GA 618 | MORE Is Better with Kathy Miller

So how do we look at things when we are faced with challenges or roadblocks? Do we see them as being really permanent situations? Do we see them as things that we can't overcome or that are going to permeate all aspects of our success? Or are we able to put it in a box and say, no, this is temporary, this is specific, and we're going to work our way through that?

Today I am excited to welcome Kathy Miller back to the show. Now, Kathy was on, well, a few hundred episodes ago where we talked about her book, Steel Toes and Stilettos. And that was a lot of fun and a great book title. But today we actually talk about a new book that she's recently put out. It's called More Is Better. And so we get. We really just dive deep into some of the key concepts of the book and had a lot of really good conversations. I actually had some questions all queued up going into it, like I always do. But then just as we started talking, other things just start popping into my mind. And so it was a really fun conversation. Things just kind of flowed nicely. But we spent some time talking about things like optimism. You know, it's optimism, one of those, one of those concepts that can't be seen as sort of like a soft concept, but without it, you know, if we have pessimism or just sort of give up, this is, this is a really bad situation. And so optimism is super important. So we talk a little bit about that and then we get into things like psychological safety, which plays with optimism, really, because without psychological safeties, there's not going to be a lot of hope. Right. And so just lots of good conversation as you're going to hear. Kathy's got a deep, deep background in manufacturing and just business in general. And so a lot of wisdom and is a lot of fun to talk to. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 618. Again. That's episode 618. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Kathy, welcome back to the show. How are you?

I'm doing great, Ron. Thanks so much for having me back.

Yeah, so we were just chatting before we hit record. It's been, well, it's been a couple hundred episodes ago that you were last on, so had a few things go on since then, so. But I'm excited to, to have you back on and hear about your new book. More is Better and. But you remember how we like to get things started with all of our episodes and that is with a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, my favorite quote regarding manufacturing is that the shop floor is a reflection of management or leadership. I've seen it written both ways, but by Taiichi Ono. And I think no truer words have ever been spoken.

Yeah, no. 100%. 100%. All right, well, hey, Kathy, tell us a little bit about yourself in case people don't remember from 200 some episodes ago. Tell us about. About you.

Don't think you're listening to our episode over and over every single day, right?

Maybe. I don't know. You never know. Yeah. So, yeah, just tell us about yourself and your background and what you're up to these days.

Yeah, thanks. So I literally started working on a plant floor as an industrial engineering co op student when I was 17 years of age. So I have been in and around manufacturing for a number of decades, let's just say that.

Okay.

And so started a vehicle assembly plant, worked my way up through plant operations manager. I've got to do some amazing things. Work for diversified industrials, helping lead lean and strategy deployment for over 300 plants. Ran all the plants for Rolls Royce Defense globally. You know, a lot of, a lot of great experiences. I, I always said that if I couldn't be a rock star, I wanted to be a plant manager of a vehicle assembly. So you probably guessed I didn't get to become a rock star and I really didn't get to run a car plant either. But as I just listed, I did get to do a lot of amazing things, meet a lot of amazing people around the world and help them with transformations. And so later in my career, I left the corporate world and went back to school to get a master's in applied positive psychology. It was a bucket list item for me. And, and so now I'm coaching, speaking, training people, writing books about, you know, how we help people flourish in these industrial settings.

So back in episode 417, we talked about your book, which I still think is one of the coolest titles of I've ever heard, which was Steel Toes in Stiletto, so. But now you've written a new book called More Is Better. I'm curious. I always like to ask authors, like, I mean, obviously you can make money and all the rest of it. Sure. But like, like, what motivates you to, to write books?

