GA 526 | Managing Expectations with Jason Henderson

So I feel like it's that way too, with Lean, because sometimes when you go to solve a problem, you may expect to go out to the shop floor and solve that problem, but maybe the person that's running the machine doesn't expect you to be there, or if they do, they don't expect you to have the answers.

Today I'm excited to welcome Jason Henderson to the show. Now, Jason has a really diverse continuous improvement background, and today we had a really interesting conversation on the whole idea of managing expectations. And what was interesting about it was Jason's background, as you'll hear, is pretty diverse. So he's got, like, he's been in, like, a physical trainer, he's been in all kinds of martial arts, and then obviously now he's. He's deep into continuous improvement. But what's interesting is in all these areas of our lives, there's always expectations, and managing them can be tricky and especially tricky in continuous improvement. And so that's what we talk about today. We talk about, you know, what does it mean to manage expectations, but also what happens when your expectations don't align with the people that you're working with, or perhaps you're trying to help someone improve, and they have different expectations than you. Like, what do you do in those situations? And so Jason has some really good insight and some really good ideas, and I really enjoyed the conversation. So show notes can be found over@gemba podcast.com look for episode 5, 26. Also, be sure to scroll down and connect with Jason over on LinkedIn and let him know that you appreciate him coming onto the show. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Jason, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm doing well, Ron.

How are you?

Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, man, doing great. Doing great. Where are you calling in from?

So I live in Columbus, Indiana.

Columbus, Indiana. Okay, now where's that?

So it's about 45 minutes south of Indianapolis.

I see. Okay. South of Indianapolis. All right. Yo. I grew up in Greenville, Ohio, so, you know.

Okay.

Yeah, so. But been all over Indiana, but I've never been to Columbus, Indiana. Awesome. All right, well, hey, man, as you know, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

So I have two quotes for you today. The first one is my own quote, and I've said this now for years. I don't have to be the smartest person in the room. I just have to get all the smartest people in the room to work together.

That's sometimes very difficult, too.

Oh, yes.

The smarter they are, the harder sometimes, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. What's your other one?

So the other quote, we'll probably talk about this a little bit. I've been in industry now for about 11 or 12 years, but before that I was a personal trainer. And so I had a client who was from Colombia, and he always said, bacaladrona no, el vida, el portillo. And so basically, what that means is it kind of translates like the thief cow never forgets the gate. And the story behind that was he grew up on a farm in the mountains, and they had the fence and they had the cows, and he would always. They would, like, undo the fence, kind of cut it a little bit to go in and help some of the cows out to do whatever they had to do. And when they came out, they would always mend the fence back. And he said that most of the cows never, ever, ever even paid attention to it. But there was always one cow that would find his way out. He'd find that hole in the fence, and he'd get himself out. So I thought that was a good quote for Lean, because there's always some issue that escapes or something that escapes us. It's almost as if the problem finds its way out of the fence that we're trying to put it in, so to speak.

I guess the natural lean thinking question is, why in the world did they just build a gate that's open and shut? You know?

Right. I don't know.

Yeah. Okay, good stuff. All right, well, hey, Jason, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you got involved in continuous improvement, and what you're up to these days.

Sure, I'd be happy to. So I started off when I was a kid. I was. When I say kid, like a young teen, I was very much into fitness. And this is what kind of started me down the path is I always wanted to know, what muscles does it take to do this? What muscles does it take to do this? So I asked around, I started interviewing people, and I just didn't get any answers that I was pleased with or thought that worked. So what I did was I took a page out of an anatomy book that had muscles and bones, because I figured, well, if I know what they are and where they are, then maybe I'll know how to work them better. And so I've always had that curious mindset. I've always had that investigative, wanting to understand the resource type of thinking. And so that started me on A journey through fitness. And I spent, ended up spending two decades in fitness as a personal trainer, fitness instructor, martial arts instructor. And as my family got older, I went back to school. At 38 years old, my family started to grow and that was a great beginning and an eye opening journey for me because I had to understand how to learn again in a different way. So I went through school, got my associates, my bachelor's, and I have a class left on my master's in engineering. And throughout that time I kind of pieced a career together out of different opportunities. So actually worked at Toyota Industrial for a while as a temporary and then worked at a wheel company. And then after that I worked for a large automotive supplier. And for the past six months I've worked for Knopf Insulation, which is in Shelbyville, Indiana. So it's about 40 minutes from where I'm at and that's just been a great company. I am learning a lot about lean and continuous improvement and, and so it's been great so far.

