GA 521 | Celebrating Quick Wins with Alen Ganic

Because when you introduced us initially, it's what's in it for water department globally. But when you told me what's in it for me yesterday, specifically, you took time to explain what's in it for me, how I'm going to be involved in that, and what kind of difference I can make to make this success. He says I want to continue today.

I'm excited to welcome Alan Gannik to the show. Now, Alan, I've known Alan for many, many years and was fortunate enough to have Alan come into the studio here in Keller, Texas. And we recorded. Recorded this in our. On our audio rooms, and it's always a blast when we get to do that. And Alan is full of lots of stories. And in fact, we featured Alan in the city of Grand Rapids in a Gemba Academy live episode a few years ago. And we're going to go ahead and unlock that full episode. So when you scroll down on the Show Notes page, you're going to see a link to that. So I want everybody after this podcast to go watch that episode because they did some amazing work and Alan was really leading that charge. And in fact, one of the stories that Alan tells here in the podcast is how they made improvements in the water department there, the city of Grand Rapids, and then they were able to take the savings and pass those on to the, to the citizens. And like, how amazing is that? So, anyhow, lots of great conversation. Talked a lot about different types of motivation and why Alan and myself are so motivated by the. The human aspects of Lean. So super, super good stuff. So this is going to be episode 521. So go to Gemba Pod, look for episode 521. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Alan, welcome to the studio here at Ngemba Academy.

How's it going? It's going well. Thank you for having me, man.

Thanks for coming in for the interview, man. We were talking. I just love doing these interviews in person and being able to just look across and see the person. So it's awesome.

It's great to be here. It's a great studio. I love it.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, well, listen, Alan, I know you know the drill. The show. We like to get things going right out of the gate with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

So today I would like to share three quotes. I have three favorite quotes.

Overachiever.

First one I'm going to share from Mother Teresa. I can do things you cannot. You can do things I cannot. Together we can do great Things. I love that quote. Another one I would like to share is from Henry Ford. I'm a big fan of Henry Ford. Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is a progress, and working together is success.

Hmm, nice.

And the last one, the author is unknown. I tried to find the author and they said don't. They don't know who mentioned this first, but what gets measured gets done. Mm.

What's that one mean to you? I mean, kind of short words, but.

There'S a deep meaning, so there's a deep meaning there. If we want us to achieve something, the best thing is to measure it. What is our goal, where do we want to be and where we at right now? And over the years, being a lean practitioner, I have noticed that, that when we start measuring our production, measuring our outcomes, people get motivated more to achieve that goal. And they have a target. They know where they need to go and they know where they at. So that's kind of what it, what it means to me. What gets measured gets done, man.

One of my favorite memories back in my sort of pre Gamma Academy corporate days, I was in England actually working with this company. And it's a small, smaller company. They were making these, these valves, you know, that went into like pumps and all this kind of stuff. And there was this little assembly area and it was actually a one, one person assembly area and had made a little U shaped cell. And the guy was doing some nice stuff and it was looking pretty good. And walk up to him and I said, hey, how's it going? He said, good. I said, what's the plan for today? I said, when he goes. He looked at me, what do you mean? I was like, how many supposed to do? You know, it's like, well, just kind of as many as I can, I guess. I was like, oh, okay. So I went to the supervisor. It's like, do you have like a plan, like what you need to do to do. Oh, yeah, yeah, we got to get this meeting done. I'm like, hey. He didn't know, you know. I said, so. And I looked over there and there was this little whiteboard just like not being used, just laying against the wall. And I said, I said, can we just hang out over there? And then I said, so by like lunchtime, you should get. I can't remember what it was. 15 done by lunch and then another 15 by the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. I said. He, how about this? So we want, I guess you got to do 30 today. And so we're gonna aim for 15 by lunch and 15 by. Is that cool? You go, oh, yeah, that's easy. And come to find out, productivity lifted in this area literally starting that day because the person just didn't know what was expected, you know, and people want to inherently win. And I think that's the power of visual management. And keeping score is, you know, if you walk out and you ask someone, are you winning or are you losing? And they can't answer, you got a problem, right?

