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My guest for Episode #416 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast, joining us from Brisbane, Australia, is Brad Jeavons, a principal consultant with SA Partners. His colleague Peter Hines was a guest in Episode #373.
Brad is the author of the book Agile Sales: Delivering Customer Journeys of Value and Delight.
Brad is also the host of The Enterprise Excellence podcast and I was his guest on Episode #20 of that series. You can also find the episode (and more) on YouTube.
Topics, questions, and links related to today's episode include:
- How did you get introduced to Lean? And to Agile?
- What does growing up on a small farm have to do with it?
- Connections between Toyota and farming
- What do you mean by the McDonalds-ization of Lean and what problems does that cause?
- What's the story behind your book?
- Key lessons about improvement work for remote workplaces? Lessons from the last year?
- Why is it so important to focus on purpose? To start with why?
- What are some of your key lessons related to People? Agile?
- What are some of your lessons about focusing on Process?
- Your perspective on Lean as a GM as opposed to being a “staff lean guy”?
The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.
This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.
You can listen to the audio or watch the video, below. I hope you enjoy it like I did.
Video of the Episode:
Automated Transcript (Not Guaranteed to be Defect Free)
Intro (2s):
Welcome to the Lean Blog Podcast. Visit our website www.leanblog.org. Now here's your host, Mark Graban.
Mark Graban (13s):
Hi, this is Mark Graban and welcome to Episode 416 of the podcast for June 2nd, 2021. My guest today is Brad Jeavons. He's joining us from Brisbane Australia, and you'll hear more about him in just a minute. We're going to be talking today about lean and agile concepts outside of manufacturing, including sales and other environments. For show notes, links, and more, you can go to leanblog.org/416 follow rate and review. And if you liked the episode, please share it with a colleague, send it to them by email or share it on LinkedIn. That would really help get the word out about the podcast and our great guests. Thanks.
Mark Graban (55s):
Hi everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Our guest today is Brad Jeavons. Has you will unmistakably tell soon enough he is joining us from Brisbane, Australia. So before I give more of an introduction, Brad, thank you for being here. How's it going?
Brad Jeavons (1m 11s):
Yeah. Thanks Mark. Really looking forward to the episode. I appreciate being on to come on. Yeah,
Mark Graban (1m 15s):
Sure thing. I, I could have left that as a big surprise for people who didn't know to hear the accent is it's not, it's a, it's nice to hear. So I'm glad you could join us that the internet makes it possible for us to connect across all, all this distance. And we can have a great discussion because I know the work and the things that you're doing there are going to be really applicable. I mean, this really is a global lean movement and opportunities to learn from each other about, so I'm glad we can do that today. Yeah, definitely. So let me tell you a little bit more about Brad. He, and he's going to tell more about his story, but he is principal consultant with a firm SA Partners among other things.
Mark Graban (1m 57s):
He is the author of a book. I think he can hold it up here for those who are watching on YouTube, “Agile Sales: Delivering Customer Journeys of Value and Delight.” So I think in our podcast today, we're aiming to deliver a value and delight. Brad is the host of a podcast called the Enterprise Excellence Podcast and he was kind enough to have me as a guest on, on his show. So, and Brad, if you can maybe just first offer on the podcast where people can find it. Do you have a website for the podcast? What episode? I forget what episode number mine was.
Brad Jeavons (2m 36s):
Yeah. So to get to the podcast so I can look on any of their podcast apps or go to theenterpriseexcellencepodcast.com and Mark your episode was number 20. So it was very good, very good feedback and good writing. So I'd recommend anyone guy listen to Mark's episode there. And there's also a YouTube channel for it too, which you can get to via the website, the same night name, Enterprise Excellence Podcast.
Mark Graban (3m 2s):
Okay. And I'll, I'll link to those in the show notes. So thank you for having me there, but here so enough about me being on your podcast. Let's learn more about you, Brad, and your background. Can you, I always like to ask guests just to help get the ball started, you know, how did you first get introduced to lean? And then I guess the related question, maybe you can weave it together as how did you get introduced to agile? Because I know for, for you personally, I know far less about the agile methodology. Some of the audience here might be in the same boat. So we're going to talk about both of those today. How did you get introduced to these approaches?