So what kind of martial arts? I'm curious.

Oh, everything. Just everything. So when I was younger, I wrestled and I coached wrestling for 10 years. Kickboxing, karate, wing chun, kung fu, tai chi, some escrima, some Brazilian Jiu jitsu. I've kind of been around the map on that.

Yeah, so I was a wrestler growing up in Ohio as well. Just in high school, you know, or middle school and high school. But. But daughter. Well, several of my kids have actually done jiu jitsu, but I have a daughter right now who I'm living vicariously through. I'll admit it, she's. Gosh, what is it? Molly? She's. I should know that. She's 10 and boy, she's good at Jiu jitsu. Just like, like, I just brought her for like one class, you know, she's only been doing it for like four months and, but even like in our first class because she's, she's a hard worker around the house. She's like our workhorse. You, if you can't find Molly, she's got like a bar room and she's cleaning off the deck or she's wrangling. Funny Molly story. I don't know why I'm sharing this, but we have chickens and she's also impatient. And so she. We wear you. Sometimes we'll clip the chicken's wings, you know, so they can't fly over the fence. They don't hurt the chicken, don't worry. And, and she said, she said, mom, we need to go cut the chicken's wings. And my wife was just like, okay, okay. So my wife kept blowing her off. And eventually Molly grabbed some scissors and ran out there and just grabbed the chicken herself, and she clipped all their wings. She goes, I got it done, Mom. So she's a hard worker, but. But, yeah, watching her do Jiu jitsu, just incredible. Like, her balance and her. It's just really fun because I know from wrestling, you know, some kids just. You kind of almost have a natural knack for body positioning. It's kind of like a. It's like building a puzzle, really, you know, and. Oh, yeah, wrestling and Jiu Jitsu. So anyhow, I thought. I thought about that when you said Jiu Jitsu, so good stuff.

Oh, yeah.

And I bet you there's lots of parallels that we could get into between things like fitness and. And training and. And the intentionality that that requires and lean. Right? And. And there's tons of parallels that I see between. Between these two worlds. So. Good stuff. Now. Okay, so talk a little bit more then about your lean journey. So, like, was it. Did you kind of get started with your current company or had you been dabbling in it before?

So when I started about 11 years ago, I just worked as a temp, and so I learned. I was in the quality department. I learned things about warranty and insurance, you know, and then some data management tools. So I kind of put some of those together. But I really didn't get into, like, the statistics part. And nobody was really. And it's nobody's fault. It's just. That wasn't. My job is to understand the lean aspects of stuff, even though I was doing things like check sheets and some of those types of things. Investigation. When I got into my next company, the director of quality decided that I need to learn about statistics. And so I got a very interesting course in statistics where he made me plot the points out by hand. And we talked about the histogram, we talked about the natural shape of things, and then do the math behind some of the XBAR R charts and stuff like that.

Very cool.

Very cool. Yeah, I really appreciate it now because it gives you that. That extra depth of knowledge.

So you don't need no mini tab, man. Just give me some piece of paper and some dots. Right?

I'll be back in a couple hours. Right?

Good stuff, man. Good stuff. All right. Well, hey, so today, Jason, really, I guess our topic is going to be managing expectations, which is a really interesting topic to me because, boy, expectations are all around us, right? Whether it's in continuous improvement or in life, really. So I guess to open up the question is, what does managing expectations just flat out stated, what's that mean to you?

