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.

96 - Yesterdays Problems

Good morning.

Humans have been solving problems since the dawn of time.  Those early problems were all related to survival and were constant:  how to get food today; how to avoid becoming food for something else.

Yesterday's problems have changed only in that our lives may or may not be constantly at stake. 

One case in particular that does put lots of lives at risk are Wildfires.  We have of course had wildfires as long as we've had history.  But we have evolved and consolidated so that now, a lot of people live in places prone to wildfires.  That in itself isn't a problem for everyone.  It would be too easy to dismiss this is irresponsible decision-making about where to live, but we need to focus on the fire.

Fires are getting more destructive and dangerous. 8 of the 20 most destructive fires in California history have occurred since 2017, with the Camp Fire of November 2018 taking the top spot in terms of structures burned (18,804) and people killed (85).

Are wildfires systemic problems with a small set of root causes that we should be able to identify and eliminate?

Or are wildfires "special-cause" problems with a different cause for each?

The answer depends on how we define the problem.  Generally speaking, many wildfires begin from some failure.  The Camp Fire started when a 100 year old Pacific Gas and Electric transformer failed. 

But if we replaced all electrical transformers with new and safer ones, would that put an end to wildfires?

Recently, wildfires have become a political topic that is further dividing our country.  One side views wildfires as the result of poor forest management policies.  The other views wildfires as the result of climate change.

If we stick to those poles, we'll never have an impact on either.  But if we realize that both are true and we attack these major challenges as the root causes, we can design countermeasures that will have a lasting impact provided we have the will to see them through.

Both climate change and forest management are huge problems that we can't solve until we break them down, but people have been breaking them down for decades so that we know what causes each and we know what to do with each.

Sadly, we don't seem willing to pay the cost to correct either of these problems if in fact they can be corrected.

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

95 -Why focus on problem solving?

Why should you focus on problem solving in your workplace?

In this series, I've mentioned Problem Solving almost every other day. 

We need to develop strong, robust problem solving skills not just for a few technical experts, but for every person in our organization and every student in school.  I have said that the only sustainable competitive advantage a company can have is the ability of its people to sense, define, and solve problems more and more quickly.

I outlined a new book that I'm calling High Speed Problem Solving.  It's supposed to allow me to capture everything I've learned about people and problem solving since I published my first book on Problem Solving that was called The C4 Process: Four vital steps to better work.

Why do I think Problem Solving is so important?

The way people learn begins with a very linear, accumulative process where we first gain basic knowledge that we may or may not understand fully.  In this knowledge phase, someone might share a set of facts with us and we should be able to repeat them back to the teacher or to someone else.  Knowledge is the first level of learning.

Next, if we place enough value on those facts to spark continued interest, we will seek to understand more about them.  Understanding is the second level of learning.

If we value and understand what someone is sharing with us, it will actually change our behavior as we start to apply what we know.  The only way we can tell if someone has actually learned something is in their behavior.  Application is the third level of learning.

In the application of any task, because the environment is never absolutely stable, we can expect to encounter problems.  A problem is anything that happens that we didn't expect to happen.  Here's where our learning changes. 

At higher levels of learning, we don't continue on a nice linear, accumulative path.  Three mental activities work in a series of rapid cycles as we Analyze what we've experienced, Evaluate what that means, and Create something new.  That creation has to also be analyzed and evaluated and usually adjusted.

This cycle was captured by Walter Shewhart as the Plan - Do - Check - Act cycle, or PDCA. 

You're going to have problems.  We need to be able to understand what happened, why it happened, and then do something about why it happened to really make a lasting difference.  If we just do something about what happened without addressing why it happened it'll come back.

More to follow, so please stick with me.

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

94 - Review and Reflect

What did YOU learn this week?

Here’s a review of the things I’ve covered this past week, a quick look ahead at what’s coming, and a few other things that I picked up.

This week:

Started with Visual management systems and metrics

    Safety
    Productivity and Delivery

Thursday, I shared October’s theme of Connecting and the Integral Leadership Model.

On Friday, I had to confront a personal demon of weight gain during COVID-19 and shared my decision to do something about it. 

Saturday I shared a travel update that focused on canceled cruises - and on hope for the future because of pent up travel demand

Coming up:

I'm getting into the outline for my book High Speed Problem Solving.  I will also do my best to make sure these problem solving concepts connect to the leadership theme for the month:  Connect.

