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 today’s guest is Matt Singh. And he is the director of operational excellence and a master black belt for the Department of administrative services in the state of Nebraska. Over the last 20 years, he has previously served in a variety of progressive management roles, including sales and service, operations and supply chain. Welcome to the show, Matt.

Matthew Singh  

Thank you, sir. It’s great to be here. I’m a huge fan of everything you do for the industry.

Patrick Adams  

Well, I appreciate that, Matt, very much. But I have also heard quite a bit about your passion for continuous improvement. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you as a guest on the show. Let’s talk about that. How did your passion for continuous improvement or operational excellence? Where did that come from?

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve had kind of a unique upbringing, my dad was a senior director and VP of operations for major airlines, all the airlines that you guys are aware of. My mom was a Senior Director of Operations for Fortune 500 companies growing up. So growing up operational excellence was just part of our family culture. As I went through school, I end up getting my bachelor’s and master’s, master’s in leadership from university, Nebraska Lincoln, and really getting into different management roles, where I started to see that operational excellence was not only important, but vital to a healthy team and healthy results. As I got into supply chain management, I got a little bit more formal training from guys who provided lean and ended up achieving a master black belt in Six Sigma master black belt in Lean Six Sigma, certified lean sensei getting a PMP and certified supply chain analytics, as well as analytics and supply chain. So during the path, just the educational path, it was really helpful to be exposed to all these different ideas, because it really helped me apply them and kind of see what works in real life. 

Patrick Adams  

I love that, you know, looking through your, your bio, and just seeing all the different things that you’ve been involved with, because it hasn’t just been educational, you’ve actually applied, you know, the tools and the techniques in many in different industries, and now in, you know, with our government, which is amazing. So, I so much appreciate what you’re doing and how you’re helping to promote operational excellence, you know, across our government and in the state of Nebraska. So thank you for that.

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, absolutely. It truly is. I’ve always been big on Team development. And I spent several years in the operations element of the business. And sometimes people think operations, operational excellence doesn’t have to be about team orientation. And that cannot be more on when we look at operational excellence in this lean as Lean Six Sigma, whatever genre we’re practicing, it is all about the team. It’s all about culture. It’s all about development. And so that’s, I think it’s really given me my passion, like you mentioned earlier for this industry, much like yours, it’s about helping people. That’s what it boils down to.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, and I think that, you know, in my experience, those lean practitioners that understand that respect for people is so important. And you know, that it is about the people and developing people empowering people, equipping people with the right tool sets and just the right skills to be able to be successful in their roles. You know, that’s where the long term sustainability comes when you’re pouring into the people, those especially those that are closest to the work, right, those that are the real experts in the work.

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, and I like how you said pouring into the people. And that, that is a great accurate description. Because when you get with these teams, you know, they’re frustrated, because there’s an operational thing, there’s a financial thing, there’s a political pain point, whatever it is, it can be taxing their soul into their being. And just everyday work, what used to be fun now becomes stressful. And when you get in there and really help them solve their own problems in using these tools and techniques, you know, whatever approach that’s used, you can help them overcome that and enjoy work again, manage their, what they signed up to do. That is really a great example of, as you said, pouring yourself into them. Great description.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, no, absolutely. And obviously, over the years, you know, you and I both have had many different lessons that have been learned in working with people. And I would be curious to hear and I’m sure my listeners would also be interested to hear what’s been your greatest lesson that you’ve learned, as, you know, a lean practitioner as a six sigma master black belt, maybe in project, maybe in a project that you’ve been involved with, or a Kaizen event or or just in people development in general, what’s been your greatest lesson that you’ve learned?

