Episode 155 – Events for Leadersights and 579 Leaders

Good morning, I'm David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance. 

I want to share some other ideas I've had about 579 Leadership and share a couple of events that I'm planning. 

First, I'm starting to record episodes for a podcast I'm simply going to call Leadersights, after my book.  It'll be a mix of me telling stories of the things I've learned about leaders and lean systems and conversations with leaders about overcoming problems and setting goals.  Those leaders might be CEOs or they might be Team Leaders from a manufacturing plant.  The key is to share some insight. 

I'll have discussions with each of them about 579 leadership, which, as I hinted at yesterday, is about the application of the Leadersights of Love, Learn, and Let go.  So I'll want to hear their stories about each of those and share them with you. 

My target length for a Podcast episode is going to be 579 seconds, twice.  579 seconds is 9 minutes and 39 seconds, and twice that will be 19 minutes and 18 seconds; which should be plenty of time for a good conversation. 

I hope you'll share with me some of the things you are looking for in a podcast so I can keep making it better.  I'm going to launch the podcast on my birthday, August 22 with the first 3 episodes, then release a new episode every week. 

Second, in September, I am launching a new mastermind study group that will focus on 579 Leadership.  Here, the members will be the stars as we share the things we discover about leadership in every situation you can imagine.   

Here's what I'm planning: 

Members will complete an application for the program, committing to a 579-day-long program (1 year, 7 months, and 4 days). Our key objective will be to become more effective as leaders, coaches, parents, team members, business owners, etc.  

Individually, I'll work with each member.  We'll have a 360-assessment done and together we'll set goals and build your action plan to become a more effective leader.  We will complete a few other assessments or diagnostic instruments for your business and set goals and build actions plans to improve there as well.   Members will get an hour of coaching with me every two weeks, plus additional access if you're working a particular problem or goal.  Members will also have access to exclusive materials I've created just for the group. 

The group will meet virtually every two weeks for 86 minutes and 51 seconds (or there abouts) which is 579 seconds times 9.  This will largely be in a Lean Coffee format where members will bring issues and we'll discuss those issues and try to help you take action to solve a problem or drive an improvement. 

Once a quarter (six times in the 579 day cycle), we'll meet face to face for 579 minutes (9 hours and 39 minutes).  We'll meet in different spots for everyone who can make it.  I hope that the members will rotate hosting in their companies and invite us in for a Genba walk while we're there and let us work on a problem they're wrestling with.  I'd like to have an agenda that includes the genba walk, focus time on a problem or lesson, a guest speaker, open networking and discussion time, lunch, and end with dinner and drinks - 9 hours and 39 minutes is a long day – so we'll make it as valuable as we can. 

Twice a year (three times in the 579 day cycle), we'll have a retreat for 3 days someplace we decide we'd like to see.  I hope all members will be able to make at least one of these, as we'll have some special recognition activities in addition to guests, tours, and cases to study. 

Once a year, we'll take a vacation – pushing us to have some balance.  So I'll book a cruise or a resort for us to take our families to and we'll spend a week or so just enjoying each other's company and taking in some cultural aspect of wherever we go.  I have Japan, a European River cruise focused on wine and beer, a Mediterranean cruise focused on culinary delights, and the Bourbon trail in mind. 

I'm still working on a pricing structure that will reflect the value of the program.  For the first cohort, I'm thinking about $15,200 for the 19 month program if paid up front, or $894 a month if paid monthly but committed for the program.  I promise we'll get much more value that that from the journey.  Of course the travel will be extra, but I'll get the best rates I can for wherever we go and offer them to the group through our partner travel agency, Clandestine Travel.  Part of the fees will contribute to a partner charity that I'm sorting through now so we can also give back to our community. 

I'll release the application which will include schedules for the 19 months on July 26th.  I'm limiting the size of the mastermind to 28 people per cohort.   

I'm pretty excited about both of these events – the podcast and the study group.  I've been thinking about these for a long time.  Let me know what YOU think. 

Have a great day, and I'll see you next time. 

Episode 152 - Plans

I’m David Veech and this is Elevate your performance. 

