GA 559 | Organizational Problem Solving with Matt White

Is it takes leadership and it takes their intentional investment to promote scientific thinking. And it starts with them and they set the tone. And how we engage them in problem solving is really that top level support and engagement with the frontline staff that are taking on these challenges every day.

Today I'm excited to welcome Matt White to the show. Now, I've interacted with Matt over the years on LinkedIn, so I was excited to finally get him on the podcast. And we. Really fun, good, great conversation, really focused on the whole idea of problem solving and in particular. So. Well, first of all, let me say, and Matt, I'll explain his background, but it's, it was really cool because he's got a healthcare background who is now in manufacturing. And as we talk about, like a lot of times it's been the other way around. I've heard of folks in manufacturing getting into healthcare. So it's kind of cool how the lean world is sort of evolving and, and how now we've got them going in the other direction. So I just thought that was really neat. So he brings diverse background to the, to the table and he was able to really just dive deep into topics like, you know, how do we make sure that we're solving problems at the right level in the organization, how do we make sure we got the right people involved? And then towards the end, we got pretty deep into just really the leader's role in problem solving and really just continuous improvement. And I thought that was probably my favorite part of the whole conversation was just really hearing his thoughts on, on how we as leaders or those of us that are leading our, you know, our lean initiatives, like what's our role and what should we be doing? So good stuff. I think you're going to enjoy the show. This, this episode is 559, so just go to Gemba podcast.com and check out the show notes all. And as always, just scroll down on your app, whatever you're listening to and please be sure if you're not already, go connect with Matt on, on LinkedIn. He shares a lot of great content over there and thank him for coming on to the show. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Matt, welcome to the show. How are you?

Doing well. Ron, how are you?

I'm doing great. Doing great. All right, where are you calling in from?

I'm calling from legendary Lake Mills.

Lake Mills.

Lake Mills, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin. Your Badger or.

Well, we live in the Badger State. I'm originally from Ohio, so we're. Yeah, we're Buckeyes and too, man.

Me too. So we're. Well, we're recording. I. I grew. I'm in Texas, but I grew up in Greenville, Ohio. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm a Buckeye for life. Yeah. Well, we're recording this on October 11th. Just to be fully transparent. It's not going to come out for, like, almost a couple months or whatever. We're way ahead right now. But we got a big one this weekend. We got Oregon. Man, I'm a little nervous. Man, I'm a little nervous.

Yeah, we. We have a lot of his. My. My brother went to Ohio State and played in the band in the 90s.

And.

And my dad was a graduate from Michigan State who played in the band in the 60s. Yeah. So we're pretty big in the Big Ten. Yeah.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, hey, man, I'm excited to have you on the show today, and I know we've bumped into each other on LinkedIn over the years and all that, so it's fine to finally to connect with you. So, hey, as you know, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote or two. What do you got?

Yeah, so there's two of them. I'll give you two of them that really just stick close to me and just about everything that I do. And the first one is from John Maxwell, which is everything rises and falls on leadership. And then the second one that I have is a Mike Rother quote, which is scientific thinking. It's why we put erasers on pencils.

Oh, yeah. You know, the most important thing in that one is use a pencil.

That's right. That's right. That's all I use.

Yeah, yeah. Use a pencil.

A lot of erasers.

Yeah. I think my favorite kata quote, not really a quote, more of a little saying, but is you've been to, like, the various conferences now have the little badge or the little button that says don't be so sure. You know, that's the one that I love. Don't be so sure. Yeah. Good stuff. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Matt. Tell us about your backgr. Um, how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and what you're up to these days.