Yes.

So, yeah, good stuff, man. Good stuff. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about your background, Alan, and how you got involved in continuous improvement and what you're up to these days.

So my background and background in lean, I started in auto manufacturing industry. First time I was introduced in lean, it was in late 90s where I saw some lean practices. But I didn't practice much at that time. That organization was very new. In about 2000, I was working for a Magna Mirror and Magna Mirror was losing a lot of money on a monthly basis. And they had two options for us. One option was to do lean transformation, complete lean transformation. And the other one is to move the jobs out of Michigan, small town, low in Michigan, outside the country. And so we obviously, all over, all of us say we want to keep the jobs here, we want to learn this lean. And it took us two years. So they were lean practitioners who came and taught us how to implement lean from ground up. And I was one of those people who volunteered to be part of that team transformation team. So I learned lean at Magna Donnelly on the floor for about two years.

Nice, nice. So then I know just because, well, you've even been on some of our videos that you did some work in the government service and all that. So walk us through that. Like, what was your experience there?

Yes. So after I learned lean, you know, you get excited, you want to show off, you want to take that somewhere else. So I went back to my old employer. They were able to bring me back and that's when I introduced another manufacturing environment. Plastic Talon Corp. At that time and worked there for a couple years, made some significant improvements, built out of the warehouse, made an assembly line. There was a warehouse for Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX vehicles. They just start building those. This a concept vehicle. After that place closed down, I decided to look for another job because they filed for bankruptcy. And there's a good reason why they did. Even though we did fantastic job in the Grand Rapids area, all three plants, I found a job friend of mine who worked for the mayor at that Time. He says, alan, there's opportunity with the city of Grand Rapids to run a parking operation and to manage a security team. They're all criminal justice students. They're going through college and that's their part time job. I said, I don't know that this is a job for me. You know, I love lean manufacturing. I'm really passionate about it. He says, that's why I'm calling you. They need a lean practitioner, a person that knows lean because the mayor has told all his managers here at city Grand Rapids that we need to do a lean transformation and when we need to bring lien to government. So that's what happened. I went to parking services for an interview. Took me six months to get hired. The process was really long. But at the end of the line, at the end of the time, I did get that lien. Not the lean job. It was parking operations and parking operations and managing security team. But the reason really later I asked my boss why she chose me. There was like 80 some candidates. So out of 80 some candidates, she picked me. I said, I don't think that I'm the best one. Why did you pick me? She said, one big reason is that you have lean experience. And our mayor and city managers are pushing us to do lean transformation in all city departments to learn about it and implement it. And I need that help and assistance. And that's how I started working for the city Grand Rapids, where I spent 14 and a half years.

Do you know, like, how did the mayor discover Lee? They read a book or have a background in it. Do you know?

Actually, I do. Mayor went to one of the conferences and people were talking about lean and how can lean be applied anywhere in government, health care, education, not just in the manufacturing. And he said he was one of those good mayors that wants to always improve and do good for the people, right? So he said, hey, this is eliminating waste in the process. We all have Process doesn't matter if you're in manufacturing, government, healthcare, everybody has to do a job and there's a process involved. And inside that process is a value added now value, time. And that waste is now validated. And he wanted it to improve some of the processes within the city of Grand Rapids. And that's why he was excited about it. And he told, actually Eric Delong at that time he was assistant city manager. He told Eric, Eric and CFO at that time, Scott Burr, he told them both, I need you guys to go learn lean and bring lean to the city Grand Rapids.

So we did a Gemba Academy Live episode. This has been a few years ago that we did that. And I think what we'll do is we're going to go ahead and open that up. You can watch the first video of any of our courses and series without a subscription. But we have the ability to go and unlock everything. So I'm going to unlock this whole city of Grand Rapids Gemba Academy Live. So I want everybody listening to go scroll down and you'll see the link. And when we get done with this podcast, go watch or start chipping away. Because one of the things that I remember, it's been a while since I watched it, but there was one with the water department.

Yes.

Where you talk about that one and you actually passed the savings on and all that.

