Patrick Adams  

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast where we discuss business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for true Lean process improvement. I am your host, Patrick Adams. Hello everybody. Our guest today is Randy Otterbridge. Randy is the founder and chief idea officer at R Bridge Business Institute, his past experience in operations and project management has given him the expertise to enhance the work of people who work with people. I love that Randy is also the author of numerous books to include the mastermind of two business guys and a reluctant entrepreneur. Welcome to the show, Randy.

Randy Otterbridge  

Hey, so happy to be here

Patrick Adams  

Well, I’m excited to have you, you and I have been talking for a number of weeks, Randy, a number of months, I think even we’ve met in person a few times. And I’m excited to have you on the show, because I think you have so much value to give out, you know, to our audience and I’m excited for them to hear just a little bit about what you have to offer. Because your experience, your background, has quite a bit of continuous improvement process improvement in it. And I’m excited for our audience to hear a little bit about that, but also how to apply continuous improvement, you know, potentially to life results as we discussed. So can you tell our audience maybe just a little bit more about your past experience and continuous improvement?

Randy Otterbridge  

Oh, yeah, man, I loved working in that space. So I worked in the manufacturing space for over 23 years. And once Lean and Six Sigma hit the scene, and we were, you know, getting such great results from our different operating centers, I started asking a deeper question, right? It’s like, how can we use these principles in a different way? So kind of the repurposing of it, right. So we start thinking about the whole lean and continuous improvement approach, I just started seeing all of these potential segues from that approach to how we can say, you know, wait a minute, I’m trying to be a better person, I’m trying to be a better husband, I’m trying to be a better friend, can I use some of these same principles that I’m using in the manufacturing space to improve our bottom line to improve our personal bottom line? There you go. So I just started thinking about that, studying it. And as we do the work, I started going, Man, I think I can apply this in a whole different area. And I just started practicing trying different things. And in that 23 years, of course, you do a lot of value mapping, you do a lot of stuff related to it, right. And it just became so clear to me, that if we can harness the power of continuous improvement, and the Lean principles, and then we go out into the world and say, you know, we’re trying to improve people’s ability to get jobs, well, let’s see if we can apply these principles to that process. And man, I just had a lot of fun doing that.

Patrick Adams  

Oh, I love that. And, you know, I’m excited to dive into some of those topics here. Before we do, tell us a little bit about the RBridge Business Institute. And, you know, the you being the chief idea officer, there, tell us a little bit about what that means and what you guys do, just to give some context around, you know, what you’re doing today, before we dive into what, you know, continuous improvement has done for your for you and your carrier.

Randy Otterbridge  

I appreciate that. So yeah, our bridge business did one of the reasons that I started it in the first place was I had all of these ideas. And I thought, you know, with all of these ideas, there’s no way that you’re going to be able to get all these ideas into the marketplace, unless you found a means by which to corral right. So within the average Business Institute, it becomes basically a big testing center. Right. And this is why I’m the chief data officer because I keep coming up with these ideas. So if I get an idea for something, I’ll spin up a company, and then within spin of that company out testing, try different things, and you know, different business models. And then it’s collected, if you think about, you know, our bridge as the house, all these different operating centers, if you will become rooms, bring people into an individual room based on you know, a niche or whatever, and then give them help in that specific area. But the house itself, once they travel through that becomes like the funnel, if you will. So when I started thinking about, you know, how can I, you know, spin up an idea quickly, test it out, determine if it’ll work, and then decide if I’m going to put some, you know, some other resources to it or have somebody running our bridge Business Institute became that container, if you will, for me to do that. It’s kind of an efficiency model.

Patrick Adams  

Hmm. I love it. Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking, you know, when we work with organizations, and we have a team member that has an idea for improvement. You know, we’re asking, you know, how can we experiment with this low cost, you know, without having to spend, you know, a bunch of money or put a bunch of resources at it? How can we test this idea? experiment to see what it’s going to do for if it’s if it’s going to help us solve a problem or reduce, reduce a problem or whatever it might be. It sounds like you’re doing that at a larger level from a, from a business standpoint, even with, you know, with entrepreneurs or with business ideas, you’re you have this, this this idea hub, where you’re where you’re looking at ideas and testing, experimenting, going through that, that scientific thought process to come out on the other end with some some learning, right? What did we learn? And how can we continue to advance this idea?

