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 and welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. My name is Patrick Adams and my guest today is Lee Campe, and he is the president of performance excellence, Inc. He’s a certified Six Sigma master black belt. He’s also a proven Lean Six Sigma deployment leader with a wide array of expertise in all facets of business and continuous improvement. He’s also one of the few instructors with extensive experience in design for six sigma and innovation through design thinking. Welcome to the show, Lee.

Lee Campe  

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely.

Patrick Adams  

One of the other things I wanted to mention to the listeners, Lee, is that you served a number of years in the US Army as a Ranger, is that correct?

Lee Campe  

Yes, yes. enlisted first at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, then I want a wonderful scholarship to college from. I call him Uncle Sugar, Uncle Sam, on the condition that I return and serve again. So I was very fortunate that your tax dollars sent me to Vicenza, Italy for eight years where I got to be a paratrooper, among other things.

Patrick Adams  

Wow, nice. That’s very cool. Maybe we’ll talk a little bit about that, too. I’d love to hear about your experiences. But

Lee Campe  

it segways nicely into continuous improvement when you want to make sure your parachute opens every time.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, that’s good. Well, we definitely want to talk about that. But you also did some Lean and Six Sigma in the army and then transitioned from the military to the civilian world. Can you just give us maybe a little bit about your background and how that transfer of military to civilian and what that looked like from

Lee Campe  

so I was fortunate that Jack Welsh had decided around the time I got out, which was 1998, that he loved ex-military officers. They had done really sort of an isn’t is not analysis, there was one of the big 12 g companies that was outperforming the other 11. And the only thing they could really put their finger on is they had started to recruit ex military officers. So Jack Welch decided that 30% of all new management hires had to come from the ex-military ranks. One thing I do love about GE under jack welch is he made decisions. It was just a very decisive organization, which, actually, that’s why I think ex-military folks did well in that environment. We come from a decisive background. And I was fortunate to be hired into Penske logistics who had just been picked up by GE Capital, okay. And when GE bought you in the late 90s, one of the first things you had to start was a six sigma program. And so Penske strategy was to hire to meet Jack’s demand, hire those ex military officers, but put them in the role of black belt. And now remember, I’ve been so I started very early in G’s rollout of this. And they’re the ones that I would say sort of made six sigma famous because jack welch and GE were the first to apply it to the non manufacturing sector. GE finance was really one of the first to go over you know, and start to apply this and services, but we only had six sigma at that time, we didn’t talk about Lean, you know, the name Toyota never came up there toward the end of 2000, you started to see lean start to come in through something called workout, okay, which was basically their branded Kaizen event, lock everybody in the room, access to all systems, printer, computers, whatever, and you had to leave with 30% less than you came in with. So it was really fortunate to kind of jump in there. And then they were also the ones I guess I have the gift for gab, they recognized that I had a speaking ability. So after a couple years as a black belt, they started to move me into more of an instructor role, which is where I then segwayed over to GE power systems in Atlanta, and took on my first master black belt role and was responsible specifically for the black belt curriculum for GE power systems.

Patrick Adams  

Okay, very nice. And obviously, that’s, you know, a lot of projects I’m sure that you were able to complete over the years, both in the military and outside of the military, what would you say would be maybe one of the highlights of a project that you completed that maybe had a great payback? Or Or maybe, you know, significant transformation for a team or something like that? 

