GA 574 | Dealing with Resistance from Management with Tanner McClure

He had that mindset of, this is never going to work. You know, we know how to weld. We know what we're doing back there. And I had to convince him, like, we're not questioning whether you are skilled at your job. We know you are. What we're questioning is whether or not we've set you up for success.

Today I'm excited to welcome Tanner McClure to the show. Now, Tanner has a really cool background in lean. He's got a really strong education, educational background. You'll hear, like, more of an engineering background. And then he sort of got into lean later in his career. And so we talk a little bit about how that's worked, first of all, how we got started with this whole lean thing. And then as he's gotten into different leadership roles, he's. He's had the opportunity to apply lean in a variety of ways. In particular, we talk about how if he's faced with some resistance, which many of us in the lean world have faced from. From time to time or a lot, the time of, like, how does he approach that? Or how has he approached resistance? In fact, even with people who might be a supervisor or a manager and they're resisting, you know, we often talk about the frontline workers resisting, but what if your supervisors and your management team is resisting? Like, how do you go ahead and counter that? And so we had a really good conversation about that. And then we also talked about some specific tools that. That Tanner has used successfully over the years. And there's one particular that he really likes. He calls it the paper doll exercise. And so we really get into that. In fact, we talk about it. And then I came back to it later because I wasn't quite sure exactly what he was talking about. And so we really dig into, like, how he goes about doing that exercise. And finally we wrap up the episode by really just kind of talking about how folks who might be just getting started with lean, like, what can they do, especially if they're struggling or they're facing some. Some. Some hurdles. What are some practical things that they can do to kind momentum built up? So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 574. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 574. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Tanner, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going really well. I'm glad to be here. Thanks, Ron.

Yeah. So where are you calling in from?

I am in independence Kansas, kind of southeast Kansas. Small town, great place to live. So.

Okay. Lots of. Lots of basketball played there, I guess, you know.

Yeah, Kansas is a basketball state for sure.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, well, hey, Tanner, I know you've listened to the show, and you know how we like to get things started with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

The quote I've. I've got for today is we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we use to create them. That's from Albert Einstein.

What's that mean to you?

To me, it really means you got to challenge yourself to think in ways that maybe even surprise yourself to try and get out of a problem you find yourself in. So if you, you know, you just. It's too easy to kind of fall back on the tools you always use and always think that that's going to get you out of whatever problem you're in, but sometimes you need to look beyond and. And maybe try something new and. And try something different.

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Experiment your way forward. Right, right. See what you learn. Yeah. Good stuff. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Tanner. Tell us about your background, how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so my background, I went to school at Kansas State University, got an engineering degree, mechanical engineering, and, you know, really enjoyed product design and things like that. And so that was how I kind of started my. My professional career was in design. Eventually started getting into management of engineering and got introduced to lean at a company called El Dorado Bus in Salina, Kansas, and had a leader there who was just really a huge proponent of lean thinking. And I really appreciated the kind of the passion he showed. And he was a guy by the name of Bryce Pfister. And I learned from him, really, about how Lean can be used to affect the culture of a company, and got to take part in a lot of lean events like Kaizen's and training sessions, and really opened my eyes to the power of that thinking in a culture company. And so as I moved on from engineering into operations, I became an operations leader at that bus company and started really using lean in my departments to try and get my team thinking about how do I make improvements, even small improvements, day to day, over, you know, what kind of has been the standard, and just seeing that, the snowball effect that you get from, you know, one guy, two guys, five guys, or all of a sudden, you know, are looking for those opportunities all the time, and the problems that Used to persist. Now all of a sudden just kind of melt away. And all of a sudden you're, you're finding out, well, now we've got too many people in this world. We need to, we need to, you know, we can take those, those people who now are, you know, struggling to find things to do in that department. Let's move them somewhere else. That's struggling. And you know, so that's, that's kind of the, the origin story of Lean in my life. And I really have enjoyed watching that that happened too.

Now, do you think that with your education, sort of engineering background or whatever, like, did that help, like, you, you personally sort of embrace this whole idea of Lean, you know, or was it just like you weren't sure about it? I'll give it a try. Like, what was that like?

So it was kind of hit and miss. You know, when you, when you get in the engineering mindset, sometimes it felt like as a mechanical engineer, there were several things that you're not necessarily exposed to that maybe an industrial engineer might have been exposed to. And so some of the concepts were a little bit foreign when, when they, you know, when I was exposed to them at first. And then the more you think about them and the more you try to include those in your, in your day to day, you find that, oh man, I, like, I was missing this whole part, this whole experience from, you know, the, the schooling that I achieved. And so in some ways it was difficult and then, but in a lot of other ways, once you, you think about, you know, approaching things from the scientific method of, you know, let's, let's make a hypothesis here and test it. And you know, once you, once you come back to that, then it's like, okay, now I can really align that with the schooling that I received as part of my engineering degree.

