GA 592 | The Aha! Moment with Dexter Chan

Lean kind of requires that you have a standard process in place for it to really work, because then you do continuous improvement on it. If you don't have a standardized process, you're always dealing with this gap to standard and defining what that standard is. And so with organizations that don't have lean, they're kind of stuck at that second problem level.

Today I am excited to welcome Dexter Chan to the show. Now, Dexter is a longtime listener of the Gemba Academy podcast. And one thing that Dexter brought to the show today was energy and passion. The guy is just oozing with positivity and passion, and it was a real delight to. To chat with him. So we really get into kind of his journey with continuous improvement and sort of open up with talking about, like, you know, did you find Lean or did Lean find you? That sort of thing? And, and then we. We kind of walk through some of his journey with. With lean and continuous improvement at a number of different companies and different industries even. And so he sort of shines a how Lean worked in those different industries. And then so. So Dexter is a. A master black belt. And so we talk a little bit about, you know, what brings him the most satisfaction as it pertains to just sort of being continuous improvement practitioner. And, and then we just really just kind of go all over the place on a bunch of different topics. And it was, again, when you're talking to someone as energetic as him, it's. It's easy to. To get lost and see. See where the conversation goes. You just never quite. It was a good one. I really enjoyed it. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 592. Again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 592. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Dexter, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Hey, Ron, thanks for inviting me. And it's going well right now. An incredible point in my life where I'm starting to see a lot of benefits from all my past years of work. And it's. It's starting to show and takes time, but, you know, coming on your show is one result of that, so. Thank you.

Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Well, Dexter, as you know, we like to get all of our shows started with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Well, I got a couple, but the first one that came to mind was, you know, I. I'm right now kind of suffering a little bit from imposter syndrome. This is my first podcast, and so I'll take a Warren Buffett quot here. It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. I'm just hoping that in our time during the podcast, that's not my five minutes. Right. But more seriously, the quote that I really want to focus on is deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. And that came from Steve Jobs, and I had a chance to work at Apple when he came back. And I'm finding that more and more that quote is coming true no matter where I'm working, because it's about prioritization of work and prioritization of what you focus on and prioritization of how you lead your life. And so that's really what it's all about. Right. You only have a certain amount of time, and so what you do with it is really important.

Yeah. Well, in honor of Mr. Jobs, we're recording this on a MacBook. I got a big imac monitor here. So, you know, there you go. There you go reading my notes off of my iPhone. So, you know, we're all Apple over here.

So. Yeah, I, I, I'm with you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's, it's funny, I was, I actually started my journey with the Apple when the Mac first came out. We can get into this in terms of how it applies to Lean and everything, but I actually, the federal government was gifted with the ability to work with one of the first thousand imacs that came off the line. Not Imax, Macintosh. Sorry. Yeah, when it came off the line. Yeah, I've been a fan ever since that day.

I remember my parents had, was like an Apple Iie or something like that or whatever. It was like that precursor.

Yeah, yeah. That changed all of personal computing.

