Zen and the Art of Manufacturing – Episode 4 ft. Jesse DePriest

Transcript

Bryan Sapot (00:05)

Hi, and welcome to the Zen and the Art of Manufacturing podcast. I’m Bryan Sapot VP of Smart Factory Solutions at Nulogy. And today I have with me Jesse DePriest of 5L Performance Group. Jesse, how you doing?

Jesse DePriest (00:18)

Good, Bryan Happy Wednesday.

Bryan Sapot (00:21)

I guess you’re not a stranger to folks that listen to this podcast, but ⁓ maybe give us like a quick overview of yourself and 5L Performance Group and what you guys do.

Jesse DePriest (00:31)

Thank you, sir. The Zen and Art of Manufacturing is a beautiful title, 100%. We need more Zen and Art manufacturing to make you make places of work and really do good work and improve our processes. And that’s what we’re born to do. The 5L Performance Group is a business coaching and consultancy here in Omaha, Nebraska. Built on the pillar is a simple leadership framework. If I can share it really fast, 5L stand for first is love. We got to love our people, love our customers, love our product, which just means we got to deeply care about that. And because we care so much, we’ll listen to our people, to our customers, what’s going on and how we can create value. And then we’ll learn from that listening. So then we have the authority to lead and then employ all those things that are lean. So we are in Omaha, Nebraska. I’m a lean six, six month black belt, spent most of my career in manufacturing. But this is the work that I’ve been we’ve been called to do is to help leaders and their teams do their work better. And we’re approaching it with that framework. So thanks for having me, Bryan. It’s ⁓ real pleasure. Thank you.

Bryan Sapot (01:39)

Yeah, thanks for thanks for doing this again. I really appreciate it. ⁓ So I guess that the reason why we wanted to do this again is because like, yes, Zen in the art of manufacturing and you you have a strong manufacturing background, but really like managing, you know, like what’s your company operating system and managing your OPEX really cuts across all types of companies, you know, and you guys don’t just work with manufacturers. But, you know, what we wanted to talk about was kind of that. that playbook and how you help people instill these processes in their organizations and the benefits they get from it. ⁓ So maybe start there on what is the OPEX management strategy and that kind of thing.

Jesse DePriest (02:30)

Yeah, well, I would say every company has a management system of some kind, whether you can articulate it ⁓ as a system or not, maybe a different question. And there are different models out there for enterprises to grab ahold of to build a good, robust, coherent, understandable management system. The 5L Performance Group prescribes to this basic idea. And I think if we look at any management system, has some ⁓ similarities around these components. The first component is leadership. So we need to have good leadership in terms of how we’re influencing and coaching and developing people. ⁓ But the other main lever here, there’s five levers, is ⁓ strategy development and deployment. How do we define strategy and how do we deploy it? Sitting on the other side of that is the daily management and governance. So another lever there in our management system is how do we manage the day? How do I know we’re performing to standard? and how do I know we’re meeting customer needs today? The difference here between strategy, development and deployment is we’re defining how we’ll create value for tomorrow. And in daily management governance, we’re defining how we create value today. The thing that then stands between those two worlds is the work of process improvement and problem solving. So that’s the fourth lever. So we have leadership, have strategy, development and deployment, we have process improvement and problem solving, and we have the lever of… daily management, and governance. The fifth lever I call enabling elements. It’s all the common inputs to any system or process. If you think about your fishbone diagram that we’ve been taught, here’s inputs and data, the machines and tools, the materials, the environment, the people, and the measurement systems. So those as common inputs to any system also determines how well that is done. So we look at that model around those five levers. think about each of those levers have specific keys. And then we can have a more objective assessment about how healthy our management system is. And then we can prescribe ⁓ things in there to make it better. So I think kind of where we wanted to go today, Bryan, is talk a little bit about the Lean Daily Management System and governance lever of that, right? And how do we coach and develop leaders or something in that vein? Is that kind of the interest of your audience? Do think today?

Bryan Sapot (05:04)

Yeah, I think so. But also, I ask a, I want to ask a different question first, right? So like we have these different areas that you laid out. When you start working with a company, how do you figure out what’s the most important area to focus on first?

Jesse DePriest (05:08)

Yeah. ⁓ Well, there is a bit of discovery through some good questions that we’ll ask the client about what’s the current reality of their business, what’s their vision, where are they going, where are they struggling, and we can extract good data from that. ⁓ In addition to that, 5L Performance Group has an assessment. We call it the Elevate Assessment because it starts with the letter L and build on our L themes. But the Elevate Assessment is built around that management ⁓ structure that I just described. So there are five levers. Each lever has five keys, and we ask questions that determine the maturity of each of those keys and those levers on a scale of one to five. So as a result of that, we have a better diagnostic, a more objective diagnostic with the client to say, here is the area within your management system that might need the most help. So let’s start with those kind of things. just adds more, I’ll say, objective view on where we should start. Because otherwise we have to go see, we’ve got to spend a lot of time, and we should probably still do that to really understand where a client might need the most help in building and improving their management system, but early on that diagnostic can be really helpful.

