Patrick Adams

Hello and welcome everybody. Our guest today is Tanya Stinson. She is the founder of leaning towards change LLC. Tanya is an experienced leader in the healthcare industry where she is responsible for performance improvement, quality, risk, patient safety and compliance. She serves as a mentor and a coach to physicians, nurses and other clinical and non clinical staff and utilizing Lean and Six Sigma methodology. Welcome to the show,Tanya.

Tanya Stinson

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Such a pleasure to be here, Patrick.

Patrick Adams

Well, I’m excited to have you, Tanya. And I’m looking forward to our discussion today, we’re going to be talking about healthcare, lean in healthcare and, you know, maybe even talk through some of the differences between how lean is applied or looked at in, you know, manufacturing or other industries and how it’s also making its way or has been making its way for the past number of years into the healthcare industry. And obviously, a lot of people that are listening right now who are process improvement practitioners or operations managers, or team leaders or consultants, they’ve heard about waste, right? They’ve heard about waste if they know lean if they know process improvement, and waste can look very different depending on the industry. But depending on whether we’re in the office or out on the production floor, or you know, whether working in a nonprofit or service based industry versus a product based industry. And so you are currently in the healthcare world, can you tell us a little bit about what waste looks like in the healthcare world?

Tanya Stinson

Absolutely. So you know, a few things that we say that are a little bit different, of course, is, you know, medication waste, there’s a lot of wasted supplies and medications and things when it comes to healthcare. And of course, when you get into healthcare, there’s some traditional things, you know, you get into waiting, which of course, you know, when you go to go to a restaurant, you have waiting time, but of course, when you get into the healthcare realm, and it comes to somebody waiting in the Ed, of course, there’s other things that are associated with that are that are critical, because this patient may be at a critical state. And so time is critical at that point. And so I think that’s one of the big differences between waiting at a restaurant or waiting, you know, at a traffic ladder or something like that. It’s the differences, the people, right, it’s the living, breathing people that we’re talking about. So I think a lot of that brings into the point that making process and quality improvements in healthcare is all the more crucial, more so. And I don’t want to be particular about healthcare, but more so in healthcare than I think it would be anywhere else, just simply because it affects people it affects patients. And, you know, and so when you get into that, you also kind of look to see, where does that waste come from. And so it’s breaking down those processes. And really, a lot of that goes back to the perspectives and how people are trained to see those wastes. And you know, a lot of times when you know you have new employees come on, they always see a lot of things that people that are in roles for a really long time, they become desensitized to seeing those waste, because the status quo, they are so concerned about taking care of those patients. And you know, sometimes they may not see the waist around him because they’ve been in that same position every day, right? Sure, for several years. And so when you have these new people that come on board, or even process improvement, people may come in and go gemba and observe right, they would be able to see different things that more so others that are actually working in those physicians wouldn’t necessarily be able to see just because for one, they’re focused on the patient, that’s the first priority. And you know, the second thing is it’s just getting taken care of the task at hand, because a lot of times that task is super crucial. And getting that patient taken care of is the top number one priority. So a lot of times it’s really about doing that first and then realize you were the white star second. Sure, though.

Patrick Adams

Oh, that’s great. And I appreciate you helping give the distinction between the two there. And for those that don’t know you, you did spend some time outside of the healthcare industry and actually your introduction to lean was outside of the healthcare industry. So can you give us just a little bit about your background, and then what brought you over to the healthcare industry.