After taking June off from making videos, I figure it’s time to get back at it, especially since it was one year ago today that I made the first of these.  I managed to run a pretty good streak then.  When I broke the streak, I broke that momentum.  As with everything else, if you’re running a streak and something breaks that momentum, it’s very tough to get back to it, so the videos got more and more sporadic. 

Because of that, I’m hesitant to commit to getting back on this horse, but I do need to make some more and spread some more joy and knowledge.  Let me share some plans with you that I’ve been working on and thinking about. 

I did a short workshop on Fearless Teams for the NK Institute for Human Advancement.  It was a blast and got great feedback.  In my consulting engagements, building effective teams is a major focus area.  We all need teams to WORK.  I’m also building a couple of additional workshops we will offer in the future. 

Fearless teams lead to fearless culture.  Any change you’re trying to make in your workplace, whether it’s new software, or something from the Lean Six Sigma toolbox, if you don’t address the culture change needed, that initiative will fall short of your goals.  I help companies bridge that gap.  While your lean consulting group is doing their thing, or your software implementation team is doing theirs, I work in the space between the technical change and the people to bring about a culture change.  That’s the sweet spot for my coaching work. 

3 other big things I’m planning to launch in the next several weeks: 

First, I want to offer a mastermind study group through the NK Institute that will focus on High Speed Problem Solving.  This will be an ongoing membership-based group that will take lots of deep dives into techniques and skills for problem solving.  We’re still working the details, but I want to meet virtually every couple of weeks and face-to-face about once a quarter with one of the participants hosting at their workplace.  While we’re there, we’ll do some specific work on their specific problem. 

Second, I’ve had this nagging idea about a new leadership study group where the focus is on balance.  I’ll be writing some more on this idea in the future, but this group will be developing more effective leadership behaviors to drive change, build wisdom, and work in cycles where we define a challenge, work to meet that challenge, then set a new one in an upward spiral elevating performance for everyone. 

The third is a podcast.  I’ve been wrestling with this one because producing a podcast is a lot of work, and marketing it to get any followers is real heavy lifting.  But I think I can do this and tie it to the leadership study group.  I want to talk to leaders about balance, about learning, and about problem solving.  Be watching for more information about this.  I’ll need at least 10 episode in the can before I can launch, so I guess I need to start on that very soon. 

I guess I’d better get to work, huh?  Thanks for listening.  Subscribe to get updates and let me know if you’re interested in participating in any of those three projects.  And if you need help developing teams and problem solving skills for your employees, reach out.  I’d love to work with you. 

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow. 

Episode 148 - Post-War Labor disputes in Japan

I'm David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance

I've been focusing these past couple of months on the historical activities that got manufacturing and business to where we are today.

I've been focused on Toyota lately because of the impact they have had on bringing improved methods to our attention.  After all, they are the Poster Child for Lean Organizations.

When I first started teaching TPS and lean, I read everything I could get my hands on about Toyota and lean manufacturing.  I learned a ton, but I wasn't always diligent about keeping track of what source said what thing.

The delays I'm experiencing this month are all related to research.  I've been re-reading those older works primarily in an effort to validate the truth of what I've been teaching.  Sadly, I've also validated that some points I make in courses I teach are wrong, historically.  

These would be details like lifetime employment contracts in Japan.  I was taught (again, I was remiss in keeping track of the source) that Japanese companies were ordered to provide lifetime employment contracts to their employees as a result of labor disputes and protests in 1950.  

This week, after re-reading Eiji Toyoda's Fifty Years in Motion, Taiichi Ohno's Toyota Production System, and a scholarly research article on Japan's Lifetime Employment, here's what seems to have really happened.

In December 1948, the occupation government, known as SCAP for Supreme Command, Allied Powers in Japan, imposed austerity measures to bring inflation under control in Japan.  The biggest piece was known as the Dodge Line, named after Joseph Dodge, chairman of the Detroit bank and special ambassador and financial advisor to SCAP.  

These measures fixed prices on certain products like trucks and passenger cars, but not on others, like raw materials.  Many Japanese customers suffered as they lost jobs, or their profits vaporized.  

