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 154 - 579 Leadership

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

Yesterday, I introduced this idea I've had surrounding numbers and balance.  I showed how odd numbers in the scale from 1 to 9, when depicted as dots on a line, have evenly distributed numbers on each side of a center point, reflecting a balanced system. 

As I researched the meaning of certain numbers: 5, 7, and 9 in particular I made some interesting connections. 

Five is positioned in the center of the scale from 1 to 9.  In that position, it reflects the pivotal point of change.  Leaders should be that pivotal point of change for their teams and organizations.  But the number 5 also reflects characteristics and values like freedom, curiosity, and adaptability.  These are all good qualities for leaders as well.   

5 also values experiences and is more willing to go with the flow than others.   

Seven represents a quest for wisdom.  Here, leaders ask questions...lots of questions, and listen carefully to the answers.  They tend to be more analytical than others and try to find meaningfulness in everything they do.  These all sound like excellent qualities to develop in leaders. 

Nine is a little more complex.  Nine represents completeness, or wholeness, but not finality.  It's like completing one cycle and then beginning another, much like we describe in the PDCA cycle of continuous improvement in a lean system.  Nine emphasizes the importance of transitions and transformations and how leaders should be guiding and empowering their people through these transformations.   

Nine is compassionate and kind and seeks the greater good.  Leaders here are wiser, stronger, more aware, tolerant, and supportive than others. 

These characteristics are all quite similar to what I describe as key insights for leaders in my book Leadersights – Love, Learn, and Let go. 

Nine, as the compassionate, guiding, and supportive leader demonstrates love – actively placing the needs of others above their own. 

Seven, seeking wisdom, asking questions, represents Learn – the on-going quest for understanding. 

Five, the free-spirited, experience-oriented (why not give it a try), going with the flow really captures the essence of Letting go.   

I want to keep exploring these leadership values, characteristics, and behaviors so I am doing two specific things to focus my energies.  I'm out of time now, so I'll tell you about them tomorrow.  Join me here at 9 am. 

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

Episode 151 - Quality Circles

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

Let’s talk about Quality Circles; also known as Quality Control Circles or QC Circles.

Quality circles are small groups of employees with cross-functional skills who work together on a problem in the workplace to learn how to solve problems.

This is my definition based on my understanding of the INTENT of quality circles programs at Toyota and Honda.

The key outcome for quality circles is not the solution to the problem, but on having people learn, understand, and use the key problem solving process.  They of course learn by doing, so the solution is the gravy to the meat and potatoes of LEARNING.

I heard a story a long time ago about the birth of Quality Circles.  Let me remind you that Deming initiated the quality movement in Japan in the 1950s through his lecturing with the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers.  

Sometime in the mid to late 50s, after Deming had taught another group of managers and engineers the basics of Statistical Quality Control, someone is said to have asked him repeatedly about ways to get more employees involved in solving problems.  

The story says that Deming made a short, off the cuff remark about pulling a group of employees together after they’ve experienced a problem and have them stand in a circle to discuss and solve their own problems instead of calling someone else.

This informal, off-the-cuff comment sparked another movement in Japan that included a series of local, regional, and national QC-Circle conferences where workers who solved a problem through a QC circle would present their findings to an audience of peers, who would then select certain ones for awards and celebrations.

Joseph Juran, a contemporary of Deming’s, wrote several articles on Quality Circles in the mid-1960s, published in Quality Digest and other similar publications in the United States.  All of these were completely ignored, of course, until the 80’s when everything Japanese was duplicated, or at least we tried to duplicate.

I was in Grad School at Clemson in 1991 researching production systems when I first learned about Quality Circles.  I was studying self-directed work teams, but quality circles kept coming up in my research and my discussions with managers.  

A lot of companies tried to install Quality Circles programs in the 80s and 90s.  But as we are wont to do here, we usually mandated that every employee be assigned to a Quality Circle, and they would meet once a week and solve problems to save the company money.

This attitude had to come from Juran’s articles that said Japanese companies who participated in all these Quality Circles conferences reported saving about $10 Million annually through the programs.  

US companies wanted that $10 million bucks and missed the whole point about people volunteering, once a problem had occurred, and that other people would be recruited to join the circle with the full support of the company.  

Needless to say, most efforts in the US failed.  

I started studying quality circles at Toyota after I joined the University of Kentucky faculty in 2001.  Toyota maintained about 150 to 170 active quality circles at any given time.  They reported saving about $10 million from these efforts - a surprisingly consistent number.  

I discovered similar findings at Honda’s facility in Marysville, Ohio when I served on the board of IdeasAmerica.

I found this so cool that I wrote about creating circles in my book Leadersights.  Here, though, I called them Learning Circles in an effort to get the focus on developing people.  

I hope you’ll pick it up, read it and give it a try.  When you do, call me.  I’d love to help make your system more successful.

I hope you’re finding these videos helpful.  