Randy Otterbridge  

Yeah, the fun part about that is that it allows you to get you know, they say, in order to become an expert in an area, you have to have 10,000 hours, and I thought, man, wait a minute, that’s a lot of time. But if you have the generalist approach, and you are constantly trying different things, and applying them in the marketplace, determining what works, what doesn’t work, right, and then what you also do is you planted so many seeds. And if you think about this, as a garden, you’ve planted so many seeds, when you look around, stuff starts coming up, and you can eat in a variety of areas. And when you can do that, right, and you do it fast, and you’re doing it constantly, you’re so well informed when you go into a company or you’re helping an entrepreneur, you can pull from a whole lot of experiences, versus just one right, who wants to be VHS tape right now. Right? So I say, I want to be what goes on the VHS tapes, right? That’s right, is the music etc, etc. And then the the platform by which you present it is very, that’s what I wanted to create with our bridge Business Institute and have done,

Patrick Adams  

huh, yeah, I love that we, we talk a lot about that exact concept when it you know, when it comes to, you know, Lean product and process development or, or even innovation in general, you know, just thinking about how do we not fall into that, you know, I think about like a blockbuster or, you know, not paying attention to the, the, what’s the dollar quarter box that came out the red box, right, the red box popped up? And, and it’s like, man, well, you know, what, why didn’t blockbuster think of that? Why weren’t they being innovative and thinking about how we can develop with technology and with the future, right, there’s so many things that are changing right now. And if companies aren’t paying attention to what’s happening, and they’re not innovating, they’re not thinking about how they can get better, you know, potentially they could be lost and left behind. Right?

Randy Otterbridge  

Absolutely. So we oftentimes say don’t be Netflix, right? Using as a verb, the concept of Don’t Be Netflix or blockbuster, right? Is the idea that again, if you’re dipping your toe in the, in the different areas, and if you can, again, now do it and scale it fast, do it without pulling too many resources from your main thing, then you have the opportunity to be on, I think the rising edge the trends that go up with what is happening out there. And then if you have your teams are asking kinds of questions like, How can I apply this? How can I repurpose this? How can I leverage this, right? It’s kind of what happened when I said I wanted to use Lean principles to leverage it in a different area that a lot of people want help in. And that was how can they grow themselves to be better husbands, better friends, better persons, we’re using a methodology, a principled approach, right? So a focused approach to just literally be better in a different area. So when you’re out there in the marketplace, you’re saying, wait a minute, there’s something new coming these NF T’s what is that? Right? And you say, Well, wait a minute, is it really new? Or is it something that has, you know, some, some roots in something else that we can utilize, even if the way it’s being presented seems new, right. And if you have a company that is always constantly dipping their toes into what might be happening, right, spinning something up really quickly, to see if it’ll work, and see if it can provide value back to the main organization, you’re going to have a successful company.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. And I think about the challenge or the worry that I have is for, you know, those companies that let’s go back to the blockbuster example, right. So for the company out there, that that, you know, I go into, and they say, you know, check out our lobby area, we want to figure out how to get people to you know, pick up one of these plastic DVD cases and get it to the front counter and out the door as quickly as possible. Right and we want you to help us with that. We want to remove any waste and they’re not seeing the bigger picture of like you’re spending a lot of time and resources on something that is not going to help you build your business in the future. In fact, it’s not going to be even something that’s even happening. In the future, right, you need to innovate, think about what’s next. And look at those opportunities in which you can, you know, find what, how do you need to change and evolve your products or your services that you’re offering so that you, you know, can be around in the future. Right. So you have to be careful about that. I think it’s important to drive waste out in your current operations. Right, but also, are you paying attention to what’s next? And looking at opportunities to improve your products or services or develop your technology along with the rest of the world?

