This week I’m speaking with Mike Leigh, who is the President of OpX Solutions, a performance improvement company that helps manufacturers remove the barriers that prevent them from achieving their goals by developing leaders and improving processes.
In this episode we talk about Kaizen events, including why they are important and how to ensure that the outcome of the event is successful.
What You’ll Learn This Episode:
- What are Kaizen events and what is their purpose
- How to define success at a Kaizen event
- The main factors that influence success and how to determine them
- How to hold a successful Kaizen event
- Having the right mindset during a Kaizen event
- Inviting leaders to participate in Kaizen events
About the Guest:
Mike Leigh started OpX Solutions to help manufacturers and other organizations be more successful.
Prior to starting his company, Mike had a 13-year manufacturing career where he held a variety of operational supply chain leadership roles. Prior to that, he served in the US Navy as a surface warfare officer where he specialized in nuclear propulsion, and later retired as a Commander in the reserves.
Additionally, Mike writes a monthly article on business operations for Valley Business FRONT magazine, was recognized as the Virginia Small Business Veteran of the Year by the state SBDC organization, and his business is currently the #1 franchise in the Americas with Leadership Management International.
When not working, Mike enjoys hiking, traveling, and following the Green Bay Packers.
Important Links:
Company Website: https://opxsolutionsllc.com/
Linked-In Sites:
OpX Solutions: https://www.linkedin.com/company/opx-solutions-llc/
Mike’s profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeleighopxsolutions/
Full Episode Transcripts:
Patrick Adams
Hello, everybody. Our special guest today is Mike Lee and Mike serves as the president of op x solutions and is a proven operational leader and lean continuous improvement expert he has over 25 years of success as a naval officer, manufacturing manager and business owner Mike has served as a lean consultant and help companies such as General Electric mitsubishi, create continuous improvement culture and increase their profitability. He’s also assisted over 25 different business sites in hundreds of Kaizen improvement teams to eliminate waste and improve flow by implementing lean principles of lean, and we’re going to be talking about Kaizen events today. So welcome to the show, Mike. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And by the way, thank you for your service. Oh, you’re welcome. My pleasure. Yeah. So as I mentioned, today, we’re going to talk about Kaizen events and we have a number of people who listen to the show that are probably very familiar with the term Kaizen may or may not be familiar with Kaizen events, but I’m sure there are also listeners that have maybe never heard the term Kaizen or have never heard about Kaizen events at all. So just to help ground the listeners, can you give us kind of an overview of what is a Kaizen event? And what is their purpose?
Mike Leigh
so you know, most of your listeners probably heard of Kaizen, right, and which is loosely translated change for the good. And that’s kind of the foundational part of lean is making continuous improvements. And a common way that organizations like to bring about Kaizen or bring about these improvements is through something called a Kaizen event. There are other names for it, and sometimes called a rapid improvement team. But basically what we’re talking about here and maybe for discussion, because it sometimes means different things to different people. But the way I like to define it is when you have a nice structure, dedicated team working on a challenge or an improvement for some finite amount of time. And in most cases, Kaizen events will have anywhere from a few to maybe a dozen people in it, it will often go from three to five days, but it’s usually a dedicated concerted effort to bring about change or to solve a problem or, or work on anything else that might be beneficial to put a dedicated team on.
Patrick Adams
Sure. And so when it comes to the team itself, do you have, do you have any advice to people around how to choose their team members,
Mike Leigh
I do, actually, you know, a very common belief. And we’ll talk a lot about this probably today, because there are different opinions on what you should do in a Kaizen event. But many people believe you know, you want to have a cross functional team, have people that are maybe heavily involved in the process, but also have supporting functions and so forth. And I will tell you that that is important, especially if you are the process that you’re working on or the topic of a team, the goal affects other departments. It’s nice to have representatives from the voter departments, it’s also helpful to have people with believe or not less experience in wheat. And I’ll go into that a little bit. But often, you will find that it doesn’t have to be just experts or your most knowledgeable lean practitioners. But also having people who may be brand new to continuous improvement because getting a different and fresh perspective is very helpful. And it’s also you’ll find that those individuals will also learn a lot. And However, with that being said, and we’ll get into this here later, but there are some risks when you have cross functional teams, or you have what are called greater diversity in the makeup of the team that you put together. Because it can actually lead to less harmony within the team. And that’s important during the event.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. And I agree with you completely, because I’ve seen that happen and experienced that. But I also support the idea of having someone that maybe has less experience within the team or even someone with a fresh perspective that comes from a completely different department or a completely different area, right, that has no perspective of the process whatsoever. And sometimes that can be very valuable to the team as well.
Mike Leigh
Yes, exactly. It can be valuable to the team, if it doesn’t detract from the army. And we’ll probably get into that later on.
Patrick Adams
I don’t want to get too far off on assuring sure, but generally, both are important. Absolutely. And before we move on to do kind of deeper into the subject, when it comes to the definition of Kaizen events, is a Kaizen events only for a manufacturing production floor, or can they be used? Whether?
Mike Leigh
Yeah, no, it’s definitely not just for manufacturing or out on the manufacturing floor. It’s really good to use in any type of organization, on any type of process or improvement you’re working on or any type of challenge. It’s most commonly known to be old on manufacturing floors. But you know, the term rapid improvement teams is more common in the healthcare setting. So the type of organization and in the type of department that it’s in, it really doesn’t matter.
Patrick Adams
Sure, okay, good. And what about success for a Kaizen event? I mean, can anybody just pull together a team for three days and call it successful? Or how would we define success coming out of a Kaizen event itself?
Mike Leigh
Yeah, good question. So what what I, what I really like their listeners to understand is that most people participate in Kaizen events or run them in the organizations, they are looking, in many cases, they want to see some sort of business result, right, some sort of metric, you’ve moved the needle on, you’ve improved quality or cycle time reduction or cut costs, some increased productivity, something that will be measurable, that helps the business. And that clearly is a measure of success for a Kaizen event. And it is important, so I don’t want to I, you know, I don’t want to in any way, negate that. However, in my opinion, just as important, is what I’ll call HR outcomes. And that is that a Kaizen event can be a very powerful method to help bring about increased learning and knowledge and skills by the members, it can be used as a learning event, it can have cially help develop greater employee engagement, greater ownership, all those things we look for in the lean enterprise culture that a Kaizen event can help bring about, that isn’t necessarily related to whether or not they get those measurable results in the goal they’re trying to achieve. So typically, that’s how I tried to look at successful events is to both get those HR opens as well as those measurable business outcomes.
Patrick Adams
Okay, that makes sense. And, you know, one of the things that I like to talk about when it comes to Kaizen is, there are Kaizen events and there’s also daily Kaizen, right. So, when we, when you talk about an event, being kind of this, this opportunity to kind of drive things forward very quickly, you know, again, the difference in having success with a Kaizen event versus maybe just daily Kaizen, where would you see the difference there?