Yeah, so I actually really loved writing growing up, you know, and then I ended up in engineering school and didn't get to do any writing for, for a while. So it really helped me, you know, tap back into Some of those different levers of creativity in our brain that I hadn't used for a while. But I think the main thing is just really wanting to reach an audience and help accelerate their journey, you know, and not have to go through some of the hard knocks and lessons learned that I did. And, you know, over the years, I've looked back on my career and am known for transforming organizations using methodologies. But it's also really important, the underpinning of helping people thrive, because when you really set that culture, that's where there's those lean tools take the next level of sustainability, acceleration, and all those kinds of things. So, you know, I've accumulated a lot of stories. I now have the science behind it and just wanting to marry those two for people who are still in it, who are so busy. Right. They don't have time to read organizational research and also translate it to that environment. What I find is a lot of organizational research focuses on more office type environments. And, you know, I want to provide tools for people who lead both on concrete and carpet.

Nice. Oh, I like that. I like that. All right, so talk about the, the title. So you have the word More in there. So what. What's More stand for in your. In your book?

Yes, I'm definitely playing on, you know, the double entendre of more, but it's actually an acronym for leading operations with meaning optimism and relationships for excellence.

I like it. Talk a little bit about meaning. So we talk about Lean, obviously on this podcast week after week, but we don't often talk about it being meaningful. So we'll talk a little bit about. About what you mean there by that.

Yeah, so when people can connect their work to a higher purpose or find it meaningful, it's less drudgery. Right. Particularly when we work in industrial environments, we have a lot of segmented work for good reason, you know, for productivity and a lot of repetitive work. And when you get in those situations where we've optimized systems for productivity, it really doesn't create a spark in our team members. And we need that spark. We need people to be excited about their work. We need them to, you know, want to give their discretionary effort. Nobody wants to come into work every day and feel like what they do doesn't matter. So what we want to do is help unleash the meaning behind the work that we're doing. Again, I used to run rubber factories where people were producing tens of thousands of parts every day of different shapes and sizes and colors. And it wasn't until we started Bringing customers in and telling them stories about how they're used to make the world a better place, that we really sensed some energy. But once we started to tell them those stories to bring in the sales people, to bring in the customers, they realized they were part of something larger. Right. Help keep food safe. We actually had a seal go on a mission where they went in and got a very well known terrorist. And our seal was on the water pack that they sprayed on his face to identify him. So all of a sudden you're going from running, you know, X number of seals at 98% quality to I'm helping keeping the world safe.

Wow.

So it, it really drove people wanting to collaborate more, wanting to, you know, serve the mission more. And it's just very powerful to connect people's work to something bigger than themselves. And because of our manufacturing systems. And I'm a big proponent of standard work. Right. It's all about quality and repeatability and those sorts of things. But it, standard work takes on a new meaning if you know that airbag control that you're working on might save your neighbor's kid's life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It comes back to sort of that big why, you know, like your purpose. Simon Sinek said it best. Right. Like, you know, start with why. Yeah, no, that's really good. So something that I know that you're, you're passionate about and you write about and is optimism. And that's a powerful concept, optimism, when you think about it. But it can be looked at sometimes as sort of like, I don't know, like kind of like a soft concept. But what's your take on optimism as it, as it pertains to sort of operational excellence and the things that we're trying to do with, with continuous improvement and lean.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. Optimism sometimes gets a bad rap because people think about it as, you know, having a sunny disposition all the time, looking at the world through rose colored glasses and, you know, not that there's anything wrong with having a sunny disposition, but what I'm talking about with optimism is the framework from Dr. Martin Seligman, who's the father of positive psychology. And that's an explanatory style. So how do we look at things when we are faced with challenges or roadblocks? Do we see them as being really permanent situations? Do we see them as things that we can't overcome or that are going to permeate all aspects of our success? Or are we able to put it in a box and Say, no, this is temporary, this is specific, and we're going to work our way through that. So when we relate optimism to implementing lean or continuous improvement, what we're doing is creating this environment where we're like, yes, this is a challenge, but we have the skill set to learn from this, to correct this, and to make sure this doesn't happen again. And we're just going to get right back, you know, on that horse and keep riding. It's not about, yeah, you know, everything goes wrong here every day. So, you know, we just have to accept that missed customer shipment or that sort of thing. And what's been found in the research is that you can develop your optimism skills. And so it's not, you know, if you can couple optimism with the lean tools, you really have a competitive advantage in terms of people wanting to collaborate on issues, wanting to continuously improve and, you know, knowing that they can impact the outcome of something. They're not hopeless against a system that's, you know, always going to produce challenges.

