GA 602 | Clues from the Factory Parking Lot with George Pesansky

Failing is not a bad thing. It's something that we can learn from and we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and go out and win the next time. It's interesting. In larger organizations and especially in manufacturing operations, failure is not thought of as something that we want to do faster. It's something that is often not forgiven. And therefore we are always kind of hedging a little bit what those goals are going to be.

Today I am very excited to welcome George Pasanski to the show. Now, as you'll hear, George has a really, really strong background in continuous improvement. And we had a fantastic conversation. So George has written a book and he kind of talks a little bit about that at the beginning, but we really jump into the whole idea of Gemba walks right out of the gate and talk about some things that we can be doing on Gemba walks. And it's not just always your traditional thing. Like George has got some interesting ideas and some things that, and I've been at this for a while that I had not ever considered. So there's some really good stuff related to sort of like just something as what we would call from a lean world basic as a Gemba walk, but some really good insights there. Also we get into just some ideas of how leaders and expectations, if not handled correctly, can really lead to sort of a toxic environment. And so we sort of talk about what not to do and what to do. Other some really interesting topics, like one was factory parking lots and you know, and what that can say about a company's culture and maybe how morale is at that organization. So like the parking lot. So you'll have to wait and hear what George has to say about that. And so we talked about many other things and just again, George is a super well rounded, continuous improvement practitioner and I really enjoy talking to him. I think you're going to like this one. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 602. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 6, 02. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. George, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Oh, great. Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. Where are you calling in from?

I live here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, specifically in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

Okay, so Nitley Lions or what's your, your college football?

Well, yeah, so, so yeah, if you're, if you're here in Pennsylvania, you're, you're certainly thinking about Penn State, especially if you're outside of the Philly or Pittsburgh suburbs. So, yeah, I'm out here in the hinterland. So we're, we're Penn State fans for sure.

Awesome. All right, well, good stuff. Good stuff. All right, well. So George, I know you, you know how the show goes. We like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, you know, I have a quote that I really often reference, often Peter Drucker, that you can't improve what you can't measure. But I always add to that that you also can't sustain what you can't explain. And it really is the foundation. I've actually had some customers put it on T shirts.

Nice.

So. So I've tried to make my contribution to Drucker's famous quote.

I love it. Talk a little bit more about that. You can't sustain what you can't explain.

Yeah, you know, it's core. You know, my upcoming book, Super Performance is so much about best pract understanding the root cause of your success. Lots of times, you know, manufacturing operations, we start with a standard and then we do a lot of continuous improvement type work to try to improve on that standard and eliminate waste and loss and make ourselves better. The ability to understand what the standard is means that you can clearly explain it. And SOPs and things are often used to do that. But the key question of why is this successful and why is it working? I kind of found that some of the training within industry kind of lessons are just so valuable. And it struck me one day that if I don't know why this standard is succeeding, then I'm probably not likely to continue to maintain it. And the rhyme kind of struck me.

Nice. Oh, I really love that. All the years, I don't think I've ever heard that. So that's fantastic. If you have some extra T shirts, I'll take one.

So. Okay, fantastic.

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

Yeah, no, thank you so much. I. So I started my career in the military and from the military, kind of entered civilian life as a junior military officer and worked in the industrial gas business in Ohio. So I got a real wonderful opportunity to get exposed to some of the really important, structured, continuous improvement, quality, world class manufacturing kind of operations in the automotive industry, being a supplier to some of those kind of key suppliers and companies. And that allowed me to kind of move into working for a specialty chemical company where I spent A good part of my corporate career. And, you know, if you think about it, you know, pretty much anything that's made uses glue in some part of its process. So I had this wonderful chance to basically visit factories, industries, companies all over the world, and to help them with, you know, basically becoming better at using their glue. We actually developed an internal consulting firm that was really about, you know, kind of reducing waste and improving productivity. Very focused on, you know, this very small piece of a manufacturing process, but quickly learned that we could certainly help organizations in every way. And that launched my blended learning just about 20 years ago. And I'm the founder and the owner, and this is what we do. We help organizations reach their full potential.