Mike Leigh
Yeah, I actually, when I talk to people or work with clients on developing a lean enterprise, I usually talk about actually three different things. There’s the daily Kaizen, and then there’s Kaizen events. But there’s also what you might call a Kaizen project, or, you know, think about in the Six Sigma community, right, they have this project, methodology, demand, and so forth. All of those are valuable ways to and to be in my opinion, all of them should be used to help bring about and develop a lean enterprise. So, specifically, daily or daily Kaizen, and not in a Kaizen event, you definitely want to develop a culture where that daily Kaizen is taking place, right, where every person has the responsibility to think and work toward making small changes every day, or at least, you know, know that that’s part of their responsibility. At timezones, there are things that are across different departments or really greater in scope than what maybe one person can do every day or even one team can do on a smaller daily basis. And so when it’s a little more complex of a challenge, when you maybe need cross departmental coordination, maybe it’s a larger level business challenge, then often an event or a object is a way to bring that about in the event itself, I find very helpful compared to a project because it’s also rapid to bring about some rapid change when you want it to happen quickly. It’s a big investment in the short term, but you get quicker results also.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. I love that you said it’s a combination of the three because I would completely agree with that. I think that’s a very important piece of information. When it comes to success. What would you say? Are the factors that really influence the success of an event itself? And how would you determine them?
Mike Leigh
When I tell you, tell your listeners a little bit about my background. So I really started practicing lean in the corporate world. And I had the good fortune of spending about five years as an internal lean consultant, a lean leader, that was a cross business. So it wasn’t just that one site and the business hired consultants from Japan, that you may have heard of sigma jitsu. Yep, well known consulting company, and I got the good fortune of spending a lot of time with those consultants, very nice. The method we did was Kaizen events, that way, we bring them in for a weekend, we would do these events. So over five years, I literally worked on probably 50 events and hundreds of teams among those events. And so I developed what I believe was some common beliefs on what factors are important. And, but once I left the corporate world, and I started my business, I wanted to find out if my beliefs were accurate, you know what I mean? And, and surprisingly, there’s not a lot of literature out there. On this line, a lot of companies practice doing Kaizen events, but there’s very little literature on what makes them successful. And most organizations I’ve worked with all have opinions and do it a little bit a different way. So what I discovered was that there is a professor at Virginia Tech, her name’s Dr. beneke. And I want to make sure she gets credit, I can name and she’s a department head in their Industrial Systems Engineering Department. And she has actually done graduate research on the effectiveness, the factors that affect Kaizen effectiveness. And so fortunately, I live 45 minutes from Virginia Tech. So I was able to go and meet with her a couple times and talk about the research. So that’s great. I tell you all that background, because between all the events I’ve taken part of and both in the corporate world and as a my own business, and then all the research, empirical research that was done, that’s how I formed, what factors are actually important, and your success for a Kaizen event. So there’s actually quite, if you think about it, I know Patrick, you participate in Kaizen events, right? organizations like to do different ways should probably have the way you like to do them. Sure, if an organization is right, and it might involve how big the team size be, or should we have a charter? Do we have a dedicated facilitator and our team, you know, they all serve lunch? I mean, I mean, there’s all kinds of factors. But there are actually only a handful that really matter. Many of them don’t matter. And to be honest, it’s whatever that site likes to do. But there are some things that do matter. So one of them I want to talk about real quick is a factor without called internal processes. Okay. This is something that Dr. Ben Ethan’s research study, and think of this as the team harming How well does the team communicate together? How well do they, you know, respect each other? Right. And what I learned was that when that team is functioning, well, if you know, I, you know, Patrick, like team dynamics, you know, you’re forming, storming, norming, or whatever, right? When that team is functioning well, there is a strong positive correlation to the members enjoying it, wanting to do more of it. So that’s one of those factors that, for instance, has a great positive correlation. The reason that’s important to know is because the role of a facilitator is critical in your success because a good facilitator can help those internal processes can help the team harmonize and work well together, right, if left to themselves without facilitation to a team that may have differing opinions or don’t get along with each other. It’s a recipe for disaster. So that’s a really important factor. That’s one of several
Patrick Adams
Sure. I think that’s great. And, and I just think about, you know, some kinds of events that I’ve participated in, in the past. And I think about one, one event where there was an individual who had a very strong opinion. And he was also a very negative individual. And I just remember that, you could just tell, as soon as he would open his mouth, the entire group would just kind of slide back, and there’s chairs, and, you know, everybody would just be quiet, and nobody would say anything, because they knew if they did it, you know, he would, he would just lash out at them or whatever. And so it was, it was a very touchy situation that had to had to be managed very carefully. But obviously, you know, to your point, that is, there’s a big difference between a group that is going through a Kaizen event with that type of, you know, group dynamic versus a group who is challenging each other, they’re excited, they’re energized, they’re respectful, they’re they know that, that each person plays an integral part in the success of that event, right, that there’s a huge difference between the two.
Mike Leigh
Absolutely. And so, you know, we’ve both seen that happen. And, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time facilitating these types of events. And if you’re, if you have a good facilitation skills, and you’re a strong facilitator, you can even pull those individuals aside and say, Listen, you are not going well, right?” I, you know, in a nice way, you need to keep your mouth shut, and really let other people be part of this. Right. So I say that bluntly. But you know, I’m talking about, you know,
Patrick Adams
there’s a certain way to approach it. But to your point, you know, that that goes back to the the facilitator piece, right, and how important that can be or, you know, depending on the team harmony, you know, do you need a facilitator, right, if the team harmony is there, you there, but they may not even need a facilitator, but in a dynamic like that, where, you know, maybe the group isn’t, in, maybe they’re in a storming phase, right? I mean, a facilitator could be very beneficial, you know, in a time like that,
Mike Leigh
yeah. And, you know, you mentioned someone else, Patrick, which is another factor, which I want to bring up. And that is, you know, there might be a team leader or somebody that is senior in the group that is very experienced, and they have a strong opinion, they have a strong opinion on what they want the team to do. And because of their personality, they just pretty much take over the team. Sure, that was clearly in the research, you know, a negative contributor to success, not only when you have somebody, a team leader that has a lot of experience, but even team members themselves, this was the most interesting one, probably the most interesting thing I discovered from the research, but it made sense. When I thought back to my my experience, the more experienced team leaders are, the more experienced that height is in your team members is actually a negative correlation to their success of a team. And that doesn’t on the surface make sense. But when you think about it, what happens are the dynamics we’ve just talked about, people become very opinionated, they’re not open to new ideas, because they have so much experience, they know the right answer already. And that actually, empirically causes less success in Kaizen events. So it’s important to actually when you’re at so all of this is important, Patrick, because if you are a lean leader for your site, or if you’re a consultant, giving advice to your clients, it’s really important to who you put on the team and understanding their personalities and their experience and making sure nobody dominates. And you have a lot of maybe people who are green and don’t know it very well, so that you get a good, they’re not they’re not already fixed mindset of what should happen. Sure, then you get more success.