Their inability to collect installment payments for vehicles they sold drove Toyota Motor Company and many others to the brink of bankruptcy, requiring them to secure significant loans that came with strict conditions on the operations of the company.

As the economy grew more volatile, the union movement in Japan flourished.  Initially, this was encouraged by SCAP until they learned that the largest union was backed by the Communist Party.

To meet the regulatory requirements and to survive, Toyota was ordered to reduce its labor force, already relatively small compared to their pre-war staffing, by 1,600 staff.   Toyota offered early retirement buyouts, but also were forced to reduce wages across the board by 10%.  As a result, Toyota President Kiichiro Toyota resigned from the company, accepting responsibility for the turmoil.

The same was happening to other companies as well and the labor unions exploded with strikes, protests, and often violence. 

The most violent labor disputes in Japanese history took place between 1949 and 1954, involving major companies, such as Toshiba, Hitachi, Toyota, and Nissan.  The working days lost in 1952 alone reached unprecedented 15 million days involving 1.6 million workers.

Lifetime employment was never mandated by the state, but as a long-time philosophy of Japanese employers, this was a goal that most large companies held very dear.  Japanese workers, accustomed to this, were particularly devastated when the staff cuts were required by the economics of the Japanese Market, pushing them into the streets in protest.

According to Ohno, a key goal Kiichiro shared with Toyota leadership was that Toyota needed to catch up with the productive capability (if not the volume) of US passenger car manufacturers within 3 years of the end of the war.  

In 1950, Eiji went to the US to study the automobile industry.  When he returned, he said he was asked "how long until we catch up with Ford?" 

 He answered that Ford was not doing anything that Toyota didn't already know about, 

but it is very difficult to say how long when you consider that Toyota's passenger car output at the time was a mere 40 vehicles per month, while Ford was making over 8,000.

Next up we'll touch on the birth of the quality movement and how Toyota was able to respond to the 1973 oil crisis, which is the event that actually made people start studying how Toyota was doing things.

Have a great day and I'll see you soon.  Don't forget to subscribe!

Episode 146 - Training Within Industry

I’m David Veech and this is elevate your performance.

Sorry about the long break.  I had knee replacement surgery for my left knee and the recovery isn’t going as smoothly as I’d like.  It’s going well, but I’m in a hurry and some things you just can’t rush along.

Before the break, I’d been talking about Toyota.  I shared a little about their founding and growth and I want to complete that picture now with a few additional stories.

During World War II in the United States, the War Department created the Defense Production Board to monitor the production of military equipment and supplies.  With so many men volunteering for military service early on, and the draft a little later on, a consistent problem was quality because new workers lacked the skill necessary.

To counter this problem, they created the Training Within Industry program.  This program had 3 key components:  Job Relations, Job Instruction, and Job Methods.  Job relations taught leaders how to interact with employees.  Job instruction taught supervisors how to teach the work techniques to employees.  Job methods taught supervisors how to engage the employees in improving the way they did the work.

These were built on sound principles of educational psychology and were scripted so the teaching was consistent.  It was very effective.

After the war, we provided all the TWI documentation to Japanese industries as part of our reconstruction effort.  At home, companies were rehiring their former employees as they returned from the war.  Since they all knew the work before the war, the figured there wasn’t a real need to keep the program and so it faded into oblivion.

Japan, however, made good use of those materials and continues to use the methodology.  In the late 80’s, as manufacturers in the US were scrambling to learn all they could about Japanese Management Techniques, we rediscovered TWI and it has since become a movement of it’s own.  

I’ll talk about some details of the program in a couple of future episodes.  This week we’ll cover Kiichiro’s challenge to his manufacturing team, a period of labor unrest in the early 50s, some lessons from Deming and Juran, how Toyota weathered the oil crisis in 1973, and the growth of their business in the United States.

Hit that subscribe button and go to my website and sign up for our occasional newsletter and encouraging word.

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Episode 143 - Toyota in World War II

I’m David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance

Best of intentions - I wanted to get back to daily production of these, but there are so many other things going on that I can’t seem to make the time to finish the research necessary to make these historical posts.  