Lee Campe  

My favorite project? I was a master black belt for Home Depot? Oh, yeah. And, you know, one of the things I tackle and try to address when I’m teaching and working with executives, particularly is they tend to talk and opinion data. When I ask people for a problem, you know, Lean Six Sigma is problem solving. That’s how I teach it. It’s not process improvement. We don’t randomly walk around looking for a process to improve that we look for a problem to solve. And don’t get me wrong if the process itself is causing the problem. Yes, we’ll fix it, we’ll do something with that. But executives, when I asked them for problems, untrained executives, I get either solutions or assumptions of causation or I get just a random opinion statement, meaning it’s not measurable. Sure. So my favorite project was when an executive said to me, and I’m very sarcastic. I you I don’t know if it’s a dark sense of humor but I can I can I can get a little closer I get a client a little frustrated at first until they realize that I’m helping them he said help us improve the store theft program hmm and I said well that’s easy just tell all employees to stare at customers when they walk down the aisle take a little you know if I were on camera you can see me to take a little peek into their into their cart or do the Meet the Fockers you know and do the fingers to the eyes I’m watching you and they you know the exact looks at me like you know you’re crazy and I go well you just you You gave me a random statement I gave you a random solution. However, let me put on my Lean Six Sigma hat. Improving the store theft program is the solution to a problem let’s pretend I do it so I always work with execs and say let’s just pretend you’re right tomorrow the store theft program is improved you know and Lean Six Sigma world we’ve got to have a chart I have to be able to show you that something got better faster, cheaper or went away that’s sort of my big four I what is the graph that I show you before and after improvement on because if I in my opinion, if I can’t show you a graph, I can’t prove I fixed anything. That’s right. And I won’t give away their numbers but I’ll just let’s just say you know, we lose x millions a year and shrink. So shrink is a retail term where we bought 100 lawn mowers. We sold 98 there are not two lawn mowers, right. So the executives now know what the executives think. He thinks store theft is the root cause for, let’s say half a billion dollars a year and retail shrink. Well get the team together, we start brainstorming, maybe we signed for 100 lawnmowers, and they only ship 98. Maybe a lawn mower received that in return and never put it back on the shelf. Let me guilt trip anybody that goes shopping, maybe you’ve picked up a bottle of Windex and put it in the paint aisle. You know that stuff gets lost. So we put three or four blackbelt teams on at one blackbelt she worked on. Did we sign for stuff that we never received? And the good news is and the data collection, we found out that that really wasn’t occurring. So and I consider that a win, you know, if you cancel a Lean Six Sigma project, because you find the problem didn’t exist, you also now know something? Absolutely. But what we ended up doing was we created a standard shopping cart. We actually were able to use, you know, sort of a How do you prepare for an inspection in the military? You know, put your sleeping bag this way and your weapon over here and your underwear must be $1 bill long. We have a standard shopping cart for the lumber aisle, the garden center and the store. And we have hypotheses and that’s so that’s what I really tell people when I teach Lean Six Sigma, I really just I’m teaching executives how to hypothesis test, we’ve just forgotten how to do hypothesis tests, we’ve also forgotten that we’re even doing one. So we created a standard shopping cart. And we had hypotheses like if it’s under the shopping cart, it’s gonna walk out the front door. And sure enough in the 200, and I think we did 210 mystery shops around the United States, if it was under the shopping cart and went out the front door almost every time. So then that led to a recommendation of redesigning the cashiers. If you’ll notice the old Home Depot cash register system, you were on the other side of the customer, we also found that the cord on the scan gun prohibited the cashier from going around all of the products in the lumber aisle in the garden center. That project led to us becoming the first major retailer to go to wireless scan guns. Wow, very nice. And in fact, the initial thought was to only do it in the lumber aisle in the garden center. But when we did our pilot, the results were so dramatic that the executive vice president said I want this at every cash register. Yeah. And I’ll highlight one last thing. Basically the savings you asked me for are big savings, the we estimated savings from the project to be about $100 million a year. Wow. That’s your roll out of wireless scan guns was 50 million. So the ROI I mean, it’s obvious, but I wanted to highlight an executive in the room I’ll never forget. He said I recommended wireless game guns two years ago. And we said we’ll sir with all due respect, you recommended wireless gang guns two years ago, when asked what it will fix you said I think things will get better. I believe I read an article, we went out and showed that $100 million is walking out the front door and could prove that it was the cord on the scan guy. That’s right. That’s right. So that sort of was the big difference there. So I would say that was in terms of ROI. That was a massive project. You know, people ask me how long the projects take, let’s not do a project in a week. But this project took a year. And really I think you’d agree project duration really comes down to data availability and the scope of the project. Absolutely. You’re dealing with, you know, at that time 2000 stores in the United States with zero data, right? So it took a while and of course that includes the pilot and things like that. Sure.

Patrick Adams  

Sure, yeah. And even for some listeners, they might be saying, Well, I have a ton of data. But I don’t even know where the data came from, or if it’s accurate, or so even, you know, if you do, maybe you do have the data, but you know, just understanding how accurate or or, you know, what, what, what data you have, where it came from, who collected, I mean, that’s important, too. And that could take some time as well, right? Absolutely.

Lee Campe  

Well, that you know, those to name a few tools, we know that we’ve got our gauge r&r and our attribute agreement analysis to help with things like that tools that black belts typically understand how to do

Patrick Adams  

absolutely, what a great project, great learnings, I appreciate you sharing that example. And I’m going to I’m going to flip to the other side to Lee and I’m going to say, you know, that was maybe one of the the highlight project right, as a black belt again, Master black belt you I gotta imagine on the other side, you have projects that you’ve been on where they didn’t turn out maybe the way that you expected or didn’t have as large an impact? And maybe there was learning or something that came out of that. Is there any one of those that you could share and talk through the learnings?