Bryan Sapot (06:39)

Yeah, it makes sense. Is there like one area that most companies really are deficient in?

Jesse DePriest (06:44)

That’s a really good question. You know what depends, like everything. I will say typically what a lot of management systems will do is they start with strategy at the executive level. And in those environments, we’re setting strategy, but sometimes it’s ill informed because we really don’t understand the current state of the business, right? We don’t have good enough data to really understand how our processes are performing today. But in the other, I’ll say, ⁓ I have of other models or what I’ve seen is maybe a deficiency is that we never leave the executive team and never move beyond strategy. Most companies, I think, are lacking a capability in process improvement and problem solving. There’s no coherent standard by which everybody in the enterprise makes change. ⁓ To some degree, there’s components within the link data management system and that kind of stuff. And maybe just one more comment around that is we tend to put too much emphasis on technology to save us, right? Like we have a problem we want to do better, so let’s go get a new gizmo of technology and fix that. We need technology. We absolutely do. And it can be an enabler to growth. But we’ve got to think, process, people, and create that structure, I think, in order for a technology to really have a big impact. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (08:09)

Yeah, that makes sense. The strategy being communicated down the org chart is a common problem that I see across a bunch of businesses that I’ve been involved in, especially the bigger the company, right?

Jesse DePriest (08:20)

Yeah, The lack of alignment between the executive leadership team to management to frontline and is everybody aligned in their work and is there a line of sight between the work that I do and how it contributes to these common shared outcomes that we are pursuing in our strategy? 100 % agree. That absolutely is typically a deficiency in lot of management systems that we see. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (08:46)

So maybe that is a good segue into the lean daily management ⁓ process. Is that one of the ways that you instill, so like you have strategy from a corporate perspective, we set objectives and goals either on a quarterly or yearly basis that have to be achieved. Is that one of the ways they get communicated down or not?

Jesse DePriest (09:07)

No, absolutely, if we can align the work that we’re doing every day, but we’re creating value for today, but we’re also gonna make change, so we can create value for tomorrow. And those worlds need to be in concert with each other, not in conflict. But we do have to step outside of the day, of managing the day to work on the business versus in it, right? That’s kind of the difference, right? daily management working in it versus working on a strategy and process improvement, making improvement. ⁓ So daily management system, ⁓ I see it as it’s a system. Therefore, it is comprised of processes that work together to create that system, right? And it’s the interaction of those different processes and methods that determines how healthy your daily management system is. There’s much we can talk about that. And when we start, look at let’s pick the critical few parts of that system and get them built and we can grow from there. For me, those things are we need to have some consistent, regular way of engaging the people. So team huddles. Weekly reviews, right? Whatever that meeting cadence is, it’s where the people come together and have a dialogue about the work, what we’re doing, what the priorities are, and getting aligned to that. So we have to have a huddle. Let’s just call it that. What is the meeting huddle? What’s it look like? We secondly need to have some visual management. We need to have a scorecard that measures our process today that informs if we are meeting the standard or not. A fun question that I like to ask when we’re doing initial engagements with teams is to… especially when we’re in the factory and we’re talking with process teams and say, how do you know if you had a good day? You know, and oftentimes in the untrained teams, the question will be, well, as long as no one yelled at me and my machine worked okay and I didn’t have any frustrations, I had a good day. But it’s not very well informed about here’s what our goal was and either we met it or we didn’t. And if we didn’t, it’s not a judgment of you, it’s something that happened in our process that prevented that.

Bryan Sapot (11:11)

Mm-hmm.

Jesse DePriest (11:22)

but having a more objective way to measure the work we’re doing relative to some standard. And then we know if we have problems or not, right? So the daily huddle needs to be aligned to a scoreboard that the team can see and understand. I like this phrase that a huddle without a visual management is just a social call. And visual management, a scoreboard without a huddle is just wall art. We need both, right?

Bryan Sapot (11:45)

You Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (11:52)

And it becomes the heart and soul of the team. It’s where we interact. It’s where we talk. It’s where we see problems together so we can solve problems together. So then that means we have to then the team needs to have some method through which to make improvement. So when we do work and it doesn’t meet our standard, we have a problem. How do we engage in that to get to the root cause and solve and fix our process so that we can do good work and we can win? And we leave the day knowing we want or not, right? It’s like if you and I are watching your, what’s your favorite sports team, Bryan? ⁓ team or support you like to watch football.

Bryan Sapot (12:23)

No. I like cycling these days. So like Tour de France and that kind of stuff.

Jesse DePriest (12:28)

You’re like, oh, okay. Well, I suppose the 200 Frons is a multi-day event, right? And you watch it little bit one day, a little bit the next day. And when you turn on that event for the first time and you’re seeing what’s going on, what’s the first thing you look for? leaderboard or something.

Bryan Sapot (12:44)

Well, yeah, it’s who’s in the lead. So like on the stage, like how far is the breakaway out from the Peloton, who’s in it, that kind of stuff, yeah.