Other things that have been driving my time the past couple of weeks:

Lean Coaching Summit 

next August - I’ve been invited to do a 90-minute breakout where I’m going to focus on coaching leaders through the deployment of a visual management system and I’ve asked to do a day-long pre-conference workshop on Coaching for High Speed Problem Solving

I’m reviewing a new book called CEO Coaching by Kazu Hisano.  Norman Bodek gave it to me.  Kazu is an incredibly successful CEO Coach, so I have high hopes for this book.

Norman founded Productivity, Inc back in the 80’s and published english translations of Japanese productivity experts like Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, giving us our Lean Thinking canon of work.

Library Study Groups

Norman has also opened his library and is creating study groups who will work through certain articles in that library and have small group discussions about them to pull out key and essential lessons. 

He’s asked me to facilitate and coach some of the groups so I'm looking forward to getting these going. 

Connect and Lead

I’m also reviewing my friend, Brian Patterson’s book, Connect and Lead - focusing on applications of Choice Theory of Leadership. 

It’s in it’s final editing stage and should be available before the end of the year.

Through a note from an old colleague from the University of Kentucky, Kozo Saito, I learned that they have published Fujio Cho’s Legacy Lecture Notes.  Fujio Cho was President of Toyoto Motor Manufacturing Kentucky in the late 80’s through the 90’s and went on to become Chairman of the Toyota Motor Company.  I expect many fantastic tidbits of wisdom from these notes.

Quantum Profit Science

I’m learning more about Quantum Profit Science -  a different way to look at scheduling production in a work system that’s focused on scheduling profit instead of scheduling inventory or orders.

What I’ve learned so far is that if we can get away from the constraints of most current systems and set profit as a fixed and required output, then we can design a schedule that makes the most profitable, balanced schedule, increasing on-time deliveries, reducing costs, and improving operations. 

Most importantly, it focuses on what is the truth about the work that we’re doing. 

Most of our accounting systems today allow us to manipulate the numbers depending on who we’re trying to impress: 

• Productivity for the COO, 
• Financial strength for the bankers, and 
• Financial weakness for the IRS. 

This system delivers an un-manipulated truth so you can make better decisions.

In one example that I’ve seen, a company reached the same level of profit by producing less than half the previously required output. 

There is real potential here, and as I learn more about it, I’ll be sharing it more with some of my clients where I think it’ll make a huge difference for them. 

It’s also extremely affordable and it gets set up in just a couple of months instead of the year-long implementation that certain other IT programs require.  More to follow on this.

Pretty promising and exciting stuff.  I don't know how I'm going to get it done!

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

93 -Travel Update

My travel agency is a very small side-hustle.  I started it for a couple of reasons:

1. I love to travel

2. I was traveling a lot and wondered if I could offset some costs with Travel Agent commissions.  It’s also a fantastic tax shelter.

3. I want to work with travel companies like cruise lines, hotel chains, and airlines in my lean and leadership consulting businesses


You’ll notice that I didn’t include “make lots of money.”

Still, to learn the business, you have to DO the work.  I have booked a couple of dozen vacations for people - mostly cruises, but several land vacations for people.  I find it fun but it’s pretty time consuming to do the research and then get the booking done and make sure every client is treated as if they are my only client.

Of course, this year destroyed the travel industry.  Cruise lines have been anchored since March.  One of the last things I did before the pandemic really hit was a Ship Inspection of the Disney Magic cruise ship in Port Canaveral.  Yes, travel advisors get to do ship inspections, which for us are really just familiarization tours of ships.

Because my business is small, I have not had to cancel a hundred vacations for people - just a few.  Yesterday I had to cancel a European river cruise for a client after Avalon Waterways, following global health guidelines, suspended all cruises through the end of the year.

Now, with United and American laying off 38,000 employees and Disney having to cut 28,000 mostly from California Theme Park operations,

And now with the early aid money gone, more and more suppliers of travel products on on the brink of disappearing.

But in speaking to both Carnival Cruise Lines and with Globus, which operates Avalon Waterways, and with people in general, there is still demand for traveling, but its bottled up right now.

What that tells me is that when the pandemic lifts, there’s going to be a huge opportunity to take advantage of that pent up demand. 

If you think you might want to get into this business, send me a message and I’ll walk you through how I did it and get you hooked up with my Host Agency - which really makes it easy and very cheap to get started.

For the next few travel updates, I’m thinking about profiling particular places or suppliers.  I can show some pictures and video if I do this through zoom.  I want to offer more luxury vacations, so I’ll likely focus on small ship and expedition cruising, river cruising globally, and some other places that offer unique experiences.

If you want to plan a vacation for late 2021 or 2022, they are all booking now and I’d be happy to find something special for you.  You can reach me at David.veech@clandestinetravel.com.