Yes.

Remember.

Yes, I do remember. So in water department the goal, this was my first job as inventory and asset manager. They didn't have that position. I did some improvement with the team at Parking Services. My boss liked it. She got promoted and she needed assistance of consolidating warehouses and water department was the first one. They want to get rid of one of the older buildings and consolidate operations and stockroom warehouse operation into one building. And that's how I got involved into it. They created that position for me in asset manager and it was one of my first project in that position. And what we did, we that that warehouse was packed already. I mean you couldn't put a needle in it. And now I'm supposed to bring with my team all the products from another warehouse which was a few miles away from the current one. And we had to bring it in. So what we did, we followed the Wheat Lean philosophy, introduced that to that team. We five assed the entire warehouse with management involvement and all the staff members. So we completely gutted it down and eliminated stuff we made actually believe it or not, over $100,000 in profit by selling scrap.

Wow.

And that was between the water department stockroom and what we scrapped from the north yard. We called it a north yard that was part of the water department system. So over $100,000. So that was one of the achievements that we showed when we did the report out. And then the other thing is, after we consolidated everything, it took us, I mean this is a big project. It took us over a year to consolidate everything to create an ABC analysis, reorder points. Min Ma created zones of responsibility 5s. I mean we really truly did our best to bring lean into this warehouse environment. And at the end I remember this. This was one of my really success story from City Grand Rapids. I remember the accountant calling me to the office and saying, can you come to my office? And this was in water department. And I went to her office. She said, I have some great news to share with you. She said. I said, okay, what is going on? She said, for the first time in a very long time, we're going to reduce water rates. I said, okay, that's great. You know, thank you for sharing that. What does that have to do with me? She said, well, you and your team last year have spent less, about 500,000 or more, less than what we have spent in previous years. She said, so here's how counting works. She said, less we spend on purchasing material to stock unless we're going to ask for my water ratepayers. So she said, this is not the only reason. There were other factors involved in that, but it was very nice to hear that from her.

So you basically got to lower people's bill.

Yes, and this is a true story. I went to my uncle, you know, to visit my uncle and aunt. And they were joking. They knew that I worked for water parking for city Grand Rapids. And we're just joking. Hey, my water bill went down. You know, he said, thank you, Alan. He was joking, to be honest with you. I told him, oh, my dear uncle. I said, believe it or not, me and my team have impact in it. So I'll take that.

You're welcome.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Wow, that's so cool, man. Like, how great did that feel to know that first of all, you made something better, which is that in and of itself is a win. But, man, all of your people in your town benefited from your work. I mean, that must have felt amazing.

It feels amazing. I mean, in a private sector, people get. Get promotions, get bonuses when you make big breakthroughs and achievements. And government entity, there's no such thing. So people have to be self motivated to work for government, number one. And this is my bonus. This is the bonus of government employees. To get something like that where people are going to benefit. That's a great feeling. You go home, tell your family, tell your friends, brag about it a little bit. But it makes you feel good inside that you did something for your own community, that the entire community is not going to benefit, not just you.

Yeah.

Wow.

So cool, man. So cool. All right, so let's say you know people right now listening in private sector, public sector, everything in between. So if someone's listening from, let's say the public sector, okay, what should they do to introduce Lean continuous improvement that sort of thing. And most importantly, once they build it, to not have it fall apart.