Randy Otterbridge  

Yeah, that’s myopia. I think that happens in businesses sometimes, right? We get so enamored with what we’re doing, we forget what other people are doing to us. Right. And that’s, I think, if you have a kind of framework and kind of business model that allows you to, or even have, you know, a division that all they do, I’ll do out there is, find new things that’s happening, what’s trending up. But when we get so myopic, right, and we start thinking about just our business, and just our little few competitors, man, I tell you, the world shuts down to you, because you haven’t opened up to see what these other things and how these other things can help your bottom line and help your efficiency. You’re looking for this magic pill in this system, this style, this is all this whatever, right? And you’re forgetting that wait a minute, efficiency might be just in doing that different process, using that different software or having that consultant come in and tell you, I’ve been out there in the marketplace, you’re about to get run over? That’s right. So if you’ve got that kind of open mind, I think that allows your business to see or at least utilizing consultants like you and me, you out there, you guys are out there, tell us what we need to be doing, as opposed to, hey, we want to do just this. That’s myopia. Right? But if you create that system, man, I think that allows you to bring more good information in, you’re going to have a successful business, because you’re always got your finger on the pulse of what’s happened. That’s right.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, never get stuck in being content with the status quo, always look for opportunities to grow and improve. And whether that means communicating with people that are out there, or doing your own market research, or whatever it might be. Obviously, that’s important. So I want to change subjects just a little bit here. Randy, you mentioned a few times about just, you know, your application of CI principles and into your personal life or into, you know, other aspects outside of your 23 years of manufacturing experience. So you talk about life results. And I would like to ask the question, how do you think that CI and Lean principles can result in a better life overall?

Randy Otterbridge  

Oh, man, I tell you, when I was looking at some material in preparation for our talk today, and I came across some stuff that I fit, because I worked in workforce development, right, once I left the manufacturing space, I started working in workforce development. And I was bringing these business principles right over into that space. So really, literally, I’m looking at a piece of paper here. And this piece of paper is a curriculum that I built for helping people find work, right. And then the people that I was working with, they were, it was hard to place people because of their life circumstances, you know, coming out of incarceration situations or whatever, right? Well, that’s the nonprofit I chose to work with, you know, involve ourselves in that environment, right. So when I started looking at the business principles and continuous improvement, I started saying, wait a minute, here’s a person that just came out of a tough situation, right or, underperforming situation, I’m thinking, Wait a minute, I can apply these principles. And literally, I’m looking at the paper here in one of the second half parts of the classes, I say, five s, your personal mess. So let’s clean up some things that are keeping you from being successful in life. And if you apply yourself to the job space, right, yeah, so I literally wrote it down sort of, you know, how can you determine what habits to get rid of? Wow, and this is how I’m doing the workshops and the classes, right? So I’m talking to him about five s giving them a principle that they can start getting better as a person better as a potential worker by five essing their personal mess, right? And now they’ll straighten How could you re look at things How could you represent things improve your social skills and or your grooming? Right? So we started to shine. How can you improve your work habits, what you did before and what you’re now going to be doing going forward? Right? If a person was coming out of an incarceration situation or whatever, bad life situation or underperforming life situation, I could literally say we’re gonna apply the five S’s to your life and get you pointed in the direction that you could and you know, could that you could do better at Right, right. And it’s just using that lean principle, and that continuous improvement and saying, if we did that for personal lives, we will be presenting a better product, if you will, to an employer, or in this case to the world. And I just went on standardized, right? How could you look at what you’re doing. And it just became such a lot, a lot of fun, because I had this methodology, having worked in the manufacturing space, and then just repurposed it, and leveraged it to tell people, hey, you can get better. And you can get better very, very quickly using these principles. That’s right, right? What do you do when you’ve had some success using some of these principles? How do you sustain that, so that you continuously improve and put yourself in a position where as you get more information in, you have a framework to continue to build on, man, I’m telling you this was such a popular, it was really a lot of fun, it was popular too, because guys come in, and they’ve never looked at their lives with a methodology to follow tasks and checkouts.