Yeah, yeah. Not to get too sidetracked here, but, gosh, as you were talking, I was thinking about a, a good friend of mine who I've known for many, many years, and this individual was a. Was a pilot for American Airlines and just very real successful and ultimately came down with Parkinson's and, you know, obviously not a pilot anymore and, you know, that sort of thing. But what always amazes me about, about this person is they're just, you know, he has a, just a sunny disposition about him and he's smiling and, you know, still doing all the things that he can do when it would be so easy to just fall into that pit of despair and just give up on life. And so, like, in a situation like that, it, it's. That's not going to get better. Right. Like in, in a way, it might only get worse. I don't know. But, you know, only you can control your reaction to the stimulus. Right. Like whatever that stimulus might be. And so, gosh, I feel like it's so powerful. Like, I just want people to hear, not, you know, read your chapter on optimism. Oh, yeah, be optim. You know, but really, like, it's, it's choice. You know, you either give up or you persevere. And, and it might suck, but, you know, trying to look at it with, with positivity and conviction is going to be a better way to navigate life or continuous improvement or anything else. And what do you think about that?

Absolutely. Well, first of all, what an inspirational story. Things like that really just touch Your heart. Right. And. And make us remember how many blessings we really have in our lives every day.

Yeah.

But it sounds like he's a ma. Able to separate what's in his control versus what's outside of his control.

Yeah.

And I'm sure he experiences so many benefits from being optimistic, you know, about the things in his life that he can control, like his attitude, his outlook. The research on optimism is very powerful. A lot of health benefits, longevity benefits, those sorts of things. So good for him. Good for him. Yeah.

All right, well, shifting gears a little bit, another topic that I know you're passionate about is psychological safety. And I'm wondering if we could dig into that. Like, just, first of all, I don't ever want to assume anything. So someone's listening and they've heard psychological safety, but they're not quite sure what, like, what does it mean to begin with. And then let's talk about a little bit about what that might look like in a workplace.

Yeah. So psychological safety is just feeling safe about speaking up without fear of repercussions. And many times I've experienced it through throughout my career. But psychological safety does. Is not pervasive in manufacturing because of the constant pressure. Right. To produce. We measure everything in seconds and minutes and, and that sort of thing. And there's of pressure to meet metrics. But psychological safety actually leads you to better outcomes because people feel safe to bring problems up early before they really. But they don't want to hide problems. Right. So psychologic a, A, a place that's characterized by psychological safety will ask questions like, how did our process allow that to happen? Not who made that mistake? Or, you know, they pull the andon cord and their supervisor shows up with, how can I help? Not what now? You know, those sorts of things. What did we learn from this? And just being very intentional about connecting and celebrating people surfacing issues as opposed to wanting to hide or bury them.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's one of those, like, how do you learn psychological safety? What do you look at, like, as a, let's say a young manager coming up and maybe there's brand new supervisor and they've, they used to be on the floor and now they're all of a sudden in, you know, leading 10 people or something like that. Like, like how do you, how do you get good at it?

So I think what you do is you look around and emulate the leaders who you feel like you can talk to about issues and concerns, and you don't emulate the ones that don't so two stories. Quick stories from the book, if I may.

Yeah.