Jesse DePriest (12:54)

Yeah, exactly. Same thing if we’re watching a football game. We step away for a minute to go, you know, go to bathroom, get some popcorn and a soda and we come back and we’ve gone for a few minutes. The first thing we’re looking at is the scoreboard, right? Why? We want to know how we’re doing. I think it’s imperative that our teams need scoreboards too for that very reason. Otherwise, I’m just doing work. I’m just doing work and I don’t know if we’re on track, off track. No one’s ever asked me a question about it. I just hope I can get through my day without someone yelling at me and I can avoid frustration. Right? Well, that’s a pretty low standard or expectation for what good work is. So back to the point, Lean Daily Management System has a couple of these components. The daily huddle or the meeting frequency, visual management, some component of a problem-solving or process improvement methodology. And in that environment, there needs to be some standard work for leaders. ⁓ What do I say? How do I engage? What are the things I’m asking to to do a couple of things, most notably for me in that environment, it’s a ripe opportunity for coaching. My job as a leader is to transfer the critical thinking about the work and transfer ownership about the outcomes and the tasks and how they’re doing it. If I just show up and tell the team what to do all the time, that’s called firefighting and I’m being in a hero and it’s really not a great leadership environment to be in, right? So in that interaction, leader standard work. would include how the leader is engaging in that, what they’re asking, what they’re looking at, and for what reasons. So there’s more we could say about the Lean Daily Management system, Bryan, but those are some of the basic components that I see. How about you? What’s your experience with that?

Bryan Sapot (14:40)

So it’s very similar. I’m, you know, obviously I get exposed to this from a manufacturing lean perspective, but then also from another, you know, business operating system. So like the Rockefeller habits or EOS or the great game of business by Jack stack, who’s, you know, manufacturing companies. And what’s really interesting is the elements of this are all the same, right? We have a regular meeting cadence. We’re looking at metrics. We all know what they are. We know what they mean. We know how to influence them.

Jesse DePriest (14:54)

Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (15:09)

We can tell if we had a good day or a bad day. ⁓ And we problem solve either in that meeting or other meetings. You know, they’re all very similar. Right. ⁓ The challenge seems to be always like whether it’s in businesses that I’ve, you know, owned or, you know, worked with from a manufacturing perspective or other things or been a part of. What data do you track? a lot of people are, and it’d be interesting to know your philosophy on this. Like, do you start out with a lot of data and then pare back to what you need? Or do you start out with a little data and then start adding when you feel like there’s gaps in these different huddles?

Jesse DePriest (15:52)

Yes. Here’s the best answer for many consultants is it depends. No, it’s just a joke. I would default to start simple in the critical field and build from there. It’s always a bit of a hypothesis to say, well, what do we need to measure? It depends. What are we trying to do? Where are the biggest problem areas? What are we trying to, what outcomes are we trying to?

Bryan Sapot (15:54)

Hahaha Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jesse DePriest (16:20)

and what would be the best way to measure that, right? So, and in picking those critical few metrics and measurables that best inform that work is what we’re trying to figure out. That’s the work of management, right? ⁓ When we’re doing process design workshops, we coach clients about measurables from two different views, the outcomes and the inputs, right? So the lagging measurables are the outcomes of things we can go back and measure after the work is done. And then the leading measurable is about as a function of the inputs. It’s like quality control versus quality assurance. We get quality control by inspecting the product after it’s been made. We get quality assurance by inspecting the process to keep the process in control. If we believe we have standard work and we do that work in that best known way and then measure it, then the outcome should be good, right? So we need kind of two, both measurables. measure how we do the work and the outcome. But we can get lost in the forest and data and metrics too. And this is finding the balance that best informs our work without overburdening and overwhelming people with too much information. It just becomes noise. You know, the traditional approach on this is safety, quality, delivery, cost, and then people, however we want to do that, teamwork and play experience and that sort of thing. So, I’ve seen really cool ways where we can incorporate an excellent, simple, lean daily management system, where we’re monitoring safety, quality, delivery, productivity, because I don’t think cost really resonates super well at the front line, but productivity does, and then teamwork with people. So we’re keeping our finger on that with really simple data, but over here we have this process improvement methodology. I love the improvement coaching CADA. And in that environment, there is one or two critical measurables that inform the work of improvement. And I’ll just finish with this comment that say, when we’re focusing on improvement around driving one measurable to be better, it forces us to fundamentally change how we do the work, change and improve the process. And when we do that, all those other measurables get better too. So. I think we just, that’s the art, the art of manufacturing. The Zenon art of manufacturing is to find the balance of data that we need to have. And sorry, I said last point before, but I just thought of something else to say, that is many times our critical processes don’t have any data. We’re not measuring anything, and that’s a big mess because we can’t even begin the CADA until we have a way to measure that critical process. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (19:07)

Yeah, and your point about it being a hypothesis is very true because you don’t know what you don’t know until you start measuring something, right? Like, simple example that we run through is like, we want to be more efficient. Okay, great. Like, you want to start measuring different things. Most people, when you look at a system like ours, you look at downtime and performance, right? But

Jesse DePriest (19:14)

Right. Right. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (19:33)

And it’s like, okay, what measurements should we look at? What data? Well, you start with downtime and performance, but you may find out that it’s something like, ⁓ we’re down a lot, but it actually has nothing to do with the machines. It’s like, we don’t have enough forklifts to be able to deliver raw material to run the lines. Right. And it, it changes over time and it is a bit of a, it’s the scientific method, right? I mean, it’s, you know, you have a hypothesis, you collect some data, you test it, make some changes and then round around we go.