I have been teaching a historical timeline for years.  These are all things that drove Toyota to create the systems  they created.  I point these out to tell people that applying lean thinking doesn’t mean you have to be exceptionally creative or innovative.  Toyota did the things they did out of necessity rather than innovation.  From the start, Toyota copied parts for Ford trucks and Chevrolet cars, but out of necessity built a system for delivering materials Just-In-Time using a Kanban system.

Access to raw materials and the industrial capacity to convert them into useful products is the winner of wars - This is what feeds the size and strength of the military.  This is what won the US Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.  

Raw materials have always been Japan’s Achille’s Heel.  Raw materials drove Japanese colonialism in the 19th century.  The first Sino-Japanese war, which was 1894-95, was fought in Korea, with China losing badly.  As a result, Japan gained control of the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, and the Liaodong Peninsula, which is where Shanghai sits.  This is where Sakichi Toyoda built a large plant to manufacture his automatic looms that I mentioned in episode 141.   

As Japan’s industries grew in the late 20s, materials ran short, so in 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria.  As China began to shift from provincial to National governance, Chinese tolerance with Japan’s interference vaporized and in 1937, Japan provoked China to war.  The Nationalist Chinese put up a strong resistance, drawing more and more resources from Japan.  Japanese atrocities from this war turned other nations in the region solidly against Japan and led to US embargoes of Japanese goods and eliminated US exports to Japan.  

Japan’s steel industry was small and dependent upon scrap metal from the US as it’s main raw materials, producing questionable quality in sheet steel needed for cars.  Toyota built it’s own steel mill but output from this was low.  When Japan nationalized for World War II, all raw materials were stockpiled by the military, which assigned them to companies to fulfill orders for trucks, airplanes, and ships.  

The peak production of trucks for Toyota occurred in December 1941, when they built about 2,000 trucks.  Because of scarcity of raw materials and constant reduction in manpower as men were called to the front lines to fight, their production levels continued to remain low. (From Eiji Toyoda’s Autobiography, Fifty Years in Motion.1985)

Toyota made it through the war largely undamaged.  One plant had been hit in a bombing run on August 14, 1945, just one week after Nagasaki had been destroyed with our second atomic bomb.  Toyota City was targeted for August 21 with a conventional bombing raid designed to reduce the entire facility to rubble.  But with the Japanese surrender on August 15, the war ended.

In the next episode, I’ll talk about peak production in the US during the war.  This was the truest lean production since the assembly line.  I’ll explain how we got there with a bunch of workers who had never worked in factories before.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my mailing list and my YouTube channel.  Connect with me on LinkedIn as well.  

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow.

For more, see: 

1) https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/07/what-prompted-japan-s-aggression-before-and-during-world-war-ii.html 

2) https://www.toyota-industries.com/company/history/toyoda_sakichi/ 

3) https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/text/index.html

4) Toyoda, Eiji (1985), Toyota, Fifty years in motion

Episode 142 - Timelines for Toyota - Part 2

I'm David Veech and this is Elevate your performance.

With Sakichi Toyoda's death in 1930, his Son Kiichiro and nephew Risaburo were left to run his businesses.  As a result of a great earthquake in 1923, which destroyed significant pieces of Japan's railways, demand for automobiles soared.

Ford built a plant in Yokohama in December 1924, beginning production in March of 1925.  In 1927, General Motors began assembly operations in their plant in Osaka.  The surge of vehicles produced by these two plants effectively destroyed Japan's domestic automobile makers at the time.

It wasn't until 1933 that Kiichiro established an Automotive Production Division within the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works.  It began prototyping parts and designs which were reverse-engineered from a 1934 Chrysler DeSoto and a Chevrolet Engine.  Kiichiro had to establish his own steelmaking department as well, because their expected demand from existing steel mills was too low.

They purchased some machines, and converted others from the Loom works to begin making parts.  Kiichiro also sent an engineer to the US from January to July of 1934 to learn more.  That engineer visited 130 plants, 7 research facilities, and 5 universities to study the automotive and machine tool industries.

The Japanese government asked Toyoda to develop a truck as well, so Kiichiro bought a 1934 Ford Truck to use as the model, similar to how he used the DeSoto as the model for their first car.  That first car, the Model A1, was finally finished in May 1935.  The first truck prototype, the G-1 was finished in November that year.  Both were prone to serious defects.