Please like, comment, share, and subscribe to let me know!

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

Episode 150 - Deming

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

Last week, I introduced the birth of the Quality Movement which followed W. Edwards Deming’s series of lectures with the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers in 1950.

Today, I want to tease out a few more details about Deming, and make the controversial point that PDCA is NOT an effective problem solving methodology.  It’s great for product development and for continuous improvements, but not specifically for everyday problem solving.

I don’t claim to be a Deming expert.  My friend Mark Graban has a far greater understanding of Deming and his key contributions.  Much of what I will share here today came from an article published in Quality Progress in November 2010 by Ronald D. Moen and Clifford L. Norman.  I’ll paste the link in the description box.  http://www.apiweb.org/circling-back.pdf

I have to start the Deming story with Walter Shewhart.  Shewhart earned his doctorate in physics from Berkeley in 1917 and joined Western Electric’s Inspection Engineering Department at the Hawthorne Works in 1918.  You can learn a little more about AT&T, Bell Labs, and Western Electric in my video episodes 134 and 135.

Deming earned his doctorate in mathematical physics from Yale in 1928.  This is around the time when Deming discovered Shewhart’s work and wanted to apply his statistical quality control principles to non-manufacturing processes.  Apparently, they built a close relationship.  In 1939, Deming served as editor for Shewhart’s book 

“Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control.”  This is where the “Shewhart Cycle” first appeared, thanks to Deming.  

This 3 step cycle consisted of “Specification - Production - Inspection” but what made it different was that Shewhart insisted that this was circular, not linear as in most production systems.  As Deming continued to evolve Shewhart’s work for non-manufacturing processes, he joined the US Census Bureau and applied his theories there.  

Deming's refined 4-step cycle included "Design – Produce – Sell (Get to market) – Redesign through Market Research.” Deming made this modification in Japan in 1950, at a meeting of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE).

It was JUSE who relabeled the steps as Plan - Do - Check - Act and published this widely through Japan.  I don’t know if this was a “lost in translation” thing, or an effort by JUSE to simplify the language, but Deming called this “the corruption.”

Deming eventually warmed to the idea, but insisted that Check was insufficient for a learning cycle and focused instead of Study, giving us the PDSA cycle.  

Toyota still uses PDCA as their main thinking process - to drive continuous improvement.  For problem solving, they built their 7-step problem solving process around the PDCA cycle but had to add more descriptions.

I taught PDCA for years and everyone always struggled with the Plan part.  That’s mainly why I think PDCA is an Launch Cycle and an Improvement Cycle, not a problem-solving cycle to tackle everyday problems.  With lots of help, I created the C4 process to focus directly on problem solving with 4 key steps:  Concern, where you focus on finding, understanding, defining, and breaking down a problem; Cause, where you find the root causes; Countermeasure, where you take action to correct the problem at its root cause; and Confirm, where you study the result, learn, and celebrate.

Here’s what I want you to be thinking about:  Japan initiated their quality focus in the 1950’s.  I grew up in the 60’s and Japanese products were cheap crap.  In the 70’s, Japanese products were cheap, but they were no longer crap, particularly with electronics.  

By the mid 80’s, US Electronics and Automobile manufacturers were collapsing under the onslaught of high-quality, affordable Japanese products.   Thanks to an old NBC News documentary called “If Japan can, why can’t we?” America “discovered” Deming and launched our own quality revolution in the 80s.

The Quality movement in Japan took 30 years to shake the market.  It was a generational change.  Lean is also a generational change.  It will not succeed if we decide to focus on “implementation” of our favorite parts and ignore the rest; or if we change initiatives with every new leader.

Next up, I have a few stories about Deming, Juran, and the Quality Circles movement of the 1960s in Japan.  Subscribe, like, and comment!

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

Episode 149 - The Quality Movement

I’m David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

I’ve been making my way through the history of events and people who have shaped Toyota, enabling them to become the great company they are.

It started with Sakichi Toyoda, who’s known in Japan as the King of Inventors.  His Automatic Loom changed the game for the textile industry and provided seed money to start the Toyota Motor Company.

Sakichi’s son, Kiichiro and nephew, Risaburo focused on the passenger car business, first with an Automotive Division within the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works and later as the Toyota Motor Company.  They struggled to reengineer cars and engines from Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.

Japan’s government asked them to design and build a truck for the military, which they did throughout World War II.  After the war, Kiichiro wanted to get back into the passenger car business as soon as possible, but the restrictions of the occupation government prevented them from achieving his goal of catching the Americans in 3 years.

Before I get too far away from the Automatic Loom Works, I want to point out that in 1949, an engineer from Toyoda Boshuku, named Taiichi Ono was promoted to General Manager of the Koromo Plant Machining Plant.  This facility integrated the engine and Powertrain plants.  Ono noticed that operators worked at a single machine, often just watching the machine as it ran.  The way that the automatic loom changed the game in textiles was instead of having one or more operators working each loom, now one operator could run a room full of looms, often up to 20.  Ono wanted to bring that practice to Koromo and initiated programs to add simple automation to machine tools so they could start and finish without human action, allowing one operator to work several machines.

