GA 630 | Why Tone Matters with Shahab Shah

You as a leader, as C-suite person, you have all the answers. You have lived it and you know what to do. No, you got to see the reality. You got to engage and you got to have the entire team come together collectively in coming up with your solutions. And only then they're going to be collectively involved in sustaining that solution.

Today, I am excited to welcome Shahab Shah to the show. Now, Shahab actually came into the Ask Gemba Academy studios here, and we recorded this face-to-face in our recording studio. And we don't normally get to do that a lot. I normally am interviewing people, you know, over the interwebs and that sort of thing. So it's always fun to have people here in studio. And boy, we had a great conversation. You'll see that this interview is a little bit longer than our— I would guess maybe our median time is around 30 minutes or so. This one goes over 40 minutes, I think. So, but we had a really good conversation, kind of wide-ranging conversation. It's here, Hobbs got a really good strong manufacturing background, did some consulting early in his career, that sort of thing. And so we really just sort of get into what makes different sort of plant systems or manufacturing systems, what makes them work and what are some of the traps and some of the sort of management issues that might get in the way of success. And yeah, he's got a lot of good thoughts and we had towards the end was when it, to me, really picked up steam and we really got into things just sort sort of working off of one another a little bit. And we had a lot of fun just talking about what we can do and even playing devil's advocate about, okay, well, we got to hit the numbers or we're going to lose the customer. So how do you balance that with the need to do autonomous maintenance and preventive maintenance and these things? So some real talk, if you will. So I think you're going to enjoy this one. I know I did. So show notes can be found over at gembapodcast.com. This is episode 630. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 630. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Shahab, welcome to the podcast. How's it going?

Pretty good. Thank you. Yeah, it's fun to be in person as well.

I know, I know. Well, you know, I don't get to do a lot of interviews in person. It's normally over the internet and all this kind of stuff. So it's always fun to, to look across the fancy glass thing here we have and, and talk to people. So yeah, thanks for coming in. Do you live in the area?

No, I come from Illinois, but DFW or Texas, I'm hitting this airport like twice a month for work reasons anyway. So I thought I'll just stop by in person. And this Gimba Academy that I've been fantasizing and listening to the podcast for a couple of years now, I thought I'll see it in person, have the honor to meet you in person.

Yes. Oh, I appreciate it, man. Thanks for coming in. So, all right. Well, I know you've listened to the show and you know how like we like to begin with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Sure. I'm a fan of Dr. Edward Deming. So many quotes come to mind, resting, but I think the one that's very near and dear to my heart is, "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." Hmm.

What's that mean to you?

I think over the years, having been in industry for so many years now, I think Typically if there's a problem, whether it's quality, customer complaint, or any other issue like that, typically people go for blaming the people, or in other words, who is responsible for what's happening, right? The results. So I tend to go away from blaming people, holding people accountable to actually trying to understand from a systemic perspective, what could have contributed to this cause, right? At hand. So, 94% of time it's the system's fault, not the people's fault. So yeah, that's what I tend to shoot for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blame the process, right? I love it. I love it. All right. Well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Shahab. Tell us about your background and maybe how you first got involved in all this continuous improvement stuff that we're up to.

Yeah, I think throughout my journey, whether it was education, being industrial engineering, systems engineering, or actually joining the workforce. For the most part, I've been in OPEX and CI. I started off with consulting first, so worked with a number of industries from small scale to medium to large scale, varying sizes of teams and whatnot. Then moving on from consulting, I thought it's time to actually see the process end to end, the results, and how actually the model that I sell whether or not it sticks, and if it doesn't, what to do about it. So then I ended up joining as CI in a company at Target Distribution Center as Senior Manager for Continuous Improvement, then moved on to a medical device field. Today I work in a food packaging environment. So yeah.

Wow.

OPEX CI has always been my thing. It's been a part of my DNA.

Nice, nice. Target. I'm curious, I've heard about their program a little bit. What do they got going on? With CI? Is it pretty good?

Yeah, they're pretty good. I think for the most part, the focus was about how to make sure that we are not just competitive, but especially like, you know, with Amazon and whatnot. So at first they were very honest about acknowledging that as far as fulfillment is concerned, customer orders, right? That they are much better than us. But now they have reached a point where they are like, no, it's not that they are better than us. We can be as well. We can get there as well. And how do we get there?

