GA 575 | Continuous Improvement at Corporations vs. Startups with Christopher Lieb

Commonly in startup worlds, most employees want to just get something and then move on to the next thing. But my perspective is, no, you can't just do something and have it half broken and then move on. You have to do it the right way the first time. You have to get it to a point where it can build itself and then move on.

Today I'm excited to welcome Chris Lieb to the show. Now, Chris lives in New York City and he works at a really, really cool company doing some pretty cool work. After the interview, he and I stayed on and he actually gave me a little demo or showed me a little demo of their product. But basically they. There's there the unit actually that their company makes clamps onto sort of like a pipe and it detects leaks and like micro leaks and that sort of thing, water leaks and so really cool, really cool product. It's a startup company, which is especially interesting because Chris has, as you'll. You'll hear, he has worked at some really, really big companies that were very far from startup and so talks a lot about that sort of that transition from a big giant company to a startup company or a big giant company who has lots of continuous improvement. He's got a lot of experience, and so at the new company, he was basically hired to sort of bring up their manufacturing and then all forms of continuous improvement. So we talk about that journey and talk about how it's gone and what he's learned along the way. And towards the end, we sort of contrast the difference between sort of a startup company versus a big established company and what. What the differences are. So I really enjoyed this one. I think you will too. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 5. 75. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 575. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Chris, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going very well. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, my pleasure. Where are you calling in from?

I am calling in from Manhattan, specifically the Upper east side.

Nice, nice. What's it like in Manhattan, Upper east side, this time of year?

Nice and brisk or it's warming up quite a bit. Very sunny today. Hopefully we slowly warm up a little bit more.

Yeah, yeah, I'm in Texas, so it's, you know, it's Jekyll and Hyde down here, man. We can be like 80 degrees and then the next day we can be 20. That's why everybody runs with, like, colds and different kind of like viruses. Love Texas this time of year.

I think, you know, can definitely understand that.

Yeah, Good stuff.

Right?

Well, hey, I know, you know, we like to begin our. Our episodes with our guests sharing a quote or. Or a thought or. So what do you got?

So one of the. It's not necessarily a quote as much as a mentality. And this is what I've learned from leading a. A uncountable amount of Kaizens. And essentially it's two things. There are two types of workers in any industry. Manufacturing, business, accounting, hospitality, etc. And there are workers who want to come to work at 9, leave at 5, and do everything that they need to do. And there's nothing wrong with that. The other kind of worker is somebody who wants to go above and beyond. So what I mean by that is that nobody goes into a position or a job or a task with the goal of failing. So when you are leading Kaizens or, you know, CI projects or any. Any of those, and somebody is failing, it's not because they are actively trying to fail. They don't know exactly what to do and then just choose to not do it. It's a consequence of the training or the process that has failed them to give them the, you know, the ability to succeed or at the very least just do what they need to do and then go about their day. And once I learned that nobody's going into a job or a task or whatnot with the purpose of failing, it changed my mindset for how to coach workers or employees.

That's fantastic. I'm curious though, like, have you interacted with someone who, for whatever reason, didn't care or like. Or. Oh, yeah, bad attitude, just sort of like, poisonous, you know what I'm saying? Like. Like. So, like. And so you could make an argument they don't want to. I mean, for whatever reason, they're just unhappy people or they've got other wounds that they're trying to heal for whatever reason. Like, what about those situations?

Well, that falls into the category of people who just want to clock into a job and clock out of a job, and they want to do the 9 to 5, and they want to do what's asked of them, and that's it. The reason that I find they are sour is because they haven't been given the knowledge or the processes or the tools to be able to do it. And while they're not given the ability to do it, they're being hounded by various people to get it done. And they're frustrated because they don't have the tools to do it.

Got it. Awesome. Love it. Well, hey Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about, about your background, how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff and then what you're up to these days.

Yeah, of course. So I started out as a industrial engineer and I quickly went into continuous improvement with a couple different industries. With continuous improvement, it's the nice part about it is you can apply it to so many different industries from healthcare to again, hospitality, manufacturing. You can even apply it to business. So I started out as a continuous improvement engineer for a metal manufacturing company where I spent a couple years there. Once I got a opportunity to build out a team as a continuous improvement manager, I was able to kind of grow my knowledge, obtain my lean six sigma black belt from Gemba Academy, working at a company called Steinway and Sons. Now Steinway is a very famous company. They make the grand of the grand pianos. And I was at that level, in that position leading Kaizens every week. Large, large scale Kaizens, process improvements, implementing large scale CNC operations. So that's really where I grew my continuous improvement kind of portfolio out. So from then, from there I actually, because I was a little bit more of a senior manager there, I started getting a little bit more into the business aspect of, you know, reducing cost of goods sold, increasing production. And then that kind of sparked in me a drive to look at things from a little bit more of a top level. So from there I actually went to a company called Hydrific which is headquartered in midtown. Now Hydrific is part of a larger company called Lixel. And the Luxel is a international company fully focused on water, water fixtures, water sustainability, etc. Hydrific has the task of changing the viewpoint of an individual's water consumption. So I joined that company leading all operations, all quality assurance of it. So my current position is a leader of product operations for Hydrific, bringing a product and it's relatively speaking a internal venture or a startup within Lixel. So my responsibilities has been to take the product from a concept, a 3D print R D concept, and build it out into a fully scalable product that we can actually ship out internationally.