1950 would turn out to be a significant year with labor disputes and turmoil, a tie-up agreement with Ford that allowed Eiji Toyoda to study their processes and facilities as well as those of dozens of other suppliers, and the Korean War, which actually hampered the Ford agreement and passenger car production.

Toyota did receive orders for 4,679 Model BM trucks to support the war and those orders stabilized the company financially.

In the late 1940’s, the United States sent representatives from the US Census Bureau to help prepare Japan for a 1950 census.  One of these representatives was W. Edwards Deming who had joined the Bureau in 1939 and applied statistical process control to their processes, significantly improving their productivity.

The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers invited Deming to speak at one of their conferences, and as a result, he lectured in Japan for ten years teaching statistical process control and total quality management to as many as 20,000.  JUSE named their top national quality prize after Deming in 1951.  The quality movement had officially begun.

Subscribe for more and join my mailing list to receive periodic updates and notices of upcoming events.

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.

Episode 135 - The Telephone

I’m David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

We’ve been looking at the historical progression from craft manufacturing to mass manufacturing and ultimately to lean manufacturing, and drawing connections to a variety of technology - and demand - issues that forced so many of these decisions.

Last time, we discussed the telegraph and the birth of Western Union.  Today, I want to share some discoveries about the telephone and the founding and growth of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.  Within that story, we want to discover the birth and contributions of Bell Labs for research and development of new technologies, and Western Electric for the manufacturing of those new products and innovation in manufacturing processes.

Western Electric grew from a small shop in Cleveland, first acquired in 1856 by George Shawk to produce telegraph parts.  He partnered with Enos Barton, then sold his own shares to Elisha Gray around 1870.  Elisha Gray was working on a technology to transmit voices over telegraph wires.  Gray and Barton moved the business to Chicago in 1872 and incorporated under the name of Western Electric Manufacturing Company.

Alexander Graham Bell gets credit for inventing the telephone, making it work in 1876 with the now famous line “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”  This was three days after his patent was issued on March 7, 1876 despite a caveat being filed in the Patent Office by Elisha Gray in 1875, the same year Gray sold his rights to Western Electric to Western Union.

During the summer of 1876, Bell and Watson demonstrated the telephone to the rest of the world at the Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, alongside dozens of inventions that demonstrated the value of mass production.

Bell’s work had been funded by Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the fathers of two pupils from his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston, where he taught deaf and mute children how to communicate.  Incidentally, one of his other students in 1872 was Helen Keller.

After Western Union refused to accept their offer to sell the telephone patent for $100,000, Sanders, Hubbard, and Bell incorporated the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.  In 1881, Bell Telephone Company acquired Western Electric and by 1886, over 150,000 telephones were in service.

As with every other invention of this magnitude, there were hundreds of claims contesting Bell’s patent, many from Western Union.  None was able to withstand the evidence and vigor brought by Bell Telephone, however, so the company continued to grow.

As lines expanded across the country, Bell’s management formed a new company to handle long distance, naming the company the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885.  In 1899, in response to restrictive laws, the assets of Bell’s companies were consolidated under the AT&T banner, creating a monopoly called Bell System, affectionately known as Ma Bell.  

In 1905, they opened a new manufacturing facility in Cicero, Illinois and named it after the original name of the town - Hawthorne.  The Hawthorne Works became one of the largest single-site employers in the country, with over 45,000 employees at its heyday.  It also hosted dozens, if not hundreds of innovative studies in manufacturing processes and socio-technical systems, including the studies surrounding the famed Hawthorne Effect, which we’ll get to a little later.

More to follow!  I hope you stay with me as I try to keep up with these.  If you’d like to know more about how I use these history lessons to make practical improvements in today’s technology driven companies, book a call with me and let’s have a chat.  I’d be happy to hear about some of the problems you’re experiencing and how we might work together toward effective solutions.

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

133 - The Birth of the Auto Industry

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

The automobile industry literally changed the face of America.  This single enterprise led to more technological innovations in manufacturing, metallurgy, electronics, oil refining, distribution systems, road construction, labor relations, and management practices than any other in the history of the world.  Until the dawn of the computer age, the automobile industry was the absolute technological driver for the United States.

 

We can't talk about cars without talking about Henry Ford, but he certainly wasn't the first or the only person focused on mass producing cars.  Leonardo da Vinci designed a self-propelled wagon way back in the 15th century.  A steam-powered "road locomotive" was invented in England in 1801, but it really took the internal combustion engine to make an automobile economically feasible.  