Okay, well, you mentioned, so you've had a lot of different roles and some of your roles have been in leadership. And so I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about resistance in particular. Resistance by people that might actually be in sort of like a management or supervision role. Like, that's a particularly difficult situation because you often think of like the front line. You know, we're trying to get the front line bought in. But if you don't have your sort of middle management bought in, how in the world are you going to get the frontline bought in? So can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, that's a, that's a really great question. So the, what I found is that as you mentioned the frontline team. They take usually less convincing that an improvement to their process is going to help them do their job right. Like, they, they can see pretty clearly that if you make a change, how that change will affect their day to day. And so what the challenge becomes is you may have a supervisor or somebody who is really just invested in, let's get done today's, you know, goal. And that's, and that's all I'm focused on is today's goal. And so those people can be pretty resistant to, well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna borrow so and so for half a day and we're gonna do some improvement. Right. And so what I've done in the past and had really good success with is try to include those people as much as possible in the process. So, for instance, a great example at the bus company was our weld shop. We had a lead in the weld shop that was just about as negative as somebody could be toward the whole lean going through the training and making the effort of including people, relieving them from their normal duties for the entire week and running an event. And so I put him on the team and I said, you're the guy who's not going to be out on the floor doing your normal job. And we went through the week long Kaizen and had just extreme success in, in the product that we were working on. You know, we had a goal in this weld shop. It was a new product that we had put out on the floor and, and we had been struggling to hit the numbers that, that we had set as goals. You know, we wanted to get to, you know, 10 units a week, which, you know, two a day. And we were struggling at the time to get to a week. I mean, it was just really, really challenging. And we ended up pulling everything out of the entire department. All the tooling, everything that was bolted to the ground, we cut it up, we rearranged everything. We ran like a paper doll simulation of, you know, okay, if we move this here and we, we put these operators in this area, you know, and we included the team that worked in the area and a lot of that effort so that they could walk through the steps and see how it would really change their roles. And this particular supervisor at the beginning of the week was, he had that mindset of, this is never going to work, you know. You know, we know how to weld, we know what we're doing back there. And, you know, I had to convince him, like, we're not questioning Whether you are skilled at your job, we know you are. What we're questioning is whether or not we've set you up for success back there from. From an actual layout perspective and all that. And so after the end of the. By the end of the week, the end of the project, we had moved every single major component, every fixture, every weld machine, everything was in a different location back there. And the first week after the event, we. I think we went from two a week to like four a week. So we doubled in one week. We were pretty excited about that, and without doing any other further changes, just letting people kind of settle into the role and. And figure out their process. Like, three weeks later, we were at. At our goal. We were doing two a day, and we found we had two people extra in the department that really we should be moving to. To another area. And. And so it was just such a big win and demonstrating that to that supervisor that it really, you know, the effort was pretty minimal compared to the payoff. Right. And. And he. That that supervisor became a huge cheerleader for the entire program after that. And so I found that trying to include those, you know, naysayers from the very beginning and kind of like, for lack of a better word, forced them through the process of showing just how. How much success you can get just by kind of working through the process that you can really convert those holdouts to people who are going out there and pushing the program and really trying to include as many people as possible in it, because now they've seen that benefit.

Yeah, well, let me. Let me jump in. And I sort of. I want to put myself in the supervisor's shoes. So supervisors got a responsibility. They got bonuses and all the rest of it that are riding on hitting two units a week. You know, like his boss or her boss says you need to get two units a week. Great. Or whatever the quota is kind of thing.

Yep.

And so now here comes this Tanner dude, you know, and his lean team that want to. They want to shut me down now for I don't know how long. At least a week, probably three, four days maybe. How does that supervisor communicate to his or her superiors that, hey, on the production side, we're going down. I'm not even going to give you two. Like, how do you deal with that? Right? Because it's easy for us to. We've all drunk the koolaid and we get it, but, you know, they got to go on faith that next week, yeah, we're getting zero this week, but next week we're going to get four. So we'll be fine. Right? But well, you don't know they're going to get four. You might have a good idea. Well improve, but you don't know for sure. Right? So like talk about that because it's real easy for us lean folks to say, you know, oh, these people are resistant and this and that. But like if we have honestly put ourselves in their shoes and we have been in their shoes, it's scary, man. Like talk about that.

