Merging Kaizen with Lean Marketing: Achieving Operational Excellence with Adam Lawrence

Merging Kaizen with Lean Marketing: Achieving Operational Excellence with Adam Lawrence
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Adam: [00:00:00] This company was averaging eight days, and they were paying over one million dollars annually in fines to Amazon.

So we chartered the event, and we brought the right people together, and in three and a half days we had implemented a bunch of really neat improvements that actually immediately cut the time from eight days to three and a half.

And from then on, they've never been fined again. We spent zero capital. We just put intense effort and we took responsibility for everything we tried and practiced it and experimented with it and, like I said, by the end of the week, done.

Introduction to Adam Lawrence and Lean Methodologies
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Allan: Right. Today it's my pleasure to welcome Adam Lawrence. He's an industry expert speaker and author, he developed the Wheel of Sustainability. Adam coaches, mentors, facilitates, and leads people through sustainable breakthrough. And the reason I had Adam on today's podcast is twofold.

So first of all, [00:01:00] he's been using lean methodologies for many years. He's a Kaizen ninja, and he'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, but also he's great case study in using the one page marketing plan for quite a long time in his business and he's used that to get other business breakthroughs as well.

So from two perspectives, from the lean approach, from the one page marketing approach and that's really why I wanted to have Adam on today. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam: Well, thanks for having me, Allan. I really appreciate it.

Allan: It's my pleasure. So for folks who don't know you how would you introduce yourself? Um, What do you do? Who do you do it for? Yeah.

Adam: Yeah. So I've been a practicing lean aficionado for just about 35 years. I love helping teams solve complex problems in a sustainable way. And lately I've been saying that I will help you grow your profits through sustainable process improvement efforts. But Kaizen [00:02:00] Ninja, which means I focus on Kaizen events.

And we certainly can talk about what that is, but highly focused, very rapid improvement events that involves the people that have the problem to solve it very quickly, in a creative way, in an intense way, and by the end of a week or less, we have a sustainable solution that they can be very proud of.

Understanding Kaizen and Its Impact on Lean
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Allan: Okay, so let's back up a little bit. For those who haven't heard or don't know about what Kaizen is maybe explain that a little bit. What is Kaizen and then what does it mean? What does sustainable improvement mean? And how do you implement that in a business?

Adam: Great. So

Kaizen is a Japanese word. I didn't make it up. It's one of the two Japanese words I'll use anytime I do. Lean support for companies, but I want people to understand Kaizen essentially means change for the better or a simpler way of thinking is a continuous improvement. So what we're [00:03:00] trying to say with people is Kaizen is just whatever problem we're working on, let's just make it better.

It doesn't have to be perfect, just better. So we get people together that are involved in the issues. And we give them ways of thinking about waste and inefficiencies so that they can actually attack their problem in a way that matters to them in a very rapid team based approach with leadership commitments supporting them.

So a Kaizen event a defined period of time where we're just going to put 100 percent of our effort only on that problem and nothing else. And by the end of the event, we have a solution that we have implemented. And then I use my wheel of sustainability to ensure that the problem doesn't come back.

Allan: that's a great definition of Kaizen. Now one thing when I first heard about Kaizen I sort of shrugged my shoulders and I thought, well, yeah, of course, continuous improvement, I continually [00:04:00] try to improve and I'm sure everybody tries their best to improve on a continuous basis.

What's the missing piece there? Like what was I not understanding? What people not understanding the difference between just kind of generically trying to improve versus taking a Kaizen approach to continuous improvement.

Adam: Yeah, that's great. So, what you're doing is you're leveraging the power of a team to be 100 percent dedicated for a period of time, thinking of nothing else.

Real-World Kaizen Implementation
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Adam: So, let me give you an example. I think examples help us a little bit here. So, had a group in Pennsylvania. I live in Pennsylvania and luckily I had a local client, so that was nice.

And their issue was they were trying to service Amazon orders. So they're a large consumer goods manufacturer whose business changed a bit in about 2016 when Amazon said, Hey, send me one box of kitty litter because I want transfer it to some other customer. Whereas these folks were making millions and millions of cases of kitty litter in a [00:05:00] year.

So of course, Amazon changed the game as you might call it. So,

Allan: So they moved to like more of a just in time sort of model. Is that

Adam: right. So in the world of Amazon, you have to get it into their distribution center. in four days or less. And this company built for large companies like Walmart and other large retailers. So they would send thousands of the same box on pallets to and fill up trucks. But now we're sending one thing at a time.