Brad Jeavons (3m 41s):
Mark Yeah, Mark, I'll go back to a long way, which is I grew up on a farm in Australia and a lot of you around the world will know the history of Australia with, you know, feast and feminine of rain and drought. And so, and it was a small farms and sometimes when you got a larger farm, the impact's not as hard, but I grew up in a small to medium size farm and you grew up in scarcity, like it was, it was tough. And so it taught you from an early age to be efficient, do more with less, you've got a bond as a team because you're, you're remote. The people that your family around you is who you're around the whole time. And so I think that taught me a lot of the behavioral traits and things that I needed to really go into this career.
The only negative of Australian farming is that there's this sign called bonded up with why to get the show back on the road. So there's a bit of a patch it up top of culture so that the shift into more scientific thinking and root cause is, is needed. So I'll just say it's not all glorious in that regard, but when I got to university, I focused in on Japan, not because of process or anything like that, just because I love love of the culture.
Brad Jeavons (4m 20s):
And that took me down that rabbit warren of really learning about Toyota Production System and Total Quality Management, and also studied McDonaldization back then there is such a thing as McDonaldization and it was really good. And I think it just linked with that passion of growing up where it was all about having to really be efficient and effective of what you do, and also focus on, you know, the family culture and the bond to really succeed. And I heard this coming out of oldest study on Japan, you know, there's ultimate focus on teamwork, this ultimate focus on people, this ultimate focus on systems and I just yeah. Bound to it. And then early on in my career, I got involved in the software world and more for a manufacturing point of view.
Brad Jeavons (5m 8s):
So it was software for automation, but I discovered agile and learn about the different scrum techniques coming through and agile and really even Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, the founders of Scrum, which really is predominantly what Agile is about. They notify that it comes from Lean, you know, they, they openly say that agile is built off of lean philosophies and lean practices. And you know, they are passionate about Taiichi Ohno. And they're passionate about Jeff, the work of Jeff Liker and, you know, Mike Rother and so many others. I think again, it's got the same philosophy of how do we form high performance, high cultural focus teams to deliver great outcomes.
Brad Jeavons (5m 53s):
And so it's very, very similar.
Mark Graban (6m 26s):
So I want to go back and touch on, or have you elaborate Brad on a couple of things that you brought up, you mentioned growing up on a farm. I mean, there are many, I think associations between Toyota and farming, you know, Toyota, you know, they, they say, you know, Honda is the big city company and Toyota is the farmers because, you know, in the outskirts of Nagoya and you know, Toyota City is surrounded by a farm land. And do you think, is there a certain, like kind of longer term perspective when it comes to growing crops versus growing people growing an organization, if you will.
Brad Jeavons (7m 9s):
Yeah. I think it's all I connections. You know, when I, when I was growing up, you know, my father and also neighbors who I'd go over and do work for, they would just say to things, say things to me like Brad, don't pick something up twice. You know, I said it was the same like that. There was a saying on focus on the right pace. You want to be able to run the whole day and get through the day. You know, you don't want to overburden the machine. You don't want to overburden yourself, all these sayings that were just folk law. And it led into my behavior. The other thing that's interesting to guys and I found this out at the end of an episode, I recorded with Jeff Sutherland.
Brad Jeavons (7m 50s):
You know, the, one of the founders of scrum and agile, Jeff grew up on a dairy farm. I think there's something in nightly when you're at the mercy of nature and you're, you're in your family and you've got to survive and succeed and it's about dynasty. So there's a bigger purpose to it too, you know, in farming because most farmers you talk to it's about, what's your purpose. It's never to make money. It's to hand this down to the next generation and it drives him so emotionally, like I could go down a rabbit Warren on that one, but it's some really great elements to what we know is best practice, lean and agile and add eyes.
Brad Jeavons (8m 32s):
You can find on most, if not any farm. And
Mark Graban (8m 35s):
I mean, when you talk about handing it down to other generations, I mean the ability to do so requires making money, but I'm guessing there's a difference between short term and longer term that you wouldn't want to do something in the short term, I'm going to make up a scenario. You can correct me if any of it's a bad scenario, but let's say, you know, there would be things that you could do to boost the production of crops in the short term that might damage the land for the longer term.