Matthew Singh  

You know, I’ve always had a unique career that started about the time I graduated from college. In my roles, somehow, as identified by higher level management, I always help with special projects. So I was always helping the chief operations officers and vice presidents operations with special projects, even though it was slightly outside My paygrade, even as I progressed a little bit outside my paygrade. And when you hang out at that level, what happened to me, and I don’t want to speak for everybody, but I’m sure several of the listeners can kind of relate is when you spend a lot of time in meetings with executives, that bottom line becomes very evident. It’s about right, especially in your businesses, they’re there to make money. We’re even nonprofits where, you know, you can’t understand we can’t overspend because the money’s not there, or even government to where we’re trying to be responsible with their finances. You know, a lot of times those bottom line results can be taken up, a lot of the talking points can take up a lot of the meeting time and can take up a lot of the deciding whether or not you’re making progress. And I think that molded me for a while in terms of looking at project management and continuous improvement and operational excellence in terms of, I don’t want to say only bottom line results, but it certainly started taking over my mindset as I progressed. And, you know, as you get your 100 projects underneath your belts, 200 300 400 500, same keeps going with even more projects and stuff, you get that experience. I think what I learned over time was, results can be achieved a lot of different ways, a lot of different ways. There’s not one right way to do stuff, there’s probably some best practices we should follow. And that’s certainly part of all those different trainings, and so forth. Really any good project management office, but there’s a lot of different ways to do it. And I think the most important thing is what you mentioned earlier, is about getting there with the team, getting yourself into the team, because you can get results by not doing that. But are they sustainable results, right? I can usually be the second the executive who asked you to the project leaves, Will those results still be there? And the answer is if the team didn’t believe in it, and the people doing the work don’t believe it or understand it, it will not guarantee a backside that’s a guarantee for me. So what I learned over the years, the biggest lesson I learned in your book does a great job of articulating my exact sentiments on it is bring the team with you, invest in them, make it a group effort, you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. But that group IQ and that group dynamics, collaboration will always always, always result in a better, more sustainable impact to the business. Right?

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely agree 100%. Matt, and also in working with people too, you know that you can have some tough times, right? And I’m curious to hear, you know, maybe if you can think of an example of maybe a time when you were working with a team and you had maybe a difficult individual, what approach would you take, you know, in your experience with somebody that may be, because again, we do have individuals that are completely 100% engaged and excited about being part of change, being part of a Kaizen event, being part of, you know, mapping a process, whatever it might be, but you always have maybe that one that is kind of maybe arms crossed at the table or not, maybe not being as vocal as they could be, you know, maybe a subject matter expert that isn’t sharing their knowledge, or for some reason they have difficulty, what would you say would be your, your approach to working with someone like that? 