Patrick Adams  

I love it. I think about and you mentioned sorting, I think about for a lot of people even sorting out, you know, toxic people out of their lives that could be dragging them down or bringing them down the wrong road. I mean, there, there’s definitely opportunities to apply the five S’s to a personal, you know, personal development or your personal life, we teach a PDCA for personal development, which would align with that as well, putting a plan together actually carrying it out, you know, what did you learn, you know, as you’re carrying out your your personal development plan, and then adjusting the plan as you go. And that could also fit perfectly with a, you know, five s in your personal life, let’s put it let’s put together a PDCA plan for development. I mean, I love that continuous improvement can be applied in so many different ways when you understand the principles when you understand the fundamentals. And and you know, you’re dedicated and passionate, there’s so many people that are listening right now that are shaking their heads, I know they are and they’re going, you know, that’s me, I’m one of those lean geeks, you know, that just loves lean so much that I apply it to every single part of my life. And so I love that you’re bringing this up? Randy, what, what would you say would be some other ways to, you know, maybe sort of shine standardize, I mean, hey, for those that are listening in, and they’re thinking about this in a different way, you know, they’ve obviously applied five s to their, their business life. If they’re listening here in their, in their in a company where they’re using CI or lean principles, what are some other ways that they could apply, you know, five s to their personal life? What are some other things that they could do?

Randy Otterbridge  

I think, once you start taking a look at it, one of the big things I like to tell people, I say, Listen, especially when I’m working with entrepreneurs, or people that are coming out of a work situation that they want to go into entrepreneurship, right. And I, you know, I say to them, I says, Listen, you work in the environment, the corporate environment in a certain way, right? You went to work and you got coffee, and then you talked to somebody, and then you did a little bit of work. But when you’re in entrepreneurship, you’re literally eating based on what you are able to drag home, right? So I say now, when we think about five S’s, we start asking ourselves a different question, how does that relate to driving income into my life now, right? And I say, look, there’s this IPA, and it’s not a beer, right? It is an income producing activity. And if you look around your environment, and you say to yourself, I’ve got all of these waste movements that aren’t driving value, and aren’t driving income into what I’m trying to accomplish. Now, as an entrepreneur, right at the job, you kind of had a little bit of protection, right? Sure. Again, you’ve seen your report over it, but what did you really do? As an entrepreneur, however, everything has to be in my estimation, and income producing activity. Otherwise, it’s a waste. So as you look around, you see yourself okay. I’ll give you a personal example. I’m looking in my 10 by 10 room that I’ve repurposed from a bedroom to an office. Like many on the board, I got a whiteboard. And then I used a part of the real estate of the office to, you know, put up some, it allows me to have an extended whiteboard, and it’s just paint. So now literally, the whole room becomes an opportunity for you to put up your stuff. You can start driving value, because you can say, wait a minute, the whole room is the income producer, if you will, environment. Right, right. So I just have to look back and see what I got to do today and go oh, yes, right. But oftentimes, we don’t do that. Right, right. We haven’t shined up, we haven’t sorted, we haven’t put things in a particular order that We can check them off and say value value, income producing activity. And at the end of the day said, I made money for myself.

Patrick Adams  

That’s right. Yeah. And I love that obviously those that are listening in can’t see what’s behind you there. But the you know, the visual management that Randy has applied to his business and, and to his personal life is pretty, pretty outstanding, pretty, pretty amazing to see the way that he’s taken a lot of the those those ideas and those items that you know, are in his head and made them visual, right. And I say a lot about keeping things visual. So obviously, in our personal lives, the more that we can visualize and take things out of our minds and put them on a chart, and we talk a lot about Leader Standard Work to what are the things throughout your day, the daily actions that you should be accomplishing, that are going to give you the right result the results that you want. And even putting making those visual and checking them off throughout your day making sure that you’re hitting on those daily actions or those multi time, you know, things that you should be doing multiple times a day, or multiple times a week, make those visual, put them in front of you post them in your in your home office in your work office. And that’s how you can organize your day and make sure that you’re hitting all of those items that you know, are going to give you the positive results that you’re looking for.

Randy Otterbridge  

Exactly that better life result. Right? What is the simplest thing that I can do? That gives me a leverage point that I can literally see the simplest thing that you know, I can come from a dream, and walk into the office. Now imagine, you know, your office isn’t far from your house, you know, to me, my office is in my house. So if a person has to go to an office in between time, you got to worry about traffic, you got to worry about this. Now you get to the office, and mainly what I was thinking about was that dream, and quite frankly, you’re not going to get up at two in the morning and write and drive to the office. Whereas because we’ve created some efficiencies in what we do, we can literally get up from that dream and go quiet, immediately, tested immediately, with very little cost now, because we’ve got the internet and all things, you know that we can apply these things and see if they work. And then we go wait a minute, this does work, we can do two things we can earn from it. We can obviously learn from it, and then we can teach it out. And that’s one of the big deals behind our bridge Business Institute is that I want to learn it, apply it, be a practitioner of it, and then say, Okay, well, I found something that might help you today. Here it is.