With promising developments in the domestic manufacturing capability, the Japanese government changed the licensing rules, restricting licenses to manufacturers owned by a majority of Japanese citizens, effectively restricting Ford and GM from continuing operations there.  This, despite low output of the 2 domestic manufacturers, Toyoda and Nissan.  By September 1936, Toyota's volume had grown to just 100 vehicles per month.

In 1936, Toyoda hosted a contest to design a new Logo for the company, and changed the name from Toyoda with a D to Toyota with a T, as Industry leaders recommended.  People submitted 27,000 entries with the winner announced in the October 10, 1936 issue of the Toyota News.

They established the Toyota Motor Company in August 1937 and saw their dealer network grow to 22 outlets.  These dealers became significant investors in the new company.

We'll pick up here tomorrow and talk about Japan's entry into World War II.

Give me some feedback.  Let me know what you'd like to know more about.  Post a comment or send me an email.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/text/index.html

Episode 139 - Recap, Reset, Relaunch

I'm David Veech and this is Elevate your Performance.

I have to apologize for letting this series slip.  I've been letting a lot of things distract me from this project.  I really enjoy making these short videos and sharing them with everyone, but the most value I get is simply focusing my thinking for a short period of time each morning and that actually has helped make my day a little smoother.  So it's important for me to get back into this groove.

Let's recap a little with recent episodes.

A few months ago, I reset my production schedule to parallel the outline I have built for a new book on problem solving.  That started back in October 2020.  

I did short video episodes on Why I think problem solving is so important, then some videos on yesterday's, today's, and tomorrow's problems.

I did episodes on the scientific method and the Shewhart cycle, then a few episodes working through my own C4 process including how to use the C4 cards, the C4 worksheet, and a C4 Master Presentation file.

In November, the video schedule really started to slide. After recording 22 episodes in October, I only did 8 in November, 3 in December, 6 in January, 5 in February, and this is just my second one in March.

Since I did that review, I also discovered that I had missed a numbered episode early on, so that my episode numbering scheme was off. My last episode, on March 8th was actually 138 instead of 135.

I am currently designing the capstone course for the Masters of Engineering Management program for the Department of Engineering at The Ohio State University.  That course will be 100% online so I have a bunch of videos I need to record for that.

I have 30 years of course contents that I've organized into a structured library that I want to create online courses and programs for.  I've been making the production of these way too complicated and that has kept me from making the progress I know I need to make on them.

I want to make a series of short How-to videos and give restricted access to these for clients. 

What I'm doing now is building a synchronized schedule that will allow me to get these projects done over the summer.  That's pretty ambitious for me, so I could use your help.

If, when you see one of these videos on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, I hope you'll just take a second to send me a little note of encouragement.  Even if you don't watch the whole video, leave me a comment or even a quick like.

Thanks in advance!  

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

131 - Developments through the 19th Century

As we're moving through our American timeline from craft manufacturing to mass production, I've rarely studied the period between Eli Whitney's milling machine and Henry Ford's assembly line.

The 19th century seemed to hide great strides in manufacturing because of the magnitude of other changes.  

Most notably, the 19th century in America is about expansion and about exploiting rich natural resources.  In 1803 alone, we doubled the size of the nation with the Louisiana Purchase, but even in the east, in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, Iron Ore was abundant and became a huge export for the US.

But it also provided rails to connect the expanding country.  Further deposits discovered throughout the great lakes region, with easy transportation routes on those great lakes, accelerated growth.  J. P. Morgan, then Andrew Carnegie were able to make great use of the Bessemer process to refine iron ore into steel.

We also saw the development and growth of the Oil industry as we learned how to refine the crude oil discovered in Pennsylvania.  J.D. Rockefeller built his first refinery in Cleveland and took advantage of the wealth he generated to consolidate hundreds of players in the oil business into Standard Oil.

Cornelius Vanderbilt created a shipping and railroad empire that enabled us to reach further westward toward our "Manifest destiny."

