GA 565 | Continuous Improvement in Higher Education with Dr. Brad Miller

The top manager was saying, if you see quality problems, you figure out where they're coming from, you call me, I will come down there and I will make sure that whoever is doing that, you know, and sure enough, plant manager would come down. Great job, Brad. You know, I'm going to fix this and go march off and all of a sudden, you know, a few weeks later, some other department manager doesn't have a job. I mean, I thought that's just the way business was run until I experienced lean.

Today I am excited to welcome my good friend, Dr. Brad Miller back to the. So Dr. Miller is a professor at the University of Houston, and he, he teaches students Lean Six Sigma continuous improvement. And I think he. I believe he's in more than the supply chain area of, of the school. But. But yeah, he's teaching kids lean, like hardcore. I mean, it's an amazing work that he's doing down there. And so today on the show, we sort of talk about, like, what he's doing, how he's going about it, and what I feel like is especially interesting for many of us listening to this are no longer in school. Maybe we got kids in college or whatever it might be.

But.

What Dr. Miller is doing down there, I feel like can and should be applied in the business world. So I almost want you to listen to it from that perspective. Sure, he's talking about academia and he's talking about students and so forth, but, like, there's many lessons and I mean, I was picking things up, you know, on things that we can be do better here as we're teaching people about continuous improvement here at Gemba Academy. So he's very passionate. He really believes in what he's doing and he's doing a fantastic job. So I think you're going to like this one. It's actually a little bit longer. I looked up and we were like 40 minutes. I was like, whoa, man, we got going and I lost track of time. So. But stick with it to the end. He has some really good stuff at the end. And especially we're kind of giving hat tips to guys like Mike Rother and Dr. Jeffrey Leiker and other folks in our lean movement who've been big in the academic world as well. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 565 and please be sure to scroll down and whatever app you're listening to this on. And we're going to link to Dr. Miller's LinkedIn account. So please go connect with him if you're not already over on LinkedIn. Tell him thank you for coming on the show and thank you for all the work that he's doing with these, with these young students. And then he's got a YouTube channel, and he got lots of good stuff that we're going to link up as well. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Brad, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Hey, thanks. I'm doing great. Thanks for inviting me. Inviting me back.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we got to chat. What was it last week on the phone? We were kind of brainstorming about some different workshops and stuff that you're doing. So I said, why don't you come on the podcast again? It's been a while.

Yeah. And this is going to be fun. We'll have a good time chatting.

Yep, for sure. All right. Well, hey, you know the drill, Brad. We'd like to get things started with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, and I think this one will fit in a little bit with the. With our topic today, I tried to look up where it came from. I have. I. I don't know where it came from, but the kind of, the way I heard it was that people are not like vegetables. People don't grow in rows. We grow in circles.

Wow. And I never heard that. So what does that mean to you?

Well, you know, as a, as a teacher. Right. You know, as a professor, I walk into the classroom and all the students are there. They've got the nice, neat rows that are all set up for us, and we think we're teaching in that. But I, as you know, and as many of your listeners know, with Lean, it's, you know, the learning happens hands on. It happens in the gimba, where, you know, where the work is actually going on. And so, you know, there's a limited amount that I, I can really get students to understand from me standing up in front of them or with a PowerPoint or them sitting down taking notes, it takes them getting their hands in the middle of things. So as many times as I have to create, like, circle moments for them where they're getting in groups or they're standing up and, you know, participating in some activity, I just know more learning is happening there.

I love it. I love it.

It's been a good, good one for me as I've. As I've grown in my teaching.

Good stuff. All right. Well, hey, Brad, in case folks didn't hear, obviously you were last on at episode 310. So we've had A few episodes. Then tell us, tell us a little bit about, about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you got involved in this continuous improvement stuff that we're in. And then tell us a little bit about your work there at the university.

