GA 562 | Lean in the Prison Industry with Brandon Bunn

It's harder to get staff on board than it is to get the offenders on board, because this is what they do every day. And so when you give them that freedom to that empowerment to make their day better and to show you what they can do, they haven't let me down yet.

Today, I am very excited to welcome Brandon Bunn to the show. Now, Brandon is. Wow, this is some episod. Brandon works as a continuous improvement leader, thinker, but in a very unique industry. He works in the prison industry. And while he's going to tell you all about it, he's going to tell you what he does and, and why he's so passionate about it. We get into kind of like, what are they doing and how does it work? I mean, I was asking all kinds of crazy questions far as, like, hey, are these, are these folks, like, in for life or they're going to get out and so forth. So we just explored a wide range of topics and it's very, very inspiring to me personally, and I hope it is to you too. In fact, I want you to listen to this whole episode all the way to the end. Maybe you got to do it in two or three drives home from work or whatever it is, but this is an important one because I really do feel like the continuous improvement movement could really have an impact on a lot of people's lives in the prison industry. And I know that sounds a little bit wild, but I've always, I've always felt called to, to work in this world and I never, I haven't done it yet. And me and Brandon talk about it a little bit, but, man, I think this might be the, the nudge that I need to, to take action myself. But anyhow, please give this one a listen and please consider what you think you can do to really make the world a better place by potentially helping folks that are incarcerated or, you know, just need a second chance. So now show notes can be found over at Gembapod. This is episode 562. Also, last important request that I have. I want you to please, even as you're listening, scroll down on whatever app you're listening to, go find Brandon on LinkedIn. We're going to have it linked below. And I want you to follow him and I want you to encourage him and say thank you for what he's doing. And, you know, if there's anything else that you want to say, say, at a minimum, let's flood his email inbox with LinkedIn requests and let him know that we appreciate all he's doing. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Brandon, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's good, Ron. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, man, I'm excited. I told you before we hit record that, man. Just the topic that we're gonna explore today is very, very inspiring to me, sort of personally, not just on a continuous improvement level, but just even on a deeper level. So I'm really excited to dig into this episode.

Me too.

But, Brandon, you know how the show goes. At the very beginning, we like to have our guests share a quote. So what do you got?

So it's not so much a quote, but more of scripture. Where there is no guidance, the people fall, but an abundance of counselors. There is victory, and that is Proverbs 11:14.

What's that mean to you?

For me, continuous improvement is no good on your own, not just within business, but in life. We all need guidance. We all need coaches. I don't think I would be where I am and who I am today if I didn't have people on the way guiding me and building me up to try to transform into something better every day.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, before we jump into sort of the topic of the day, Brandon, I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you first got involved in continuous improvement, and then I suppose that can just sort of naturally lead us right into the big reveal on what you do.

Okay. So I started working in the printing industry around 1997. I was around 14 years old. And I decided very early that that was my calling to be in printing. So I spent every day after school, every summer vacation, working, and continued working after I graduated high school. And I continued until I was. It was 2019 when I actually decided to make a change for my life and ended up moving to another printing company in our state, ran by North Carolina Correction Enterprises, which is a prison industry. I never knew what continuous improvement was. I never knew what lean was until I got kind of voluntold into a class during my job at the North Carolina Correction Enterprise print plant. And I realized this is something I've been doing my entire life in printing. I've always had to working in a small company, had to learn how to do things faster, how to do things more efficiently. And so when I was exposed to it, I was like, huh, it's got a name. You know, I thought this was just how you. You do work. So it. Continuous improvement has really created the work ethic that I. I try to follow every day.

Okay. And so am I right in understanding now that you are working sort of full time in the formal prison industry and not necessarily just with the printing side of it, Is that right?