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, I think the best advice I can give, and I’m thinking there’s several, several situations where that’s occurred, pretty much every project has something like that, to some extent, that’s why the project is because there’s, there’s some kind of major constraints, seek to understand, understand, you know, a lot of the things that helped you get into this industry, if you’re in any kind of management role, the things that help you get to management is one of those skill sets is, you know, making decisions off of the limited data we have, and just kind of using our gut understanding of situational awareness. And that’s a good skill set to have. But it can also be the enemy of getting team by and sometimes I’m not suggesting you forget what you know, what I’m saying is there’s another equal skill every humors of the universe, if you will, and that is seeking to really understand what’s going on I have this project is about a $20 million project. In all reality, it probably should have taken about six months, which is probably a healthy approach due to the political nature of it. We had six weeks to decide what the project leader in a breaking down meth lab needs in a lot of different interesting ways. But the number one thing is we had a team member who had all the information on one very important part of the process where the pain point was where the major pain point was, and they refused to put it down into standard operational procedures. Like the Yoda effect where they kind of you know, they do it internally to themselves. They know the process, but they don’t want to explain it to others. And this was part of the pain point then everybody going up to it said, Oh, yeah, you know, this person is going to be a pain in the butt. This person is against y&z. And my first thought was, well, why, right? We’re here, we’re here to make it better for her. This will give her better job performance. Why doesn’t anybody give me a good answer? And so during the process within the Kaizen event, less than five days of very intense kind of lock the doors let’s get it done in five days. Oh, you definitely manifest itself in that storming phase, you know of team development within the first and second day within the first hour. And there definitely was a us versus them mentality starting to form between the team and you know, I openly addressed it a couple times and it helped a little bit, but that didn’t fully solve it. So I really want to see to understand. So I did during lunch break as a two I pulled her aside and said, Hey, you know, can I talk to you? She’s like, yeah, my trouble. I’m like, Well, I don’t know you maybe, but it has nothing to do with me really quickly, and I just had an open, honest conversation with her behind closed doors. Okay, here’s the deal, I’m really trying to do this, I think this will help you. I have no vested interest other than hope you guys can help me understand why this seems like at least, I perceive to be that you really don’t want this. And she didn’t want it. She openly admitted it and she broke down. And if you’re new to these kinds of things they are called Crucial Conversations. If this is new to you, it’s not uncommon, when you have these moments of authenticity for people to break down crying. Sometimes they throw shoes across the room, sometimes they get up and walk out. These are all normal parts of the storming phase of a healthy project, right, got to be ready for it. When I finally heard her. The end result was what was really causing the frustrations for her had nothing at all to do with the project, the project team members, anything that had happened 10 years ago, and it was still there. It impacted her quality of work. Very shortly, she ended up being the biggest advocate for it. By day three, she was leading day three, four and five. As the leader, I wasn’t even being aggressive enough for her; she was on board and driving this thing. We ended up getting it solved within the time frame we had, well, half of that to this day, she is still my professional network, we stay in touch. And so that’s one of several examples I put out there. If you’re new to this, that’s normal, don’t don’t get frustrated. But the greatest thing I can tell you is seek to understand because what is inherently against your project, no one is right. We have to figure out where those constraints are coming from, where the concerns are coming from, and help understand it and work with them through it.