Brad Jeavons (9m 4s):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You need to be thinking about every element of what you're doing because profit of course, is a part of being able to hand it down. But that longer term perspective of what's going to be happening on this land in 50 years where my grandchild's got, it plays a part and it is longer term thinking, mark, exactly what you said, because when you're talking that purpose of, I want to hand this on to the next generation, it's not about yourself. It's about doing what you can do for that generation. Unfortunately, many of the farmers have so many other forces coming at them, largely from mother nature that can really make their life tough at times. You know, it's, it's a wonderful life and when things are high pressure and stressful, I still place myself back on the farm and imagine some of the things I used to do there, but yeah, mother nature and yeah, it's tough.
Mark Graban (9m 55s):
So one of the things I wanted to ask you, Brad, that you mentioned earlier, the, the phrase, I guess, word McDonald's is Asian, certain things that come to mind to me, but also I'll just ask you, like, what were you taught about that phrase? What does that mean to you?
Brad Jeavons (10m 14s):
Yeah, the, the thing that really, when I first heard it, I was shocked and I was, I was like, oh my goodness, that we're gonna learn about McDonald's and, but they phrased it with the caveat that, you know, that McDonald's had been highly successful at bringing together young teams of, I don't know, what 15, 16 year olds to be able to perform and achieve high performance and customer experience and all over the world in a standardized way where you can walk into a, a store in Bangkok and have a similar experience to a few you're going to New York in a store. It's quite amazing. So again, just like lean and agile, the whole foundation of it comes back to high performance teams and then using elements of lean and agile to actually achieve great results for customers.
Brad Jeavons (11m 5s):
And then you see the evolution of McDonald's were originally that a Kanban, like you would go into the store and there was a Kanban of burgers. And then they've now got it to a place where it's more single-piece flow and you look at McDonald's and they've, you know, introduced self-service to get more flow in through the store and get rid of the cues. So they've the whole thinking of just like lean, just like agile McDonaldization it starts with the high-performance teams and then it goes rapidly to how do we make value, fly for customers, the right value that customers actually want. Yeah.
Mark Graban (11m 41s):
And I think w you know, there are probably, you know, a lot of there are elements of systems design and flow and standardization, and, you know, the perception of McDonald's is that, you know, everything is in a binders of procedures, you know, in a way it might be considered standard work. But the one thing that might be a little different is the culture around Kaizen. And I'm just, I'm, I'm guessing based on perceptions, I've never worked at a McDonald's. I worked at a fast food restaurant when I was in high school and I, I didn't, I didn't do that very long that wasn't a good fit for me, but I don't remember being engaged in improvement.
Mark Graban (12m 21s):
And maybe that doesn't work because of the risk around, you know, I don't know, food safety or flavor. Maybe they have to be so concerned about standardization that, that maybe they're not engaging people the way, you know, for a while Starbucks was teaching, you know, kind of, you know, Kaizen lean, inspired, continuous improvement to the baristas and the store managers, instead of just dictating from Seattle headquarters and, you know, Chick-fil-A, which is a, you know, a famous, have you heard of Chick-fil-A brand it's big here. So they do chicken sandwiches. And I interviewed somebody from Chick-fil-A where they very specifically teach lean methods to franchise owners who are interested in it.
Mark Graban (13m 7s):
And so, you know, I'm, I'm curious, your thoughts are, how do we build upon what might be some of the strengths of McDonald's ization, but also like, make sure we're not being too rigid, you know, and approaches to, or possibilities for improvement.
Brad Jeavons (13m 22s):
Yeah. I think for me, the key there is, is strategy and cultural deployment. I think that's the key. If you can do that very well, you can be having a culture of Kaizen that is moving forward, but still keeping some alignment to the brand and the direction of the company. That's, that's the missing piece because you're right. Market typically sees, it seems to go two ways. Doesn't it, it, the one way you see is a company where it's highly structured, highly standardized, and it's sort of, it's one way it's a highway, or you see, but they may have still be project-based improvement. They do, or , you'd say Toyota production system to Japanese, but then you get the other way where you can get a company where it's maybe a franchise and there's a lot more freedom.
