GA 539 | Productivity Reimagined with Jacob Stoller

I remember when Toyota people first started to come to North America, they didn't say, we have this wonderful, fantastic system. They just said, well, we're okay, we get by, but you guys are terrible. Right? So the question is, supposing we take that at face value and we say, okay, why are conventionally managed companies so terrible?

Today, I'm excited to welcome Jacob Staller back to the show. Now, Jacob has a really interesting background, so he's, as he explains, he's a writer. And he first was introduced to Lean by being an author and writing about it and studying it and well, he's gone on to do a lot of really good work for our Lean community. He's written several books and he's got a new one coming out called Productivity Reimagined. And so today what we talk about is just the whole idea of productivity and, and why, why Jacob was interested in it and then kind of peeling back the layers of what it means to be productive, both from like sort of a manufacturing persp and even a service organization. So we sort of talk about both sides of that coin. And there's some really interesting aspects through Jacob's research where he was gig into and talking to an orchestra conductor and just some of the things that we can learn from different industries as it relates to productivity and really just achievement. So, yeah, a really fun episode. I think you're going to enjoy it. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 539. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Jacob, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I'm good, Ron, and great to be here.

Yeah, well, it's always good to chat with you. It's been a while. I mean, you've been on the show several times, but it's been a little.

While since it has. It has, yeah. Time flies.

Yeah, sure does. So well, Jacob, you know the drill. We like to get things, things started with our guest sharing a quote. What do you got?

Well, the one I, I refer to most often is, is the one. And I think it's John Shook has popularized it. But I think it was around for, for quite a while. It was that it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting. I love that quote and I, I kind of refer to it all the time.

What's it mean to you?

I think it's about really sort of a bias for action and it's the kind of fallacy of overthinking things that I know we all fall into now and then. And it's just a very, very useful kind of thing if you want to change. I think change comes with action, not just with thinking about a new way.

Yeah, yeah. You know, with the. With Mike Roller's work on Toyota Kata and scientific thinking, it's. It's so interesting that thinking's in there, but, you know, scientifically thinking, so like, thinking as you move, thinking as you experiment. Right.

Yeah. Thinking when you have some data from the real world, I think is. That's when thinking becomes more effective.

Yep. Yeah. Wonderful. Awesome. Okay, well, hey, Jacob, tell us a little bit about. About your background and how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff. And then I'm excited to talk about your new book. So maybe you could just kind of touch on that a little bit.

Okay. Yeah. You know, I. I came into continuous improvement as a journalist, so I'm a little different than a lot of you folks who are engineers and whatever. But I was actually. Was a complete accident. I was writing for a metalworking magazine, you know, metal working manufacturers, and someone said, could you look into this Lean thing? And I'd never heard of it. And I talked, you know, I interviewed somebody and, you know, at first I didn't get it, but I did eventually talk to a guy who, I think maybe, you know, Larry Cote, who. He was associated with the Lean Lei at one point, but, you know, he's up here in Canada. But he explained Lean to me in a way that I really got it, you know, and he started with value streams, you know, and talked about value and how it flows, and then, you know, what flow meant and all that. And then I started to get the picture that this is something different than the way I. I had heard management talked about before. So I, you know, one thing led to another. I started to write, because I'm a writer, started to write some things for his company, do interviews, do case studies and stuff like that. And then he connected his company, Lean Advisors, connected with Kaizen Institute. And John Miller was there. And I got to know John Miller. I wound up doing work for Kaizen Institute. I was the sort of, I guess, the key writer in the update on Mazaki Imai's second edition of Gemba Kaizen. And then I said, well, maybe I can write my own book. And, you know, with support, great support from John Miller, I wrote the Lean CEO. So that kind of was my entry into the Lean world, and people got to know me a bit more that way. Et Cetera, So, but that was some time ago. So I've been thinking ever since about the next act sort of thing in the lean world.

Yeah, awesome. Well, so, so you do have an upcoming book, Productivity Reimagined. So maybe it's just quick ele, like what's the book about and why did you write it? What problem are you trying to solve?