Great, Great. Awesome. All right, well, I know you're big into Gemba Walk, so I wanted to maybe kick things off with that. So talk a little bit. Your thoughts on. On Gemba Walks and how they play into sort of performance improvement.

Yeah, well, thank you. And, you know, I think in almost any operations environment, we always talk about being on the floor and getting out, you know, into the operations. And I have found so many kind of cultures where getting out onto the floor and being in the operations means that I'm in full supervisor mode. I'm looking for the things that are wrong. I'm correcting the conditions I don't like. I'm trying to provide, you know, kind of training, and I'm trying to make sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to be doing. And I really, you know, don't believe that that is the most effective way to really understand your organization. And that lesson, you know, that so many other companies, you know, perform so well. This idea of a Gemba Walk, that you're there to listen, you're there to learn, you're there to understand. It even kind of comes down to when I have a chance to visit a factory. I like to call it industrial tourism. You know, getting the chance to see how things work. I like taking the tour from the employee's perspective, like, literally starting in the employee lot, kind of going in past their time clocks, through their locker rooms, out to their floor, out past all the communication boards. And it is often a dramatically different tour than the one they give visitors. And that experience of then having the chance to listen to what it is they have to say, to learn what it's like to work in their environment and really understand where opportunities are, is the gift that, again, the walk gives us.

Yeah, it's interesting. I really like that idea of sort of going with the flow of what the operator does. That's an interesting perspective. You know, you know, sometimes we'll focus on the product, but. But in a way you will. Eventually you're going to get there. Right. But there's a lot of things before and there's a lot of things after. Right. That could potential potentially impact things. So that's a, that's a pretty clever way of approaching it.

You know, it's, it's. I have, you know, kind of a silly analogy. Some of us, you know, may remember, you know, younger folks, I don't know if it's a common, you know, story anymore, but the famous kind of fable of Rumpelstiltskin, you know, this magical creature that takes straw and with this magic loom can turn the straw into gold. And there's a whole, you know, kind of story around it. And, and I always kind of talk about, you know, in a factory, it really is Rumpelstiltskin. The operator really is this magical person who takes these things that don't have much value, these raw materials and with this special equipment, with this talent, with this time, they turn it into gold, they turn it into value that companies are willing to sell and buy. And understanding how that's done and how we can do it better, um, it's not that different than what we learned as kids. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, well, let's shift gears a little bit and I want to ask you about leadership and expectations. So obviously most leaders are going to set expectations and sometimes even high expectations. So how can we go about doing that without creating sort of this, I don't know, toxic or maybe a high stress environment?

Well, you know, there's a name that I kind of coined for this. I call it the prison of expectations. And I actually got kind of locked in this in my early part of my career. I actually talk about it in my upcoming book, Super Performance. And it's this situation where the higher the stakes get, the more risk I have of having a very negative consequence if I fail. So I start to really think about how to make sure there's no chance at all that I can fail. And I think we can all relate that one of the ways I do that is to apply myself. But another way I do it is I start to manage expectations. I want to try to make sure that my goal is realistic so that I'm not setting myself up for failure. And this circle of events where leaders will often kind of create a very kind of high pressure, high stakes, we really need to succeed. These are our must win battles that can create the environment for the people who are delivering to now start negotiating those goals and those expectations. And what it means is we're not really fully applying ourselves because the risk of failure is so high. We're going to hedge and we're going to hold back a little bit to make sure that I'm not making commitments I can't fulfill. So we being willing to allow a failure, we see this certainly in startups and founders know this well, that failing is not a bad thing. It's something that we can learn from and we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and go out and win the next time. It's interesting. In larger organizations and especially in manufacturing operations, failure is not thought of as something that we want to do faster. It's something that is often not forgiven. And therefore we are always kind of hedging a little bit what those goals are going to be.

So we'll talk a little bit about like say from a manufacturing perspective. I'm a frontline operator. I'm out there doing my job and whatnot. But what do you mean? Like talk a little bit more just about that whole idea of failure. Like what would that look like? Can you give me an example?

