Rolling Towards Success: Decoding The Wheel Of Sustainability With Adam Lawrence
Sustainable change is achieved through the smallest improvements, despite their imperfect appearance at first. In this first video interview of the Eye of Power Podcast, Tom Dardick welcomes his friend Adam Lawrence. Adam's company, Process Improvement Partners, helps organizations permanently raise productivity, efficiency, and safety through a Kaizen-based approach that he has innovated over his many years of experience. His book, The Wheel of Sustainability, provides his model that organizations can use to permanently elevate the situational awareness, performance, and culture of any of their processes. Tom and Adam talk about the psychology of organizational change management while Adam shares insights from some of his more notable experiences. A major takeaway is how a little bit of fresh examination and listening to stakeholders can translate into dramatic payoffs. Enjoy!
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Rolling Towards Success: Decoding The Wheel Of Sustainability With Adam Lawrence
Adam Lawrence and I have been friends and professional colleagues for a number of years now. I've been able to see how he's been able to help organizations through efficiencies and finding better ways to do things, even mundane things that would have seemed obvious in retrospect, but nobody took the time to change. He has a process that he has a book about. It's called The Wheel Of Sustainability. I do recommend it. For anybody who's on a team and has got a team they are responsible for, it’s a way to consider process improvement and getting a little bit better than we are today. There's no telling what you might find. None of us know what we don't know. We all have blind spots.
I think it's that humility of understanding, “Wait a minute, I should be in the business of finding out what I don't know on an ongoing basis,” that brings us to get help from people such as Adam. I'm looking forward to this discussion with Adam. You will be able to see how well thought out. His system is born out of lots of experiences over many years and many installations of working with client teams. I hope you enjoy it. You'll hopefully see how working with teams and leadership roles all come down to taking ownership, responsibility, our own agency, looking in the mirror, and being able to make those changes. That's what we're all about at the show. I'd like to welcome Adam.
One of the things that I've been thinking about in preparing for this interview is how we're kindred spirits, Adam. We both have spent a lot of time in our industry, have built models, and want to share those models to help people. We're coming from a similar playbook there. Your system is called The Wheel Of Sustainability. Can you briefly walk us through what that is and how it helps people achieve the aims they're looking to achieve?
I've been a consultant that helps teams solve critical business problems. The hope is that once the problem is solved, it stays solved. What I noticed early on in my career was we would solve a problem, and the team would be excited. We'd go away. Three months later, the problem would come back. My challenge was to come up with a system to keep the problem solved. It was easily transferable and trainable. We could implement it during the one-week-long continuous improvement or Kaizen Event.
Did the model help them remember to stay aware top of mind of what they agreed? I'm wondering how people drift. What are some of the traps or the things that bring them off track?
The key to the model is leadership commitment. What happens is the team does a great job putting blood, sweat, and tears into a solution to a problem. They've implemented new standard work, operating procedures, visuals, and so on. If we have engaged the leadership team, as well as the rest of the organization around those changes, we make assumptions that they understand it and they're going to follow the new standards. This is a bad assumption. As you know, assumptions are always bad when you’re saying it.
What I learned was we can't make those assumptions. We have to make it simple visual and easy to manage the whole system so that people will see the change as the better thing. Most of us know that it’s human nature to expect the worst and hope for the best. Change is typically a negative experience, at least mentally for people. What I'm trying to do is change that into a positive experience by applying this system called The Wheel Of Sustainability to any changes that we make. It has nine elements to it when you're ready.
Think about an image of a wagon wheel. I live in Amish country not far from you. In the Wagon Wheel, at the center is this thing called leadership commitment. What we're saying is, “How do we set up the team for success so that any change they make they feel authorized and empowered to do so?” What I do is I coach leadership in what that looks like and how they have to participate or play.
The first piece of that is how we charter or scope out the work that we're going to engage the team in. I help them understand what the team would look like, and then what their role is in supporting the team as the activities occur. These things tend to be in one-week or shorter-duration events. They have to show up the first thing to kick off the team. They have to come to the team dinner. They have to approve no matter what the team says they want to do. He or she has to realize that I'm going to keep them within scope. We're not going to spend $1 million. We have a week. We can't do that anyway. Essentially, it's blanket approval to make any of the changes that they want to make in a way to support those changes.
The other eight elements surround that leadership commitment. The answer is yes, no matter the question, is the easiest image to give leadership around that. There's nothing more important going on in your business, facility, location, office, or whatever, so you have to act that way. Drop what you're doing when they need your help. Encourage, inspire, and support them, and even roll up your sleeves if you have an opportunity to do so.
I've seen leaders do that. I share that. I explain what their level of commitment needs to be and what the team's commitment is. That's leadership commitment. Surrounding that, because we don't know what the change is going to be prior to the event, now that we have made a change, we have the first element, which is called notification. Meaning we've made a change. What is it? Why did we do it? What do we think the benefits are of it?"
It's the message of the change in a way that is beneficial and truly transparent to the organization. Notification is the first one. Think of it as a wheel. At 12:00 is a notification. That's the first thing. What is the message around the change? Why does it matter? Why did you do it this way? That’s one element. That's typically in front of a group. The next element is called training and review. We're going to do this one-on-one now. I am going to explain to you specifically, Tom, what the change is and why we made the change. I'm going to let you ask questions and I'm going to demonstrate it for you. I'm going to take the time and show my care for you that I will take time with you to demonstrate it.