Yeah, so I spent about a decade in industry, managing manufacturing, in manufacturing organizations. Learned a ton there, made a bunch of mistakes and got introduced to Lean there and began practicing at that point, then got into academics. I, my dream really was, I just, I just loved, I love teaching people. Even when I was in industry, my favorite things were, you know, learning something new, learning about an improvement, a technique or a way to improve things, and then talking with people and then sort of working through with them. And then the moment when you see their eyes, like kind of open up where something clicks inside their brain. That was just an adrenaline rush for me. And so, you know, at some point in my career, I just decided, you know, I really, I want more of those experiences. And so that's really when I began pursuing, getting into an academic role. Anyway, got a PhD, ended up getting a PhD, and now I teach at University of Houston in the College of Business, teaching in supply chain. And so specifically, the upper level, sort of senior level undergrad course that I teach is focused entirely on Lean and Six Sigma. It's my favorite thing to do. I, you know, I tell students, name of the class. It's called Process and Quality Management. That's what it's called. I mean, you know, traditionally it would have been like an operations class, but I've really kind of taken it as a process improvement and quality improvement class. And we use the foundation of Lean and Six Sigma for, for putting the, for putting the course together. And I mean, I just, I love it. It's, it's amazingly fun to go in and, and interact and, and, you know, have a lot of the activities that we do with this.

So I'm curious not to get too personal and feel free to. We can punt on this if you don't want to answer it, but like, we've heard, I've heard a lot over the years of people, oh, I was in health care and then I went to manufacturing. I was in manufacturing, then I went to health care or whatever. You know, kind of like shifting gears in someone's career, going from, you know, the manufacturing world to academia. That's a, that's a big shift. Like, what did that look like? Did you just say, like, apply at University of Houston and they hired you or like, like you had no, like you had teaching experience but not in A university setting, right?

Well, yeah. Yes. And it's. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of funny a lot of times I think some universities will think that if they get somebody that has a Ph.D. then they automatically know how to teach, which, I mean, you know, we've all taken, or many of us have taken university classes. We know that's not necessarily the case. But I had the practical experience coming in. I did in my PhD. I researched, looked at Kaizen events and motivation. I think that's what we kind of talked about the last time we were chatting once I got my degree, actually moved to Columbus, Ohio. So, you know, right there. Yeah, Go Bucks. And it turned out that the chair of the department at Ohio State that was teaching Lean was one of the people who had written articles that I had referenced. And so anyway, I called him up and said, hey, you know, I'm in town, I'd love to just come in and just chat, you know, about, you know, about the research and just say, hey, I'm here if you need anything, you know, I'm around. It turned into teaching adjunct with them just teaching, hey, you know, we've got a class, we need somebody you want to jump in. So taught there and taught a couple of other places similar topics and just sort of grew, grew from there. And that's kind of how I got, I guess, a reputation. Got it to. Became a little, a little easier to, to transition around. And now I'm back in Houston and, and, and loving it here.

Great. Great. All right, well, I'm curious to hear, you know, few things have happened over the last few years in the world, to put it mildly.

Right.

Like, what's it like? What are these students like these days? I mean, I've got college age students, so. But I'm not teaching them in a university. Right. And so I'm curious to see like, like just, maybe even just over the last 10 years or so, like what, what it's happened is anything changed or it's gotten better, worse, different.