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. What great advice. I am a firm believer that everybody comes to work wanting to do a good job. And you know, sometimes they just have frustrations, as you said, and you know, a great leader is going to identify that and be willing to, to dig into it. And as you said, seek to understand and some amazing things can happen. My experience as well has been the same where those are the people that sometimes become your greatest advocates for change. And so if you’re willing to invest the time, and really seek to understand, genuinely seek to understand, because people know the difference, right? Then amazing things can happen. I have to imagine, Matt, that over the years, you’ve filled your tool belt with many different tools. Obviously, you know, being a master black belt, I know that you have many different tools, techniques that you use. What would you think if you had to choose one out of all the different tools and techniques that you have? What would you say is your most favorite tool or technique?

Matthew Singh  

You know, it’s funny because a lot of times I do guest speaking as a subject matter expert throughout the nation in creating different videos for different universities and stuff. And anytime I’m asked this question, I think people are a little bit surprised, because they’re expecting me to pull it when using my statistical tool, cool, visual tools. And those are fun, don’t get me wrong, I could talk about this for hours. But I think the most advantageous tool that exists in all the toolboxes anywhere in operational excellence, in my opinion, is the voice of the customer. See the voice of the customer, simply put that’s going out and talking to the people that actually receive the service talking to the internal customers, those that actually do the process. It’s very qualitative and very antidotal. And some people look down on that. But I think that the strength of it is to just talk to the people, not to the people that are involved to see what their concerns are, what their perception is, seek to understand where they’re coming from, because sometimes it’s not against anybody, it just has to be the organizational structure. It has to assist them setup many, many years ago. But sometimes there’s a disconnect, in which we want to report about what an Excel spreadsheet says and what the people are actually experiencing. And that’s very real. Shane was the customer who helped us get out there and touch base with the people doing the process and receiving the product and saying, What do you guys think? What do you guys think? Because then we can find solutions. And again, there’s a lot of ways to come up with solutions. But we can find a solution that helps the customers internal external customers, meet their needs, be satisfied with the product and still achieve the business objectives. So the most powerful tool in the toolkit I’ve strongly recommended is you if you’ve never come across it before, that’s okay. A lot of youngsters don’t teach it. But definitely in the lean world Lean Six Sigma world checkout voice of the customer or voc Yeah, powerful tool you’ll come across.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. I remember walking in. I think I actually posted a picture of this at one time, but the voice of the customer can come in many different forms. I walked into a library at a university and they had two chairs, sitting at the doorway and behind the two chairs was a whiteboard. And it said we’re replacing our library chairs. Try these two out and let us know which one you like best and there was like a voting box and everything and and I and so I saw students sitting in both chairs and having fun with it and taking pictures and, and then putting their vote in. And I thought, what a creative way for a library of all places to get their voice of the customer, you know, the people that are sitting in the library, they want them to be comfortable, why would they not reach out and ask them to be part of the process? What charity you think is going to be best for you, since you’re going to be the one sitting in it right? A lot of times we forget that we don’t think we just think, Oh, I know what’s best, you know. So I’ll just, I’ll just do it myself versus, you know, actually taking the time to reach out and ask our customers what they think,