I'm going to do it in front of you, giving you the opportunity to ask questions. It's going to be just you and I so you don't have to worry about peer pressure. I'll ask you, “Did you understand that? Any questions?” The typical answer is, “No, I have no questions,” but that's not true. I can either dig deeper because I'm looking at your body language when I'm demonstrating. The next element is to have you demonstrate it to me.
Now, I have you show me that you do understand. I can correct any inaccuracies, behavior, safety risks, and anything at all at the moment just with you to make sure you truly do understand it. That's training and review. The next element is called visible evidence, which means that from 20 feet away, you can tell if somebody is following the change as designed or not and if they need help or not.
Because not all changes are created equal. They have to be evident. If there is a change, they are obvious.
Correct. Large signage, red light versus green light, and shadow boarding so that the tool is sitting in the right place. I can see that the document is where it's supposed to be. The lightest fashion is green, which means everything is good. That way, if leaders see somebody following the change as prescribed, they can step in, thank and recognize. If they see somebody not following the change as prescribed, they can step in, coach, and help. Remember, the leadership commitment is tied to all of this. Leaders have to be ready to not walk by but look at the visual, make sure the person is following this new standard, and reinforce and encourage it.
Leaders have to be ready to not walk by but actually look at the visual. Make sure the person is following this new standard and reinforce and encourage it.
That strikes me in the part of the leader as both a skill and a habit, where I need to dial into what I am looking for. I also have to have the discipline to do it enough in the beginning so that it gets into muscle memory, and then I keep doing it or, “Am I a little off on that? How do you think along the lines in terms of the perspective of the leader?”
You're right about the leader’s behavior. We have to prep them to engage, but the visual has to be easy and obvious that it's hard to miss it. Think of yourself going to the mall and parking in a parking space. From 30 feet away, you can tell if the space you want to park in is safe to park in because somebody hasn't crossed over the line or they're too close to the line and, “Maybe I'll pick another space.” That's the same idea. Large visuals, big flashing green or red. The thing is in the box or it isn't in the box. It's obvious. The team is always challenged to do it in a way that, “Within three seconds, I know if everything is okay or not okay from 20 feet away.” That is the challenge for them.
Because I've done this hundreds of times, I have many examples that I can share with them in case they're stuck. Color coding, shadowing, putting things in boxes or on hooks with things around them in big print, lights, and audio signals. There are many choices. What we don't want to do is overdo it. We want to make it easy to do the right thing, and easy to tell if we're doing the right thing. That's visible evidence.
The fourth one is called all tools available. What we're saying is give the person what they need, right where they need it without having to search. In a manufacturing facility, if I need a wrench in three locations, I don't keep wrenches in a toolbox. I hang the wrench at the three specific locations so that I don't have to remember to bring it with me. It's already there waiting for me. I'm also going to label that wrench so that if it's sitting somewhere else where it's not supposed to be, anybody would know where to place it back so that it'll be ready and available for the person who needs it.
It’s the same thing being on your computer. Can you find your files? Do you have all the software you need? Do you have the links that you need to do your job and not have to search for them? When we're designing these changes, we're making sure that everybody has everything they need. The leadership commitment comes from the fact that if I have to go buy some software, a tool, or a new document, the answer is always yes. We're making it easier for somebody to do their job safely and productively.
The leadership commitment comes from the fact that if they have to go buy some software, tool, or a new document, the answer is always "Yes, we're making it easier for somebody to do their job safely and productively."
Those are the physical elements. I'm going to take you into the behavioral elements of this. The next element is what we call clear benefit. The idea is that the person who is going to have to execute the new standard but wasn't on the team has to see it as a benefit to them specifically or else they're not going to follow it. They need to understand that they need to be properly trained. They need to get the opportunity to ask the tough questions, then we always want them to try it. If they don't try it, it's easy to think of the change as bad. If they try it and they see that it's beneficial to them personally, they're more likely to do it.
In a 24-hour operation, I'm not going to be there at 2:00 AM. The person makes a decision to do it the old way or the new way. Of course, we want them to do it the new way, but if they don't see it as their own personal benefit, they're less likely to do it. Very often, in the middle of the week, we have the team go out and talk to people not on the team, demonstrate it, and get their feedback because if people still think it's harder, then they're not going to do it.
If they see, “This is so much better for me,” and then personalize it in their own words, they're more likely to follow the new standard. In the old days, we call that, “What's in it for me?” That's the old-timey way to go. I've been doing this for a while, but I liked using a different term to get that with them out of people's heads.
The next element is called layered audits. The idea now is the person who does the work checks their work. That's what we're all paid to do, but with less frequency as we go up levels, we're going to audit to reinforce and ensure that people are doing things the right way. If I'm working in an office and I do certain types of documentation, I'm going to check my work from time to time. My manager should come and visit with me either on a daily or a weekly basis and randomly audit, not to me but with me one of my bits of work and ensure that I’m still following the standard, get my feedback for it, and reinforce how important it is. That's the next layer.
