GA 623 | The Power of Entropy with Adam Lawrence

People get so excited about making their improvements, but then what happens is if we're not paying attention and putting the systems in place to hold them there, things start to backslide and it basically feels like failure.

Today I am excited to welcome Adam Lawrence back to the show. Now, uh, longtime listeners of the Get Back Academy podcast have likely recognized that name, Adam Lawrence. He's been on a few times. In fact, we didn't say it on the actual interview, but we were— when once we stopped the recording, we were chatting a little bit, and Adam reminded me that this was actually his 13th episode with Gemba Academy on our podcast. So I think for sure he's probably got the number one place. I don't think anybody's had 13 other episodes that we've done. I always love talking to Adam. He's got a lot of really great experience and really great stories. So that's my favorite thing about him. Today we get into what Adam calls the his Wheel of Sustainability. Now we've talked about that on some past shows, but what we really get into today is this assessment that he's created. And it's a Wheel of Sustainability assessment, easy to say, right? And so we kind of get into like, I'm always curious, like, why did you create it? What problem are you trying to solve? That sort of thing. Then we kind of dive into it a little bit and like what it is and how you use it. And now it's a free tool. In fact, We're going to link to it here in the show notes. So go down and go check it out and click on it. And yeah, it's free of charge and you can go through and it basically it's just a survey asking you a series of questions and then it gives you a report out. I haven't done the survey yet myself. I plan to, but I haven't done it as of this recording, so I can't give you any experience on that. But, but yeah, Adam does great work and I think it's going to add a lot of value for those that go check it out. So show notes can be found over at gimbalpodcast.com. This is episode 623. Again, gamba podcast.com and look for episode 623. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Adam, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

It's going well, Ron. Thanks for having me back.

Yeah, man. So it's, uh, it's been a minute, man, since, uh, since you last came on. I think, what was it, 586 or I don't know what was the most recent one, but, uh, But anyhow, yeah, it's always good to have you back on and talking about sustainability. So, that's some good stuff. So, you know the drill, Adam. We like to begin all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So, what do you got?

Okay. So, this quote is related to standard work and it's by the lead guitarist of the greatest rock and roll band in the world, AC/DC. Angus Young said, "I'm sick to death of people saying we've made 11 albums that sound exactly the same." In fact, we've made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.

Yeah, what's that mean to you?

Well, it means that they've got a standard formula that was quite successful, and why deviate, right? They didn't sell out. They did the same thing over and over, same 3 power chords, talking about sex, drugs, and rock and roll in every song, and it sold tens of millions of albums.

Yeah. Yep, it sure did. Sure did.

All right.

Well, hey, Adam, in case folks are just maybe new to the Gemba Academy podcast and haven't heard any of our previous episodes, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us about your background and what you're up to these days?

Okay. Well, thanks, Ron. So, I am the managing partner of Process Improvement Partners. I call myself a Kaizen ninja, and my goal is to help businesses grow their profits through sustainable process improvement. First 29 years of my career, I was working in a corporate setting. In the last 8 years, I went out on my own helping various companies just do Kaizen events and then sustain the improvements following those events.

All right. Well, so today, so in previous episodes, we'll link all the previous episodes up in the show notes. So, people want to go back if they haven't heard them all, it'd be kind of cool to go back and listen. To some of those older ones. But today we're going to talk a little bit about a sustainability system that you've come up with, an assessment. But maybe to kick things off, why don't we just sort of level set and tell us a little bit about the Wheel of Sustainability? I know we've talked about it before on previous episodes, but talk about what is the Wheel of Sustainability and what problem does it solve?

Right. So many, many years ago, I was facilitating Kaizen events in manufacturing facilities for Armstrong World Industries. What I noticed is we did great work, but we didn't seem to sustain those changes. So, I realized that it was my fault and I needed to create some kind of system or structure to ensure that all that great work would live on. So, over the many years, I developed that and then eventually got a name called the Wheel of Sustainability. It has 9 elements. The central hub of the wheel is leadership commitment. Basically meaning that leaders understand their role in sustaining the improvements and supporting their teams. And then we are going to implement the other 8 elements so that put together, it keeps the problems from resurfacing.