Yes. So in 2019, when I started at the printing plant, I ended up. It was a big. It was a culture shock for me. Not just the prison, but state workers, they have a reputation about them and our state can be just like every other state. And it was hard for me to slow down. Instead of working over an entire printing facility, I was in one small area. So I got bored a lot. So I wanted to expand out and do as much as I could. And so after the training, the lean training I went through, I ended up started to teach offenders and our plant different lean techniques. And in 2023, they created a new position, which is the Kaizen Promotion officer. And so I applied for that and got it. And so for the last year, I've been over 27 plants and 18 different industry types for correction enterprises doing lean training. So I'm no longer in the print industry, but it is still under my belt.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I guess I. I'm. The reason this is. I'm so excited about this episode is I've. And you and I had talked before. You know, I've always felt, for whatever reason, called to like some sort of prison ministry or work. I've never done it, not yet. But, man, I'm so intrigued by it. So I'm really just almost living vicariously through you right now. Brandon, I'm wondering just kind of talk a little bit about, like, why, like what. What led you to this calling, really?

Well, just like you said, I felt called. I'd been very comfortable at the company I was formerly in, and I felt called to do something different. I felt called to, number one, to create a better life for my family, but also to be able to reach more people. And I just. I didn't know any of this was going to happen. So it, it just. It. God works that way, man. It's. And I learned more about myself in the prison industry than I did outside. Because you think, you know, it all going into a place and there's a lot of. A lot of knowledge in some of these guys, so they, they imparted that onto me, so it allowed me to grow. It's. It's definitely not what I pictured when I decided to go into. To the prison business.

So what does a day in the life look like? Like, what are you doing as it relates to Continuous improvement in inside of a prison. Are you working with folks that are, you know, prisoners or are you working with the staff or both?

Yes. All of our plants contain offender employees. I still report to our print plant every morning. Just to give you a typical day, we have a 2 second lien pilot program that's going on at the print plant. So every morning since June I've been reporting there and I've been meeting with a group of 10 offenders and we've been learning 2 second lean based off the 2 second lien book we've listened to. Improvement Starts with I We by Tom Hughes. And we created this program, not just me, but relied on them to give me their input because these guys are in there every day, we get to go home. So they have to not only work with everybody, they have to live with everybody. So I needed them to help me develop a program where we could improve our processes. And we found that 2 second lean was the best way because you can have engineers in prison and you can have people that have never even made it to high school in prison. So being able to connect all of them, we needed something simple, something that everyone could relate to. So every morning we have a morning meeting and we're at the, our phase two. So now every morning plant wide, there's I think 108 offenders in the printing plant. One of the offenders will lead the meeting with stretches the music and then they go on about their waist and what they're grateful for. Just a typical two second lean improvement meeting. And then they spend about 15 minutes doing 3s, you know, the sweep sort standardized and then improvement time and then from there they go about their day and I'll usually leave and I'll either go to another prison where I'm helping out with lean efforts there, or if I have classes, I teach Toyota Kata classes. And we have just created a new 2 second lean course because my director would like every plant to be 2 second lean to have it implemented by the end of 2026. So that's where we're at.

Have you been in contact with Paul, Paul Akers?

No. No.

And you need to, because I'll personally make the introductions because this all over the moon, man.

I bet. And I've, I have spoken with Tom Hughes, I have spoken with him on, on WhatsApp and we actually had a video call and he, he sounds about as excited as you do. A lot of people get excited about what we do because it's just, it's in a different environment. It's not something you See every day.

So, okay, walk us through. Like, I just. I want to geek out a little bit. Just on the lean side, like, what are some of the. What are the. Some being done? I mean, we have meetings. Great and all that, but, like, talk about some of the improvements, talk about, you know, maybe the changes that are happening inside people's hearts as they see improvements. Let's get into that.