Yeah, I mean, definitely different. Yeah, the environment has definitely, has definitely changed. Obviously, Covid happened several years ago and just through all of us, you know, through everything online threw us all for a loop. Like none of us really knew what was going on and just kind of had to pick through and figure out how it was all going to work. Then we came back face to face and I'll tell you that it was difficult coming back face to face when the students came back. I can remember having conversations with some of my colleagues and having conversations about, wow, the you know, the students are different or, you know, I, you know, I don't know if they really want to put in the work or they, you know, have forgotten how to be in a classroom and those sorts of things. And over time, I've realized that really what that was is just me longing for like, the way things used to be. And it's like the environment is different now. I don't know. I kind of liken it to, From a, from a lean perspective. Right. That's what continuous improvement is all about, is realizing that the market environment is going to change, the workforce is going to change, our company's capabilities are going to change. And what may have worked in the past, like, excellently great world class. I mean, it's going to change. And so we've got to be able to be flexible to, to, to deal with those changes. And so you have really began kind of looking at, at what, you know, what do students really want? The students now, they're definitely, they're definitely into the tech, Tech savvy. They, they, you know, in a classroom, honestly, in the classroom, I'm not sure that a whole lot has changed since I was in school. Like, I always wanted, I wanted to go someplace in the class where I felt like I was learning something that was going to be useful to me. I wanted a professor that was engaged, that wanted to be there. I mean, the more that they wanted to be there, the more I was interested. Yeah, I wanted to be entertained, you know, a little bit. Like, I didn't want, I didn't like a boring, like, turn your back to the class lecture. I don't think anybody does. And the students today are no different. I think now too, students realize that, you know, if they're going to show up someplace, it's got to be meaningful to them. Yeah. You know, I really think that for. Because I know a lot of our, your listeners are practitioners or managers in businesses that are practicing lean. I really think that a lot of the changes that have happened in the way that the young folks are growing coming up is an advantage to lean managers. The students today, they're energetic, they have a lot of energy. They want to make a difference in the world. You may, you know, get this with your kids too. I mean, they're socially conscious, they're environmentally conscious. They want to contribute to their communities. They want to know that what they're doing makes a difference. They want a voice. So they aren't content with someone just saying, telling them, hey, go do this job and do this and do this and shut up and don't talk back to me. You know, they want a voice in that. They want to be part of that community. And I think as lean leaders, I mean, in my mind, isn't that what we dream about? Like, we dream about having a workforce that is engaged and wants to make a difference and is diving in. We've got a problem and everybody's going to bring their own diverse background and perspective and jump in and you know, I'm going to throw in my two cents with this and we're going to hash this out and let's figure it out and make it happen. And I really want to make a difference. That's what we want. And so I think it's a real advantage. Yeah. For lean managers these days. I just like to encourage folks, find some of these young people, connect with your local university, especially if they're teaching Lean or Six Sigma. Offer some internships to these kids. You know, it's like an internship's a great way to kind of trial somebody and see how, see how it works and see what you think. I mean, I think that the, the kids today are great in the, the energy that they bring. If you give them the opportunities to, you know, to have some of that influencer or see what sorts of things that they can do.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, so last week when we were chatting, you were talking a lot about, and I already knew some of this, but you were talking a lot about sort of how you're structuring your classes and in, you know, lots of hands on activities. I'm wondering if you could just walk us through sort of how you're structuring these classes to teach things like Lean, things like Six Sigma, just continuous improvement to these students. Like, what are you doing? And is it just you? Death by PowerPoint video. What are you doing?

Yeah, to be honest, like, Covid was a huge advantage for me in this and I, because I, you know, I was just, I was doing, I, I always tried to bring activities into the classroom or tried to do things that would be interactive in the class. But I was really, you know, stuck in kind of the old paradigm of like, here's a PowerPoint and I'm going to talk through it and I'm going to be entertaining up here. But there's still the PowerPoint sort of a thing Covid happened. Then I, so I had to put everything online. So I created all these videos. Okay. So then we came back face to face. Mostly we still have, there's still a cohort of students Right. That is, there's a lot of programs that have 100% online programs in University of Houston. It's the same, but for our face to face. I had created all these online videos, and I said, like, what am I going to do with these things? Like, am I just going to delete them all and say, you know, tough, you got to be in the class, or, you know, what. How is that going to work? So I said, well, why can't I just give them those video? The videos kind of talk through, like, a lot of the lean principles, how to do the tool, use the tools and the principles behind it, and definitions of terms and those sorts of things. And then why don't we spend, like, class, most of the classroom time, like, actually having Gemba experiences? I found that my. After spending time in industry, I mean, what I really longed for with my students was I wanted to take them back to some of the plants, you know, that I had managed at. And like, you know, let's just sit here for a week and, like, do the process, you know, and see how this works. I want them to have that experience. And so I said, well, how. How can I bring some of those Gemba experiences into the classroom and give students the opportunity to. To experience, lean, experience what it's like to improve a process or experience, what it's like to interact with other people when you're dealing with these tools and techniques? At the, at the beginning of my. At the beginning of my course, when I start at the beginning of the semester, I don't know, at the beginning, I try to be a little funny, and I put up a. A slide that has the steps for how to ride a bicycle. Like, it's step one, two, three, four, five, six little diagrams and all this stuff. And I tell them, I say, like, being in this class is like learning to ride a bicycle. You know, we can have a PowerPoint presentation. It's going to have definitions of terms, step one, two, three, four, diagrams. Maybe I show a video of someone riding a bicycle. You know, those sorts of things. I can give you quizzes, homeworks about it. I can give you an exam. You can make flashcards, study with a group, you know, memorize stuff. Yeah, and take the exam. You can get an A on the exam, but if you've never ridden a bicycle, you know, it's. I like giving that example because most of the students in the class actually have the Gemba experience of learning to ride a bicycle. And so they like. They laugh when I say, like, you know, someone that's never ridden a bike. They can go through this, this PowerPoint, watch a video and then come up here. We can just push them off the sidewalk on a bicycle. And they're riding, you know, and they all laugh because they know, you know, what's, what goes on. You know, well, they're going to fall down, they're going to, like, you know, they're not going to be able to do it. They're going to skin their knee, they're going to bump their head. They're going to, it's not going to work. See, that's exactly, exactly right. Like, you can learn all the definitions, you can know all the processes, you know, be able to speak the language and the principles and you got, I mean, that's a great, you got to have some of that foundation, right, to be able to improve processes. As if you're going to get, you know, then you get out and you, you're going to know about process improvement. You won't be able to improve a process. Right. Because that's not how it works. And so I said, so what we're going to do in the classroom is we're going to ride the bike. We're going to ride a bicycle. So you'll come in, we'll take tools from, we'll take tools that, you know, that you're learning online. We'll bring them into the class, we'll try them out, and you're going to find out like, it doesn't work like that. Like, when you deal with other people, there's some adjustments you got to make in the middle of it, and every time you do it, it's different. And man, I just, I, I love creating and developing and.