So, do you think it's safe to say, you know, a company like Toyota, for example, are they doing something similar in your opinion? I mean, obviously, you know, all respect, I'm sure they you know, were doing this a little bit before Adam came onto the scene. So like, what do you think, like, their, their style and their approach to maintaining the gains, if you will, and continuing to make things better, is it similar to what you're talking about?

Yeah, so what I would say for them, it's just their culture, right? I mean, it's just an expectation, it's just how they live, how they breathe, how they work. So what I'm trying to do is bring this to companies that aren't as familiar with that, that it isn't already ingrained in their culture. And I've met and helped so many companies where maybe they don't realize that they're not helping their employees sustain. So, there are companies that are advanced and for them, it's just how they do business. So, I would never presume to say, "Hey, bring my system to that." What I'm trying to do is expose leaders to understand where they can help strengthen their team efforts.

Yeah, fair enough. So, like, talk a little bit more about the why, because I know there's some deep meaning and some deep purpose behind this system. So, why did you really create it?

So, I did it again. The problem I was trying to solve was that people get so excited about making their improvements, but then what happens is if we're not paying attention and putting the systems in place to hold them there, things start to backslide and it basically feels like failure, right? We did all this work, we gave all this time, And for me, I couldn't leave it that way. It just didn't feel right to me to put that much blood, sweat, and tears into improvement efforts and then let them backslide. So, I said, "This is what I need to do. I need to make that change. I need to learn how to help leaders see what needs to be done and help the teams really feel like their voices matter, their effort matters, and that I want to grow and scale these improvement efforts across organizations." Can you maybe give an example of—

you don't have to name names or anything like that, but maybe just sort of like a little mini tiny case study of how you've seen this work with some of your clients?

Right. So, some great examples. I won't name names, but think of a team trying to solve a critical problem. So, the first entry into this is that we're chartering. We're making sure that leaders understand what the work that's about to happen and what their role is to have the backs of their people. So, the coolest thing I saw 3 years after helping an organization, I hadn't done any work for them, I got a chance to visit. I was at a conference and I just happened to get to stop by for a day. And I went down to an area we had done a 5S activity and created an hourly area owner. And it had saved so much effort and pain and suffering. And I wanted to see how he was doing. I was curious to see, hey, how does the area look? Does it look as good as, worse than, or better than? And are they still holding firm to it? And what was really cool was he was there, he and his little partner that had been there 3 or 4 years ago. And the first thing he did was give me a big old bear hug. He said, let me show you what we've been doing since I saw you last. And he gave me a guided tour of his area, showed me his area owner board, showed me other areas within the space that they had tackled after the kaizen event. And the pride and excitement and engagement just made me feel so good that it was easy enough and it made sense enough and it was important enough. And leaders had his back so that, "Hey, I didn't get more money. You know, I'm not a director, I'm not a manager, but my space is important and I need you to keep it that way because it helps everybody." Something that I remember back in my corporate days, some of the companies that I worked at, they were—

this is almost when Six Sigma was just at its sort of peak and a lot of companies were practicing DMAIC. And, you know, C in DMAIC is control, right? And I remember teaching it and practicing it many, many, many times and coaching hundreds and hundreds of belts through the various projects. And I remember coming to the realization that the hardest part was, was control. And I almost came to the conclusion that it really shouldn't be called control because I'm almost of the opinion— and I could be wrong, but I think science backs me up— that I think it's really almost impossible to completely control anything because of the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy. And it's always pulling. And so you can't, almost of the opinion, you can't really control anything. You can, it's either going to get a little bit better or a little bit worse. I mean, it's not exactly true. I mean, there are, of course you can hold things sideways, but you know what I'm saying? So like, I almost wanted to change Demekin. In fact, I did in some of my training classes. I'd be like, it's officially called control. But we're going to put in parentheses continuously improve. Like, you know, so you go ahead and define, measure, analyze, improve, and then get it all working. But then, you know, keep it working. Yeah, you got your standard work, you got your control charts and this and that, but how do we make it a little bit better? So, what do you think about that?

Yeah, so I like that thought because I know this gentleman specifically, when we were done in the Kaizen week, he was not satisfied. He was not satisfied. And I'd come back and visit because I was helping them every month in different areas and I'd come visit And sometimes I would use him for inspiration of the other team. He said, "I still didn't get this and I still want that." And I was like, "That's awesome." And so, when I went there, this was this past November, again, over 3 years since I had done work with them. He said, "Yeah, but we need to also do this and we need to also do that." And I said, "You're exactly where you should be. So, I'm with you." So, desire, the desire to be better, not being satisfied Whatever that week did to this gentleman, right? And again, he never got more money. You know, he didn't get a promotion, but he's never satisfied. And clearly, the leaders of that organization kept helping him, kept supporting him. And again, love that he's not satisfied because who knows 2 years from now what that could look like.