Jesse DePriest (19:46)

Exactly. Yeah, it is hypothesis because the measurable, the thing that I’m measuring may not sufficiently inform the work, right? So we’ve got to, if it’s not resonating, it doesn’t drive improvement, doesn’t inspire us to think critically about how we’re doing the work, then it’s probably the wrong measurable. It’s too lagging, it’s too big or whatever. ⁓ And I found ⁓ a lot of traction. around if we have a process and we have some way to get the data, just get a flip chart and make a run chart. Start creating a process behavior chart. we’re putting dots on it. The horizontal axis is the time, hours, days, months, weeks, whatever, and the vertical axis is whatever it is we’re measuring. And then just start plotting dates on a grid or date data on a grid. That informs the information around the current state. We can see variation of what’s going on. And then I’ve also seen some really cool ideas where We have a process for measuring it. when we have gaps like town, they take downtime, for example, like you said. Well, there were some pretty standard root causes about why we had downtime. It’s because I didn’t have material, because the weather was bad, because I didn’t have enough labor, because the machine is broke. And every time I have downtime, we could just note the downtime here and then just check the box of the root cause that we normally experience. And if we collect that data over time, then now we’ve got some good root cause data around how we might improve our process. It becomes more evident what we should do to make it better, right? Yeah. That’s good.

Bryan Sapot (21:33)

Yeah. Can you give me the, give me the high level. So that’s like a good segue into problem solving, right? As part of this daily management system, like give me the high level on Cata, right? And how you use that to solve problems.

Jesse DePriest (21:50)

Yeah. First comment is building on the Lean Daily Management System. Another part of that, within our huddles, our team meetings, there needs to be alignment at each level of leadership. So if the frontline, the value-creating team, and their supervisor is meeting daily in front of their task, right, what is the manager level doing? They’re showing up in that conversation, but there needs to be in the next level of leadership so that when the process team runs into a root cause or an obstacle that is bigger than them. They can’t solve, they need a way to escalate it. And so the management team has to have a routine and a schedule. So I have a place to put it, right? And then they have the same thing at maybe at the tier three or tier four level, there’s an executive level team that maybe meets a little less frequently, but it’s very structured and consistent and regular so that the manager team can then also escalate things. Anyhow, we can cascade. what’s going on and now we’re aligned and doing really good work. So that’s a really important point too about the Lean Daily Management system. But I would say I have found that the Improvement Coaching CADA is probably one of the simplest, most powerful ways to get a process team engaged in the work of improvement. It requires that we allocate some time to it. And if we have these conversations on our Lean Daily Management system, we can add just a little bit more content in that conversation around the CADA that will begin to drive improvement. And then also connect with those other tiers of leadership. So for the folks who may not know what the CADA is, it’s a practice routine. It was born out of a study of Toyota by Mike Rother, and he wrote the book, The Toyota CADA. And the practice routine is the practice of scientific thinking in the real world of work. So we’re going to improve a process while also learning and building muscles. of how to improve a process, how to do problem solving. And the way it works simply is first, name the process that has to be improved. Because there multiple processes that a team may own. Which one of those processes needs the most help? That’s a way to think of that. Second then is how you’re to measure it, both the outcome and the input. But if we don’t know, we just pick the outcome. ⁓ Could be safety, quality, speed, lead time. What are lots of different things we can measure? Pick one. What do we think is the most important? And then the leader needs to define what excellence is. From that perspective of that measurable, what would be excellent for this process in that measurable and these outcomes? Once we have that, now we can set a challenge or we can define the ideal state of what this process should do. Then we come back and say, well, where are we now? So that’s daily management governance. We’re measuring your process today. And in that conversation, really no room for assumptions or opinions here. Just tell me the truth, measure it, don’t judge the people. And if we don’t know, say we don’t know and, okay, fine, let’s go collect the data. But now I know where I am and now I know where excellence is. And typically that is, well, not typically, that is the ideal way to define a problem, the difference between what is versus what should be. And what should be is defined by our standard of excellence. But that’s a big gap. Typically, when we’re starting, that gap in performance oftentimes can be a big gap and it will scare people who are not sure how we’re going to do it, don’t even know what to begin. So we have a conversation with the team and say, here’s where we are, here’s where we’re going, let’s set a target and something that we could achieve in the next whatever period of time, 30, 60 days, maybe less than that, maybe two weeks. And the team needs to have a voice in setting the target as something that they believe is achievable and reasonable and feasible to do. So we have it. current state, where we’re going, set a target. Now we’ve defined a smaller problem, and that problem is something we believe could be done. Then the team lists all the obstacles and root causes and things that are preventing them from getting to that next level of performance. We have a discussion and prioritize what obstacle to work on. We move that obstacle over there and we start doing some PDSA. Well, what might we do about that obstacle? What changes do we need to make to eliminate that obstacle? And that whole conversation is all with the team. And frankly, this is the environment where the leader needs to change his behavior, her behavior, to not be coming in and command and controlling and telling them what to do. You ask the good questions that gets the people thinking critically about it, they’ll make a decision, they’ll figure it out, they’ll start making, taking action. And over time, done consistently, they will achieve that target condition. And now we’re driving process improvement that’s embedded right into the Lean Daily Management system. And it’s super powerful. ⁓ Really, really good. It’s important and critical though that as the team steps into that world, when they identify obstacles that they need help with and they escalate it, you better have a dang good, it’s almost like a macro end-on system, right? Where someone calls for help, you respond and help them and keep them informed about how we’re helping them with that. If they don’t feel that level of support when they escalate things, then that whole framework at the tier one level could fray.