Patrick Adams
Yeah, and I agree with that completely. It also made me think, Mike about what having leaders on a Kaizen team, you know, I’ve had some Kaizen events that I’ve walked into where a plant manager or an executive leader is in the room, and is participating on the team and when an executive leader or someone in at a level, like a plant manager level or even a value stream manager says, you know, management type level, when they say something, if they’re if the room, you know, most of the people in the room are reporting to that person when they say something, I mean, it kind of is the way it has to go. Right? So they have to be very careful about what they say, and that they don’t veer the group towards their thoughts and decisions only right but and so really, I don’t know what your approach is with mid management or leadership, executive leaders being involved in Kaizen events or or how that’s worked. For you, but I know it’s definitely something that they have to be very careful about what they say,
Mike Leigh
Yeah, I will tell you that I have one, one client who’s a plant manager decision maker that I coached . He knew that he had that impact. And he didn’t want to have an impact, even when he is such a strange, dynamic, Patrick, and you’ve probably seen this, a leader, an executive leader can even make a suggestion or ask a question. Yes. And the participants, not only don’t take it as just asking a question, they take it, that’s what the leader wants. That’s right. It’s fascinating. And so I tell leaders, that it’s okay for them to participate, even encourage them, but if I know their personality, we talk ahead of time, you know, are you going to, it’s critically important that you don’t even give an opinion that you that you have to continuously ask for other people’s opinions. Don’t let people go down something just because they think you want it. And as long as you know that going into it and and then then you know, you’re gonna have success. But I will tell you, Patrick, the reason I encourage the participation and because a positive factor, another one is management support. The staff and employees when they see active engagement, whether it’s on a team or simply checking in on them every day, how are you doing? Do you need anything right, just verbally, and sometimes economically showing support to the team members, that has a positive impact on the team, even if it’s just that they like it more, right want to do more of it, that’s a good thing for a culture.
Patrick Adams
Yeah, many times, what I do is, I’ll actually ask an executive leader to come in to the kind of the kickoff of the Kaizen event and have them, give the team you know, their support, maybe if there are any boundaries, or anything that they need to kind of let the team know that they have, but really just come in there and 100% just completely give them the support that they need in order to have an effective and a successful Kaizen event. And then again, if they’re not participating in the entire event, come back at the end, and listen to the report of what’s happened. And then again, give that validation that you support, you know, everything that’s happening, and that you’re going to do everything you can to remove roadblocks and continue driving that the results of that Kaizen event forward.
Mike Leigh
I couldn’t agree more. And that’s the minimum expectation, I would expect leaders to participate. I even use the term supporter versus promoter, you know, you Roman develop a good lean enterprise, senior leaders, it’s not enough to just be a supporter, you have to be a promoter. That’s right. And, and it can’t be simply Whatever you need, I’ll provide that support, it needs to be demanded, this is how we’re going to do business, this is my expectation, everybody’s going to be involved with this, this is your responsibility. It has to be stronger than supporting. And when it is, I think it’s also more effective.
Patrick Adams
I love the idea of being a promoter, not just a supporter, almost like an ambassador for change, right? Whatever. I just, I love that word promoter. So thank you for that. I’m gonna probably steal it and use it. Alright, perfect. So obviously, you’ve done a lot of research on this, you’ve you’ve, you have some really, really great data behind this. And after kind of going through this and studying this, how should a Kaizen event be conducted? What would you say to those that are listening in? What are the steps? What are those things that they should take into consideration to ensure that they do have a successful Kaizen event?
Mike Leigh
You have some pretty firm opinions based on the research based on experience? I will tell you up front that for the things that aren’t a strong factor, do whatever works best in the organization. For instance, how long should the event be? Three days, five days, it doesn’t matter what works best for your organization, even if it’s one day, it’s a good one day and the scope of the project fits in a day. Great, you know, there, there’s Do you want to serve lunch? Go for it, you know, however you want to do that. It works. Okay. Sure. There are a few things that you definitely want to do in your Kobo van. One of them, which we’ve talked about already, is there needs to be good team dynamics. So when you are planning and by the way, the planning overall is critical for a couple reasons. One of them is developing this team who’s going to be on it, who’s going to ensure that the team dynamics work well, like a facilitator, and who’s going to be leading the direction of a team really making sure that the team is working toward its goal. Those things happen. To be in place, when that pre planning is not done with some good thought, it really sets you up for mediocre or even poor results, you might get lucky. But you’re increasing the risk of having poor results. So that planning, thinking about that team harmony, who’s going to be on there having a good mix. And if you do have a mix from different departments, making sure that they get along, or there’s somebody there to help them get along. That’s really important. So number one, good. Somebody has to be there filling that facilitator role if the team has already worked well together and doesn’t need one. Okay, so that’s critically important. A second, and this goes into the planning side, again, is the clarity of the goal to accomplish. So another factor we haven’t talked about yet, that came out very strong in documentaries and research was having good goal clarity, that clear the goal was the objective for the team, the better the results were. And as someone who does a lot of leadership development and help leaders with goal setting, most of us have heard of smart goals, right? Is this goal clear, measurable, specific? Where everybody knows exactly what we’re trying to do? And is it scoped correctly for the amount of time that takes some practice to do well, but it definitely has a contributing factor to success. I mean, think about employees who may ask given responsibility, but it’s not clear what their outcome should look like. Right? Right. frustrating. It’s frustrating when employees don’t know exactly what’s good from bad or how to do their jobs, right. It’s the same thing here, the team is left to as the wind blows, and nobody gives him clear direction on what’s expected. It’s, it’s, it’s a recipe for disaster. So those are two of the big things, Patrick, is, you know, making sure that there’s good facilitation involved in making sure that there’s a really clear goal that needs to be accomplished. Those are probably the two biggest factors that that really encompass most of the main success factors and cause. Sure,
Patrick Adams
Would you say so? I’m sure there’s more factors we can talk about here shortly. But what would you say within a Kaizen event? What if we were to kind of lay out a high level agenda? What would one look like?
