GA 568 | Lean and Talent Development with Sarah Tilkens

And I was told for a very long time that I was receiving coaching from my leaders, from my mentors. But it took working with someone who was trained as a coach for me to recognize, holy crap. What I've been experiencing was not coaching.

Today I'm excited to welcome Sarah Tolkiens back to the show. Now, I've known Sarah for many, many years. I think this is the fourth time she's been on the podcast. So she's got a really strong background, spent a lot of working for GE in various lean and leadership roles, and now she's got her own company that she started. So we'll tell you all about that here when we get going. But today we really focused in on the whole idea of talent development as part of a organizational transformation. And so this is really one of Sarah's passions, is developing people and developing talent within sort of a lean ecosystem. And, yeah, lots of good wisdom in here and lots of good lessons from things that she's learned over the years. So I think you're going to enjoy it. I know I did. Our show. Notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 568. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 568. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Sarah, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Hi, Ron. Thanks for having me. I'm great. How are you doing?

Oh, I'm doing well. I'm doing well. So, yeah. So what is this like? I think this is the fourth time you've been on the podcast. Does that sound right?

It is the fourth time. I started as, like, a super fan, and I remember the first time you interviewed me being terrified, thinking, oh, my God, what do I have to say? So the fact that this is time number four is a testament to your legacy and my journey.

I appreciate it. Yeah, no, it's always great to catch up. And so we were just chatting right before we hit record. The last time you were on was episode 474. So it's been a minute. Right, so. But you know, Sarah, how we like to get things going right out of the gate. We like to start with a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, this one I actually have on a sticky note and I look at it all the time. My girlfriend told it to me. It's attributed to Wayne Dyer, but it's when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yeah, that's pretty good. What's that mean to you?

You know, I Think in the context of problem solving in I'm a new entrepreneur. It's just this reminder that perspective is so important. So when we're feeling like things are hard, when we're feeling like we're stuck, we can just simply change our mind. And sometimes that's all it takes to actually create movement. So it's just like again, this, it reminds me that I'm responsible for what I think and what I think controls the results that I create.

Awesome. Okay. All right. Well, you just hinted at a little bit about a change since last time we chatted, but tell us a little bit about what's going on. Maybe back up a little bit. Just tell us in case folks missed the previous episodes. Like a little bit about, about your background and then obvious what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so my background was all over the place. I got introduced to Six Sigma when I was a biologist, spent some time in construction, ended up landing at GE Healthcare. So that's really where I spent most of my time in operations, really understanding and developing as a lean practitioner. The last time we spoke, I was actually a business team leader for GE Healthcare. So that's essentially managing on operations. I had a three shift manufacturing operation that I was responsible for. It was very intense and I actually ended up pivoting shortly after we spoke last. So I went back into a lean coaching Op X role. Did that for a while and then last fall I actually left GE to pursue my company, the KPI Lab, full time.

Wow. Okay, so tell us a little bit about the KPI Lab.

It is everything that I love. It's a people centric problem solving studio. So the type of work that I'm doing is really focused on developing problem solvers instead of just solving problems. I experienced being the recipient of consultants a lot and I always thought that there is this disconnect between really the human empathy, understanding from the people who are impacted by the problem, what the problem actually is. And so the results that were put in place just never sustain. So what I do is really all about again, developing talent, solving problems in a way that actually changes the culture and creates real change in an organization.

Awesome. Okay, and we're going to link everything up here on the show notes. So everybody go check out Sarah's website and everything she's got going on there. But so you've mentioned talent development, so I want to maybe just let's hone in on that a little bit to start. So why do you think developing people, developing talent is such a critical part of really Transformation.

You know, I think it's twofold. So I think I've told the origin of how I got into this before on your podcast, but for those who don't know, I got an executive coach. It was probably five years ago now, and I was told for a very long time that I was receiving coaching from my leaders, from my mentors. But it took working with someone who was trained as a coach for me to recognize, holy crap. What I've been experiencing was not coaching. So that made me fall in love with this different way of being with people, with serving people, and with developing talent. I think what that means to me now, right, is that people are really burnt out. The job market is really intense, and for leaders and everybody just to understand who they are, what they believe, their point of view. When you have access to that, how you deliver results for your organization, how you serve yourself and others, and how you keep your cup full, I mean, it just changes dramatically. So talk about a waste. In organizations, you know, we talk about the traditional. I always knew the acronym Tim Wood. Right. But there's talent, which I feel like a lot of people are talking about now, and people just aren't fully unlocked. People are bored. People don't recognize, you know, their path to something different. So really giving people, again, access to that just. Just changes organizations.