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

92 - Measuring Personal Performance

Do you ever have days where you have a plan to do something in particular, but when you start to work on it, you think maybe there's something different you should be doing?  That's me this morning.  More on that in a minute but first...

I want to wish my son, Matthew, a Happy 30th Birthday today.  He's on his way to Texas to get lost at big Bend National Park with his little brother.  I know they'll have a blast and I wish I could have gone with them. 

Other than that, I'm struggling a little with what to talk about this morning.  I had planned to wrap up a conversation I started last week about visual management systems.  The plan was to talk about measuring quality and cost at different tiers, but I made the mistake of stepping on the scale to measure my own weight and was disappointed with the result. 

Since the pandemic began, I've managed to gain about 15 pounds.  This despite being home most of the time; despite still walking a bunch.  Sadly, I've also eaten voraciously with lots of delivered and take out food - often not the healthiest.

Part of my initial strategy for this webcast was to mix up topics with leadership, lean thinking, travel, and personal development.  I've pretty much left off the personal development piece, so I think I'm going to fix that starting today and ask a big favor from all of you.

I'm going to set a target weight of 190 lbs.  I have an app that actually says my "normal" weight is between 132.2 and 178.6, but I in 2018 I managed to get as low as 186 and I thought I looked like I was a patient dying of something horrible.  What I will ask of you is encouragement and accountability.

Just like with what you measure at work, you have results metrics and process metrics.  I usually use weight loss as an example of the difference.  My target weight is set so that's my result metric.  I don't expect to hit that target for about 6 months.  So I need an intermediate target that will make this more manageable. 

The intermediate target is 1.5 pounds per week.  So I'll get on the scale every Friday and check to see if I've lost my 1.5 pounds.  But that's not a process metric, it's still an after-the-fact result metric.  If all I do is weigh myself, I can't see making much progress - same applies at work.

The process metric involves how I plan to lose this weight.  I don't ever stick to fad diets, so the rule is simply, consume fewer calories and burn more calories.  Eat Less.  Move more.

So I'm working on the details of those daily targets, particularly with walking because I want to get back to my half-marathon challenge as soon as the pandemic is over.

Help me stick to it, please.  I've done this 3 times before in private.  I know exactly what works, but the mind games work hard on me so I really think I need your help this time around.

Thanks in advance!

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

91 - Integral Leadership

Good morning.

Welcome to October.  We’re entering the 8th month of the pandemic.  People and businesses have found thousands of new ways to work, but we’re still struggling to stay afloat.  American and United are laying off thousands of workers today since new aid packages are still stalled in congress. 

Congress needs fixing, so I’m going to encourage you all to vote against those in both the house and the senate who have been there too long.  I’ll let you decide what “too long” means.  A lot of people cry out for term limits, but we the people have always controlled the length of the terms of our elected leaders.  We have the chance to limit terms with every election.  Please vote next month.  I plan to take advantage of early voting to avoid crowds. 

Now, let me get back to what this time is supposed to be for…elevating your performance.

I started this series on July first.  The theme for July was Love, and I tried to bring that focus into the topics I shared and the way I shared them.  In August, the theme was Learn, and last month it was Let Go.

Love, Learn, and Let go are the three critical decisions leaders need to make to drive their behavior in the workplace.  Love is the decision to be a servant leader and place the needs of your people above your own.  Learn is the decision to be a Level-5 Leader, focusing on developing people for future responsibilities.  Let Go is the decision to lead through Short-Interval Leadership, where you’ve fully empowered people, but stay engaged with them to Challenge them, Support them, Correct them, and Encourage them through gemba walks and management by walking around and through effective visual management systems so they will have the information they need close at hand to allow them to make better decisions.

Once I learned all the stuff behind these three decisions and summarized them, I built them into a new leadership model that I call the Integral Leadership Model.  I wrote about it for the first time in my book “Leadersights:  Creating great leaders who create great workplaces.”  Here I organized these into overlapping zones to indicate that leaders need to be operating in all zones at once, rather than progressing from one to the other.  That’s what I mean by Integral in the Integral Leadership Model.

But there is a fourth zone I discovered, or that I realized was very real for us.  It involves charismatic leaders.  I studied what attracts us to charismatic leaders and concluded that they make us feel connected through their confidence and certainty when they talk to us.  The fourth decision leaders need to make is to Connect with others. 

Connect is the theme for us this month.  This month, I’ve built a schedule that will allow me to focus on making progress on a new book, but I’ll tie all of these into this general theme of Connecting.  I hope you find it useful.

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