Yeah.

So the whole OPEX, the whole CI department over there is all centered around not just getting there, but actually outpacing them.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it.

I love it. I love it. So when you think about like your, your background, I'm curious to like What was most influential for you as far as like, like, uh, was education or what, what are we, what do you think as far as, I'm always curious to hear that with people who are, you know, really practicing continuous improvement. I mean, go through some training or whatever, or 2-week black belt or whatever, you know, like tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah. I think education, black belts and all of that, uh, for sure that helps, but Aside from that, Dr. David Cochran, who's a professor from MIT, and I worked under him in consultancy as well. The guy is good. He's solid. He's a 2-time Shigeo Shingo Prize winner as well, right? So I learned a lot from him working under him with different industries and seeing the different issues over time. I've learned that Again, going back to that, it's a system's fault versus people's fault, right? My whole mantra is all around that, that it's the culture, the system that forms a culture. And the culture is basically the beliefs that have been shaped by leadership, their choices, their actions, their— what they award, what they incentivize from time to time, right? The behaviors, the hero mentality versus the team mentality, right? What are they incentivizing? How is the system structured? So I look at it from all of these different perspectives, um, in getting to my, my conclusion. So I think, um, working with numerous teams of different styles of leadership, different styles of people, different kind of challenges, uh, it's just been fun trying to navigate and help them understand the root causes, help them see beneath the surface level, getting to that root cause. So yeah, that's been fun for me.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. All right. So let's imagine that you're walking into a facility. Maybe it's a manufacturing facility, a plant, something like that for the first time. What are you looking for in their system?

Yeah, I think most professionals would start off with reviewing numbers, spreadsheets, databases, budgets, P&Ls, you name it, anything and everything that has to do with a number. My case, it's the opposite. I go walk down to the floor. I see if people are engaged or disengaged, if they're walking heads up or heads down, right? Because at the end of the day, people is the most important asset to any organization. We are always striving for the best of the best equipment, outclassing our competition in the technology, right? But how about the individuals that are working for us that is actually driving and running that technology for us, right?

Yeah.

And guess what? The talent acquisition teams, the hiring managers, they do a great job bringing in the right talent. It's about keeping the spark alive, keeping the spark alive in those individuals as they work through in our systems, right? So I walk down to the factory floor. I see if people know what they're doing. If within 60 seconds, I'm able to quickly tell if they're on track or off track to meeting expectations, because if I can tell, they can tell. And if they can tell, they can do something about it, right? So number one. Number two, I look to see if they care, if they care about whether or not they're hitting their goals or not. And how you know that, how do you know if they're actually owning the business versus trying to survive within it versus that renter's mentality, owners versus renters mentality, if you know what I mean. So, so I look for those cues right there. And one good way of looking at owner versus renter's mentality is that engagement, heads up versus trying not to be noticed, going through the day, going through the shift, just coming in for the paycheck, right? And there are so many visual cues that tell you all of that. Like if you notice that a person's just trying to work, do a workaround when they notice a problem versus actually trying to resolve it. And hey, first of all, how would you know the visitor just walking on the floor if they're actually trying to resolve the right problem the right way or not? By looking around through visual systems, through standard work, through escalation protocols. Do they have a way to know if, um, when things go south, when, when, um, there are problems with the machine, with the process, what do I do? At what time do I escalate it? Who do I escalate it to? Or are they too afraid? To speak up.

Yeah.

Right. So those are some of the things that I look at. And then I also, on the flip side, look at the management as well. Um, are they stomping? Are they running around like a chicken with a head cut off? Are they too busy? If you ask them in a one-liner, what is it that you are trying to communicate while sitting through their 1 hour of presentation? Are they able to communicate that or not? Is there that clarity? Right. In their vision, in their, in their mindset. Do they know what their day-to-day looks like? Do they know what their week, month looks like? Right. What's their end goal? So from both sides, whether it be at all levels of departments, I look for people's engagement, their motivation, their clarity in vision, thoughts, actions. And that tells me a whole lot about the culture. And again, the culture is formed through the leadership actions over the years. If the leadership have actually lived as a role model, have actually incentivized the right behaviors, or have they been incentivizing hero mentality. And hero mentality is my favorite one of all, because if you have got people, if your system is dependent on that one person, In one of my places, we called it Iraqis. So you call it what? Iraqis. They were a family of Iraqis. So Shahab Iraqi, Ahmad Iraqi, so on and so forth. Their last name. Okay. So the system was all dependent on the Iraqis. If the Iraqis were out, oh, he's on FMLA, so this machine can't be fixed. Let's just make it work. We got to reduce the pace, the speed of the performance. Of production, sorry, for 4 months we gotta do that. Well, the Iraqis are out, we will have to do it manually. We can't run it on the machine, right? So I look to see if we have a hero mentality there. Rather than incentivizing and appreciating that mentality, I say, get all that knowledge into a system because system is always going to outlast the individuals. right? So yeah, that's what I look for.