Oh, I think productivity is something that's both vitally important. I mean it's really the most important thing that a company can do is be productive. And at the same time it's misunderstood. You know, people measure it often in misleading ways and in the wrong way and in the context of Lean, I think Lean is the method that's very, very good at growing productivity. But I think it's often, you know, I think it needs to be maybe framed a little more directly. So what I've done with Productivity Reimagined is I sort of looked at sort of a basic question first, a basic problem. And that is, and I start this in the preface that people do human beings want to be productive and companies like to have people that are productive. Right? I mean it's, it's just, but somehow we have a disconnect between those, you know, somehow we have situation in traditionally managed companies where you've got only 30% of the workforce is engaged, right. And you've got almost as big a proportion of people that are actively disengaged. So employees are not engaged. And if you look at the economic statistics, statistics, the, you know, the mean salary for, for workers, non management workers has barely budged in 40 years. So you've got kind of a double, double edged sword here, I guess, where, you know, companies are not being, you know, they're not practicing sort of the methods that, that would allow them to be more productive. So I kind of looked into the why of this and you know, I remember, you know, when Lean Consultants or Toyota people first started to come to North America, they didn't say we have this wonderful fantastic system. They just said, well, we're okay, we get by, but you guys are terrible. Right? It was a sort of a, you know, and so the question is, you know, supposing we take that at face value and we say, okay, why are conventionally managed companies so terrible? And it really revolves around productivity. You know, if you really look at it, what happens is they do things in a way that people aren't productive. You don't grow your human productivity. So that's what I decided to do is to talk to people inside and outside of the lean world about what companies do wrong. How do companies sort of isolate themselves from the productive forces in their organizations?

I'm wondering. So then is it really a play on just sort of like streamlining and being efficient or. Because, like, productivity. That's a big word. Right. And it is.

Yeah.

And it can mean, you know, personal productivity could be being more productive in your factory or in your hospital or whatever it is that you're doing. So like, sort of, what's your angle with it?

Well, okay, great question. Yeah, the productivity I'm focusing on is company productivity, which is producing higher output or greater output with a given set of inputs. Right. So you've got. Essentially what that translates into is that can we make. Can we make our products faster, cheaper, or better without changing the resources? And, you know, it sounds pretty straightforward, but when it comes down to measurement, it often people don't know how to measure it and how to follow it.

So when you were writing a book and meeting with these folks, were there any sort of aha. Moments that. That jumped out at you?

Oh, boy, there sure were. There sure were. I mean, I think, you know, the first aha. Moment I would talk about is I spent. I had quite a few conversations with Orifiume about measuring productivity. And what's really interesting about Orey is that he was looking at this productivity problem almost 10 years before art Byrne showed up at Wiremold. So very early on he had. He had taken a course and he had discovered a white paper by, I think it was written by a guy named Jackson Grayson. But anyway, it was the American Productivity center, and they were warning that American industries had a huge productivity problem. And what he identified is he drew a sort of a graph, sort of a diagram. And it shows that, you know, you look input and you look at output, that there are two things that affect input and output. One of them is productivity. You know, whether you're. You're actually producing more with the resources you have. The other is something called price recovery. And he, he. That's a big category. It's whatever changes in price occurred between time A and type B. You're always comparing two time frames, right? So from time A to time B, did my material cost go up or down? Did my labor costs go up and down or down? That kind of thing. And then in the output, you know, there your prices, you know, which. Which may have changed as well. So the basic idea is that, you know, if your price went up, that doesn't mean. Or if your selling price goes up, it doesn't mean your employees are more productive, you know, and vice versa. Right. But it's, it's. What Orey found is it's very, very hard to separate those things. Right. He had to do a lot of work to get manual spreadsheets to kind of sort that out within Wiremold. But then he did know really where the productivity problems were and was able to, you know, help his teams troubleshoot that. But that, you know, as Ori says, that not a lot of attention was really paid to that until Art Byrne showed up and that became the accounting system. But just to finish that thought, I mean, we call this, it's been dubbed lean accounting. Right. We call it lean accounting now, but Orey doesn't like that term at all because he says the numbers that people were looking at, you know, based on standard costs and that sort of thing were not actually correct numbers. So we're not talking about lean accounting. We're talking about just accounting for the, for the actual numbers that exist. Right. Accurate accounting. So that should be standard. You know, that's what everybody should be looking at.