Yeah, so what about the grocery store? I can't let you off the hook without talking about the grocery store.

I've got lots of them. I, and we could chat a little bit about the grocery store. I developed one of the sort of activities simulations that I have is a grocery store checkout was born just because I, I, I am the grocery shopper in my family and I have to go every week. And I just, I, I like, I don't mind the grocery shopping experience. The checkout process drives me bonkers. And. Yeah. And the reason is just because my stuff ends up getting, like, crushed at the end of the line, groceries tumbling over each other, stuff falling off the table. You know, all of these things sort of happen. And, and I look at it from a process viewpoint and I was, I just say to myself, like, this has, there's got to be better ways of doing this. And so. Yeah. So I created a full size grocery store checkout. You know, actually, I mean, it's. It's a little wonky, but went to the grocery store while they weren't looking with a tape measure to see how big the thing was. And then, you know, I brought that stuff. Yeah. You know, kind of makeshift. Put it together so I can have it in the front of the classroom. And we've got students that, you know, come up and one plays the part of the person doing the scanning and one plays the part of the person doing the bagging, and we run the process. Man, it's just a. It's a really great experience because they get to see what a real process looks like with people that have to interact and how the. How when the company and managers have performance expectations on people and then, you know, set like, numeric goals for, you know, here's what good performance looks like, which is all done in good faith. When you do this, it creates a culture where people react naturally to that. And so you end up seeing the grocery store checkout in the classroom works the same as it does the regular grocery store. And all the groceries, like, end up being crushed and trampled and stuff. Get the milk gets put on top of the eggs and like, all the stuff, you know, happens. Just because that's the way it's set up. Yeah. Switch roles. The same thing happens. It doesn't matter what role people are in. They perform the same. Then we end up brainstorming. We look at waste. You know, where's the waste happening? You know, how's it starting with overproduction and transferring through to all the other wastes. And then we brainstorm ways to improve and then create kind of a visually managed, kind of a conceptualized idea of what a grocery store could look like. And. And measure it again. So we kind of have a before and after. Yeah.

What's interesting to me about it is the importance of. I mean, obviously everybody listening knows that it's not just the process, it's the people. Right. And just that. The harmony of the people. So I'm curious, like, how does that go with the students? Because there's all. They're all different personalities. And, you know, maybe you have an extrovert and maybe you have an introvert and that sort of thing. Like, what are you seeing there on. Just on the behavioral side of. Of things when you're running this, the simulation?