Yeah. So within the first two weeks of our morning meeting, we had close to 20 improvements, which blew me away because I expected this to take months. But simple things could be just moving a machine five feet over so that somebody's not having to walk. We had one process where there was a table next to a press, but it was 10 steps away. And so a man 20 to 30 times a day would be walking 10 steps there and 10 steps back. So I calculated. I said, man, you're taking a hundred thousand steps a year and this table has wheels on it. Why don't we just move it right beside you? And so I was like, think if we do this to 10 different processes, think of how much time you're saving. And. But the biggest thing I've seen is their motivation, because one thing people don't realize is in the prison environment, it's a very control and command, command and control type of situation. They know what time they're getting up, they know what time they're going to eat, they know what time they're going to work. They. Every aspect of their day is planned out. So when you come to them and say, hey, look, you're the operator of this machine, you're the subject matter expert, how can we make it better? How can we do this faster? What can we do to make your day better? They run with it. I mean, they go crazy with it. It's harder to get staff on board than it is to get the offenders on board, because this is what they do every day. And so when you give them that freedom to that empowerment to make their day better and to show you what they can do, they haven't let me down yet. So we do have bigger Kaizen events in some of our plants. But the problem we've had in the past is the reason why Lean has failed in our industry is because it's always been an event, it's always been something that happened when a group of people come in and you spend a week or two and you might make things better, but after they leave, it's all forgotten about and that new way becomes the way you're going to continually do it. One of the biggest phrases I hear in our industry is, well, we've always done it that way, and it just. It kills. It kills improvement. So allowing these guys to say, you know, I always tell them the first idea is the worst idea. So you might make it better, but keep looking, because they're always going to find a way to just make it a little bit better. So most of the things we have been improving lately have been very small. Organizing their desk drawers. They love Kaizen foam. We love Kaizen foam. I love Kaizen foam. My wife doesn't like Kaizen foam.

You didn't go into her kitchen, did you?

No, I did my bathroom drawer, and it looks so good.

It's your drawer. It's fine, man.

Well, only my drawer. And so I bring my wife and I said, hey, I want you to look at something. Look what I did. And I opened it up and I was just like, isn't that beautiful? She said, why can't you just pick your socks up off the floor? You know, like, that's all I want you to do. And I'm like, okay, okay.

Valid, though.

My daughter loved it. My daughter thought it was the greatest thing ever. I'm trying to impart. Lean onto her, because it can. It can help everybody. It's. It's not. It's not this strict process. It's just about making your day better. Every day.

Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. In fact, funny story, my oldest daughter. So I don't know if you've ever seen our old Gimbal Academy video with a dishwasher. My two. Well, in the video, it's my two oldest girls, but they were real young back in that video. And we were emptying the dishwasher and we're leaning it out, right? Like it's part of this Kaizen event course. And anyhow, the oldest one in There is now 21 and just got married and. And I was. I was actually at her wedding and the little father speech thing, you know, at the reception and. And true story is we used to have the laundry basket bite right by their. Their bathroom. My two. My two oldest girls. And then their little brother, who is now 18. But back then he was messing around and. And he was getting ready to go take a bath or whatever it was. And so, you know, the. The kids would just sort of take all their stuff off right by there and throw it in the hamper, right? And walk into the bathroom, point of use. And my daughter, my, like flipping his T shirt around one day and he just threw it across the Floor. And my oldest, Kylie, she's real bossy and he always has been. And she started yelling at him and she said, daddy put this at point of use. Why don't you use it? I was like, it's like the proudest moments of my life, man. My little girl talking about a point.

Of use hamper, man. That's right. That's right.

So it's so true though, that how, you know, it really, we really do need to be sort of spreading this just everywhere.

Right.

It can't just be at work, so.

But look, that's, that's the one thing I tell all the offenders, no matter what class I do, is this isn't just for work.

Yeah.

This is for life. This can help. When I was teaching Toyota, when I. To the, when I do the Toyota Cotta classes, I tell them, this can benefit you for every problem you have. If you can create a new habit that will improve your situation, this is what it's for. It's not just to make your cycle times faster. This is, this is to help you in every aspect when you don't know the answer. Yep.