Tanya Stinson

So I started on my Lean journey back in 2006, in 2007, and I was working at a power plant and then went on to work in an aboveground strip mining Corporation. And then of course, went into healthcare and then actually back out of healthcare until multimodal manufacturing company, and then back into healthcare and a lot of the things that I have learned in and outside of healthcare are things that I wanted to take back into healthcare and ensure that we started utilizing those tools that were created outside of healthcare, because a lot of those tools are really essential and would help to improve upon the patients that we serve and to help improve those outcomes for those patients. And not just the patients. For the employees as well, I think that the other thing is when we talk about the voice of the customer, because the voice of the customer is super important. And it’s not just about the voice of the patient, it’s about the voices of the employees and the people working in those positions, you really have to include them in, of course, when you go to the gemba, that’s the first thing that’s super important is because that’s where you see where the work is being done, you can actually see those ways and that’s where you can talk to the people that are doing the work and really get the the process for their perspective, because a lot of times they’ll be able to tell you, without you even looking where the waste is brought right there, you know, that’s the true Voice of the Customer as part of those processes. And then, because sometimes the patient sees the waiting time on the back end, but they don’t know the reason for that wait time. Right, right. And that’s where those employees that are actually doing those processes and completing that work, are the ones that can truly tell you where those, you know, those errors and inefficiencies are? Absolutely, you know, I think from that perspective, that’s when you really have to, to, you know, and this is the reason why I’m so passionate about leader Standard Work is in standard work itself, not just for the leader, but just Standard Work is so important is because you’ve got to go gemba, determine what your current state looks like, gather the voices of the people that are actually doing the work capture that current state from their perspective and to determine from their perspective where the weights are, you know, because you can come in and see those things from your perspective. But if you can just sit down with those people that are doing the work, that’s where the communication breakdowns come in. Because a lot of times people don’t understand until they talk to other areas, if you look at a total process from start to finish. So if your scope is let’s just say from the time that patient comes into the EDI, to the time that the patient is discharged, that process flows through more than one department. And a lot of times these departments don’t talk to each other, they don’t communicate. And so that’s where some of the communication breakdown comes in. Because they don’t truly know that if there’s a broken process that they have, what kind of delays, errors and inefficiencies that sends it as a waterfall effect down to the second step in the process, and so on and so forth until the patient is already out the door. Nobody truly knows how many errors and inefficiencies and breakdowns that we truly have.

Patrick Adams

Right? Absolutely. And I appreciate that. And you’re you’re starting to talk a little bit about perception right to and what people feel or, or what they see, when they’re when they’re in the emergency room, or in the hospital or you know, even in a doctor’s office, I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are around how perception plays a part in learning to see waste, right, and so maybe you can expand on that a little bit more.

Tanya Stinson

So I think, you know, just the way that we’re raised, or the way that we’re raised, the way that we’re trained, essentially, as we get out into the workforce a lot of times, that’s what helps us to build our perception of the world, right? So even from a child, the things that you’re taught the things that you’re, you know, you believe all of those are things that have been taught to you, right. And so as we get into our process improvement perspective, even when we’re grown, and we get into the workforce, the way that we’re trained is the way we think the current state truly is, that’s our perception. And so it’s not really until we start to communicate to others to see what their perception is, to see that they may have a completely different perspective or perception than we do. So that’s also where that communication breakdown may come into play, too. Because a lot of people do things differently. And it’s not truly until you start using these Lean Six Sigma tools and techniques to determine that, to know that the communication breakdowns are there, to know that the wastes that are in the process breakdowns are there. And you know, a lot of times that’s the reason why when you just get people into a room, you’ll determine where those gaps are. And that automatically starts to improve upon. And from a data perspective, you’ll see this a lot of times before you even work on the project, you’ll see from a data perspective just for communicating about where those issues are, and where the breakdowns are in between the different groups you’ll start to see start to improve just from that perspective.

Patrick Adams

Absolutely. It makes me think about, have you ever seen the cartoon where the the two people are standing across from each other and in the middle of them as there’s a number six or number nine laying on the ground, depending on you know, how you’re looking at it, you know, what perspective that you’re coming at the situation from? So, you know, I am completely undecided. It’s pretty interesting. I think you can probably Google perception and find the cartoon but it’s a pretty funny picture. I actually think I’ve used it in some of my training sessions. So depending on whether you’re looking at it, you know, this way or that way that it could be a six it could be a nine and so talks about you know, basically is exactly what you’re talking about. Everybody is brought up in a different way. And you know, some people are brought up in single parent homes. Some people are brought up in two parent homes, some people live in the country. Some people live in the city and Depending on where you’re brought up, and where you came from, what industry you work in, your perception of things can be completely different. So one person might see waste in one way or another in another, one person might see it not as waste, another person might see it as waste. So again, there’s so many different perceptions that you know, can come, especially when we’re dealing with human beings, right?

Tanya Stinson

That’s right. I mean, if you think about it, even from a Lean Six Sigma training perspective, it really just depends on what organization or you know, university you go with, everybody teaches things differently. It’s not like it’s one standard training system that we all have, you can go with one person, and it may be completely different than what you’d get from somebody else. And I think that’s the same thing with universities and colleges as well. Because you may go to one university and get trained on, you know, these four courses, but it may be completely different from what you would get from another university. And so that’s where I eat, sleep, and embrace standardization. And so, you know, standardization is something that we lack across all industries, right, and not just the industry’s processes, because you may put on your shoes differently than what I do. Right. And so there’s not really a whole lot of standardization that we have. And of course, we know what standardization comes improvement. Right. And, and so on. And so I think that’s one of the things that, you know, when we look at process and performance improvement and quality improvement, getting back into the healthcare realm and not just in healthcare, being able to standardize our processes would be a good thing to do.