We have to label one thing at a time. So in the land of Amazon, every box has to have a label and they have to get it in their distribution centers in four days or less, or you get fined. So. This company was averaging eight days, and they were paying over one million dollars annually in fines to Amazon.

So we chartered the event, we can talk about what that means in a bit, kind of scoping it, what's the problem we're trying to solve, what's in scope, what's out of scope, all those wonderful things. And we brought the right people together, and in [00:06:00] three and a half days we had implemented a bunch of really neat improvements that actually immediately cut the time from eight days to three and a half.

And from then on, this was in 2018 or 2019, I can't recall the exact date, they've never been fined again. So, three and a half days of focused effort with, I'm going to say, maybe 10 to 12 people on the team that really could attack the problem. We spent zero capital. We just put intense effort and we took responsibility for everything we tried and practiced it and experimented with it and, like I said, by the end of the week, done.

Implemented, and Sustained, so they've never paid the fines again and Amazon's much happier with them.

Allan: Of course. So in that example, what sort of things would you do to go from eight days to three and a half? Because presumably even when they're delivering in eight days they're still trying their best to get their product out the door as quickly as possible. So, Hey, I'm already trying my best.

[00:07:00] How do I better my best?

Adam: Yeah, so, I'm a facilitator, so I don't have any answers, but I've been fortunate enough to work with literally hundreds of teams all over the world in the last 30 some odd years, so what I first do is I have the team visualize their process and see the complexity of it, and one of the methods we do is the other Japanese term, go to GEMBA, go where the work happens.

Right? And see the waste and inefficiencies in it. Because they only know what they know, and they've always done it that way. So some very simple things happened. One thing was, they had their printer for Amazon separate, and it was in the back corner of their large distribution center. not being well maintained, not well lit, and they were using it was still 2016 when they were just doing one or two things for Amazon.

No one's going to buy cat litter online, right? So we said, well, let's bring it into the light. Let's maintain it. Let's put it in a very easy to [00:08:00] assess place. Okay. So that was one thing. A couple other things that happened. One was For Walmart and large retailers, there's an automated system for taking orders.

For Amazon, since it was kind of a one off, there was this one person at their corporate facility that worked from 9 a. m. to 6 p. m., and if an order came in after 6 p. m., she wouldn't get until the next day. So there were 16 hours of loss at that point. This is what we visualized, right? So what we found out was, well, over the weekend, on Friday, It could be until Monday at 10 a.

m. till an order that came in Friday after 6 p. m. So that's over two and a half days. Okay, so I just was facilitating and asking questions to say, well, what do we do for Walmart? Oh, well, we have that automated. Well, how do you have it automated? And there happened to be somebody from their IT department on the team and she says, Oh, I just fixed that.

So could they have done that without a Kaizen event? Of course. [00:09:00] Had they done it? No. So sometimes you just have to expose people to the craziness and the waste and inefficiencies in their process. And because of my approach, I just try to bring it out into the light for them, keep asking questions, keep challenging the standard, and say, Hey, how do we make this easier for everybody to do the right thing at all times?

And so that's my approach to it.

Allan: love that. And it's one of the things that we also find in our coaching program is, it's not that you'll get some mind blowing innovation that you've never, ever thought of or whatever. it's just, you know, someone external having a look at what you're doing and having seen many different iterations of the same thing.

So, you know, when we're working with a company we've seen. marketing campaigns, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of times. We've seen what works, what doesn't work. And just being able to see the inefficiencies in the process. very common example is.

[00:10:00] leads going cold when they've inquired and there's too much time between an inquiry and somebody following up with a phone call. Now, we all know that following up with a phone call quicker is better, but often there's inefficiencies. It goes into HubSpot, then, you know, this salesperson isn't there or whatever.

And they've got some other stuff to do as well. So, often just an external pair of eyes is incredibly valuable, even if they're not bringing Any kind of, kind of mind bending innovation. It's just someone external seeing what you're doing and then a second pair of eyes and getting someone to question the day to day, because it is easy to get into a routine that, Hey, this is how we do it.

And without that intervention, it's very difficult to kind of see the forest for the trees.

Adam: Right. And that's what actually appealed to me about the one page marketing plan, just to plug the whole idea together. I love that it forced me to think differently and efficiently about what I was trying to accomplish. I [00:11:00] love the idea that I had to get it all on one page. So you better get clear. You got to really understand and As much as I would like, I'm a solo entrepreneur.

