Lessons

Lesson Info

Hot Seat: Susan Judd

Okay, we're ready for you. Yes, absolutely isn't season. All right. Hello there maybe susan can also start off by just reminding us of you know where where your business lies, what size it is and all of that yeah I work for a small manufacturing facility and michigan we designed tooling for automotive and pretty much everyone in the business has been in the business for about twenty years so we've been going through over the last twenty years lean six sigma but what I realized today is are this week I don't really know lean and six sigma like I thought I did there's way do constantly have meetings but nothing like what we've learned today and what's happening with our company is we are tripling and size right now with the same people and the same the system that worked for us last year is not working for us at all right now where laid on deliveries we continue to take more work in sometimes by our customers who like what we did last year but now where because of timing and quality we c...

an't meet that with what we have currently yes well, you know what happens of course is if customers start to experience that you're not the same as you were a year ago in a not good way and you can no longer rely on you you're making promises that it seems like you can't keep not sure what's going on with your company but from the customer's perspective what's that likely to lead to I'm no longer a priority apparently because you 00:01:58.098 --> 00:02:00. got all this other stuff going on and customers do 00:02:00.99 --> 00:02:04. have a tendency to think me me me you know I don't 00:02:04.31 --> 00:02:06. care how many other customers you have I care about 00:02:07.29 --> 00:02:08. what you're going to do for me because I'm the one 00:02:08.86 --> 00:02:12. that's going to write you the check so are you are 00:02:12.78 --> 00:02:15. you basically training me to go somewhere else? You're 00:02:15.21 --> 00:02:18. training me tow to break our loyalties like we saw 00:02:18.26 --> 00:02:22. in the lean six sigma gammas I like you guys we're 00:02:22.56 --> 00:02:24. not doing business for a long time but you're basically 00:02:24.89 --> 00:02:27. you're training me to leave and there's competition 00:02:27.76 --> 00:02:30. out there that wants wants the business so in your 00:02:30.72 --> 00:02:33. situation and we've talked about this at break just 00:02:33.33 --> 00:02:36. a little bit you know a lot of people talk lean talk 00:02:36.76 --> 00:02:40. six sigma and actually have no idea what it really 00:02:40.22 --> 00:02:43. is all about in my research I found that nine out 00:02:43.39 --> 00:02:47. of ten black belts trained certified black boats really 00:02:47.11 --> 00:02:51. don't get it nine out of ten it's a shocking number 00:02:51.92 --> 00:02:54. and you got green belts running around with a few 00:02:54.12 --> 00:02:55. days of training 00:02:56.52 --> 00:02:59. I'm with projects they've never finished 00:03:00.32 --> 00:03:03. because they haven't got the truth executive sponsorship 00:03:03.87 --> 00:03:06. and support in a culture that doesn't support it and 00:03:06.7 --> 00:03:09. I also know you've talked to me about that. The culture 00:03:09.66 --> 00:03:16. is not one of rigor and discipline and lean it's it's 00:03:16.16 --> 00:03:19. it's chaotic it's similar to what can't describe so 00:03:20.12 --> 00:03:23. you know, a step one in that situation is let's collect 00:03:23.1 --> 00:03:26. some data to prove that the baby's ugly so to speak 00:03:26.8 --> 00:03:31. the process isn't pretty and uh let's get the decision 00:03:31.85 --> 00:03:34. makers senior leadership to take a look at this and 00:03:34.83 --> 00:03:36. say, you know what? You're right 00:03:38.29 --> 00:03:41. get it where I think I get it to the point now where 00:03:41.3 --> 00:03:44. we need to fix this we need to get a team together 00:03:44.75 --> 00:03:48. to come up with a standard process now that we all 00:03:48.68 --> 00:03:50. think is better than what we've got today and if we 00:03:50.9 --> 00:03:54. don't even have one today we have to just map out 00:03:54.7 --> 00:03:57. well let's taken example of how work gets through 00:03:58.48 --> 00:04:01. and map that out when we recognize well that's how 00:04:01.05 --> 00:04:03. we did it the last time but that's not how we do it 00:04:03.05 --> 00:04:05. every time and it's all of a sudden we've now discovered 00:04:05.33 --> 00:04:08. we don't have a consistent, predictable way to do this so let's create one and we've had small meetings and a lot of them get stopped because they always say, oh there's there's something else out there we need an air p system which you know there's money and there's time invested in that so then you sit there in your leg well, we don't have that capability at this we're not that type of a company we may build into it eventually, but it's getting the people to be aligned and that's the hardest part saying let's use what we have because I know we can use what we have to move forward until we get to that point until we break that point of being a larger