Patrick Adams

Absolutely, definitely. 100% stand behind you on that. And and I think we could probably today we’re trying to to focus on waste, or we will be focusing on waste primarily in this conversation, but just in in hearing you talk I feel like we need to record another podcast maybe next month or the month after just talk about leader Standard Work and standards, because that’s that’s also another hot topic and and also one that I’m very passionate about as well. But anyways, back to waste. So let’s talk about waste walks. Again, I’m, you know, very familiar with how a waste walk works and what they are. But there’s probably a lot of listeners out there that are maybe hearing that term wastewater for the first time, can you define what is a waste walk? And what would it be used for, and maybe even talk about the differences in what you’ve seen in different industries.

Tanya Stinson

So a waste walk to me is completely different from again, but walk again, but walk is actually where you’re just you’re walking to where the work is being done. But a waste walk is actually where, number one, you learn what those waste areas and inefficiencies are. So Tim Woods downtime, you really learn what those wastes are in some examples of what the wastes are. Because a lot of times what I’ve seen, and this is not just in healthcare, people are really passionate about wanting to make changes, but they don’t truly know where they start. And I think that’s where wastewater really comes into play is, you know, once they learn what the waste and where those errors and deficiencies potentially could be, give them some examples of what those could be even in health care outside of healthcare, wherever it is that they want to focus on process and performance improvement. You know, it could be manufacturing health care, or, you know, like I said, mining and utilities, but I think it’s really giving you them that way, swap form and being able to have him go gemba. Just sit back and watch the process. And a lot of times I’ve seen people record the processes as they’re being, you know, as people are actually doing the work because they don’t want to interrupt the person doing it, right? And a lot of times, if you record it, they get back to doing things. Normally, they don’t get so nervous when people are actually standing there standing over them watching them. And so a lot of times, if you’ll just record the processes as people are doing the work, and look for those things that you learned about the waist, you can go back and look to see as you’re watching this person, it’s not just about those ways there. Are there any kind of things that they’re doing that we consider to be unsafe? Right? You know, a lot of times what we think about things that are unsafe, we think that’s an off stop, right? Let’s pull that end at core, let’s, let’s see, you know, we’ve seen a major failure, you know, we need to stop the process. But of course, if you see it on video, you can’t do that. But it’s certainly something you can certainly document and go back to that person. And you know, as well as the other documentation, as you recall, you know, watch the video, go back and look at it and see what waste you find, document those errors and inefficiencies, including the safety incidents, go back and talk to those people that are doing the work as part of the current state that you actually document that you watched on video, or you watched in person, and then talk with them about some of the findings that you had. And so, and I think that’s where you get into, well, are these things that we need to start? Do we need to start watching other people because one of the things that you’ll see is that’s where that non standardization comes into play. You’ll start to see people doing things differently, then you’ll determine that there’s no best practice for what people were trained by different people. And this also gets back into perception. A lot of people are trained by the Where people, one person could have been hard 15 years ago, and the way that they did things were different, right? You may have a new person that’s coming in that could have been trained on a whole new set of processes, and that, you know, in a whole new way. And so I think that’s one of the things that you’ll find when it’s not standardized. And people do things differently. And the people that have been around longer have no shortcuts, right? And, you know, sometimes with those shortcuts, it’s, you know, there’s, there’s different practices. That’s absolutely right. Yeah, all that goes back into your perception, too. So it goes back into perception on how you’re trained, the person that was trained 15 years ago, has a different perception than this new person that comes onto the floor. And you know, the new person that comes on to the forum may be really passionate about wanting to make those changes and things and, you know, wants to want to make a difference. And then you have your you’re not to be disrespectful, or people that have been in work for several years that they may have a different perception, because it’s status quo at that point, you know, and that’s another waste that comes into play and skills, right? Because they may just want to come in and get the work done. Whereas your new person may want to try to make a major difference and try to see what they can do to eliminate a lot of those wasting all of those shortcuts.