Mike Leigh
I’ve been with some organizations that like to put together a very detailed agenda for the week, or three days, right? Sure. I’ve also seen organizations where they didn’t really have a clear agenda, they had a goal. But they kind of let the team go in whatever direction made sense, as long as it was moving toward the goal. I’ve seen both of them effective. Sure, you’ve seen both of them effectively. So that may not be a factor. I personally like to have something kind of in between. Generally, I recommend that. You know, before you embark on any improvement, you have to understand the current state. If there’s a lack of clear understanding of the current state from maybe pre work that was done, then you better spend some time upfront, making sure everybody understands what’s currently going on. Because otherwise, you may go off in a direction without knowing the root causes or the current state. So there has to be some time to make sure upfront that the current state is understood, depending on what you’re working on. If there are some team members who do not have good knowledge about me, you may put some training in the beginning part can help give them some basic understanding. So for instance, if the team is working on a quick changeover or a summit event, it would be helpful to take 20 to 30 minutes just describe the steps of SMAD and, and why it’s important in an organization, right that that can be helpful for understanding. So current state, having some making sure everybody has at least some baseline knowledge. And then making sure that a team leader or maybe it could be outside consultant, right, helping making sure you’re always moving forward toward that goal. What you do every exact day to me is a little bit less important. Because as you know, Patrick, you start working on something in IE, try things out and you discover and learn as you go. And you may find that that takes you in a different direction. Or you may try something and realize you have to go back and get more data. And now you have to do more discovery. And so you don’t want to shortchange that because you have this rigid agenda you’re trying to meet. Yeah,
Patrick Adams
that makes sense. Thank you for that. I felt like it was just something that was kind of hanging out there that we needed to talk about the so back to the factors There’s got to be some other factors to that that have to be considered. Obviously, you gave us the two main factors. But what are some other factors that could be considered to ensure the success of a Kaizen event,
Mike Leigh
there’s one other big one that I want to talk about. And that is something that I discovered accidentally, to be honest with you, I was it was a white paper, I think it was a white paper, but it was put out by ATD, the Association of talent Development that used to be called astd, I think American Society of training and development. And there’s a white paper called the power of three, or the power article or phase three, okay, and this had nothing to do with lean. But they put out this paper that describe that for any training event, a class or whatever it might be, they found through research that the investment in that event, about 85% of the investment in the event happened during the event, about 5% of the investment was after and 10% before. So now, imagine a Kaizen event being a training event, right? That makes sense, where about 85% of your efforts during the Kaizen event, maybe 10%. Beforehand, doing some pre work doing some preliminary planning 5% afterwards, right? Sure. But what this paper describes is that the value you get from the training event does not match that approximately 25% of the values beforehand, 25% during 50%, afterwards, wow. So think about the things you might learn in a training event, half of the value of it doesn’t happen during but it happens afterwards. And when I read this, and I discovered this, I immediately thought of Kaizen events, because what happens in a Kaizen event I see too often is the event gets done, and everybody’s like, we’re done high five, let’s go back to our jobs. That’s the biggest mistake that organizations make with their events. Because what happens is, the important stuff is what happens after those changes make an impact that behaviors change. There are so many reasons why changes slide back to the old way. And sometimes it’s because the changes didn’t work. And sometimes habits, new habits need to be formed. And so it’s critically important after a Kaizen event that you plan for the continuous monitoring of the changes. And what I normally recommend is at least every day, for three weeks, check on Checkout, make sure people are doing it that new way, make sure it’s sticking, and immediately correct it, or look for reasons why it’s not. That’s where the learning comes in, it doesn’t happen during that happens afterwards. That’s a huge factor, from my opinion, if you have to make plans afterwards to monitor and audit what you did to see how effective it was. And to make sure that the changes you were trying to make, actually stay there and occur.
Patrick Adams
I agree completely. And I think that that is definitely a place that’s missed. Because, again, a lot of places feel like well, we got everything done during the event. So we’re all set to head back in and just kind of go back to the way things were. But to your point, there has to be in order to sustain those changes, drastic be, you know, behavior change that happens or has to be changed within the process that’s supported, and sustained. So adding, adding some of those activities or changes to some type of a layered audit process or, you know, again, putting putting the leadership out there to ensure that the change is happening, and there’s so many different ways that it can be followed up on but it definitely has to be part of the event itself, the follow up.
Mike Leigh
Exactly. And you know, it’s not just Kaizen events, Patrick, but it’s also when you look at any change management. Sure, often this frustrates lean practitioners because they try to make changes that don’t stick. Right. This is one of the most common challenges I see with lean practitioners. And often leadership jumps to the conclusion that well, people don’t like to change. But in reality, although that can be a reason, what I find typically happens is if they don’t understand it, or if there’s something wrong with the improvement, and sometimes there is that can be a root cause but sometimes it’s simply we need time to change the habit. I like when I’m training people on this in Wayne, and I talked about change management, and we’re trying to change behaviors. You know, I’m a big student of behavior, change of habit formation. It’s a big part of the leadership development that I do. Sure and I always use the example When, you know, a long time in my job, I used to travel a lot. And I was traveling two weeks a month. And I had a path I went to the airport every time right? A specific path. Well, after a couple years, my way discover a better way to the airport. Right? And she showed it to me, Michael, this is great. It saves me a few minutes. It’s more relaxing, I’ll start taping it. Patrick, the next three times I went to the airport, I missed that term. Why? It wasn’t because I hated the change, right? Because I didn’t think it was effective because it was a habit, I kept going straight instead of turning right at this one stoplight three times. So that’s what is happening often. Not always. But that’s often what’s happening when you’re trying to change behaviors is people have been doing it the same way for a long time. And you have to continuously help them choose.
Patrick Adams
That’s right. That’s right. And as you mentioned, it could be as simple as just being out there every day for a certain time reminding them this is the turn right? This is the turn to remember this. And it’s not that they’re going to fight it because they know they’ve experienced it, they know that it’s better. They were part of the change. They just need that reminder, that constant reminder, you know that check in until it does become the new habit, a new way of doing things?
Mike Leigh
Exactly, you know, it’s somebody moves some material to this spot, and you change the spot. And they kept doing it. They’re like, hey, reminder, that means that over here, yes, sir. Up, remember close over here? Oh, yeah, that’s right. Remember, it goes over here. And next thing you know that, but it takes a while there’s one of my clients has a safety program they call behavior based safety. And I don’t ever heard the beep I have based on developing a new habit. And you have to display it. 21 days in a row? Yes. Where you say, Okay, now that habits been changed. So I’ve had sensors that tell me to audit it every day for three weeks to make sure it’s happening. So I don’t know where that three weeks comes from. But it sounds about right, where you really want to make sure that habits change. You need that reinforcement for about three weeks. Yeah.
Patrick Adams
I love that. And I think that that’s such an important piece of what we’re talking about today. Because I know there are so many people out there that have experienced Kaizen events that they’ve been involved in or they facilitated. And then, you know, a couple weeks later, they see things starting to go back to the way they were. So I think that this is just such a key piece to that sustainment after the Kaizen event. And I appreciate that, that we were able to talk through that today. Mike, I think we could talk about this forever. There’s so many more aspects of Kaizen events that could be discussed, we might have to do a part two to this podcast to just continue the conversation?
Mike Leigh
I do enjoy them, and I’ve done them for a long time. And when they go well, they’re fantastic, right? Yes, fantastic.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. And I very much appreciate you being on today. If people did want to reach out to you if they were interested to learn more about what Apex solutions offers? Where would they go to find you or contact you?
Mike Leigh
Oh, sure. So the best way to reach me for your listeners is, you know, find me on LinkedIn, connect with me. You know, Michael Lee without tech solutions, so find me on LinkedIn, I love connecting with people and I try to be active, I’m not sure if I’m as active as you are Patrick, but you follow you. But I do like to share some things on there. So people can always reach me that way, I would encourage you check out our website. It’s effect solutions. llc.com. And we, we frequently post, we put out occasional newsletters that you can sign up for which we also post on our LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. So you can follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook also. And in all the way to talk much about leadership development. You know, we also regularly provide leadership courses that really help you change that culture you’re looking for for lean enterprise that we do regularly. And so some of your listeners might be interested in there and go there for more information.