As you go up to the CEO, that person might audit once every quarter or once every year. We go in layers. It's a two-way learning. We're reinforcing critical work and standards. We're showing how important it is because people are engaging with you. You're not auditing the same person. You're not auditing the same work. You're not auditing the same at the same time, but you're auditing with a person. My team is always encouraged to create a 3 to 5-minute audit because most people can give you 3 to 5 minutes. You can't have a one-hour audit. You can't say, “Audit everybody and everything.” No. Pick the three most important things. Pick it with one person. The rest of the organization will know that the CEO showed up auditing.
This is part of that sustainability thing where it's got to be something that you can do. If it's too much work to keep the new procedure going, it's not going to be something that people are going to be able to stick to. Is that what I’m hearing from you?
That’s right. It can't be so complicated that people won't be able to do it. It can't be so complicated that people can't audit it in 3 to 5 minutes. For example, the very simple audit is, “Is the shovel hanging in the location for the shovel?” It either is or it isn't.
If it's not, it should be being used. If it’s being used or it's in a spot, good. Anything else is not good.
When it's not good, all you're doing is going back to the person that isn't using it but it's next to them and said, "Do you understand why we put the shovel back when we're not using it? The point is when you need the shovel and it's hanging there, now you can have it and never have to search for it."
An example like that, at least to me, if I'm a lay person, I'm thinking, “This seems pretty obvious. Why haven't we had discussions about this?”
Do you remember when your mom told you that there's a place for everything and everything in its place? “Pick up your clothes off the off the floor.” You are probably saying it to your kids. Even with the best of intentions, people still miss some of the most obvious things, or we don't make it important or as important as it is. Think about it this way. I had a bunch of welders in one of these events where it took them over two hours to gather their tools so they could perform work on a line while waiting for help.
Even with the best intentions, people still miss some of the most obvious things.
That was just to get ready because they couldn't find things. By the end of the week, it took them less than three minutes to gather everything they needed. The facility saved 1 hour and 57 minutes of lost productivity and lost revenue because we made it so easy for those welders to find what they needed. They made it easy. They knew where they needed their stuff.
You would say, “That's obvious,” but when they get in the heat of battle, they don't think about how critical that is. Why does it sustain? It’s because they won't let the rest of the organization screw it up because it was frustrating for them. After about half a year with all the layered audits and all the other leadership support, they realized, “This is important to the organization.” Now it's how they do their jobs. The plant benefits every single day because of that.
That efficiency in the example you shared, let's call it two hours would have been time lost. Every time, you have to mobilize that force. This is a good that keeps repeating over and over. Who knows what that's worth over time?
I signed an NDA so I can't tell you, but I know exactly what it is worth. It is not an insignificant number. This is money that drops right into their profit statement.
What I'm getting from you as you go through your model and as you talk about how it's implemented and used, it seems to me like we pay less attention to the small, immediate, and repetitive things that, neurologically speaking, become part of our background. We're not thinking about it because it's familiar. It's already there and where we're not devoting our bandwidth to that. Our attention leaves itself open to the novel. What's the mismatch? We can create these blind spots as a result. You're going in and you're helping people see those blind spots. Is that a good summary? Can you expand on that?
I never thought about it in that way, but it's a very similar thing. Most people do their work and keep their heads down. They're paying attention to what they're responsible for if you think about it. What these events tend to do is open up their perspective on the whole picture. Oftentimes, some of the most breakthrough solutions are the simplest ones. Drawing a nice outline around where the wrench needs to be and labeling the wrench so you know exactly where it came from, they could have done that without any outside intervention, but they never realized what the impact might be on the overall system.
Oftentimes, some of the most breakthrough solutions are the simplest ones.
This is why people like yourself and myself get brought in. It's because we've had many shared experiences across many different industries. We see how people solve problems in a way that the group we’re helping may not be aware of. They don't feel empowered or engaged. That's why the leadership commitment in the center is so critical. To give them that opportunity, we are sequestering them.
When I run a Kaizen Event, let's say it's four and a half days, we'll start Monday morning at 7:00. We will work until 5:00 or 6:00 every single day. The people on the team who have been very carefully identified will be 100% committed to this work. They have no other work that week. This is all they do. It's like a jury being sequestered. Very few people in this world have had the opportunity to work this way. We're taking them off their jobs. It's the only thing they're going to work on.
The way we describe it is, “There's nothing more important in your facility, office, or business than what we're going to do this week.” That's not always true but sometimes it is. There are stories of multi-million-dollar efforts within a week that I've had the opportunity to be part of. What you're calling the blind spots, I might say the person got their head down with the blinders on. They're not seeing the whole picture around them. One thing I may or may not have pointed out is everyone in these elements gets implemented during that week. This is not homework. We're designing the audit, visualization, tools, and the way we're going to message this and train people.
There are two more elements that I have not shared yet. Let me share those last two. This is the ribbon or the bow that ties it all together. The first one is called accountability. This is not personal accountability. This is leadership accountability. There is some overlap in these elements. If you or I as a leader are walking to a meeting and we're going to be late, but out of the corner of our eye, we see somebody not following standards, we now make a choice. Our accountability under this model is to be later for the meeting and engage with the person to redirect and correct the behavior in a coaching and positive way to help them to redirect them back to standard.