Sure. And that is the biggest problem as we know, sustaining anything you make, make improvements. I tell people it's easy, sustain, sustaining it is hard. That's where you show your strength. First thing that I would tell people in the public sector especially is you have to get a buy in from the top. Every project that I did for the city of Grand Rapids, I always went to the top and tried to get the buy in. Next step is in the process of getting that buy in from the top. You have to tell that person what's in it for them. They have to understand what's in it really for them so they can see a bigger picture. After you get the buy in from the top, it gets a lot easier down the door. So what I found out working all these years in a government entity is it's very hard to start from the bottom implementing lean. But when you start from the top, it's a lot easier. And here's why. So we know in Lean we like to pull system, right? People pull. I think that at the beginning, when introducing, especially in the public sector, you have to do a push at the beginning. You have to go to the top person and they have to push that down, tell hey, you need to participate in this to learn. And believe it or not, and I know in some of the videos, I don't know if it's in yours, on a YouTube like with the forestry department, people were exactly saying those words. My manager told me, I got to work with this. Allen Gannick didn't know what Gamba is, didn't know what Lean is, had to google it and was not really impressed about it. You know, he doesn't have experience in my work area and he's going to come here and help us out. But then when people get to expose to Lean, then they're going to get buy in and you will not have going to have a hard time taking that away from them. So that's the first thing. The other thing I would recommend is to start small and quick wins to celebrate those successes. So you got to start small, get some quick wins, celebrate those successes with the team. And here's why. When you have quick wins and people celebrate like you were talking about, that achievement that my team and I had, reducing the water rate for the water ratepayers in Grand Rapids, that felt good. We're humans, right? So you want other people, your team members, to feel good. They can see this really works. We did a Small project. I see this is benefiting me most importantly, but not only me, everybody else on the team, and maybe possibly the organization. So that's really important to get some quick wins and get some celebrations.

Let's talk a little bit more about this one though, because like, well, the warehouse thing, that's not a quick win. Right. Took you a year. Right. But where there like, were there quick wins in that initiative that, that get some momentum.

Yes.

Like give us some examples of like a quick win.

So you said that you will open up a Gamba Academy where you came and recorded some of our successes in water department or city Grand Rapids. So what the audience is going to see the quick win that I had in water department is I have to introduce this to the team. And nobody trust me, nobody. But my boss believed in that. She saw it because I have done things in parking operation and for security. But people in water department didn't know what lean is, didn't want to do nothing. Well, they just have a busy work and want to go on with it. So the click when I had is introducing 5s. I'm one of those people that starts with 5s. So the team that I had in water department, we picked an area and there was one repair shop inside the stockroom where they fix the valves, water meters, take them apart and stuff like that. And they had a workbench, they had some saws and stuff like that. It was a mess. Okay. And what I did, I decided to pick that small area and teach people 5s and 8 deadly waste. Back then it was 7. And to be honest with you, I used your videos 100%. So I'm a big. I used to be when I worked for government. Big user. Gamba Academy. Yeah. Anyone listening? I would recommend. I mean, and it's not a commercial, but seriously, I use your videos and why did I use your videos? Because your videos are short. I loved it. 5, 10, 15 minutes. I can show my team. I can translate some of your stuff that you said in the video and say, well, how does that apply? Ron said this in the manufacturing. How does it apply here in government? I would translate it quickly to them, but we use those videos and we put pause, stop. We do 1s. We're teaching 1s. We use your quizzes. I didn't have to redo anything, reinvent the wheel. I just used what you had. I said, do this. And then we go and do applied 1s. Then they get the idea of 1s. I said, stop. Let's go back to the conference room. And learn about 2 2nds and we watch your video, we have a discussion and then we go apply. So we went through that five all five S's and then at the end of the this week long Kaizen event, we had a report out where we brought my manager, we brought an assistant city manager, cfo I think at that time a water department manager of course. And we brought him to to celebrate this one quick win and what the team did. Basically you can open the drawer and you'll see in your videos, audience will be able to see. You can open the drawer at the glance. You can see what's missing, what's not at the glance. Less than five seconds. We made it so that at less than five seconds you can just walk around and see what's out of the place. And that's what I showed the team. And all these managers says, hey, this is just a small example here in the corner. This is what we're gonna do with the entire warehouse. And then we had some people that were using that area be part of our team and they had the chance to speak up and tell the audience how they're gonna benefit from it and what they have learned during that process. So when I did this, I did the least amount of talking. During the report out, the entire team was talking about the success and what they did in.

Nice. Perfect. Got it. Okay, so quick wins, get some momentum, get people fired up. What else?