Patrick Adams
Perfect. And we’ll make sure that we drop those links into the show notes. So if anybody is interested to check out the website or to reach out to Mike on LinkedIn, we will have those links right in the show notes. Well, Mike, thank you so much for being a guest on the lean solutions podcast. I appreciate your time. I look forward to another episode with you in the future. Well, I’m glad to come on again. And Patrick is nice catching up with you again, and thanks for having me on. All right, take care. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lien 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
Hello, everybody. Our special guest today is Mike Lee and Mike serves as the president of op x solutions and is a proven operational leader and lean continuous improvement expert he has over 25 years of success as a naval officer, manufacturing manager and business owner Mike has served as a lean consultant and help companies such as General Electric mitsubishi, create continuous improvement culture and increase their profitability. He’s also assisted over 25 different business sites in hundreds of Kaizen improvement teams to eliminate waste and improve flow by implementing lean principles of lean, and we’re going to be talking about Kaizen events today. So welcome to the show, Mike. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. And by the way, thank you for your service. Oh, you’re welcome. My pleasure. Yeah. So as I mentioned, today, we’re going to talk about Kaizen events and we have a number of people who listen to the show that are probably very familiar with the term Kaizen may or may not be familiar with Kaizen events, but I’m sure there are also listeners that have maybe never heard the term Kaizen or have never heard about Kaizen events at all. So just to help ground the listeners, can you give us kind of an overview of what is a Kaizen event? And what is their purpose?
Mike Leigh
so you know, most of your listeners probably heard of Kaizen, right, and which is loosely translated change for the good. And that’s kind of the foundational part of lean is making continuous improvements. And a common way that organizations like to bring about Kaizen or bring about these improvements is through something called a Kaizen event. There are other names for it, and sometimes called a rapid improvement team. But basically what we’re talking about here and maybe for discussion, because it sometimes means different things to different people. But the way I like to define it is when you have a nice structure, dedicated team working on a challenge or an improvement for some finite amount of time. And in most cases, Kaizen events will have anywhere from a few to maybe a dozen people in it, it will often go from three to five days, but it’s usually a dedicated concerted effort to bring about change or to solve a problem or, or work on anything else that might be beneficial to put a dedicated team on.
Patrick Adams
Sure. And so when it comes to the team itself, do you have, do you have any advice to people around how to choose their team members,
Mike Leigh
I do, actually, you know, a very common belief. And we’ll talk a lot about this probably today, because there are different opinions on what you should do in a Kaizen event. But many people believe you know, you want to have a cross functional team, have people that are maybe heavily involved in the process, but also have supporting functions and so forth. And I will tell you that that is important, especially if you are the process that you’re working on or the topic of a team, the goal affects other departments. It’s nice to have representatives from the voter departments, it’s also helpful to have people with believe or not less experience in wheat. And I’ll go into that a little bit. But often, you will find that it doesn’t have to be just experts or your most knowledgeable lean practitioners. But also having people who may be brand new to continuous improvement because getting a different and fresh perspective is very helpful. And it’s also you’ll find that those individuals will also learn a lot. And However, with that being said, and we’ll get into this here later, but there are some risks when you have cross functional teams, or you have what are called greater diversity in the makeup of the team that you put together. Because it can actually lead to less harmony within the team. And that’s important during the event.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. And I agree with you completely, because I’ve seen that happen and experienced that. But I also support the idea of having someone that maybe has less experience within the team or even someone with a fresh perspective that comes from a completely different department or a completely different area, right, that has no perspective of the process whatsoever. And sometimes that can be very valuable to the team as well.
Mike Leigh
Yes, exactly. It can be valuable to the team, if it doesn’t detract from the army. And we’ll probably get into that later on.
Patrick Adams
I don’t want to get too far off on assuring sure, but generally, both are important. Absolutely. And before we move on to do kind of deeper into the subject, when it comes to the definition of Kaizen events, is a Kaizen events only for a manufacturing production floor, or can they be used? Whether?
Mike Leigh
Yeah, no, it’s definitely not just for manufacturing or out on the manufacturing floor. It’s really good to use in any type of organization, on any type of process or improvement you’re working on or any type of challenge. It’s most commonly known to be old on manufacturing floors. But you know, the term rapid improvement teams is more common in the healthcare setting. So the type of organization and in the type of department that it’s in, it really doesn’t matter.
Patrick Adams
Sure, okay, good. And what about success for a Kaizen event? I mean, can anybody just pull together a team for three days and call it successful? Or how would we define success coming out of a Kaizen event itself?
Mike Leigh
Yeah, good question. So what what I, what I really like their listeners to understand is that most people participate in Kaizen events or run them in the organizations, they are looking, in many cases, they want to see some sort of business result, right, some sort of metric, you’ve moved the needle on, you’ve improved quality or cycle time reduction or cut costs, some increased productivity, something that will be measurable, that helps the business. And that clearly is a measure of success for a Kaizen event. And it is important, so I don’t want to I, you know, I don’t want to in any way, negate that. However, in my opinion, just as important, is what I’ll call HR outcomes. And that is that a Kaizen event can be a very powerful method to help bring about increased learning and knowledge and skills by the members, it can be used as a learning event, it can have cially help develop greater employee engagement, greater ownership, all those things we look for in the lean enterprise culture that a Kaizen event can help bring about, that isn’t necessarily related to whether or not they get those measurable results in the goal they’re trying to achieve. So typically, that’s how I tried to look at successful events is to both get those HR opens as well as those measurable business outcomes.
Patrick Adams
Okay, that makes sense. And, you know, one of the things that I like to talk about when it comes to Kaizen is, there are Kaizen events and there’s also daily Kaizen, right. So, when we, when you talk about an event, being kind of this, this opportunity to kind of drive things forward very quickly, you know, again, the difference in having success with a Kaizen event versus maybe just daily Kaizen, where would you see the difference there?
Mike Leigh
Yeah, I actually, when I talk to people or work with clients on developing a lean enterprise, I usually talk about actually three different things. There’s the daily Kaizen, and then there’s Kaizen events. But there’s also what you might call a Kaizen project, or, you know, think about in the Six Sigma community, right, they have this project, methodology, demand, and so forth. All of those are valuable ways to and to be in my opinion, all of them should be used to help bring about and develop a lean enterprise. So, specifically, daily or daily Kaizen, and not in a Kaizen event, you definitely want to develop a culture where that daily Kaizen is taking place, right, where every person has the responsibility to think and work toward making small changes every day, or at least, you know, know that that’s part of their responsibility. At timezones, there are things that are across different departments or really greater in scope than what maybe one person can do every day or even one team can do on a smaller daily basis. And so when it’s a little more complex of a challenge, when you maybe need cross departmental coordination, maybe it’s a larger level business challenge, then often an event or a object is a way to bring that about in the event itself, I find very helpful compared to a project because it’s also rapid to bring about some rapid change when you want it to happen quickly. It’s a big investment in the short term, but you get quicker results also.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. I love that you said it’s a combination of the three because I would completely agree with that. I think that’s a very important piece of information. When it comes to success. What would you say? Are the factors that really influence the success of an event itself? And how would you determine them?