So a lot. It means quite a bit to me. If I go back to my first quote, you know, if I go into the room and I think that I'm going to be the smartest person, that changes the expectation, that changes the outcome of what can happen. And that puts me in a position where I can't fully and effectively help people. And their expectation is for me to do that. So whether they're rocket scientists or not, it doesn't matter. Whomever it is, I want to have that openness and that understanding that I can do whatever I can to help. Their expectation on me is that I will try to help them fix something. And then my expectation of them is just that they'll listen to me and learn. But there's so many parallels, as you say, with fitness and martial arts. I was a personal trainer. You know, people would come in and they want to lose weight or they want to work on their health or do this or that. And so that's their expectation. And so then becomes my responsibility to help them get there. So one of the other things since we talked about jiu jitsu a little bit, is some. Most of the martial arts I've done have been like street type of martial arts, so self defense as opposed to sport. And there's, there's good stuff on both sides of that. If I go into the Octagon and I'm fighting somebody, those two people that go in there, they have the expectation that they're gonna fight. That happens. That's just the way it is. If I'm out of the street and just, you know, I come out from a restaurant with my wife and then somebody attacks me, then that's. That's different, right? Because not both people are expecting that. So I feel like it's that way too with Lean, because sometimes when you go to solve a problem, you may expect to go out to the shop floor and solve that problem, but maybe the person that's running the machine doesn't expect you to be there. Or if they do, they don't expect you to have the answers. So there's just a lot of parallels with that. And there's just a lot of value in trying to help people understand why they need what they need or what they want. And getting them to really unlock is a. Is a big thing. It's a big payoff for me.

So do you have any Examples or stories of times where maybe your expectations didn't align with, you know, the person you were walking up to you there at work or, you know, in your training or whatever it was.

Sure, yeah. So at the company I was at before this, that's where I actually went through Six Sigma training and became a black belt. And now I'm working on my mbb, But I had a project in the plant, and every project that had been in that plant up to that point had gotten canceled or didn't come out with the right expectation. So there was a. There was a little bit of, I'm not sure about this guy feel to it. Right. So the best thing I can do is just be transparent and be honest and say, hey, look, we've got this problem. I'd like to try and help you solve it. I'm not an expert, but if we work together, we can get there. This project, when I was running it, almost got cancelled twice. And then we kind of had to escalate and we kind of had to get some people tuned to that thinking. What came out of it was that a lot of folks that didn't believe in lean and continuous improvement or didn't have enough experience in it started to become believers because they saw the results. And it was really just about us taking a defect out of a part. It was something that we couldn't measure with a specific gauge. So there was a visual inspection. We had to create criteria for that. We ran an MSA and then started to stoke that fire. And they started to see, okay, well, now I understand. This is what I'm doing. This is what it should look like. This is what it shouldn't look like. And then we went to do the design of experiments. We started messing around with the variables, and they could see the structure and they could see how we were doing it. It was highly successful. I remember staying at the plant, I had to call my wife and say, I'm gonna be home late. And I think it was like midnight, one in the morning, something like that, before I got done. And I'd start in the afternoon. So it was a lot of fun.

Yeah. You know what's interesting about this whole thing with expectations? I don't have you dabbled with Toyota Cotta scientific thinking or anything like that at all.

Yeah, so I'm doing a Carter right now, so my first right, actually.