Easy.

Yeah, I will to my own horn. It took me a year.

Wow, that's amazing though.

Yeah.

From nothing to shipping in a year.

Yeah. So we have, we've already started shipping earlier this year the products called Droplet. And so one of the interesting things that I wanted to touch on during this conversation is leveraging the lean and continuous improvement kind of methodologies with a new company. Because a lot of, a lot of the way that I think people learn about continuous improvement and Lean Six Sigma is improving processes that have already been created and have already been implemented. And then your job is to improve a already implemented process. Whereas in my, in my position I'm improving processes or creating processes that have not even existed before. And I have found that having that knowledge has put me a step ahead when knowledge, having the lean six Sigma, the quality assurance, understanding qms as well, being able to leverage that knowledge after I've already in my previous positions, improved processes that have already existed. That has given me so much, so much hindsight that now creating new processes, I can take it a step or two further when I create them because I know what the faults are early on. So when I create these new processes for things that don't even exist yet, I can leverage that and build it out for a better kind of starting point then I think most processes are created.

So I mean, talk a little bit about, I don't know, like how hard has it been? You know, you're in a startup environment now, so like you said, everything is, is being created. Was it hard to, you know, have these ideas of statistical process control or whatever it might be, data driven improvement, these sort of things, like how was that to, you know, to experience in that startup world?

It is very difficult. Commonly in startup worlds you, most people, most employees want to just get something and then move on to the next thing. But my perspective is no, you can't just do something and have it half broken and then move on. You have to do it the right way the first time. You have to get it to a point where it can build itself and then move on. The difficult part sometimes, and I found a solution for this, is having people understand KPIs. Not only external KPIs but internal KPIs as well. Understanding, for example, my, like One of the KPIs that I look at is RMA's defects obviously. But it's not just that. That's not the only part of a company, that's not the only part of the business. So I'm also going into the software side and I'm showing them the KPIs of clicks per page as well. And once I have shown them the value of watching these on a consistent basis, it is invaluable. People get excited not only because they can understand how their actions impact customers or impact the application or impact the hardware. But they can see their own progress on an individual level. Initially, it's difficult to get people to do it, to see that value from, you know, seeing that statistical, that like the graph of these KPIs going up. But once they see it, everyone is enthralled by it. And that's something that is, you know, it's, it's been difficult, but it's so valuable and it's so rewarding once you show people the value of it.

So what was it like in the very beginning? You're just hired, you've got all this continuous improvement knowledge. Was there anyone else in the company that had any type of continuous improvement knowledge or belief? Someone clearly did or they wouldn't have hired you, right? Or, or, you know what I mean? Like, so talk a little bit about, I'm curious about that.

So, no, actually nobody had any continuous improvement knowledge.

So how did they know to hire you? Did somebody read a book or, or what?

So I was hired because they realized they had nobody with any form of manufacturing and production experience. Okay. So they, they did their research. They understood that we need somebody who has had firsthand experience building on the manufacturing floor, you know, experimenting, you know, somebody who has worn the Kevlar gloves and the, the safety glasses and the earplugs next to the Amada punch machine. And so when I started talking with them initially, they saw that value of that firsthand experience, that firsthand quality experience, the firsthand Lean Sigma experience, and they saw that I would be able to communicate with suppliers, with manufacturing suppliers on an equal basis and leverage my experience based being the manufacturer, being the supplier at one time. And I would be able to talk with them on a level that they, that the suppliers would understand and appreciate and respect.

Were they attracted to you because of, or say, let me say it this way, was the fact. Because there's a lot of manufacturing folks out there, right? Like a lot of manufacturers that have no clue about continuous improvement, right? Like, they just, they don't know you. Do you have manufacturing and continuous improvement. So were they attracted to you because you had a continuous improvement, or was it just like, oh, that's nice that he's got that. I guess that's probably good, you know what I'm saying? Like, were they more interested, like, how did you sell yourself? Maybe that's a better way of asking it.