Matthew Singh  

like in the real impact with that exact example to is, every single time anybody who took a picture or participated or put a checkmark on the board or any way, shape or form engaged with that, every time they walk in that library, and they see one of those chairs, that memory is going to be triggered. And remember, they were a part of that process. And that’s the real power with this voice of the customer comes from is that they were involved in the process of solution icing.

Patrick Adams  

That’s right. powerful tool. Thank you for sharing that. And obviously, as I mentioned, you’ve also been involved in many different cultural development opportunities for different companies and just building true continuous improvement cultures. And obviously, we’re going to talk a little bit more in depth about what you’re doing at the state of Nebraska here shortly. But can you share some insight with the listeners around, you know, just building a culture of innovation and continuous improvement? what that looks like, what your involvement has been, and maybe even some advice for our listeners around that?

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit of story about me, I was doing a lot of use of permits in the private sector, especially if I illustrate in Omaha for a lot of different manufacturers and different supply chain groups working Bellevue University MBA program, university Nebraska, all my MBA program Apex is Supply Chain Management inventory, an organization in Australia where I end up coming to the state about six years ago to kind of kick off their Continuous Improvement Program underneath governor Ricketts. Governor Ricketts is the governor of Nebraska, he’s on a second term when he came in wanting to make government more effective, efficient and customer focused. And so what he has asked to do is create a center that can help agencies do that, and I’m the director of that center. And we got it up and running. But as you can imagine, with any organization, but especially in government, we had a lot of pushback, a lot of pushback people originally thought we were there to take their jobs, which could not be further from the truth. People said, you know, we’ve seen this kind of stuff come and go before, you know you’ll be on in six months, we had all sorts of people who really just didn’t understand. I mean, I think most of these people in this kind of change management environment, it’s not that they’re for or against, they haven’t heard enough to understand it. And so they’re kind of neutral. And that’s what’s perceived sometimes as being oppositional, but I don’t think that’s what it is. Um, and so we got started with some of the basics of creating a Lean Six Sigma program, early Operational Excellence Program. And I’ll also give you a very high level of some of those right off the bat. This is by the book, but I can also speak that it works in real life, every time in trading. So first off, you know, identifying and sponsor for the overall program, some kind of executive that has cloud that when it comes down to it, and there’s competing priorities has the authority to say where they’re gonna go with operational excellence on this particular decision, or we’re going to go the other direction for good reasons. And it’s not so much the decision is the fact that we have one person we can go to in our in our situation, it was governor Pete Ricketts, but then also his chief of staff, Mr. Milton Berger, and his chief administrator, director, Jason Jackson, were all the one minds of helping us try this for sure. But that self legitimate authority in itself doesn’t just get the job done. You gotta have it for those situations, but 90%, your situations are not that situation, right? So we pushed a huge, huge effort on getting the cultural impact, you hired full time practitioners that received some pretty intense training, our similar mindset, one team one dream kind of connectivity across the entire enterprise, which is 18 different agencies to think about 18 different companies, right? Everything from the State Patrol, to the corrections, facilities to Health and Human Services, they all have their own cabinet member, leader above them, like a CEO of each company. And the thing for us was how do we drive cultural change when culture can be something very different. So an agency that’s largely made up of social workers, that’s going to be a different approach than if you have agency full cops who should have been on the streets for, you know, 40 years. And so there are common threads and themes. And I think the number one thing in seeking to understand listening is things like visual management, and really just persistence and coming with a good authentic spirit. It’s, it’s, well if you’re just, you know, if there’s somebody in this field that’s just doing it for the money and there’s decent money in this field, if you’re on the private sector, I get that and that’s fair enough, but as you said earlier, people do pick up on those cues as to why you’re there. Tell the team, hey, I really care about these results. And they’re feeling, hey, I really care about my paycheck, they’re probably not going to open up to you. Right, they have to know you actually care about them. And that authenticity and that persistence, I think, are the two most important factors, once you understand their concerns, of how to get them on board to change, because if you’re going to change management, guys and girls, and you think it’s not going to have struggles, and it’s not going to have those tough days, it will, there will be hiccups. There will be people that should be on board, you think but don’t quite get it yet. And your job is to help them through a process. And it is a process of change management. If you’re ever curious about this, guys, there is a Harvard case study on myself and the Ricketts administration, going through this several year process, it is on the if you want to check it out, it’s a great Harvard case study, it’s very accurate. Check out the center of operational excellence, Nebraska websites, the Center for operational excellence, Nebraska website. In addition, it also has several educational videos. So our how to do a Pew diagram. If you want to learn how to do really any tools, any kind of stuff, it should have some instructional videos there, too. So please check that out. And it’ll help with the change management efforts.

Patrick Adams  

And I appreciate that you guys put that out there, Matt. And we’ll definitely put a link to that in the show notes. And it’s free of charge right as far as I understand it, to be able to access the case study and some of those tools that are in there.

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I really love about this sort of operational excellence is we see this as a service to the citizens of Nebraska but also to anybody and citizens anywhere private sector, public sector, nonprofit sector. Our goal is to put tools out there and educational opportunities out there for you guys to learn and grow in the industry. So yeah, it’s all free. And if you guys ever see something that you wish was up there, that’s not up there. please reach out directly to me at Matthew period Singh, si mgh at Nebraska COMM And I’d be happy to create a document or video and put it up there for you.

Patrick Adams  

Perfect, thank you so much for that couple of the things that you mentioned in your answer that I wanted to just expand on a little bit. You mentioned the champion that you know, the governor, for us specifically being the champion for any organization, having you know, any project, having that champion in place is so key, not just to help lead the project and help give, you know, direction, but also remove roadblocks. You know, a lot of times when with projects, you know, us as the project manager, we might have we might run into those roadblocks where we just unfortunately can’t get traction or, you know, maybe there’s another leader that maybe is I hate to say this but I’m standing in the way or or maybe moving you know, throwing the project in a different direction or whatever it might be. But the product champion’s role is also to, you know, come in and help remove some of those roadblocks so that the lean practitioners and project managers can be successful. I don’t know if you have had any experience with that or you know, have any, maybe a project or a story where a project champion, maybe the governor you know, or or it could be any other project champion jumped in to maybe help remove a roadblock.