So, my resources are somewhat limited. So I do a lot of book reading and experimenting and trial and error. So that kind of challenged me to say, All right, what are you really trying to accomplish here? And then I, I keep taking advantage of your free resources. So every so often I get a free 20 minute, boost from your team.

And it just challenges me again. So like you said, that outside set of eyes. or a different way of thinking to force you to go from a multi page business plan and strategy to one page. You better be clear about what you're talking about or you're not going to make it on that page.

Allan: that was very much my intention is to force clarity because it's kind of like that phrase [00:12:00] where, if I had more time, I'd write a shorter letter, right? So, to really get clear and to really have the. simple structure. It takes a lot of thinking, you know, so it's you really got to distill things down.

Whereas if you've got a lot more space, a lot more time, a lot more room, you end up with a lot more fluff and stuff that you don't need. So. lot of people have found it incredibly valuable that, there is only a limited amount of space. There is, we really do need to capture everything on one page.

And that's not to say that's going to be your comprehensive plan forever to the end of time. But we worked with some massive companies that really their strategy can be distilled down to one page. Now, of course, there's, additional clarification, additional complexity and things like that.

But the point of the one page marketing plan is that it's very easily shareable. It's very easily updatable. you can share it with your team, your web developer. So everybody's on the same page, literally on the same page. And it's something that [00:13:00] where someone doesn't have to read something voluminous because oftentimes when it is, People just won't.

It'll just sit in someone's top drawer and never be seen again. So the idea behind it was that it'd be a living document. And yeah, that's great. I'm glad that you've used it that way. And I have been surprised by the number of people who are in lean industry, Lean Six Sigma some of these industries where they are using.

Efficiency and helping people become more efficient and operate more efficiently. They've been really drawn to the one page marketing plan and which was one of the reasons I wrote lean marketing. So, to take a lot of the concepts from that industry and apply it to what we're doing in marketing.

So I think there is a real synergy there.

Before you implemented the one page marketing plan what was your approach and how did you go about, you know, thinking about your marketing?

Adam: Right. Well, I'm an engineer, so we don't think about marketing a whole lot, to be honestly. So the good news for [00:14:00] me early into my entrepreneurial journey was that people who had worked with me and saw the way I approach things wanted to work with me. So early on, it was all referrals. that was great.

People that I had worked with that were in new companies, that were opportunities, they were able to bring me in and then they would promote me to others. I worked with some mentors. There's a thing in the United States called SCORE, where you have retired executives that act as mentors. It's a free service, so I'm a big fan of that.

You know, I did a lot of research. I talked to, as many people in my network to kind of, Get a sense for what was out there in my industry. I would say we have what we call the abundance theory, which I'm sure you've heard of that. So the belief is there's a lot of people that can be helped and we're not really competing.

against each other. And I don't even think we compete on price. The people that think you should be a lower price, don't really understand what you bring and the value you bring. So you better understand your value [00:15:00] proposition. What's neat about Kaizen events specifically is it's not unusual to get a 20 to 50 times return for what you're being paid.

You know, I, my joke has always been, I'm not smart enough to take a percentage. I am smart enough to ask for a number. They'd go, Whoa, where'd that come from? And then you say, well, this is worth this. So any number I could have said would have sounded large. But the reality is if I could get that return, I'd do that all day.

So There's a bit of a leap of faith if you've never been in one of these events, if you've never really seen it happen. And unfortunately, some prospects have had bad Kaizen experiences. Some people don't really understand the true foundational principles of Lean and Kaizen, where they think that get a team together and just tell them to do something.

No, that's not it at all. Frame the problem in a way that's meaningful to the people and then [00:16:00] give them ways of thinking, but they solve, they own. So that's why sustainability is so meaningful to me.

Allan: so talk about the sustainability because it's great. A facilitator comes in, we get things more efficient. It's running. How do we maintain that? How do we not go back to old habits and going back to putting the printer back in the corner or, some manager, overriding that or whatever.

How do we make sure that it sustains and that old habits don't creep back?

Adam: Great. Great question. Of course. And of course I love sustainability because during the pandemic, my labor of love was writing a book about how I helped team sustain. So the first thing you're going to hear similar terms that we all use pain points, right? A business has pain, the people that do the work and deal with the process have the pain.