Patrick Adams  

I love it. And speaking of learning and applying one of the things that I see you, because you are also the host of another podcast and you do you do some other work outside of the average Institute, or as I guess in parallel or in addition to it, but you also are part of a number of masterminds where you have been part of mastermind groups, and I’m curious, there’s a lot of people listening right now that maybe have never heard the term mastermind, or maybe, maybe they have, but they just don’t know what it is. Can you tell our listeners what what exactly is a mastermind and maybe talk about how they could be important to those that are listening,

Randy Otterbridge  

You know, to have a mastermind, you just have to have another person. But imagine, you’ve got the wisdom of the room, if you will, when you have multiple people from a variety of backgrounds, different cultures, that are, you know, thinking about a particular subject matter, right. So now you’ve got all of these particular influences, these styles, these differences that are being applied to a problem, or something that you’re trying to solve, or an opportunity you’re trying to take advantage of. And this mastermind, in other words, this collection of different thinking, allows you to look at this particular situation or problem or opportunity in a whole different way than you may have. And that’s because you come with your own filters. You also come with your own, you know, limits, if you will, you can have a PhD, but you can have a PhD in a particular area, somebody else could just have, you know, just came off from their shift on the cab, right. And they’re applying something that they heard or they learned to your mastermind, and you get all of these viewpoints that allow you to solve situations a whole lot better. And it’s simply because you’re not the only and most important cog in the wheel, if you will, right, you got the wisdom of the room that is being applied and focused in a particular area. Man, it allows you to make decisions better to solve problems way faster, and more efficiently so efficiently when you are a part of a mastermind, right? Whether it’s you and another person, or you and five people or you and 50 people, you get a chance to just do some amazing things and that’s why I love mastermind groups, and why would I create it? The two business guys mastermind you know that other person. And then what we do is we come out read stuff and then we’ll bring it to the mastermind and we’ll start saying, Hey, listen, what did you learn last week last month?” And we apply it to a particular situation with the idea that when people listen in to hear how we’ve taken all of this information, and people we’ve worked with the books, we’ve read, and applied it to a situation and says, This is how we can help improve your business, or here’s a situation that we just learned about, that might have be another piece to what you’re trying to do. Right. So to business guys, mastermind, again, was created with that in mind. But if you are involving yourself with other people, you know, lending your brainpower, you guys can go out and solve some tremendous things.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, Randy, I think about it reminds me of, you know, a Kaizen event, right? I mean, Kaizen is a small improvement for the better. And when you do a Kaizen event, it’s more of a focus breakthrough, right? And it’s a one time thing, but you’re talking about doing having these focus breakthroughs on a recurring basis, maybe even weekly or monthly, where you’re meeting with the same cross functional group, and you’re having discussions on a continuous basis about how to improve some part of your business or some part of your life, or whatever it might be. It’s like a Kaizen event on steroids, right?

Randy Otterbridge  

Yeah, it’s power in the power is in the fact that people are different in you. Right? The people are bringing different experiences, different feelings, different emotions. And then if you’ve been tasked to read different materials, instead of saying, Hey, we’re gonna have a book club event, where you read one book, and you’re kind of saying some of the same things based on the book, you’re saying, Okay, we what you want to, let’s bring it into this situation and see if we can use these leverage points, to solve a situation solve our problem to help our process. So yeah, to the degree is on steroids. Absolutely. And you know, when people are starting to get big, this situation can get big at this bottom line, your profits can get big fast.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. So I think back to, you know, everyone that’s listening in, we have lean practitioners, I’m sure we have operations managers, executives that are that are on the the podcast listening in, how do you think that they could benefit from a mastermind, you know, whether that means they they host their own mastermind, you know, in their business? Or maybe it’s something that they’re doing outside of their business? You know, you talked about entrepreneurs, you know, maybe people that have their own business or their own, you know, side hustle, or whatever it might be, how could they benefit from being part of a mastermind?