You're moving that guaranteeing the operation of the system, the quality control, and the ecology of the new system. You're moving that up the hierarchy of priorities. I suppose that is true when it's new, before things get into muscle memory. It takes a group effort to help each other remember. Is that correct?
That’s right. The other thing is humans are creative animals. Sometimes people like to test the new system. It happens, “Are they serious about this change and stuff all the time? What if I do this?” If somebody swoops in and says, “Here's why doing it the other way is much safer and more productive and critical. We need to do it the same way,” now everybody learns, "That's not one to test anymore. They're serious about this. This is important. This guy stopped what he was doing. He or she wasn't yelling at me. What they're doing is they're coaching me up. I'm coaching leaders on how to coach this when they see it in real-time and how they react.
I'm not there for all of it, but I've heard stories following it. Surprisingly, impressive type of stuff. They make it important. The last piece is what I call recognition. This is about tying cause and effect together. We did this and because of this, something good happens. It's the telling of stories and making of connections. It's not awarding prizes or any of that. I use recognition in a way that a professor told me that I was using the wrong word. I said, “You may be correct, but I'm going to still use it anyway because it got people's attention.”
It's positive reinforcement. It sounds like it's catching people doing things the right agreed way. It’s using the carrot as much as you are the stick.
An example of this is somebody whose area I helped. I've had them explain what we did in their area and how it's been helping him in his words with another group. We're reinforcing it. The credibility grows. His commitment and sustainment of it grows every time he tells a story. I'm not telling the story anymore. He is. Isn't that slick? I've seen that done. I've done that for fifteen years. The first time, I was like, “I think I stumbled onto something.” I started to experiment with that to see if it was more impactful than somebody just telling the story outside of the team. The internal person telling that story and showing people how things work is a lot more impactful than the outside consultants, the CEO, or whoever is speaking that story.
Something I talk about a lot in the show is the power of story. The more that you can put the listener of the story in the hero's place of the story, the stronger the story is. That's the principle that you're pointing to there. The internal story is something like, "This pertains to me." You're removing a layer of distance and more in that story. That's good. That's a pretty good segue to something I was wondering about when I learned about this model and all the experiences you've had. We've known each other for quite some time now. I have gotten the chance to hear some of these things, but I'm always amazed at the stories that you have from this. I know some things have to be changed to protect the innocent.
The names always get changed. The numbers get changed.
The lessons stay the same regardless. I wanted to see if you had maybe a story on the bright side that would be inspirational, and possibly a story on the opposite side of the cautionary tale of tragedy.
One of my favorite stories is of the weld shop. I did this about four and a half years ago with a client. It used to take them two hours to respond.
This is that same client.
I'm picturing the person. I have a very personal connection with my teams. Think about going on a five-day road trip with a bunch of friends. In the first hour, everybody is on their best behavior. By six hours in, every bad habit. You get to know folks. I get a new team every time. I don't get to pick them. I give a general view of what this should look like. This team was made up of one engineer and six welders. Welders are very proud people.
They have high skills. They can do some stuff, but a lot of them don't want to be on teams. That's fine. This weld shop services a 900-person factory. When I walked through the weld shop prior to the event, it was a disaster. It would be a nice way of putting it. So much clutter and stuff in the way. These guys were working their tails off to try to help the factory, but they were all grumpy and grumbly, “If they just let us do our jobs, we do a lot better. They don't ever listen to us.”
My sponsor says, “I got a challenge for you. Help these guys be more productive.” I'm like, “That sounds fun. Let's do that.” On day one, I'm walking into this room. I got seven people glaring at me because we're going to introduce this continuous improvement stuff to them. They're welders. They don't need any of that.
There's a five-step process to help them be productive. It's called 5S. I won't bore you with those details. The first step is to declutter. Most people keep stuff. In this weld shop, there was old equipment that wasn't being used. There were materials that weren't being used. There was scrap stuff and stuff all over the place. We spent about one day identifying and removing all that stuff. Think about three 20 or 30-yard dumpsters. Do you know how big that is? Do you ever see those monster dumpsters they put out? We filled three of them. That's a lot of stuff. That's the first step.
The second step is now that you have the remaining stuff, put it in the best location to use it. Think very purposefully about where is the main work done and then optimize everything to that main space. They have these two welding tables we brought together. We brought power, light, air, and everything they needed. We relocated the light and everything. We labeled and cleaned up everything. Everything was where it needed to be. We took all the locks off of the equipment because that’s reduced time to make the equipment available and all that stuff. That was the second step.
They're into it because it's all physical work. They're welders. It’s physical work. That's cool. The third step is what we would call shine, which is making sure that everything that remains is in optimal condition. We created a dust collection. We cleaned up and inspected things. We made sure everything worked. We lubricated the equipment. We did all this type of stuff. Those are the first three steps. They are all very physical and mechanical. They were into it.
There’s no problem getting buy-in on that part.
After we got them started, because they didn't think they'd be allowed to throw things out. Leadership commitment had been built prior to this. Everything had been set. In anything they wanted to do, we didn't require any approvals. While we're doing this, we're creating those visuals. We're creating the messaging. We’re putting the tools where they need it. The benefits are very clear because they were designing it for their work. They had all that opportunity.
