GA 561 | People and Process Integration with Beau Groover

And so when we're talking about integration, it's like, look, the way you've got to approach this thing is holistically, you can't do it without your people. If you do it without involving them, it feels like it's being done to them instead of with them. And so now you're actually hurting your culture when you're trying to improve and build a culture that's going to be high performing.

Today I am excited to welcome Beau Gruver to the show. Now, Bo and I were actually, we've known each other for a while, and we were able to connect face to face at the AME Conference, which was, well, it was a few months or a few weeks ago from the time I'm recording this episode here in early November. But great guy, and it's got a really strong, lean background. And so I was really delighted to have him on the. On the podcast. And, and today we, we talk about. Really, the topic is, is sort of the whole idea of people and process integration as it relates to lean and leader in leadership. And so we kind of get it, get started with just definitions like, what do you mean talk about people and process integration and because we spend a lot of time in a lean world talking about respect for people, continuous improvement, but sometimes I think that it's words that kind of go past this. So sort of dig into that a little bit, and then we get into, like, you know, why it's important and why it's so hard to do. And then finally we talk about some. Some examples of where Beau has seen this work and, and how it worked and why it worked, and as well as some. Some tips for what to do. And so those got a lot of wisdom. I think you're going to enjoy this one. I know I did. Now, show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 561 and be sure to scroll down on whatever app you're listening to this on and connect with Bo over on LinkedIn and check out his website and all that other good stuff. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Bo, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Great, Ron, thank you. How are you?

I'm doing well, man. Doing well. Yeah. It was good to see you. Yeah. Well, we're recording here in the beginning of November, so this won't come out for a little while, but we just saw each other recently at the AME Conference in Atlanta. So how was the conference for you?

Great, great. A lot. A lot of good Energy, a lot of good people. I got to see some old friends and got to make some new ones.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same. It was. I feel like, you know, ever since COVID or whatever, it kind of slowly climbed back a little bit, but feel like the last couple years, the energy has been. Has been really good. And. And, yeah, it's been. It's been a lot of fun. So. Yeah. Well, hey, Bo, I appreciate you coming on. We talked about it at the AME conference, in fact, so I'm glad we were able to make it happen. So I know you know the drill. We like to get things going with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

I've got one. And it's based on the idea that life is hard. Right. So everything that you want in your life is on the other side of all the stuff you don't want to do.

Yeah.

And that's probably not as eloquently as however I heard it, but the principle is you just got to do hard stuff if you're trying to get anywhere.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. That's great. So tell us a little bit about yourself, Bo. Tell us about your background and how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff, and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Perfect. Yeah. So I worked for a company called Nordson Corporation. I joined them in 2000, and in 2001, they formally launched their Lean program and I was the inventory control manager. Volunteered to be involved, read the book Lean Thinking and started hanging out with the Lean consultant team that we brought in. And actually I saw him at the AME conference. I probably haven't seen that guy in 15, maybe 20 years, so it was fantastic. But spent about seven years. He was a tier one Toyota supplier forever and just an absolute rock star of a teacher and a trainer. And just. I owe a great deal of my career to him, but really fell in love, right place, right time, and was able to turn that into a career. I was splitting my time as the inventory control manager and the lean facilitator for a while, and then I became the full time lean facilitator. Spent I guess, nine years there with Nordson working on that. Then I joined Rock 10, which is then became Westrock and now got purchased by Smurfit. They seem to be moving around too much, too much to keep up with and just stayed in the continuous improvement area. I spent some time as director of manufacturing. I was a master black belt for a while, so really applying it on the front line. Spent a very short period of time with Certus Simmons Bedding, the manufacturing company of mattresses, as the director of Lean Supply Chain. And then in 2015, I started my own company called the Effective Syndicate. So we work with manufacturing leaders who are struggling with the process side and what we call the people side. Right. People say soft skills, and I argue that because they're really darn hard. But we're working with manufacturing companies on the nature of continuous improvement, which is developing your people and improving your processes.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Where are you located?

I'm in Atlanta, Georgia.