All right. So, all right, well, let's imagine that we're in a, I don't know, in a facility and we're seeing all these things and maybe some things catch your eye. Obviously, I mean, everybody has opportunities, right?

Right.

For improvement. But, but let's say, I don't know, you see some, some hero mentality or maybe you see some people with their heads down and you can tell maybe the culture isn't as good as it could be. Like, what do you do? Like, what are, what are some of your first steps? To make improvements?

Yeah, I think before I dive into designing the solutions, designing the system, I always look for diagnosing the problem first, right? Okay. Now I understand. I just saw some visual cues. I saw some problems with the lack of engagement in the people, right? That rental mentality, that mentality of just being there for the paycheck, heads down mentality. I ask questions, I probe further, investigate what caused that. And in one of my recent workplaces, in one of my recent experiences, I learned that there was a huge layoff. There was a mass layoff that had recently taken place. Okay. And as a result, people were too afraid to speak up. They didn't want to be the one who bringing up problems. Right. Some of their best talent had left. So it's ironic. It's funny that with about 10% of the layoffs, we ended up noticing about 15 cents, which is like equivalent about 10%, 15 cents of cost per unit going up. So you'll be like, we just laid off people. Why is the cost per unit going up? Well, it's because one, you let off some of your best talent. Two, the rest of them followed after, some of them followed after them saying, well, if it was them today, tomorrow it could be me.

Writing on the wall.

Writing on the wall. And third, the people who stayed, they're too afraid right now. They're living in that fear of, oh, it could be me next, right? And as a result, you just yourself, created a system where people are too afraid to make a change, right? So then they had these CI professionals and these OPEX professionals to come help them fix a problem, help them fix the system. But guess what? They have themselves created this system where we just have bodies walking around, and those bodies are not going to want to cooperate with you in designing solutions or in coming up with better ways of doing things because they know that they will be next to be let go versus being repurposed versus being utilized for their skills and knowledge that they carry. So yes, I first diagnose, then I jump into solutions.

Yeah, it's tough. You know, like think about, you know, you've been a business owner or whatever, or you've been in consulting and all this. So let's say whatever reason, the, you know, think about modern, current day, like artificial intelligence, everybody is worried about losing their job to AI or something like this. And to be honest, there's truth to it, right? There's valid reasons for fear. So how do you balance that as a leader in an organization when your job is to, so whatever, maximize profits for your shareholder or whatever, whoever that is. Right. If it's a publicly traded company, it's very easy, right? Your stock, you know, or something like this. But like, how do you balance that then? Like with the realities of the world, but also not losing sort of that, I don't know, human empathy and, you know, the things that matter.

Yeah. Great question. So I think yes, you are going to have the pressure on you to reduce the, expenses, to reduce the cost. And that's why most of the companies are going toward private equities and whatnot. But then it's about how you implement the solutions, how you, how you go about that change, how you go about that. It's the AI, it's the next big thing, whether or not you want it, it's going to come, it's going to go through. So I say rather than imposing solutions, Rather than thinking you as a leader, as C-suite person, you have all the answers, you have lived it and you know what to do. No, you got to see the reality. You got to engage and you got to have the entire team come together collectively in coming up with your solutions. And only then they're going to be collectively involved in sustaining that solution, that system for you, right? Because yeah, AI comes in, you have all these SOPs, you have all these systems. You can, you can create all the systems you want. You can automate as much as you want. But then at the end of the day, I have a car. It's going to take me from point A to B versus walking. Okay. So car versus walking, think of it as before and after AI, much more automatic system. But if I don't know how to drive that car, I'm not going to get to point B. Right. So, Sometimes you can automate—

And we gain weight because we don't walk as much anymore, right?