Lee Campe  

I can say that? Well, it’s interesting. When I was a director of Lean Six, Sigma Johnson and Johnson, we actually did a six sigma project on the cycle time to complete Six Sigma projects. And we love them. Well, we found that if we were getting in our own way, the charter had seven signatures on Hmm. So the bureaucracy basically did a value added non value added analysis of the process of selecting and identifying projects, and we had too much bureaucracy built into that, I would say, if I can get a project started, it’s usually successful. And my frustration comes a lot of times more on this, if more on the side now today, where I’m not working for the company. So if I’m the master black belt, at Home Depot, or Johnson and Johnson or you know, I was vice president JP Morgan Chase, people are going to do their projects, because I’m going to, you know, ask them, here’s the next tool. What do you want to do next? When are you going to go out and collect data? My frustration is more on the client side today, where I don’t work for the organization where I’m brought in to train 20 people, and then you just get radio silence. And it, you know, Lean Six Sigma works, but you know, that the leadership isn’t driving the project? That’s right. They’re not, they’re not asking for, you know, they didn’t attend the class themselves. They’re not asking the belts to complete their work. They’re not that so that, you know, so that would be my most frustrating. I’ll have maybe, I don’t know, one client out of 20, where I don’t get a lot of certification out of the student population. Because the client didn’t force any project effort to be quite honest. Sure, sure.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah. That’s got to be frustrating for sure. And you know, just thinking about your leader, your comment about leadership, there’s probably a lot of leaders that are listening right now and thinking to themselves or wondering, you know, Is that me? And I just, I want to ask you to, would you have any advice for maybe a leader that’s listening? Who thinks, you know, well, we have Lean and Six Sigma and in our organization, but I don’t really feel like I’m engaged or involved in it at all. Any advice to any leaders out there that might be in that position?

Lee Campe  

Well, yeah, one of the things I always do when a client calls me up and says, Can you train 20? People? I say, Sure, but what do you want from it, training for the sake of training never works. I mean, you see that in some of the fluff stuff that, you know, many companies want to do today, in this area, you know, I won’t get too political or anything, but training for the sake of training never works. And that, again, maybe comes from the military, it’s been very helpful. We trained by objectives, what is the point of the training? What is it that you’re supposed to accomplish? So I will say to a client, if you just start doing this for something cool for the employees, and so that they can kind of have a class and you can say you offered something that maybe people don’t have to get certified? I mean, personally, that I think that’s a waste because I’ve never had a client that if they make a student do projects, the course pays for itself. One project out of the 25 students will pay for everything. You know, the first project we did for a major US Auto Parts company, United States, the first guy that got certified saved $650,000. Wow. Which paid for all of the training that I provided that company for the next two or three years. So I think that the first thing you have to ask yourself is, what is the objective of the training? Sure, you know, I’ve gotten a picture yourself having 20 people that have now completed, you know, let’s say at least a minimum of a week greenbelt training, what do you want to see three or four months from and I don’t think people think that through I don’t think well, I want to see $250,000 in cost reduction, because then it’s kind of I guess, coming over to strategy once you know, your measurable goal. Well, then I know as your master black belt, I’m going to help you pick projects that have cost savings because you just said you want to save 250 grand, you just say I want people to feel good that they got a free class. Okay, maybe we can focus on something different, but I think not having the objectives identified prior to the training is a huge mistake that a lot of companies make sure yeah, we’re then number two. I mean, you have to ask people what Where are you What’s your project, what’s the status of your project, and then the next time you see them, you have to ask for the status update. And if there’s no changes, you know, one of the biggest mistakes I see so many companies as you probably know that do three s not five s. And when I talk about five s, I go listen, at some point, somebody’s going to get fired. You know, if the lines on the floor and the word pallet jack is spray painted there, and five times now the person has not put the pallet jack back, and we’ve decided that that’s important, that’s why we painted the floor, maybe that person needs to go to another part of the organization, or maybe they’re not a good fit for that role. So same thing back over to Lean Six Sigma, if your objective let’s say was cost savings, then people have to do projects that reduce costs, and you have to ask them what the project is and you have to keep abreast of what they’re working on. And you probably know this too many times they are delayed because they can’t fight the bureaucracy of the organization or you as a leader can right so if you’re the one that can call up Bob and say why hasn’t my black belt been given that data? Yeah, you know, Bob just is you know, there’s only so much he can do through you know, peer pressure and email