The Otto engine was the first patented 4-stroke internal combustion engine, back in 1867.  Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler each developed practical cars in Germany in 1885 and 1886.  Shortly after that, in 1893, Ford finished his own internal combustion engine and then in 1896 built a steel frame around it, added 4 bicycle tires, and the Quadricycle was born.  When he tried to get it out of his shed to take it for a test drive, it was too wide to fit through, so he had to bust down a brick wall to get it out.

His first auto venture was as mechanical superintendent of the Detroit Automobile Company, formed in August of 1899.  By this time, there were 60 automakers in the US, a number that would grow to 253 by 1908.  This early competition killed the Detroit Automobile Company, but in 1901, with the same financial backers, he started the Henry Ford Company which also failed.  Finally, in 1903, and the Ford Motor Company launched with a simple car called the Model A that eventually morphed into the Model T.

In 1908, Ford produced 10,607 Model Ts.  In contrast, Daimler, working in the most integrated factory in Europe, with 1,700 workers, produced fewer than 1,000.  

In 1908, Ford’s Model T cost $850, which was more money than his workers made in a year of labor.  Ford’s vision was to build a simple but durable car at the lowest possible cost, then pay his workers high enough wages to allow them to afford the very cars they built.  At the root of this vision was a core value that a corporation exists to serve society (Henry Ford, Today and Tomorrow).  

 

To accomplish his vision, Ford needed to do something dramatic and revolutionary.  While all the other automakers employed teams of fitters working in dozens of workshops, custom shaping standard components to make them fit together, Ford, inspired by a visit to Chicago Meat Packers, decided to divide the labor involved among his entire workforce.  

 

In 1910, he built a new factory in Highland Park, Michigan and began work on a moving assembly line.  In 1913, the assembly line began operations.  It relied on each worker specializing in one small area of work and bringing the work to the worker by moving the car from station to station on a moving conveyor belt.  This single innovation resulted in a 900% improvement in productivity over the craftsmen fitters.  

 

In 1914, in response to high turnover rates and low morale, Ford began paying his workers $5 per day when the rest of the industry was paying $11 per week.  By 1916, Ford was making over 730,000 cars a year and selling them for about $350 each.   

 

The Government recognized the need for new roads and passed the Federal Aid Road Act in 1916, and the Federal Highway Act in 1921.

 

Several factors combined to enable this revolution in the auto industry, which essentially saved two other industries.  

 

First, the price of steel was low thanks to the construction of the nation-wide railroad.  But the railroads were no longer expanding at the same rate as through the last part of the 1800’s.  A reduction in the demand for steel may have forced some steel mills to close, but now they had another primary customer, the auto industry.  

 

The oil industry was about to fall victim to electricity until the automobile created the demand for a modified version of kerosene called gasoline.  

 

The availability of cheap raw materials, a shortage of skilled labor, and the high demand for cars drove Ford to mechanize the manufacturing process.  This in turn drove the consolidation of the automobile industry so that those 253 independent auto makers of 1908 turned into 44 makers in 1929.  

 

Of those 44, the big three (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler) accounted for over 80% of 

new car sales in America.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/henry-ford-leaves-edison-to-start-automobile-company

132 - Industrial Revolutions

Today I want to pick up from the last episode, where I talked about the birth and growth of Iron and Steel, railroads, and the oil industry through the early 1800s; evidence of the first industrial revolution in the US.

There's no real date for when the "revolution" occurred, but the biggest enablers of that first industrial revolution were:

 

• coal-fired furnaces to convert iron ore to finished metals, 

• the steam engine and steam driven equipment, and 

• Eli Whitney’s milling machines which established the American System of Manufacturing, where machines would produce parts in volume to be assembled into products sometime later.

In the last decades of the 19th century, three more technological advances fueled a second industrial revolution:

 

• the completion of modern transportation and communications networks

• electricity 

• “the scientific method.”

 

The modern communication networks began with Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph in 1837.  But it wasn't until 1844, when Congress finally financed the construction of the first telegraph line from Washington DC to Baltimore, Maryland, that the revolutionary nature of this invention was realized.  Within 10 years, 23,000 miles of cable connected the country.  As railroads expanded westward, and eastward from California, the telegraph went along with it.

In 1856, the development of the “Bessemer” process for making steel dramatically reduced the time, energy, and money required for this task.  Since steel lasts longer and is much harder than iron, it became the substance of choice for making railroad rails.  

 

From 1864 to the end of the century, Bessemer converters produced millions of tons of steel rails as the nation expanded westward.    

The expanding steel market, driven by the demand of railroad networks, led to more efficient production methods and to the discovery of new deposits of coal and iron ore, dramatically reducing prices.  In 1880, Andrew Carnegie’s companies could produce a ton of steel for about $67.  By the turn of the century, a ton of steel cost only $17.  Steel mills ultimately exceeded 10 million tons annually.   J.P. Morgan, Elbert Gary, and Charles Schwab built the US Steel Corporation into the largest industrial enterprise on Earth.