Now, we're going to have to create the audit and the checklist. They're welders. There’s no way they want to do that. I'm going to tone it down. There are a lot of naughty words said every other sentence when I said, “We got to create the audit in the checklist.” “No way,” they said with other words interspersed, “We don't do no stinking checklists. That's paperwork. That's for managers.” “No, this is for you to make sure that everything is exactly as you need it to be.”
Going around in a few circles, I was getting nowhere with them. I decided I needed to create a significant emotional event. I put up a slide showing some other team's checklists and went word by word with them to show them why it was critical. All the while, three of them, their face has turned redder than the lettering on your backdrop. Finally, the lead welder says, “We've had enough of this,” fill-in-the-blank, “We're going to go to the Smoke Shack and decide what we want to do. You wait here,” and they walk out.
I'm like, “That's what I needed to do. I hope they come back.” I'm sitting in this room for about 20 minutes which felt like 2 hours. My sponsor walked by, “What did you do? I hear you tick them off.” I said, “I sure did. They needed it. I hope they come back.” He says, “They'll come back.” I said, “Are you sure? I'm not sure.” Twenty minutes go by, they come back. They got smiles on their faces like they were going to put me in my place. They said, “We figured out what we want to do. You type. We'll talk.” I'm like, “Cool.”
I go up on this checklist. They give me eleven things to check for in their words, not my words. It’s very similar to what I had. That was it. That's a checklist. “Who's going to do this checklist?” “The welders need to do this every day. We'll rotate that.” “That's cool. Where are you going to put the checklist?” “We'll put it right where everybody can see it.” “Good. What do you want management to do?” “What do you mean, what we want management to do?” “Don't you want them to make sure everybody is playing by your rules because you're not here all the time?” “Yes.”
I show them a checklist that managers do. It takes 3 to 5 minutes. It’s very simple. I said, “What you're going to do is you're going to tell the plant manager he has to do that.” “We are?” I said, “You are.” “What do you mean? Why wouldn't you?” “Is this important?” “Yes.” “How much time have you saved? 2 hours to 3 minutes?” “Yes, three minutes.” They probably said three seconds.
I said, “You tell him that and let him decide if that isn't worth checking every once in a while. You tell him what you want him to do.” They did. At the end of the week, we always do a report out where the team tells the staff, leadership, and the CEO, who happened to be in the area that day for a different reason, so he attended. These guys did one of these reveals like, “Here's what it used to look like.” We had all these big pictures because I'd take a lot of pictures.
We pulled the curtain back because every welding shop has a big curtain so that you don't get your eyes burned. That's not good. The ooze, uhs, and the clapping when they came in and now these guys are proud. They're showing it off and tell them why the guy did it. They wrapped it up in the end, and I did not tell them to do this. They said, "Here's what we need from our plant manager." They look right at the plant manager, “You can do this, can't you?” I won't say his name. What could he say but “I will.”
For years since, every single day, the check is done by the welders. Every single week, somebody on the leadership team does the audit without fail. They rotated area owners, the person that you have to answer to in the weld shop, the first guy and angriest and grumpiest of them all, to begin with, has rotated out and there's a new leader and owner. It's as good or even better than we left it. Why? Because it helps and leadership supports it to this day because it's critical to how they perform. We'll call that a good story.
A couple of good lessons from that. What I take away is that accountability function is not a one-way street. Leadership requires being willing to be vulnerable, being held accountable for what you're delivering, and making sure when you say you're going to do something, you do it. It's part of that audit. It doesn't necessarily have to be personal, but as a leader, I have to buy it and live it.
That's the preparation I do with leaders prior to these events to give them a sense of what's about to happen. I look in the whites of their eyes to see if they're ready for that because some are not.
It takes some humility and willingness to be vulnerable, willingness to maybe, “I might drop the ball here once or twice. It’s okay.”
They have to be willing to be called out because we said there's nothing more important. If it's true that there was nothing more important, then you have to act like there isn't anything more important. This must live on. It's that valuable to our people, customers, and organization.
When you're in that initial stage where you're talking with the leadership, you're preparing and getting a read on them, “Is this going to work? Where do I have to help here? Are they ready to jump into an event? Do we have to do some pre-work before we're going to be ready for that?”
The hardest lesson for us new business owners is the ability to say, “This probably isn't a good idea even though they're willing to pay me.” The ability to walk away from business if they are truly not ready because what I do not want to do is set them up to fail. I have to set them up to win. If the leadership isn't there, even if you have a willing team, it's not going to sustain. Remember, the leadership commitments are in the center of that wheel. If that goes away, the wheel falls apart. You can lose one of the spokes of the wheel. The wheel is still okay. It's not quite as strong. If you lose the center, it's gone. There is no wheel.
That's crucial. I love that aspect of your model. For me, the idea there is when I'm working with teams, with a physical process, you can see things, but with the professional development of the team process, it plays out over a pretty long period of time. It's not clear as to whether we surmounted a hurdle or not. In other words, somebody might remember, have a new skill, conduct a meeting in a more efficient way, or something like that. They might do that once or twice and then revert back.