Yeah. So my. So my background, I. I worked a little over 20 years in the healthcare space, so hospitals, clinics, really full healthcare operations. I started out in the lab as a phlebotomist and really just kind of grew in various roles, I think, from continuous improvement mindset. I think my mind just naturally leans that way and so as I had different roles within the lab operation, we drove a lot of improvement, a lot of patient safety, quality things that we were driving from a patient's perspective. And that led to various roles and opportunities that was very fortunate to have in terms of helping the organization grow from a continuous improvement standpoint. Part of that was after I was done working in the lab, I was there for about 12 or 13 years, was a supervisor there, and took the opportunity to be the patient experience coordinator there. And from there it was really getting into all corners of the organization and all patient experiences, from not being able to find a parking spot to medical errors and being able to work with teams and leaders in problem solving. Those issues that were coming in really, really helped me identify where I thought I could use my gifts and talents in the organization. And so when the opportunity came up to be a continuous improvement facilitator at the organization, jumped at that and had really good leadership helping grow and develop me in that area. That's where I was really introduced to the lean Toyota production system, Toyota Way, Toyota Kata, back in the 2013, 2014 timeline. And really that was really where I felt that I could add the most value with the things that I was doing in the organization. And so really the rest is history from there. Just working in continuous improvement roles in a few different health care organizations, helping improve patient outcomes and population health, and really engaging teams and leaders in their day to day improvement work. And so like I said, I had done that for about a little over 20 years in healthcare and then most recently in the last year and a half or two years left the healthcare organization or industry and I'm now working for a manufacturing company, more on the transactional side. So the front end, so customer care, commercial marketing, sales on the front end of the business and really working to drive improvement from the customer's perspective, similar to like I did in healthcare. And so it's leveraging a lot of the same transactional process improvement kind of philosophies and methodologies. And it's been a wonderful transition. A little nervous about it when you spend so much time in one industry, but just I've been really surprised, surrounded by great leaders and people that take the time to explain things and help me learn and grow too. And that's just been a really smooth transition for the last 18 months, almost two years.

Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, historically I would say a lot of folks that I've interacted with in the continuous improvement world have started in manufacturing and then gone into healthcare and you're like the reverse man. You start healthcare now you're going into manufacturing. So that's pretty neat. You know, you don't, you don't see that a lot. So that's, that's pretty cool. I'm curious to get your, your, your hot take on the, the, the times. And people say, well, we're not, we're not, we don't manufacture something, so lean doesn't work for us. You know, like, we're not, you know, like, like what, what are your immediate thoughts on when you hear that?

Yeah, I think that, I think the behaviors and mindset is an important thing to, to start with, meeting people where they're at. When I was interviewed with the company that I'm at now, one of the questions that was asked was around how you take this kind of lean manufacturing methodology and how did you apply that in healthcare? That was really the starting point of our conversations and what that could look like here. Really, it's just unpacking the, what problem are you trying to solve and how can we systematically go after that, Leveraging the, the various tools that are out there, but really it's, it's engaging the people and meeting them where they're at and trying to understand from their perspective, like, what's, what's the pain point for them.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, well, speaking of sort of problem solving, it's going to be really, really the theme of today's episode. Maybe we could just call it like organizational problem solving. So maybe to start with, I'd like to get to pick your brain a little bit on what you've seen or what you've experienced or maybe what your opinions are as far as, you know, organizations, like, identifying problems, like how are they going about it and then how are they sort of solving them from an organizational perspective?

Yeah. In my experience, working with teams and leaders and their problem solving is just the importance of where the problems are identified, how they're uncovered, and how we bring the right people into the problem solving process so that we're really focused on the main thing. Something that I use in a lot of my trainings, I use. If you Google it, it's the iceberg of ignorance. And with my group and in my trainings, I've retitled that just out of respect for people. I don't want to call leaders and people ignorant, but I call it the iceberg of distance. And in that distance, there's a process within problem solving where if you haven't had eyes on the problem, should you really be engaged in solving it. And so kind of working through that distance is what is the problem you're trying to solve and relative to the proximity of where you sit in the organization and trying to solve it. And so part of what we do in that problem solving is, you know, if you think at the top of that iceberg, they may identify a problem or they may hear about something. But how do we engage the people at the lower levels in that problem solving and that we're not skipping levels in that. And so at the top of the iceberg you might get the background of what, what is happening. You might get that top level 10,000 foot view of the pain point. But as you dig into it, it's really going to be the people on the front lines that understand and know that pain point better than anybody else. And so how do we bridge that gap? And so teaching leaders and coaching leaders to go to Gemba to go and see the problem at the point of impact and then how they can enable people to solve those problems that, that are on those teams and, and experiencing that pain point.