Yeah, I. I love this. I've got a couple of different ones that, That I use you know, to demonstrate this, and I try to reinforce it a couple of times during the semester because understanding that the thing that's going to determine your outcomes is it really is the process. It's not the people for the most part. I mean, you know, but I mean, I don't know, like Deming said, you know, whatever it is, the 90 plus whatever percent of the time, it's. It's really the people and giving them these experiences allow them to see it in real, in real action. With the grocery store, there's just a couple of people, a few people that are involved and then other people the rest of the class is observing. Yeah, I'll let me tell you about another one that I do. Yeah, that's kind of fun that I think some people will be a little bit familiar with too, is I play my adaptation of the airplane game. So I. And for anyone that hasn't heard of that, like, you can just Google the airplane game and people have like, tutorials, how to set it up and those sorts of things. But I've got classes with 60 to 80 students in them and I wanted everyone to be involved and I wanted to create an environment where they could see a real, like a real man what is the dynamics of a real complex manufacturing system. So I kind of took that airplane game and really blew it up. So we've got. I have four different products that they make, four different airplanes, four different customers with demand, like a regular demand that comes through 10 different departments scattered throughout the class. Each department has their own work instructions, couple of managers, material handlers, and you know, we're making these airplanes to, to this customer demand. And in this class session, you know, all the stuff that I want them to see. And I, I say this and tell them this in the classroom and encourage them to look at, not at the paper airplane making thing, but as at the interpersonal dynamics that are happening. So all the stuff happens, like we fall behind and some departments are way overloaded and they get these big piles of paper that they can't keep up with. And so then they shortcut the process by like, you know, doing what they, whatever they do, they do it in a large batch to try to make it all at once. And then they send it on. Of course, the quality is, you know, terrible when they do that. And then the next people, whatever. And then we've got quality. Oh, we've got a final inspection process, of course, to make sure the good quality gets to the customer. But like 80% of the planes are no good. That get to the customer nonetheless, you know, so the managers are upset and people are frustrated. Honestly, it's a pretty chaotic class session, but like, you know, then we try to find quality. Well, where's the quality problem coming from? Well, you know, this was folded wrong, so let's go to that department. Well, why was this folded wrong? Well, it's not my fault. It's them over there, they did that, you know, and so you get the finger pointing, you get the hiding of problems, people taking things and like putting them under the desk because they don't want people to see, you know, that they've made these errors and all of these behaviors, you know, sort of happen. And so then we have a discussion about like, okay, this is, you know, traditional management, traditional functional layout. This is what you get. Like, this is the outcome, this is the culture. And we, up to this point we've been talking about culture in the classroom. And so I say, you know, look how I didn't tell you to act this way. And I know that as a group, University of Houston students aren't wanting to cheat the system or blame other people or hide, you know, hide problems or, you know, not do good quality work or not do your best job. You're all trying, you're all behaving exactly the way you should. It's just the system is creating this and they sort of believe. Then a few weeks later, then we work on some problem solving over a week or so. And then we come back and we've put together a fully, like lean cells where we have visual management, circular cell layout, people doing all the jobs kind of in a circle, walking through Kanban system feedback loops for quality issues and these sorts of things. And all of a sudden, like, I don't tell them to do this, it's just part of the system. And they start collaborating and they were able to meet, they're able to go faster than customer demand. And some cells, it's easy to tell with the Kanbans, like which cell is ahead. And so they stop working and then they come over and help another cell and they're collaborating. And then I, it's so cool because at the end I tell them, I say, hey, like all, we had great success here in this class. But notice it's exactly the same people that you had in the other one. Like we were making the exact same airplanes, same design, you know, the same process, same tools. Didn't improve. Tools, no. Automation? No, I didn't get new scissors, you know, or what it was like, it's exactly the same Equipment, exactly the same process or exactly the same tools that we use, but just the process, the way we organized it is different. And notice how we were able to be successful. It is the process, not the person.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you a big. I'm. I'm very. I'm really passionate about teaching this. I do it a few times in the class. Um, because early in my. Early in my career, I had managers who wanted to be mentors to me and were teaching me as a young, you know, young supervisor, wanting to be a manager and getting ready to move into management positions, giving me advice on how to manage people and how to, you know, improve systems of people. And the advice that I was given was, you know, the. The poor performers, you got to get rid of those people. There's some people that are just no good. And you're just going to have to. You need to fire them. And the, you know, those people over there, if they keep making mistakes, you need. You need to go over there and threaten them with whatever. And we're going to back you up. You know, we're backing you up here. I'm going to coach you through this. You're going to make it, but you need to threaten them and tell them they need to, you know, get things going better or you're going to demote them or you're going to fire them or whatever. And in my. I was in. In like on us, this. I was the assembly department manager, and the top manager was saying, if you see quality problems, you figure out where they're coming from, you call me, I will come down there and I will make sure that whoever is doing that, you know. And so, man, I'm telling you, and assembly, I think I had more of an advantage because everyone else from the plant was feeding me their stuff.