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, that’s really i mean that’s really the the power that a project champion you know, or a leader that’s overseeing a project has is is to help remove roadblocks for the project manager and you know, key continue to to stay abreast with them be involved with the updates and just look for opportunities to be engaged in you know, but but I agree with you i think removing roadblocks is such an important piece of a leaders role in any project you know,

Lee Campe  

yeah and that’s a big one I see that a lot is you know, you know, kind of elbow a VP and say why don’t you email so and so and ask them why they haven’t sent this belt the data if this project is so critical? Yep, that’s right. The initiative Yeah,

Patrick Adams  

That’s right. So sometimes that’s what that’s all it takes right? I mean, yeah,

Lee Campe  

well and I’ll tell you what, to be honest you know, when I push more these days as a phone call I’ve had so many people say I’ve sent three emails from so and so to get day and I go Have you called them? That’s right. The phone is used so rarely today that it almost creates a sense of urgency when it rains like oh my god, someone’s calling me right? Now get the data, you know, my MBA, it’s so true, George. Yeah, I taught at Georgia Tech for 20 years and they’ve Professor I’ve sent five emails to the client I go call them they’ll freak out. They won’t know what

Patrick Adams  

That’s so funny. I have my daughter is she’s in college and she’s getting ready to graduate she’s she’s 20 actually tomorrow she’s 20 and she had she runs her own marketing and photography business and I tell her the same thing she’s like, I keep emailing this client and I’m not hearing back and I’m like, how have you call like it’s it’s just not it’s not the regular thing to do anymore?

Lee Campe  

And it’s so shocking for the phone to ring. Oh, yeah. You know, yeah, for sure. One of the things that GE taught me and I do teach it today is change management. We had a wonderful change management program. In fact, we did a project. You’ll love this. Sometimes I just love people, they just have an idea. Hey, how many emails are people getting that they shouldn’t get? And we said you know, I don’t know so I picked a random sample of 30 employees at GE power systems and I said I just want a simple tip sheet. Did you get an email and then click over here? Did you need to get it yes or no? Right right. And we found that about 80% of the emails you know pareto principle there that came to an individual they did not need to get and then we identified the root cause was the Reply All button and at this time we were able to get it to

Patrick Adams  

It is so surreal, but yeah, that is so true.

Lee Campe  

But one of the things we studied was there’s action messages and awareness messages and email at best is an awareness form of communication yet we use it much of the time for action and then that’s what kind of what we’re talking about picking up the phone and calling someone is how you get action I can ignore your email

Patrick Adams  

that’s right right but yeah back to that that

Lee Campe  

was one of my most fun projects ever deleting the reply all but

Patrick Adams  

I love that I’m sure there’s many people that are listening that are thinking about Okay, how can I get with my IT department and get that taken

Lee Campe  

care of don’t need to reply all Yeah, on a side note I can also use that I’m sure people agree here I use that sometimes as a way to find out who may be I have I’ll put it this way who I have to be a little cautious with meaning when someone emails me with 12 people see seed I will just reply back to that person. And if they reply back to me re see seeing everyone you know, I’ve kind of kind of got a theme of what I need to what I need to do and be careful on so it’s really interesting how you know, as because one of the things I teach is black master black belts, black belts, great. We’re detectives. You know, when I’m asked on an airplane, what’s a black belt? I’m a detective for corporate America. I go, do you like the CSI shows? Like, Oh, I love them. That’s what I do except my crime scene is it’s the case of why it takes 12 days to load an invoice in SAP. Right? Right. Or it’s the case of the you know, the defective, you know, windshield wiper, right. And so I you know, the more I can get people to think detective and I also try to teach people a lot to apply this in your personal life, it’s the case of why my 240 pounds and not 225 pounds. So my point there is, the more you can look for those, if you really embrace Lean Six Sigma in the training it, it’s so powerful in your personal life, because in the, in the email example, I see a leading indicator of performance that I can now recognize early in the process and make adjustments to avoid any defects or complications in the future.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. Lee, one of the things, You and I are both connected on LinkedIn. And so we tend to comment, you know, on different similar posts or or each other’s posts at times, but I’ve seen you, you know, say things like six sigma doesn’t really exist, or it doesn’t fix anything, right. So what do you mean, you know, when you make a comment like that, you know, what is it that frustrates you about the current Lean Six Sigma offerings, or the current Lean Six Sigma environment?