So what happens though? So you, so basically, if I'm hearing you right, it's really trying to figure out that we're at the right level in the organization to, to make it happen. But what happens if someone at the, let's just call a higher level attempts to solve something at a lower level? Like will it, can it succeed or is it probably doomed to fail?

I guess it depends. I would say that if we're trying to solve it at that highest level and we're not engaging the front lines, it might not be doomed to fail, but it may take much longer to solve.

Yeah, well, even that change management side, that's maybe it would be more akin to doing lean to someone instead of, you know, cooperating with folks and having them, you know, go along with you instead of doing it to them.

Right. And yeah, and that's a big thing that when we scope these problems with the leaders and you pull them together to scope out whether it's a charter or whatever it is you're, you're using to bring that team together, you're scoping it out with that respect for people in mind so that as the leaders are brought into the conversation, it's setting their teams up to succeed and the leader's role is to remove barriers in that process. So maybe the barrier is, if it's a big problem that we've identified, a barrier is hey, if we can't pull people offline for a half a day or A day to solve this problem. That's a barrier that they can help remove. Yeah, right. So that we can have that focused effort if that's, you know, if that's the route that you're going to go to help solve that problem.

Do you have sort of a preferred, I don't know, problem solving technique? Are you kind of like a eight step Toyota business practice, practical problem solving? Are you DMAIC or PDCA? What's your favorite flavor of problem solving?

Yeah, definitely PDCA leveraging A3 reporting. And that is kind of my go to. I think that, you know, different organizations that I've been in have had different tools and templates and methodologies that they use. And so there's, there's some instances where they've had kind of the hard, hey, this is what we use. And so it's been, you know, it's a little bit of a challenge to work around that. I'm not so much focused on the tool as much as I am the thinking that goes into it. Yeah. So I always try to focus on that PDCA really that, that methodology of, you know, what's the problem we're trying to solve, what's the plan we're going to pull together and really spending a good chunk of our time working through that before we get to the, the DCA of that, of that process.

So I know you're a fan of scientific thinking. Toyota Kata. You quoted Mike Roller earlier, like what? How do you see scientific thinking playing into your attempt at solving problems?

Yeah, it's huge. I mean that's one of the things that we really try to set up out of the gate is the success metric of this, which is if we're going to solve this problem, how will we know what's going to be the indicator of whether or not this problem is solved? And so going through that scientific thinking of, hey, if we do this, we expect that to happen and then measuring whether or not it did. I'll say that going through different healthcare organizations and where I'm at now, I tend to not use the Kata or TPS verbiage. But definitely that thinking in my experience has been important in driving some of that change in the problem solving process. Like for example, just with using Toyota Kata is what's our target condition? Right. Like what are we aiming for? And then where are we at today and where do we want to be in a week? And what are the obstacles and those barriers that are preventing us from getting there? And kind of slowly working through that process is the thinking that's behind a lot of the problem solving tactics that I use with teams.

So you mentioned it. Maybe it was, if I heard you right, like maybe previous organizations or something. You were careful with the verbiage that you used. Tell me more about that.

Yeah, just being mindful of sticking to the language. And this is something that a mentor of mine has really coached me towards in the last number of years, which is using the language of the company and so really trying to not be a disruption in what we're trying to do. And so really just trying to use what I call kind of the language of the land. Appreciate. Yeah. So, like, the. The company that I'm working for now, they have a couple of tools that they use for problem solving. One of them is called the ipdca, for example. And so sticking with that, the ipdca, in my mind, as I look at it, is really just an A3 problem solving methodology. Leveraging PDCA.