But it was our manufacturing capability that produced the iron, the drilling rigs, the mining equipment, the steamships, and the locomotives.  Our first integrated factory opened in 1814, a textile mill.  By the middle of the century we're a leading exporter of all kinds of goods.  

Of course, with all this prosperity on one extreme, the downside was just as significant.  The expansion of slavery, the Indian Removal Act, and oppressive working conditions are all dreadful events we wish we could forget, but we're compelled to never forget.  

In the second half of the century, new technologies emerged with the wider availability of electricity, which was a much better power source for equipment in factories, and the light meant we could now exploit workers 24 hours a day.  

Electricity, the telephone and telegraph, are two keys to the second major industrial revolution.  More on that tomorrow.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

128 - The Craft Age and craft culture

While this segment is called The Craft Age and craft culture, I’m not sure that "Craft Age" is an appropriate term.  Since the very first human struck two rocks together to make a sharp edge, we've been making things by hand.  

Craft manufacturing is just that.  Making things by hand, with or without the aid of tools.  Crafts people are often called artisans and they make unique pieces of work to trade.  

The success or failure of a crafts person depended upon functional quality.  If the product didn't do what the customer needed it to do, or if it failed to last as long as the customer thought it should, then the craftsman probably couldn't stay in business.  

In the middle ages, when more people began migrating and congregating in villages, towns, and cities, the craftsmen would band together to form a guild, whose purpose was to protect the craft.  They would restrict entry into certain professions, and define training requirements, from apprentice, to journeyman, to master.

The culture surrounding this economic system depended heavily on understanding value from the customer's perspective, and on development of expertise by the craftsman.  That's the only way to guarantee quality.  

These three characteristics - value, mastery, and quality - live on today.  A quick visit to Etsy.com will show you how strong craft manufacturing remains.

On the down side though is availability.  When your business model focuses on making exactly what the customer wants, and your financial situation doesn't allow you to speculate it's impossible to have a product "in stock." 

When today we have Amazon Now delivering products to us in 2 hours, that tells you that people have lost patience except for some special purposes.  While once we were content to wait for that customized quality good to be made just for me, now we're not.  

And the cost doesn't help.  Manufacturing products by hand is expensive.  

As population centers grew and taxed the capacity of the craft guilds to satisfy the demand of the population, inventive people go to work to speed production and lower costs.  We’ll talk about a few of them over the next couple of days.

Now the challenge is to get exactly what we want and at the cost we're willing to pay - the value problem; and to get it to work just as we need it to work - the quality problem.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.

127 - Timelines for industrial and cultural change

Hi, I'm David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

I love studying historical timelines.  History's stories have always been fascinating.  But there is so much rich detail, and so often contradictory records based on the point of view of the writer at the time. 

We can't see everything and we can't know everything.  Facts from one point of view are different from another.  You and I might watch the same video of an accident, a shoplifter, a police shooting and walk away drawing two completely opposite conclusions.  

My message is to try your best to keep and open mind, and try your best to understand multiple points of view before you charge off to take action.

Among these timelines, if you take a macro view, you can see patterns of change.  Sometimes it might be new knowledge driving the change - like Galileo discovering that the earth revolved around the sun, although this kept him under house arrest while he lived - or it might be new technology driving the change - like James Watt's steam engine.  

Every now and then, you'll find something so momentous that it changes everything and creates a new culture around that technology - think about the smart phone and how it has changed the way we all live.

Over the next few weeks, I want to explore some of these timelines with you and the culture that prevailed in each of these chunks of time.  Specifically, I will talk about craft production and a craft culture, then I'll share some key technologies that resulted in a mass production age and how that changed the culture - particularly in the US and the UK.

To try to help us all maintain that open mind, I have partnered with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky and Hiitide and we're doing a book review online of his book "The Blind Spots Between Us:  How to Overcome Unconscious Bias & Build Better Relationships".  It begins on February 1st.  

Here is the registration link:  https://api.hiitide.com/api/v2/email/click/?cid=David&ea=click&el=click-to-learnmore&cn=david_&cm=social&cs=campaign&redirect_url=https://hiitide.com/crews/the-blindspots-between-us&ci=david

I hope you'll join me on this journey.

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.