So yeah, it brings up a really good opportunity for things like meaningful metrics. A and B. Sometimes an improvement like this is going to hurt your metric. I mean shipped units or completed units is really how any, any department should be judged, you know, but if I'm gonna run a project that we know is probably gonna hurt you for a week, maybe we need a holiday from that metric for the week, you know, or maybe we need to give them some other opportunity to either make that time up or make those units up to give them kind of the peace of mind that we're not here to just mess up your world, you know, and again, go back to the little bit of a sales pitch of a little bit of temporary pain. But the long term gain is going to be extreme. And, and you know, especially if you're going from a situation like, like this department was where we were working overtime every week, you know, 10 hours of overtime every week in a well department that's expensive and I'd much rather pay, you know, bonuses of hitting the goals inside of the allotted, you know, 40 hour week that's planned. And so, and, and ultimately so would they, they would rather get it there too. So that motivation factor of, you know, let's give you your time back and you can make that money back on bonus structure and we're not going to penalize you for, for the week that we've kind of thrown everything up in the air and ruined your metrics.

Yeah. And I don't know how you guys approach it, but like I've been in situations back when I worked in industry where I remember going into a plant in Sulphur Springs, Texas in fact, and we were very similar. We're going to take this line down for at least a week. In fact, I think it was even longer than a week. And yeah, so they made zero units right on this production line. This was a pretty high speed. We were making cell phones back in the day, you know, and we made a lot of phones, man. And so when you take a, a line like that off for a week you're talking big money, right? Like that's not being produced. But the one thing that we did, like I was sort of from the corporate team here to help, you know, imagine that, you know, this plant. But we got the plant manager on board, right? And we let the plant manager know, you're going to get zero, man. You know, and the plant manager. But we had showed evidence. Hey, over in Springville, Utah, we did this, and here's what we got. So we kind of had our own little marketing pitch, right? And we were able to sort of convince, convince the general manager or the plant manager to give us a, give us a go, let us try this. Because we're very confident you're going to yield positive results. And so in that case, the supervisor could put their mind at ease because their boss came in and said, we're going down for a week.

Right.

And you know, we want you all to be on board. We're on board. And that really made our job easier, right. Like the corporate sort of CI folks rolling in there to sort of run, help run the event. And yeah, it was, it was a fantastic success. But I think the, the, I don't know, the key for us was getting that, that plant leadership on board. Right. And has that been sort of your experience as well?

Yeah. I mean, if you don't, if you don't have. Well, I guess first, if you're not in that position, that plant leadership role, then that's a critical hurdle to overcome. And so very, very clear expectations about what's going to happen in an event like that. Sounds like, like you mentioned, you gotta, you gotta be clear, like, you know, production is going to be zero, and if zero is, you know, uncomfortable, then, you know, why or what are the big reasons why we need to get some comfortability around that. We know that the improvement is, is coming, you know, but it's still, it's still going to be a difficult, you know, pill to swallow.

Right.

For. For most production leaders who. Those metrics were really tied to, to their success, you know, at the end of the year when it comes time for, for reviews and bonuses and all that good stuff.

Exactly. Yeah. They're putting their livelihood in the continuous improvement team's hands, really. Right. So, yeah, it's a, It's a tricky one. It's a tricky one. So I'm wondering. You've mentioned a few, few tools already, but I'm wondering if you have any sort of particular favorite tools or techniques, lean techniques that you've, that you've used, you know, and Maybe, I don't know, maybe they aren't typical or something like that. Like, what have you, what have you guys used that's had some success?

So one that, that I use seemingly all the time is the paper doll that I mentioned earlier. I like to use, you know, scale replica cutouts of every tool in a cell in either paper or cardboard. Usually, you know, an inch equals a foot or whatever. And then cut out every single thing in that department or in that area of concern and then have a bigger piece that represents the actual floor space that you have work in and then you just shuffle those things around. I mean, you can do this in AutoCAD, you can do it in a million other tools that are, that are on a computer, but there's really nothing like having the flexibility of having it. A physical piece of cardboard could be scrap cardboard, whatever, just write what the tool is, which side is the front of it, you know, cut out little operator, you know, tokens or whatever, and just so that you can walk through the process and have everybody involved. And I just love that tool. For the people who are not as like visually spatial thinkers, it's so difficult for some people to picture in their mind how a space is going to be laid out when you're just talking about it. But if you have a physical representation in front of you, it's so much easier for those people who just don't think that way.

Yeah.

To, to really, you know, see the process, picture it in their mind and think through, okay, yeah, this is going to work. Or, you know, here's my challenges with whatever layout that we're discussing. And I think, I think we need to fix this. Okay, great. And you can do it really easily with that, with that paper doll method. And so I tend to fall back on that tool a lot when you're talking about cell design flow, you know, of material through a process. And anytime that there's going to be a handful of people involved and it's not just one or two people, but it affects a larger department, maybe up to 10 people or so. So that's one. And then obviously from a root cause analysis perspective, five, why is super powerful, really easy for most people to understand? You can literally write it on any scrap of paper and work through that process of, of kind of helping identify a root cause. And then it really just starts the conversation about what are we going to do about it, you know, and so those, those two tools, just super powerful in my opinion.