Randy Otterbridge  

The best way is to be open, right? And not to, to, to judge. So imagine if the CEO of the company says, hey, you know, what, we’re going to be gathering folks together.

Patrick Adams

And we’re going to talk, here’s where we are, here’s where we are, what are you

Randy Otterbridge  

seeing out there? So imagine the janitor walks in, right? If they I don’t know, if you still call people janitors, and that or the, you know, the, the engineer of fixing stuff up whatever, right? So they bring in all these experiences, and we’re just going to mastermind on where we’re trying to go as a company. So what are your experiences? What have you heard, what do you know? What are you doing out there? You’d be surprised at how many people that bump into other people that, you know, they have all this knowledge, but then they have no mechanism by which to express it. And then the CEO brings them in and says, Hey, you know, what, we’re all in this together. Doesn’t matter where you are in the company. Right? But you’re classified as, as the person you are, you have significant value to the success of this company. And imagine now bringing them in, and having this big mastermind group, right, and we’re talking about unfiltered, where they’re unafraid to express themselves. No one’s over there saying, Yeah, I don’t, I don’t see that that’s not a good idea. Nobody’s filtering it. You’re just saying I want to bring everybody in, in this big mastermind group, so that they can express themselves now imagine the power that they would have, the retention rates that I can imagine going up, because now every individual is feeling heard. Every individual says, You know what, I’m the reason why sales went up, and they go, Well, wait a minute, you sweep the floors, right? No, I’m not just that bricklayer, if you will, right? I’m building a cathedral that is our company that’s going to feed me for 30 years. If they can do that kind of stuff, bring people in in that kind of way. And just do these mastermind literally caught in a column what you want to write, but these Kaizen events, you have these masterminds, whatever, then they had them value of all of that person’s experiences coming into the room, bumping off of other people’s experiences to create one whole thing and that’s up and improve bottom line. There’s power there.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, yeah. I think of a few CEOs, executives that I know that have hosted, you know, they call them different names, but a breakfast meeting, monthly breakfast meeting or whatever it might be. And I think that that’s an amazing way to start something like this, the one thing that you have to be careful of if you are the executive or leader in an organization of some sort, and you’re trying to host one of these, you made the point of being a safe place, right? So if you’re inviting employees to come to this, you know, they’re going to be very hesitant in the beginning depending on your culture, right, but they’re going to be hesitant in the beginning to share. But they have to know that this is a safe environment to be able to really talk about some of their ideas and how do you do that? How do you make it a safe environment? How do you make it somewhere where people can express their ideas and talk about, you know, different challenges or things that they might be having in their area? I don’t know, do you have any ideas? I’m just thinking of, you know, how do we break this down for someone that isn’t it? You know, maybe they’re, they’re not an entrepreneur, but they’re in a company, where they, you know, have 100 employees? And, you know, could they break those down into smaller meetings that are led by supervisors or team leads? Or, or maybe you put, you know, you mentioned the janitor, maybe the gender leads a group? I mean, why not? Right,