Mike Leigh
When I tell you, tell your listeners a little bit about my background. So I really started practicing lean in the corporate world. And I had the good fortune of spending about five years as an internal lean consultant, a lean leader, that was a cross business. So it wasn’t just that one site and the business hired consultants from Japan, that you may have heard of sigma jitsu. Yep, well known consulting company, and I got the good fortune of spending a lot of time with those consultants, very nice. The method we did was Kaizen events, that way, we bring them in for a weekend, we would do these events. So over five years, I literally worked on probably 50 events and hundreds of teams among those events. And so I developed what I believe was some common beliefs on what factors are important. And, but once I left the corporate world, and I started my business, I wanted to find out if my beliefs were accurate, you know what I mean? And, and surprisingly, there’s not a lot of literature out there. On this line, a lot of companies practice doing Kaizen events, but there’s very little literature on what makes them successful. And most organizations I’ve worked with all have opinions and do it a little bit a different way. So what I discovered was that there is a professor at Virginia Tech, her name’s Dr. beneke. And I want to make sure she gets credit, I can name and she’s a department head in their Industrial Systems Engineering Department. And she has actually done graduate research on the effectiveness, the factors that affect Kaizen effectiveness. And so fortunately, I live 45 minutes from Virginia Tech. So I was able to go and meet with her a couple times and talk about the research. So that’s great. I tell you all that background, because between all the events I’ve taken part of and both in the corporate world and as a my own business, and then all the research, empirical research that was done, that’s how I formed, what factors are actually important, and your success for a Kaizen event. So there’s actually quite, if you think about it, I know Patrick, you participate in Kaizen events, right? organizations like to do different ways should probably have the way you like to do them. Sure, if an organization is right, and it might involve how big the team size be, or should we have a charter? Do we have a dedicated facilitator and our team, you know, they all serve lunch? I mean, I mean, there’s all kinds of factors. But there are actually only a handful that really matter. Many of them don’t matter. And to be honest, it’s whatever that site likes to do. But there are some things that do matter. So one of them I want to talk about real quick is a factor without called internal processes. Okay. This is something that Dr. Ben Ethan’s research study, and think of this as the team harming How well does the team communicate together? How well do they, you know, respect each other? Right. And what I learned was that when that team is functioning, well, if you know, I, you know, Patrick, like team dynamics, you know, you’re forming, storming, norming, or whatever, right? When that team is functioning well, there is a strong positive correlation to the members enjoying it, wanting to do more of it. So that’s one of those factors that, for instance, has a great positive correlation. The reason that’s important to know is because the role of a facilitator is critical in your success because a good facilitator can help those internal processes can help the team harmonize and work well together, right, if left to themselves without facilitation to a team that may have differing opinions or don’t get along with each other. It’s a recipe for disaster. So that’s a really important factor. That’s one of several
Patrick Adams
Sure. I think that’s great. And, and I just think about, you know, some kinds of events that I’ve participated in, in the past. And I think about one, one event where there was an individual who had a very strong opinion. And he was also a very negative individual. And I just remember that, you could just tell, as soon as he would open his mouth, the entire group would just kind of slide back, and there’s chairs, and, you know, everybody would just be quiet, and nobody would say anything, because they knew if they did it, you know, he would, he would just lash out at them or whatever. And so it was, it was a very touchy situation that had to had to be managed very carefully. But obviously, you know, to your point, that is, there’s a big difference between a group that is going through a Kaizen event with that type of, you know, group dynamic versus a group who is challenging each other, they’re excited, they’re energized, they’re respectful, they’re they know that, that each person plays an integral part in the success of that event, right, that there’s a huge difference between the two.
Mike Leigh
Absolutely. And so, you know, we’ve both seen that happen. And, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time facilitating these types of events. And if you’re, if you have a good facilitation skills, and you’re a strong facilitator, you can even pull those individuals aside and say, Listen, you are not going well, right?” I, you know, in a nice way, you need to keep your mouth shut, and really let other people be part of this. Right. So I say that bluntly. But you know, I’m talking about, you know,
Patrick Adams
there’s a certain way to approach it. But to your point, you know, that that goes back to the the facilitator piece, right, and how important that can be or, you know, depending on the team harmony, you know, do you need a facilitator, right, if the team harmony is there, you there, but they may not even need a facilitator, but in a dynamic like that, where, you know, maybe the group isn’t, in, maybe they’re in a storming phase, right? I mean, a facilitator could be very beneficial, you know, in a time like that,
Mike Leigh
yeah. And, you know, you mentioned someone else, Patrick, which is another factor, which I want to bring up. And that is, you know, there might be a team leader or somebody that is senior in the group that is very experienced, and they have a strong opinion, they have a strong opinion on what they want the team to do. And because of their personality, they just pretty much take over the team. Sure, that was clearly in the research, you know, a negative contributor to success, not only when you have somebody, a team leader that has a lot of experience, but even team members themselves, this was the most interesting one, probably the most interesting thing I discovered from the research, but it made sense. When I thought back to my my experience, the more experienced team leaders are, the more experienced that height is in your team members is actually a negative correlation to their success of a team. And that doesn’t on the surface make sense. But when you think about it, what happens are the dynamics we’ve just talked about, people become very opinionated, they’re not open to new ideas, because they have so much experience, they know the right answer already. And that actually, empirically causes less success in Kaizen events. So it’s important to actually when you’re at so all of this is important, Patrick, because if you are a lean leader for your site, or if you’re a consultant, giving advice to your clients, it’s really important to who you put on the team and understanding their personalities and their experience and making sure nobody dominates. And you have a lot of maybe people who are green and don’t know it very well, so that you get a good, they’re not they’re not already fixed mindset of what should happen. Sure, then you get more success.