Okay. Okay. Well, that was a short drive for you then, wasn't it?

I slept in my own bed. It was fantastic.

That's the way to do a conference, man. Yeah, I mean, Ame was in Dallas, oh, several years ago, and that was. That was lovely. Bad because I'm in the Metroplex. So. Yeah, nothing beats sleeping in your bed. So.

All right.

Well, hey, I'm excited for today's topic. So I guess we're going to kind of call it Lean and Leadership, People and Process Integration to. To gsd. I suppose we'll call that Get Stuff Done. How about that? You know, so.

So.

So I guess maybe just out of the beginning. What do you mean when you say people and process integration?

Yeah, and this is so. This is decades of experience speaking. Right. And I'm sure there's a lot of companies doing it really well, but it seems like there's a pendulum between focusing on our people side versus focusing on the process side, which might include automation and technology and robotics. And what we see is organizations get going too far one way or the other. So they get so excited about their people. And now we're doing ice cream socials and we're having barbecues, and we're celebrating all the stuff while the processes are either in idle or they're even, you know, slipping away, or they go so far the other way. They get really, really excited about the new process, or we're going to start doing Lean or Six Sigma, or we're going to get a robot, or we're going to get some AGVs. And the magic happens when you've got the people who are already there problem solving with you on the process side. And so it's not an either or. It has to be an and all the way. And we keep find companies that need more help on the people side because they haven't been focused there, or people that need more help on the process side because they've. They've swung one way or the Other. And so when we're talking about integration, it's like, look, the way you've got to approach this thing is holistically, you can't do it without your people. If you do it without involving them, it feels like it's being done to them instead of with them. And so now you're actually hurting your culture when you're trying to improve and build a culture that's going to be high performing. So that's, that's kind of the foundation of what we're talking about.

Yeah, it's interesting, you know, because, yeah, clearly, you know, even just thinking about the so called lean house, when we've got continuous improvement and then respect for people, you got to have them both sort of thing. So I'm wondering if, I mean, like, I mean, why do you think it's so important? And then do you think it's easy or hard to, to make it happen?

I think it's hard, Ron. Right. So. So we like to say it's very simple, but really hard. So the concept in and of itself is really, really simple to understand. Right. I've got to involve my people, I've got to engage my people. Yeah, that's, that's really simple to explain, but the, the act of doing it becomes very difficult. And in our experience is that most managers became managers because they were really good operators.

Yeah.

And there was not a lot of managerial development. There wasn't a lot of leadership development. I know earlier in my career when I was going through leadership training, it was really how to not get the company sued.

Yeah.

Right. You can't ask them this, you can't say this. You can't, you know, whatever. It's like, well, that's not leadership. That's just teaching me how to not say stupid things.

Right.

And so the, the effort is like really going back to the basics of how do we treat each other. Right. How do you build trust amongst your teammates, how do you enhance communic. How do you learn how to be vulnerable even though you're quote unquote, the boss? And it's hard. Most people don't get exposed to that. Our schools certainly don't teach it. Our colleges certainly don't teach it. Most organizations don't teach it. But they say, hey, Bo, you're a really good operator. I want you to be the department manager. Okay? I don't. Now, now, now I'm even in a harder place, right. Because now the people that were my peers, I'm trying to direct them and they're going, dude, you used to be cool, now you're a jerk. Yeah. And it's this weird dynamic that we're putting these people in and we're not giving them any help. So, you know, in my opinion, and this may be controversial to some of your listeners, the lean Six Sigma part is really, really easy. Learning the steps, right? Learning the eight ways, learning tact time standard work that's not hard to do. How to do it well so that the culture can buy into it because people are naturally resistant to change. People think it's a job threat. I've been doing this 17 years. What do you mean I'm doing it wrong? So that communication piece that comes from the. Integrating the people into it becomes really, really important if you truly want to strive for that world class performance.