Yeah.

So it was easy for me. If I had any problems, I could just say, ah, it's them, it's them, it's them. Point my way backward in the plant. And sure enough, plant manager would come down, you know, great job, Brad. You know, I'm going to fix this and go march off. And all of a sudden, you know, a few weeks later, some other department manager doesn't have a job like. And I. I mean, I thought that's just the way business was run until I experienced lean and experienced a company that really had a good, positive culture, a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement. They weren't perfect, but they were certainly moving that direction. And when I learned that and realized that and then practiced, like in the Classroom and then practicing myself in industry or with other teams that I was helping them improve processes. I mean, I, once I realized that it is the process, not the person, it was a game changer for me. Yeah, to where, I mean, even now when I've got, I've got like assistants that work for me, you know, and sometimes things don't work out exactly right. But it, you know, it's, well, how can we change the process? What can we do differently to, to make this better? How can we make the process more direct? Or where is the real root cause of this problem coming from? And how can we help you be successful? How, you know, and helping me, you know, me helping you be successful isn't try harder. It's, let's use some, I mean, we've got a bunch of lean, you know, lean knowledge here. Like how can we create visual management or poke yoke or there's got to be something. How can we, you know, let's brainstorm how can this happen? You know, and, and really working and helping people. I just, I, that's one thing I wish I had. I'm, I guess I wish I had known it earlier all in my career because I just think it's such an important part of, of managing in, in lean systems. And at the same time, had I not had that experience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then today I wouldn't be as passionate about it. And I tell students about this of mine and hopefully, I mean, that's the real point of doing these, these in class events they're going to probably remember. I talk about Gemba enough in class. This one thing students make fun of me about and they're like, they'll make Gemba jokes about, about the class, which is kind of funny. So they'll know what the definition of Gemba. But then there's a lot of like lean terms or I don't know the steps for doing something or the history of Toyota. They're, they're never, they're not going to remember that after the class. And honestly, I really don't care. But these events, my hope is that they're, they get into industry and then they see people, they see problems in their company and maybe their manager comes to them and says, well, you know, should we, you know, what are you going to do about that person? How are we going to get them on an improvement plan or whatever? And I hope that these activities help them to remember, like, wait a second, I experienced this before. I mean, it was paper airplanes, it was a grocery store checkout. It's not what I'm doing now. But is there a way that we can make this better? Is there a way we can improve the process? I mean, and that's kind of my, my hope and dream for.

But it reminds me of, you know, the famous May Angelo quote of learn. People will forget what you said, forget what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And I feel like, I feel like that there's a very kinesthetic environment going on in your classroom, right. Where like people are, they're literally experiencing it, they're touching it, they're feeling it, they've got the emotions, they've got the adrenaline, that the kind of stuff gets burned into those neural pathways, I think in your brain.

Right.

And that's. Oh yeah, that's harder for, Harder to forget. But yeah. What was the third S and 5s? Ah, you know, you know what I mean?

So I will figure that out. But yeah, and so I do. I try to, with a lot of these, I try to have kind of a shocking moment in the middle of these where it's like, whoa, I had no idea that that's, you know, just to try to create that little memory hook for them for sure.

So the last question I have for you here, and I don't mean to sound critical of, of sort of academia in any way, but you know, sometimes there's this, at least when I was in school, there was just sort of this, I don't know, gotta get it right, gotta pass the test, you know, and yeah, and there's a lot of pressure, you know, here. You know, the high school students hearing the star test and everybody's freaking out and all our. We've got this environment for good or for bad. I don't know who am I to judge of, of the way school is done. But you're doing it in a. I mean, I know your students, I'm sure, have to take tests and so forth. But, but how do you balance that sort of get it right the first time mindset with experimenting your way forward, with, with, with lean and, and not. Not knowing the answer. But we're going to figure it out. Right? Like, how do you balance those things?

