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 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.

117 - Heading for the Holidays

Good Morning.  I'm David Veech.  This is Elevate Your Performance.

We are quickly heading into the Thanksgiving weekend, and then on to Christmas, Chanukah, and New Years.  All fantastic times to re-center, reconnect, rejoice.  I'm praying for a safe, virus-free, small gathering for everyone.  In the midst of this pandemic, please take the time to reflect on your blessings and find gratitude for small things.  Gratitude eases the stress and can get you refocused and reenergized.  We all need that!

If you need a brief renewal with focused problem solving, I invite you to join me for a 2-day virtual learning experience hosted by my friends at Lean Frontiers.  

Come and discuss how we can... 

• See problems more quickly

• Teach problem-solving skills more consistently

• Write better problem statements

• Determine more accurate and actionable root causes

• Reduce bias and increase certainty in your decisions

• Build more creativity in your workplace...

The workshop will be from 12-4 pm EST on December 2 - 3.  Register HERE.

If you need something more focused on your business, please reach out.  We can co-create a program to deliver precisely what you need, delivered either virtually or on-site.  My favorites are strategic planning, leadership development, operational excellence & lean systems, and problem solving. 

If you need a speaker for an upcoming event, I am happy to help.  I can deliver an inspirational and motivational message virtually or in person.  It might be the perfect touch to your organization's holiday celebration. 

Please visit my Blog and my YouTube channel.  I've been posting something nearly every day.  Drop by and share a thought or two and let's get a conversation going.  Please consider Subscribing to my mailing list for the most current information.

Call me at 502-517-1845 or send an email to me at david.veech@leadersights.com to get the ball rolling. 

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Join me over the next couple of days.  I'm going to be talking about different types of organizational culture and how we might be able to change to create a better workplace.

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

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.

111 - C4 Master Pres File

Sometimes teams need to keep track of more than the C4 Card or C4 Worksheet provides the space for. I built this C4 Master Presentation File in PowerPoint just to provide that space and keep things organized, especially for teams who will need to periodically present their progress to a decision-maker. #problemsolving

110 - The C4 Worksheet

Elevate Episode 110   The C4 Worksheet 20201026

How do you keep track of ugly problems?  I've been in dozens of meetings where teams of people argue back and forth about what problem is really plaguing them or who should be doing what about it.  Lots of talk.  Lots of defensive emotions.  Lots of stress.   Zero action.

I've said this before but I'm telling you again, you have to write down everything that comes up when talking about a problem.

In most cases, problems that employees tell us about can be taken care of with the C4 card I shared with you last week.  It works great to help people think through the critical issues of the problem, find the most likely root causes, and develop more effective countermeasures by requiring us to think through the impact the countermeasure will have.

But what happens when it's a big ol' ugly problem?  

To address these, we need a team.  To help the team get it's head around the problem, we need something a little more flexible and substantial than the card.

In lean circles, we teach A3 problem solving.  A3 is simply the size of the paper that you work on.  The process follows PDCA steps.  But in many cases, the A3 is just a blank sheet of paper, or a paper with several large blocks designated for different activities, and I have found that many people find this very intimidating and it limits their progress as they try to figure out what is supposed to go where on this blank form.

So I thought I'd offer up some training wheels.  I took a Quality Circles Theme report from Toyota and used it as a guide to create this annotated C4 A3 worksheet.

It starts off with some questions to ask and answer and offers some descriptions and examples of what to put in each block.  It's everything you need to keep track of a problem or a project in summary form.  

It is not sufficient for collecting everything a team needs to complete a proper analysis of processes surrounding the problem or for details related to confirming root causes and managing experiments to gather enough data to evaluate countermeasures.  For these tasks, I've put together a C4 master presentation file that I'll talk about tomorrow.

This C4 A3 is available to download for free at my website, https://www.leadersights.com.  Just hover over "Learning Resources" and click on "Free Downloads."  After we verify who you are, you're free to download everything we have there, including a full copy of my book, "The C4 Process."

I will also be teaching how to use these in a Lean Frontiers Digital Workshop coming up December 3-4.  Here's the registration link:  https://leanfrontiers.com/highspeed/

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.

108 - Four Types of Problems

I mentioned yesterday that how we process the C4 Card depends on the type of problem we have.  The types of problems that I have written about in my books are:

• Alert Response Problems:

• Problem occurs that threatens your ability to serve your customer

• Requires immediate report and immediate response

• Short term countermeasures contain the problem from spreading further

• Follow up analysis to find the root cause and develop a permanent solution

• For these problems, you'll need to take some action to contain or correct the problem immediately.  When the "crisis" passes, grab a C4 card or worksheet and quickly capture the problem and describe what actions you took.  Try to pull a few people together to dig into the problem deeper to make sure your countermeasure will correct the root cause.