Correct. So sometimes I said, do not mechanize the West with the label of automation and AI and all these improvements, right? So you need to know what you're doing. You need to have the vision first, right? So, and in order to create that vision, it needs to be a shared vision. you need to encompass and get everybody at all levels as part of your team.

Yeah.

As part of your vision.

Yeah, I actually, I'm excited about AI thinking about like, I think about our company here, Gemba Academy, and we were leveraging AI, you know, on a regular basis. We have our own Ask Gemba tool that we've built that has all of our knowledge and information in it. You know, it's fantastic, right? Like, to me, it's a growth— I have like a growth mindset because of AI, not a scarcity or, oh, I'm going to get rid of people. I want to add people because we're going to be in so many different areas.

Right.

And it's going to require people to sort of organize all of this and leverage the million AI tools out there. So, yeah, it's 100%. It's exciting. You know, the future is very exciting. Yeah.

So it is exciting without a doubt. We just need to make sure that we have the vision, the roadmap that is focused on growth, that is focused on going together from A to B, because you can, you can run as fast as you want. It's not going to get you too far. So using AI, think of it as running, right? Because it is literally like on, on Espresso, you're running fast, but are you going to go as a team, you need to make sure everybody is bought into your vision. And for that, as part of designing solutions, what I like to do is when you have a workforce that is too afraid to change, how are you going to do kaizens over there? How are you going to go about making improvements? So I tend to flip the script on them rather than asking them, hey, we need to increase our production from 200 units an hour to 400 units an hour. Let's get together. Here's the game plan. Let's implement A, B, and C. No, what I rather like to do is I go out there and I ask them, hey, what are your pain points? Let's get together these people at all different levels, managers, supervisors, and some operators, lead operators, right? Maintenance, planning, all of these team members. You get them all together and you ask them, what are your main pain points? What is keeping you up at nights? What's stopping you from achieving your results with a smiling face at the end of the day as you exit the door, right? So you don't tell them, hey, we have a goal of reducing the budget by 20%, by 15%, by 5%, right? So rather you ask them, what are your pain points? And once they go through what we call a value stream mapping approach, which is like basically the people flow, material flow, information flow. You map all of that out and you ask them, okay, across all of these steps, tell me about your opportunities for improvement. Tell me about your pain points. And once they do, then you help them realize, okay, how would it look like in terms of dollar savings? So a good example comes to mind in one of my recent experiences. A guy came to me and said, you know what, this forming head, it costs us $2,000. What if you were to 3D print it? And 3D printing would cost us $50. And I know how to do 3D printing. Okay. How much would it cost to get you the setup, 3D printing setup? Because keep in mind, it's not just one forming head. We have around 60 machines that require forming heads on and for different, all the different product families that we run. Requiring different forming heads along with them. So you are saving at least $100,000 a year right here. Right. And that too, just in this one facility. So we have other facilities that run similar operations that are going to require forming heads and all. So if I can trim down my $2,000 down to $50, right, in just one forming head, and then you multiply it all across. Great. Let's invest in the 3D printing for you. And we saw the potential, we saw the gain, but when I did the math with him, okay, it's not just one tool. How many do we have? How many do we purchase in a year? Let's get the data from our controller, right? We got the data. We realized the amount of expenses we have had on just that one tool right there. And then we did the math for the return on investment. He was like blown away. Oh my gosh, I didn't know I could put this much in the pocket of the company by utilizing my talent. All these years I've been keeping it with me, knowing that we are spending way too much than what I could utilize it for, right? So going back to that pain points, you help paint the picture of those pain points into opportunities, into dollars. And the reason I convert everything into dollars at the end of day is so that Leaders, all the way from operators to leaders, everybody within the organization is aligned on the importance of an opportunity and why it matters so much to them and to us, right? So all of a sudden you are not asking them for 4% cut, they give you a 7% cut. They give you a 7% improvement, maybe just not in ways you were looking for by cutting heads, some of the most talented staff, but rather by exposing West and by getting rid of that West for you. Mm-hmm.

So I want to switch gears a little bit now. So something that I know that you're passionate— before we started, we were kind of brainstorming a little bit of what to talk about. And I know that tone, leadership tone in particular, really matter. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about why you think that is, and then how does that sort of I don't know, show up in a day-to-day manner?