Yeah, sure. So two main things. So my experience with continuous improvement has been three main aspects for my entire career, and that has been to increase quality, increase Production and reduce cost, though that's the majority of my experience as a continuity, those are the majority of my projects. So I was able to kind of leverage that to be able to showcase, hey, I have built out and I have increased production, I have reduced cost, I have made sure that the products are, you know, quality. And by quality, quality is such a general term, but when you talk about quality, it's whatever you promise the customer for whatever product you could promise the customer. This is a kind of okay device, right? And then a kind of okay product is quality for that, because that's what you've communicated to the customer. When I was working at a company called Steinway and Sons, extraordinarily high quality. So the communication to the customer is extraordinarily high quality. So that becomes the goal. So it completely depends on the products, what you consider quality, what you consider production, what you consider cost. So I was able to kind of showcase that to them, to kind of show the growth that I can actually emphasize or within that manufacturing field.

Okay, so let's pivot a little bit. You mentioned early on your work in supply chain, so I'm curious to hear how Lean has, if it has impacted the supply chain, like, how has that gone?

That's a very fun question. Actually. When I was hired, one of the concepts of Lean that I really do emphasize is reactivity within Lean. So again, minimal amount of effort, maximum amount of return. So when I was hired to produce this brand new product, first product for this company, I realize that the amount of rapid feedback was so critical to the success of, you know, the kind of rapid prototyping aspect of it. So in pure Lean kind of ideas, instead of what a lot of companies do, which is offshore a device, we actually made our device in the usa. And so that's not only allowed us to minimize the amount of inventory, it's allowed us to be able to visit suppliers on a whim. It's been able to allow us to be extraordinarily reactive to any and all issues that we have had. And so all of our suppliers, even our final assembler and shipper are all in the Northeast. And the reason for this is not just because it makes it easy for us, but because this is a first product. It's not tried and true. Or at least at the moment it wasn't tried and true. Now it's tried and true. But that allowed us to rapidly improve and plug and tie off every loose end that we had for a brand new product. If we have an issue with one supplier, we can solve it within 72 hours. Whereas when you're working with a company in, let's say Japan or Singapore or Indonesia or something along those lines, the feedback that you can get and the way that you can improve the product and process takes much, much longer. It takes weeks. The inventory holding on in those other countries and the inventory holding close to your distributor is much higher. So that's one of the aspects that I really wanted to emphasize in terms of making sure that every aspect of our logistics and supply chain was as lean as possible so that we could be reactive as possible during this rapid prototyping. PH and again for a new product. Mm.

I want to come back. I keep, sorry, I keep coming back to this, but just the whole idea of, you know, you have this incredible experience working at this big monster company, Steinway, you know, you know, amazing continuous improvement program, and you're going into a startup now, who I presumably is much smaller, right. You know, and revenue and people.

One or one or two people less.

Yeah, yeah. And so like, how did you guard against being. Being that? I don't know. I've seen it. I've probably been it like the annoying guy who knows everything, right. And he's here to fix all the problems. He's so smart and this and that, you know, like, how did you balance that?

The, the way that I found is that people are really, really positively reactive when they can't, when they want to be. And. My thought process is it doesn't matter if it's a large company, it doesn't matter if it's a small company. When you take a step back, every company is selling a service or a product or something along those lines. They all have accounting, they all have finance. So when you realize that a startup is trying to be a big company, it takes all of that differences out of the way. So the same methodologies that you use in continuous improvement for a larger company still apply to a smaller company. You need to be able to, for example, like, show examples. You need to be able to essentially handhold people who are not continuous improvement experts and have them see the process and see the way that it can be improved. And once they can see that themselves with their respective roles, it is extraordinarily invaluable. And that even applies to software. We have. At my company, we have monthly KPI meetings. And that is for every single person, marketing business, you know, even UI UX, we all have KPIs. And once you have shown them and even if you have to make, you know, at the Very, very beginning. Maybe you have to make fake KPIs and create a fake process to show them the improvement possibilities. Then they get extraordinarily excited about it. So that's, that's one of the ways that I've been able to kind of like almost break through that issue of. Yeah, it's a, there's a massive company and you know, a massive company has had so many trainings on continuous improvement. So they're more or less familiar with CI sometimes.