Patrick Adams

That’s right, while you were talking, I was thinking back to a company that I worked with years ago, and we were looking at their ramp up times for a particular machine that had a number of different settings on it. And the first shift team was struggling with a ramp up, I can’t remember what the times were off the top of my head, but they were Wait, they were probably I don’t know, we’ll just say they were an hour, an hour ramp up. And until they were until they had their first good part off the line. The third shift, however, had like I’d say, let’s say 10 minutes, I mean, it was crazy, the difference between third shift and first shift once we started tracking the ramp up times. And so we went obviously, and asked them to let us watch them actually do their setup. And when we saw the way that third shift was doing it on his dials, he would always go past the number and then come back to the right setting, go past the number and then come back to the right setting. And we watch for shifts, they would just go right to the setting. And so once we identified that difference, we obviously asked third shift, why do you go past, you know, like 20, click past and then come back to the number. And his response was, well, there’s, you know, I’ve been working here for 25 years. And I know that there’s a lot of play in the tooling. And so I know that if I just go right to the number, then the play is still going to be there. But if I go past 20, click and come back, then the play is taken out. And so I can ramp up much quicker. But it wasn’t until we actually went out to the place where the work was being done, observed the work being done, talked to the different shifts and actually received some data and then had those conversations that we were able to identify that. And so it was really interesting to me to think about, you know, why aren’t you guys talking to each other. And obviously, that that came to some more discussions around communication breakdown, which is really what where I want to go to next, I’d love to talk to you about what you think, you know, problems in lack of communication, you have two shifts that clearly see each other during, you know, shift handoff. But what does a lack of communication, you know, what does that cause for teams when they have that lack of communication.

Tanya Stinson

So I think from the perspective, just like you were talking about, it sounds like there was a great best practice that you could have built out of all of those different things that you had heard and seen, right. And I think that communication breakdown comes into play if people don’t talk to each other, they don’t truly know where those failures are, and where the opportunities for improvement are, unless they communicate. You know, a lot of times when we work on improvement projects, we work in silos. And it’s not just improvement projects, every day, departments work in silos, they don’t truly communicate to other departments to determine where the communication gaps are much less any kind of failure that could be associated with, you know, process failures or things like that, or even safety issues. Because sometimes when we, you know, one of the things I can think about from that perspective is mislabeled specimens, I mean, that, you know, there might be a specimen that could have been collected in the Ed, by the time he gets to the lab, there could have been something happened in the elevator, taking the specimen to the lab to where it lost the, you know, it lost its label sticker. And so they have to send that back down to the ad and communicate with them to let them know, look, this specimen is this label. So guess what happens we have to go back to that patient and recollect that, you know, that specimen on this patient. And if you know, the patient could already be disgruntled because we probably had to, you know, try to stick them two or three times just to get the specimens that we did even if we can the second time. Some of these patients may be so dehydrated or something’s going on with them to where we may not be able to collect another specimen and so that’s where You know, a lot of times it’s not just and, and that’s the thing, I think with communication breakdowns, there’s always another failure associated somewhere in the process, right. And so you know, this as well as adding Patrick, whenever we talk about processes, it’s not just we don’t find just one failure, we don’t find just one waste. Because when we find these, it’s in multiples, because sometimes one waste impacts in other ways that impacts on other ways. And it’s kind of that, like I said, that waterfall effect to where, you know, if you find one, you’re gonna find more, right. And so when you actually start working on those opportunities for improvement, it involves a lot of work, just simply because it’s not a simple change. Sure, and a lot of times that involves more than one department, because what you’ll see is that that communication breakdown, of course, with the communication breakdown is also, like I said, other process failures. And that’s where the waste and the you know, the error and inefficiency comes in, because that’s when they start to talk about how they’re passing those errors and inefficiencies from one department to the other. Right, right. And then, and in the case of them is labeled specimen, so they have to pass that specimen back to the ED or trash, it even formed the ED that they’ve got to recollect. And then at that point, the EDS got to come back, well, we don’t know how often that happens is slowly start to track, you know, start to track and trend because, you know, that’s another thing too, you know, with the variation in the processes, unless we start to track and train how often that happens, we’re not going to truly be able to see the complexity of how big these problems are. And you know, that’s another waste in itself, too, because a lot of times people will, we have a tendency to, to not want to say put a bandaid on that, you know, put it but we put a quick fix it right. A lot of times, we don’t really want it, we don’t have the time to go back and invest the time. And so looking to see how often these issues happen, and how often we track and trend, you know, how many times do we have to search from room to room to look for a thermometer? How many times did we run out of nursing or gowns for the patients in one room, where we had to go back and forth searching and out of the rooms for gowns for the patients? You know, these are different ways that a lot of times we don’t we don’t track those things, because we don’t know how often it might happen to the next shift, or we don’t know how often it may happen to all these other people doing the work as part of the process. Right. And so I think that’s just all of it, all of it to me, perception, training, communication, breakdowns, all of those things, they work together, right? Because if you have one that breaks essentially, and others are gonna break.