He mentioned you thought people. More people are more. More burned out these days than maybe they have been. Like, why do you think that? And what are some potential countermeasures?

I think that for lots of different generations, it's. I don't. I'm not a burnout coach. I feel like there's people who talk about this a lot, but in my experience, again, it's like people looking for purpose and people not feeling like they're getting that level of validation. And the dissonance that's created there leads to some of that. Like, what am I doing? What am I working for? Why am I working so hard if people don't care about me or if I'm not getting something out of it? And so, at least in my experience, like, a lot of that boredom and burnout actually kind of dance together. And I think a lot of people just don't know what they're good at, what they want to pursue. So, again, offering that opportunity and just letting them kind of unlock themselves.

So someone's listening to this right now, and maybe they manage people and they're like, oh, my gosh, what are. Maybe my people are feeling that, or, you know, family members or something. Anything like that. So like, what can we do? Like, let's say you're a leader of people and you don't want them to feel like that, you know, you genuinely care about them or whatever it might be. Like, what are some things that we can be doing as leaders to sort of counter these, these issues that are very real.

I think the first thing is just talking about it, you know, creating space for it. Not in a, it's my leader, I have to solve this problem. But in a, let me better understand this and empathize with it first. I think, you know, it was hard when I was a leader to talk to my staff about that kind of stuff. I felt like there was that boundary where I can talk to my superiors, but I can't show them that I don't have it all together. I can't show them that I'm burnt out. It's super vulnerable. You're the leader, you're the adult, you're supposed to have it all together. So I think when we get okay with offering that to others, it again gives them permission to experience it. And one of the tricks that I've used with coaching clients is again, just asking the questions of what finds, like what brings you joy or what fills you up. I heard once that freedom equals time spent doing things you love minus time spent doing things you hate. So it's again, just giving people permission to what would you actually like to be doing more of what's something on your plate that is really burning you out? And how can we come up with solutions to make that easier, better? So again, I keep saying this, but it's just like having the conversation. I don't think there's one cure, but just, just offering that it exists and we can, we can do something together. Yeah.

I think like vulnerability is a missing ingredient in many organizations for whatever reason, you know, like, you got to be. You're the boss, so you're supposed to know the answers or you're supposed to have it all figured out, or you're supposed to have it always together. And the reality is we're human beings, right? And there' going to be moments in everyone's life to where you don't have it all together or, you know, your kid's been sick for two weeks or whatever, you haven't been sleep, you know, and, and I, I just feel like that ability to be real with one another is, is so important. But man, it's hard. Especially like a, not to pick on ge, but like a giant company like that. Right. Like, you know what I'M saying, like billions of dollars, you know, like. Like, we don't have time for feelings around here, man. We get. You know what I mean? That's really difficult, right, when you're in a big company like that. What do you think about that?

I totally agree with that. And I think, you know, diversity plays into that a lot. I would say maybe ge, but, like, a lot of manufacturers are still really heavily, like, male leadership is what runs. So I think that teaches, like, there's certain characteristics in male leadership that are a little bit the softer female stuff. So we learn to exist in our path to leadership, and sometimes that has us downplaying some of those different aspects of who we are. So, again, just encouraging that different is okay, and there isn't one right way to show up. But it's hard to show vulnerability when you haven't seen other people offer that permission. So it's hard to be the first, it's hard to be the second. But again, like, that's. We just sometimes have to do that work so that we can take care of ourselves. And in doing that, maybe we offer something to others.

Yeah. Okay, so. All right, well, let's shift gears a little bit now. So I know that, you know, just knowing you over the years, that you're passionate about, about Lean, for sure, but also about, you know, developing people and developing talent. So I'm wondering if you could share some examples of. I don't know if there's any programs or initiatives or anything that you've been involved with where you were able to sort of comb your love of developing talent and Lean.