So. So what's. What's cool about that scientific thinking framework is, you know, one of the questions we ask in there is, you know, after we. We make a plan and then we make a prediction, you know, and what do we think is going to happen? So, you know, what do we expect? Right. And what's, what's freeing about it? At least it was for me when I first really started to adopt this way of thinking was sort of takes the pressure off of being right or knowing the answer or. So if you're, you're, you're, you're collaborating with another person who also has no idea what's going to happen or even that they need to make something better, you can sort of enter into this together arm to arm and say, what do you think's gonna happen? You know, and neither of you know, right. And so you write it down and you're sort of entering into it, you know, just with curiosity really, and, and then you just play out the experiment or the action or whatever it is that what that next step was outlining, and you see what actually happens and then what you learn. And so it's just beautiful dance, really, that I think, and that's why we're so passionate about scientific thinking here at Gumba Academy, is because, you know, it's, it is the way, you know, towards continuous improvement. Yes. All the tools are important, and you need to know all these tools, you know, so you can take a good next step. Because it might be that we need to do an msa, right? It's like, what's an msa? Well, it's called a measurement, you know, and so you got to learn, right? You got to learn how to do that. You got to go to class, you got to take the training, whatever it is, but knowing it in and of itself, who cares? It's like, you know, might not need an msa, but when you do. All right, what do you expect? What do you think's going to happen? Well, I think this, this measurement system here is amazing. It's a million dollar piece of equipment. It was just calibrated to the gold standard. Oh, wonderful. So play out the msa, and guess what? It's terrible.

Right, Right.

You know, and, but you learned. I could have the expectation that I pretty confident we're going to fail this msa.

Right.

And you could have the expectation that this is a million dollar piece of equipment, this thing is going to be great. And. Okay, let's write it down and then see what actually happens. What do you think about that whole framework with scientific thinking and managing expectations that way?

Oh, absolutely. And what's interesting about this is that when, when I was a personal trainer, I always kind of took that approach the scientific approach. I'm not just going to stand here and count repetitions for you. We need to understand why this is working. Right? This works, this doesn't work. And what's interesting about that, too, is that you'll get folks that. Do you have any injuries? Nope, nope. No injuries. I'm gold. And then about halfway through the workout, well, I was in a car wreck like six months ago.

Yeah, yeah. My back is starting to.

Yeah, yeah, that would have been good at the beginning. But it's the same thing here. I mean, just taking that scientific approach and just putting the egos aside and just looking at the problem for what it is and trying to understand and fix it, and that's really what every company wants. They just want folks that integrate, that work together well and that can get the problem done, you know, get it solved.

Now, what do you do in those situations where you're. You're trying to collaborate with another person on some endeavor, whatever it might be, and that person is presenting perhaps even negativity, or, you know, they're just not excited to be at the gym, or they're not excited for you to do this Kaizen event in their area. Because this lean thing, you know, I've seen this before, you know, flavor of the month or whatever it might be. So you almost have negative expectations. Have you experienced that? And if so, like, what are some ideas for. For countering that?

Oh, sure. I mean, it's. It's just human nature, right? It all comes back to behaviors and communication and that sort of thing, in my opinion. And so when I. When I run into that, it's still, for me, it's still that thing of, hey, look, you know, you're an expert in your field. I am not. I am not going to tell you how to do your job, but I just want to show you a different way of thinking so that maybe we can entertain some ideas that maybe this isn't working the way we think it's working. I'm going to rely on you to tell me about what it is you do so I can understand it more and try to help map it out. And what's really been good is when you start mapping out the process, it's amazing what people see that they didn't see. And again, with fitness, it's like, I'm not gonna give you a diet plan. Just write down everything that you're eating for two weeks. And what you don't realize is you go by that bowl of chips and you eat some, right? You go buy that, the candy store and you eat and you just, you don't think about become second nature. And so we do that with our jobs too. And so I just try to get that point across and just to let everybody know, you know, hey, look, we're in this together. Let's work on it. You know, if I'm stepping out of line or if you think I'm missing something, you tell me, I'm here for you. And I think when you turn it around like that and they understand that you just want to help. It's not about, I have to bring in a million dollar cost savings or I've got KPIs for my. It's not about that. If I fix a problem that's this small, I'm still fixing a problem, you're fixing it with me. It's going to have a ripple effect. It's going to affect the other parts of the process. And at very least, you're gonna see that other people are gonna understand that, oh, yeah, they went over here and they worked on this. And so then that's how you really build that culture. And Knopf's great because we have a. We have had a really strong CI culture since 2016. And then in 2021, we started move that into the office. And so I work mostly in the corporate office. And so that's been great because I've been able to work with some folks that maybe had some. Some doubts, who's this new guy that just keeps walking around and introducing himself, that kind of thing. But, you know, we're all in it together. And that's what I really want to get across is that that's what CI is about. It's a team effort. It's a team sport, right?

