GA 543 | Using Improv in Kaizen Events with Adam Lawrence

If leaders walk by somebody not at standard, they're essentially saying, hey, it's okay to not be at standard. So you're not really protecting the interests of the employees or the business or the customers by allowing people to be off standard. So things can certainly fall apart if you don't have that.

Today I am excited to welcome my good friend Adam Lawrence back to the show. Now, as you'll hear at the beginning of the episode, this is the 10th time that Adam's been on the podcast. So I really love having Adam on the show. He's a fantastic storyteller and that's what really makes a good podcast, is when people are able to share stories. And so today what we do is we talk about. Adam has created what he calls the wheel of sustainability. And so we kind of walk through that. We've talked about that before on the podcast. So we spend just a few minutes reviewing it, but then really we get a really cool conversation about how he discovered during a Kaizen event, sort of like a rapid improvement event, how to use improv in order to help the participants of the event sort of prepare for any sort of resistance or any sort of, you know, sort of change management type issues they may encounter and also to just really make sure everybody involved in the event is able to totally buy in. And he stumbled across this as an experiment during a Kaizen event. And well, it worked so well that now he just really does it every time he runs it event. So it's a really cool aspect of how he goes about his work. And I think there's lots that any of us who are doing continuous improvement, we can learn from this and maybe even borrow it and, and try it ourselves. So really good stuff. I think you're going to enjoy it. Show notes can be found over@gemba podcast.com this is episode 543. Also, thank you to everybody that's left a review on the podcast, if you don't mind, whatever platform you're on, especially if you're listening on the Apple podcast app, if you can scroll down on the, on the page that you're listening to this on. And if you keep going towards the bottom, you'll see a little review section. If you, if you like the show, if you could give us a five star review and then type a few words in there. Because I read them all and I really appreciate all the comments that people leave. Makes me feel great, honestly, just reading the really positive reviews people leave. So, hey, also, if you think this show stinks, maybe to send an Email to me personally. Maybe don't put that on the review. I'm just kidding. You can do whatever you want to do, but. But, yeah, if you can leave a review, that does help the. The show sort of reach more people, and that's what we're all about. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Adam, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I'm doing great, Ron. Thanks for having me back.

So, all right, what episode? How many times you been on now?

This is the tenth time as far as my count.

Tenth. I mean, that it's got to be the most, isn't it? I mean, I know you keep stats, right? Are you number one now or what?

Well, my competitive nature wants me to be number one, but it just says that you might be struggling for content.

No. Are you kidding me? Trust me, it's not that. No, no, no, no. It's always about stories, and nobody really tells stories as good as you. Adam, previous guests. There's lots of great storytellers, but you're. You're fantastic. So that's why I like having you on, so. Oh, all right. Well, hey, you've been on. You know the drill, man. We like to get going out of the gate with a quote. So what do you got?

Okay, this one's from blues legend B.B. king, who said, the beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you. That's fantastic.

What's that mean to you?

So being in continuous improvement is always about learning, right? So what are we giving people? We're giving them a gift. How they can improve their work, their lives, their relationships, all that kind of good stuff. So what's neat is they get to take it with them no matter where they go.

Yeah, yeah. We actually just ran. We do a couple different, so in person workshops here. I actually ran one the last couple days. I get to do them every so often. And we were sprinkling in some scientific thinking and all that, and I was just. My big. My big. My big speech was, you know, the organizations that. I believe it, that. That excel, they learn their way fast. They learn faster than their competitors, and they. They learn their way forward, you know, and they're comfortable with experimentation and. And learning. And even if your experiment doesn't pan out the way you expected, beautiful. You still learned. Right? And, gosh, I think if everybody can fully embrace that idea of just the importance of. Of learning and not just, like, read a book and you learn something, but, like, you don't know, you have a problem. Like, learn what works and what doesn't work by running experiments. You know what I mean?

I totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah.

So good stuff. All right, well, Adam, my gosh, you've been on this number 10. So most people probably listening, if they're regular listeners, know who you are. But just in the case, we've got some folks who haven't heard any of the previous nine, and we're going to link them all up in the show notes so they can go back and check them out. But give us a rundown on who is Adam.

Well, I am your Kaizen ninja, so I have realized that what I love to do is help teams grow profits through sustained process improvement. But I'm all Kaizen event all the time. Do what I love, help people make very fast improvements and. And then sustain those improvements using the Wheel of sustainability.