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely all the time. You know, one of the things about our blackball program, it sounds kind of funny if you don’t haven’t heard about the belt, the belt system, but in Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma they have belts like much like you would have in karate or judo. White belts are for very simple introductions, yellow belts are a little bit more advanced green belts where you start seeing actual projects. We have an executive green belt and then a black belts and black belts take on the big things. My black belt program helps me with projects that are crossed into our enterprise so it’s across eight 910 different agencies working with all the cabinet members and stuff. They also help sometimes there’s projects between the federal level and the state level and so sometimes there’s a perception and I’ll say perception cuz I don’t think it’s really not my experience but there’s sometimes our perceptions that there’s competing priorities when in fact that’s not the case and so there’s this need to kind of leverage that that sponsor champion to help make decisions I think when I can speak about is the state of Nebraska about two years ago launch what’s called a one stop portal. portal website so it’s a website for its entrepreneurs who are looking to start businesses the concern was that people were using their life savings to invest in getting a building and they thought they’re going to start their business the inspector would come the day of of you know ribbon cutting and they come in so we can’t use this building to brew beer or do cigars or whatever it doesn’t meet the code and you know the investors are like well sure we can we got the paperwork like well not all the paperwork, you miss something. And so this was a frustration in some of these cases, entrepreneurs don’t have the financial resources to double back and actually go through their business so it’s a dream killer for some and so as you can tell the risk ministry takes grown Nebraska insistence very seriously. And so the records ministration Watch the center of operational excellence to say, Hey, can you guys help with this? So we ended up creating a one stop portal website that has all the links and all the documentation for all the agencies. So if you wanted to start as a cigar place, tomorrow’s fire shop, it’s a downtown Lincoln, you can go into the website, do a couple drop downs to talk about what you’re trying to start in an entire list of all the different links that you’ll need to click on to fill out the paperwork or right there, you can just like fill out paperwork, save it, send it in, and it makes it very simple. Well, it’s a very noble project, it was a very complicated project, because of course, you have to work with every single agency that requires you to upload information we’re talking about. There are agencies that work directly underneath the governor, but there are several agencies that do not. And so the agencies work underneath the governor, that was pretty easy. You know, Hey, guys, we’re working on this, let’s get this done on a big deal. We start talking about certain programs like the Department of Education, just for examples of those that are not. These are the ones that were initiated by departments of recreation, and parks departments of all sorts of things are independent of the governor’s office, but they still have paperwork that needs to be filled out. So working with them, we did come across a couple programs that had significantly important paperwork that we needed to get links set up on the website, but I don’t think it was in opposition to what we’re trying to do, I think everybody got the value of it. prioritization of getting it done in a reasonable time period, our understanding of reasonable time period was just not a top priority for them. And so we weren’t getting the follow up, we needed to go forward with our timeline. This is a great example where escalated to the situation, the Chief of Staff, Mr. member, and also the Americans, and they simply reached out and called, you know, it doesn’t always have to be confrontational, or you’d like that they just called and said, Hey, we’re calling we’re trying to do this thing, would you be willing to help us out and of course, they were able to remove those obstacles that I was not able to remove at my level. So I think that really highlights a real life example of a real life situation with major snipping impacts of as the project manager, I just didn’t have the clout needed or the ability to influence and so I did go to my sponsors and said, help. Yeah, can you help us, and they picked up the phone and did what they did, and ended up getting a stronger partnership with people vital

Patrick Adams  

to the project. That’s amazing. And that’s exactly what a good project champion should be doing. And so and also as a, as a product manager, you know, or lean practitioner, being humble enough or willing to ask for help when you need help. Right? Those are, those are just a couple lessons that I kind of pulled away as you were, as you were telling that story. So thank you for sharing that for our listeners that that are here that maybe are brand new to Lean and Six Sigma, maybe they’re just hearing about Lean for the first time or they’re very early in their Lean journey, what would be maybe some advice from you on maybe first steps or you know, it, I guess it could even be advice for someone that is maybe further along in their journey, but you maybe are struggling or they they’re hung up or their wheels are spinning, they’re just not able to get traction. Any advice for those people on first steps? What should they do to start moving?