I had a boss once who. He wasn't my boss. He was my boss's boss. So he was. He was pretty high up there. I was a plant manager, and I was going on a. A5s walk in a plastics department that had been idled years before. So it became this big, like, dump dumping ground for things. And so I really wanted it cleaned up. And I was walking through it one day, and I found all these gaylords of parts. And I was like, that's very strange. Well, someone was hiding the parts that needed to be scrapped or reworked because there was so much pressure around this. And I was like, oh, my goodness. We haven't relieved the system, so we're not ordering material. Like, this explains a lot. So I called my boss. He came back and looked at it, and. And he was like, oh, my gosh, Kathy. And I'm like, I know. So we took them out, we put them in the center of the plant, we made them visible, we put together a plan for it. But in the process of that, his boss called me out on the line. Like, literally the yellow line that separates, you know, the aisle from the machining. My superintendent and my general supervisor. So two of my direct reports and just berated me publicly, just express his disappointment in me. Told me if I didn't get it fixed in six months, he was gonna fire me. I mean, this was in front of, like, everybody. And I told him, hey, I did not hide the parts. I found the parts. And he said, are you saying so and so hid the parts? I'm like, I don't know who hid the parts. I'm just saying I found the parts. Well, you know. And he said, is your halo on straighter than that other person? I mean, very humiliating. Yeah. Public situation. So I didn't even know the term psychological safety at that time, but I knew that wasn't it and quite honestly is probably the reason the parts were hit in the first place. Yeah, right. Yeah, if that was the reaction you were going to get. So, you know, when he left, I, you know, took a moment and I said to my general supervisor and my supervisor, I said, okay, now you've just seen a member of senior leadership eat their young, like many animal species do. Don't ever let me catch you doing that to your people. Right. So even if you're in a situation where it's toxic, you don't have to amplify it. You can buffer it for your team. By the same token, you Know, later in my career, I had one of my continuous improvement leaders come in and we were, you know, working on a pull system, and they didn't calculate the buffer right, between two processes, and we ran out of parts and missed a customer shipment. So after I ingested some Tylenol, right, Which is, you know, very important PPE in these jobs, as you know. You know, I asked the question, okay, how are we going to protect the company customer? And what did we learn, Right? I wasn't gonna yell and scream because then they wouldn't want to experiment and try to get better in those sorts of things.

What's gonna help anyhow?

You know, it's not gonna help. It's just gonna propagate fear. And there's a lot of pressure. Don't get me wrong, it's not like it's okay to not make your numbers right, but you're not gonna make your numbers by hiding problems in the long run. So you have to really facilitate that culture where it's okay to ask for help.

What. What advice do you have for. For someone who might have a less than ideal leader in their life, like, you, like, you experience there, Like, I mean, sounds like you handled that as well as you could and what are you going to do in that moment, right? And then you did. It sounds like you did a good job, sort of with your team. But, like, that's really hard, right? Like, when you get humiliated like that, I mean, that's like a deep, deep wound that can. I mean, here you are talking about it how many years later, right?

Like, it stuck with you like decades, right? Yeah, it's in my book. It was that traumatic to me, but I knew that I. You can't treat people that way. That's. That's not right. So, you know, my advice is if you're in a toxic situation, like that is, first of all, work on your resilience. Don't overreact, don't feed into it. You know, provide feedback when the situation's calmed down a little bit. But ultimately, Ron, the younger generation is not going to put up with this sort of thing. So companies that really allow that sort of leadership will lose their talent and people will move on to better cultures and it will impact things over time, just through attrition. But, you know, don't take abuse, be respectful, keep the high road and no, shield your people from it. Don't propagate it.

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, and I bet, like, your team probably respected you even more, you know, sort of after. After Going through that. Right. Or seeing that and seeing how you responded to it.

So I had a great team. I really.

Yeah, sounds like it. All right. Talk a little bit about, you know, sometimes within organizations. And I've. And I've seen this. And I've seen as well, I've seen it manufacturing for sure, but I've also seen it in front office and everywhere in between. Is that that attitude of like, hey, this is how things just go. This is what we do. This is how we do things around here. But if you want to change those things, like, kind of like those, you know, entrenched ideas, like, what do you. How do you go about that without sort of like starting a revolt?