Brad Jeavons (14m 10s):
And, but that freedom too can go too far if it's not aligned, you know, and there's not that alignment. And I've seen that in some franchises as well. It's finding that middle ground, isn't it. And I think what's your thoughts on that might cause I would guys, to me, mastering strategy and cultural deployment is such a key aspect of success in, in my mind anyway.
Mark Graban (14m 31s):
Yeah. I mean, like to me, I think whether I was, let's say running a McDonald's location or, you know, thinking of the work that I'm around in healthcare, I think you, you draw certain boundaries. There, there are certain things that must be formulaic and for McDonald's that might be the food recipe for Starbucks. That would be the drink recipe in a hospital, let's say within a pharmacy, or like with vaccination, you can't be innovative about how much you're diluting the vaccine. Like you have to follow really rigid science-based structure, but then there's room for a lot of continuous improvement and innovation around.
Mark Graban (15m 12s):
How does that syringe full of diluted vaccine flow to the patient? How does somebody arrange their workstation that they're using when they're giving the injection? So to me, I think you just sort of, you know, you, you talk about what is completely non-negotiable. There are certain things that cannot be changed or they have to be done through, you know, some strategic controlled initiative. But then there are a lot of things where you'd say, yeah, this is completely negotiable within these boundaries. You can figure out the best way to do the work.
Brad Jeavons (15m 44s):
Yeah. It's a good point, Matt, because I think I'll give another example. I sort of standards, it creates quality at the source in a way, like I work a lot in marketing teams, right? With my book. It's brought me into the sales and marketing world heavily. If you go into a marketing team and they don't have a brain guide, you have masses of Whiting because invariably they feeding up to the boss or the boss above to try and get approval for every campaign they do and think that's happening. As soon as you put in place at that, the field around the goalposts, you know, in those that framework you've you've then got flow and you get this ultimate performance happening because they've got, they know the boundaries to work within once had a HR lead aside to me that, you know, excellence in businesses a lot like a football field.
Brad Jeavons (16m 32s):
You've got the goalposts down the end of the field, the challenging goal. And then you've got this boundary line going around G and there's a lot is you've got this room. You can move in, but there's some boundaries that you go to, we need to work within. And I thought that was a really good analogy. Links to what you were saying too.
Mark Graban (16m 47s):
And I think what you said applies, you may have been thinking Australian rules football, or I was thinking American
Brad Jeavons (16m 53s):
Football. So I lifted at, I was saying to myself, okay, don't say Australian rules say
Mark Graban (16m 60s):
I've seen a little bit of Australian rules football to at least appreciate it. Yeah. There are goalposts. Yeah.
Brad Jeavons (17m 8s):
One thing in common, there's a standard day. Right. But Australian rules has full goalposts at every each end. So that's a little bit, a little bit of a variance. Yep.
Mark Graban (17m 19s):
And so I had like coming back to agile and I want to hear a little bit about the story behind your book. And again, Brad's book is titled agile sales. How did you get started working with, with sales teams and in particular, and this is going to be one of the themes of the episode here, you know, people perhaps who were working remotely.
Brad Jeavons (17m 44s):
Yeah. So with, I ended up in a general management for a long time in my career, and also I was involved in sales management. And if you talk lean and agile and you talk lean traditionally applaud in manufacturing, you talk agile, typically applied in it. It's both just about high performance teams. You know, it's, how do you get these high performance teams that you build that culture of continuous improvement and you move towards that goal. And whether it's a sales team, a factory, a hospital, you talking it's about people. And so what I found early on through some trial and error and challenges, I found that the same elements out of a learnt out of agile and I T and R and D and lean out of the manufacturing and studying Toyota production systems.
Brad Jeavons (18m 33s):
I found that I just applied to sales in the same way. The other aspect that did for me is sales has always traditionally been fairly remote. And you had people all over the country, people all in different regions. And so applying it, you had to apply remotely. And so in the early days we were using telephone and we're using the old different screen-share apps that you could get back in the day to be able to show, make a transparent board and, you know, make data transparent. Of course, nowadays in sales, you've just got the most amazing systems through like CRM softwares, like Salesforce or Microsoft dynamics or HubSpot.