Matthew Singh  

So this is the lean sensei in me. And I preface that because there’s a quality management guy that does Six Sigma, and me too, that has a very different answer. But for a very humanistic perspective, a broad stroke or perspective, a perspective I think everyone listening to can connect with. It’s gonna sound a little cliche, but I’d say, look, internally, look inside you and help understand why you’re doing these things. Why are you doing continuous improvement? We must suggest, if you can understand why you’re involved with it, we can better understand where the frustrations or hiccups are coming from. So for instance, in the course of the center of operational excellence, last six years, our program underneath me has produced a cabinet member in about nine or 10 division directors, people coming from jobs never do anything like this before, to within three, four years hadn’t skillsets advanced levels that are just phenomenal. Every one of those situations, at some point, there was a Crux, where we had to have a conversation very much like you’re describing up frustrations, concerns, maybe lack of guidance, whatever. And I would say, try to understand what you’re trying to accomplish. It doesn’t even matter what the interest that is, but do you know what you’re doing everyday when you come in trying to practice this stuff, because if your heart’s not in it in, your mind’s not in it, and they’re not enlightenment, you’re never going to achieve your full potential. So for me, it’s a way of life and I truly believe in this. I was a church worker for three years, and I believe that I’m no longer a church worker. But I believe this is an extension of that belief system of doing good here on Earth, that he doesn’t have to drag you. Do you know what, let’s say it as your career drives you, okay? Where do you want to go? What is your objective in five years for your career, because that motivates you to do your absolute best for the people around you. Let’s say you just like being a subject matter expert, and that’s as far as you thought through it, not a problem. So if your joy comes from being a subject matter expert, What is it that’s causing frustration? Why do we think we’re not making progress? What particular skill or technique is that we need to develop to help you move this project or your career forward? Or this or the program for whatever might be that’s hung up? So I think the very first step is, look internally, be honest with yourself, as to what you’re trying to accomplish, and there is no wrong answer. And then once you have that moment of reality with yourself, now let’s look through what some next steps could be to achieve it. And I would suggest grabbing out, listening to podcasts like this, reading good books, like the book we’ve talked about here. trap, I believe it is, look at the coaches and mentors, you know, go find some coaches and mentors in the industry that have a really good understanding of this stuff. And we open to feedback, you know, we all make mistakes, I make mistakes daily, I probably made mistakes on this podcast. And that’s okay. The point is to get up every day, and keep driving forward and surround yourself with some people who can give you guidance or feedback or even really just moral support to keep moving forward.

Patrick Adams  

That’s right, I think, just as you’re, as you’re talking, it makes me think of Dr. Jeff Likers leadership development model and the section that he talks about personal development and how key that is. And, you know, for each one of us, no matter where we’re at, in our, in our own personal journey, being able to you know, even as a master black belt, as a black belt, you know, as someone with 20 plus years experience in the lean world, you know, every, every person should be looking for opportunities to continue to develop themselves and become better leader become a better lean practitioner become a better problem solver. And that’s, you know, being organizations as well as learning organizations that are supporting individuals in their personal development is also, you know, an important piece of that, too. So, thank you for sharing that. I want to wrap up our conversation today. I feel like we could continue to talk about this all day long. But I want to, I want to kind of bring us full circle back around to the state of Nebraska. And the amazing work that the state is doing to help support operational excellence and really promote continuous improvement cultures, within organizations in Nebraska. And obviously, with this Harvard case study and what you guys are doing there, you know, you’re promoting and even outside of the state of Nebraska, so I so much appreciate what you guys are doing. But the month of October is actually a special month for Nebraska. Is that right?