Yeah. Not meeting expectations. You know, if we use maybe one of the simplest examples like downtime in the sense of a manufacturing operation, that I have a goal that in my eight hour shift I'm going to have no more than 30 minutes of downtime. Well, what's going to happen is in the early part of the shift, If I have five minutes here, 10 minutes there, I still have 20 more minutes of opportunity where that can happen or it doesn't happen. But as I kind of get closer to the end of the shift, I'm going to going to really be trying to make sure that I don't end up with 31 minutes because that puts me in the red category. I really want to end up with 29 minutes. And the reality is, even if I could have ended up with 24 minutes, the incentive to do that's not there because the next time the standard will be 25 minutes. So I kind of always want to end up close, but never over. Because if I lower that standard, if I end up, you know, kind of getting to the point where we're doing something in 15 minutes and not having that downtime that I expected, well, you may come around and lower my standard. You may make it something that's now much more difficult for me to achieve. So you're kind of not giving me the incentive because you know, now the expectations have changed. So the, you know, to answer your question really clearly, as a leader, you have to recognize the implication of the expectations that you're setting and allowing people to really just fulfill their potential to be able to kind of really perform at their peak, and then to recognize both the reasons they may have been held back and the level of performance they had, but also the things that they did well, what are the root causes of their success? And then asking, you know, kind of what was getting us to not meet our full potential today is a very different question than did you meet the standard of 30 minutes of downtime? Because that operator is never going to do it in 10 minutes because the new standard is going to become 15 minutes.

Yeah, that's interesting. All right, so I know something that, that you're passionate about talking about and not something that I normally ask folks about on the podcast. So I'm really excited to hear what you say. But talk a little bit about, about parking lots, factory parking lots, and how they might, I don't know, offer some clues into morale within the organization.

Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, I mentioned earlier kind of this idea of industrial tourism having. Every single time I have a chance to visit a facility, a factory, I always take advantage of it. And I again, really like kind of taking the tour from the operator's perspective. And when, you know, you leave the parking lot and you're entering the facility, if you find earplugs laying all over the parking lot, is often really an indication of what the rest of this tour is going to look like, because the locker rooms, the restrooms are probably going to be a mess and not well taken care of. And as I'm walking out to the machinery, it's going to be littered with, you know, kind of all kinds of parts that are stored in bins and places and dirt and materials and things that no one even knows why it's here. And then as I get closer to the equipment, we see that it's probably not in the state of care that it could be in to reach its full potential. And often I'm there to try to help organizations perform. And in that 15 or so minute walk, I've learned almost everything I need to learn that it's really about the culture here and the engagement of the employees and whether or not we're really seizing upon and giving the opportunity for them to reach their full potential.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the KANO model. First of all, maybe just give a quick explanation of what it is for folks who aren't familiar. And then I have a follow up question here.

Sure. Yeah. So this is used in marketing. It's often used in also continuous improvement type projects. And it really is about value and the things that are requirements, you know, must be type requirements that if I buy a airplane ticket to get to a destination, I expect to get to that destination. But some of my requirements may not be a need like having a first class upgrade. It's something I want, but it's not something I need. I need to get to my destination, but I want a first class upgrade. A KANO model is a way for us to separate our wants and our needs and to really make sure we're focusing on what people are willing to pay for and what they define as value.

Okay, so then talk a little bit about then how this whole idea of this model can be used to sort of lower the temperature and talk about like, you know, with our customers, make sure we're satisfying what our customers want.

You know, there's a lot of examples. I was actually recently at a hotel and it's a, you know, famous brand that gives away cookies when you.

I know the brand. Yeah.

And I want to be careful because I'm a huge fan and I'm also a lifetime, you know, level member. So I don't, I don't want to talk negatively about them. But in this particular case, I received my cookie with great fanfare, which I always love. The ceremony of where they bestow the cookie and they gave me a key to a room that somebody else was already in.

Oh.

So when I, you know, all of us who travel a lot have probably experienced this maybe once or twice in their whole career.

I never have.

And I've traveled a lot.

I never have.