Next thing I would like to mention that you need to focus on the process improvement from the customer view, not from your view. How's your customer? It doesn't matter if it's internal customer or external. In water department, for example, it was an internal customer. We wanted to see how can we deliver product from the warehouse to our internal customer. People that fix pipes out on the streets and how can we get them in and out as quick as possible. How can we make sure that we have the parts that they need and tools? So you need to think when you do. When we design that warehouse, we were thinking from the customer perspective, not our perspective. What's easier for us to manage the inventory and make it look good? No, what is important for customer. So we did a lot of spaghetti diagrams, watched our customers for example, getting their own parts and we saw that we did not kit it properly. And then we involved them and says, hey, this warehouse looks awesome. Not very functional. I see you walking from this aisle to next aisle and you spend 30 minutes getting parts and now you're going to go out. So we involved the team. You need to Involve people that you are working on, improving their process. It's very important to involve them in that process. And then you're going to benefit from that much more.

Got it. Okay, what else?

Next one. I would say you need to measure. Measure your desired goal versus your actual. That's why I shared that quote. I'm a big believer.

Yeah.

Even I worked a little bit later. I mean, before, while working with Signs, I did some consulting, Lean consulting, and I would go visit these different manufacturing places. And when I walk in and people like you said, they don't know what the goal is for today. They don't know what the hourly goal is. That's the first thing I do. Fryfast. And then visual management by measuring, creating some KPIs, our bar boards. So you know where you need to be every hour or every day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just. Boy. And if there's anything that people take from this episode, if you've. If you're not on top of your visual management, even in an office, you know, like our sales team, you know, they'll have thermometers on goals that, you know, whether it's a sales goal or how many people you talk to in a day or something like that, you know, like, what's the plan? What's the actual.

Right.

And it sounds so commonsensical and it is, but. But so many people don't do it.

Exactly. And lean is all common sense people. When I teach people lean, they say, helen, at the end of this training session, this is all common sense. I said, yes, but have you practiced? He said, no. Never occurred to me because I was busy.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. What is your approach, Alan? When maybe you meet some resistance from folks who need to be sort of convinced that we should do this? Or sometimes we'll talk about the people who are actively against. But sometimes, you know, you can sort of work with them because you know where they stand. Maybe sometimes it's those people who are in the middle. Right. They're not against it, but they're not excited about it. You're just kind of like, eh, like, how do you approach them? Like, how do you get them bought in?

That is an excellent question. I'm going to use now water department, since we're talking about water department. There was a gentleman on my team who didn't like lean watching those videos. He didn't like Japanese words like gamba, kaizen and so on. He says this. I don't understand this. So we untranslated for him. But he was very resistant to the point where he came to me after the first couple sessions that we had every day, we had like two hour sessions where we learned and go apply what we learned, he came to me and says, alan, I don't think I'm the right fit for it. I don't like this. I don't believe in this. Okay, okay. And I gave him a chance. I said, hey, here's what's in it for you. This is why I can tell you what will benefit. How it will benefit you, not just here at work. Yeah, you'll do some great things here at work, but this can benefit you at home, in your garage, in your truck, in your home office, and so on. So when I explained to him from his what's in it for him, then I got him bought in. That's one thing I did. And the third day of that week, I did not plan to have him, to be honest with you. So we started a session. There he is coming in my office. I said, is there something wrong? You know, we're in the training session. He said, no. He said, I'm back. I said, why? He said, well, you explained to me what's in it for. For me. Because when you introduced us initially, it's what's in it for water department globally. But when you told me what's in it for me yesterday, specifically, you took time to explain what's in it for me, how I'm going to be involved in that and what, what kind of difference I can make to make this success. He says, I want to continue. So that's very, I think, important to explain people what's in it for them. The other thing is what I use, and this is my tactic that I trick people, is when I see somebody really resisting, I make them like a head of the team. I make them a head of the team. So this same individual, he was the team leader. So I was his coach. I said, I'm your coach and mentor. When it comes time to the presentation, I won't do anything. I will not tell you how to do it. I'm going to teach you five 5s tools and other things like e daily waste. But I will not tell you how you guys gonna do this and you're gonna be the team leader. So he was excited about it. Wow.