Yeah, yeah, 100%. So I'm wondering, Jason, if there's someone listening right now who is. Maybe they're early on in their continuous improvement, their lean journey, and I don't know, maybe they're just struggling or something like that. Like what? Speak to that person. Like, what advice do you have to help that person navigate these early days?

Well, you know, so for me, this has been a faith journey too. So I'm a Lutheran, so this has been a situation where I've been. I feel I've been put in and blessed with these opportunities by God. So it's been a great thing for me, it's been a faith thing. But aside from that, what I would tell people is don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. And I know that's hard sometimes for folks. I'm very extroverted, so it's easier for me. And I understand for some folks it's not, but just put yourself out there a little bit and just ask some questions and don't be afraid to ask for help or don't be afraid to say, I don't know, but we can figure it out together. I think that will help folks drive that CI type of mindset. And then you're going to start seeing again that ripple effect where people are coming together and they're wanting to understand how you're looking at things. If you're straight out of college or if you haven't gone to college, I would do all I could to learn some tools, some lean tools. They're great. And you don't have to know every single one. There's just too many to memorize in a short period of time. It's almost like. I mean, it is. It's its own discipline. So it's almost like going to college again, except you get college every day for the rest of your life. So just don't be afraid to learn, don't be afraid to ask. And you know, it's going to be surprising, I think, for some people if you do that, to see what comes out of it.

If you could go back to the day that you first were introduced to, to continue some movement, to lean to six sigma, whatever it was, and you had 10 minutes to spend with yourself and like Jason today could go back to that person back then, to Jason back then, would there be any advice you would give to that person, to Jason before?

Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be always, always keep learning. Just. Just keep learning.

Or maybe like, if you could do something over again as another way of thinking about it, like how you started. Was there anything that you wish? Gosh, if I would have known that, like, for me, it's scientific thinking. Like, had I. Had I known about scientific Mike Rother, I hadn't done a research yet, so couldn't have happened.

But had it.

Had it been available when I first started, boy, oh boy, how much more successful I think I would have been. Like that sort of thing.

Yeah, I think for me it was. So I had some difficulties trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up, so that as far as college was concerned and stuff. So it took me a while and I listened to my wife. And then if I had done that from the beginning, that would have been a lot easier. But I think it's just Really a matter of if I could go back and do anything or say anything to myself would be take this tool set, work on it, build on it, go out and see how it applies to different areas on the shop floor or in the office. See what you can do to make some improvements and see if you can get some people to give you some feedback on it and then go back and try to improve it again.

Yeah, yeah. Always listen to your wife, guys. You know, all the men out there who are married, you know, listen to your wife. That's good advice right there.

Rule number one. Yeah, yeah.

Good stuff, man. All right, well, hey, Jason, this has been a lot of fun. If, if folks want to connect with you personally, what's the, what's the best way.

So I'm on LinkedIn. You can also reach me at Jason Henderson 74outlook.com you know, drop me a line. Let's talk about Lean. I love it. I don't get tired of talking about it. I'll learn something from you and you learn something from me, hopefully. And yeah, and then we'll all be a little bit better off for awesome.

Well, we'll get your LinkedIn connected here on the show notes everybody. Just kind of scroll down on the app there, whatever you're listening on, and let's all go connect with Jason. And yeah, man, hey, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on.

Yeah, you too. Thanks so much, Ron. Thanks for having me on.

All right, take care.

You too.

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