Brad Jeavons (19m 15s):
And so your, the key aspects of agile is three key pillars. One is transparency. The second is inspection that you're inspecting that transparency, that transparent daughter regularly. And the third pillar is adaption. That based on that learning frontline teams are adapting. Like you said, mark, they they've got the boundary lines and they're, they know where they got a challenging goal and they're able to adapt and improve and continuously evolve themselves. And so that's what made me think. Okay, well, sales has been this area where everyone's seen it as a art form and a lot of organizations just hire salespeople and say, Ronnie, I here's your car, here's your keys, here's your phone off you go, go sell us some stuff.
Brad Jeavons (19m 58s):
And you only get a few high performance in that scenario where you take that approach the same as if you did it in a factory, the same as if you did it in it. And so that's why I wrote that book first, because I was like, okay, this is an area that really needs help because it's an area that has not had any sort of systems and scientific thinking and even high performance cultural approaches applied to it because traditionally it's all been about books that have been written. Haven't been about systems and culture. They've been about how do you entice, manipulate whatever you want to do, call it a customer. And so I felt it's the first book I should ride.
Mark Graban (20m 38s):
Ah, so when you say at first book, they're there at least in your mind, there are other books that will probably follow.
Brad Jeavons (20m 45s):
Yeah, definitely. I enjoyed it was a tough road, but it wasn't as you'd know to mock writing books, does it get easier, mark? Like, you're up to your third now, does it get easier
Mark Graban (20m 57s):
In some ways? Yeah, it may, you know, I mean, each book has its own unique creation in a way. So, I mean, know, you learn things about writing and managing that and, and publishing I guess, but, but yeah, I mean, I've, I've met some authors who say, Nope, one and done. I wanted to write a book and I'm glad that I did, but I'm never going to do it again. And then there are the authors who say, yeah, okay. I've now that I've done it there'll be something else.
Brad Jeavons (21m 24s):
Yeah. I'll be there. I'll be back in down the path.
Mark Graban (21m 28s):
Okay. So I was wondering, you know, we, we've got a lot of things we want to touch on here today, but you know, thinking back to, you know, at the time of this recording, 11 months of, at least in the United States, for me, it's been 11 months, we'll call it roughly a year of life being upended, of course, with the pandemic and people adjusting to more remote work. What are some of the things that you've learned over this time about, you know, improvement work that's happening in more distributed workplaces?
Brad Jeavons (22m 2s):
Yeah. I think the same applies remote as it does. In-person, it's just applied differently and more important in a way. So the thing I find whenever I go into an organization or I work with a team, I always look for what's the motivator first, what's the purpose. What's, what's the reason why they want to change and do something better. And without that, I find not much happens. And you've got so many studies and books that have been written on it. You know, John Kotter talks a lot about the burning platform and, you know, he, he talks about that negative emotion. Like, you know, a purpose for change can be a negative emotion.
Brad Jeavons (22m 44s):
I think the critical thing you gotta be careful of is that it doesn't go too far. Cause otherwise if you fired up too far, people would just run away, you know, jump ship or put their head in the sand. And then you've got like recently Simon Sinek riding around about the just cause you know, more of that positive emotion, of course he's, he's famous for the start with why also. So I think it can be a negative or positive, but you've got to find that purpose. And I think if it, if it can be aligned to the top level of the organization, that's powerful, you know, but it doesn't have to be as you. And I know it can be, you're creating a beachhead, a pilot within your own department or your own division. And you're going to look to really start to integrate excellent Cindy or team.
Brad Jeavons (23m 28s):
I've got one company mark where they've done it really well. Like their company's mission has always been helping Australian organizations compete like these guys sell packaging. You know, Cigna is the company name and insignia is I assist the company and through COVID they went remote. So they've used Microsoft teams, largely it's not many platforms you can use and they've shifted everything to that platform. And we've actually found some benefits. Like we found that people are having to travel to huddles or scrums and people are able to rapidly jump on. But the other benefit is that from a purpose point of view, the CEO, he does a town hall for 15 minutes every Friday at lunchtime or just before lunch and the whole organization, whoever wants to can join.
Brad Jeavons (24m 16s):
It's not mandatory, but, and of course in that town hall, he's referring back to the purpose constantly, and he's talking about what's happening and impacting the company right now and what it means to the people. And, you know, that's powerful. You could not do that prior to the pandemic. And a lot of the shift where people have really gone remote in a big way. So I think they've taken that element of transparency and also the element of purpose and really taken it to another level. So you can, you can think quite smartly now about how do we run out rhythms from, you know, frontline teams to middle management to executive, but also to how do we maybe put in more of a town hall approach to a more that open transparency where people can opt in to hearing.