Right, right. So what do you think? You know, somebody's listening to this. And I mean, no matter what you do, what kind of business, whether you're making like Gemba Academy, we. Our product, if you will, is. Is primarily videos and podcasts and things like this. Right. And, and, and the way that we coach people. So, you know, obviously there's ways of us being more productive, more efficient with our resources. What about, like, some general tips for those who don't actually produce a widget? Right? Like they're not, they're not transfer, transforming metal or plastic or something like that. What are some ideas or some insights that you have for that audience?

Yeah, that's a good question. And I did study service companies as well as, as manufacturers, but I think that what I, what I've identified really, you know, the problems are not production problems, but they are kind of overall management problems. So I think, and by the way, I got a lot of input from people that work with it, with Deming principles, which was, was new to me, and I find that really fascinating. It parallels Lean in a lot of ways, but there are also some interesting differences in the way they approach things. But, you know, one of the, one of the examples was an architectural firm, right. And they produce, you know, obviously drawings and do things for clients, but they put a lot of emphasis on breaking down. You know, I think the standard image people have of a company is a sort of a hierarchy, right. Where you have departments and you have different people. And, you know, a large firm, you know, 50 people can get fairly siloed. So I think that's one of them. One of the lessons is what I put down is the myth of segmented success. And that is if each individual succeeds, and you see this a lot in creative environments, right? This idea, if the individual succeeds, then the whole organization succeeds. And that's not necessarily true. And we see that in production, but we also see it in service environments where the work has to kind of flow between people. Especially, you know, you're doing a project. I mean, an architecture design is a project, and it has to flow from one person to the next. And you have to have a lot of respect for people. You. People cannot have fear of speaking out about things. So there's a lot of the stuff you see. And, you know, in a lean production environment, you're going to see in service organizations as well.

Yeah, well, even, you know, traditional line balancing, you know, the example you just had with the architects and drawing, I mean, you know, if. If you've got to flow some sort of value through multiple people or multiple stages, you know, your traditional time studies and different things like that, they also apply. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah. And to show you just how broad it is, how broadly this can apply, one of my. One of my favorite case studies in. In the. In the book is I actually interviewed an orchestral cond. And what happens in a symphony orchestra. And you know, there's some amazing parallels, but there was. I don't. I don't know if any folks have seen this, but there was a docudrama last year. I think it was up for some Oscars, but it was called Maestro. And it was the. The story, the life story, the personal life story of a famous conductor, orchestral conductor Leonard Bernstein. And the. The mov. The film opens with a phone ringing, right? So he's in a. In. In his apartment, and the phone rings and he's being summoned to conduct the New York Philharmonic that evening, and with no rehearsal. So, you know, what happens is then you zoom to Carnegie hall, and there he is, triumphant performance. You know, he was wearing a business suit, he didn't have even tails. And next morning in the New York Times is this huge headline, you know, American Conductor Triumph, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I talked to this young conductor up here in Canada, and name is Evan Mitchell. And Evan said that that actually what happens in orchestral performances happen in the rehearsals. He said it's not the performance that really matters. He said the performance really is a kind of a celebration of the work that everybody's done together. So the real story then I found out, was that Bernstein had actually, you know, the orchestra had already rehearsed with a conductor who was sick and had had their rehearsals already. So Bernstein went to the conductor, found out, got all his markings, knew what he had done written on the score. So he knew it. And then when he went to the. You know, he arrived at Carnegie hall, he knew what was going on, and he basically just went through the motions. But that performance would have owed itself a lot to Bruno Walter, who was the original conductor who had gotten sick. So, I mean, that's really interesting because we get this kind of idea that leaders come in and just transform things and. And can do magic in. In a performance. And it's really. When. When they talk to Evan about the work that conductors do, it's quite different than that. You know, it's a lot more like a lean kind of operation because he's got, you know, he's got a bunch of people, you know, 50 or 60 people. Very. It's a very, very expensive. These rehearsals, you know, they cost many, many thousands of dollars. So every minute you spend has got to be spent, you know, as productively as possible. And what he does, he says, which he recommends to other conductors, is that he writes down all the instructions in pencil on everybody's part. We're talking 60 parts. He does all this preparation, but he says if I can save five minutes in a rehearsal, that might make the difference between a superb performance and just a mediocre one. So, you know, just this idea of time, the value of time, and also the value of working with people and making things easier for them is just enormous, you know, and he also said that in conducting school, they teach you all about the music, but they don't teach you how to manage people, which. Which I find is interesting. And it just. Kind of the same thing with business school, right?

Yeah. So I'm wondering, did that young man learn how to manage people just on the fly or, like, what do you think?

That's what he says? Yeah, he just had to learn on the job.

Wow. Super interesting. Yeah, I just love studying different fields of expertise and just seeing how they go about it. And then the more you zoom out and just look at sort of the meta thinking and the meta skills that are being employed, they're really not that different.

Really? Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

You know, key lean principles of blame the process, not the person. Right. And, yeah, when you really look at it in that Example of the orchestra, you know, the. It wasn't about the actual conductor. It was about the work and the process that went into it. And it was well documented.

You got it.

That was able to be handed off to another now, albeit expert, world class expert.

Yeah, right.

It wasn't his first rodeo either.

Right.

I mean, yeah, right. But suppose that helped a little. But. But without that practice, without that she. I don't think even he could have succeeded. Right.

Well, actually, this is one thing Evan pointed out. He said a good orchestra, really, you know, top orchestra, like the New York Philharmonic could have done that performance without a conductor.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think the conductor also is just part of the, you know, part of the show. Right. Like, you love watching them. Right. Because they look so established.

They do. And they play the act, but. But then again, it's. They're there to celebrate what the work that was done, you know.

Were you at the AME conference? Gosh, it was many years ago where there was the guy, big famous conductor, and he did the keynote speech. I don't know if you were at that conference or not, but it was very interesting. And all the things that you're saying and many of the things he was saying about how he like brought someone up and taught them how to play the piano kind of thing right on the spot.

I wasn't there, but I know there was someone that was doing that kind of thing. It was a Canadian conductor named Boris brought, and I don't know if that's who it was.

Might be right.

Yeah, he's passed away since, but yeah, I know he had some great stuff going. Yeah, yeah, wonderful.

Well, I wonder, Jacob, if there's any sort of final maybe advice that you have for folks that are out there trying to. You know, people listening to this podcast are all about productivity. They're all about trying to make things better, improve people's work and their lives and the world, really. Do you have any sort of parting tips or advice?

Yeah, I mean, I would say culture first. I mean, I think that the companies I talked with, and by the way, not necessarily lean companies, companies that done wonderful things with their people, you know, using deming principles and etc. You really have to get. You have to create the culture, build the trust, know where you're going, all this stuff before you start to sort of, I guess, train and transform stage, you know. So I would say there needs to be a lot of preparation. And then once you're there, of course, you know, then everybody's ready for it. Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. All right. Productivity Reimagined. When's the book available?

It's available October 14th. Okay.

All right, well, we're gonna get, is there pre orders and all that kind of good stuff?

Yeah, there's pre orders. You know, you can find that. There's a pre order if you, if you Google it on Amazon or through my website@jacobstoler.com, you know, you can click the link and pre order it.

Yep, got it. Well, we'll, we'll, we're gonna get everything linked up on the show notes here for this episode. So everybody just kind of scroll down, down on the whatever app you're using to listen to this and we'll have everything linked up to go pre order this book and.

Wonderful.

We'll put your LinkedIn profile and all that kind of good stuff in there, Jacob. And anything else.

Fantastic. Yeah.

All right, well, I look forward to checking out the book when it comes out and maybe after I read it, I'll have you back on and I'll have some more in depth questions or something.

Sounds great. Yeah.

Awesome. All right, well, thanks again, Jake.

Take care. Okay, thanks, Ron.

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