• Measured Response Problems:

• Problem is visible through process metrics as an "out-of-standard" condition

• Could also be a nuisance problem but doesn’t threaten customers (usually smaller in scope)

• Individual reports the problem

• Coach works through the problem with the individual, escalating the problem if warranted

• Together they develop and implement the countermeasure

• For these problems, when you see the deviation from standard in your process, pull a C4 Card and capture the problem as the gap between what you planned and what you actually got.  Assign a coach - or do it yourself - and work through the card to define and clarity the problem, the find the root causes.  Afterwards, develop several countermeasures to try and implement the one that works best in every similar process.

• Individual Ideas:

• Individual has an idea and is willing to share it with us

• Ideas often stem from unresolved problems that may be hard to define

• Coach works through idea with the individual to identify the problem and check if the idea actually solves the problem

• Together they decide whether or not to implement the idea

• For these problems, write the idea in the countermeasure section of the card, then, as the leader coaches the team member, we identify the problem that prompted the idea, the find its root cause.  If the idea solves the problem at that root cause level, we can say it's a good idea; if it doesn't solve the problem, try something else!

• Management Response Problems:

• Problem is created when management sets a goal that exceeds current ability (push the standard; set a stretch goal) OR

• Business is making slow or no progress on annual or quarterly goals

• Assign a team to work through the problem solving process to pinpoint problems or barriers to success, find its cause or articulate the obstacles, develop and implement a set of countermeasures, then track progress

• For these problems, pull a team together from the start and build the plan to achieve the goal, but dig through to understand not just the root causes of any problems you foresee in pursuing this new standard, but also to identify any potential barriers to success.

Tomorrow, let's talk about escalating and using the C4 worksheet.

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

105 - Review and Reflection

Good morning!

What did you learn this week?

Overall, this was a pretty good week.  I celebrated my 100th episode on Monday and got a chance to explain why I'm doing this daily show.

When I got into the prep for Tuesday morning's episode on the scientific method, I searched for some new information.  What I've had in my notes for a long time focused on the impact that the scientific method had on accelerating the Industrial Revolution - but that was only a few hundred years ago.

When I read about the Edwin Smith papyrus I was fascinated. I love finding things that make me want to learn more.  But it makes you think:  People have always had the capability to think in a focused and deliberate fashion.  The hard part is getting people to actually do it.

Finding out why we don't has been a significant part of my research.  To me, it's much less about the sequence of steps in applying the scientific method and much more about people's general behavioral and cognitive habits. 

What makes people do what they do always intrigues me.

I also covered the quality movement; first as part of the discussion on the scientific method, then, on Wednesday, in terms of a shift from inspection at the end of a process to process control.   We haven't gotten away from inspecting and auditing anywhere that I've been, but we have learned that we don't have to rely exclusively on inspection to ensure our products are good.

On Thursday and Friday, I shared the stages and steps of the C4 Process.  I want to emphasize once more that I designed the C4 Process to develop people through problem solving, not just to solve problems.  I hope that focus on people stick with all of you who might decide to use the technique at work.

This week, I have a couple of days with a client that will likely delay or eliminate a couple of episodes.  The plan is to share with you how to use the C4 Card and C4 Worksheet with teams to help solve problems and develop people.

I also signed up for Orienteering Cincinnati's TROL/WARS series of orienteering meets this fall.  I'm excited about getting back out into the woods and get lost again.  They had to suspend meets at the beginning of COVID but we're on this fall - since orienteering is largely individual and spread out in the woods.  I just can't wait to do it; it's one of my favorite things to do.

I hope you'll stick with me. 

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

103 - The C4 Process

Good Morning!

On this day in 1878, Edison Electric Light co. founded. More relevantly, in 1951, the First episode of I Love Lucy aired on American Television. That's relevant because we use a clip from I Love Lucy in teaching the principles of problem solving. That clip is available on my YouTube channel.

I've mentioned my process for solving problems a few times, but so far, I haven't had an episode dedicated to the C4 process. After discussing the evolution of the scientific method and the history of the quality movement over the past couple of days, I think it fits in nicely here and will help set the tone for future episodes.

The C4 Process is an evolution of the PDCA cycle that I first learned in the Army, but later really focused on in working with Toyota to understand what makes the Toyota Production System tick.

I taught PDCA for several years. It's stages of Plan, Do, Check, Act I found were excellent for conducting a thoroughly scientific analysis of a problem that we needed to solve or for an improvement we needed to make to a process.

I ran into problems with people taking shortcuts in the process. Mostly, people would tend to skip completely over the Plan stage, and Do something, then see what happened, and then do something else.

I was working with the team the developed the Rolls-Royce Production System and having lots of discussions about learning, employee development and engagement, and simplifying the problem solving process.