Right. Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right. So, all right, let's, let's switch gears now and get into the sustainability system assessment. So tell us a little bit about what it is and what problems you're trying to solve with, with this system.

Well, I'm just one guy, right? I'm your Kaizen Ninja. And I obviously I don't get hired by everybody, right? So what I realized, and with some nudging, not even gentle nudging from my marketing advisors, They said, you need to be able to give more people help even if they're not hiring you for that help. You need to add some form of some way that people can assess. There's some psychology to scorecard marketing is what they call it. I don't understand it enough to explain it well. I read a few books just because they were pushing me hard into this. But how can I help people that choose not to buy my book, right? Very few buy it. I don't care. Or choose not to hire me. So, the thought was, okay, what if I could put Adam in a box, right? And give you ways to look at your sustainability system in a way that you can see where you are in the spectrum of sustainability. And of course, this is very my view of it. It doesn't mean I'm— I'm not the expert and I just live in it. To say, okay, not only where am I— and I have, um, 7 categories that we're assessing plus an overall summary, okay— but I'm trying to not just show them where they are, but okay, but what can I do about it? What can I do about it on my own? Give me some very specific things that I can do right now without calling Adam, without calling Ron, without calling a consultant. So, that's the goal and the challenge. And I'm probably in the 15th iteration of this thing because I'm trying to make it stronger and stronger again so they don't need me. Okay? So, I rolled it out December 3rd. I was trying to integrate it with a webinar. I've been doing Wheel of Sustainability webinars, free webinars. And I set this deadline for myself, roll it out at the December webinar. And oh man, it was so buggy. But the good news is people took it, gave me feedback on it, and we're just strengthening it over and over again. And I'm noticing that just not just one person from an organization is taking the assessment, multiples, because I get some visibility to that. And what it tells me is somebody saying to somebody else, hey, this is helpful. I want you to see this as well because maybe we can do something about it.

Is it like a web-based tool or a spreadsheet, or tell us about the tool itself?

Yeah, so you can get to it a couple of ways, and we'll, we'll create a link in the show notes, but it's web-based. There's a, there's a company called ScoreApp, and I can tell you that I knew nothing about it. So maybe you've heard of it. I hadn't because I don't know these things. And so they host, they have a platform that allows you to design your assessment in any way, shape, or form. You can create scoring systems, you can create questions, you can create graphics, you can do all these things, and you tie it all together to give somebody something that they can use. Some— it can be as simple as, what are your favorite colors, and what's your astrological sign, and what kind of day are you having? Or it can get deep. I have 35 questions. I'm a little at the high end of the scale here. Because I thought these questions were important enough. Some go very deep and then some are— I have my favorite one is, "You sleep well at night knowing that your organization is running well." And if you're a plant manager, we know you don't sleep well at night unless everything's smooth and steady.

So, it's like 1 to 5 or something like that?

Yeah, it's a 1 to 5. And I have choices on that too. But 1 to 5, people seem to be willing to stay in that range. And it's pretty easy to handle. But there's lots of psychology about should I have done 1 to 4 so you can't be in the middle, but I'm 1 to 5 and I'm learning as I go. I'm getting great feedback in the spirit of continuous improvement. And yeah, people are actually engaging.

Do you see all the results or like when people fill out the survey?

Yeah, so they get immediate results and I have visibility to how they answer the questions. And the purpose of that is twofold. One is if they do choose to engage with me, then I have a sense for where they are. Instead of, you know, it actually reduces the time of exploration. I know where they, at least I know where they think they are. So if they score themselves a 1 in a few areas, you know, we can kind of hone in on those and see how I might be able to give them ideas around that and where they think they're strongest. I can learn more about this. So, it's almost a two-way learning when I get to engage. Otherwise, I just see it. But if they don't engage, I don't force myself on them. But they do get in an email nurture sequence only because my marketing people force me to do that.

Oh, yeah, these marketing people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's good stuff. So, what's been the reaction and maybe you need any feedback or? How's that working?