 

The discovery of new oil reserves and more efficient refining reduced the cost of producing a gallon of kerosene from 54 cents to less than ½ cent.  

 

The deployment of electrical power generation provided a much more flexible power source to businesses than steam.  Factories had also relied on kerosene lamps for illumination for years.  With Edison's perfecting of the incandescent lightbulb, factories began converting to electricity and adding better illumination, achieving higher production rates both day and night along the way.  

 

Electricity provided the power behind exciting developments in chemistry and metallurgy, which were integrated into manufacturing operations.  Engineering emerged as a dominant skill for manufacturing companies as they began to apply the scientific method (controlled experimentation) to solving problems with products and processes.

 

Companies operated with high levels of capital equipment and relatively low levels of labor (high capital to labor ratio for you economists) which resulted in economies of scale and lower unit costs.  But sustaining those lower costs required operation of the equipment at near full capacity.  

 

This strain on resources gave birth to the science of management and to mass production systems.  These developments were put to use in two new industries born from the desire of Americans to have more control over getting around.  As the railroads, the telegraph, the steamship, and long-distance cable networks brought more people together, the turn of the century witnessed the birth of the automobile industry and the aviation industry.  

We'll talk about these industries more in the next episode.

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

129 - Industrial revolutions and Eli Whitney

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

Last time I offered some thoughts on the craft age.  Today, I want to start talking about how we ended up mastering mass manufacturing.

As I mentioned last time, shifting population patterns, from rural setting to urban settings increased demand for manufactured goods.  Textiles were in high demand since everyone still needed clothing, so the first industrial revolution really begins with inventions to increase the productivity of spinning yarn and weaving material.

In England, the Spinning Jenny was invented in 1764 followed in 1769 by the Water Frame, the first fully automatic and continuously operating spinning machine.  The water frame was large and required a water wheel driven by a running stream.  These were the first factories, since before now, most spinning wheels were in individual homes.  

All this automation boosted the demand for cotton, creating a market for cotton grown in the US.  There are a couple of strains of cotton that grew in the south.  There was a black-seeded long-staple variety that grew well in coastal areas and a green-seeded short-staple that grew well in the interior areas of the south.  

The long-staple variety was relatively easy to brush out, but the short-staple was very labor intensive.  The economics of cotton made owning slaves not only morally repugnant, but also unaffordable, so in the mid 1700s, slavery was actually declining in the US.

That changed in 1793.  That's when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.  This was a machine that was so simple to make and to operate that it changed the economics of the south and perpetuated slavery for another 70 years.

While Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1794, he was unable to profit from it because planters would just copy the design and build their own rather than pay the license fees he was asking.  When he was unable to successfully sue the planters, he sued the states and was able to win and receive payments from South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia.  

Tomorrow, we'll talk about what happened next for Eli Whitney.

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

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.

Thinking about 2021

After the new year, I'm planning to get back into the daily video business.  I've been spending these past couple of weeks focused first on family, then on developing some new ideas.

Neither of these are really new ideas, but I'm mustering up some energy to get them going this time around.

First is a concept around a high confidence culture.  This is based on what I think is the most significant factor in a successful culture of engagement: self-efficacy.  I've been talking about self-efficacy for years and sometimes it seems like I'm the only lean guy who does.  Self-Efficacy is the confidence we have about our own ability to do a particular task.  It could be a particular job at work, or an entrepreneur's marketing efforts, or my confidence that I can take a train from one part of DC to another.

Self-efficacy isn't something that just happens. Leaders can help shape this in team members, and I believe this fundamental understanding of how to build confidence in team members, and then to let it flourish is the first step to becoming a more effective leader.

The second idea is to build a more focused practice on coaching others.  I intend to take on clients who want to become more effective leaders and build engaging, high-confidence cultures.  I need to keep it oriented toward leadership in organizations, since it's that culture piece that we want to employ to create a better work environment for as many people as we can.

I guess I'll end up with three tiers of membership.  

    Tier 1 is individual, one-on-one coaching.  It'll start with a 360 degree assessment.  I use the LifeStyles Inventory (LSI) from Human Synergistics.  It'll also include an organizational assessment for profitability using the Quantum Profit Science Profit Model and will show how your organization compares with its industry averages.  We'll build a personal development plan and a roadmap to more engagement and we'll connect once a month for an hour to help you with accountability.

    Tier 2 is individual, one-on-one coaching as in Tier 1 but with 2 sessions per month, plus access to a weekly group Zoom call that will use lean coffee dialog techniques to discuss issues that participants bring to the table, rather than a set agenda.

    Tier 3 is the big Kahuna.  It includes the same individual one-on-one coaching as at Tier 2, and this group'll get their own weekly Zoom call.  But for this group, we add a specific project for participants from their own workplace.  Every 6 to 8 weeks, we will have a 3 to 4 day workshop focusing on a deep dive into a familiar topic, or an introduction to something completely new.  Finally, twice a year, pandemics notwithstanding, we'll meet face-to-face as a group in a place where we can learn, reflect, and relax.