Yeah, well, like I told you, I was in charge of lean for over, you know, 300 plants at one company. And every single plant that I went in, you know, I would joke with, I'm here from corporate. I'm here to help, you know, because that's the first thing. Nobody in the plants wants anyone from corporate coming in and helping them. And then they would say, you know, we're unique, special and different. And that stuff doesn't apply here. Like, it just was a matter of if it was five minutes into the conversation or ten. Right? Yeah, so. And I didn't believe that. I believe everybody can benefit from continuous improvement and lean tools and all those sorts of things. So, you know, you have to have conviction, conviction, first of all, and where you're trying to take people is better for them, but you need to listen. You need to listen to what people are saying about what they do believe is unique, different, special about them. How has the way they do work served them and what pain is it keeping them from? So I think it starts with listening and understanding and not just bulldozing over people. And then when you can address things that they're concerned about, you got to get to the cool kids, you know, you got to get cool kids. Okay, so the people who have a lot of social capital who may or may not have leadership in their title, so, you know, I go in as a new leader. Hey, we're going to do a lean transformation. People rolling their eyes, you know, or whatever, like, oh, yeah, flavor of the month. We've been here before, that sort of thing. So really understanding, you know, why they do things a certain way. And then when you want them to change, you have to win over the people that they look to after the meetings and, and. And really get them on board. And then they will help with their actions by doing things a new way. And they have a certain level of credibility. So there's been a lot of research done on this, this concept of shifting norms. Norms are how things are done around here actually in high schools and you know, around bullying. And if they can get to the kids who, you know, set the dress code and teach them about the ill effects of bullying and being kind to people, it has a much more pervasive impact than just the leaders dictating it.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

And then add in social media for these kids and oh boy, you know.

So much, so much influence. But you know, there's always people in the organization who aren't leaders who have a lot of influence.

Yeah, no, for sure. No, that's a good point because yeah, I can even just think back, back to my career. There was always people who, yeah, again, they might not have had the title, but you still knew they knew what was up and, and they had some pull, you know, out there on the floor.

So leaders can also shift norms. Right. But they have to understand it's not just by dictating it, it's by modeling the behaviors, it's by being relatable, it's by active listening, it's by being legitimate. So another example, I had a leader who wanted to change the dress code in the factory where people had been wearing whatever they wanted. And he came in in his three piece suit and red tie and you know, polished wing tips and told everybody what they were going to wear going forward. That didn't go over well. He was not seen as a representative of the group.

Right, right, right, right. I can imagine.

I had a lot of cleanup to do after that one.

I bet, I bet, I bet. So maybe to wrap things up, I'm wondering if could talk a little bit about your thoughts on high quality connections and, and maybe their impact on, on metrics and just really performance in general.

Yeah, High quality connections are something that we all engage in but don't necessarily know what they are. And there's been a lot of research done on them at the University of Michigan in particular. But what they are are those small moments where positive energy is exchanged between two people. And you know, people go away from them feeling seen, valued and with energy. And what's wonderful about them is they help build these positive spirals in the organization and they happen regardless of where you fall on the org chart or the length of your relationship. So for instance, you're walking down the hall, you're already thinking about your next meeting, someone walks by you, you don't even see them versus oh, there's another person, my presence. Hi Joe, how are you today? Right. Doesn't take any longer as you're walking by. But Joe knows that you saw him and you knew his name and you took a second to acknowledge him. So they're very powerful and they really help people feel connected within an organization. And when they feel connected and not isolated, they're going to give more discretionary effort, there's going to be more cooperation. It actually enhances people's clarity. So being very intentional about high quality connections can lead to some very positive things. So you know, someone may help their co worker with a changeover versus that's his job, not mine. You know, those, those sorts of things.