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, yeah, the month of October is when the governor proclaims it an official proclamation that it is the center of operational excellence month. But it’s a pretty exciting month, where we have all sorts of videos being posted for recognition for our teams, we regularly across the state do over 400 continuous improvement projects per year, and we have this opportunity to talk about a lot of them. We actually have a center of operational excellence summit, our first ever operational excellence summit, which both of us will be there,

Patrick Adams  

Yes, I’m excited to be there and will be speaking and I’m excited to visit Nebraska and meet the governor and just see all of the amazing work that’s happening at the state level. So the summit itself is not necessarily open to the public. But maybe that’s something in the future, I think that will be available. Yeah,

Matthew Singh  

This is our first year. So we’re really trying to get our basis with lessons learned from other states that have done this, South Dakota drained some others that were kind enough to lend our expertise to us. So the first year or two, we’re going to kind of keep it internal to our Nebraska program. Sure. But in the future, we’re more likely not to be opening that up to all sorts of people that are interested in learning and growing in the industry. So if this is something that excites you, and you’re sad that you can’t come here, that’s okay. Check out our center of operational excellence website, look at some of the videos, shoot me a phone call, email, text, whatever works for you, let’s get connected, and become part of our network so we can continue to grow together and really grow this industry in our organizations.

Patrick Adams  

And I appreciate that bat. Can you just repeat the website one more time for people? And we’ll also drop that into the show notes. But where can people go if they want to learn a little bit more about the work that the state of Nebraska is doing? And maybe even get some access to some of those tools, those tools that you guys have out there?

Matthew Singh  

Yeah, yeah. Nebraska center of operational excellence, or center of operational excellence, Nebraska. Just put that in Google. And we are the only ones that will pop up. Or administrate services and our operational excellence. Check that out. Once you get there, there’s some cool stuff we try to make it as simple as possible. We try to practice what we preach, keep it simple, there’s some different oranges you can click on everything. If you’re into analytics, you want to see what’s produced, you want to see the over 80 million saved and six years and where that’s add, you know, number training, stuff like that. We have an analytics section, we have a network section. So if you’re in any of those nonprofits, or government entities that might work or even some private companies that work with the government, you can go in there and check out which agency has certified the leaders which ones as executive greenbelts, what their names are, where they’re at, so please use that. As well, we have descriptions of our training, which are all the different belts plus some certified leader stuff. So plus some coaching and counseling. We also have an education section, which I think is what I’m really, really excited about talking about. And I talked about it a little bit earlier, but please check out the education tab. We’re creating one page documents you don’t get like those cheat sheets they have at school, sometimes they’re laminated, you can get all the answers for physics, you can study physical fitness, by looking at this one page document, right at least enough to pass us. And that kind of well, we created a bunch of one pagers you guys can use to get the gist of certain elements that can be complicated. We also have tons of videos, probably 3040 videos at this point of everything from how do you do science driven decision making to how do you do to make projects, how to use particular tools. And again, if you guys have any ideas of something that you’re disappointed that it’s not up there, please reach out to me personally, let me know what you’re thinking. And I can at some point, get that tool or document created and put on the website for you. So please check it out guys, again, center of operational excellence, Nebraska. And let us know what you think.

Patrick Adams  

Well, Matt, this has been great and I so much appreciate again, all of the work that you guys are doing at the state of Nebraska to help support and promote continuous improvement and operational excellence not just in the state of Nebraska but really to anyone anywhere. So thank you for what you guys are doing. And I look forward to seeing you here in a few weeks. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Matthew Singh  

Absolutely one final word again I want to thank you for having me one final thing tell your listeners if you have not read his book I would strongly encourage you go read it I don’t know do you have multiple books I only read

Patrick Adams  

one is the one we have the audio and also a workbook that’ll be coming out next year. So

Matthew Singh  

I’m receiving no compensation or was even just having read it I couldn’t agree more with the spirit behind it. And the wisdom and the inside it as you get further in this industry becomes more and more true. And so I just I’m a huge I’m a huge apostle of that book. So please check it out. And if you have any questions again about the industry, please reach out to me I’d be happy to answer.

Patrick Adams  

Alright, thanks again, Matt, so much appreciate it. Thank you sir. 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