Lee Campe  

Well, the first thing that is common is people throw away all Lean and Six Sigma don’t go well together, or you know, or six sigma, there’s no Six Sigma as a matter. It’s a mathematical term, it means six standard deviations from the mean. Unfortunately, the use of that term is where in my opinion, we get the incorrect definition of Six Sigma has variation reduction, you know, of 1000 projects, I’ll mentor it a year maybe to have standard deviation as the problem statement. But it’s so a lot of what we say Lean Six Sigma is today comes out of what it was in the 90s, it had to do with quality at Motorola, it had to do with variation reduction. And that’s, you know, they simply doubled the bell curve. They said, well, let’s go from three standard deviations from the mean to six. But just quoting a mathematical term, it’s like me saying body fat percentage doesn’t solve anything. Well, of course, it doesn’t. It’s just a measure what came out of this Six Sigma effort is a powerful methodology called DMAIC. And that’s another thing that people don’t know about the historians I started at GE, we only had measure, analyze, improve and control, it was GE Capital that added the D, because they wanted senior executives to be on board for the problem identification. Now personally, I have a whole other mantra where I think it’s measure, define, analyze, improve, and control, I can’t tell you that Lee is 240 pounds, and he wants to be 225. And less, I’ve done the measure phase. So that’s just the little facts that we have a saying in the military Train as you fight. So when I teach I teach, identify an issue, make it measurable, go out and get the data, which is the measure phase. Sure. And if you find that you have a problem, you’ve documented, that’s the Define phase, and then off to analyze, you go trying to solve it, but just this term, this mathematical metric, Six Sigma, it’s just a term. So I wish and of course, I can change the river. But I wish that we had said, lean DMAIC or domanick. So what my philosophy is, there’s a powerful methodology called domain, yes, you define a problem, the measure phase, as you prove that it exists, which means I have no problem canceling a project and the measure phase after we found out the problem doesn’t really exist, right? analyze as you identify the root cause, which is why I say we’re detectives for corporate America, improvement is the solution and control is to make it stay fixed. And then I feel like I can win over my lean only folks who say that Six Sigma doesn’t work by saying, if the problem is something that takes too long. Oh my gosh, there’s so much application of the lean tools and principles. Oh, yeah. And then on the flip side, occasionally and get a lean person to kind of acknowledge Yeah, you know, I don’t know that lean has the best tools for the problem of employee absenteeism is 10%. You know, like, I don’t know where I could go to do a Value Stream Map, or a Kaizen event or one one lean person said they would go to the gym by go, they’re not there. show up for work. They’re not coming in. So yeah, it’s it’s, we have this wonderful methodology called domain. It’s what your doctor does inherently. It’s what your mechanic does. It’s what a detective does, right? And then the problem that we’re going to work on will dictate the tools that we use. That’s right. So I always kind of use a NASCAR example, if it takes 12 seconds to do a pit stop, and we want to get it to eight. Boy that screams lean. Do I have the tools ready? Am I kidding? You know, and I cross train the employees. But if I’m not winning races, I feel like I’m going to be a little bit more on the analytical sort of Moneyball side of things. You know, I feel like I might Throw a little regression analysis in there or something or a T test, you know, just to throw some tools out there. Yeah, so that’s my, that’s my feel on that. And then in terms of what’s happening in the public sector, years ago, we had isixsigma.com. And, man, I used to be all over those message boards, you know, that was pre LinkedIn. But they did some interesting research back in the day that showed that about 85% of Lean Six Sigma certification came from the company that you worked for, which left about 15%, to the colleges and the, you know, in the organizations that we have out there, we have no certifying body. And now there’s people that say they’re the certifying body, but we don’t have one. And so I tell my clients, the positive to that is you can create your own program, you determine your certification standards, you can determine how many projects people do the negative to that is we have the $69, you know, one hour, take a 10 question, multiple choice exam, and you’re, you’re a green belt. Yep. And why I try to post on LinkedIn a lot about this is I feel like the group that can help us drive standards are hiring managers. And when I tell my clients, if you’re gonna bring someone in from the outside, I have a three legged stool quality of the course. Meaning the content. So I don’t know about you, I sort of feel like a minimum of a week for a green belt.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, we do. We do five days plus coaching for projects. So that’s the minimum, right?