I love that measurement and aspect to whatever degree you can get it. It's obvious that the changes are there. What I'm driving to the question here is, when it's not obvious and the changes aren't as clear as "Is the tool in the right spot, yes or no?" When it's more like, "Is this person performing to the agreed standard on this particular thing?" We have to track that over weeks if not months. What are your insights or thoughts on how you might take that approach and apply it to maybe a wider range or a softer range of situations for change?
The good news is we have applied it in non-physical activities. There are many ways to do this. First of all, you're asking yourself, "Regardless of what the activity is, are they following standards or not?" You have to have a way to measure that. Are they using the documentation? Are they programming in the correct way? Are they following the steps? One thing we've done in many locations is create a visual audit of following standards versus not following standards.
I audited 4 people and 3 of them were following standards and 1 was not. That was Monday. On Tuesday, 4 were following standard and 2 were not. Now you can visualize, "What did we do about the 2? What were the actions we took?" We don't have to name them, but the person auditing has accountability and a commitment to help if they're not following standards because the goal, if you've created a better standard, behavior, procedure, or what have you, is that everybody would follow it. The goal is to get to 100% compliance. We're not going to go any further on that, but I have hundreds of stories of how we've done it in non-physical processes.
Can you give one example? You gave me a little bit. I took that to create a visual aid. You're taking that, which is not all that tangible. You're making it tangible by saying, “Here is the thing. It's a yes or no.”
The simplest way to go about it. A manager comes down and assesses five people in her organization around one standard. It can be a physical or a non-physical activity. They have a conversation to see if they even understand the standard. Three of them did not. We create a whiteboard Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, all the way through Sunday. The first thing is audit compliance. The second thing is coaching opportunities. The third thing is actions to follow up on. We're making that visible. What do we care about?
What we care about is that people are doing the right thing. What we also care about is leadership is supporting them to do the right thing. If you throw it in a computer, you don't have to look at it. If you make it big and visible, everybody looks at it. You put it in the break room where everybody goes at least once or twice a day. You put it in the restrooms or you put it in where the time clock is. Everybody sees it. There's no place to hide. I can even tell if they've updated it recently because it's Wednesday, and Monday and Tuesday haven't been filled in, I know who to go to.
When we do these factory audits, we have pieces of paper sitting in a document holder right in front of the location. I can tell if they've been auditing every week or if they skipped a week. I can tell who did and who didn't do it. I can go back to them and say, “What are you slacking for? You told me how important this is.” Believe me, this is the way I talk. This is why not everybody is ready for this because this is all about being real, transparent, humble, and willing to be different for the good of the organization.
I try to make it as comfortable and real. I don't use big words. I try not to use any technical terms. Every so often, I throw one in. It's not intentional. It just happens because you're around so much stuff, but the point is we're here to help people. We're trying to help them do the right thing. If you understand, like this show, you're trying to help people navigate hard things that they can do on their own by reinforcing something that was in their blind spot. You're bringing it into the light for them. I’m bringing things into the light for my folks, but I'm turning the light on so everybody can see it and there is no place to hide.
It seems to me that when you're making that evaluation of whether the team is ready for this approach or not, part of it is it seems like you have to have a certain level of trust in the cultural environment to be able to operate at that maturity level where people feel like, “No, I can be open. If I make a mistake, it's not a death sentence. We expect people to be people.”
I'd be interested in your view on this, but when I'm going into organizations, what I'm trying to impart to leadership is you have a couple of major choices. One is that tomorrow, we're going to be better than we are today. That's a choice that you have to actively make and you have to be a steward of that choice because it's an active choice. It's not something that takes care of itself. That's what requires the leadership. That seems like it's analogous to part of your conversation going in.
How interested are they in being better? You said that earlier. We have a choice that we're going to make. Do we want to be better? Some groups don't. They may say they do, but they don't, “Things are okay. Leave me alone.” Those don't turn into paid engagements. The cautionary tale is it's better to know that it doesn't work and not try it or you're not prepared or ready for it than to jump in and not be able to sustain it because you're not committed to it. I try not to just take people's money and then leave them to deal with it after I leave.
This sounds self-serving. I found a lot of consultants that do that. They'll tell you what to do and then you don't know what to do after they left. That's not the point. That doesn't make any sense. You're throwing money away. I don't want to do that. Clearly, that wasn't going to work as much as I wanted to ride on his yacht. If something comes of it, I'll be shocked.
I don't want people to think that’s that person's problem. That's me too. My approach is not for everybody. Sometimes part of it is that I'm not portraying it in a way that helps them see how it could help them because some of the sounds ridiculous, “How did you save $2 million for a team in a week? We did this together, but it sounds outlandish, “A week? How does that happen?” People are creative and amazing.
The Wheel of Sustainability: Engaging and Empowering Teams to Produce Lasting Results by Adam T. Lawrence
People don't want to imagine that they're leaving so much on the table. If we had full knowledge of the costs we cost ourselves because we could easily make some changes within our power, and by not making those changes, if we somehow magically knew what the cost of those was, it would keep most of us up at night because it’s way more than what you think.