What will the coaching focus on?  I'm glad you asked.  As the author of a book on leadership and another book on problem solving, it's a good bet that we'll be spending a lot of time on both of those topics.  But they will always be discussed within the framework of the high confidence culture.  Lots of lean systems thinking, principles, practices, tools and techniques with a special emphasis on standardized work (no, it's not the same thing that you're familiar with), workplace organization, visual management systems, and problem solving systems.

What's it going to cost??  I haven't figured that out yet.  I do know that I'm capping tier 3 at 16 people so I can provide a proper level of attention to achieve their learning and performance objectives.  What would you be willing to pay to get one or two of your key people into a focused development group like that?  Let me know.  

If you want to know when we're going to start and how you can be first in line, send me an email (david.veech@leadersights.com).  If you're ready to take that plunge now, go to https://calendly.com/davidveech/15min and schedule a 15 minute video chat with me.

All the best and Happy New Year.

David

114 - Challenges, Opportunities, and Problems

I've been in a bunch of organizations who initially are uncomfortable with using the word "problem."  I expect this is caused by feelings lingering from some previous negative experience with a problem of some kind.  Most likely someone received some kind of punishment for having a problem.  This would be particularly acute if that person wasn't fully in control of the area that had the problem.

I suspect that some of this is also caused by our egos, which tell us we should not let anyone else see that we're having any problems lest they think badly of us.  This is where the expression "don't air your dirty laundry" may originate.

In lots of places, people would rather say we have some "opportunities" or we have some "challenges."  Those seem to be nicer words than "problem" but they mean something different.

A problem is anything that happens that you didn't expect to happen.  Some are good "We get free HBO this weekend!" Some are bad "Wifi is down!"  The key is that there is an expectation of some kind, but the actual condition was different and therefore it's a problem.  

An opportunity is something that you can choose to take advantage of or not.  "We have an opportunity to sell 400 units to the government."  You don't have to do that.

If you change the phrase to "opportunity for improvement" it's still OPTIONAL.  If there's a problem - something that is not meeting our expectations - good or bad - we have to take some action.  If it's the positive side, "free HBO" could be an opportunity - we can choose to figure out if we want that to be the new expectation or not; but on the bad side, "the wifi is down" that's something we have to fix.

You can make all the semantics arguments you want about these kinds of examples.  What I want to get to is that we need to call problems - problems so we can apply an effective problem solving method to fix them. 

But I also want to teach leaders how to CHALLENGE people because if a leader challenges people to do something different than they are doing now, that is, if the leader CREATES the problem by changing the expectation, that can drive some positive and creative behaviors.  But people perceive that as impossible, they are going to be unwilling to accept the challenge.  So even now, it's optional.  A leader can try to force the challenge, but if people are forced, they may not pursue it with gusto.  

But consider this:  Once accepted, once we decide to pursue an opportunity or take on a challenge, then, with new expectations set, any deviation from that new expectation is now a problem.  

The difference is choice.  For a problem, you don't have a choice of whether or not to solve it...you have to find out what happened.  For a challenge or opportunity, you first get the option to go for it.  Once you choose, then you can use "problem" language because we're going for it.

Another thing to consider is getting out of it.  It's often pretty difficult the get out of the challenge or opportunity once you accept it.  For example, when Alex Honnold accepted the challenge to Free Solo El Capitan, he treated it like a problem to solve, planning and investigating and experimenting, and testing everything.  But until he started up the wall, he had a choice.  Half way up though, he didn't have the option to quit.

What kind of challenge will get you fired up today?

Don't forget to Vote tomorrow.  I'm David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

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

david.veech@leadersights.com

Follow me on twitter:  @davidveech

113 - Tomorrows problems

Today was a big day.  On October 29, 1969, the Internet was born.  That’s the day that ARPANET created the first host-to-host connection and transmitted a message between two computers at UCLA.

As I'm working through my production schedule for these videos and the book, I'm trying to set the framework for what kinds of problems we've had in the past and what we might face in the future.  I don't necessarily predict the future, but looking at certain trends provides some foresight.

Tomorrow’s Problems and Challenges of the future

Productivity, Profitability, and Professionalism

How do we improve Productivity in all types of work systems?  I think we will need to continue to improve productivity to stay competitive.  In many cases, we will have fewer resources available so we will have to figure out how to get more work done by each without burning people out or asking them simply to work longer and harder.

How will we increase Profitability as resources become scarcer or more expensive?  If we can't maintain profitability, we can't stay in business.  This is intimately linked to the productivity question, but will also force us to understand markets, pricing, and staying attuned to customers demands.

How can we attract, assimilate, and retain a professional workforce?  This may be the toughest challenge we'll face.  We already believe there is a significant gap in the available talent we need in many workplaces.  