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm doing my best. I'm continuing to try to improve. I don't know that I'm doing the best job at it. I'm working at trying to make it better, having those in class experiences. And honestly, it's at least 3/4 of my classes, these, these interactive things where there's no expectations about performance. It's just them being there, being hands in the middle, you know, getting their hands dirty in the middle of a process and. And really learning that is one of the struggles, I think, with all of us is we all grew up in this educational system where high performance means I'm presented with a problem, I'm able to develop the ideal solution first time, and then I present that back, and that is the best solution of everybody. And if it's the best solution of everyone, then I'm the best at whatever this is, and I get the highest grade. And that's built into the. I mean, it's built into all of our education systems. I'm. I am still in my own brain experimenting with how all this works. I know. I'm pretty sure Bob Emiliani had worked quite a bit with how to do this in his classrooms as well. So I'm still kind of experimenting how it works. But students don't like failing at things. So I'll have activities in the classroom where failure is a part of it for, you know, let's see. For example, one is if you've never done the. And for this, for anyone, that's out there as well. If you've never done the spaghetti, the marshmallow spaghetti challenge, super fun, but it involves, like, a lot of failure. And at the end of that, you know, I say, you know, I say, was that fun? Like, oh, yeah, that was blah. That was. I had a lot of fun, you know, well, how much of that, like, what proportion of the time were you failing versus what proportion of time were you succeeding? You know, and they're like, well, we were failing most of the time. Well, that's where the learning happens, and that's how you are able to make things better. So I try to bring some of those experiences in. I'm still struggling with how to do it academically. One place that I have experimented with it a little bit and I'll continue to do this is in my online section. So I've got an online section of the same class. Well, I, you know, I can't do an immersive in the classroom experience with them. So instead, every week I have them do independent on their own. I try to create experiences that they can have at home, you know, where they're, you know, either taking one of the tools and using it for themselves, or they're having to look at their own processes and define what a process is and evaluate waste. Or I have them take apart a pen, like, take. Get 10 pens. Take them all apart into their little pieces, put it together in batch, and then put it together in flow, in one piece. Flow. Take a video, you know, and show me the video. And then turn these in for their, you know, kind of gimbal experiences. Especially early in the class, like when they're defining what a process is and defining what. Where is the waste in the process. And you know, this Ron, that it's. The definitions are simple and teaching it is simple, but when it's applied to real processes. Yeah, you know, it get. It gets a little fuzzy and it's hard for folks first time through. So what I've done is, especially on those early ones, they submit the assignment and then I'll set up a one on one with them and we kind of go through their assignment. I'll give them a grade, you know, and I'll purposely. It'll be a low grade, you know, and then I get online with them and then we have a little coaching and I say, hey, why don't you try it again? You know, try it again. Let's, you know, now that we've talked, try it again. Get it back to me for full credit. Like, you know, that way you can get, you can earn all the points, but it's not important that you get it right the first time.

Yeah.

The thing that I was afraid of when I started doing that was that I was afraid that later in the semester students would do activities and, and that they wouldn't try very hard.

Oh yeah.

And that, you know, that they would like kind of half put half effort into it because they're like, yeah, Dr.

Miller will tell me how to do it.

Yeah, I don't really. I'll just put something in. Then Dr. Miller will call me, you know, whatever, and we'll end it up, make it all right. And I guess, I mean, it was a big learning for me. It was a shock for me. But the opposite happened, like, as we progressed through the semester, for most students in the class, their work gets better. Like it's more thorough, it's more well thought out and they really want to please, you know, they really want to do it correctly. And they're like putting all of it into. I'm like, wow, how did that.

So interesting. I think I. I don't know my hypotheses, just on the limited things that you've told me is that you've, you've been able to train, get these kids, these students to be intrinsically motivated like they want. They're getting better. Mastery, autonomy, purpose, all these things, like you've, you've, you've gotten that inside of them now. Ver the traditional approach of extrinsic motivation, like you're gonna get a good grade, you know, and golly, you know, like some people, like, you know, like my, my son, he's a, he's a senior in high school. He just, he just hates school. He gets good grades, but he just hates it, you know, and always has, you know, so for him, getting a good grade is not motivating. He doesn't want to be in trouble and get his phone taken away and all, you know, but, but what you've done, it sounds like, is the reason that they, they probably want to make you proud. Also when they're getting ready, I know I'm going to have a call with him on next Wednesday and I want them to be proud of me. And you know that. And so I feel like that's probably what's going on. If I were to guess.