Wow, that's so good. Yeah, I know I've told this story before, but there was a. I had the same thing many, many, many, many years ago. I was in Sulphur Springs, Texas at a facility and this gentleman had his arms crossed in the back room and scowl on his face. And I was like, oh, boy, here we go. And anyhow, we involved them. My strategy was maybe similar, but maybe a little different. It's like I kind of just ignore them, right, and not to involve them. Hey, what's your name? You know, but don't pick on them. Don't anything like that. But then my strategy is, when we get out to the shop floor, we know in this person, this gentleman's area, it was his work area, you know, that we were in. That's why he was on a team. I'd be like, hey, how does that work? Oh, yeah.

Oh, okay.

How could we make that better? Well, we could do that. Oh, good idea. Write that down, guys, you know? And we started listening to him anyhow, jump to the end, the report out. Five days later, this guy gets up. He's an older gentleman. Maybe he was going to retire in, I don't know, four or five years. The dude started. He didn't like ugly cry, but he teared up in the report out and he said, and however many years he's worked at this facility, no one has ever listened to my ideas. Like this team listened to my ideas, you know, and man, it was moving, you know. And I remember thinking to myself, that's what this stuff's really all about. You know, we can say it's about tools or people, this, but when you change someone's sort of perception on this thing and like, that dude was bought in, man. From then on, right? Like that, I mean, we potentially change someone's life, right, to orient their mind towards making things better. Like that's. That's beyond any sort of monetary recognition or anything like that. So, yeah, super powerful, man.

100 agree with you. And those people, believe it or not, what I have seen for the past 24 years, practicing Lean, they become champions of lean. They become the biggest champions of lean and spreading lean throughout the department.

Yep, man, for sure, for sure. Hey, man, just to wrap up a little bit, I'm wondering if you could just. I don't know if you have any sort of just general. I mean, you've been around and done so much, Alan, and different types of companies and seen so many things.

Like.

What if you could just leave people with some encouragement or some advice, Especially those people who are maybe thinking about getting going with this. Like, I know you go through, you know, you know, you gave some ideas already, but just general encouragement. What would you say to those people?

What I would say to the people. We are all humans and the Best feeling is when you have another human. Yeah, bonuses are great. Incentives are fine. We all like them. We're humans. But the biggest incentive to me is when you improve somebody's environment, when you improve somebody's process, when you help somebody alleviate some obstacles and bottlenecks, issues, problems, that is the best satisfaction that you will get. And Lean philosophy. When I learned Lean first, initially, to be honest with you, I was against Lean, but I was young at that time, I was in my 20s, and I want to learn something more. I always wanted to learn till today. And after I really got to lean, I says, I will never, ever, ever leave Lean philosophy. Why? It's all about people helping people and gives me that satisfaction. At the end of the day, when you go home, when you go with your families and spend time, and you did some great things at your work, working with your colleagues, made some improvements using some of the Lean principles and tools. It's a great satisfaction sitting at the table with your family, talking about it, or sharing with your friends and family. I think that is what motivated me. It's my personal motivation. And that's what I have. Speaking to other Lean practitioners, they share the same story. That's why they stuck with Lean. This is not about tools. It's not about saving money. We don't even talk about that initially. That's the outcome. But we don't say, hey, we want to save this. No, that's the outcome. We want to improve the process. We want to remove any issues and problems on the way. We don't call them problems in Lean. Just, you know, we call them opportunities for improvement. Obstacles. Obstacles. Yeah.

Yeah, man, for sure. Oh, man. So good. Well, hey, man, I really appreciate you coming in for this, Alan. It's been. It's been a blast. I think we're going to go grab some lunch now, man, you know? But hey, if people want to connect with you, what's the best way?

LinkedIn. LinkedIn. And those are two things that I check on. Okay?

And if people are just listening, spell your name. Alan.

Alan. A, L, E, N. Last name Gannick. G, A, N, I, C. Okay?

And then obviously just everyone just scroll down on your app there and we'll link up to Alan's social media. So everybody go connect with him. And hey, man, keep up the great work and thanks again for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years, or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos. We also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. Options to learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.