Randy Otterbridge  

it becomes so much fun. Because once they know that this is a safe place, right? And they know that, you know, what, it’s, I’m not going to be edited, while I’m talking. And we’ve seen those environments, right? Where you got, well, they’re the boss. So I don’t want to say anything that makes the boss mad, right, right. But if the boss says, Hey, listen, this is a place where you’ve got to give your ideas, why, because you’re part of this company. And we are giving you that safe space, to do this right to be a part of the growth of us. And once they start seeing that they’re not going to be edited, right, that when they say something, nobody’s gonna be there shaking their hands or arms are going to be folded all up, the bilayer is going to say, you know, you’re out shining your boss, that person is and allow them to bring into that environment. All that they know, all that they’ve experienced, we don’t know, they can be the book reader of books, they just happen to be in a situation where they’re doing this kind of work, and you listen to you hear this, there becomes opportunities to see who could potentially start rising up in the ranks of your organization. That’s right. Because if that idea is we start collecting those ideas, if you start looking at these things, and go, Wait a minute, we can apply, I never looked at it like this. Why? Because well, you know, you’re doing a single thing, right, your VHS tape your blockbuster thing, because well, that’s what you do. But then other people are saying I’m exposed to this, my kids do this kind of stuff here, I heard about these NF T’s, I see how they’re raising money in a whole different way. And you hadn’t thought about that they just brought it to the room, you’re not looking at their stature in the company, you’re looking at it as any piece of valuable information that can come to us that you know, boons the bottom line, we all eat, we all benefit. That’s right. And we’ve seen these things kind of spot that certain ways where employees are, are paid based on the value that whatever they gave has to the company, and you’re talking about an incentive program, I’d be at home with a pad every day, nine ideas, 10 ideas. And if you’ve got that kind of environment, next thing, you know, you’ve got all of these ideas. Now, of course, you know, that could cause its own kind of problems, you get so many ideas. Now, you got to have a person sort those, well, yeah, you get yourself a chief idea officer. And their whole job is to take these ideas, and put them into workable and fashionable ways by which to leverage and make money from and benefit the company. Well, now you’ve created an I think, in a department that has significant value.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. Now I agree. 100%. And I was thinking the same thing that obviously if you’re, if you’re going down this road, you have to have a way to manage this, because it could get very overwhelming very, very quickly. And what the worst thing that you can do is say, I want to hear your ideas, and then never respond to those who never follow up or never, you know, just listen, and then nothing ever happens, right? Because then people say, Well, I gave my idea and nobody did anything with it. I’m not going to give any more ideas, right? Nobody cares about when I say something. So I think you do have to have a process in place for follow up, even if it’s just going back to that person and saying, Hey, thank you for that idea. We couldn’t implement it because of this, right? Because of this reason, or whatever it might be. But please continue to bring your ideas because you know, we value you as a team member. And we know that you’re helping to build this cathedral, right? So please continue to bring those ideas forward. There has to be some method of follow up that’s happening. I know that because

Randy Otterbridge  

the work that becomes a worker To the company where you’re looking at and saying, Listen, how can we what is the best value mapping of the value that we’ve unlocked? Right? How do we then apply these things? You know, how do we flow these things, right? There are many principles of Lean. You’re using these principles that you teach, when you go when the organization’s you’re seeing, let’s apply that to here. And maybe retention rates go, they go up, because you don’t have people leaving a company, because now they feel more valuable, right. So you can see that one activity could have multiple effects in a variety of ways that, of course, helped the bottom line.

Patrick Adams  

I love it, Randy, this conversation has been great. I think we could talk all day long on this. And obviously, so much passion is pouring out of you, I think we could, again, probably just continue but at some point, I have to, I have to call it quits. And I’d love to have you back on at some point. And maybe we can talk about, you know, topics out of one of your books or go into, you know, another specific conversation about idea generating, you know, Chief idea, officer, whatever might be, I love the direction we’re heading. But Randy, if anybody is interested to learn more about the R bridge Business Institute, or get in contact with you, where would they go, we can throw this in the show notes as well.

Randy Otterbridge  

One of the best ways is to actually come through, right, if you hear this now, you know, I’d like them to be able to say, hey, Pat, where’s this guy, you know, get in touch with me, and then you have an opportunity to connect us? Sure, right? Because of the fact that they came through. If you want to just know, get to me directly. I’m just going to take you right to my email address, which is Randy at our bridge business institute.com That’s R Bridge business institute.com. That’s one of the clearest ways otherwise, you call Pat says, Hey, let’s let’s get on a mastermind together and see if we can spin up something together could be some of your people you’ve worked before somebody that’s thinking about working with you, we get on and just make it happen.

Patrick Adams  

I love it. And obviously, you know though we’ll throw your email into the show notes as well. But you also run the podcast the mastermind with two business guys Master. Yeah. If someone wanted to listen to that they can search it up on their their podcast platform

Randy Otterbridge  

that is everywhere. Yeah, you got it on Anchor, you got it on Spotify, so they can just type it in. And then of course I don’t lead them into other portals sure into what I do. Perfect.

Patrick Adams  

All right. Well, Randy, it’s been great having you on. I appreciate the value that you brought to our listeners today. And definitely look forward to having you back on as a guest in the future.

Randy Otterbridge  

Yes, sir. Appreciate it. All right, thank you guys.

Patrick Adams  

Thanks so much for tuning into 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.