What's the I stand for?

I'm. I'm not sure what the AD stands for. I'm not sure. I haven't asked. It's just like, okay, this is your template. That's all right. Yep. We can, you know, whatever innovation here it is. Yeah, could be. Yeah. Individual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be a number of things. But, yeah, that's just an example of, you know, and we're kind of working towards this methodology, too. Of. I think it's practical problem solving and really that. Practical problem solving, as you look at the tool, it's just the construct of PDCA and A3 thinking, as well as that scientific thinking of hypothesis testing. And this is what we're planning to do. This is what we expect. And then what was the outcome? And so I wouldn't challenge the, I guess, the language that they're using and be sensitive to that so that we're not creating confusion as we're working, especially with CI professionals across different departments and divisions, that I'm not using verbiage that doesn't align with what they're using. And they're like, well, what. Well, what's kata like, what do you mean by that? Right. So I kind of stick to the methodology that they're using, and I try not to deviate my language too much for that. Mm.

Yeah. I've been in. I've been in your shoes, and I've actually approached it a couple different ways. You know, like, I've. I've done what you. What you do, sort of just sort of cooperate with it. But then there were times where I'm like they just. Again, using the words carefully here, but like they were unconsciously incompetent. Like they didn't even know what they didn't know.

Right.

And so, so there were times where I said, hey, I'm going to introduce a new word here. It's Japanese. Don't freak out, you know, whatever. And it's kaizen or it's kata or it's, you know, whatever it might be. And I feel like there's been. Over the years, there's, there's some people don't ever say Japanese words in here, you know, or, you know, and it's kind of like, I don't know, you know, so it's like, so it's. It, it. It's an interesting one. And I'm always curious to hear people's perspectives. And I mean, sometimes it's not worth what we say. Don't quarrel over words. Right, right. Like don't, don't argue over words. So if it's easier to say continuous improvement than kaizen, fine. Are we doing it? That's what's matt. That's what matters, I guess.

Right, Right.

So.

Yep.

Yeah. Well, I want to swing back to just really thinking about problem solving. We kind of touched on it a little bit. But when I go back to like, how do we make sure that we've got the right people involved? I mean, I get that. Yeah. If it's at the front line, kind of go to the point of cause or sort of thing. But like, how do you do that though?

Right?

Like, how do we identify the folks that should be involved in this improvement endeavor?

Yeah, that's in an organization that's as large as the one that I'm in now. I feel like in healthcare it was a little easier and maybe it's because I knew healthcare a little more in depth, but where I'm at now, I would say that the challenge is working through the iterations of developing a problem statement to help us get closer to that. I think what I have found in some instances is that problems are identified that are really symptoms for a department, not so much problems for the department in terms of being able to solve them. And so really it's that cross functional alignment of, hey, we've identified a problem in this area. We really don't influence this. Or it's really not a task or a process of ours. It's a process of somebody else's either upstream or downstream stream. And so really it's getting to that, that granular detail of the problem that's at Hand and being able to identify who the right people are to bring in to the room for that problem. And so working through a few iterations of a problem statement and really allowing that to direct us as well as bringing in the right data to point us where the problem is actually occurring. And so those two things together take time. I call that kind of my go slow to go fast process and working with leaders to understand really that peeling back of the onion, so to speak, so that we can really get to the right place of where the problem is happening.

Yeah, I mean I've used as simple as it is, like a basic SIPOC can be super helpful. Right. Because you can look at your, your, your, your suppliers and your customers and kind of like those are the key. Those folks need to be on the product, on the team. Right. It's so easy to do. But a lot of people don't use basic tools like that to, to help.

Yes. Yeah. SIPOC is definitely one of those go to once we've. And that's really part of that, that iteration of the problem statement and how we're working through that is working through that side pocket and saying okay, right. Like how do we condense this so that we aren't spreading that process too thin. Where now our potential Kaizen event or our workshop is now a party. Right. Where we've got a lot of people and so we want to try to eliminate the party invites and the spectators as much as possible and really try to get the, the right people in the room. And a side pocket is an excellent way to distill that down.