Yeah, it sure did. Yeah, it sure did. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff, and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Sure. So it's kind of funny. I never really focused on Lean directly, but, you know, I'm kind of built for it in an odd way. So if I go back to even my college days, right, I, I graduated with a degree in environmental science, of all things. Right. So at UC Berkeley, when I went through, was one of the first interdisciplinary majors for the campus. And that meant that I took courses in biology, zoology, zoology, biochem, chemistry, all the sciences, physics, and everything else like that, which was unusual. I mean, the fun part is that I didn't have to take some of the humanities stuff and some of the other required courses because it was so science intensive that we didn't have enough units otherwise. And so during that period, I actually was able to be instructed by a couple of legends in environmental science like Dr. Joel Hedgepath and Dr. Randall Smith, and learned about the importance of ecosystems. And I just then that's how I discovered I was a systems thinker. Right. And I like to look at things from a system perspective and get introduced to terms like fractals, chaos, entropy. These are things that have come up in your past podcast as well, but I saw them from more of a scientific aspect of it, and then that focused my attention onto the coastal processes. So the interface between water and land, the interface between saltwater and fresh water and the delta. And that transition point has been sort of my calling card throughout my entire career. That interface between a task and another task, those deliverables, the interface between one group and another group, the interface between data and the product, the interface between people and the system, that's been one consistent thing that's gone on and on throughout my career. And lean kind of speaks to that in lots of different ways. A lot of my background's on process management. And so that choreography between different levels of a process and that comes through in Value Stream. And when you look at sitebox and everything else like that, those relationships are really that gray area where a lot of the magic happens. And so you know that the box of a task is pretty straightforward. It's when you leave that box and you go to the next box, that handoff, that little transition point is where the magic has to happen. Exactly. Yeah. So that's how I kind of came to my lean journey. I mean, I went and did emergency response for 10 years for the federal government, working with an amazing agency that developed a product that free and still available now to the public. And it came out on the Mac first because at the time, you know, I was involved with federal oil spill response. And so there's an on scene coordinator for the Coast Guard and there's a federal on scene coordinator for the epa. One deals with chemicals on land and oil spills on land. The other one deals with oil spills and chemical spills on the ocean. And with my background in coastal processes and environmental, it just made sense. Right. So I was involved with those. I was response in the Office of Response and Restoration Rate group. They're still around. Fabulous. And they developed a tool that was aimed at the customer. They had a customer focus where we always provide scientific support for these emergencies and we had to aggregate all this information that was in the federal government. So for example, if you're doing chemical and hazardous chemicals, there would be like 11 different agencies that would have information about hazardous chemicals, but they would be all kind of like in the voice of the scientist, voice of the chemist. And what we did was we had to put it into the voice of the responder who could be. Some of that just came out of high school and the Coast Guard, you know, ensign or something else like that. They. Or firemen, right. We had to actually get to their language. And so we always put everything in the, in the perspective of the customer. And so we developed the first computer aided decision support system on the Mac. We use initially was Business File Vision, but we used actually HyperCard, you know, RIP to Bill Atkinson who developed that. My God. But we use HyperCard to actually develop a system so that the Coast Guard in the field could deploy because the Mac was the portable system and actually do emergency response in real time. Right. So they didn't have to rely on us immediately. They could go and deploy and do this.

Well, let's jump in a little bit. Just like more on the, on your, just your lean journey. Like how did you first, I don't know, hear about Lean and, and did it find you, did you find it like, talk about that.

So, so after all of that, yeah, I found Apple and did marketing. But then I got to Genentech and I spent a number of years at Genentech, right. So I was able to live through this incredible diff, think different generation. The launch of the imac that you're using, all that, that was an amazing time. But then at Genentech I got to live through biotech and obviously manufacturing, right. So that's where I got introduced to tpm. That's where I got introduced to class A, you know, the whole idea of operational efficiencies and stuff like that. And we were doing a lot of that work where we were starting to use Lean and Six Sigma. And I was an instructor at that time because I did a lot of training wise with the government as well. But, but I was instructing and doing process improvement at the same time trying to improve the manufacturing process and then later on the clinical studies process. So I came at this weird time where Roche and Genentech merged and we had to merge our clinical trial process. And in that I took the lean portions that I was learning in manufacturing and applied it into the clinical trials on how to do single piece Flow, how to be able to get into the value stream, to be able to understand the SIPOC in terms of the activities and try and harmonize two companies, different global trials, and the way they were doing it globally and regionally into one. So that took a year and a half to do. So that's where my lean journey really started taking off. I was doing project management at the time. I was doing resource management, supply chain, but then I added on that, and then now I'm working at a company called Hill Physicians Medical Group, which is a managed care organization. We're sort of the middle layer for these independent physicians. We're the largest network of independent physicians in the country and we provide support for them for their claims processing, their prior authorization, their use of their, their ehr, the electronic health record system, in this case, epic. And so I'm part of the business transformation and looking to optimize. And so I take a lot of that stuff there. So I take and now apply that to try and streamline the, the experience of going from a claim all the way up to getting payments and all those sort of things. And so it's a warrior journey. Lean came to me. I didn't come to lean. And so as part of that, I got my lean Six Sigma black belt at the encouragement and urging of a number of great people who said that I was built for this. And lo and behold, it came naturally for me.