Brad Jeavons (25m 3s):
And it's not always the CEO who talks sometimes it's different executives that will rotate and talk, but they're just sharing things that happening and linking it back to the purpose and also communicating at what it means to the people as much as I can, that helps, helps everyone feel safe. You know, people love certainty and they love being in the loop. So I think that that plays a big part to start with is getting to that whole motivational pace and thinking about how do we communicate that and really make it part of our DNA and then also to allowing people to put it into their own language. So of course the sales team in that organization, I'm talking about, well, their language of helping Australia compete is very easy because it's okay, well, I'm going to go, I'm going to find out what my customers are focused on, what their challenges and goals are.
Brad Jeavons (25m 51s):
And I'm going to see how I can help them. I'm going to see how I can run improvement with them. And I use a PDCA cycle it's in different words, but it follows a PDCA cycle to help them. The warehouse team, their driver is different. They've got a person down on the floor. He looks after the forklifts. So his driver is to do TPM and keep forklifts running. And he helps keep the site running that allows them to dispatch so that they make sure that people have got their supplies they need. So their whole driver is, you know, we hope we help Australian industry keep moving because we are slick at dispatch and we really make sure we improve constantly to get better at how quickly can we get down.
Brad Jeavons (26m 32s):
And they're constantly pushing back how light they can dispatch, which means that more customers can order later in the day and get the goods the next day. So is that real? That's the example of that draw getting the purpose down to what it means to people too.
Mark Graban (26m 47s):
So one thing I hear you saying, Brad, is that even though there, there may be some challenges and how do we connect with people and collaborate on improvement in a distributed workforce that there are some technologies that maybe make it easier to communicate, communicate, communicate when it comes to trying to create alignment and in an organization. And maybe one of the challenges is how to turn that from really effective one-way communication to two-way communication. Like, you know, how would you, how would you incorporate cycles of catch ball in an organization through technology?
Mark Graban (27m 27s):
So have you seen people work on that piece of it?
Brad Jeavons (27m 30s):
Yeah, definitely. So in, in an, in an agile approach, they do, what's called big room planning. So in an agile approach to actually get everyone in one room. So with programs like zoom now and also teams has got breakout rooms. So it's really cool that you can bring everyone into this big room to conduct catchable, both for strategy, but also culture and, and financials. And you can bring everyone together and then you can break out and you can bring together bright cap, bring together breakout. And there's that whole concept out of agile, which is sort of focused on 5% teams as much as possible because it's known that that's sort of the highest performance base, but the technology of breakout rooms just Mike's amazing.
Brad Jeavons (28m 15s):
So that's one example that I would say they're doing that big room planning. The other approach is just really that traditional Hoshin Kanri approach of form the top plan, and then set up a series of, you know, teams or zoom meetings with the people below and then that cascades down to the people below and you get that feedback and then help the people below form. But what I'm finding in this new remote world is you can do it so much more effectively and so much faster because it's easy for people to be able to join meetings and run rapid 15, 30 minute strategy and cultural deployment meetings.
Brad Jeavons (28m 56s):
So either way works and depending on the company culture, I, I choose either approach and it seems to get the same, the same result, coolest big room planning is a bit, can be a bit more, a bit faster, but you can lose a bit more of that independent, that intimacy between leader and team, and then later in team building.
Mark Graban (29m 18s):
So you, you talk about a purpose and to give a little bit of a preview for some of the things that we're going to delve into multiple PS, right? It's a good framework. Can you talk about purpose and people and process and performance? What are some of your key lessons? Brad related to people? You've already touched a little bit on some of this, but I think there's a lot, I'm sure you could say on people.
Brad Jeavons (29m 43s):
Am I gonna think that's, that's one thing I really find a difference between the typical agile deployment and the typical lean deployment. This is a variance and please feel free to chime in here with this mark, because you've got such a big background with, with people. Agile looks at the putting the cross-functional team if it's needed at the front lawn. So one difference is you look at who's the customer. So let me apply it to a factory because this is a different one, but you, you got to a factoring, you go who's the customer, the customer can be a machine. And so then you go, okay, so who's the team that we need working tightly together to keep that machine running. What capability do they need? And you choose your team based on that, the same in sales, in sales, you go who's the customer.