What are your thoughts on, you know, sort of like let's call it maybe I know you're more on the, the front end side, but let's pretend you were in the factory, in the, in the manufacturing area and you're going to run some big event or whatever in some manufacturing process. What is your take on inviting an HR rep to join the team who has no idea what's going on out there? Like have you ever experimented with something like that?

Not intentionally. I would say that we just ran an event where an HR partner was involved and the learnings that that individual had within our two day workshop was enlightening. And so having somebody who's maybe not directly involved with the process and the tasks and getting their input, at least in this two day workshop was in my mind kind of something that I can think about going forward is does it help to have. I mean, I'm an outside perspective, you know, from a facilitating standpoint, but does it help to include somebody from an outside perspective as well? That last workshop really makes me, as I was reflecting on it, think on, you know, is there opportunity like this in other things that I do and how can I incorporate that going forward? I think that's an important piece to not just have me as a facilitator asking questions, but having a, maybe a secondary person and being thoughtful about who that person might be.

I remember many, many years ago I was involved in a SMED event in a factory and this, in this team, I was facilitating it. And I wasn't an expert either on this particular piece of equipment, but they invited an HR professional onto the team and they all knew each other, you know, they're all friends and all that. But I never forget like this, this young lady, she was just like why do you do that? Like that simple question like why do you do that? And she said it just like, not in a sarcastic way, but she was really curious like why would you do it that way? And they're like, I don't know. And she was right, you know, there was no sense in how they were doing something. And so having that complete outsiders. Because the problem with having just a bunch of experts air quote experts on a team is they're so biased. Right. Because they built that process, right. Probably that it's not that they're bad people, but they're just biased, biased. And so bringing other people in who don't have that same bias sometimes can be helpful. But I don't know, it's been my experience. I was just curious what you thought.

Yeah, And I think that's, you know, before I facilitate a workshop or a Kaizen event like that, I always have a reflection to start off with to help level set that bias and that, that's the way we've always done thing. And one of my go to reflections at the start of these events is having somebody write their name out on a piece of paper with, with the hand that they normally write on. And then I have them write their name with the hand that they don't normally write with. Right. And it's really uncomfortable and the reflection is right, like oh, I had to think about how to spell my name or right. I ran out of space to write on the paper. Right. And it's uncomfortable. Yeah. And so as we go into these events, it's really thinking about, you know, the problem didn't occur and we didn't get here in one day and you're not going to solve it in one day. And so we're going to have to go test and iterate and it's going to take deliberate practice. And you know, and I tell them if you practice writing with your opposite hand for 20 minutes a day, you'd be able to do that over a period of time. And so it's unlearning and relearning the things that we've always done and that are just normal in habit for us for sure.

So maybe to wrap things up, we kind of touched on this earlier. But I want to dig a little bit deeper. I want to get maybe just sort of like some of your final thoughts. I've got a lot of leaders listening to this right now. Like, what is, what is the leader's role in problem solving?

Yeah, I think the leader's role is to support, engage and enable their team members. I think support is one thing. I think support and showing up and being at an event or going to Gemba is one thing. I think engaging with the team is another. Engaging is asking those humble inquiry questions, you know, what problems are you facing? Are there barriers that are preventing you from being able to do that? How can I support you in that? And so when I do leaders standard work training, part of the focus that I have on leader standard work is are they going to Gemba and are they engaging with their teams? I think it's one thing to say that, hey, yep, we support continuous improvement. We support the, you know, the visual daily management that you're doing and whatever. I think it's another to show up, roll up your sleeves and engage with them and have conversations. And I think that, you know, going back to the two quotes coming into this, everything rises and falls on leadership and scientific thinking is why we put erasers on pencil is it takes leadership and it takes their intentional investment to promote scientific thinking. And it starts with them and they set the tone and how we engage them in problem solving is really that top level support and engagement with, with the frontline staff that are taking on these challenges every day.