Lee Campe  

The black belts are tough, you know, I have I have two weeks because then you start getting, you know, three, four or five, you’re either trying to make them advance as statisticians or you’re starting to get into stuff like project management, which is your own sort of thing, right? But, you know, quality of the course, quality of the instructor. So look for people like you and me who have been doing this, but we’re not, you know, academics. We’re not non practitioners. We didn’t just get our black belt last week, and now we’re teaching people, right. I saw that, unfortunately, I’ve seen it a lot. Yeah. And then number three, project based certification. Yeah. Now, if you want to let you know, I trained over 120 Industrial engineers at Michelin North America, they also wanted an exam on top of that, I have no problem with that. But they had one of the best certification standards I’ve seen, which again, is that Win Win of being able to create your own the green belt had to report out to a jury of three people master black belt process executive and general executive, like one was the process owner, and one was just a, you know, like a VP, right? Right, pass an exam and complete a project. And so you know, today, if a Michelin black belt came to me and said, Lee, would you refer me to, you know, Home Depot to be a blackbelt? Absolutely. I’ll write the email now. You know, versus Hey, I just finished this two day course for 299. Would you link me up with your contact over a company XYZ? No, I’m gonna have to pass on that.

Patrick Adams  

Right. Yeah. The application of the tools, you know, with some type of project and in coaching is definitely key. You know, if anyone is looking for a certification that that’s out there, do you have any recommendations on certifying bodies, you know, any any specific body that you that you use, or, you know, any thoughts on that

Lee Campe  

when I taught it? So I, I brought, I was actually one of the first to bring Lean Six Sigma certification to the academic world. I brought the program to Georgia Tech in 2003. I call it the miracle email, they emailed me eight months later, I was very honored. And they still use my course in the masters and analytics. But I had, when I started, I brought my sort of G Green Belt black belt with me. So it was a two week Green Belt, and an extra week for black belt. You could skip the green belt and go straight to black, but I had to review it. Sure. So I didn’t, I didn’t have a certifying body that I frankly, I lean more toward. I gave much more credibility to corporate programs, like, you know, you came, you have gotten your green belt certification from Napa auto parts. And what I would ask to see is the curriculum and proof that you did a project. Very nice. So I leaned more toward let you know, was it at least a week. Did you do a project? Yes, absolutely. You can move on to the black belt. You know, there were cases where somebody came to me and said, You know, this group came to our school and gave me a two day Lean Six Sigma class on Saturday and Sunday, and I’m like, I just I really think you would enjoy coming to the greenbelt anyway. And most of them said, Oh, I can’t thank you enough for kind of forcing me through that. So I look more at credentials then because again, you know this I mean, so many companies, I won’t name the group but there was a group they talked about about six sigma, they talk mad about it. You know, when I started 98, people would for the email, look at this group saying that, Six Sigma is this and that, and then all of a sudden in 2000 they remember releasing a press release that said we’re now the certifying party for six sigma. So I think I understand their attempt to try to create a standard, but too many successful corporations are out the gate.

Patrick Adams  

Right? Right, that point. Yeah, and I love what you said earlier about just the methodology and and then looking once you’ve determined what your problem is, you know, then then looking at, you know, what tools are you going to pull from to to utilize and apply to your, whatever that particular problem or project is that you’re going after. And I think about, you know, over the years for me, you know, I started in the lean world, and then, you know, moving to another corporate, another large corporate company, where it was a big Six Sigma shop only no lean, you know, and, and so then being able to pull those together, and I just think about how valuable it’s been over the years, to be able to just look down at my tool belt, and whatever problem that I’m facing, whether it’s a six sigma tool, or a lean tool, or, or whatever it is, I can just pull it out and be effective to help that organization solve a problem. So I love what you said about that. And also the, you know, the corporate america piece, and just knowing that there are companies out there that have really, really great standards around Lean and Six Sigma and how they’re teaching individuals how to apply the tools to specific projects and coaching them through that. But I would ask what, what would you say, you know, companies can do to, to maybe help maintain or or enforce some of those higher standards of Lean Six Sigma, that they might, you know, already have? Or maybe they’re thinking about deploying them into their organization? What would you say to them?

Lee Campe  

Well, I mean, start by listening to the podcast, right? I mean, listen to the subject matter experts that are out there doing this, and, and not ignoring their warnings, right? Like, you know, it’s it’s, it’s, again, it’s sort of the detective example, do you want a person fresh from the Academy to go right into the detective role? You know, no formal training and Crime Scene Investigation or anything? Or do you pull someone who’s been out on the beat for a couple years that you know, made Sergeant and already knows the lingo and just needs that extra training to get over the hump. So I think that the big thing is, being looking for true subject matter experts doesn’t get your knowledge. And you can tell, just look at the bio of some folks that are non practitioners, but are offering this stuff, you can just read the bio and say, Well, this person hasn’t really ever done it, they’re teaching it. 