Now, I'm guessing that it hasn't always been easy and perhaps there's been some, some challenges, maybe some obstacles or two that you got to sort of overcome in the whole frame of scientific thinking even. But I'm wondering if maybe you could just talk a little bit about some of those bumps along the way, like what have they been and what have you done to sort of overcome them?

Yeah. I think the biggest obstacle we face is the culture inside the prison system. Now. It is voluntary. They volunteer to work for us. We, we give them every opportunity to want to come to work. And for the most part they do, they do get paid. They get around 30 something cent an hour. That's. And we give bonuses and different things like that. But trying to motivate someone to do more when they're never going to get more out of it, physically, tangibly, not something they can put in their wallet and take with them, has been a sort of a obstacle. But I think the way I found around that and the way to motivate them is, like I said, give them the power to, to make the change. Yeah. The other, one of the biggest, another big obstacle is just the mentality of some of our staff. And it's not their fault. I mean, anywhere you go where there's never been any type of continuous improvement or lean implementation or at least trial, they look at it as more work. They never see the fact that this Change is going to make your job easier. They just see it as, okay, there's something else I have to do now. Luckily, most people have been on board since I've been in this position because I guess maybe they feel like they don't have a choice. It's always harder when I go to the print plant because that's where I started. Just like Jesus said, a prophet's never really welcome in his hometown.

Yeah.

Because they know me. And so when I go to new plants, I don't have to face as many challenges because they know I'm coming from our administrative offices. And like, when I went to one of our plants, the first thing I did was I said, what. What do they need that they don't have? And so to motivate them, I got them. I tried to get them stress fatigue mats because they didn't have any. I tried to get them safety glasses, earplugs, things that aren't required in that plant. But some of them have requested some coffee. Most of our plants, we give all the, our offenders coffee. It's in our budget and they just didn't have any. And so once I threw all that at them, they're like they were ready to do anything I asked them to do.

But, hey, one question I have though is sure, and don't answer what you're not supposed to answer. I'm going to be pushy and nosy right now. But, like, are the offenders? Like, I don't know, are they? I don't. I want to say what are they in there for? But, like, are they like, some of them, like in there for life or some of them going to get out or a mixture or what are we dealing with here?

It is a mixture. It depends on the different facility we have it at. Like, we have minimum, medium and closed custody. So most of our. We have a lot of plants that are in medium custody. These are people that could either be there for three to five years or life, but they have met qualifications we set for in order to work in our facilities. Okay. So yes, there, there are people in our plants. We've had people in the same plant for 40 years. And we try to balance who gets to do what. Because if you have a very high, almost like a technical skill that can really benefit someone out on the outside and you've got someone in there serving life, it's not fair to keep them on that just because they're really good at it, because other people need to benefit from that knowledge. So we try to rotate guys around and and, and females as well. We do have our female. Prison actually is where we print our license tags. So we have women make all of our license plates and that. We have a sewing plant there. We have men, so implants. We have a braille plant. We do. A lot of people don't realize even in our state that.

What state? I guess I didn't even ask you. Ask you.

Well, I said it. It's North Carolina.

Okay. Yeah.