Of course, there are a couple different things that come to mind. So several years ago now, I got asked by our plant manager to bring back a problem solving program. We had started using a version of an A3, and it was really figuring out how do we get this new language across the organization? How do we help people understand not only the tools, but when it's appropriate? And so I did my own kind of process to figure out what's the problem statement and how are we actually going to implement a program. The first thing I did, I mean, you know, again, like, understanding what people want, doing some of that discovery work, going to Gemba, but instead of asking how, I started by asking who. So understanding that we're launching a new program, you want people at the helm who are going to naturally be passionate, maybe have a little bit of that sales mentality, maybe already have the relationships built. So my step one was like, I'm going to find the people and then once we're in the room together, we're going to figure out the how. So it was just a little bit of a different way of honoring people's natural capabilities so that we built something that they could lead. Instead of saying, okay, here, I built it all in my head. Here are maybe the right people on paper to go teach and deploy. But those people actually are only right in title, but not right maybe in behavioral profile. So that's an example. I also did. This is probably about a year and a half ago, we launched what we called a KPO program, so a Kaizen promotion office. The problem we were solving was we had a huge dock of projects that we needed to get done around productivity. And we didn't necessarily have the labor to resource them because most of our effort was on the day to day firefighting, day to day manufacturing. So I remember talking to some of the leaders and saying, we don't have a talent problem. Just part of our talent is busy pushing buttons on machines. But if we can figure out a way to get them off the floor and utilize their brain, brains pointing them at different problems that we have to solve, we can make some progress. So we actually negotiated with the union. We were able to get union members onto my team and we had a list of problems and we helped take a very people centric approach to, you know, Ron, you're in the union, maybe you've never had leadership development, but what are your superpowers? What type of work do you want to do? How do you want to contribute? So just giving people permission to think in a really different way. And then we did Kaizen very intentionally to develop skill sets. We, you know, helped them understand how to lift the muscles. We put them in the gym and we did, you know, in 90 days, we created insane results. I think that we contributed to six or seven hundred thousand dollars in VCP initiatives just by, you know, tapping some untapped talent.

Wow. How did that make you feel like when you were involved in that?

You know, I, I think proud. By the time I was involved in that, my staff actually took a lot of the responsibility of doing some of that development work, which was the first time that it wasn't me, you know, coming up with the idea and orchestrating it myself. So, so proud of what they were able to accomplish because it, it wasn't actually my lone victory. It was, I have this idea, you guys have your superpowers. I think we can make this happen. How do we leverage each other? And it, it worked. And again, it offered the Entire team this different. Permission to think about how they contribute inside the organization.

Love it. Okay, I want to circle back to KPI lab now, so you the not. How long have you been been at it?

I started KPI lab almost two years ago.

Okay. So I'm curious to maybe just take us a little bit on that journey of what, what is it, what it's been like and I don't know, has, have, have. Obviously with any business, you evolve, you learn, you know, you adapt and sort of thing and grow. So, like walk us through that a little bit like what it's been like and, and what you're up to these days.

Yeah. So I started with just coaching when I was getting my coaching certification. In order to be credentialized, you have to get paid to coach. So I went from, you know, this is a side hobby to holy crap, I have to figure out, you know, how to sell and how to become a business. So it started there. And my entire approach to building my business has been, you know, I experiment and just allowing myself permission to still be that version of myself as I was, you know, taking in a ton of information on what good looks like. So I started selling coaching and the question was, who wants to be coached by me and how do I create value in this space? So understanding that operations leaders were really attracted to me because I could deeply empathize with their point of view on a lot of things. So. Oh, interesting. Let's play with that then. You know, it served them to sometimes have some versions of consulting. So that helped me understand again, what does my client need and how can I meet them, where they're at? I've had a lot of, again, I've consumed a ton of information on how to run a business. And there's people who build it and then try to sell it. I've never done that. I've always just asked, what problem are you trying to solve and what can I pull from my toolkit to support you? So it's this very customer centric approach to I make no assumptions about what my market needs. I have again, my toolkit and I, I understand, I seek to understand. And then if I'm the right solution, cool, here's how I can help you. And if I'm not, here's my arsenal of other badass consultants who do different types of works that I'm happy to point you in the direction of. So it's been hard. It takes an army, just like raising a kid, because you're constantly learning and tapping your network for lots of different requests, but it's been super validating. And my favorite part is I've just allowed myself to be who I am. So even when other people are telling me there's a better way, it's coming back to, but this is my way. And I don't know anything about running a business, but I know how I create value and kind of just trusting that that's going to get me where I need to go.

That's interesting. So if folks want to learn more about your work, what's the best way you can?

Check out my website. You can find me on LinkedIn. The website is the kpilab.com LinkedIn I'm @Sarah Tilkins, but I'm, I'm out here so, you know, finally connect with me.

And the easiest thing is just whatever you're listening to on right to scroll down because we'll have everything linked up there. So. Wow, it's been awesome to catch up and super proud of you for, for stepping out because, hey, I, I know, I know that feeling. You know, going from the corporate world into your own gig. So, you know, it's, it's, it's amazing but also, you know, terrifying at the same time and, but just keep going, keep adding value, which I know you will, and things are going to work out, so.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.

All right. Okay. Well, we'll catch up again down the road, I'm sure.

Okay, sounds great.

Take care.

Thanks. Bye.

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