Well, good. I hope that, I hope that streak continues. But I won the unlucky lottery on this day. And it is a great example of the KANO model because in that front desk, they were super focused on the warm cookies and the ceremony of giving me that cookie and creating great pleasure for me as a customer. And they didn't properly issue a key, which is a must be requirement. And honestly, in that moment, as I'm munching away the key and standing in somebody else's room, I'm thinking, I could have done without this cookie. I could have held it back. So how do we lower the temperature? How do we reduce the friction? It's being clear about what matters. And I think in manufacturing, in operations, in so many organizations, small businesses, large businesses, we get Tied up in the drama. We get tied up in the thing that is happening right now and the thing that people are talking about. But we have to remember that some things are cookies. And yes, you may have some people who are upset and they may not be happy, but they're not, you know, angry, they're not, you know, frustrated, and they're not going to walk away from your brand and never use you again. So knowing kind of what matters, those must be requirements and separating it from the things that are only nice to have. We never want to get the cart in front of the horse. Yeah. So always take the key over the cookie.

How did the hotel handle that situation? I'm curious.

Extremely well. The recovery. My wife, I met her, she was a general manager of a hotel. So as soon as this happened, I obviously told her the story, which she was horrified because it's the worst thing that can really happen almost in a hotel. It's definitely in the top few. And she was extremely proud of their recovery. She thought they did really well.

If you don't mind me asking.

Well, the first thing they did is when they remade my key, rather than handing it to me and say, good luck, they. They actually walked me to my room to make sure that it was correct and it was what I expected. And then they comped me dinner and drinks in the hotel restaurant. So I felt like they really recognized the gravity of the mistake and then recovered rather remarkably.

How interesting. I don't know what word to use was the situation in the first room. Did you open the door and see someone half naked? What?

Yeah. No. Well, yeah, that's like the stuff of nightmares, right?

Yeah.

So thankfully it was somebody who was sitting at the. The desk and working on their email or doing some kind of work and certainly was completely shocked to see their door, you know, opening. And, you know, whether it's fortunate or unfortunate, I've had this happen before. And I also immediately recognized what was happening. So I instantly said, I'm apologizing. I'm sorry. Let me. Let me leave.

I wonder what they did for that person. If they comped them or gave them extra cookies or something. I don't know.

Yeah, no, I hope so. But I think it was clearly a mistake that they never want to make a whole story in error proofing for us. Right?

Oh, boy, oh, boy. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you really could think about that because that could be really, really dangerous and really devastating, you know?

Yeah. Under the wrong circumstance, you know, with the wrong people, lots of things could go sideways.

Yep. All right. Well, let's shift gears a little bit. Back to some more lean talk here. So I, I understand that you've had some success here using A3s, perhaps beyond their traditional use case. So what does that look like? Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, and I know a lot of your audience, likely extremely familiar, you know, the A3, that single sheet of paper that we can really summarize our problem and understand kind of that plan, do check and act, really a remarkable tool in lean manufacturing. And I have always, always been a fan from the time I was first introduced to it, you know, really almost 25 years ago. And as I've kind of practiced and tried to help organizations, one day it struck me that when you finish a project, and this comes back to my saying that we kicked off with, when you finish a project and you now have a new problem, it's not solving the problem. It's going to be sustaining the improvement that we've worked so hard to implement. It's like reaching retirement. You know, you get to that stage where your whole life you were pursuing that nest egg, and then you realize on a Friday afternoon, wearing that gold watch, my whole life now is preserving that nest egg versus growing that nest egg. You know, it's a whole new problem you have. I think every single improvement project faces that same problem. And what we did was repurpose the magic, the beauty, the wisdom of an A3 to focus on the problem of sustaining the outcome and thought about a lot of the common questions and sort of things that go into that A3, you know, the background and current condition and goal, and really thinking of it through the lens of what we would do to sustain this improvement. And it has been a remarkable tool in the clients that I work with. And I've always kind of thought, you know, improvement is a funny thing because a lot of organizations work on a lot of projects, work, do a lot of work, but they often don't really measure or really focus on sustaining the improvements they implement. I kind of think of it a lot like a leaky bucket, that whatever you're putting in is going to be kind of, eventually the level is going to be dictated not on just what you're putting in, but how much is leaking out. And our, our sustain A3 is really a great way to help us prevent the leaks.