Bryan Sapot (27:07)

That is a very good point. ⁓ We have two customers actually that did this really well and it helped with employee retention. So like they would have that level one meeting with the people out on the floor. They used to bring up issues and they would get escalated and they felt like they were never being listened to. ⁓ The reality was stuff was happening. It’s just like certain groups problems weren’t a big enough priority. And then what they started doing was publishing the stats on how many suggestions they got back that were escalated.

Jesse DePriest (27:31)

Right.

Bryan Sapot (27:36)

how many of them were actually solved, and that actually made the teams whose issues weren’t being solved feel better about the situation. It’s like, ⁓ like this got done, this got done. Yeah, exactly, they’re not ignoring us. So our stuff, when it’s big enough, will get done, right?

Jesse DePriest (27:45)

They are doing something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so we can start to imagine what that lean daily management system looks like at tier two. I need an intake system. I need a way to prioritize those. I need to make sure we’re flowing those problems through really well in the feedback loop, right? So if I’m a process team and I escalate an obstacle to there and they landed on their board and they do what they do and they come back and say, thank you, Jesse, for elevating that obstacle. We got it. It’s number 52 on the list and here’s why. we were working on these other higher priority things, because it might be a higher priority. Man, that’s OK. I would be OK with that. least you heard me. You’ve got it. I know you’ve got it. And I know what the expectations are. If I just never heard anything back from you ever, it’s like, it just goes into a black hole. It gets lost. And it’s like, well, never heard from those people anyway. So even the feedback to say, thank you, but we can’t do anything with that right now, that’s good too. We need to tell people that too.

Bryan Sapot (28:48)

Well, and gives you the opportunity. Now, you know it’s number 52 and it’s probably not going to get done for like a year. Maybe there’s something else you can do in the meantime to counteract whatever that obstacle is. Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (28:54)

Right? 100 % Dravo becomes a constraint then around the work that we could do to make improvements. Like, okay, well, I can’t have that gizmo or that thing that I’m asking for. What else might we do? Right? And going back to data and measurables at that tier two level, there needs to be good data and information about how that process is performing. What you just said is reflecting back to the enterprise, this is how many we took in, this is how many we resolved, here’s our completion rate. So that’s good data that helps inform how that whole system is performing. Really, really good example there.

Bryan Sapot (29:32)

people do that usually? Like what’s that managed in? Like sticky notes in a whiteboard or what have you? How do people do it well?

Jesse DePriest (29:37)

Sure. Well, I would say we can do really, really good work with just, yes, physical, tangible, sticky note, Kanban boards, right? We don’t need fancy technology to start, so start with that. ⁓ But recognizing that, especially in non-manufacturing environments, we have distributed remote workers, right, all working in a digital environment. we can create a con bond visual management board at Microsoft Teams or Lucidcharts or Miro or any of these other digital tools, londay.com, whatever little system you might have, employ that and put it to work. My observation, Bryan, and I’m no pro in Office 365, all I know is that there is a ton of capability in Office 365, especially like in Microsoft Teams that are untapped. And we just see. soft teams as a Zoom call channel. No, it’s way more than that. We can set up team, right, environments, create these combined workflows, feedback loops and chat channels. So even in a distributed remote work environment, we can do really good work with visual management systems that are in a digital environment, right? And that can be good. But someone’s got to build it. I think that’s probably the immediate obstacle when people don’t have it and they need it. They just need a dedicated resource that kind of knows how to do it and build it for you. But once you’re in, it’ll work great. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (31:01)

And somebody to run it. Yeah, like the non tech side like you were talking about, like somebody’s got to run it. They got to make sure that it gets done every week, like reporting all this stuff.

Jesse DePriest (31:13)

Yeah, before there, if you do have people that are kind of geographically centered in a factory or something like that, just get a couple pieces of flip chart paper, put them up on the wall, create your structure and start. And as you go about it, you’ll evolve and mature from there and get a little fancier. But don’t wait for the fancy to start. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (31:32)

Yeah, yeah, just start like a bias. Yeah, I don’t know if this is a lean thing, but I’ve always had a bias towards action. Like, let’s try something. Like, let’s not do analysis by paralysis. Like, let’s just, or the other way around. Like, we don’t need to plan that much. Let’s go try something and see if, see what results we get and then, you know, iterate on it, right?