I want to hone in on. You mentioned in that last response there, the importance of being vulnerable. And I want to hone in on that. I heard something this morning. I was listening to this kind of like a, more of a spiritual reflection and the guy was talking about the difference between transparency and vulnerability. And I thought, that's interesting. I haven't really thought about it. And he said that transparency is like, like you're in a fishbowl and you're swimming in a lot of water and people can see you. Right. Because you're in a fishbowl, a glass fishbowl. Okay. So people can see. That's transparency. Vulnerability is allowing them to come into the water with you.

Oh, right, yeah.

What do you think about. Because it's everybody's. Oh, be vulnerable. Like, what does that mean though? Like practically speaking?

I think practically speaking, it's a humility thing. Right. And we've all got bad, or we've all probably seen bad examples of leadership where the boss acts like he knows all the answers. He's got to be involved in every decision or she's got to, you know, be copied on every email and it's like, all right, so there's a trust problem that that would indicate. Right. And then the vulnerability comes from the boss being able to say, hey, I don't, I don't know the answer to that. It's a great question. Thank you for asking it. I don't know the answer, but I'm going to go find out. And then being willing to serve your people to go find an answer and come back and answer somebody that may be two or three levels below you in the organization. I think vulnerability also includes, you know, the ability to say, hey, I'm worried about this. Right. And we we like to put on this facade like, I'm the boss. I've always got to be positive. I've always got to be uplifting. And we're all humans. Right. I didn't matter what rank you are or how much money you make or whatever. At the end of the day, if something's concerning to you, I think it's really impactful to say, hey, I'm concerned, or I'm worried. And then the final piece that ironically, more people miss than anything is I think people view asking for help as a weakness. And as an avid student of leadership, I think that's absolutely demonstrating strength. Right. If I. If I've got the confidence to turn to my team and say, guys, I need some help with this, I'm not sure how to approach it.

Yeah.

I'm not sure what to do here. What do you guys think? Let me bounce some ideas off of you. Because what you're doing psychologically to your team is saying, hey, it's okay to ask for help here. I'm supposed to be the quote, unquote boss, the leader, whatever. And I'm asking you guys for help. I'm giving them permission to come to me and say, hey, boss, I'm not sure what to do here. I'm struggling, I'm stuck, I'm confused, whatever. And all of that comes back to you. Right. Your people reflect what you give them in terms of your leadership. And when you're not doing those things, you're kind of saying, that's not okay to do. So that's how I think of that vulnerability piece. And it's a tough one, man. I don't know. I'm not sure why God gave us these ego things, but he did. Yeah. And they are bears to wrestle down. They are just not fun.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you nailed it with humility. I mean, it's the opposite. Is pride.

Right.

And, like, just happening. And so easy to be prideful or even maybe not even prideful. Just like carrying a heavy bias. Right. Can make it really difficult to be vulnerable because I'm just. I'm just biased one direction. And nothing you say can really sort of move me, you know?

Absolutely. And our brains are wired for confirmation bias. Right. So if I. If I have a belief, my brain is now looking for things to support my belief instead of saying, hey, what's the other side of this that I'm not thinking about.

Yeah.

Which requires a lot of self awareness, a lot of humility, and a truckload of effort just to say, all right, I need to think about what's the other side of this thing that I'm so convinced I'm right on. What's the other side that I'm missing?

Right, right, exactly. So when we think about then, this whole idea of people and process integration, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on where you see people, organizations, everything in between missing the mark.

Yes. I think the fundamental, Ms. Ron, is there's just not enough focus put on it. Right. I'll talk to executives all the time who are, who are considering hiring us for, you know, some turnaround work or some help in an area and like, well, tell me about your culture. And I get things like, oh, you know, we've got a great bought in culture. They have an entrepreneurial spirit, they're getting stuff done, they're knocking it out, and then I'll go interview 10 people. And they're like, I don't see it like that at all. They describe it completely different. Or the leader who is too far off of the pulse. I guess that would indicate that too. But, well, these people don't buy in. They're just coming to get a check. And you know, because I wear this coach's hat, I have to say, well, who's leading this team? Whose team is this? You're saying they're not bought in, they're not executing, they're not. Whatever. It's your team, dude. So here's a mirror. Let's start here. Because if you want me to change your team and you're leading them poorly or you have others that are leading them poorly, we. There's no way out of that problem. So we have to start with the leaders who are usually asking the question about fixing the culture. It's the leader that's usually the problem.