So when we bring the team together. The core group are the people that actually are feeling the pain every single day. So imagine the person that dealt with that Amazon issue [00:17:00] had to deal with a printer that was a disaster, they had to walk hundreds of yards to get supplies, they couldn't communicate well, so they're frustrated, they're stressed out.

So what we do is that team gets the opportunity to solve it in a way that's beneficial to the customer and to them, okay? So, you know, in your mind, why would you ever want to go back the other way? So now you're protecting it. So what I do when I facilitate is I'm giving them the way to own their solution.

It can never be Adam's solution. It can't be 15 years ago. It was maybe 20 years ago. It was, and that's when I knew I was in trouble. And somebody said, well, Adam wants us to do this. It can never be me. It has to be them. They have to own their solution. So then I give them a structure for how to think about Ensuring that solution stays solved.

And I always start with leadership, so the center of my wheel is leadership [00:18:00] commitment. And I'm able to create an image with the leader, the leadership of the facility or the business or what have you, so they know what is likely to happen and the role that they have to play in order for the team to win and sustain the win.

And everybody wins if the team wins, but Saving one million dollars a year, that's pretty good. So you probably don't want it to go back to the old ways. But we build it when the team creates the solution, then they have that ownership and they're not going to let you screw it up. But the biggest issue is then how do I scale it to the people that weren't on the team?

And that's where the wheel comes in. We have created a system so that every part of it makes it almost impossible to ever do it the old way. It's too easy to do it right. It's too difficult to do it wrong.

Allan: Okay. One thing I wanted to kind of really highlight about what you said is it's usually the small changes that make the biggest difference. I call that small [00:19:00] hinges that swing big doors. So to someone external they'll say, What you paid this high price consultant to move the printer from here to there.

I mean, that was it like, and it seems like nothing or seems like something small, but often it's those small hinges that swing the big doors that make the biggest difference. But in reality, those few movements and reducing some of the friction that's a million dollars to the bottom line.

That is huge. And then you become a fraction of what they've saved or what they've earned or what they've made. And that becomes a great way of pricing yourself and becoming a value proposition. So where possible tying your pricing down to the result that the person is going to get, rather than a deliverable or a, you know, a set of processes or whatever else, but really tying it to what they've earned.

What the actual return on investment is going to be is very powerful from [00:20:00] a pricing and positioning perspective.

so I would love to hear about the wheel of sustainability and then how do you filter out those practices to people who maybe weren't involved in the intervention and is further interventions required or how does that all work?

Adam: Okay. Great questions. I'm going to step back on something you said about how do we know what the return is? So part of the wheel is this thing called leadership commitment, and part of the way we prepare for Kaizen event is we charter the work. So chartering the work basically is scoping the problem and understanding the impact on the business, the customer, and the employees.

And there's usually a financial equation to be had, okay? So I'm going to demonstrate the center portion of leadership commitment with a small story about how we got financials and how getting the right team matters so much. So I was in the west coast of the United States and we were going to reduce the time it took to switch from [00:21:00] one product to another.

The goal was to cut the time in half if we got it right, just over two million dollars annually. That's pretty good use of a right? So I knew that it was possible because we've never failed in 60 to 100 of these attempts to cut the time in half when we change products over because there's so much opportunity.

speaking with the site manager and I said, you know, there's two people from Pennsylvania you should try to get to come out during the week to be on the team. They're extremely creative, they're great. team members. And he said, Adam, I'm not really sure I could get them out here. And I said to him, do you think there's anything else going on in your company this coming week that's worth more than 2 million? I said, because if you do, then they probably should stay in Pennsylvania. But if you don't, and if our math is right, you've got a great argument. Well, because we had chartered and had a financial equation, [00:22:00] because I'm an engineer, so it's very easy for me to say, This amount of time is worth this amount of money.

This amount of scrap is worth this amount of money, this amount of labors. You know, there's so many ways and they have accountants, they have controllers. I mean, we can get close. We don't have to be perfect. It was actually worth 3. 4 million. He was unwilling to state that in front of his leaders, right?

It's a little sandbagging. It was worth 3. 4 million dollars. So, A week before the event he reaches out and he calls me and he says, Hey, we got your two plus there's one more that wants to come. Okay, great. Okay, so chartering is a good step in to leadership commitment. Do you really know that this problem is worth solving?

Do you know who should be involved? Have we scoped it well? What are the objectives in such a way that we know this is a win? All right, because if you don't know what it's worth, then you're probably not committed as a leader

Allan: So, so chartering is figuring out how much is this [00:23:00] problem.