company yeah well you know I'll give you a couple of tips here because this has worked well for me for years and I'm not tryingto you know seller promote the lean sigma game if you will you have access to it the young knight audience has access to it I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a company and run that simulation with senior executives with senior people large and small companies and they say wow this is just like our process this is just like our company's now it's a safe way with a simulation it's a safe way to say we're doing the same thing is round one maybe we should fix that and so if they're gone they went to a cut by the way around to is let's get that air p system that'll fix everything and it doesn't that's by design in that game it's to prove to a lot of people that don't quite get it that that's that's still not going to solve the problem we have to completely rethink the way we've got things so let's commission a team to do it and that idea you said susan about you know we have meetings and then we meet again when we get distracted if you remember that slide I had up there aboutthe more standard approach where we just keep 00:06:04.568 --> 00:06:07. meeting and meeting and we have re work luke on disk 00:06:07.12 --> 00:06:10. and we get distracted as compared to the kaiser on 00:06:10.49 --> 00:06:14. approach where it's just thirty days and it's done 00:06:15.23 --> 00:06:18. I mean that would be my advice to you is go back and 00:06:18.3 --> 00:06:20. run the simulation with your team 00:06:21.73 --> 00:06:24. and be armed with some of the brutal facts that you 00:06:24.4 --> 00:06:27. already have so that while you're running the game 00:06:27.76 --> 00:06:29. you can say how is this like our business well let 00:06:29.83 --> 00:06:32. me give you some data points because that'll add credibility 00:06:33.83 --> 00:06:36. and then what if we uh what if we actually pull the 00:06:36.27 --> 00:06:38. team together and 00:06:39.43 --> 00:06:42. came up with a new uh new process and walked out with 00:06:42.45 --> 00:06:45. a conclusion and something that we were actually going 00:06:45.57 --> 00:06:51. to test right now not next year right now and uh I 00:06:51.4 --> 00:06:54. mean that's where chi zan is in my experience kaizen 00:06:54.9 --> 00:06:58. is the fastest most efficient most effective way to 00:06:58.3 --> 00:07:01. change culture for to be the change that you want 00:07:01.29 --> 00:07:04. to see in the world to quote gandhi his kaizen because 00:07:04.43 --> 00:07:07. in a week you're being different it doesn't have to 00:07:07.5 --> 00:07:09. take a year to change a lot of this stuff 00:07:10.23 --> 00:07:12. so that's what I would start I would say let's uh 00:07:13.65 --> 00:07:16. let's run the simulation let's run a caisson and let's 00:07:16.91 --> 00:07:21. create some evidence in some enthusiasm that this 00:07:21.5 --> 00:07:24. stuff works. I have no doubt in my mind that it works 00:07:24.82 --> 00:07:27. because it's been working for a long time, but you're 00:07:27.08 --> 00:07:30. senior leadership might not believe it yet. It's because 00:07:30.82 --> 00:07:34. it's the time issue, everybody is overworked, overwhelmed 00:07:34.48 --> 00:07:37. over and that when they want to keep throwing more 00:07:37.81 --> 00:07:41. hours at it and it doesn't seem to get the un results 00:07:41.93 --> 00:07:44. were missing, deliveries were making customers mad. 00:07:45.53 --> 00:07:48. I even had attacks the first day you saw the text, 00:07:48.65 --> 00:07:52. we were laughing. One of my customers said, how can 00:07:52.19 --> 00:07:55. I give you more work when you're always on vacation? 00:07:56.23 --> 00:08:00. And so my answer. Wass. I'm not really on vacation. 00:08:00.86 --> 00:08:05. I'm getting educated so I can make my process better 00:08:05.43 --> 00:08:08. so I can make my on time delivery is and here's the connection here's, the link toe would I'm doing right now? Uh, so so I'm here learning how to take better care of you customer how's, that that's a clever in love that's, beautiful that's, a sales thing. Yeah, indeed. So just a couple of captures here and thank you for susan and I got again, I encourage, and I encourage anyone to take advantage of this is, you know, use. Use the lean sigma game. To educate. And olive. Use the word awaken. You know your team to the need for change and then translate that into kaizen you know let's pull a team together and let's let's just start with you again we talked about this earlier small simple relatively simple steps let's take one process with one customer let's map it out let's rip out the white space and incidentally and all out of time till we find that people are overwhelmed and they're busy and they're crazy but guess what they're busy doing a lot of a lot of nothing a lot of not value added we saw a lot of business in that round one with seven people and we were thinking maybe we need eight maybe we need nine and then around three were doing it with three with time to spare and perfect quality yeah rise and mr yeah you can call it murphy's eyes and this is it you know it's a japanese word it's actually the two words that come together into one and then it's been westernized if you will in the west way of kaizen events where cousin is more philosophy of continuous improvement kaizen event it is where we say let's take that and accelerated let's let's let's so it's like step change we keep we keep improving but then we blitz it and then we keep improving we blitz it we keep improving so it doesn't end but it's the idea that event which is more or less a blitz when we just really go after it okay just ask you said in the beginning there meetings is a big struggle for your company and having purpose having meaning do you think if you were to go back on monday and talk to him about what you've learned to make eyes and do you think they'd be open to trying it's an implement yeah they all know we need to do so good that's a positive step but I think a half the time is winning the battle of even bringing a new idea to the table and you got a good question oh yeah well the other question reminding reminded of the requisition incentive we had a question if you could talk a little bit more about aligning incentives I get changing susan's incentives in the lean game but that's a pretty easy change aligning incentives for some roles can be really complicated and it feels like you have to make the least worst decision it is it's actually very difficult even in someone's situation like requisition let's just change that to sales bonuses you tried taking a sales bonus away from somebody who's in sales when a significant amount of their income comes from their bonuses and they're motivated eat out there and sell stuff that the company might not even be able to deliver on so that's it just a common disconnect so it's not as simple to just you know we're going to change that bonus structure we've got to think about a way to we're going to change the incentive system without people losing out you know and that's so it is a systems thinking not an independent action thinking approach but the at the end of the day we have to say what are the top things that we we want to accomplish the better faster leaner more user friendly things and then what are the best 00:12:05.568 --> 00:12:10. ways to incent that across the stream not independently 00:12:11.3 --> 00:12:16. and that that's not as easy as it sounds because when 00:12:16.0 --> 00:12:19. you start playing around with the compensation I had 00:12:19.73 --> 00:12:21. reporting relationships even 00:12:23.5 --> 00:12:26. it's disruptive it's very disruptive and you get people 00:12:26.83 --> 00:12:30. who are hanging on tight clinging to their incentives 00:12:30.38 --> 00:12:32. and don't mess with my pain you would too 00:12:34.1 --> 00:12:37. so you've got to find it's a replacement so you're 00:12:37.59 --> 00:12:39. not taking it away you're not taken away from people 00:12:39.99 --> 00:12:42. you finding a better way to incent them in a different 00:12:42.62 --> 00:12:46. direction that's more holistic so you want to keep 00:12:46.8 --> 00:12:51. incentives but you want them to be more cross functional 00:12:51.8 --> 00:12:55. then and interdependent than independent and functional 00:12:56.4 --> 00:12:57. and so 00:12:58.45 --> 00:13:02. the easiest way to get there is too keep everything 00:13:02.86 --> 00:13:06. as is on one side of the room so to speak and say 00:13:06.9 --> 00:13:11. if we were going toe we were goingto create a competitors 00:13:11.29 --> 00:13:14. tow our own business and design 00:13:15.7 --> 00:13:17. a way to beat us 00:13:19.4 --> 00:13:20. how would we design it 00:13:21.8 --> 00:13:24. so you take your own people I do this all the time. 00:13:24.59 --> 00:13:26. And we just you know what? We're going to come up 00:13:26.93 --> 00:13:29. with a way to beat the company we work for. 00:13:32.2 --> 00:13:35. And what does that look like? So if I took people 00:13:35.3 --> 00:13:37. from that lean sigma game and say, we're going to 00:13:37.14 --> 00:13:39. come up with a way to beat that company, well, that 00:13:39.56 --> 00:13:41. would be easy for one thing, because it was so crazy. 00:13:41.64 --> 00:13:43. But a lot of you've already said. This is a lot like 00:13:43.9 --> 00:13:46. mike. My company come up with a way to beat it, and 00:13:46.93 --> 00:13:50. that includes the incentives, and it includes the 00:13:50.36 --> 00:13:52. reporting it because look what we came up with in 00:13:52.78 --> 00:13:56. round three, we had three people cross trained people 00:13:56.7 --> 00:13:59. we didn't have requisition, so that that incentive 00:13:59.61 --> 00:14:02. went away. We came up with a different incentive that 00:14:02.45 --> 00:14:05. was more around right first time, and we could come 00:14:05.17 --> 00:14:08. up with a way to reward right first time quality and 00:14:08.12 --> 00:14:10. delivery things like that. And 00:14:11.72 --> 00:14:17. I truly believe in profit sharing and that core value 00:14:17.38 --> 00:14:20. of ownership, but there's a lot of lots of different 00:14:20.95 --> 00:14:23. ways. We can mechanically design that toe work.