Yeah, there's some of that. I think also with a lot of these things, it's not just like a busy work. Okay. Doing the pens one piece flow is kind of a busy work. It was. Doesn't have any direct impact on their lives, but like for looking at waste or process, they're doing it in their own personal processes. And then as we're having these one on one discussions, I'm always tying it back to, you know, wow, doesn't that make it, you know, does it make it easier for you now to see like areas that maybe you could be better in this area or when we do something like, and we do an interrelationship digraph. And so I have them do it. And a lot of students will struggle with like, how do we draw the lines and stuff around and, and they put something together and it's like, it's not right. And so we talk and then I say, okay, let's, let's talk through it. Let's talk through this first card. Like, how does this apply to this one? How does it apply to this one? Let's draw the arrows. We start drawing and once they get through, they, then they open up and they say, wow, like now I can really see like where the source of the problem is coming from. And I said, now, now can you write that last section where you say, you know, what is, you know, what are you going to do next? You know, you know, what are you going to do next to improve this process? Or like, like, yeah, that'd be easy because I now I know you know, and so they realize it's. It's having an impact on them personally, which is what I want. I mean, that's what. Isn't that what. Yeah, Ron, Isn't that what Lean's all about? Like, yeah, we're in business. We want our business processes better. Of course.

Yeah.

And then for this, for us that are our practitioners, it's. It's everything we do in life. Like, why can't I just make life better for me and my family, the people around me, my community?

Yep.

And that's what I want for them, too.

That's beautiful, man. That's awesome. It gives me so much hope, really, thinking about the work that you're doing. And then there's so many other. Like, you know, I'm a big Ohio State guy, but I give props to University of Michigan, you know, like, their school is fantastic. As far as, you know, Dr. Leiker and Mike Rother and all those guys over there and just all the, you know, what they've got going on. There's lots of examples across the country, really, where we're. I feel like we're starting to teach these young people how to think, you know, more than just how to good. Get. Get a good grade, how to think. And, man, if we have a bunch of young people coming into the business world and manufacturing world and healthcare that can think, boy, the world's going to be a much better place.

Yeah. And I mean, I'll let you know. Ohio State, well, obviously, University of Houston is. So if you're in Texas and in the. In the Houston area specifically, you know, anywhere. Look at our supply chain. Look at our supply chain program. I think our students are amazing. I really do. They come from such diverse backgrounds and they're so motivated, so definitely look at us. But Ohio State as well, does really great work with Lean. And I'd like. Also, since you mentioned Mike Rather, I'd like to just give props to Mike Rather, especially if someone's made it this far in the podcast. They're probably interested somehow in teaching. If you do a Google search for Mike Rother teaching kata, Mike Rother has a whole website and he gives away all of his stuff for free. We're talking lesson plans and PowerPoint presentations and how to put together these things. And I mean, obviously you can. You can just take them off the shelf and use them, but for free. But you can also adapt. I've taken a lot of that and kind of adapted for what I'm doing in the class, but I just want to throw that out there. That's a great resource for teachers. He's done a great job of putting that out there.

He sure has. I feel like Mike is, you know, he's one of the most humble guys that you'll ever meet, you know, and, but think about the impact that he's had on our, on our movement, you know, learning to see and you know, early days of value stream mapping and all this kind of stuff. I mean, I remember as a young engineer I had this book and I'm just like highlighting it, running around factories and you know, and then, well, we've missed something. What have we missed? It went back and Toyota Kata was born. Right. And yeah, what a wonderful job him and Dr. Leiker and all those guys have done. So.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hat tip to them for sure.

All right.

Hey Brad, if folks wanted to connect with you personally, what's the, the best way? LinkedIn. Something like that.

Yeah, LinkedIn's the, the best way. I think you'll be able to post my LinkedIn link. You can always search for me at University of Houston as well and kind of see me there. I'd love to hear from folks. Love to share. I know I've been talking with you, Ron. I love to share and yeah, if people are doing this, love to collaborate with you and, and help us be able to teach Lean, especially to young folks in, in a lot better, more meaningful ways.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, keep up the great work and everybody scroll down to whatever app you're listening to on. And Pete, please go. Sure. Be sure to to connect with Brad over on LinkedIn and send him a message thanking him for coming on the show. All right, well, you take care and I'm sure we'll talk again down the road.

Thanks. I enjoyed chatting with you today, Ron.

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