Adam: So there's four steps. There's a problem statement first. So what's the problem we're trying to solve in the event? The second step is the objectives of the event. What would tell us that we have solved the problem in a way that we'll know? So for example, this thing took four and a half hours to change from one product to the next.

So 15 minutes. That would be a. Another objective is I always have a safety objective. Each team member must improve two safety things, whatever they find, they're going to take ownership for safety. Another objective would be creating the new standard work in a training plan so that beyond the team everybody else learns how to do it safely and properly.

And because it's me, and because I have that, right, I You're going to implement the sustainability system because we're going to solve it and keep it solved. That, to me, that's the true win. and learn how to do that and apply that to anything, right? So the leadership commitment is getting that charter, picking the right team to help you [00:24:00] win, picking the right leader who's going to own the output of the system.

Now, that's the extreme element. If you think of a wheel, right? If you lose a spoke, The wheel's not as strong, but still rolls. If you lose the hub, the wheel falls apart. So leadership commitment is the hub. During the week, the team is going to come up with changes, improvements, solutions, and we have a saying that we use.

I'm going to introduce it to, you're in Australia, right?

Okay. The term I use is butt ugly by Friday. So what does that mean? Pretty simple. Doesn't have to look pretty, it just has to work. Because us engineers, we like perfection. That's a mistake.

You're sacrificing the opportunity to try something and learn from it multiple times during an event.

So we want learning cycles. Okay, so I get that in their head. It's kind of an earworm, but ugly by Friday, right? By the end of the week, they're teaching me that because I don't want them to buy all the pretty materials. Let's just [00:25:00] see if it works, right? Okay, so they come up with some solutions. And so the first spoke at 12 o'clock, think of it like a wagon wheel, is called notification. What did we do and why did we do it? And how does it help? So the messaging, just like on the one page marketing plan, your messaging has to be crisp. It has to be easy enough that a 12 year old can understand it. Anybody has to be able to say it. So what did you do? And why did you do it? Why did you move the printer?

Because the printer needs to be easily accessible, easily maintainable, and if it needs help, everybody can see it. It's not in some corner where no one's gonna ever go. Learn Because Amazon has gone up and it's just as important as the Walmart printer. Okay, great. What did you do it and why did you do it?

Why is the most important thing to know, right? So the messaging is critical. So notification is usually with a group of people. If you're a normal adult human, you retain 3 percent of what's told to you. [00:26:00] So we hear like Charlie Brown and the teacher. Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. Wah.

Right?

Effective Kaizen Training and Review Techniques
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Adam: So, the Y, but we've got to be crisp on that because the second spoke is called training and review. Now what we're going to do is we're going to visit with each person that will interact with this process and we're going to do one to one training and we're going to use tell, show, and do. So I'm going to tell you about the change with the same Y messaging.

I'm going to show you how to do it. I'm going to show you my respect for you by actually demonstrating it to you without an audience, just you and I give you a chance to ask questions. You won't because adults don't like to admit that they, you know, don't understand, which is cool, but I can look at the whites of your eyes and see if you're really paying attention.

You're looking at your phone or, you know, you're bored or whatever. But now the last piece that locks it all in is I let you demonstrate it to me because now I can tell for sure. Whether you really get it or not. And guess what? Most of the time, they don't get it on the first try. Okay, well, let me [00:27:00] show you.

Okay, now, does that make more sense? Now you try it. Okay, does that make more sense? And that's based on a lean topic called training within industry, which is basically what helped the U. S. be so successful in World War II. But the history is that in World War II, a lot of young men got taken out of the factories and conscripted to the war.

Allan: Okay.

Adam: So they had to fill with women who normally didn't work in factories. to make armaments, and older folks, and people right off farms, and things like that. So they had to get a very quick way to train. So there's a very, tell, show, do, is kind of an easy example of that, but it's a very purposeful approach.

Toyota actually was influenced by that in the way they train their people, because it's, it uses a lot of repetition. It uses a lot of things to make sure that it's all on the trainer, not on the learner. And it's again, a respect for people by taking a one on one [00:28:00] approach. That's the basis of what I call training and review, because not everybody does this. It's a huge investment of time and effort, but well worth it.

Implementing Lean Principles in Kaizen Practice
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Adam: The next one is visible evidence. So this is the idea that anybody from 20 feet away can see whether you are following the standard or you're not following the standard, right?