What is your take on like personality types and leadership? So you might have a super strong extrovert leader who just loves to talk to people and gets energy from talking to people and that sort of thing. But you might also have an, an introvert who does not get energy from people. But they're both leading and they're both good at their job and all the rest of it. Like how do, how do you see that playing into how a leader sort of responds to a situation?

Yeah, I mean you do have all types and sometimes a lot of the wisdom comes from those more quiet members of our team. So you have to make sure when you're the leader, you recognize that you're not always giving play to the people who are most comfortable speaking up first. But in terms of high quality connections, I think that they're still very important. They're just probably executed differently between an extrovert and an introvert. Like an extrovert might be happy at the huddle meeting, standing up. Hey, you know, Jimmy, we learned yesterday that we got to change the filters on stuff, you know, and everybody laughs and it's, and it's great and that sort of thing. An introvert more might more be, be more like one on one. Jimmy, thanks for finding that. That filter.

Yeah.

You know, hadn't been changed in a while. You know, so they're, they're just more comfortable in, in different situations. So you can give energy even if you don't necessarily thrive on it from others and be very effective at it.

Yeah. In fact, I think about even here like so me and my business partner, John Miller. So John takes care of all the content side of the business and, and I sort of, you know, run the company kind of thing. But he, he, he, I think he would be comfortable calling himself an introvert. And I mean I, I guess I, when I take the test. I mean I'm sort of like an ENTJ sort of thing. So I, I not super high extrovert. I mean I like my quiet time, but I don't mind, you know, sort of getting in front of people and that sort of thing. But boy, we have very different leadership styles. But he's wildly effective with his team, you know, and, and he's got his own com, like you said, he's got his own style and it might be like you hit it on the head like that more one on one type thing versus the big staff meeting, you know, and that sort of thing. You know what I mean?

So yeah, I think that honesty and trust. Right. And, and being authentic.

Yeah, being authentic. Be who you are. Yeah. Because it. For him to try to become an extrovert or whatever, like he can, he can get up and teach a class and be great at it, but he's gotta work. He's got to make himself do it. Right. Because he doesn't naturally want to do that. Right.

Yeah, we can all, you know, do those things. When I first started, I was a very strong E S T J.

Okay.

And you know, I think through the years of just being around so many people and people like meeting me, following me into the bathroom, like, you know, all those things, I've become a little bit more of an ambivert. So. Yeah, yeah, I, I get energy both places I like.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm alone but I do find when I am with people I really love it as well. So you know, it's just, it's about where you get your energy and.

Yeah, for sure.

And introverts can be amazing leaders and have high quality connections with their people.

Well, hey, this has been fun, Kathy. I'm, I'm excited to, to get my hands on your book and, and check it out if. Do you have any sort of like final words of wisdom or parting thoughts that you want to leave the folks?

Well, I do have one thing I want to talk about that's not like a word of wisdom. But what I did do with this book is included a QR code that leads to a more mentor. So it's an AI agent where you can ask the book questions real time.

Nice.

So if you have, you know, your phone, you can go to moreforleaders.com and then click on the more mentor and you can ask it. I'm an introvert. How would I create a high quality connection with my new team leader?

I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's more the number four leaders Right.

More for the number leaders.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. So I'd love people to check that out. I also created one for steel toes and stilettos if people are interested in.

We'll link everything up in the show notes and everybody get to scroll down on whatever you're listening to and. And we'll have everything linked up there.

So fun. So, yes, because, you know, it's like having a little Coach Kathy in your pocket. Pocket everywhere.

I like it.

But I think that the parting words of wisdom are, you really get results when the people in your organization thrive.

Yeah, yeah. Perfectly said. Good stuff. All right, Kathy. Well, hey, this has been a lot of fun. I'm sure we'll talk again down the road, but until then, thanks for all you do.

Thanks, Ron. Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed today's session.

All right, 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 6 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.