Yeah, I'm like, I sort of a. A big fan of preaching the idea that due to entropy, which never sleeps, like, you cannot sustain anything. I mean, it's just, it's nature, right? It's science. Like nothing can be sort of controlled. Right. So in my opinion, you're either getting a little bit better or you're getting a little bit worse. Very, very few times are you going to be just completely static.

Right.

And so I'm a big fan of using if even if you want to call a traditional control plan or whatever it is, that's fine, but make it in such a way, sort of like what you're talking about. I think of like, hey, how do we just keep sort of moving that rock up the hill ever? Just, just a little bit, you know, and, and that way you don't ever have to worry about it crushing you on the way back down 100%.

I think we're in very close alignment. I, I, I, I refer to this, I've talked about it, the idea behind having an understanding of the root cause of your success and you know, it kind of goes back to again, you know, my initial comments, but I think so many organizations, so many teams, so many individuals focus on using root cause analysis to identify why they're having a problem, but they don't spend enough time trying to understand why we're successful. And the point you're making, it applies to this idea of a sustain A three. Because I don't want to know everything I've got to do. I can't fit it on one piece of paper. What I want is the critical bit. I want the essence of what is actually helping this survive. What is the seed that I can continue to water? What is the plant that can potentially grow? And what are those things that we did differently that could help us actually kind of not just continue, but obviously improve on what it is we already have. So, yeah, Pareto principle is undefeated, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, even like, you know, if you've taken more, if you got and dabbled into more of like a domainic type approach where, you know, things like FMEAs are involved. You know, like these are tools that I feel like often just get put on a shelf somewhere where it's a living document. Right. And you should be sort of updating it and learning from it and using it to continue to, to improve your process. And it just never ends. That's why it's continuous improvement. I feel like sometimes we say it so often that we forget what the word means. Continuous.

Absolutely. And you know, Ron, you, you, you know, you're, you're, you and your audience may be, you know, a very small group that would really appreciate this, but let me blow your mind for a second. So that FMEA you just mentioned one of my favorite tools. Learned it, you know, back there by being in the, you know, I call it the Ford Prison where they were teaching us how to do FMEAs. What we have found is, is that if you flip the script and instead of doing a failure modes effects analysis, you do a success modes effects analysis. So everything's the same. And, you know, certainly you can look at it as a process, but when I did it with those employees that were retiring after 40 years, what we learned, what we took away around the processes, the responsibilities, it was the ultimate transition document. And really, you know, a tool that so many of your listeners are familiar with. If you just flip that script, the value it can create is enormous.

Wow, that's so good. That's so good. It's like, learn how to win and why are you winning. Right. Instead of trying not to lose, lose, like, figure out how to win and how to keep winning.

Right.

It's a mindset shift. Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

So anyhow, good stuff. Well, hey, I don't know, George has been an awesome conversation. Is there any sort of like final words of wisdom or some parting thoughts that you want to leave the folks with?

Yeah, and I really appreciate the chance, the opportunity, really. Everything that I've talked about today, you know, we've had just an amazing career and we put all of this knowledge, we put all of the things you heard about today into our upcoming book, Super Performance. Going to be out Amazon, Barnes and Noble, everywhere you buy books September 23rd. Root cause of analysis, the root cause of success. You know, really understanding what drives you, how to reach your full potential. All of these topics we put into a really great kind of story based frame format. We're really giving away everything that we've Learned in our 30 years of our continuous improvement practice. So I hope people benefit from it. I would really love to hear from you. Georgepasanski.com if you want to follow me on social media or you want to see any of the other podcasts or articles or publications we're in. And you can also subscribe to our Deliberate Minute, our newsletter on all these little tips and tricks.

Love it. Awesome. We're going to have everything linked up in the show notes and this episode will come out after your book is released. So it's perfect timing. Everybody's already ordering it right now, I can tell.

Really appreciate that. Thank you.

All right, well, hey, George, I appreciate the time. This has been a lot of fun.

It is. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, take care. Thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey from 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 more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy. Com.