There are a couple of silly things I say once I get to know you. One of them is I'm never going to tell you how ugly your baby is because that's not a good approach. Have you ever seen the old Seinfeld episode where there's a group who loved their baby? It’s very snugly, but there's a lot of that. It hurts the old ego to know that we've been wasting so much money for so long. There's also a predisposition against bringing somebody in from the outside to tell us what we should already know. I try not to ever make it feel that way.
You're not coming in telling them anything about what they're doing. What you're doing is applying a model of the process that allows them to see what they're doing in a new way. That's where you and I are right together. That's what the Eye Of Power model is. It's allowing you to see the familiar territory of what's going on inside here. It allows you to see that in a little different way than you otherwise would. We can't make any positive change if we're not aware. Awareness is the first thing we need.
Oftentimes, if things are going well, which is the goal, by usually, the second day going into the third day, they're on such a role. I usually say, “I guess you don't need me anymore. I'm going home.” Where do you think you are going? You're holding the bike as they're going along with the training wheel. That’s riding alongside them.
One question I wanted to get to is something that as I looked at The Wheel Of Sustainability, I saw a couple of principles that you emphasize in the book. You said something along the lines of if everyone is in charge of a process, no one will be. You talked about that as you were going through where you have a champion or somebody has given responsibility. That's the audit chair or person. That's one thing.
Another thing you said is, "People are the key to improvements." Especially as we go to systems, we may want to take the personalities and the people out of it. At the end of the day, it is people that run everything. I said earlier that one of the things about leadership is you have to commit tomorrow, we're going to have to be a little bit better than we are today. That's the one non-negotiable. Am I seeing it right as far as, yes, we're talking about systems, checklists, efficient ways, and covering for inefficiencies that we were blind to in the past, but in the end, it is a people-changing proposition.
Think about it this way. All the systems that we put in are trying to simplify the stuff so you don't have to worry about it. What we need your brain, mind, heart, and thought for is around the complex stuff. The fact that I had to chase down the equipment I needed for two hours if I can remove that, now you can be the welder. You can be the guy or girl solving the complex problem using your skills, experience, training, and all that good stuff. You're not wasting two hours and frustrated trying to get your stuff organized.
In the end, it does come down to the people, until we go AI on everything, which is clearly not an area of my interest. People make decisions every single moment of every single day. They decide what they're going to do. All we're trying to do is make their decisions easier for them because sometimes they're going to have complex stuff. You have stuff going on in your life that's affecting your work decisions as well.
That’s a very complicated picture. A lot of people tuning in to us, maybe they are on a team, maybe they manage a team, or maybe they're working by themselves. We have things we can be better at doing. We can all perhaps look in the mirror and say, “What are the small things? What are the things that I've stopped thinking about and they're all in muscle memory, that I'm doing that are the opportunities to save those two hours like you did with the weld team?” That's something that people could possibly do on an individual basis.
In my family, we joke about geeking out on this stuff. My wife got the kitchen and pantry organized. Don't mess with the locations of that stuff. Our clothes are fall versus spring. We do a rotation every six months. It's geeky. I have tubs in my basement with labels on them. You can apply that to things that are beneficial to you to make whatever it is you do.
I can find any tool I need for gardening or repair because I have them organized in a way that I know exactly where they are. I never have to chase anything down. My son knows if he uses a tool. He knows exactly where it goes back. Dad doesn't have to tell him because he knows that there's a cutout for the hammer. By golly, that's what fits right there. It's nicely labeled and organized. He gets it.
You can make your home life easy. You can make your work life easy. You can make your working space if you're working from home organized. I have everything organized in my working space. My wife can tell me what my upcoming two weeks are. What are my three goals for the week? What are the longer-term tasks? What are my metrics? You can apply this stuff in a visual and sustainable way to anything that's important to you. Even in hobbies, if you collect coins, which I do not, but if you did, can you find all your coins? Do you know when and where you got them? If you had to sell them, what are they worth?
What I'm gathering there then is we may or may not pay attention. We may or may not naturally be organized thinkers. We may or may not take the time to create these systems naturally. If we do, okay. What you said is preaching to the choir. Those who don't naturally do that, that's where they are probably paying a higher price than they realize because their focus is somewhere else.
They're on talking to that person and being a supportive person and contributing to the relationships in their life or it might be on some other priority, creative or productive priority. We might poo-poo that, “Retentive people will do it that way, not me. Everything is exactly where I want it because I put it there and no one else can come in and find the thing,” and neither can you if you're honest with yourself.
The question that starts to come to my mind is if you're working with a team, you're going to have a spectrum of people along with the area that we were talking about. Some are naturally going to take to this organized. For others, this is going to be a huge stretch for them. I guess this is where that audit and that accountability comes into play where some people need other people's help to do this at all.
Remember, one of the elements is a clear benefit. We are only designing something that will be beneficial to the people who designed it or use it. Even those disorganized people have helped design it in a way that they go, “This helps me.”
In other words, there’s part of it that has admitted that this is better.
It is because they were part of the solution. There's a broad spectrum of this. Think about the home thing. I make fun of myself for doing these kinds of things. What's the real benefit of having an organized kitchen, toolbox, this or that? It allows me to have more time to do the fun stuff because I'm not wasting time on the hard stuff. If you think about it, if I love being around family, it gives me more time to be around family.