Yeah, I think it's really important. It's the tone. And when I say tone, I mean the attitude, the mindset, right? The thinking, the philosophy, the leadership philosophy, basically, from the leaders that shapes the culture of that organization. What we see out on the floor on the gimbal today, is the result of, if not decades, years of the leadership tone, what they have been incentivizing and what they have been penalizing basically, right, over the years. Which basically, there might be some operators, some people on the floor that have been there 5 months, some people who have been there for 30 years. You don't think that, oh, only those 30 people who have been there 30 years, only they know of the issues that have taken place, the bad leadership behaviors out there on the floor, right? So because they communicate. So I give you an example from my recent past about the impact of leadership tone, right? One of the very important machines, machining department to the company, to the facility was unable to hit the production target. And if we didn't hit that production target, we're going to lose one of our major, most, one of our biggest customers. Right. They had given us a deadline. So we ran a Kaizen. We were like, let's go out there. Let's identify what are the bottlenecks? What are the issues that is hindering us from achieving that goal? We mapped it all out. We had all that cross-functional team that came together. We identified all the root causes. Some of them had to do with people. Some had to do with technology. Some had to do with the process. We countermeasured them all. But above all, majority of it had to do with the discipline, staying true to the discipline, right? We weren't doing our preventive maintenance programs. We weren't doing our autonomous maintenance programs. It wasn't descriptive enough. It wasn't easy enough for others to replicate when we have change of personnel and whatnot. So we created all of these systems. We were able to achieve the goals that we wanted because we invested in technology. We made some changes to the machines, to the process, right? The kaizen was celebrated. We were able to retain that customer. Great. Guess what? A few months from now, that very same leadership who asked for that kaizen to go out, investigate and resolve, and was pleased with the outcome, was telling the production teams, don't stop for AM, don't stop for PM, just run, baby, run. The reason being is because that month again, they were behind on numbers, production goals for another customer. When you are at a crunch, when you are running behind, you are having a challenge, you are under pressure as a leader, that's where culture will be defined, right? The tone that you use at that time, whether or not you respect the systems that you yourself and your teams have put up, developed over the years, whether you kick those routines, whether you stay true and adhere to those cadences, that's what is going to define the culture for you. That tone right there. And that leader saying, "Run, baby, run," basically defined the culture of ignoring systems, ignoring processes when you're under pressure. While he said it once, it became the mantra on the floor. Who cares about PM? Who cares about AM? Just run, run, run, right? If there's an issue, let's work around it. Who cares about fixing it? Let's band-aid it. And once that became the norm, it wasn't too far until all the problems, all the gaps starting to show up again and the variances to budget, right? And that same leader is asking the OPEX and CI team again, I think the Kaizen was unsuccessful because we are seeing the same problems here again. We are not meeting the customer demand. Let's go for another kaizen. I'm like, what are you going to learn out of a different kaizen with the same people, with the same approach? You were given a set of problems. You were given a set of solutions. We implemented those solutions. You are the one who chose to walk over them. Right? So don't expect a different answer. So I think that's where, sets the tone, the leadership tone of, hey, we collectively put together the system. We are going to protect it. Or are we going to walk out under pressure? That's what sets the tone. And that is very important.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, being real, like I remember back in my manufacturing days, building cell phones, built a lot of cell phones back in the Motorola, the Nokia and all these different companies where I grew up. In manufacturing, and I can remember the hour-by-hour boards and all the rest of it. And there's a red on this. Oh boy, this is not looking good. And you're feeling the pressure from the plant manager or whoever it might be. And then yeah, there's lots of overtime. And I don't know if we— I don't necessarily remember examples where we completely gave up on preventive maintenance or autonomous maintenance or anything like this, but maybe we shortcut it a few times here or there. I guess my question for you is put yourself in the, just to play contraire, and I agree with you. I just want to have an interesting conversation, but imagine that you are now in charge of the, you're, you're the owner of the business and you've got these trying to win the big contracts and you've won the big contract and now you're under pressure. You stole it from your arch, you know, competitor, right? And things are going great. And all of a sudden, you know, demand has increased and, whatever reason your sales team said we can do it. You're like, oh, we really can't do it. You know, but like, what do you do in those situations? Do you have to go back to the customer and say, I'm sorry, Mr. or Mrs. Customer, we cannot do it? Or are you going to, I don't know, try to flex up and figure out a way to make it happen? Like, talk a lot about it because that's the reality that many people listening, it's just, oh yeah, sounds great. But you don't understand, you know, we've got these customers who are going to fire us if we don't give them X number of widgets by this date. Like, what do you do?