Yeah. How do you navigate that? I mean, they just hired you. Now you're going to come in there and call them a bad leader. Like, how do you navigate that?

Fortunately, that usually happens before they hire me.

Okay.

It is a, It's a wild sales call, Ryan. I'll invite you on one sometime. It's fun.

Yeah.

But that's usually a pretty good indicator of where I'm coming from. Right. And so before they hire me, I can usually look at the leader and say, all right, Joe, I appreciate you bringing me in. Here's what I heard you say. Here's what I heard your people say. If you want to hire me, recognize that there's a whole lot of going to the gym that you and I are going to have to do. On you because your people are not seeing the same world you're seeing. You're okay with that. And some of them are. And they're the humble ones. Right. They've already kind of recognized I need to improve, to be a better leader. I want to provide leadership to my team. And some of them are like, oh, that's crazy. I'm, you know, I'm great. They suck. They don't want to work. It's all them. And like, all right, well, I'm not your coach then. I'm not ever going to work out for you.

Right, Right, right. Well, yeah. And sadly, I mean, there are some folks out there who are looking to bring in a consultant or some other partner to just fix their problems when, you know, you got to say, I have found the problem and he is. I, you know, and they're not willing to do that. It's probably good that you do that on a sal call because you're just going to sort of waste your time and frustrate them and, and then they'll leave you a bad Google review because you didn't, you know, solve their horrible culture.

You know, that's 100. Right? You're exactly right.

Yeah. So, I mean, do you have any sort of, like, practical tips to sort of help people? Let's say they're listening to this and their head's going up and down. Yeah, I get it. That sounds good. I'm bought in. I'm, I'm the leader. I'm willing to change and all that. Like, are there any sort of, like, practical tips or recommendations that you can give to sort of get better at this integration of people and process?

Yes. And, and there's several of them, and I appreciate you asking that. Right, so. So one of them is to reach out to your people and ask them, right. How am I doing as a leader? What do you wish I was doing more of? What do you wish I would do less of? What do you wish I would stop doing? And what do you wish I would start doing? If you like.

I like how you came up. Sorry to interrupt that. That was follow up. Because if I, if I ask, you know, Leslie Moles, who's worked for me forever, super sweet lady, loves me and I love her, you know, and, hey, Leslie, how am I doing as a leader? You're great, you know, no, like, but then you go up with those, follow up, like, what should we start doing? What should we stop doing? Like, giving more sort of prescriptive requests. I think that's the way to go about that, Right, right.

And it's really important to be open ended. Right. Am I, am I doing great as a leader? Yes, you are. Now leave me alone and get out of here because I got work to do. Yeah, so, so that's one. And the other one is, is very much something that we've, I'm sure other people have, have came up with the same idea, Ron, but instead of voice of the customer. Right. So Lean Six Sigma, we do a lot of voice of the customer. Let's do a survey, let's do a to our customers. We call it the voice of the team. And we, we have a survey. If anybody's interested, reach out, we'll share it with you. But it's very succinct and to the point about communication, about teamwork, about trust, about leadership. And the idea is to do it anonymously so they feel comfortable talking about how they feel. It doesn't talk about benefits or pay or any of that stuff. It's just like, how are we doing as a unit? Which is reflecting on me as the leader. So I want to hear the voice of the team, not my opinion as the leader. I think I'm the world's greatest leader. I'm kicking butt and getting that feedback and then sitting down and we recommend somebody with, from the outside doing it with you to say, hey, look, here's some stuff that I'm noticing, right? How do you feel about this question? Right. Here's your lowest answered question. You got, the organization got the lowest rating here. What do you think about that? And provided they're willing to go, then do some work around it. It's pretty quick for people to turn around because now I've exposed myself, I've opened that vulnerability and I'm being transparent. Some of the stuff that we started with and your team will quickly pick up on, hey, Bo's trying to get better. I see that it's more impactful if I stand in front of them and say, guys, look, I'm endeavoring to be a better leader for you, therefore I'm going to do this survey. I want you to please be honest with me because I genuinely want to get better. And once we do the survey, I'll come back and tell you what I want to, I'm going to do about it. And I need your feedback if I'm getting better or if I'm still screwing this thing up. And so it's opening that door of saying, look, I don't have all the answers. I'm not the world's greatest leader. I know that I'm human. I've got errors, I've got flaws. I want your help improving. I've yet to see a group of people. I don't want to help you. Screw that. You're the boss and I hate working for you. But I'm just going to keep my mouth quiet back here. It doesn't work like that.