But, and I, and I can speak from my own experience, you know, I've. Prior to Gemba Academy, starting Gemba Academy, we, you know, I worked in several different multi billion dollar companies, you know, with tens of thousands of employees and you know, trying to steer or change the direction of those types of ships can be really difficult. Right. Whereas you come into Gemba Academy, it's like in the beginning we had five people. You know, you want to go a different direction, we just go a different direction, you know. So in some ways the startup world is, I'm, I don't know, my experience maybe a little easier in some ways because you know, you don't have this huge bureaucracy in front of you to have to sort of navigate.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean you have full range, you have full control over creating. Think about it this way, if you are working for a company that started in, and I'm over exaggerating here to make a point, it started in 1820. Okay. So they have had a, they have had two centuries of, let's say for sake of argument, continuous improvement efforts. Yeah. And baggage there. No, no. Oh God, no. So they have their own templates. They have their own, these templates are from like 1970s, let's say. And it's tough to change that. It's really, really impossible to change that. But when you're starting from the ground up, it's. You have full control over everything. So you can make it so that every single system is synced. And that is one of the best aspects that I've had with creating new processes, teaching continuous improvement and emphasizing any form of statistical process control or, or lean six Sigma or even ISO to these teams. Because I can make sure that all of these different systems, all of these different methodologies can connect and build off of each other. And that's one of the things that I've always emphasized to the team, is that these things are meant to change. Continuous improvement, it's literally in the name. It's continuous, it's meant to change and it's the same Thing with like a qms, ISO programs, they're meant to change. And being able to build those from the ground up and make sure that all of these different systems perfectly align has been extraordinarily invaluable for me in a startup culture.

I think it's so wise that you're really taking that approach to like preaching the, that the true essence of what we're trying to do is like, hey, if we fast forward a year from now and we're operating the exact same way, we probably got a problem. Right. You know, but having that mindset, because that can be a big trap, right? It's like, especially for those, you know, I don't mean to beat up on the old legacy companies. Thank God they're around because they make our country great.

Oh, well, they're, they're, it's tried and true. Those companies are tried and true. I mean, even if they're operating off of, you know, 1970s knowledge, I mean, they're, they're still going 100.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. So it's like having that balance between sort of like, we got it all figured out, leave us alone to having that sort of that learner's mindset, that growth mindset, trying to always continue to make things better. It's so easy to say and read it in a book or watch it on a video or whatever it might be, but it's another thing to actually practice it.

Right? Yeah, well. And I really try to emphasize individual ownership in terms of continuous improvement. The whole concept behind all of this is to better a company. Correct. And what is, what is a company? A company is its employees. The employees make the products. So the employees need to be able to better themselves. And you can't just demand an employee to better themselves because they're not, they're not going to, they're not going to want to do. We've all been told to do something and the first thought that we have is that, oh, now I don't want to do it. So the first thing that you have to do is really show them that, hey, this is for your improvements. And the way to get them to see that is for them to own it. So for internal KPIs, for example, I truly emphasize this is for your own growth, this is for your own insurance. If you're able to share that, you're positively impacting the company, that's good for you. And all of a sudden that has value for them and they want to improve, they want to change these KPIs, they want to make changes to this. And once they have a ownership association with these positive metrics that in the one or two levels away, positively impact the company. That's when you get them individually, on their own, improving themselves and improving. And again, that means that they're improving the company because they're improving themselves.

Yeah, yeah. That's called winning when you get there. Yeah. I love it. I love it, man. This has been a fun conversation. Chris, I'm wondering if you have any maybe final words of wisdom that you want to leave with us and then I want you to definitely repeat, if folks wanted to connect with you again, what's the best way?

Yeah, sure. My last bit of wisdom is it doesn't matter how much of a improvement it is. Any improvement, even if it's, you know, if you're one second improvement on a cycle time, that's improvement. And if you do that continuously, then you will move mountains. And that applies to everything. You simplify one document, you simplify one email. If you do that continuously, you will build and move mountains. Yeah.

Love it.

Yep.

Good stuff. And if folks want to connect with you, what's the best way?

Connect via LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. I don't believe I have a TikTok. I. I think I missed that generation, but, yeah, my kids do, I can tell you that. My gosh. Yeah, yeah.

When you say Facebook, they just roll their eyes, you know.

I know.

He's so old.

Just. I'm just happy I didn't say MySpace. Right? Yeah, for sure, for sure. Awesome.

All right, we'll have everything linked up in the show notes. But hey, man, I really appreciate you coming on. So last quick, quick question. I don't normally ask this, but it's. We're recording this on a Friday afternoon, so New York City, a Friday night. What's going on tonight, man? What are you doing in New York?

Not much is going on Friday night for me. I think me and my fiance are going to be watching some TV shows later and we might grab dinner. Luckily for us, in New York City, this is something I always tell people. If you can imagine it, it's within walking distance.

Right.

So it's really. It's really like a single moment of like, hey, do you want Thai food? Oh, that sounds great. There's a place 300ft away.

Right, right, right, right, right. Well, next time in the. I'm in the area, I'm gonna look you up and you can show me around, man.

Perfect.

All right, you take care. Appreciate you.

Thank you very much for having me.

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.