Patrick Adams

Sure. And I have another question based on what you’re saying. So the, when you’re out doing a waist walk, if you find multiple, multiple ways, or multiple opportunities for improvement, what is your suggestion to listeners about how they manage that, because that could that can become overwhelming very quickly, if they have, if you have multiple people doing waist walks at a department and, you know, they’re finding five, six different opportunities for improvement that can become very overwhelming very quickly. So how would you suggest people manage that type of workload, or how do they approach organizing those tasks or those opportunities, those solutions for the opportunities of improvement?

Tanya Stinson

I think they need to track and turn it over time, just you know, because some things may be things where they can be you know, what we call just do, it’s where it may be an immediate change that they can go out and complete and fix the problem. Sure. But then these more complex problems that may take an actual word, use the domain methodology and use these Lean Six Sigma tools. So I think it’s all about prioritization, they really need to start tracking and trending, how often they see those issues, maybe 30 days, maybe 60 days, 90 days, however long they feel like they really need to build to be able to get trained, depending on what what the waste is that they find rot, right. And I think part of that goes back to Well, is it something immediate, that we need to address this immediately, because if it’s a wrong site surgery, I mean, I would want to address that immediately. It’s not something that I would want to wait, right, it needs to be addressed immediately. But if it’s something like, like I talked about where they’re, they’re not getting, you know, missing thermometers in one form or another, that may be something you want to track over time and talk to different departments and talk to the different shifts to see how often this happens. And then to what’s the complexity of that, because it may be not just an issue with thermometers, it can be an issue with other stuff, clouds as well. So, you know, it’s just kind of talking about that with the team. So I think if you have a group of people, bring them together, you know, maybe a person from supply chain, and maybe a person from the EDI, maybe a person from the lab, you want to get a group of people together to talk about these different issues that we’re seeing. But one of the first things that I would say to do is start tracking and trending to see how often it happens. Because once you do that, you may see that it’s not as big an issue as you thought it was right? Or it may not happen as often as you think it does. And so and then from that perspective, I would just start monitoring the data. And then if you start to see that it’s something that you know, is truly getting out of hand, bring people together. to prioritize those different issues to determine Is this something that, especially in healthcare is something that could impact the patient, you know, or the employee immediately? If it’s an immediate danger, we need to go ahead and address that. But if it’s something that can take a few months to get an improvement made, then it’s just all about that prioritization, I believe.

Patrick Adams

Right. Yeah. And he talked quite quite a bit about going and talking to the people and involving them and engaging them in the process. How important is it for people, for leaders, for those that are out doing a waste walk? How important is it for them to be effective listeners?