So, I want to be able to know, because if you are, I want to stop by and thank you for following standards. If you're not following the standard, I need to step in and redirect and coach you because once we get a new standard, it's not okay to not use the new standard because the whole idea is you want that Amazon thing to be in four days or less.

Why do you want to pay a million dollars in fines? So why is it okay to go back to the old way? Well, the answer is it's not. so that's visible evidence. The fourth topic is all tools available. I probably could have named it something more interesting, but. For me, it's give them everything they need to do their job right where they need it.

There's no searching. you [00:29:00] never search for the thing you need. If you need something in three places, you have that same something waiting for you in all three places.

So it can be physical tools, it can be computer programs, it can be documents, it can be whatever, but don't just keep it hidden. Have it right there where you need it so you never have to search for it. You don't have to say, well, I didn't know. I didn't remember. you don't have to worry about it because it's right there.

Okay. That's the fourth one. The fifth one is called clear benefits. So this is the idea that the team has developed this new thing, but what about all the other people? What do they think? So usually during the week, I'll have the team go out and get feedback. and get raw feedback. And by the way, most people, their first reaction is that's a dumb idea.

Why are you doing that? So you're trying to get them to try it because if they don't see it as beneficial, they typically won't do it, especially when you're not looking. So in these facilities that run 24 hours a day, what happens at 2am? Sometimes [00:30:00] we find out too late at 7am the next day, right? So the idea is, hey, try it and see if it helps you.

Let me do it with you so that you can see for sure. And here's why we did it. So the message is still the same across all of this. We think this will be safer. Let me show you why it's safer. We think this will be more efficient. Let me show you why it's more efficient. Now you try it. Okay. What's your feedback?

So it builds buy in. You get more ideas. We had a moment when one of my team members, this was a few years ago, ran back into the team meeting room and said, Oh my God, there must be only right handed people on our team. Okay, what happened? Well, we were showing Joe over there and he said, I can't do this.

And we're like, what? This is great. But I'm a lefty. See, it doesn't work. Perfect. So find out before it's too late, right? So that's called clear benefits. The next one is layered audits. So the idea is the person that does the work or makes the change follows that, approach, all the time. They should be watching to make sure they're [00:31:00] doing it right, but they shouldn't be the only one to worry about it.

So their supervisor should check on it every so often. Audit with them. Engage with them. Hey, how's it going? Is it working okay for you? You haven't anything you need help with? Do you understand the standards? Show me how to do it. Do that every so often. As you go up the ladder on your way to CEO, maybe once a week, the manager, maybe once a month, the site manager, maybe once a quarter, the VP of Ops, and once a year, the CEO.

And the audit needs to be three to five minutes or less because people can make five minutes out of their day. So basically you're reinforcing the importance and you're creating two way engagement and learning. So we don't audit 20 feet away, we audit with the person. Hey, show me the top three things that you're supposed to do with this new thing.

Can't audit everything, just audit a few things, and it just reinforces the importance. Okay, so the seventh one's called accountability, so that [00:32:00] sounds obvious, but this is leadership accountability, not employee accountability. So the idea is you walk out there, you're going to a meeting, you're going to be late, and out of the corner of your eye, you see somebody not operating to standard.

What do you do? You make a choice. I'm going to make the meeting on time or I'm going to divert and coach and bring that person back to standard, right? So the reality is most people, if they don't think about, want to get to the meeting on time. But the reality is if you walk by the person doing it wrong, what happens is you're essentially saying it's okay to do it wrong.

So people watch the actions of leaders. So remember leadership commitment is so important because they're going to get tested. That is going to happen.

Allan: So they should miss their meeting or come late to the meeting and make sure that it gets corrected. Is that right?

Adam: This is what we encourage because if they don't, they're saying it's okay to be wrong. people will interpret things the way they want to interpret it. So we also encourage them to [00:33:00] congratulate and appreciate people when they're doing it right. So there's the balance of this equation. Don't always find people doing things wrong.

Find people doing things right. And reinforce it, you know, congratulate, thank, whatever. And, it's funny, you know, our natural tendency is just to focus on the problem. Focus on the person doing it right and try to create a balance, because that also reinforces how important things are. Don't always be late to your meetings, but just understand that if you do see something that's off spec, off standard, you need to step in. So the last one is, I call it recognition, and it's really storytelling. So the whole idea of, Hey, look what we did over here. Let me show you. Let me tell you how that felt. Hey, did you hear about this team that did this? Did you hear about the Amazon team? Did you hear about the welders? Did you hear about the gummy vitamins and show them?