Yeah, the feedback's been great in many ways. Some feedback is how to make this assessment results pages stronger and more beneficial, so I, and I really appreciate it. One guy who's a great Lean and Six Sigma guy said, well, I'm not really sure I could get, you know, prove Gage R&R if I were to do these things and then score it back again, and would that really mean that I that were performing better. Okay, that you're a little beyond me for that. I think earlier I told you about a gentleman that took it, got so much out of it that he got a coworker to take it, and then they got their COO to take it as well. And what they found out was two of them scored very similarly, one did not, and that's led to additional meetings between them about how they can be better. So, I was involved in an early portion of that, but now they've just taken it themselves and they're seeing what they can do as an organization. So, that's been great. One neat bit of feedback that I was concerned about was maybe too many questions and it's too hard to take and it takes too long. We're getting— it's about 5 to 7 minutes. I call it 5 because that doesn't scare people off. And only 1 out of about 20 or 30 people that have taken it so far has bailed in the middle of it. So, that's actually pretty good. Normally, you're going to lose people like, I don't have time for this, I'm out, or the questions aren't meaningful enough, I'm out. So there's some really neat support on ScoreApp itself, and, and the person that I've been dealing with said, yeah, that's really good because early on you're going to get 20 or 30% of people just stop in the middle and leave you. And I'm like, okay, well, that's only one, but I hated losing one. But you know, you learn as you go.

Yeah, that's a really cool idea. I don't know, it would be interesting if you had like a sort of like a company version, whereas you could have, let's say there's 50 people in my company that take it and then it's sort of, I don't know, you can have all 50 individually, but then sort of rolls it up. Does it do that? Like, can you do that?

I know that any number of people can take it for free. Yeah, I know that you can have as many from your company as you want. That's a great question. I can certainly ask that. I don't actually have visibility to anything other than the person's email, first name, last name, and then their actual answers. So they would probably have to identify, you know, and I could have asked that actually. It was an opportunity, but I figured I wanted to make this as least invasive as possible, and I, I don't want it to be hard to do. I want to make it as easy easy to do, but it's a cool idea. And maybe the answer is maybe. I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, when we're on next time, you're like, hey, Ron, remember when you said, yeah, we did it?

I mean, they're really good. They've got great, uh, customer support, great platform. Yeah, I don't have anything to compare it to, but yeah, technically would be—

I say easy, but you know, for these, for these people who databases and whatnot, they it's all there, you know, you just gotta, of course, pull it out differently. So yeah, yeah, good stuff. Well, it's exciting. I, uh, I've not seen it yet, so I'm curious to, uh, take a peek at it. I'll do it for, for, for Gimbal Academy or something, or my take on our little company here.

So I'd love your feedback, I'd love your feedback, because again, it's free, there's no obligation of any kind. Of course, there's a point where it says, hey, you should talk to Adam, but you can easily avoid that. Many have. So there's not— that is zero issue. But you know, that it would be remiss of me to not at least offer help when you think of the gaps in sustainability.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Good stuff, man. All right. Well, anything else that's on your mind or you want to chat about as we wrap things up?

No, I just appreciate the opportunity to share this. It's new for me, so I would love it. Let's challenge 5 of your listeners whenever this actually comes out to try the assessment.

500. Come on, people. Let's go set the bar low.

Uh, it's pi-partners.scoreapp.com. So ScoreApp is the thing, and then you put your piece in front of it, but that's how it takes you directly to my assessment.

So yeah, I'd love to, you know, again, yeah, we'll link it up here in the show notes so everybody just kind of scroll down and hit that and go check it out. And, uh, yeah, let Adam know what you think. And, uh, yeah, excited to see it myself.

Thank you, Ron. I appreciate that.

All right. And, uh, and folks do want to connect with you, what's the best way, Adam?

Sure. So, you know, I have my, my personal profile on LinkedIn, Adam Lawrence. You know, connect up with me, you get to find out all my wild kaizen success stories. And then pi-partners.com is the website. You can— you'll find a button right to the assessment or to get a free chapter of my book, or I can't remember what else I have there anymore. But, you know, it just kind of shows you the kinds of things I do and the people I help.

Got it. Love it. All right. Well, thanks again, man. I appreciate you.

All right. Thank you, Ron. Great to see you again.

Thank you. Thanks for listening.

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