Yeah, I totally understand the situation where sales can throw a contract at you over the wall and say, make it happen, right? By this date. Understand there can be concerns around how do I stay true to discipline at all times when I don't just, I just don't have the capacity. I just don't have the capability, whether it's production, whether it's the people, compared to what I'm being asked for. I'm down like 7 people in a team of 10, whether it's production or in maintenance, because that happens, right? I've lived it personally. I think in those moments, you first of all need to be able to speak up, right? At all levels, the culture again, whether it's operator needs to raise the hands, hey, I'm running into an issue, I need to escalate it. The supervisor, the manager, the plant manager, all the way to the VP, you need to be able to raise your hand.

Yeah, pull the hand on.

Pull the hand on.

Yeah.

Connect with sales, connect with operations, connect with planning, right? We are supposed to be a team. Yes. We're not supposed to be different silos. So that's number one. At the top level, your leader, as a leader, you need to take responsibility. You need to understand what's your crewing model like? What's your manning looking like, right? What's your labor work like? What's your machining capability? Before I can throw in more change orders on them, more demands on them. So yes, it's important to design all of those systems. And while autonomous maintenance and preventive maintenance were just some very tactical examples, even at a higher level, again, regardless of the level of leadership, I'm saying you need to create a system and adhere to it, right? Don't wait for the end of month to kick in and then realize, oh man, we are behind.

And panic.

Yeah. Panic.

Yeah.

Let's skip AM/PM. Let's, let's just throw change orders in them. Let's just make and break the change orders. So on and so forth. Like you alluded to the hour-by-hour boards. And while I understood sometimes lean people could be seen as, micromanagers, right? We are trying to micromanage hour by hour because, but if you manage every hour correctly, it's going to lead to a good shift. It's going to lead to a good day. It's going to lead to a good week and then the month and the year. So rather than waiting all the way until the end of the budget, until the end of the year to panic and say, let's just have a 6% layoff because we are seeing huge variances where We need to downsize rather than waiting until the end of the year. You need to manage it at the quarter and at the month level, right? And then in the monthly, rather than waiting until the end of the month to realize, oh man, we are bleeding in all metrics, right? Starting day one, treat your every single shift like as if it is that last day, last week of that quarter or of that month or of that year that's going to matter. And that's going to, help make or break. But how do you do that? Because you have thought operations from, for a long time that none of these processes matter, right? None of the systems matter. So if you are going to come in with a genuine interest and genuinely caring about them and telling them, hey, I'm going to get you the support. I'm going to get you the capabilities. But you need to stick to these core principles that you and I collectively came up with, they're going to think you're, it's just a flavor of the month. Too many leaders have come in and gone. While what you're saying is accurate, I buy into everything you're saying. What I don't buy into is that this is going to stick because before you, other leaders have said the same. Yeah. Yeah. So, so Again, that is where the leadership tone, right? That mindset, that living like a role model. If at that moment you show yourself weak or weak and you need to, as a senior leader, in every single meeting that you are gonna have, you need to let your operations, you need to let your teams know that, hey, this Hoshin Planning, this strategic deployment, this whatever the system that you guys have collectively put together, is here to stay. It's not a flavor of the month. And then you act upon it, then they will trust you.

Yeah, I think the best organizations that I see are the ones that take what we would call like a value stream approach. So everybody from marketing and sales all the way through operations to the people shipping the product out the door, they're on the same team. It's one value stream, it's all together, all singing from the same hymnal, as they say, right? And this is where I see, when we start having these silos, you know, like, and everyone has their own little individual goals, you know, like I must do X number of things today, no matter what anybody else is doing. I have, you know, and there's accountability that you do need to have on a personal level, don't get me wrong. But in the end, it's all about the system, right? And getting everybody working together.

Getting everybody working together. And that reminds me of a very good situation where In one of the organizations, there are two plants that are feeding each other. Basically, one is the manufacturing plant, one is a CNC shop that is basically cutting the widgets for you, feeding it into an assembly plant, then feeding into a distribution plant. And guess what? They all have different metrics.

Yeah.

One is about schedule compliance, 98% adherence to the customer's orders. That's your distribution center. So the manufacturing plant is about 20,000 units out the door.