Nice. Nice. Well, I'm wondering if you worked at a bunch of different organizations and some of them quite different from one another. I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about, like, I don't know, are there any sort of like, key learnings that you, that you took from that, that diverse sort of background?

Yeah, it's funny, I'm mentoring now and I get asked that questions quite a bit. And in hindsight, yes, I can see the thread. So, for example, 5s. 5s shows up in lots of different areas. You don't even realize it sometimes because you're just sorting through things. Right. You're setting them in order, then you're standardizing them, then you're shining them up and you're just standing it. You can do that for anything. Right. So a lot of the work that I do now is buying 5s for categorizing different types of data, different types of way that we're doing work, the way that the organization works functionally. Right. So. And it does come back to 5s being a tool for prioritization. Basically, you identify everything and then once you've identified and categorize it. You then prioritize what you want to work on, what you need to actually shine, what you need to actually sustain. So it's a way of doing that as well. So I find like 5s is one of those big tools. Obviously, as a process person, sidebox, value stream, those all become big things as well. But the whole concept of all the different things that go on in Lean, in terms of what it takes, I mean, you take all the waste, right. Tim woods and everything else like that, and you try and bring it down to a, a language that is more palatable. So my challenge is that I usually work in organizations, Genentech aside, that don't understand me. Right. So health, Healthcare is a place where Lean is trying to come into. But. And Alan's talked to you about this, Alan Gannick, let's talk to you about this. It's a challenge. Yeah, because the way that they're built, it's different. I mean, it's not always necessarily a clean customer, for example, because the patient doesn't necessarily talk directly to the health plans who supply all the requirements. The provider is kind of in the middle. And then yet we're another level in between that, between the plans, the provider and the patient. So it's not a clean, straight line like it is in manufacturing. And that brings problems unto itself. And so one of the great books that I keep referring to people is Managing the Gray Area by Gerrymans, because it talks about managing everything. That's not the extremes. Extremes are easier to manage. It's everything in the middle. It's the outliers, the special conditions, the non, you know, the exceptions and everything like that. So I go to that. I also use, you know, Art Somali's four Problems and try and figure out, is it a, you know, is it a real incident? Is it a gap to standard? Is it something that's more about problem solving in general, or is it more like a development thing? We want to innovate and go to a new direction. And nine times out of 10, it's this gap to standard. So Lean kind of requires that you have a standard process in place for it to really work, because then you do continuous improvement on it. If you don't have a standardized process, you're always dealing with this gap to standard and defining what that standard is. And so with organizations that don't have Lean, they're kind of stuck at that second problem level.

Yeah. So you're obviously, I can hear it in your voice, very passionate about, about continuous improvement. About lean, talk about those situations if, if they've ever happened to where.

You.

Know, people are sort of resistant to the whole idea. And how does that work for someone like you? Because you've got tons of, you have passion, like oozing out of you, right? So like how do you, how do you deal with that if you're approached with negativity or just flat out resistance, like, what's your style in that situation?

That's a great question. Thank you. So part of my journey in being an instructor, you learn how to do change management, obviously. And part of change management, you spend a lot of time learning about active listening. And so one of the big things that I apply is being empathetic and listening. So from design thinking aspect of it, you want to put yourself in the role of another person. And so I listen to their problem statement, I listen to what pain points they're hearing, I listen to how they're looking at them, I listen to how they are trying to address them and I try to find a way to bring it back to a model in my head that might be related to 5s, that might be related to single piece flow, that might be related to Agile and the application of an agile methodology. I let them keep talking about it and I use their language. And then at the end of it, when they say, okay, I understand where you want to come in and try and make an improvement and that we're jumping to solution and we're not actually defining a problem or everything, and I say, yeah, great, you've just applied something that from a lean signal standpoint is this. Now we don't need to go into that level of detail, but understand that you're using a methodology that thousands of other people are already applying otherwise and there's a discipline around it, so you're not that far off. Let's just refine how you're doing it and let's go down this path together. And then at that point they tend to be more open to my suggestions about maybe modifying the way they're approaching something, because I can apply something that might be from another discipline, from a Lean Sigma standpoint or from an Agile standpoint, and then they see additional results and then they get excited once they start seeing the progress and they want to find out more about leaning, they want to find out more about Agile, they want to find out more about project management in general. Right. So this is where, that's my entry point, right? I come to where they are. The customer is. It's sort of like Gemba and then I kind of work out. So from that aspect of it now.