Yeah, Love it. All right, so Wheel of Sustainability. I wish you would have picked something that was a little easier to say, though. Sustainability. I don't know why I can't ever say that word right. But we've touched on it in great detail in a couple hundred episodes ago. But give us a rundown of what it is before, you know, just to get just a level set. Like, what is it?

Right. So the wheel is my approach, my system to try to sustain improvements for teams so that the problems don't recur. Right. So if you kind of create an image of a wagon wheel, so I live in Amish country, so that's kind of an easy image for us. So there's a hub and there's eight spokes. And so those elements all put together help sustain whatever change or improvement that you're trying to make. So the center is leadership, commitment. So this is the whole idea of everything that the team does will be supported visibly by leaders. And then I can take you around the wheel if you're ready for that. So at the top at 12 o' clock is notifications. So we've made a change. We're going to communicate to the organization now. We need to know why we did what we did, because people will pay more attention to that than if we just say what the change was. So that message is really critical. So we want to define that very, very well so we can take that message all the way around the wheel. The next spoke is training and review. So this is a simplified version of training within industry. And this is a tell show and do. I'm going to tell you about the change. We're going to do it one to one. I'm going to demonstrate it to you to show you how to do it and that I respect your time and that I will then have you show it to me. That way I can assess whether you really understand the change and really can apply it directly to your work. The next is called Visible Evidence. So the idea here is that I can see whether you're on standard or off standard from at least 20ft away. That way, when I'm in Gemba, when I'm auditing, I can easily engage with you and either thank you for staying at standard and reinforce it or coach you back to standard. The fourth one is called All Tools Available. The idea here is that everything you need is right where you need it. No searching, you know, no fumbling for anything. So if I need a wrench in four locations, I have four wrenches all set and ready for me. I don't have to go to my toolbox. And the same thing works for virtual tools as well. Next element is clear benefits. So the idea here is that the change that we're making is seen as personally beneficial to, to the person who's going to have to use it. So I always encourage my Kaizen team members to go out early in the process to get feedback from people and to understand if they really believe it will help them. So it is not unusual to hear, oh, that's stupid. And so then we say, well, okay, why don't you try it? Then they try it and they go, okay, maybe that wasn't so stupid. That actually makes sense. So people will generally expect the worst and hope for the best. But when they try things, especially if we've tried to help them, then they can see at least our intent. And we're keeping the same message throughout the whole thing. And again, leadership commitment is supporting all those elements. The next is layered audits, meaning that the person that does the work is checking their work to make sure it's correct. But as we go up levels, we're checking with less frequency. So a manager may check once a shift or a supervisor wants a shift, a manager maybe once a week, the CEO maybe once a year. But we're, we're aligned around message and when we're auditing, it should be an engaging audit with the person doing the work. So we have a two way learning as well as making sure we're reinforcing the message and just again showing the importance of whatever the work is or the changes. All good audits should be five minutes or less. The next is accountability, and this is leadership accountability. The idea here is that it is not okay. To let people be off standard and just walk idly by. So we need to engage, we to reinforce, we need to coach, and we need to congratulate. So leaders have to take that accountability even if they're late to one of their zillions of meetings that occur any day, any week. The last one I call recognition. This is the storytelling. So, hey, we did this 5s, and my goodness, we now can respond to a call in three minutes where it used to take two hours. This is great. Let's do more of it. So that's what recognition is. So you. So you tie all those elements together with strong leadership commitment to say, hey, you're allowed to do all this, and all of a sudden you have a much better chance to sustain whatever changes you're trying to make.

So I'm actually looking at a PDF version of the Wheel. We had it linked up in episode 287.

Wow, that's a lot of fun.

I pulled it up. So I'll go ahead and get Jessica to relink this up in the show notes for this episode. And that way, folks, you can print it out and, you know, have reference of it. So but just if you're only listening right now and you're not looking. So notification, training and review, visible evidence, all tools available, clear benefits, layered audit, accountability, recognition, and then leadership, commitment there in the middle and the hub. So one, one. I've probably asked you this before. I think I know the answer, but I just want to be.

I want to.

When I'm looking at it, you know, you can see that, for example, like, like layered audits is. Is insane in the line. Same line of the. Of the wheel with training and review. Like, is there any reasoning for the positioning that you put them on the wheel?

Yeah, so I'd like to think that I did that intentionally. So we would call that intentionally brilliant. It might be unintentionally brilliant. So they do connect. I started to go with kind of from a traditional physical means all the way into the mental and behavioral means as you go around the wheel. It was the way I thought. It may not be how everybody else thinks, but it does seem to connect. So, yeah. Yeah, sure. Maybe.