Patrick Adams
Yeah, and I agree with that completely. It also made me think, Mike about what having leaders on a Kaizen team, you know, I’ve had some Kaizen events that I’ve walked into where a plant manager or an executive leader is in the room, and is participating on the team and when an executive leader or someone in at a level, like a plant manager level or even a value stream manager says, you know, management type level, when they say something, if they’re if the room, you know, most of the people in the room are reporting to that person when they say something, I mean, it kind of is the way it has to go. Right? So they have to be very careful about what they say, and that they don’t veer the group towards their thoughts and decisions only right but and so really, I don’t know what your approach is with mid management or leadership, executive leaders being involved in Kaizen events or or how that’s worked. For you, but I know it’s definitely something that they have to be very careful about what they say,
Mike Leigh
Yeah, I will tell you that I have one, one client who’s a plant manager decision maker that I coached . He knew that he had that impact. And he didn’t want to have an impact, even when he is such a strange, dynamic, Patrick, and you’ve probably seen this, a leader, an executive leader can even make a suggestion or ask a question. Yes. And the participants, not only don’t take it as just asking a question, they take it, that’s what the leader wants. That’s right. It’s fascinating. And so I tell leaders, that it’s okay for them to participate, even encourage them, but if I know their personality, we talk ahead of time, you know, are you going to, it’s critically important that you don’t even give an opinion that you that you have to continuously ask for other people’s opinions. Don’t let people go down something just because they think you want it. And as long as you know that going into it and and then then you know, you’re gonna have success. But I will tell you, Patrick, the reason I encourage the participation and because a positive factor, another one is management support. The staff and employees when they see active engagement, whether it’s on a team or simply checking in on them every day, how are you doing? Do you need anything right, just verbally, and sometimes economically showing support to the team members, that has a positive impact on the team, even if it’s just that they like it more, right want to do more of it, that’s a good thing for a culture.
Patrick Adams
Yeah, many times, what I do is, I’ll actually ask an executive leader to come in to the kind of the kickoff of the Kaizen event and have them, give the team you know, their support, maybe if there are any boundaries, or anything that they need to kind of let the team know that they have, but really just come in there and 100% just completely give them the support that they need in order to have an effective and a successful Kaizen event. And then again, if they’re not participating in the entire event, come back at the end, and listen to the report of what’s happened. And then again, give that validation that you support, you know, everything that’s happening, and that you’re going to do everything you can to remove roadblocks and continue driving that the results of that Kaizen event forward.
Mike Leigh
I couldn’t agree more. And that’s the minimum expectation, I would expect leaders to participate. I even use the term supporter versus promoter, you know, you Roman develop a good lean enterprise, senior leaders, it’s not enough to just be a supporter, you have to be a promoter. That’s right. And, and it can’t be simply Whatever you need, I’ll provide that support, it needs to be demanded, this is how we’re going to do business, this is my expectation, everybody’s going to be involved with this, this is your responsibility. It has to be stronger than supporting. And when it is, I think it’s also more effective.
Patrick Adams
I love the idea of being a promoter, not just a supporter, almost like an ambassador for change, right? Whatever. I just, I love that word promoter. So thank you for that. I’m gonna probably steal it and use it. Alright, perfect. So obviously, you’ve done a lot of research on this, you’ve you’ve, you have some really, really great data behind this. And after kind of going through this and studying this, how should a Kaizen event be conducted? What would you say to those that are listening in? What are the steps? What are those things that they should take into consideration to ensure that they do have a successful Kaizen event?
Mike Leigh
You have some pretty firm opinions based on the research based on experience? I will tell you up front that for the things that aren’t a strong factor, do whatever works best in the organization. For instance, how long should the event be? Three days, five days, it doesn’t matter what works best for your organization, even if it’s one day, it’s a good one day and the scope of the project fits in a day. Great, you know, there, there’s Do you want to serve lunch? Go for it, you know, however you want to do that. It works. Okay. Sure. There are a few things that you definitely want to do in your Kobo van. One of them, which we’ve talked about already, is there needs to be good team dynamics. So when you are planning and by the way, the planning overall is critical for a couple reasons. One of them is developing this team who’s going to be on it, who’s going to ensure that the team dynamics work well, like a facilitator, and who’s going to be leading the direction of a team really making sure that the team is working toward its goal. Those things happen. To be in place, when that pre planning is not done with some good thought, it really sets you up for mediocre or even poor results, you might get lucky. But you’re increasing the risk of having poor results. So that planning, thinking about that team harmony, who’s going to be on there having a good mix. And if you do have a mix from different departments, making sure that they get along, or there’s somebody there to help them get along. That’s really important. So number one, good. Somebody has to be there filling that facilitator role if the team has already worked well together and doesn’t need one. Okay, so that’s critically important. A second, and this goes into the planning side, again, is the clarity of the goal to accomplish. So another factor we haven’t talked about yet, that came out very strong in documentaries and research was having good goal clarity, that clear the goal was the objective for the team, the better the results were. And as someone who does a lot of leadership development and help leaders with goal setting, most of us have heard of smart goals, right? Is this goal clear, measurable, specific? Where everybody knows exactly what we’re trying to do? And is it scoped correctly for the amount of time that takes some practice to do well, but it definitely has a contributing factor to success. I mean, think about employees who may ask given responsibility, but it’s not clear what their outcome should look like. Right? Right. frustrating. It’s frustrating when employees don’t know exactly what’s good from bad or how to do their jobs, right. It’s the same thing here, the team is left to as the wind blows, and nobody gives him clear direction on what’s expected. It’s, it’s, it’s a recipe for disaster. So those are two of the big things, Patrick, is, you know, making sure that there’s good facilitation involved in making sure that there’s a really clear goal that needs to be accomplished. Those are probably the two biggest factors that that really encompass most of the main success factors and cause. Sure,
Patrick Adams
Would you say so? I’m sure there’s more factors we can talk about here shortly. But what would you say within a Kaizen event? What if we were to kind of lay out a high level agenda? What would one look like?