Jesse DePriest (31:50)

Totally, totally. Because that becomes more of the style versus the principle, right? In terms of principles and certain techniques, we should stand like a lighthouse, right? In terms of the style, well, that’s fine. We can be like the tide flowing around that, right? So you want, you’re certain how we structure the Kanban or whatever else. The principle is make your work visual. Limit the whip, right? Have a way to prioritize. The way we do that,

Bryan Sapot (32:13)

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (32:18)

I’ll give you a method or a style that I like, but if you want to tweak that style for you, that’s cool. Do it. And that’s kind the experimentation to find a way that it evolved through that. the team really grabs on and does it really, really well. Yeah. You want to shift to a little bit around leadership, Bryan, or did you have something else you wanted to poke?

Bryan Sapot (32:37)

No, I do. I was actually thinking the same thing. Let’s talk a little bit about leadership and developing leaders.

Jesse DePriest (32:39)

Yeah, okay. I have a question and a thought maybe that could inspire our conversation for the few minutes we have left, right? That’d be all right. So here’s the question. First of all, I love asking this question when I’m doing a keynote or a breakout is to say, to raise your hand if you are 100 % confident calling yourself a leader.

Bryan Sapot (32:49)

Alright. Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (33:05)

Generally, most people don’t raise their hand because we’re humble and you don’t want to say that, right? ⁓ Then the second question is, can anyone be an inspiring leader? Can anyone be an inspiring leader? What do you think, Bryan? What’s view on that? know I’m catching you off guard.

Bryan Sapot (33:28)

So I think anyone can be an inspiring leader. I think so. I think you can learn that ⁓ for sure.

Jesse DePriest (33:31)

Yeah, we can learn that. And if that’s true, then we can train it, we can build it, we can reinforce it. And then therefore, maybe people can see, can have influence on another human being in a really great way. And therefore, I can give myself the privilege of calling myself a leader. I know people have responded to that more of a humility thing, like I don’t want to be the guy. But we reserve that the thinking behind that, I think, is, well, I can’t give myself the credit as being a leader, because leaders is for something we do to transforms the world. If it isn’t some big grandiose transformation thing, then it’s really not leadership. And I say that’s wrong. Leadership boils down to human interaction, one to one, eyeball to eyeball conversation, where I’m trying to articulate where we’re going and get you to see that and you to come along on this ride with me, right? And then in that work, I need you to do some things for us, right? You need to transfer the the critical thinking to you and they need to transfer the ownership of accountability for that work. So you can grow and develop too in that, right? But that influence can be something as simple as just giving somebody recognition when they’re working hard and doing the right thing to say, I see you. Thank you for what you’re doing. It’s having an impact. It’s making us feel good and we appreciate it. And a simple recognition like that, that’s influence and we can move people forward really, really well. So that’s just one thought around people overcoming their humility about being an inspirational leader. It’s just like, if you can just connect with somebody like that and give them recognition and once in a while probably some correction, then we’re leaders. It doesn’t need to be reserved for the CEO with some grandiose vision, right? Even frontline team leaders and supervisors should have a vision about what their process should be and how their team behaves and define a standard of excellence around that. and coach and train and reinforce everything to achieve that. ⁓ I like to hear, so my point is, again, it’s just around being an inspirational leader. I’ll go really fast, but there’s this framework that I learned about and added to that I kinda like, that there’s kinda four buckets of work. The first is vision and articulating that vision, crafting and articulating it, aligning and persuading people to that work, ⁓ being a good example of the behaviors that we need and want, and then coaching. So if we think about, there’s a spectrum of our influence, whether we’re either inspiring people or we’re inferiorating people. And we’re all ebb and flowing in our leadership practices and those four buckets of work between inspiring and inferiorating. And so it’s just a way for us to self-reflect and say, am I being the best leader I can be for my team today? In terms of visioning and articulation, An inferior leading will be short-term pessimistic, inconsistent, changing all the time and all about me and my ego and my success, right? And inspiring leaders can be big picture and optimistic and consistent and about shared values, right? So we can see that spectrum. Around aligning and persuading, an inferior leading would be random assignments based on politics and personalities, telling people what to do all the time, that kind of thing. An inspiring leader will be more aligning people to their strengths, listening and learning and making sure people are doing what we need to do and we have alignment. Being a good example, obviously, and if you’re relating, would be a hypocrite. Do this, but I’m not going to do it, right? And do as I say, not as I do. But an inspiring leader recognizes that their influence goes more than just what I say, but also how I show up and how I’m behaving. And I need to be. being exemplar to our values and behaviors. So just the way we carry ourselves. Am I speaking in a confident tone? I, right, being, I’ll say confident and courageous and with a positive tone in reinforcing the behaviors we need and want. And then the last thing, being a coach and a mentor. know, the inferior leader, inferior rating leader is one who tells all the time, micromanages. constantly criticizing and judging people. First is the inspiring leader is one who’s asking me really good questions and challenges me. It says you’re capable of more. Here’s some questions that you need to think about in your work because we want to grow you and develop you, right? And that’s what a good coach would do. So it’s just, it’s an interesting framework. Bryan about in this work of link dealing management and creating, you know, humane work environments where continuous improvement and OPEX can thrive. a lot of this work boils down to leadership and how well are we engaging people in good authentic ways to build people up and do good work. What do you think? Does that framework resonate with you just in terms of like visioning, articulating, persuading, being a good example and coaching?