Patrick Adams  

And there’s a big difference between people that have actually done what I think about Actually, I had an engine, a young engineer that worked for me, just out of college. And he asked me, at the end of this time with me, What advice do you have for me, you know, coming out of this, this role, and I said, you need to get a job as a production supervisor. And he’s like, why would I do that? Why wouldn’t I just go and get black belt certified and start moving down that road? I thought, and I told him, I explained to him you have to have the people skills that are necessary in order to be a good problem solver to be a good lean practitioner. And so, you know, he did do that he went in and got a job as a practice supervisor. And he thanked me afterwards, because it was exactly what he needed in order to be understand how to actually apply the tools, you know, in an environment with humans, where they’re not, you know, you learn something in the classroom, and then you go out to the production floor, or wherever it might be, things are going to be a little bit different than they were in the classroom. Right?

Lee Campe  

You bring up a great point, too, because I’ll have executives ask me, What is the skill set most needed for a black belt? What technical skills do they need to have? And I’ll go throughout my years of doing this, and I’m 98 I mean, I’m well over 20. Right, the best black belts have been former salespeople, hmm. Because they have that personal skill. They know how to approach people, they know how to talk to people, they’re not intimidated by opening a conversation. I can teach the technical stuff, right? But it’s the same thing I would tell I taught or I would mentor undergrads and they would go. Yeah, you know, I’m graduating this year. I’m going to start my MBA. I go Don’t start your MBA, you have absolutely no work experience whatsoever. I have no doubt you’ll pass but you won’t. In my opinion, you won’t get the value from it. Because when he talks about EBIT, or EBITDA and the pressure of profitability or an organization you don’t, you’ve never worked for anybody, right? So yeah, I’ll have people I love during this time, we’ll take Lean Six Sigma training, or I do a lot of training for folks who get out of the military. Sure. And they have no business experience whatsoever. And they ask that question, you know, what can I do to prepare for this role? And I’ll say, and this is why again, I harp so much on it not being process improvement, but problem solving. You can do five, six sigma, Lean Six Sigma projects this week in your personal life. And you know, it’s fun during COVID, my Master’s in analytics when COVID was high, like people couldn’t leave, okay, I made them do projects. I’m not going to let you off the hook for projects, but they did stuff really powerful projects on reducing screen time. Oh, yeah. One young lady did a project on her Amazon dot com expense per month she didn’t realize how much he was spending on Amazon and then kind of parado charted it out what categories was she buying and then if I might have to have my wife listen to this afterwards it’s a toughy to you can’t come to me in the improve phase to say the solution is don’t shop at amazon right right well I want to see where you you know someone in it is blocked Amazon from your phone and your you know, your partner has to you know, enter a code for you to buy something but um, one person did decreasing his mile runtime so I just saw all sorts of really cool creative proof of I know how to use the dimeric methodology and so you know to that point you can go you can do three projects this week at your house right credit card exploiting one lady did she had a hypothesis that her electric bill went up when her sons were home from college hmm and so she got two years of electrical build I mean that just think about that that’s data rich she knows when the kids come home and turns out the hypothesis wasn’t correct Hmm. But she went ahead and continued on with the project to reduce the overall monthly wattage. Yes, great.

So you know, it’s kind of the same point don’t no matter the position you’re in, you can go out and get experience so that you’re not just some green but again, that’s where that you know, just taking it this listening to someone talk and taking an exam doesn’t prepare you for that application. Right. So that would be another thing I would tell people to look for is whoever you pick for training you know adult one of the best things that ever got trained in as adult learning theory. And adult learners only retain about 5% of lectures so you really need to look for a course where people have to do things hands on right so I’m famous for I don’t show a single PowerPoint slide in a week of class now that’s just my gift I have the ability to write and talk and do that. But I would say my course is almost you know off the cuff of course what is the joke? 98% of statistics are made up on the spot but I would say at least 70% hands on application Wow, that’s great. Yeah. Train a detective in the classroom or you’re going to take him out to the crime scene lab and have him look at things you know and touch things and go out on cases and things like that.

Patrick Adams  

That’s right. It’s been fun to see over this last year as so many people I’ve transitioned from classroom to virtual. It’s been fun to see some of the ways that you know trainers and teachers are using different activities to engage us to be creative Oh for sure. Absolutely. Any of your go to engagement tools.