Balance and wellness.  I believe that services for balance and wellness at work will be critical to maintaining our ability to improve productivity, profitability, and professionalism.  I think it will be important that we find affordable ways to look after the needs of all employees, but especially key leaders in stressful roles.

Global leadership – Leading people across a spectrum of vastly different cultures will tax the ability of leaders.

Diverging mindsets – will we be able to lead people with polarized mindsets toward a common objective?

Greed - Can we find ways to avoid promoting only incentive-based structures for motivating employees reducing greed across senior leadership?

Hate - Can we find ways to promote a mutually respectful environment to get people from diverse cultural backgrounds to work together, overcoming centuries of hate?

Another huge problem is our human tendency to jump to and act on a solution or conclusion - this problem points to the importance of finding ways of developing processes to resolve prospective or existing problems in the organization.

Technology – Technological interventions that help create an engaging environment in the workplace.

Talent – Diverse talent – hiring individuals that add value to the organization rather than fill empty spaces.

I'm certain there will be things that can't anticipate that will tax our abilities.  I want to work to discover the best ways to prepare for this.  What we do now really matters.

I teach people how to think, not simply how to solve problems.  My hope is that better thinking will help us respond better to whatever comes our way.

david.veech@leadersights.com  https://www.leadersights.com

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

112 - More of Today's Problems

Good morning!

I love taking a look back through history as I prepare for these daily videos.  Here’s what I found for today:

• In 1636, Harvard College is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• In 1793, Eli Whitney applied for a patent for his Cotton Gin, a device that dramatically changed the economics of growing cotton in the southern United States, which I think allowed slavery to expand because the Cotton Gin made plantations profitable.

• In 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated Liberty Enlightening the World, also known as the Statue of Liberty.  She was a gift from France celebrating our Centennial in 1876.

• In 1927, Pan American Airways launches the world’s first scheduled international flight.

• In 1955, Bill Gates was born.  Happy Birthday, Bill!

I encourage you to take a step back every now and then and take a look around.  This quick review of the past always sparks some desire to learn more.  I use the Eli Whitney example of one of the seminal events that enabled the transition from the Craft Age to the Mass Production Age.  

We are still trying to make the jump from Mass Production to Lean Production - and when I say production, I don't mean just manufacturing.  We "produce" services as well and the principles are just as applicable.

Today, we still have problems, whether caused by a system failure or a decision to be better.  

To me problems are NOT bad things. They teach us. They challenge us. They drive us forward. We only think they hold us back because our heads aren't always on right.

I've had a few conversations with people about framing this and here's what I've learned.

The fundamental problem for business is "how can we be successful."  In most cases, success = growth.  But there are a variety of ways to shape success, and there are a variety of reasons to grow.

• Maybe we want to keep high paying manufacturing jobs in your region. 

 

• Maybe we want to have some positive impact on the community - one client of mine that makes medical devices said they want to reduce overall healthcare systems costs through improved patient outcomes.  

• Maybe they are focused on providing a reward those invested in the success of the company - following the old “Maximize Shareholder Wealth” purpose.

How can you grow your business?  To me, there’s really only one way:

• Be more innovative.  That means to learn and act faster than others.  This can lead to 2 basic things:

○ New processes for higher quality and productivity (including a faster process for launching new products, better processes for sales and marketing to reach new markets, etc.)  

○ New products for market growth

How can a company be more innovative?

• Get more ideas from more people.  In other words, improve employee engagement and confidence so they are willing to share their ideas.  We can do that in several ways:

○ Give them ownership (leadership has to let go) and rewards (not necessarily money) for sharing their ideas

○ Give them better thinking skills to improve the quality of ideas (teach them how to think critically)

○ Give them a structure that allows them to experiment with their ideas quickly:  Give them structures so that they can more quickly see problems that might prompt ideas (structures that make them more aware of what is going on)

○ Give them practice at doing these things

I've designed the C4 system I've been talking about to do all of these.  Let me help you put it in place.  Send me an email at david.veech@leadersights.com or send me a direct message on one of my social media platforms.

I’m David Veech and this has been Elevate Your Performance.

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

109 - Sunday Reflection

Good morning.

With travel this past week, I missed recording on Thursday and Friday.  Saturday I have managed to skip for 3 weeks in a row.  I still have in mind to do a travel related show on Saturdays to have some fun and to boost my travel agency a bit.  We'll see how that works out.

The pandemic had an effect on my travel to New York.  I had checked the travel restrictions and New York apparently has some of the tightest controls in the country.  I'm happy about that, because we don't seem to be taking it as seriously as we probably should especially since we had  a record number of new cases yesterday.

To make it to my client in Rochester, I had to complete a form for the New York State Health Department giving the details of where I was arriving from and if I've shown any symptoms or if I'd been exposed to anyone with symptoms or been in any potentially hazardous activities that could have put me at risk.  