Separately, we had both began to focus on the key activities within the Plan stage, to call them out separately, so people might stick to them a little better. As we worked through these issues, Mike Kirkby of the RRPS team, told me that they had run a trial of a simple system they were calling the 3C's process because it focused on the Concern, then the Cause, and then the Countermeasure.

I had already decided that Cause and Countermeasure had to stay, but I couldn't find the right word for the first stage until this discussion. I immediately adopted this (or abducted it - or stole it outright) but because my focus was much more centered on what the employees can learn from the process rather than simply getting a solution in place, I added a 4th stage to capture the need for some retrospective thinking to solidify the learning. I called that 4th stage "Confirm."

So the 4 stages of the C4 process are Concern - where we understand the real problem; Cause - where we find the root causes; Countermeasure - where we develop and evaluate potential solutions; and Confirm - where we collect and analyze the results and reflect on what we learned by going through the process.

Tomorrow, I'll break these down into 11 key steps that I teach.

I'm presenting tomorrow and the People Processes Digital Summit that kicks off this morning.  My presentation on Solving Tomorrow's Problems will go at Noon Eastern time tomorrow, October 16.

Hit the link in the comments to register. It's free, unless you want to upgrade to VIP access for only $30 - that will get you access to all the videos for another month plus a few other perks.

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

Elevate Episode 101 The scientific method 20201013

Back in August, I did a short video about the scientific method, outlining it's basic steps of observation and measurement, questioning, developing a hypothesis, testing, and analyzing the results.  Today I want to run through a brief history of this kind of thinking. 

The scientific method is given credit for accelerating the industrial revolution of the 18th century, but that's not where it begins. 

There's a document called the Edwin Smith Papyrus, which is a medical text from Egypt dating back to 1600 BCE.  I think it's safe to say that we as humans have had this capability to think like this since we became humans.  Just imagine what kind of thinking was required to build pyramids with limited tooling, not just in ancient Egypt, but in ancient civilizations around the world.

The scientific method requires an ordered way of thinking that aims to strip emotional noise and bias out of the analysis we do on any phenomenon.  It turns out that this is the hard part.

But let me fast forward a few thousand years.  Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, also outlines a scientific method and gives us the theory of empiricism.  Empirical evidence is that which is directly observed and measured.  Aristotle also taught us inductive and deductive reasoning, which essentially requires us to question even that which is directly observed in order to make sense of what we see. 

So observation and thinking really go hand in hand.  These days we see a lot of shocking videos and our emotional responses are predictable as we jump to conclusions based on the very limited evidence provided by most of these videos.  Because we aren't to see and describe ALL the circumstances surrounding what we are seeing on the video, we aren't able to properly decide what happened, so we fill in the gaps with whatever our emotional and experiential triggers give us.

The 1600's gave us Francis Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, and Isaac Newton, all of whom devised ways of thinking, measuring, and reasoning through the problems they were interested in and took us in a different direction, away from inductive and deductive reasoning and into quantitative analysis and experimentation.  These guys brought mathematics to the game.

In the lean world, we tend to begin our historical analysis with Walter Shewhart, who, in 1939, published “Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control” and introduced the Shewhart Cycle which he listed as “Specification – Production – Inspection.”

W. Edwards Deming, a disciple of Shewhart’s (and editor of Shewhart’s book) evolved the Shewhart Cycle into a 4-step cycle he labeled “Design – Produce – Sell (Get to market) – Redesign through Market Research” while working in Japan in 1950. 

The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers called this the “Deming Wheel” and deployed it to companies throughout Japan after relabeling the steps “Plan – Do – Check – Act” in what Deming later called “the corruption.”

We'll pick it up from here as we move forward.

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

99 - Review and Reflection

I’ll try not to whine too much, but this has been a pretty tough week.  It’s been hard for me to be consistent with my programming this week primarily because of how I’m managing the time I’m spending taking post-surgery care of my lovely bride.

She had knee replacement surgery on Monday.  She is allergic to codeine-based pain killers, so we’re managing her pain with alternative methods - In other words, she’s in a lot of pain most of the time.  That’s been affecting our sleep and so it makes it more difficult for me to write and record.  She is doing better every day, though, so I expect to get everything back on track this coming week.

From a contents perspective, though, the week was relatively rich.

This week, I turned the focus squarely onto problem solving with episodes explaining why along with examples of yesterday’s problems - particularly focusing on wildfires; on today’s problems - focusing on employee engagement; and on tomorrow’s problems - which we can’t specifically forecast, but which we know will be coming.

I also spent a lot of time this week working through a system called Quantum Profit Science.  I mentioned it once before a couple of weeks ago.  I think it offers real promise to organizations who are struggling with profitability.  This system builds schedules that ensure each order tracks to a profit specification and provides and incentive structure to employees to find ways to improve the work. 