Yeah.

Well, guess what? Your operators and supervisors are going to want to make decisions to make whatever is easiest for them to produce, whatever is available, readily available. They're going to rob Peter to pay Paul, basically, right? And get that, those 20,000 units out the door. At the end of day, you are going to have a situation in your distribution center, in your warehouse where you way too much inventory, too much cash is tied into that inventory, yet you are behind on orders and you have got backlog and whatnot. So it goes back to that mindset of, do you have aligned metrics? Is everybody speaking the same language, right? Yeah. And you get there by asking the right questions, by having these cross-functional value stream events. And guess what? Funny enough, when I looked at their value stream mapping events, all those 3 plants had their own value stream mapping events conducted in the past. They were not brought together as one unified team. And they ended up having the same, different goals and different solutions.

Yesterday I was having conversation with one of my daughters. She's 10 years old and she's got a really brilliant mind. I mean, a little bias as my daughter, but she's really, Her, her mind works differently than my, even my other kids who are also, you know, brilliant and lovely in their own ways. But like this one, she can take a Rubik's Cube, any Rubik's, you mess it up as much as you can and less than 90 seconds it's done. Like her brain is just working differently. And, uh, yesterday she was asking me, hey, we, we, we did a long video a long time ago on the envelope stuffing. You've seen it, you know, the one piece flow envelope stuffing, right? So you fold 10 pieces of paper and then you stuff 10 envelopes. Then you seal 'em in batch, you know, and then And now we're gonna do one-piece flow. So we fold, we stuff, we seal, we stamp, done. And the one-piece flow is always faster, right? And she's like, Daddy, tell me, I wanna talk about this envelopes again. And she was really inquisitive and I'm like, what are you talking about?

You know?

And she's like, you know, I don't understand why is it faster? You know? And then we got to talking about it and just really explaining, well, think about how many times you're picking up the paper and sitting it down, picking up the paper, sitting it down, just explaining the mind of batch production. Versus I pick the paper up, I fold it, I stuff it, I seal it, done. And she's like, and she got it, you know, and it was like one of my proud parenting moments, you know, I was like, you know, thinking about my kid understands, you know, flow, one piece flow versus batch production. But just for whatever reason, back to the original farmers or whatever it was, having to store up grain in the silos for the long winter. And you don't get me wrong, there are times where you do need to have batches or pitch if we want to be lean, right? You know, sometimes you do need to have some, some inventory or whatever, for whatever reason. But, uh, but yeah, it's a really ingrained concept in us as human beings, I think, to batch, you know what I mean?

Yeah, because everybody wants to protect themselves.

Yeah.

Each department, each machinist, each operator, they want to protect themselves so that If my machine goes down, nobody would know that I had a problem, right? Because I have this extra inventory that I've created that will help protect me. Same is the mindset of that facility. That is like, I need to create 20,000 units out the door, right? Because at the end of the day, they get their absorption. If you, if you call it right, they, they get their cash flow cashed in for it. So they're like, well, I created all the pieces for you. You need to, in the assembly plant, you need to put them together. It's your fault. But you didn't give them the right parts at the right time. And unfortunately they have way too many of one versus not enough of the other to be able to make anything out of it. Right. So again, it goes back to that point of identifying the systemic drivers that led to that kind of thinking that led to that kind of behavior? Why do they feel the need to protect themselves? Have they been penalized in the past? Are they currently getting penalized?

Yeah.

What are their metrics like?

Yeah, it comes back to what we talked about earlier in the very beginning, right? It's all full circle.

It's all full circle.

Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Fantastic. Fantastic. Oh man. Well, this has been a fun conversation, Shahab. I'm really glad that you came in. I'm wondering, do you have many, any sort of like final words of wisdom or final pieces of advice that you'd like to, uh, to leave with the listeners?

Um, remember that tone is the invisible hand that shapes your culture. Keep the tone steady and the system will follow. I like that.

Keep the tone steady, the system will follow. That's beautiful. Hey, if people wanted to connect with you, what's the, uh, the best way?

Um, LinkedIn. Okay, you can find me My name is Shahab Shah. Easy to come up.

Yeah, we'll link it up here in the show notes as well. Everybody can go connect with Shahab. So, hey, thanks again for coming in, man. This has been a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's been— thank you very much for having me. It's been an honor.

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