Bryan Sapot (38:42)

It does. Yeah. I actually recognized a lot of my faults as a younger person in that list of things. ⁓ A lot of telling and that in the past. So, yeah, I think it’s a really good framework for ⁓ for what a leader should be. So the question is. No.

Jesse DePriest (39:05)

Yeah. None of us is perfect, Bryan, right? We’re growing and developing, getting better and better at this. But man, I have bad days where I get mad and scared. And then I default to telling people what to do because I’m impatient. It’s like, hold on, man. You need go to the other end of the spectrum, right? Because you’re tearing people down. I know you’re upset and mad and scared right now. But your influence is not effective in this moment, right? And it’s that self-reflection so we can practice and get better. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (39:34)

The challenge I’ve always had there is how long do you try to influence, persuade, question to get somebody to see maybe a different way of doing something that is proven to be better over a long period of time before you’re just like, you kind of just need to do it this way.

Jesse DePriest (39:56)

I really need you to meet our standard. Yeah, and I think that’s part of a leadership skill is to coaching is to call out the best in people, right? And in our enterprise, we need standards of performance and behavior, and those standards need to be well articulated and very explicit and clear. I think most of the time or a lot of times the biggest

Bryan Sapot (40:00)

Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (40:25)

root cause is leaders just haven’t articulated the expectations clearly. You haven’t told me, or if you have told me, it’s too vague. frankly, I don’t think you’re serious because you said this is the expectation, but I see people all around that not meeting it you’re not doing anything about it. So it must not be true, right? Like our standard is defined by the worst thing we’re willing to tolerate. So what are you willing to tolerate in terms of performance and behavior? But if we can be really clear about what those standards are, and they should be high, we should set high standards.

Bryan Sapot (40:29)

Yeah. consistency.

Jesse DePriest (40:55)

Then it’s like, I’m to do everything I can to bring you to the standard, everything I can. And at some point, if ⁓ it’s an attitude issue or whatever, it’d be like, either meet our standard or go find something else to do. And that’s OK if you don’t want to. We’ll help you find something else to do in a really great way. But here, at XYZ Acme Company, these are our expectations. And this is what good looks like here. We want you to be here. ⁓ Again, it comes back to voice down to the leadership interaction. How can we have a courageous, candid, loving conversation with somebody about that stuff? And it takes time and energy, right? And maybe that’s why we don’t really do it because we see it as like, that’s going to take too long or it’s too scary or tolerating it isn’t easier out than getting everybody to meet it.

Bryan Sapot (41:47)

Yeah, it’s a it all the pieces now that you described that they fit together to keep you from kind of the bad habits. Like if you have the standards, if you have clearly articulated expectations and goals and like all the other things that you laid out, it has this framework to keep both the people you’re leading and the leader kind of on track. Right. ⁓ And you know, it’s interesting. I was talking to somebody this morning, somebody that I work with and

Jesse DePriest (42:11)

Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (42:16)

kind of about the same topic and there’s always like freedom for individuality, individuality and other people to add things and improve the processes, right? And he had an analogy of it’s like jazz. It’s not like classical music where you have to play every single note the way it is defined. It’s like jazz. These are the standards. He called it like a cue sheet. I’m not, I’m not a musician, but it’s like

Jesse DePriest (42:24)

You’re saying. Yeah!

Bryan Sapot (42:39)

You go over here, but you always come back. You go over here, but you always come back, right? There’s some guidelines, but there’s a lot of wiggle room within the guidelines, right? For people to contribute and improve things, right?

Jesse DePriest (42:51)

Yeah, that’s a great analogy in the work we’re trying to do is like we have standards, we’re doing work, you know, in terms of problem solving or process improvement, the principle that without a standard there can be no improvement, Because everyone’s just doing it their own way and there is no structure at all. But if we can create that standard work and everyone’s doing it that way, now we can be creative to find new and better ways to do it, And in the Lean Daily Management system, that system then builds respect for people so you can show up and be your own self in that, but there are guidelines and structures to enable it, right? So the style, again, can be, have it flow, but it’s structured and there are some standards around that. No, I love that analogy, it’s really good. There’s still a rhythm. Right? Even though someone spins out in the jazz thing, but they come back, there’s still a rhythm. We’re sticking to the rhythm. And I think that’s a good lesson too, in the daily management system, you’ve got to be consistent with the rhythm. Like if we’re going to do a daily huddle at seven o’clock every day, then you better do a daily huddle every day, seven o’clock, and get good and efficient. And it doesn’t need to take two hours. The first time we do it, maybe 20, 30, 40 minutes or something, but we can get that 15 or 20 minutes. And now we’re cooking. And then the styles we can have a flow around that, but there’s a rhythm that we always come back to. always come back to. I love that analogy. Really good. We need more jazz musicians in lean maybe.