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Like, yeah, like clear benefits and notification sort of linked up. I mean, recognition and all tools available. I don't know if that. I don't know.

Yeah, probably not, but.

But yeah. So, like, do you think that it's kind of like, you know, each. Each spoke is your. Your child or one of your kids, you know, so that you like them all equally. But do you, do you see any of them that perhaps are a little more important than others or do you just feel they're all equally weighted?

Well, okay, that's a great question. So certainly if you don't have leadership commitment, the whole thing falls apart. So the idea here, if leadership doesn't support all these things and give us the time to do these things, there's nothing in this works. Yeah. Okay, so that was kind of an easy one. Yeah. Let's talk about clear benefits a little bit. To be honest, if the person doesn't connect to this idea being better for them, they're not going to do it. Right. So I don't know about you, but I've walked through facilities, manufacturing facilities, where somebody should be wearing their safety glasses and it's on their forehead. Yeah, right. And the manager comes by and all of a sudden the safety glasses are over their ey. Okay. So clearly they're not seeing the benefit of the protection that the safety glasses provide. They're not seeing it as a personal benefit. So that's probably one that's stronger in my opinion. Accountability is probably the second one. So if leaders walk by somebody not at standard, they're event essentially saying, hey, it's okay to not be at standard. So you're not really protecting the interests of the employees or the business or the customers by allowing people to be off standard. So things can certainly fall apart if you don't have that.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I think my favorite is visible evidence.

Okay.

You know, it's kind of like one of my favorite things to do if I'm ever visiting a, a company, say it's a manufacturing company, walk out into the shop floor and just, you know, randomly walk up to any associate and introduce myself and, you know, how's it going and all that. And, and I'll just ask a question, hey, are you winning or are you losing right now?

Right.

And I just love that question because within seconds, you know, they'll respond with if they know, they'll tell you. Right. And, but it's very evident I'm not trying to get them or any. If they don't know, I'm not, you know, beating them up or anything like that. But, but that's very clear. If you have, you know, just even a simple hour by hour board or just any sort of way of knowing, are we on track, you know, for what we're supposed to be doing and just the whole idea of visual management, you know, it's just so powerful, in my opinion.

But.

But yeah, all good stuff. So obviously, I know you do a lot of of Kaizen events and support companies and sort of one of your strengths. I'm wondering, how does this whole wheel of sustainability, how does it play into doing like a rapid improvement event?

Okay, so one of the reasons why I developed this system was that I was doing Kaizen events in the 90s, and what I found out was three months, six months later, the problem had resurfaced. And that bothered me a whole bunch. So then I made a big mistake one time of asking my sponsor why he was never visiting us during the Kaizen event. Was he not committed to our improvements? And he kind of ran me back to corporate. So I realized that the whole issue was me. So what I needed to do was come up with some way that during the Kaizen event, during the project improvement phase, we could sustain those changes. Right. So that was what created the wheel in my mind. That wasn't a wheel to begin with, but that's neither here nor there. So the reality now is I introduced the wheel on the first day of any Kaizen event. And the goal and the expectation is we will implement all elements of the wheel by the end of the event. Okay, so. And we've been very, very successful with that because I think, you know this, you set a high expectation, people will meet it. So they don't want to lose. Like you said, hey, are we winning? Well, teams always want to win. So the. One of the Kaizen objectives is implement the wheel of sustainability. So they want to know more about it. What is this thing? How does it work? How do we apply it to the thing we're doing? And do my best to explain and demonstrate and all that kind of stuff. But yes, during every Kaizen event, we do implement the sustaining system.

So. I understand, and I didn't know this, but just we were chatting the other day and you got to telling me a little bit about how you started to use improv or you know, like role playing during these events. Like, tell me more about that.