Yeah. Just that the willingness of a leader to just ask like that alone is Herculean, really. Because many would never think of doing it, you know, unless HR teams. I work to do a 360 or whatever, you know, okay. That can facilitate it, but in a way that's still not as powerful as the leader just on their own saying, hey, how can I be better? How can I better serve you?

Can I share a real quick story, Ryan?

Yeah.

So when I first became plant manager, I had been the lean manager at this company at this location for about three years. That made me plant manager. And I'm all about the team. Right. So I'm trying to build this culture and I've got all these great ideas. I hung up this suggestion box, and once a quarter, we did. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was locked up.

Yeah, of course. They always are.

You had to drop it in there. I didn't want anybody taking them.

Yeah.

So once a quarter, we did a town hall meeting and we would talk about the state of the business and we would bring in lunch and kind of share everything. This was our first quarter with the suggestion box and me as a plant manager. And literally, I had not opened the box. I had not pre read anything. So the. The one of my teammates brought the box up on stage and I opened it up and I got the cards out and there was some good stuff. You know, I wish we were doing this. I wish we were doing that. There were three in there that said bo sucks. Oh, and I'm reading that, you know, there's 175 people in the plant, and I'm reading it as a bow. Sucks, Bo sucks. And Bo sucks. I'm like, guys, I'm really sorry that I'm sucking and I really want to stop sucking, but I don't know what BO sucks means. So if you guys are going to take the time to fill out the card and thank you for that, but what am I doing that makes you feel like I suck? Am I not communicating enough? Am I communicating too much? Am I not listening? Am I, you know, all of these things, guys, help me out because I genuinely want to be better. The next quarter, we got much more Specific feedback on the specific areas that I needed to improve. And so, you know, I said about working on it, but it was just like. Just what you were saying, like, I don't know how to fix. You think I suck. I don't know what that means. I'm sorry. Not trying to. But I don't know what to do with it.

Right, right. Yeah. It reminds me of when we do training classes. I'm sure you do the same, like pluses and deltas, you know, at the end. And a Delta, like a. Is not a complaint. Like, don't write on the delta board. You know, the room is too hot. Look, that's kind of a complaint, you know, like a better a delta would be, please adjust the temperature till 72 degrees.

Right.

I can do that. Right. But I don't know, is it way too hot, way too cold? You know, and so, yeah, that's good. Just on the way that we give feedback is being as specific as we can. And I mean, you suck. That's just an angry person trying to be funny, really? Probably so.

Well, it did get a lot of laughs from everybody else. I think they laughed because I was willing to read it on stage about myself.

That's a great humility, you know, and vulnerability, even.

Right.

To put that out there. So I'm wondering maybe to wrap things up if. And I don't want you to name any names or companies or anything like that, but if you could maybe share an example of where you've seen maybe an organization or group of people who were maybe not completely dialed in on the whole people process integration. And then maybe how they. How they. How they improved. Like, what were some of the things that they did? And then what were the. What was the. The ending result?