So talk a little bit more about this paper doll exercise. I kind of have an idea of what you're talking about. But I want to make sure, like, are you going to like a conference room and you got like some tables and you just do it on a table? Are you doing it on a wall? Like brown paper? Talk about the mechanics of that exercise.

Right? So if it's in a, in like a formal Kaizen event, then yeah, having it in a, laid out on a conference room table, or even just using some masking tape, you can, you can use the table itself as your kind of work cell zone. You know, you can map out the, the walls and any, you know, fixtures that are immovable and you can just use a conference room table for that. That's really, that's really great. Or if it's, if it's not a formal event where you don't want to tie up a conference room table for, you know, potentially days, I like to do it out in the area as it's currently built. So get a big piece of cardboard, a big, big box that you've broken down. Like draw on it with a Sharpie to mark your walls and the things that are immovable. Just draw that on a big, big flattened box and then cut out other cardboard pieces to lay on that box. Like leave them loose so you can move them around until you get to something that feels pretty, you know, pretty solid. Something that you, you think you've got a buy in with the team. Let's try this. And then you can easily tape everything down and say like, okay, this is where we're at. This is what we think is going to be our next step. Let's give it a go. And then the great thing about it is that it's such a very clearly communicated idea. It doesn't need to be fully dimensioned. It doesn't need all that stuff because with a ruler you can tell exactly where everything goes. And, and so, and then when it comes time to actually move stuff into place, everybody has that available in the area to just start going, hey, we're going to move this thing over here. Because that's where it goes, right? That, that's where we're going to, we're put it. No lists need made, no committees need to be involved. Let's just go.

Yeah. No, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm wondering, do you, do you keep it around like after the event like this? You know what I'm saying? Like you could use it for training or something of say, hey, here's how the operation works.

Exactly. So that tool becomes usable over and over. That's one of the things about a lean environment is that the key word is continuous, right? It's continuous improvement. So you may have settled on a floor plan for one improvement iteration, but the first time that a new product or a new challenge comes into place, maybe, you know, maybe the company grows, and all of a sudden you've got another person that you need to have doing work that may affect your layout. And if that tool's readily available, it's really easy to, you know, say, okay, let's, let's, you know, let's bring that back out. Let's lay it back in the area. And now let's think about, you know, where do we put this, this new person?

Awesome. So I'm wondering maybe to wrap things up, someone listening right now who maybe their engineering background or they're responsible for some production area, but they're just getting started with this whole lean journey. Like, do you have any, like, I don't know, advice, specific advice for someone who's just. Just getting started with this whole journey?

I would say my advice would be to start with the things that you control. Don't wait to get approval to affect some department that you think is the biggest problem. Start with your office. Do a 5s project in your office. Set up whatever your processes are, set those up for maximum success, and challenge yourself to put a metric in place for yourself that tells you whether or not you're succeeding. Really, it's really easy to see the benefits of all the tools and everything like that when you can do them in a way that affects your job in particular.

Yeah, I love it. I love it for one specific reason. So often when you're just getting started, you yourself may doubt, does this stuff really work? I know they wrote on the book and there's videos and this and that, but, you know, you got to prove it to yourself. So to your point, if you, if you do it yourself and you see that it works, then again, you have a success story that, you know, that you can share. Hey, listen, I'm just getting started with this, but here's what I did over there. Here's where I was before I did this thing. Here's where I was after. And that's. Come see, right? And now you've got a success story, right? Whereas if you just sort of blindly go in with hoping it works. That's they said on the video it would work. You know, it's like, well, yeah, that's, that's nice, but let's get some actual results here. In this building.

Yeah, yeah. And. And what I really love about doing something like that is that it gives you that kind of icebreaker for somebody that comes into your work area and they're going to comment like, oh, wow, your. Your desk is super clean. I can never keep my desk this clean. That's an icebreaker. And you can say, you know what? I challenged myself and this is what I was able to end up with. And it's made my days so, you know, it's improved my workflows. It's, you know, it's made it so I never lose a piece of paper. You know, give them, give them the benefits. And maybe, maybe you've got, you know, your next project. There is, you know what? That person might want help doing that in their department too.

Right, Right. Love it. Love it. Very good. Hey, Tanner, if folks wanted to connect with you personally, what's the best way?

My LinkedIn is probably my best spot. I try to be pretty active on there. I've got, I've got my personal page. It's just. I think it's LinkedIn.com in Tanner McClure. Okay, what's the best way? And then also with my consulting company, which is Tanner McClure Consulting, LLC, I've got a LinkedIn page for that as well that folks can connect to me on.

Awesome. Yeah. And we'll link everything up in the show notes, so everybody please go connect with Tanner. So, hey, man, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on.

Yeah, it's been great. Thank you.

All right, you take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.