Lee Campe  

I have two exercises during the week. They have to go out and collect discrete data attributes that pass good bad. And I go to a dog park big dog little dog and a defect is any little dog in the big dog part that they would struggle like well what do I consider a defect I just make something up but the point is we’re trying to learn how to collect that data and analyze it so you just to say I don’t like small dogs but now I need you to write the definition of what is a small dog right? So that no matter I’m a big believer that you need to write the definition so specific that anybody could go collect the data there you go, but we had folks combined continuous and discrete one person again everything was about not getting out of the car not going into a building so one person went and measured did people abandon their car at the gas pump right go into the store and then if they did leave the car he had to define that like no more they they left more than you know you know five feet from the back of the vehicle and then he would start a stopwatch and measure how long they were gone from the vehicle. So he was able to clean you know, and then I had people just were really hypersensitive to COVID look out the window and did your neighbor run the stop sign yes or no. But again, it forced them to write the definite what is the definition of not stopped at the stop sign? Right got to be very cool, your five year old can get it right and then look out but you’re absolutely right. We were still able to kind of capture that hands on activity and sort of that online environment Yeah, and of course many of us in the instructor role we’ve learned about zoom fatigue and things like that is like that gave them an opportunity to sort of get off the computer and go do something and then come back to the group and kind of talk about what they collected

Patrick Adams  

absolutely no I love that and and again I’m sure there’s so many people that are listening right now they’re just really really excited about the the the way that you train and just some of the the background that you shared you know what some of the projects that you’ve done and some of the projects that you some of your students have done could you you have any upcoming development opportunities or ongoing development opportunities that people could you know tap into if they’re interested

Lee Campe  

Yes, I if I have a pseudo well what I realized I became a more well known by Lee campy so while I own a company called performance excellence, you know, we collecting data on myself, you know, I realized more people know me on LinkedIn as Lee can be and Lee can’t be my preferred at Georgia Tech so I have a domain Li can’t be calm and that ca MP e if you forget the E you’re going to get a comedian namely cam and I’m also told them quite funny though so but that that’s kind of a placeholder you know phone number email kind of thing it’s it’s very easy li li can’t be calm but if you go to YouTube and type my name in I think someone’s added Six Sigma to it so Lee can’t be six sigma I’ve got a lot of videos that I’ve made really for my students after the class to go watch and do their projects but yeah, I’m offering green belt and black belt online right now for folks at a very reasonable price just given that you know COVID got all of us in a weird position many of us can work from home you know you started in lean your loved one of the things that make people do I make them pick a drawer in the house or the trunk of their car or the closet and they have to do a five s event not to include labeling and pictures before and after

Patrick Adams  

Nice said that’s fine to share during one of your classes.

Lee Campe  

It’s interesting to see what people’s drawers look like and the other they’re like do I have to do the whole kitchen no no no just a drawer I want to see that you can apply the principles but so I guess the point there is yeah you can reach out to me for green belt or black belt training I’m glad to come on site I have done three on site classes this year it just depends on the sensitivity of the client The situation is you know

Patrick Adams  

sure absolutely. But yeah

Lee Campe  

that’s that’s checkout Lee can’t be on on LinkedIn I mean on YouTube or LinkedIn or my domain perfect and

Patrick Adams  

we’ll drop those links into the show notes too so if anyone’s interested to reach out to Lee you can go right to the show notes you can click on link and or download the transcript from this show at the elite the lien solutions podcast calm and almost

Lee Campe  

forgot I’ve got a I’m sorry I mean I’ve got a book on Amazon called Lean Six Sigma defined correctly

Patrick Adams  

Okay, so they can search your name or the title

Lee Campe  

yeah it’s like 10 bucks it’s kind of me speaking from this flow of hey it’s problem solving and and then going through all the tools share the same book I hand out to my you know, my MBA students and my clients

Patrick Adams  

perfect we’ll drop that link into the show notes as well. Lee it’s it’s been great talking to you I mean, I think we could sounds like we could talk all day maybe we could Yeah, we’ll have to have you back in maybe we’ll pick a specific lean subject or a six sigma subject and we’ll we’ll dive into that you know, maybe next time I appreciate really really appreciate you coming on and just filling us in on your background and how you’ve been able to use Lean Six Sigma and in many of the different projects that you’ve been involved with and also hearing you know, the the training and the way that you approach training, especially during this time when so many people are transitioning to virtual training. So thank you for your time. Really appreciate it.

Lee Campe  

I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for having me.

Patrick Adams  

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

Transcribed by https://otter.ai