Bryan Sapot (44:16)

Yeah, it was really good. ⁓ Yeah. What the other thing that’s just so interesting to me is just like, I know that there was a time period where lean was in fashion across all industries, right? Like, I mean, they did it big time in hospitals and you know, things like that. And it seems to have kind of faded a little bit, but the concepts are just, like I said, they’re, they’re the same, like in well run businesses. This is what happens. It doesn’t matter if you’re making car parts or you’re building software or you’re a marketing firm, the concepts here apply, right?

Jesse DePriest (44:54)

Yeah, well, I think that’s curious that you, from your observation, it sounds like it’s maybe not as prevalent as it was. ⁓ Maybe we’re just not using the same vocabulary, but we’re still striving and trying to do the same things. That’s fine. That’s right. And people that were doing that work were very vocal about lean in healthcare and that kind of stuff. And I know a number of people that were doing that. And because it was new in this new industry, there was a lot of discussion around it.

Bryan Sapot (45:10)

I think we are. Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (45:24)

My guess is that that work is still going on, ⁓ maybe using different vocabulary, but the essence is the same. We’re just trying to make improvement, make processes better, ⁓ But we’re seeing it in construction, healthcare, maybe even education now. A lot of service industries, law firms, financial institutions, these principles can be applied to any work because we need to be able to see our work as a process. There’s an input, there’s output. we transform the thing through our process, we just look at that and say, how do we measure it? And then what would be great, right? In terms of speed and quality and safety, and then figuring out how we improve that process so that we can get more efficient and create better outcomes, right? It doesn’t matter where I’m processing a mortgage at a mortgage company or a loan at a bank or, I don’t know, process impacts right there.

Bryan Sapot (46:20)

Tax returns, whatever. Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (46:23)

in processing a patient in hospital, all of our work is a process. So we first got to see it as a process, see where the gaps are and then make improvement, right? So again, coming back to the point of what is our standard coherent method by which everybody is doing that, right? And again, there’s structure around the problem solving approach. So getting everybody trained and doing that in that practice is, I think the work of continuous improvement professionals to create that organizational capability for problem solving that is standard and consistent, right? And it becomes its own routine, right? Yeah, yeah. And the system gets a little healthier across the board. Yeah. Cool.

Bryan Sapot (47:04)

Yeah, I mean, we’re kind of to the end of our hour. Like I could keep going. Like we didn’t get to the developing leaders part, but we alluded to it enough. Like you have to teach the people the techniques and things that you outlined.

Jesse DePriest (47:09)

Yeah. Yeah, well, if I can just comment on it really fast, like with. We create the environment to develop leaders through a lean daily management practice and a process improvement problem solving method. Again, I would default to the CODEC as a place to start, because in that environment now the leader has a role, a very specific role, and we can coach and train them about what they should be saying and doing in that environment that makes them better leaders, right? So there’s leadership development. Oftentimes we think of it as we’re going to send people to some big leadership development curriculum and go to school and come back. I’d rather develop you in the real world of work as a component of these systems, clean daily management and the CADA process improvement system, right? Because I can go observe a leader in that and give them tips and tricks like reinforce good things and coach that, you know, correct the bad things and Frankly, the kata prescribes a leadership behavior that overcomes firefighting. It is a really great antidote to the undesirable leadership behavior of firefighting where we make assumptions, jump to conclusions, and just tell people what to do. Well, you’re not being a very effective leader in that. You’re not developing your people either. So use the script, man. Here’s the script. Practice that. And as you get better, you can adapt from there. ⁓ But I think developing leaders is fundamentally part of what lean is, its purpose is to develop leaders through problem solving. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (48:53)

And teaching, yeah, teaching that process too. It’s interesting how many people don’t kind of know that process and having it formalized is really important in pretty much every business, in every business. Yeah.

Jesse DePriest (49:05)

There’s a learner and coach interaction in the kata that, be more technically correct, it’s the improvement coaching kata. It’s the improvement kata because we’re actually in a process. It’s a coaching kata because we’re going to build an improved leadership too in that practice. So they go hand in hand together for sure. Anyway, it’s my favorite jam. Yeah.

Bryan Sapot (49:28)

I know. I know it is. That’s why we talked about it because I’d be a good one.

Jesse DePriest (49:31)

There’s a lot more we can pick up higher level tools and lean and all that kind of stuff. man, you want to get started fast and get the team engaged, we can make some pretty transformative work through those practices pretty quick. Yeah. Awesome.

Bryan Sapot (49:35)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well Jesse, thank you. Where can people find you on the internet if they want to reach out?

Jesse DePriest (49:52)

You can find us at 5LPerformance.com, pretty straightforward. 5L, the number five, the letter L, PerformanceGroup.com. Okay, you can come and see us there. Yeah, thank you, Bryan. You make me much success in your work. We want to keep loving the people and improving the process, okay? Keep striving.

Bryan Sapot (50:04)

Alright. Yeah, thanks. Yes we do.