Tanya Stinson

So I think from that perspective, like I said, I think the people doing the work are the most important people, you’ve really got to listen to that voice of the customer, because you know, they’re the ones that are doing the work. And it’s not just about it. And then from that perspective, you talk about leadership, right? You want to get leaders involved, because guess what’s going to happen, if the people on the frontlines, see that their leaders are invested, they’re going to want to ensure that they put all of their time and attention into whatever it is that you know, whatever topic it is the issues that we’re talking about. Because if they see that their leaders are invested, they’re going to be invested. And that’s one of the things that we see even with sustainability, it to the opposite of that, as we start to complete PR improvements, and we start to get into the control phase, and we want to look at long term sustainment, what are the things that we want to ensure happens is we want to ensure that the leaders are still engaged, because sometimes if the leaders aren’t engaged, and they feel like it’s not a priority, so the people then start to think it’s not a priority anymore. And we don’t want things to go back to the way they were before. Because sometimes that happens. I mean, we, you know, we know this. And so I think that’s part of it, too, it truly depends on how important these changes are that were made as part of these processes, especially if it comes to the safety of the patients or the employees that are that do this work on a daily basis? You know, it really goes back to how long do we track and trend to the once we get to that place where we’re sustaining these processes? How long do we consider to keep this as a topic of importance? So I think that’s also where we get back into communication breakdowns. Because if you see people start to revert back to those old ways of doing things, it’s that see something, say something mentality. And you know, that’s really important in a healthcare perspective, because a lot of times what I’ve seen is when people make changes, the people that work so hard to make these changes become very passionate about the changes that were made. And so a lot of times it you know, they want to see visual management boards put up, they want to be able to see the data, they want to be able to see who had a failure, it’s other people in their department. And sometimes they call them out on that, like, dude, we’ve worked really hard on this, I need you to step it up. And can you tell me what happened? And so they own those changes, right. And I think that’s the great thing about it is that’s where you see that sustainability piece come in, is people take personable, or they take Person person, you know, they take it, they’re personally responsible for those changes, and they want to ensure those things are successful for the long term. So they own it, right? And then they expect other people to own it. And when those people don’t own it, then it’s what are you doing wrong? Can I help you with this? You know, what, what’s going on with, there was an issue, we were working on a blood culture contamination reduction project, and I’ll never forget this. And, and so when we started the project, I believe it was about 5.67% contamination rate. And the national average for blood culture contamination was 3%. And once we had worked on this improvement project, we had actually gotten down to less than 1% after a year. And so I had sustained that for over a year, I’m sorry. And so when you look at that those people started owning those changes, right, they started owning that process. And that’s what they were doing, we’re holding each other accountable is that see something safe in the mentality to where they saw somebody that they saw was deviating. So we built a standard work, right as the future state process, we built a standard work process flow. And so when they would do their random audits and things like that, they would see some people deviating from the standard work, and it was like see something, say something, you know, why did you break the process? Right? And so they, they own that, and I think that’s part of it, too is is these people become so passionate about the changes that were made, they start to own them, and then that’s what you want to keep going is for people to become so passionate about these changes, that they start owning it and holding people accountable. Sure, sure.

Patrick Adams

Yeah. And I think what you’re talking about here is, you know, obviously, the people’s side of change and really understanding true ownership and buy-in from your team and what that looks like. There’s probably some people who are listening that, you know, maybe struggle a little bit with that because they think well, that’s my peers. Is it really my job to call them out or to throw them under the bus or whatever it might be? Is it really my job to do that? And I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are, you know what you would say to someone that says, is that really my job? Do I need to really be the one that, you know, says something? If I see something happening? What would you say to that?

Tanya Stinson

I would say absolutely, that that’s the thing, we’re here to help each other do our jobs the best way and the safest way every day. Right. And, you know, if I was to see something, I would definitely say something. Because if I didn’t, I would be worried about what the repercussions would be if I didn’t like it, not from an HR perspective. But what would happen if I knew there was a failure, or an opportunity to improve or something, and I didn’t say something, and something happened to my peer co worker, because I didn’t say something or even to a patient, right? And so I think that’s where we all have to be accountable to each other, not just for ourselves, but each other. We’ve got to be there for each other and hold each other up and you know, support each other when it comes to these differences regardless of what job it is we’re out, we’ve got to hold each other accountable to ensure that each other does our best work. And I think that goes back to you assigning your work with excellence. So I don’t want somebody to be able to come back to me one day and say, Tonya, did you know about this, this and this and not say something? Well, absolutely not? If I see an issue, I will say something. And I think that’s part of if we would all practice that every day, I think everything would be a whole lot better.

Patrick Adams

Absolutely. Tanya, the other thing on the people’s side of change, right, in understanding that as leaders, how important is it that we focus on this people’s side of change? How important is it to understand the people’s side of change? Obviously, we’ve talked extensively about, you know, what that could do for us. But how important is it really?

Tanya Stinson

So I think about the people’s side of change, and really learning what that is because you could have people who are really good, how about making changes, that you know, there would be proactive change, rather, people who are change adapters that really want to, to make a difference in the world? Right? That’s a lot of people NPR, that’s what we do it for, because we want to change things for the better, right. And there may be some people out there that are resistant to change. And I think that a lot of that comes into perception how people are trained, they may have been a change adapter. At one point, they were really passionate about making changes, but because they communicated those two others and it fell on deaf ears, they lost that and inertia route, they lost that passion. And I think that’s where we really have to get the people back into that place. And a way to do that is to communicate with them about why they feel the way they do about things, right? We really have to understand that people sort of change and while people feel the way they do, do you know what happened to them in their past that caused them to be where they are now? And how can we get them back to be a change adapter or somebody that’s going to be able to be passionate about change again, and want to make those changes and make a difference in the organizations? And of course, if you’re working in healthcare for the people that they serve right in their communities, right, what can we do to get that passion back?