Okay, so if you write the book on sustainability, you think it's kind of easy because I'm not really an. I'm an author, but not a writer, if that makes any sense. Right. So I was just trying to describe the things that I had been doing so that others could do it, and it just seemed pretty easy to me. Right. So I introduced this thing and I could tell. Took me a while to kind of catch on that they got it, but they didn't know how to apply it very well. So a couple years ago, I tried an experiment. So we're always learning, right? Every Kaizen event is a new learning experience. I've done maybe 400 now, I don't know, in 35 years. So 10 a year. Let's just call it that. So anyway, I just noticed that they really weren't. They weren't putting in as strong a sustaining solution as I thought they could. And again, I realized, well, that was my fault, right? So the experiment was this. One of my teams a couple years ago, I said, hey, day three of a five day event. Is anybody willing to pretend they are the skeptical new employee? And yeah, so we get those a few times, right? And I will attempt to be the team member taking you around the wheel, around the project you're working on right now. You haven't even finished it. But I want to kind of give you a way to think about every element related to your potential solution. So of course, nobody raised their hands, right? But one guy finally goes, all right, I can be the skeptical employee. I'm going to challenge you. And I say, sure, okay, let's do that. So he came up. I picked one of the three things they were working on, and I started doing the whole, hey, did you know a Kaizen team, you know, was chartered to do this? Here's the problem they were trying to solve. And I got together with your leadership four to six weeks ago, and we really worked out, hey, not only what the problem was and what we were trying to accomplish, but the team we wanted, and we were going to clear your schedules. And you see how our sponsor came in the first, first day at 7am and how we had a team dinner. All that's leadership, commitment. Your leaders said whatever you were going to accomplish, it was so critical that they're going to clear your schedules and whatever solution you come up with. He was backing you 100% and basically inspired greatness at the beginning and then left. So there it was, leadership, commitment. And the guy goes, oh, I didn't realize that, right? So then I took and I attempted to apply notification training and review all of those things one at a time with the messaging, you know, And I was making this up as I went along, but I do one element at a time. And then I'd look at the guy and then he'd do his skeptical. Yeah, but you know, this stuff's gonna just go back to the way it always was. Or whatever. Whatever he said at the time, that was two years ago. But anyway, so we go through every single piece of the wheel. It took about, let's call it 20 minutes, you know, because he was trying, I probably wore him down after the fourth element, right? Because he tried to be all skeptical. But after a while I was like, yeah, that actually makes sense. I said, dude, you give me a tougher challenge, right? Come on, man. I do this all the time. But you know, eventually it kind of made sense and you could see the other team members starting to get into it, right? So like I said, About 20 minutes after, you know, we do a little clappage for the improv, you know, the volunteer. And so then they go about their work. And what I noticed, or what I thought I noticed was they seemed to have a deeper understanding of how to apply the wheel to their specific projects that they were working on to make the improvements. So that was pretty cool. And then at the end of the event, I always do a kind of anonymous post it note, event evaluation and facilitation evaluation. So what you like, what didn't you like? So I'm not, I'm not highly structured. I'm just a plus and delta kind of guy. I never look at it until I have a final review with my leader and my sponsor. So I open up these post its with my leader and sponsor and there's some very deep feedback specifically about the improv. I said, oh, well that's pretty cool. But that's just one data point, right? This is one data point. Absolutely. Positively is not a trend at one data point. But I knew that in prior feedbacks I was getting, yeah, this wheel sustainability is a little complicated, right? So I said, okay, I'm going to try that experiment again with the next team. Well, I got similar feedback and you know, pick another topic, you know, and I'm not the world's best improv, but if that's a word, I don't even know. But I had the next skeptical person and again the feedback was like, yeah, this really makes sense. Thank you for doing that. Somebody actually wrote thank you for doing that. So eventually I got to the point where I do it all the time. And getting a volunteer is not always too easy because people don't love doing role play. But you know, those that have worked with me more than one time, they get it and they'll easily volunteer. But I get a lot of new team members every time I do a kaizen. New company, new team members, new problem, whatever the issue is. But I found that this is something that keeps getting good feedback. So what I realized is, as Easy as it seems to me, until you make something real, you know, that's when people start to see. So it's almost like I'm using the wheel of sustainability around my wheel of sustainability. Right. So, yeah, I just keep learning how important it is to make it clear to the people that need it, rather than the guy that authored it.

Yeah. There's something about watching, like, really good improv. What's that one TV show, you know, where they always had to get up and do crazy stuff.

Yeah.

It's just incredible how.

Yeah.

You know, and it's almost. It's just. It's almost like a deep, innate. Like it's. It's moving in a weird kind of way because it's like. It's art, but it's just on another level that, you know, there's no script. Right. And maybe there's something. I don't know what the word is, but there's something primal almost about it. Right. And. And maybe that's why it's working so well, is because deep inside, people maybe want this to work. Or if, you know, if they don't want it to work, if they're just being negative, you know, this sort of taps into a. An emotional trigger in their brain or something. That's just not normal. I'm wondering if there's more opportunity for continuous improvement practitioners to do stuff like this, you know, because it's not your normal activity at a Kaizen event. I think that's probably happening at one Kaizen event, and that's yours, you know, when you're doing this type of stuff. So.