Mike Leigh
I’ve been with some organizations that like to put together a very detailed agenda for the week, or three days, right? Sure. I’ve also seen organizations where they didn’t really have a clear agenda, they had a goal. But they kind of let the team go in whatever direction made sense, as long as it was moving toward the goal. I’ve seen both of them effective. Sure, you’ve seen both of them effectively. So that may not be a factor. I personally like to have something kind of in between. Generally, I recommend that. You know, before you embark on any improvement, you have to understand the current state. If there’s a lack of clear understanding of the current state from maybe pre work that was done, then you better spend some time upfront, making sure everybody understands what’s currently going on. Because otherwise, you may go off in a direction without knowing the root causes or the current state. So there has to be some time to make sure upfront that the current state is understood, depending on what you’re working on. If there are some team members who do not have good knowledge about me, you may put some training in the beginning part can help give them some basic understanding. So for instance, if the team is working on a quick changeover or a summit event, it would be helpful to take 20 to 30 minutes just describe the steps of SMAD and, and why it’s important in an organization, right that that can be helpful for understanding. So current state, having some making sure everybody has at least some baseline knowledge. And then making sure that a team leader or maybe it could be outside consultant, right, helping making sure you’re always moving forward toward that goal. What you do every exact day to me is a little bit less important. Because as you know, Patrick, you start working on something in IE, try things out and you discover and learn as you go. And you may find that that takes you in a different direction. Or you may try something and realize you have to go back and get more data. And now you have to do more discovery. And so you don’t want to shortchange that because you have this rigid agenda you’re trying to meet. Yeah,
Patrick Adams
that makes sense. Thank you for that. I felt like it was just something that was kind of hanging out there that we needed to talk about the so back to the factors There’s got to be some other factors to that that have to be considered. Obviously, you gave us the two main factors. But what are some other factors that could be considered to ensure the success of a Kaizen event,
Mike Leigh
there’s one other big one that I want to talk about. And that is something that I discovered accidentally, to be honest with you, I was it was a white paper, I think it was a white paper, but it was put out by ATD, the Association of talent Development that used to be called astd, I think American Society of training and development. And there’s a white paper called the power of three, or the power article or phase three, okay, and this had nothing to do with lean. But they put out this paper that describe that for any training event, a class or whatever it might be, they found through research that the investment in that event, about 85% of the investment in the event happened during the event, about 5% of the investment was after and 10% before. So now, imagine a Kaizen event being a training event, right? That makes sense, where about 85% of your efforts during the Kaizen event, maybe 10%. Beforehand, doing some pre work doing some preliminary planning 5% afterwards, right? Sure. But what this paper describes is that the value you get from the training event does not match that approximately 25% of the values beforehand, 25% during 50%, afterwards, wow. So think about the things you might learn in a training event, half of the value of it doesn’t happen during but it happens afterwards. And when I read this, and I discovered this, I immediately thought of Kaizen events, because what happens in a Kaizen event I see too often is the event gets done, and everybody’s like, we’re done high five, let’s go back to our jobs. That’s the biggest mistake that organizations make with their events. Because what happens is, the important stuff is what happens after those changes make an impact that behaviors change. There are so many reasons why changes slide back to the old way. And sometimes it’s because the changes didn’t work. And sometimes habits, new habits need to be formed. And so it’s critically important after a Kaizen event that you plan for the continuous monitoring of the changes. And what I normally recommend is at least every day, for three weeks, check on Checkout, make sure people are doing it that new way, make sure it’s sticking, and immediately correct it, or look for reasons why it’s not. That’s where the learning comes in, it doesn’t happen during that happens afterwards. That’s a huge factor, from my opinion, if you have to make plans afterwards to monitor and audit what you did to see how effective it was. And to make sure that the changes you were trying to make, actually stay there and occur.
Patrick Adams
I agree completely. And I think that that is definitely a place that’s missed. Because, again, a lot of places feel like well, we got everything done during the event. So we’re all set to head back in and just kind of go back to the way things were. But to your point, there has to be in order to sustain those changes, drastic be, you know, behavior change that happens or has to be changed within the process that’s supported, and sustained. So adding, adding some of those activities or changes to some type of a layered audit process or, you know, again, putting putting the leadership out there to ensure that the change is happening, and there’s so many different ways that it can be followed up on but it definitely has to be part of the event itself, the follow up.
Mike Leigh
Exactly. And you know, it’s not just Kaizen events, Patrick, but it’s also when you look at any change management. Sure, often this frustrates lean practitioners because they try to make changes that don’t stick. Right. This is one of the most common challenges I see with lean practitioners. And often leadership jumps to the conclusion that well, people don’t like to change. But in reality, although that can be a reason, what I find typically happens is if they don’t understand it, or if there’s something wrong with the improvement, and sometimes there is that can be a root cause but sometimes it’s simply we need time to change the habit. I like when I’m training people on this in Wayne, and I talked about change management, and we’re trying to change behaviors. You know, I’m a big student of behavior, change of habit formation. It’s a big part of the leadership development that I do. Sure and I always use the example When, you know, a long time in my job, I used to travel a lot. And I was traveling two weeks a month. And I had a path I went to the airport every time right? A specific path. Well, after a couple years, my way discover a better way to the airport. Right? And she showed it to me, Michael, this is great. It saves me a few minutes. It’s more relaxing, I’ll start taping it. Patrick, the next three times I went to the airport, I missed that term. Why? It wasn’t because I hated the change, right? Because I didn’t think it was effective because it was a habit, I kept going straight instead of turning right at this one stoplight three times. So that’s what is happening often. Not always. But that’s often what’s happening when you’re trying to change behaviors is people have been doing it the same way for a long time. And you have to continuously help them choose.
Patrick Adams
That’s right. That’s right. And as you mentioned, it could be as simple as just being out there every day for a certain time reminding them this is the turn right? This is the turn to remember this. And it’s not that they’re going to fight it because they know they’ve experienced it, they know that it’s better. They were part of the change. They just need that reminder, that constant reminder, you know that check in until it does become the new habit, a new way of doing things?
Mike Leigh
Exactly, you know, it’s somebody moves some material to this spot, and you change the spot. And they kept doing it. They’re like, hey, reminder, that means that over here, yes, sir. Up, remember close over here? Oh, yeah, that’s right. Remember, it goes over here. And next thing you know that, but it takes a while there’s one of my clients has a safety program they call behavior based safety. And I don’t ever heard the beep I have based on developing a new habit. And you have to display it. 21 days in a row? Yes. Where you say, Okay, now that habits been changed. So I’ve had sensors that tell me to audit it every day for three weeks to make sure it’s happening. So I don’t know where that three weeks comes from. But it sounds about right, where you really want to make sure that habits change. You need that reinforcement for about three weeks. Yeah.
Patrick Adams
I love that. And I think that that’s such an important piece of what we’re talking about today. Because I know there are so many people out there that have experienced Kaizen events that they’ve been involved in or they facilitated. And then, you know, a couple weeks later, they see things starting to go back to the way they were. So I think that this is just such a key piece to that sustainment after the Kaizen event. And I appreciate that, that we were able to talk through that today. Mike, I think we could talk about this forever. There’s so many more aspects of Kaizen events that could be discussed, we might have to do a part two to this podcast to just continue the conversation?
Mike Leigh
I do enjoy them, and I’ve done them for a long time. And when they go well, they’re fantastic, right? Yes, fantastic.
Patrick Adams
Absolutely. And I very much appreciate you being on today. If people did want to reach out to you if they were interested to learn more about what Apex solutions offers? Where would they go to find you or contact you?
Mike Leigh
Oh, sure. So the best way to reach me for your listeners is, you know, find me on LinkedIn, connect with me. You know, Michael Lee without tech solutions, so find me on LinkedIn, I love connecting with people and I try to be active, I’m not sure if I’m as active as you are Patrick, but you follow you. But I do like to share some things on there. So people can always reach me that way, I would encourage you check out our website. It’s effect solutions. llc.com. And we, we frequently post, we put out occasional newsletters that you can sign up for which we also post on our LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. So you can follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook also. And in all the way to talk much about leadership development. You know, we also regularly provide leadership courses that really help you change that culture you’re looking for for lean enterprise that we do regularly. And so some of your listeners might be interested in there and go there for more information.
Patrick Adams
Perfect. And we’ll make sure that we drop those links into the show notes. So if anybody is interested to check out the website or to reach out to Mike on LinkedIn, we will have those links right in the show notes. Well, Mike, thank you so much for being a guest on the lean solutions podcast. I appreciate your time. I look forward to another episode with you in the future. Well, I’m glad to come on again. And Patrick is nice catching up with you again, and thanks for having me on. All right, take care. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lien 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
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