We have farms. So our offenders grow all the food, a lot of the food they eat. We have a meat processing plant where they process all the food they're going to eat. We have a janitorial plant where they make all the soaps and janitorial products. And these also are used in schools and different government offices. But they're pretty much enterprise self sustains the prison system. We don't have to rely so much on outside vendors for things we can produce. The offenders make their own clothes. They make the clothes for themselves as well as the officers, as well as our staff. They do a lot to keep the, the prison system running. And a lot of people in the state don't even know we exist. They, they have no clue. Like I, I'm, I'm from a little town called Nashville. It is actually the original Nashville, Nashville, North Carolina. It's on the sign outside of the town where it says the original is the first Nashville. And our printing company, our printing plant which is inside of the Nash Correctional Institution is the biggest Heidelberg printing plant on the east coast. It's massive. And I never knew it was there my whole life and it was five minutes down the road from me. So. But back to what you were talking about, yes, there are many different levels of offender and some of our plants do struggle when we have a rotating door where you get guys that come in, they're only there for a short time and they can't really learn enough and you can't really rely on them. So yeah, turn that turnover rate can, can, you know, affect us a little bit. And then we've got plants like at the print plant, we have people that I call influencers. There are people that have been there long enough that they know every aspect of every department and people go to them. And so when I'm going into a plant to try to implement some type of new lean measure, I always grab an influencer because whether they know about it or not, they're the ones that are going to help everybody else out. So when we had our two second program, I had seven offenders that had taken and Were really well. Did really well at our cotter classes. And then I grabbed one guy that was just an influencer. He had never taken a class, but he knows every machine in that building and knows every process. So I said, I. I need your help. I need you to come help me because I need to convey a message to everyone. And everyone comes to you. And she was like, okay, you know, no problem. And he's. He's stuck right in there with it. Yeah. So it's finding ways to keep people motivated because we can't physically. I can't give them money.

Well, I was even. I wanted. I was going to circle back to that, just the whole topic of motivation, because I am personally fascinated with it. Just, you know, outside of your world, but just any company in the world trying to practice continuous improvement. You know, we've got intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. And extrinsic is the carrot, you know, the bonus or whatever. And sure, everybody likes to get a nice bonus. That's fine. But in your case, that ain't gonna really work, right? So we're back to intrinsic motivation. So mastery, autonomy, purpose, Like. Like really diving into their hearts. Like, that's what I'm so fascinated by with your work is like how you can just genuinely. How to say it any other way, but make them better people, right? Like, make them love themselves. Probably. That's maybe the first thing they got to do, right? Forgive themselves or whatever it might be to just sort of improve their own life that way. I mean, because. So it's way bigger than. Yeah, like you said, reducing the number of steps to here or there. You know, it's changing people's lives, man.

It is. And you know, one word you hear in the. In the prison world is rehabilitation. And it should really be transformation. That should be the word because we're not here to rehabilitate anyone. And the punishment.

What do you think's different? Sorry to interrupt. What's different between transformation and rehabilitation? What's different there?

I think rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is taking them somewhere they've already been. You're saying, hey, let's gonna correct this. We're gonna set you back to where you need to be. Transformation says, where can you be in the. Who can you be in the future? So I think the biggest intrinsic motivation can be recognition, especially in there. Because even in the private sector, recognition sometimes is few and far between. When you receive it, you always hear the bad news. You never get told you're doing a good job. And Even in my 23 years in the Private sector. It was very rare that I ever had a great job, you know? And so one thing we do is every day, it's, hey, great job, man. I don't care if you just swept the floor, man. You just did a great job, and it works. Yeah, I don't know why it works. It's just, I guess, something. We're hardwired. When someone recognizes and appreciates us and, you know, it's genuine, you. You run with it. Yeah, man.

I'm wondering. Well, just speak, like, maybe directly to anybody else that works in. In a. Maybe in a prison or maybe there are other, I don't know, like, regulated sort of places, you know, not necessarily a prison, but where things are highly regulated. Like, what advice do you have for those folks who are maybe trying to. Maybe they got to stand it up from nothing, or maybe they got a little bit going, but it's just not going the way they want it to go.

Well, and this isn't just in our industry, but one of the biggest issues I hear with Lean is never having support from the top down. And, I mean, luckily we have that support. Our director is. He's a master black belt. He loves Lean. But before I knew that, I just did it. I didn't want to wait. I took a class, and I saw that it was useful, and Lean could help us and help everyone in our plant. So I didn't wait and I didn't ask for permission. Now, this might not be the best advice, but I knew I could help, so I helped where I could. Yeah. And I took it slow. I didn't try to climb the mountain in one day. I started at the base, and I inched my way up one person at a time to improve. So my best advice is to set a goal and inch your way there day by day. I'm just chiseling away at the things that hold you back. Yeah. Like I said, I've heard many, many Lean thinkers ask, how do I get. How do I get my supervisor on board? How do I get my CEO on board? And that's a struggle because it has to. It has to envelop your entire. Your entire company.