I also spent a lot of time this week thinking through a new program that my friend Norman Bodek is launching.  He’s calling it his Library Study group and he’s asked me to help with a group or two as they form.  We’ll pull a book or article out of his lean library, read through it, pull it apart for key lessons, and then reassemble it using current problems and examples.  It will be a true mastermind program for lean practitioners, particularly those who have been doing this work as leaders, consultants and coaches.  This will be a way they can share their perspectives and gain new perspective that they will be able to take back into their companies or their client work.

I hope you had a great week.  Coming up this week, I’m going to be digging in to the scientific method, problem-solving methodologies that based on the scientific method, and particularly on my C4 process.  I’ll be sharing the key phases of C4 and its 11-step process that will guarantee better thinking and better solutions.

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

98 - Tomorrow's Problems

We really don't know what kind of problems, opportunities, and challenges are going to show up tomorrow.

But rather than waiting to react to what might happen, we can take steps to shape the future we want and position ourselves and our organizations to thrive regardless of what might come.

I'm not sure anyone clearly foresaw the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet many businesses were able to pivot and thrive.  Or maybe thrive without having to pivot. 

By now, everyone listening and watching has heard of or used Zoom.  I first downloaded Zoom in 2015 when the team I was working with in Arizona decided to try it to help us all stay on the same sheet of music in dealing with 9 different agencies.  It always worked well for us.  Last October, because I liked it so much, I decided to buy 20 shares of stock.

That was just lucky, but Zoom had a vision that they were forced to accelerate in response to the Pandemic.  The huge surge in use exposed problems they were unable to see or anticipate with fewer users.  They were, however, able to diagnose, analyze, and solve many of those problems very quickly.

I also noticed a trend last year toward ghost kitchens - restaurants created only for delivery.  Now every restaurant uses this mindset.  One of the best restaurant pivots away from the dining room and to the drive through is Chick-fil-A.  They have always been a popular drive through, but when the pandemic hit, they doubled down. 

There always seem to be two lines of cars wrapped around every Chick-fil-A, a site that would send me scurrying away in other restaurant chains.  But Chick-fil-A gets everyone through so expertly, but that's not by accident.  They put a dozen crewmembers outside to direct traffic, to take orders, to take payments, and to deliver food. 

The only other restaurant I have seen with this kind of response is In-n-Out. 

Other restaurants seem content to have longer lines and to have customers decide not to wait.

I think the true secret for solving tomorrow's problems isn't in anticipating any specific problem, but to prepare the organization and the workforce for anything.  If we can sense a problem coming; if we can see when it actually begins to impact us; and if we have people who know how to think critically and face the hard facts about what they see then we'll be able to respond nearly immediately. 

We may not get it right the first few times, but with a culture that is willing to try anything and persist, we're more likely to get to an effective solution much more quickly that those who are more protective of the status quo.

A culture like that is characterized by high self-efficacy among its people.  High self-efficacy translates to willingness to try new things and persistence through failure.  Solving tomorrow's problems depend on this, so we need to start building that today.  I can show you how. 

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

97 - Today's Problems

There are no shortages of problems in today's working world. 

• Management complains that they can't get the right skills or they can't find people who will actually work.
• Employees complain about mind-numbing jobs, or inequity at work, particularly where there's no accountability.  So some people work their butts off and get no reward, while others do as little as possible and nothing ever happens to them.

COVID-19 has only made these problems worse.

To me, we can sum up all of these problems when we talk about employee engagement. 

Those complaints immediately tell me that an organization doesn't focus on employee engagement nor on its key component of developing people.

What does engaged mean?  Gallup defines engaged employees as those who are highly involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace.

According to Gallup, 52% of employees are not engaged, with another 13% actively disengaged.  That leaves 35% who report that they are engaged at work. 

That 35% is the highest since Gallup started measuring in 2000.  Organizations are doing some things right to build that trend of improvement, but there is still great opportunity in that other 52%.

What about those 13%?  I think we will always have a small group of employees who would rather be somewhere else or doing something else, so I don't think we should put a ton of effort into solving that problem.  The much bigger opportunity is to turn a few of those in the middle into more of those in the engaged block.

That's the core problem that I wanted to solve in my book Leadersights.  In the new book, I want to show that so many other "routine problems" at work flow from engagement.  Everything from productivity, to quality; even safety suffers when employees are not engaged.

What do you think is causing this poor engagement?  I think it's poor leadership.  Over the next few months, let's see how much of this stuff we can tie together and connect so that if we solve the main root cause, we'll see a domino effect of problems disappearing.  And that, conveniently, ties well into our theme this month of Connecting.

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