Have you ever been exposed to. I know you've probably heard the acronym CAVE people like Citizen Against Virtually Everything.

Ellen's latest podcast. Yes. That is a challenge. Right. So sometimes you have to bring the light into the cave, but a lot of times, to be perfectly honest, you need to get an executive sponsor. Right. And Alan talked about that. You need to kind of get leadership to come in and actually say, hey, we got to change the way we're doing things. It's not working this way. Let's take a chance and try it a different way. Right. So you do need to have that executive support as well, somebody who's willing to take that risk with you to take that jump. And once you can partner with somebody like that that has a little bit more influence than you might have, things can change.

Yeah.

But you do have to. You have to sometimes reach out and find somebody to take people out of that cave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always been my experience. There's been many times where I've interacted with someone super negative, arms crossed. I don't want sitting in the back of the room or whatever in a training class. And my style is just not. I don't pick on them or even just. I don't ignore them, but just, you know, just gently kind of work into it. But it's been my experience that. And I don't know how many times I've heard this, that people will eventually just say something to the effect of, you know, no one's ever listened to me like this team has listened to me. And, you know, they've. They. Maybe they have been wronged. I don't know. I wasn't there. But, you know, that's. That's what I've experience with lean is just when you have that sort of empathy and that heart for just hearing people and involving them, most people will come around, you know.

No, it's great. And I. I've seen some of your podcasts where you're teaching a class and everything like that, and your video, you know, that you have on your website and everything, a little promo for you. And. And it's interesting to see sometimes the effect of the other students on that one person that's kind of resistant. The energy kind of becomes contagious. Right. Yeah. And so you. I. I could see you lean in and take advantage of that.

Yeah.

But for me, a lot of it has to do with language. It's just terminology sometimes. Right. Just simple words like, you Know, for me, I get stuck on things. I have a bit of OCD sometimes, but I get stuck on words like pre planning. Right. What is pre planning? There is no plan to plan. You. You stage something or you prepare something. You just plan. Right. So sometimes it's simplifying the words and making sure that we're aligned on understanding how we're communicating. And then they kind of get the idea because, you know, otherwise, you know, you're talking across each other.

Yeah. So what part of being a Lean Six Sigma master black belt continuous improvement practitioner, what brings you the most satisfaction?

Oh, it's that aha moment, Right. I think most of us feel that, right. So it's going back to that example where I'm talking to somebody about their problem and they put it in their language and then we start talking about it from a slightly different lens, we turn it around, and then I start explaining to them, hey, if you follow these five steps, maybe you can come up with a different result. And it happens to be like the 5s things. I keep going 5s. Right. So it goes back to the 5s things. And. And then I say, well, you know, have you thought about it maybe from the way. A different perspective, right? So in healthcare, you might want to bring in an example from Starbucks or something else like that. And they don't see the connection initially, but you start talking through it, they suddenly a light bulb goes off on them, they get it, and suddenly you're able to bring them into a different flow state. They talk about it slightly differently. They're more open to seeing it from a different light. Right. And so for me, as a lean practitioner, working with a lot of people that don't have that type of background, it's them understanding the concepts without knowing that they're actually seeing it as Lean. And then when they start talking and hearing about it from Lean from other sources and everything, they suddenly get it. They suddenly go, ah, I know why you're talking to me about Lean now. Right. That magic moment is for me where I get my joy. So I don't work in companies that are really strong in Lean Six Sigma. And that's a challenge unto itself. But at the same time, that's so much enjoyment for me.

Yeah, I've heard it described as covert lean sometimes, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. And you get your frustrations, right. So you've gone into organizations where lean is kind of thought of one way, but then the leadership has that certain mindset and it's not really aligned to what needs to be done. And so you have to kind of work with them a little bit, but once they do, it can be magical.