We've got this video of Masaki Amai. You know, he wrote that, one of the original Kaizen books that was brought into the west. And, and somebody asked him what are the three most important, you know, aspects of basically continuous improvement? Success, lean success. Like what are the three most important things? And he said, number one, top management commitment. Commitment. And he said number two, top management commitment. And number three, top management commitment. I'll never forget that, you know, and I was like, yeah, that's it, man, you know, and sadly there's Some people out there listening who don't have. So maybe. So I lied. I got one. One last, last question. Someone's listening right now and they don't have top management commitment. Maybe it's pretend top management commitment. Like, what is that practitioner to do? Do you have any advice for them? Leave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes it comes to that.

Right.

Unfortunately. But, you know, I think that an important aspect of engaging leaders is making it visual. How do we make the problems visual? You know, at the end of the day, the leaders are accountable and responsible for the work. And how we engage the leaders in enabling teams to get that done is important. And so my approach in working with leaders is to help make that problem visible, help to draw that line of visibility into the work that's getting done and expose the issues and the barriers that exist within the problem or process. And, you know, oftentimes when we facilitate these workshops and Kaizen events and the leaders are involved, almost 100% of the time, the leaders are like, wow, We. We had no idea it was. It was like this. I mean, so I think the visual component.

Yeah.

Of the. The work that you're doing, whether it's in a department and you're just mapping a process and exposing barriers at a local level, or if you're engaging in a workshop or an event where you've got participation from leadership, is mapping out those processes, getting to the issues and some of those root causes, and then seeing that visual indicator on the wall is. Is a huge victory at the end of the day because the leaders now see it.

Yeah.

And that's that component of learning to see.

I love that advice, Matt. I mean, because in defense of the leader out there who maybe the practitioner feels like they don't care, they got a lot of stuff on their plate. Right. And they're worried about a lot of different things. And if you, if we as practitioners aren't doing a good job, to your point of making it visible, making it easy for them so their brain doesn't have to burn too many calories to figure out what's going on over here. You know, if they can just walk by and they see red, you know, on a. On a chart, like, you can quickly stop and figure out what's going on, why is that red? You know, and that's not good. Right. For the business. And now you've got their attention. Right. But if you don't, if all we do is sit back and complain and whine and, you know, say how bad these people are, but we're not doing our part, then shame on us. Right?

Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, what you just said, there is an important element in terms of how we engage the leaders is, you know, if they're necessarily not supportive or if they're kind of off to the side and they do have a lot on their plate. And that's from a respect for people standpoint, I see that at all, you know, through all layers. And I certainly want to respect the leader and the challenges that they're faced with and not dismiss that.

Yeah.

Just say, well, why don't you get what's happening at that. Right. Like that's not respecting them either. And I think from a, a leadership perspective in, in that coaching is understanding their pain points and using that same thinking and that same process of, hey, what are the things that keep you up at night? But let's just list some of those things out and let's start chipping away at them.

Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Good stuff, Matt. Man, this has been a lot of fun. Hey, if folks wanted to connect with you personally, what's the best way?

Yeah, the best way is on LinkedIn. Pretty active on there. The CI community for, for on LinkedIn is, is really great. So I tap into that a lot, learn from others and try not to do what we do in isolation.

Yeah. Are there a bunch of Matt Whites out there? I don't know.

Yeah, there probably are. I can get you my link.

Yeah, we'll link it up in the show notes. So folks, look up Matt White, but we'll have everything. Just scroll down on your app and let's all go connect with Matt and thank you for coming on the show. So. All right, man. Hey, this has been a lot of fun. Keep up the great work and yeah, maybe we'll, we'll have you back on down the road.

Yeah, same here, Ron. Appreciate the time.

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 1500 lean and 6 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.