Yeah, so I. I think the. The thing. The. The most impactful thing is practicing effective communication. Right. And so if you ask somebody, how did communication happen? They'll usually say, well, the other person understood what I said. Okay, what if I challenge that? And said communication happens when both people agree what was said. And so there was a warehouse facility, large distribution center, and they just weren't aligned on their processes. So this was right. At Covid, they brought me in as the interim distribution center manager. And there were multiple ways to look at the orders. Right. They were behind. So one way would be to look at the biggest dollars and chase those. One way would have been to look at the biggest customers and chase those. The other one would have been to look at the dates and chase those. And when I asked my sponsor who Was the VP of something or other? Like, hey, what's the most important thing? Right? What are we doing here? Is this one, this one, or this one the number one priority? And he said, well, they all are. Which is a nice way of saying, I haven't picked and led yet. Right. So I huddled up with the operations team and said, look, guys, what do you all think? And they said, well, you know, we argued and had some discussions and we landed on dates because we figured the guys and gals who were waiting the longest were probably the most frustrated. While we're chasing those, we're still falling farther and farther behind with the newer ones. So we all agreed on dates and the process of how we chase those old orders. Right. Something happened. It was on backorder. We needed 10 and we only had eight. And all of these things that would cause these orders to just kind of get stuck. I divided the team and so I had what I called a SWAT team. And they were really good problem solvers. They knew the system, they knew inventory, they knew how to find things and fix things and all that. So, guys, y' all are. Look, y' all are after the old ones. And then I took the day to day grinders and said, guys, y' all can't let us fall behind. So we had processes, but the people were all disconnected from this poor communication. And it took us about three weeks and we were caught up and pulling ahead literally didn't change anything in the process. What I changed was the communication and the alignment. Right. The clarity of, hey, guys, we're all going to chase orders and here's how we're going to do it. You guys are chasing the oldest dates. You guys are chasing the current dates. Everybody stack hands. It was a 247 shift, so we had three shifts all doing the same thing, and it was almost instant. They're high five and they're celebrating. We're winning. And it's like, holy moly, this. You know, nothing that I did was great. Right. It was just like understanding that nobody was on the same page. We were all singing different songs.

Yeah. Yeah. The inability to communicate has destroyed many organizations and many relationships and everything in between. Yeah. Easy to say, though. Hard to do sometimes.

It's simple but hard, man. Simple but hard.

Yeah, yeah. Yep. Good stuff. All right, well, hey, Bo, this has been a. Been a lot of fun, man. I. I really appreciate you coming on. Do you have any sort of final words of wisdom or some parting advice for the listeners?

Yes. Get very. Get serious about working on your culture. Right. So so don't dabble, don't, don't listen to this podcast and get excited and say, I'm going to go be vulnerable and do it for a week and a half. If you're going to go down the road, and we highly suggest that you do commit to it, recognize that your culture's been under development as long as your company's existed, so it's not going to happen by next Thursday. But say, all right guys, we've got to get better at our communication, our trust, our alignment, our accountability, all of those components that we know make an effective culture. Tell your people that you're doing it, telling them why you're doing it, telling them what's important about it and telling them what's in it for them. Why should they care about what you're about to start doing? Doing with them, not to them. And so every bit as much effort as you're putting into your production Plan or your Q4 forecasting, all that stuff, put the same amount of effort into improving your culture and you'll see amazing results without having to add robots or capital expenditures or all of that stuff. Just fix your people side. And we've yet to see it not produce double digit improvements.

Nice. Good stuff. Hey, if folks wanted to connect with you boat, what's the best way? LinkedIn website, what do you got?

Yes, please. Website is www.tes.ru n and of course on LinkedIn it's beau as b e a U Groover G R O O V as in Victor Er.

Okay, yeah, and we'll get everything linked up in the, in the show notes. So everybody just scroll down on whatever app you're on and and go continue connect with bo.

So.

All right, man. Hey, I'm glad that we were able to connect at AME and make this podcast happen. It's been a lot of fun.

Absolutely. Ron, I appreciate the opportunity, man. I appreciate what you're doing, spreading the gospel of Lean Six Sigma out in the world and getting everybody aligned. So thank you very much.

We're trying man. I appreciate you. Take care.

See you, buddy.

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