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. So, okay, on the flip side, what's been some of your, I don't know, the toughest part of this whole journey or maybe a big challenge or something that you've. That you've had to face. Anything come to mind?

Oh, adjusting to technology and dealing with data quality and more specifically in this is in my last part of my journey so far and working with healthcare, it is. This is a nightmare. Data managing with data quality issues and making sure that things are the metrics, piece.

Names or anything like that.

Yeah. So you know when, when open enrollment occurs. Right. So you go through open enrollment every year, you have to choose a health plan. Right. All those health plans have different kind of criteria for what they will pay for. Right. And so those criteria have to flow into a system that then the providers, the doctors can actually see what's applicable for them to actually apply for that health plan and that patient. That combination, what is the payment that's going to come out for the patient, what's their copay as well as what's going to be acceptable that will be approved by the health plan not only for the treatment, but also for the medication. All of that has to flow into the system. And for us, we deal with multiple health plans and with multiple products, and all of that information comes in in different formats because the health plans format it based upon what's most convenient for them. But we have to normalize that data and then make it available in a consumable format for the providers and the patients to get the best experience. That whole transformation piece is one of the biggest challenges that I've seen in my career. And as technology changes, it gets a little better. And now with AI, there seems to be some opportunities there. But until you can try and deal with the data flows and the data managements that underlie the processes, man, that combination is really, really tough.

I'm wondering if there's someone listening right now. Maybe they're just getting started with lean or continuous improvement and don't even know what they don't know. You've obviously been around the block a time or two. Speak to that person who's just getting started, like, what words of wisdom, what advice do you have for that individual?

Oh, man, you're putting me in a spot that a. I'm flattered, first of all, because normally I'd not ask that type of question, but from my standpoint, it's you need to understand yourself and what your strengths are and then be patient with understanding how those strengths work. With problem solving, I think for, and I've talked to this about with my son who's just graduated from college, problem solving is probably the biggest skill set that is not taught in schools. Understanding how to break down a problem, how to categorize it, and how to understand where to put it in terms of your priority, of what you're doing with everything else. Time management, right. So how you prioritize things is one of the biggest challenges. And dealing with the fact that your priorities are not necessarily yours alone. You're given priorities, right? And then how do you manage that? So, you know, there's Stephen Covey's matrix about how you deal with prioritization is one of those classic ways of doing it. Eisenhower had his matrix and stuff like that. So that whole set of how you prioritize Org, which goes back to my quote at the very beginning, is where your journey starts. Because all the tools that we talk about like Agile, Project Management, Lean, Six Sigma, all of those key fundamental starting points in all those different disciplines start with how do you identify the work, how do you sort through it and how do you prioritize it? And then you focus on doing it right. So prioritization keeps coming back over and over and over again. Once you get that, then you can go out and maybe look at Lean and the different ways that they deal with how to prioritize, how to then take that prioritization, do root cause analysis to figure out deeper meanings of it, how to take that, and even go even to FMEA to figure out when it's most likely to fail. So it builds itself, it becomes a building block, Right?

Yeah. Good stuff. Awesome. Well, Dexter, man, I appreciate you coming on. This has been a lot of fun. If folks wanted to connect with you personally, what's the best way right now?

LinkedIn. That's the one I pay attention to from outside. I don't take on a lot of people from outside the network unless they explain why they want to connect with me. Some people just send a lot, like a blind, hey, let's connect. And I have no idea why they're.

Gonna say, I heard you on the Gemba Academy podcast, so you gotta accept that.

Well, no, and I probably will. So I have no problem problems about that. And Ron, I, I appreciate this. I, you know, there's so much more, I mean, you know, from my head, it's just like bursting like, you know, and so if there's any opportunity for us to connect again. I'd love to.

Yeah, we'll do that. You can come back on a second time. Third time I've had a few people on many times as you know. You've listened to the podcast so and.

Any feedback you get from from this as well, please pass it on to me. I'd be more than happy to pick. I love feedback for sure.

For sure. Awesome. All right, well thanks again Dexter. Take care.

Thanks Ron.

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.