Because really lean is not tools. You know, the mistake that us newbies made, I [00:34:00] did it too for a number of years as I saw, Oh, look at all these great tools. Tools are nothing. It's culture. What you're trying to do is you're trying to get the entire workforce engaged to want to be better. and give you ideas and get and participate and engage and act like business owners.

So all those elements put together are the best way I know and something that I can demonstrate during any Kaizen event and we can test against it in such a way that it's so simple, even Adam could do it, right? So that's kind of the whole summary of that.

Allan: That's really cool. So how does that work either in conjunction with, or in replacement of, or whatever, of like five steps standard sort of lean methodology, which is kind of, specified, the desired value to the customer, value stream mapping, flow. pull Perfection. So Perfection, obviously you're talking about Kaizen a lot.

Is that an evolution of that or is that in addition to that work?

Adam: So really what I'm doing is I'm integrating with all these things. So think first, the [00:35:00] foundation of lean is respect for people. So if we have bad processes, we don't respect our people. So what we're trying to do is, through Kaizen, and Kaizen is just one of many, so I've done many value stream mappings, done a lot of Flow Kaizen.

I mean, value stream mapping can be used in many different ways. It's a great tool. It also can be a Kaizen event. It's a great way to think of strategies. It's just a great approach. What this is doing is this is integrating with all of that to strengthen it. So any tools that we bring in to help teams solve problems, what this is trying to do is keep the problem solved for them.

And because a lot of feedback that I get prior to introducing this is, Hey, sustainability is hard. It doesn't have to be. As long as you can keep the principles in mind, and just use some simple approaches that, that support whichever improvements you're trying to make. So Kaizen. in itself is a process.

There's a lot of science [00:36:00] and a lot of psychology to it. The wheel of sustainability supports the Kaizen and it came out of my particular issue years and years ago, where we would solve an amazing problem. The team would do this awesome stuff and congratulate. And six months later, this is when I was working for a large company.

I'd come back to the same location. The thing we had done had kind of fallen apart and that upset me. Because that team works so hard that I said, well, I need to figure out how to do something about it. So that, this was my approach to do. So there's really nothing new here. It's just a structure. It's just a structure that I can easily provide an image to and demonstrate.

I even do improv during Kaizen, which means around day three, when a team has come up with some neat stuff, I'll bring one of their team members, they have to volunteer, and I'll give them the wheel based on their topic, and pretend that I'm talking to a brand new employee about their solution. So it isn't my solution, it's theirs, just [00:37:00] to show them how easy it is to implement every one of these elements against their solution.

Allan: Okay.

Lean Marketing and Customer-Centric Strategies
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Allan: The other thing that I really appreciated about Lean and that really got me thinking about it from a marketing perspective is it's, you about respect for people, but also it being so customer centric around, if this doesn't bring value to the end customer, the person who's actually going to be buying that.

And it considers it from, Beginning right through to delivery to even final disposal. So, really thinking about it. From a customer perspective, does this process, is this a value adding process or is it not? In which case it's waste. And sometimes there's necessary waste, but nevertheless waste.

So, you taking people through that whole process of really looking at from the lens of a customer, Hey, we want the label on this way. So they don't confuse the instructions or it doesn't create an extra support ticket or whatever else.

Adam: Right, so think about respect for [00:38:00] people, respect for Amazon. Do you think that Amazon wanted to fine this company for being late? That's the worst thing that can happen. So we value stream mapped their process from the perspective of Amazon being the customer and we identified the things that got in their way, the wasteful practices, the eight deadly wastes that got in their way to deliver within what the requirements and expectations of Amazon are, right?

So it wasn't about Adam's solution or the team's solution from their standpoint, but what's neat is the correlation is life gets better for the employees, for the company, and for the customer. Customer first, because that's why we're in business, but when you remove waste, when you simplify and make it more efficient and safer, you're helping everybody.

Everybody gets to win, so that's a neat way of thinking about it. And then you just define waste is [00:39:00] defined only from the eyes of the customer anyway, that's the basis of all that. And so if if you have a process, it doesn't respect your people. It doesn't respect the customer either because customers paying for errors and scrap and inefficiencies and unhappy employees.

They're paying for one way or the other. And you can see it in so many businesses. it's just neat to see how it helps everybody. If you frame it well, and you really look at it from the lens of the customer. So great point.