Patrick Adams

Absolutely. So Tanya, tell me a little bit more about leaning towards change? Why, why leaning towards change? What’s the thought behind that and what you do to the company?

Tanya Stinson

Well, I think sometimes, you know, leaning towards chatting, just started leaning towards change in November 2020. And actually part of an organization called the American College of healthcare executives of North Texas. And I’ll mention her name here. So shout out to Bree. She actually had voted for me to recommend me for the mentor of the Year award. And the student council, of course, had said, we’d like somebody to teach us Lean Six Sigma classes. And I had one of the mentors, you know, I was super bright because I had one of the mentor of the Year awards. But you know, there were opportunities that came with this, my mom passed away from COVID in August of this past year, and all of these things were kind of happening around the same time the student council said, you know, we’d like to, to learn about Lean Six Sigma. And, you know, I had my mentee, who was the president of the Student Council. And, you know, they talked to me about, you know, teaching these Lean Six Sigma classes, and it’s kind of one of those things where you step back to go, what do I want to be when I grow up? Do I want to really step out of my comfort zone and take on this responsibility of starting my own business and teaching Lean Six Sigma classes, something I’ve always wanted to do. And then you get into that, of course, then November 2020, is when I started leaning towards changing the title, of course as lean in it. And I think that it’s decided on the ton of leaning towards change just simply because I think sometimes a lot of people get to that point to where they have it in their mind. And just like, you know, you have goals right, three year goals. 65 years. goals, everybody has dreams, everybody has goals. And a lot of times we want to lean toward those changes, but we never get to the point where we really want to truly commit. And I think there’s some, sometimes it’s caught, it’s like when my mother passed away, there’s drastic things sometimes that have to happen to cause you to take that big step, right? Get out of that comfort zone to be able to determine what I want to do next with my life. And I think that’s where a lot of times, when you think about process improvement, and you know, quality improvement for that perspective, sometimes we’re scared of what’s going to happen on the other side of change. But until you make that big step and make that commitment, you’ll never know, right? And so, and I think that goes back to those people that are scared of change, they’re scared, because they don’t know, if they say something, what’s going to happen next, right, you know, sometimes Lean and Six Sigma gets a bad rap, because people have heard and seen that people are just going to come and start firing people. That’s what Lean Six Sigma that they’ve heard, that’s what Lean Six Sigma is about, is people are just going to start being eliminated. That’s what making cuts is all about. Right? But you and I both know, that’s far from the truth, right. And a lot of times when you go into organizations, you have to prove yourself and prove to the people that that’s not what you are about. And that’s not what Lean Six Sigma is about, you’re out you have to prove to them. Because the proof is in the pudding, you truly have to prove to those people that that’s not what that’s not what making changes it’s about it’s about improving on the process. And not about eliminating people, right. But it’s about truly the people’s side of change and about getting those people passionate about making changes again. And I think that’s the reason why leaning towards change was pivotal for me. And because I want these people to be hungry, I want them to be passionate about changes, I want them to be able to know that they’re making a positive difference in the world. So yes, right.

Patrick Adams

I love that. Thank you for explaining that to us. And I’m interested to hear how to get in contact with you. For those that are listening that say, you know, I love what Tonya is doing. I love the idea behind leaning towards change. And you know, maybe they are looking for a mentor or whatever it might be, how would they get a hold of you? What’s your website and or what’s the contact info for you.

Tanya Stinson

So I have a website called leaning towards change and I’m also very active on LinkedIn. And anybody can message me through there, I can provide my cell phone number and email, if they would like, whatever, I’m very communicative. All they have to do is reach out to me and I’d be happy to sit at some time and discuss with people about you know what their current issues are and how I can best help them.

Patrick Adams

Perfect and we’ll definitely drop those links into the show notes. So if you’re interested in getting in contact with Tanya Stinson you can go to the show notes and find her website as well as her LinkedIn page. And the transcripts and the notes and the highlights from this podcast. So Tonya, thank you so much for being here with us today as a guest and as I said earlier, maybe we need to schedule another time to talk about standards and leader Standard Work.

Tanya Stinson

That sounds like a wonderful idea. Patrick, thanks so much for having me on.

Patrick Adams

All right, take care of Tanya. You too. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe. This way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined. Please give us a review. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai