So it wasn't like it just a blank canvas, but we would choose the one that made the most sense based on our observations. We would. We run the drill, focus in on those micro skills, and then we go scrimmage again. And then we would repeat and we would do that like basically three times during a practice. Like three cycles of experiment and reflection. Kind of each time we would ask the kids, you know, say, hey, what did you feel that you did well during that scrimmage? What did you think that you want to try to work on and get them engaged in their voices, helping determine what are we going to focus on next. With guidance, of course. And yeah, and it was just a amazing multiple rapid rounds of learning each practice.

Well, yeah. And then. Yeah. What I love about that also is especially with you and then in your, your. Your assistant coach who is very knowledgeable in soccer, you know, you can do that deliberate practice. Right. And. And like. No, try it this way. And then you're giving them immediate feedback. Right. And correcting right then and there. And that just so often doesn't happen always. Right. Giving that deliberate coaching where there's sort of feedback going back and forth.

Yeah. Very deliberate, very customized. And like that. That's just from, you know, like that's the hallmark of a master coach. Right. Like somebody like this guy David, who was my assistant coach, he would stop practice and go into a drill and it would be something like I would never think of, like how, you know, he would do mental drills like, hey, we need to be better at communicating with each other. And so he'd do like a communication drill that had nothing to do with a soccer ball whatsoever, you know.

Yeah.

And. And he would focus on the cognitive side of the game if he saw that that was the need. And. Yeah, and it was very deliberate and it was very. Just like with our colleague Tilo Schwartz and his coaching dojo, it gets down to the micro skill levels and down to, you know, just the micro skill of, you know, when you pass the ball, we need you to move and not stand still. Just like that. That little habit of wanting to admire your past as opposed to moving to the open spot. Yeah. It's like this little. So micro. It's almost not even a skills more of just a reflex or like a tendency. And to get down to that level that me is like fascinating. And that's. And that's when you get it down to the science of skill level acquisition and learning and deliberate practice. But then mixing that with the art of, you know, it's kind of psychologically engaging and getting people excited to come to practice and wanting to. To do that stuff that the art and the science of it really is what. What is fascinating to me.

Yeah. One of my favorite memories. I. Almost all of my kids have played soccer and my, my son, older son now he's more of a American football player. But. But my, My one daughter who's. She's in college now, plays and. But she was growing up, I was her little recreational coach, you know, when she's real little and then she Ended up going to club teams and had, like, David was her coach then, you know, like some British guy from. Yeah, and so I learned a lot by watching those coaches, by the way. And then I could go coach my rec team even better, right? But I remember there was this rec game where we had. And we were. We were the little Angels, and. And Brenna, my daughter, she was like the little tiny star forward, you know, scored all the goals and. And. And we were playing the Pink Panthers, man, this was our rival, right? I mean. I mean, this is serious stuff. And I'll never forget it was like three. Three. And we were just like, I don't know, a couple minutes left in the game, and it's just going back and forth. And Pink Panthers had this one girl named Angela, and boy, she was hard to handle, but had her marked up with three of my strongest defenders. You just to shut her down. And anyhow, my daughter Brenna gets the ball, and she's on a breakaway, and I'm like, this is it. This is it. And she comes in and she's closing in, and all of a sudden this girl comes out of nowhere and just sideswipes her and just knocked my. Brenna's super tiny right back then. So she. She's flying through the air and inside the. Inside the box there. So guess what? And I'm like, let's go, let's go. Anyhow, so she lines up, puts the ball down, and. And we practice a man, you know, like knockout, you know, in forever practice and all that. And I'm like, pick us. Pick a corner. You know, she knows. Knows the Dr. 80 hours. So she picked her corner and she hit the ball. Boom. You can hear it. Beautiful hit, man, that funk, you know, you really hit it hard with her laces. And. And all of a sudden you hear ding.

Oh, no.

Right off the post. And. And then. And then basically time expired and we tied. And she was devastated, man. I don't know, seven, eight years old, you know, and she was just wrecked. And so when we got home, we had a little net in the backyard, and I. I just. I was never hard on or anything like that. She was harder on herself, you know, and. And next thing you know, I look out at her, and she had her. Her brother out there holding a cell phone and with a video camera on, and she had those balls lined up in front of her, and she said, all right, I'm gonna hit 10 in the bottom left corner. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then she would. Then she'd want. And watch the tape, I was so proud of her. She did on her own. Then she said, okay, I'm gonna it, and put 10 in the bottom right corner. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And then right down the middle and so forth. But what was she was doing, and she didn't even realize it was just the beautiful form of deliberate practice.

Right.

Because she was like being deliberate on what she was trying to do because she could have just got a bunch of balls and just whacked him into the net. Right. That's what most people would probably do. But for whatever reason, it wasn't because of me coaching her on deliberate practice. Right. This is many years ago, but. But she did that. I always share that story, even today when I'm teaching it as an examp of the difference between just random practice, which is just wildly kicking soccer balls into the net, and deliberate practice, which is like having a plan. And then if you miss, go back, look at the tape. Oh, yeah, my plant foot was off a little bit. I didn't. I wasn't over the ball or whatever it might be. Right. And you make. Make corrections like that. So I. I don't know. There's so many beautiful examples of being able to practice well and deliberately in sports and youth sports. And I think it's just a great opportunity to teach kids that so they can carry that. That skill for the rest of them lives, even if it's not a physical sports thing.

Right, right. And, you know, the difference between, like you were saying, you know, random practice and deliberate practice. And then just to put a very fine point on the deliberate practice, you know, the, the. The. With the spirit of kata in mind, you know, I've heard, you know, one interpretation of kata is like a method of balance, so to speak, like personal balance. And I could just imagine, you know, a somebody like your daughter who's put in so much work and is so competitive probably, and misses that kick, could get really out of balance. Right. You know, And. And instead of lingering in that, like going and practicing her kata, which in this case is this, you know, deliberate practice of kicking the 10 balls into each corner. And then I could just imagine how that would help get back to balance, you know, and so it's a beautiful thing.

Yeah, well, you just, you know, I've always tried to teach my kids to play in the middle. You know, don't get too high, don't get too low. When you make a great play, celebrate a little bit, but then get right back to the middle or stay neutral, as they'll say that that Guy that coached Russell Wilson, that, that sports psychologist dude that he was famous for saying stay neutral.

Right.

And I think that's maybe to your point, that bal. That we need, really need that as grown ups right here in the business world. You know, you have a great month. Okay, good. Have a bad month. Okay. But get back to the middle and, and try to stay there.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Wow. Man. Well, so, so are you, what, soccer season about ready to start back up, right. For you guys or.

Yeah, yeah, it'll be starting back up in the spring. We have a little reprieve right now.

Okay.

Having, having the kids doing a few other things. But what was also fun is I've been, it's kind of an experiment. I don't know if it's going to go anywhere or not, but I've been doing this little thing like where I'll sit down with my kids and teach them a little one point lesson, you know, five minutes or less about something related to improvement science. And we actually, my kids say, hey, why don't we, you know, do like a little video of this. Call it like, you know, explain it to me like I was an eight year old, you know, and, and so I'm kind of engaging them in some of that stuff right now. Like how, you know, can you simplify a complex concept and teach it to an 8 year old like my son in a way that they can then turn around and teach it to. He can teach to his sister, for example. And I want to see it just as.

Sounds like you got a YouTube family YouTube channel about to be created. Dude, I'm not even kidding, man.

I know, I know. And you know, I gotta figure out what we're gonna call it or, or I got, heck, I got to figure out how to do a YouTube channel and, and all that. I'll probably be sending a bunch of rookie questions your way, Mr. Fine.

Yeah, man. Hey, you never know your kids go viral and then pay for their college out of their YouTube revenue, you know.

There you go, man. That'll, that'll fund some. Well, hey, that'll fund some of these cottage School of Florida caught in the classroom sessions. I'll give 400, 500 people. I'll break your record.

Yeah, let's go, let's go. Well, I mean, we got caught a school. Texas, man. So Texas versus Florida, man. Let's go, man.

Let's see. Yeah, big. Everything's bigger in Texas, but you know, we'll see what's up. We'll see what's up. Florida's Coming on the scene.

It's all good, man. Hey man, it's always so, so fun to talk to you, Mike. I really appreciate you, man. Hey, so if people want to connect with you, what's the best way?

Yeah, Hot off the presses. Cottaschoolflorida.com okay, they can go there and check that out. On there you'll find some links. One of them is to the Cottage School Florida LinkedIn page. So you can find that there or on LinkedIn. Just Cottage School Florida. And then people are welcome to email me@mikeataschoolflorida.com and that I will be using that email. For anybody who would like to just talk about, learn or practice the improvement kata and the coaching kata. It's really a life mission for me is to help individuals and teams and organizations really accomplish their full potential through the use of scientific thinking and coaching patterns. And so anybody, if they just want to geek out on kata or if they want to do some coaching cycles. Yeah, it's just my way of giving back to, to the, to the community and for, you know, I've learned so much from people like yourself and Mike Rother and others that it just, I need, I feel the need that I want to spread it and give back so they, they can use that email address for that.

Awesome. We're going to have everything linked up on the show notes people. So just kind of scroll down on your app and everything will be linked up there. So hey man, always good to chat with you. Keep up those huddles and work on that first touch, man, in the off season. Okay, so you're ready to go?

I'm hopeless on the field. I don't even be able to be able to have any touch with the ball. But thank you for the encouragement.

All right, Bad, you take care of.

All right, have a good one. Ron.

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