Allan: that's very much why I wanted to integrate this with marketing because there is so much waste in marketing and I consider waste in marketing anything that doesn't add value to the prospect that sees it. I mean, we're subjected every single day to advertising, to interruption, to, to spam, to cold calls and stuff.

That's just, wasting our time. It's not effective for the person who's doing it or generating it. And so. A large part of the philosophy behind lean marketing is, look, let's make our marketing [00:40:00] so valuable that someone would potentially pay to receive that marketing, you know, so if it's an email newsletter, it's a value adding thing.

It's not spam. If we're creating content, it's something that's entertaining, inspiring helpful to our audience. even if they never buy from us. so that's the critical point there because a lot of people are like, yeah, sure. We're going to add a lot of value to our customers and people who buy from us, but we want to create that positive externality for people who even never buy from us, because that's still creating goodwill for our business.

That's still creating potential people who may buy in the future, who may Refer other people. So there's still a lot of brand value to be had there. And we've gotten to a stage where it's okay to just continually spam and interrupt and be obnoxious and that's a large part of why I wrote Lean Marketing and put together the Lean Marketing methodology, because.

There's so much of that waste and, you know, people saying things like, Hey, it's a numbers game. We've just got to do a [00:41:00] thousand dials to get one meeting and one meet, you know, so on and so forth. And all of that is just, it's wasteful. It's not helpful and it creates bad will. So all round really bad.

So, it was a reaction to a lot of that. And I think it's been really well received in that respect. And I like that alignment with. Lean philosophy is that we take everything from the end customer perspective. Does this add value or does this not?

Adam: Yeah, absolutely. And again, that's what appealed to me. Okay. One page marketing plan for sure. But then when you said, Oh, lean marketing, now I have to say that I was also curious to see if you really got it, the real founder, you know, because if you're new to it again, you can get caught up in the tools.

It's, we call it the bright, shiny objects. And I'm going to say. You are my marketing sensei, so we'll give you that one. But so you see, the integration of it. I totally get that, but it took me a few years to truly understand that lean was much more than tools, right?

And then to really [00:42:00] be able to communicate that in a way that was value adding to the people I was helping, right? Because it is easy to get caught up. Hey, let's just do a lot of 5s. Okay. But to what end? Right? What are you trying to accomplish by that? Let's do value stream mapping. Okay, to what end? What are you trying to accomplish with that?

So you really need to understand how everything tries to integrate and work as a system. But once you do, it's almost like you're unstoppable. So again, that's what appealed to me about what you were trying to accomplish. I don't read lean books anymore because I mean, after a while, we're saying the same stuff, right?

The principles are the same. You know, I got a top five. I don't need to, unless somebody I know writes one, then I'll be like, Of course I'm going to read it because, you know, I want to support my fellow. Hey it's not easy to write a book. So, you know, let's give them some, let's give them some respect and read their book, but some of them are really hard to get through.

Allan: Yes. Well, Adam, it's been a pleasure to have you on. You're a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Lean. Where can people find you? Who [00:43:00] is an ideal person to connect with you?

Adam: Right. So I love to help businesses grow their profits through sustained process improvement, but I'm a Kaizen Ninja. So if you don't want to get your folks involved in making things better, I ain't your guy. But if you want some rapid, high powered, sustainable wins. I am your guy. So if you want a Kaizen Ninja, I'm in.

If you want a leadership coach, I include that, but I don't do that separate because I'm just not patient enough. You need to have probably 50 employees on a location. I've worked with smaller, but when you have a Kaizen event you're going to pull people off their jobs for a period of time and they need to be 100 percent dedicated.

So if you got just 10 employees and you take six off their jobs your business isn't going to go anywhere for a week and so most people can't afford that. It doesn't have to be manufacturing. I've worked in distribution. I've worked in non profits. I've worked in service industries. Processing [00:44:00] people.

People always say, hey, have you ever worked with this one, this industry, that industry? It doesn't matter. After 30 some odd years of working, you find out that people are the whole glue. And they're creative animals and they do great work. So, now that's my long version. The short version is come see me on LinkedIn.

I'm out there I have Process Improvement Partners as my company. It has a little page as well. I have a Google business page. I have a website, pi partners. com, net, and all the other ones that I paid for that no one cares about.

Allan: Nice. Well, thank you, Adam. It was a pleasure to have you on and you've been a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much.

Adam: Thanks for having me, Allan. I really appreciate it.

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