Yeah.

For it to really take on.

What about this question? Let's say we've got. We've got a lot of people listening to this podcast right now, a lot of people practicing Lean Six Sigma, all kinds of continuous improvement, every flavor you can imagine.

It's.

It's pretty much covered by the audience listening right now. What can we. Not you, we, the listeners, myself included. Like, what are some ways that we can take our talents, you know, the gifts that we have as I can run a cotta class or I can. You know what I mean? Like, what could, what do you do? Just call up your local prison and say, hey, ever heard of lean? Or like, what do you think there, is there any value that we could be adding to the, to that world?

Yes, most. As far as the, the state prisons go, most state prisons have a prison industry and there's a lot of them. California, New York, Georgia, South Carolina. Just off top of my head, they're everywhere. And there's, there's an organization called the ncia, which is the National Correctional Industries Association. You can contact the, the different industry of, of that state and say, hey, look, I'd like to partner up, I'd like to teach some classes. Could I do this? Just, you know, you have to reach out to your state government, even local sheriff's departments. I mean, I don't, I'm not really familiar with that. I'm just familiar with state government. But, and prisons, whether it's continuous improvement or it's ministry, prisons have ministries all the time. And volunteers come in and in fact, like in our state, North Carolina State University has industry expansion solutions. The ies, they come in and teach us classes. They do train the trainers. So that's where I got my start was with NC State. So we have outside vendors coming all the time and just reach out, just reach out to that state and say, hey, I'd love to partner up. If you know anybody that works in the state government, they can get you into the, the avenue where you need to be to, to help out because they need it. Every, every offender needs it in, in every state. And our state just happens to be really good at it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic, man. I just want to tip my hat to you, Brandon, and to all of your colleagues and you know, every, all the offenders. I don't know if they'll be allowed to listen to this, but man, if they are bad, I would just want to pour my heart out to them and tip my hat to them as well. For, for diving in and, and controlling what they can control, which is their, their circumstance and they're trying to make it better.

Absolutely.

That's fantastic. I mean, and I know you're obviously a man of faith and you know, I just always think about Matthew 25:36 when he's very clear. Jesus is very clear. I was in prison and you came to me, you know, and that's what sort of pulls me and, and you know, I, I keep having conversations like this. Not like, eventually I just gotta quit making excuses and do something. But, but boy, man, I really, I really applaud you, man. So well done.

Thank you. Well, hey, look, if it wasn't for the, the podcast, I wouldn't be where I am, so. God, like I said, God has a way of putting people together, man. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, fantastic. So listen, Brandon, if people wanted to connect with you personally, what is the, what's the best way?

LinkedIn would probably be the best way. They can go up there and check out my profile and I can, I'll always respond if anyone reaches out.

Yeah, Brandon Bun with two n's, right?

That's right.

Yeah. And so we're gonna, we're gonna link it up here, folks, in the show notes. So just scroll down on your app, whatever you're listening to on, and please be sure to go and connect with Brandon if you're not already, and thank him. Let's flood his. Overwhelm his LinkedIn box with encouragement and thanks for him for all the work that he's doing, but also just for sharing a story on the podcast. So, and I'm gonna send this to Paul, I'm gonna text him, in fact, when we get off here, I'll say, there's this dude named Brandon. You gotta meet him. And he will. You just gotta jump on a, on a WhatsApp call with him. He didn't email or anything. He just wants to talk, you know.

Yeah, I know, I know. That's fine, man. Go for it.

Awesome. All right, well, hey man, I appreciate you, Brandon, and keep up the great work.

Thank you, Ron.

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