Well, I mean, if you think about it, every Kaizen event is improv anyway. Right. Because the moment it starts, you're going sideways anyway. Right?

Yeah.

Because everybody's got different issues. They've got different things on their mind. The problem might seem obvious, but they all see it a different way. But. But I do think. And I think there are others doing maybe similar things. I think I've heard of this one other time, maybe not one of your episodes, but I can't remember. I can't remember who it was, but she wrote the book with the 50 different quotes. I was interviewed. Elizabeth. I can't remember. That's terrible. That's terrible. It's tough getting older. Man just turned 60. So sometimes we forget. So forget Elizabeth Swan, right? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. That's right.

You're right.

Right, right. I forgot about that.

Yeah.

Well, I've also had a lady. I'm trying to find it here where she is like A professional improv person. Oh, Tim Petrie also played around with some different stuff like that.

So while you're looking here, here's what I think about all this. Why did I really do this? And why does it take a while to get your mind to this? All of this continuous improvement work should be about them and not us, Right. So you're really trying to give back to the community. So the more you keep it to yourself, you just think they know all that. Hey, what's lean? Hey, what's 5s? Hey, what's this? What's that? So when we get. There's a point in our careers where we get away from tools and get to actual foundational principles about respect for people. So if you design all your activities in every continuous improvement arena to the Respect for People foundation, you redesign everything so that those people have that best possible experience. So my experiment was getting off of the hey, why don't they understand it thing to the hey, they don't understand it. That's on me. I better figure out something to help them better or else they don't get as good a win is. I'm trying to help them get to. Yeah.

If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught.

Right? Exactly.

So.

Exactly. Yeah, I was looking at those quotes too. I said, yeah, you probably heard that one before. I did, but I said, hey, B.B. king. That must be a new one. I don't know.

Yeah, it was. Ah, good stuff, man. Oh, well, I'm curious to hear maybe 20, 30 episodes from now, what new trick you come up with, because I'm sure you will, but I want to wrap things. I got an interesting question for you.

Sure.

Something that's been on my mind a lot lately. It's just thinking about, like, what do you think the future of our sort of lean, continuous improvement, whatever you want to call it, this movement of ours, what do you think the future holds for us?

Well, I think, first of all, we are designed to help people. Right. First and foremost, we're trying to help people solve problems and pretty sure that problems are going to still exist. The thing for me, for the future, personally, and for the movement is this. Stop worrying about the tools. The tools really haven't changed. Even the Wheel of Sustainability is just my image of a bunch of continuous improvement tools all put together. Right. There's nothing new in that. But all it's trying to do is help people solve problems and keep them solved. Right. So in a future way, you know, I don't worry about AI. I don't worry about machine learning. I don't worry about that because we're going to have other problems to solve. Right. Hey, how do we simplify how we implemented AI in our organization? But I don't think 5s changes. I don't think respect for people changes. So I guess I'm fairly conservative in this. I think Shingo and Ono and all those other early ones had the right idea and we're still people with emotions and problems to solve and we need help.

Yeah.

So I don't really see a lot different with it. And I'm still, you heard me do this a few episodes back. I'm still butt ugly by Friday. So the idea is I don't need complex tools. I don't need complex computer programs to help people solve problems, make it pretty later. Let's solve the problem, let's sustain the solution. And then you can, you can worry about what it looks like, you know, after I leave. We don't have time for all that, all that Vizio or whatever to do. That isn't a new thing. Clearly. But I'm all posted all the time. Yeah.

I love it. Love it. Hey, Adam, if folks want to connect with you, what's the best way?

Well, hey, in person. Although it might be too late, I want to promote a couple conferences I'll be speaking at. So Paul Critchley has the Northeast Lean summit, and that's September 12th and 13th in Connecticut. And Jared Thatcher has the Global lean Summit, the September 16th through 20th in Columbus, Indiana, which is really cool because we're going to spend a whole day at a Toyota material handling plant. So hopefully it's not too late. But if you don't catch us this year, maybe we can get you for next year for sure. So that's fun. You can find me me on LinkedIn. You can find me on my website, PI-partners.com you can read my book on Amazon, add to my 53 reviews. Right. So maybe one day I'll get to 54 or just, you know, just connect up with me. Many ways to find me.

Got it, Got it. Well, it's always a pleasure, my friend. I love having you on and I know you'll be on again down the road and we'll be Talking about number 11 and all the rest of it. So keep up the great work and, man, I appreciate you.

Thanks, Ron. Appreciate you as well.

All right, take care. 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 50 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. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.