If I love to go fishing, it gives me more time to go fishing. If I like to travel, it gives me more time to do that. A small investment in a behavior or a habit gives you more time to do the things you love to do. What's wrong with that? That's a nice little benefit no matter who you are. If you prefer to sit and watch television, then you have more time to sit and watch television. If you like that, we can help you there.
Sit there in front of the TV with your label maker. Is there anything else that I didn't ask you that you think might pertain to the theme of our discussion?
I could talk about this all day and your audience doesn't have all day. What I would say is this whole system is nothing new. It's just my construct that was trying to solve a problem for me and the teams that I was helping. The idea is that they worked hard to solve a problem. How do I help it stay solved? What's nice about The Wheel Of Sustainability, from my viewpoint, is it is so simple that even Adam can do it.
It's teachable and trainable. We do it every single time. We learn. It's not perfect. Is there something missing? Probably. Do you lose anything by not doing one of the spokes? A little bit, but at least you tried. I always say to my team, “The goal is you tried to apply every one of those elements to the changes you've made. If you've at least tried it, then we're way better off than if you hadn't tried it.” It's simple. Every element is designed to be simple. Nothing needs high skills, computer skills, or AI skills. You have to be able to write big. You have to be willing to draw ugly pictures and be willing to talk to people.
Your company is process improvement partners, not process perfection partners.
One of our other sayings is, “Butt ugly by Friday,” which means your solution doesn't have to be pretty. It has to help people. Don't worry about it looking perfect. Worry about, “Is it helping people?” We'll make it pretty later. We say silly terms like that because people remember that. I didn't make that up. It was said to me about fifteen years ago and I said, “That's cool. I’m stealing that one.”
Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule and being with us. We appreciate you. I respect what you do. I know the value you bring to lots of teams of various kinds. I very much respect the model that you created. I love the chance to chop it up with a kindred spirit like we've been able to do here. Thank you so much.
Thank you for letting me be your guest.
You are always welcome.
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Adam talked about a few things that I thought were valuable to the Eye Of Power community. One of the things in terms of the idea of the kinds of changes we might want to make, it may not be all that dramatic or it might be hard to see it in a physical form. He had a good idea of how we can make that happen by translating it into words and putting it in a place you can see, whether it's a checklist or a reminder. Some sort of thing that says, “Did I do that thing I agreed to? Yes or no.”
We can create metrics for ourselves and sustain that. Maybe in a journal. We use journals a lot and work in the Eye Of Power community. We keep track so we can see where we’re on track, where we got a little bit off track, and be able to make those changes. When we do that as a team and we're not doing it by ourselves, we're keeping those records and then sharing them with our guide, now we have a discussion with a thought partner where we can come up with solutions and ways that we can at least do that sustainable thing that we know we can do if we just remember.
We have to do it long enough to sustain it. I appreciate those parts of the discussion that we had. The other thing was the types of people that we might either be ourselves or encounter. He was pointing to the idea of the team of welders, the grumbling, and the “We don't have to do it this way. This way is fine.” A lot of people tend to have that attitude. You probably know people like that yourself. The idea here is that for the purposes of understanding, we have a tendency to want to reduce complicated things down to bite-size form. That's called reductionism.
We spent a bunch of time talking about how that can be a good thing. We intentionally do that, but we can't lose track of the reality that things are not simple. When we conclude and we say, “I know everything there is to know here. There's no room to improve here,” a little bit of humility could be in store. It's a lot of hubris to imagine that you know everything there is to know. It is not going to comport with reality almost all the time. That's something we can all learn from.
In Adam’s talk, I was thinking in terms of how he pointed out how people are sometimes willing to change and sometimes not. They are already wired to prefer how we've been doing it and prefer the familiar. It becomes a function of leadership to impose that new standard or at least that expectation that, “No, status quo has got to go.” That's something that I find myself talking about a lot with people.
We can apply that in our own lives too, where you are the one who decides what acceptable is. What is your level of income or your lifestyle? You're the one who says, “What I have is fine. I need more. How much more do I need? How much is too much? How much is too little?” These are variables that depend on the other values we have. Whether it's a material thing or a spiritual thing, we are the arbiters to say, “This is no longer attention for me at this level.”
That's variable. We get to choose that. Part of our agency or power is to look at what that is and make sure we're not diluted. Are we taking a limitation based on something that is not true but we just accepted because of an experience or because somebody said this, or we don't know what we don't know? I take that as an invitation to stay in the question, to remain open, and want to learn. These are the lessons I took. I'd be interested to hear what you took from that conversation. Please do share that with us so we can all get the most that we possibly can out of this and every episode. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
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About Adam Lawrence
Adam Lawrence founded Process Improvement Partners LLC in 2018. He has 35+ years of experience in process improvement activities, targeted at manufacturing, distribution, and business processes. With 350+ Kaizen events in multiple industries across North America, Europe, and Asia, he engages teams, aligns leadership, and creates sustainable results. The Wheel of Sustainability is his first book.
Married to his wonderful wife Peggy, he has one son, Tyler (his IT department). Adam enjoys loud music, family travel adventures, and collecting sports memorabilia.