Unlike Massachusetts, New York didn't say they would waive the requirements with a negative COVID test within the past 72 hours.  I decided it would be prudent to get one anyway, for my client's and my own peace of mind.

CVS does drive through testing that easy and essentially free, so I took care of that on Monday morning hoping to have the results before I arrived in New York.  I didn't, but I filled out the New York travel forms and got an email back with a green check mark that said I'm good to go.

When I arrived in Rochester, the National Guard was there to collect information from everyone arriving.  I showed them my green check mark and they let me sail on through.  I picked up the car at Hertz with no trouble and arrived at the Marriott hotel with no trouble.

The client had a similar statement that I had to sign, plus they took my temperature before they let me in.  Our group met in a large, well-ventilated training room that allowed everyone (a group of 9 people) to spread out.

At lunch, I got a phone call from the New York State Health Department and we had a nice conversation about how I was feeling, and if I'd had any symptoms at all.  They said if my employer had restrictions or quarantine requirements I should follow their guidance.  I was following the client's guidance so I think I'm good to go.

Later that afternoon, I got an email from them (the Health Department) that was pretty much a form letter that they must send to everyone arriving in New York from almost any other state that ordered me to quarantine in my hotel room for 14 days.  There was no hint of this coming based on the phone call I had, which clearly indicated I could work following the employer's guidelines.  

About this same time, my test results arrived - a nice big "Negative" across the top.  I forwarded this to the client, and showed them the email, and we decided to proceed with the second day of training.

I was supposed to get periodic text messages from the Health Department asking about symptoms, but they sent them to the wrong phone number so I didn't see them until I got home.

I'm home now, feeling fine except for not sleeping much because my poor wife is still hurting so badly from her knee surgery.

This past week, I showed you my C4 Card and explained how to use it.  On Wednesday, I talked about 4 types of problems:  Alert Response, Measured Response, Individual Idea, and Management Response and how they tie in to the C4 card as well.  

This week, I'll bring up the C4 worksheet and a Master file I give to groups to use to hold everything they discover on their problem solving journey.  I'll talk through both of those, then go into a little more depth on  the types of problems and on the types of gemba walks.

I hope you'll stick around.  Let me hear from you!  Make a comment.  Let me know if you'd like to know more about anything I'm talking about.  Let me know if you'd like me to come to you and take a group through these steps.  

david.veech@leadersights.com

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

107 - The C4 Card Part 2

Good Morning.

Yesterday, I showed you the C4 Card and what it's used for.  Today I want to show you how it works.

Working the Card

• Problem occurs/team member has an idea

• Post card

• Leader pulls

• Assign coach

○ TL or Peer coach

• Dialogue 

○ Critical thinking

○ 5 whys

○ Initial evaluation

• The Dialog piece not only helps the team member but it teaches the coach how to ask better questions and build stronger relationships

• Cross unit coordination

○ Cross-shift/Cross-Dept

• Adjust inputs

• Countermeasures

○ Explore multiple options

○ Evaluate

○ Plan

○ Execute

• Confirm - Check the result.  Do we need to update any procedures or standardized work? Review the process - did we follow it as planned?  If we deviated, why did we deviate?  What did we learn by going through this?

How it works depends a little on how the problem shows up.  We'll cover these tomorrow!

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

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

106 - The C4 Card, Part 1

Good morning.

Do you need an easy way to get more people involved in sharing ideas and in finding and solving problems?

Let's talk about the C4 Card.

Every problem or every idea that a team member has is an opportunity for developing problem-solving skills.  So this C4 Card System is first a skills- and people-development system, and second a system to solve problems.

The C4 card is designed to be the initial recording device for all the problems identified or exposed in the workplace.  It is relatively simple and hopefully non-threatening, so that every employee would have, or develop, a high level of confidence that they can fill it out.

The C4 card is sufficient by itself for many smaller problems that employees experience, but still requires all four steps - Concern - Cause - Countermeasure - and Confirm.  Since we are driving learning, and not just solving problems, it is essential that we require evaluation of countermeasures to reach those higher levels of learning for people.

The C4 card is also sufficient for use in an employee suggestion system, where we can capture their ideas, and assist them in analyzing, evaluating, and implementing those ideas themselves, while giving us a tool to keep track of all of them.  For this, you simply start on the back, recording the idea in the Countermeasure box.

Many problems will be more significant and will require more resources to solve than the C4 card will support.  A problem may be initially captured on the C4 card, but could quickly elevate to the next level, which brings us to the C4 worksheet.

Join me tomorrow and I’ll walk through the details of working through this card. It sounds like it will be very time consuming, and the first few times it may be.  But the idea is to get better at these key skills so that we can blast through all the steps in the shortest possible time - Maybe as little as 10 or 15 minutes.

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

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

david.veech@leadersights.com

https://www.leadersights.com