Brad Jeavons (30m 27s):
Okay. So the customer is a manufacturing customer. It's highly technical sale. Okay. Well, who do we need working tightly together as a four, five person team to deliver great outcomes. Okay, well, it's not just a sales person. We actually need the team to be a sales person, a project or technical person, a marketing person. And, you know, we need these capabilities in that team. And so you formed the team. There were a lot of the companies where I've myself anyway, worked on the lean deployment. The cross-functional seems to happen at the level of the divisional level, you know, is where that true cross-functional happens. And so that's the team part. I've been doing a lot of that now where in a company that really wants to amplify performance is just signed to them.
Brad Jeavons (31m 10s):
Okay. So who's the customer here and who are the people that we need working together, or what skills and capability do we need? One of the best examples in the world. I see this is special forces. You know, when you look at a special forces team, they there's a medic in there in that five-person team. There's a medic, there's a sniper, there's a demolitions expert. And then the role of those people is actually to cross train the others so that if unfortunately the medic gets injured or killed, they can still function. So it's really taking that philosophy and applying it to, to teams, but the autonomy and the empowerment you get in that scenario too, is so great. And we all know how powerful that can be.
Brad Jeavons (31m 52s):
And so I find that taking members and forming them based on who the customer is for that process or that function. The one thing with teamwork in the remote world we're in now is there's a concept in agile called quantum entanglement and agile have a lot of these patents. So in lane, we talk about behaviors in agile. I talk about patterns. These are patterns of behavior that determines success or failure. Quantum entanglement basically says that you need to entangle people where you need them to be able to work together and form that bond. If you can. Now in this world right now, we can't put people together easily for a number of months, so they can really bond.
Brad Jeavons (32m 32s):
But in, in traditional times it was like, okay, let's put teams together for a while, let them really bond and form that connection. And then we remotely move them apart and they can work remotely. And then quantum entanglement also says that you watch then the key measures. So you watch cultural measures in your scrum or your huddle and you watch performance measures. And over time, you'll see that they will plateau because it's knowing that when people are remote over time, they can drift the team bond. The team culture can drift. And so the concept is once you see that happen, bring them back together and get them back together as a team for a period of time. So they can reform reconnect, and then split again.
Brad Jeavons (33m 13s):
I'm finding now in this world, we're in right now, you can still achieve it, but you just need to be a bit more creative about it. Like Friday afternoon, Friday afternoon drinks and remote board games or whatever you can do to allow people to just connect as a team on a human side. Of course, there's going to be stuff that draws them together with work and draws them apart, challenges that come up. But I think you can still create outcomes by being quite creative on what are some unique ways using virtual technology that we can bring people together to learn more about each other, live in each other's shoes, more, you know, show empathy to each other, you know, find areas of relatedness and commonality that is actually, you know, within a work content texts, but also outside of a work context.
Brad Jeavons (34m 3s):
So I think that's what we need to do at the moment when we need to get creative as teams and think, how can we do that?
Mark Graban (34m 10s):
One of the ask also, you know, kind of thinking back to your time as a general manager, you know, many listeners here may be internal process improvement specialists or outside consultants, you know, they, they don't have responsibility for the organization, the way a general manager would, where were there lessons thinking back even, you know, a traditional workplace environment of lessons around engaging people, what does it really mean to create a learning organization?
Brad Jeavons (34m 42s):
Yeah. As a general manager of MOC, back in the day, I was very fortunate because as a consultant or a business improvement lead in a business, you're, cross-functional like you, your job is to be able to really understand and be able to help people when, you know, God people and influence. And that can be challenging. Whereas as a general manager, you are part of that direct cultural chain and you can alter your behavior instantly to get better outcomes. Like it's, it's amazing cause you you're basically you alter yourself, you will get movement. And so I think the key for me in when you are in that general management position is to be constantly running PDC each, each day, each week, reflecting and reflecting on what you're saying, but then also adjusting yourself and then helping the team below you reflect and learn and adjust.
Brad Jeavons (35m 37s):
And you can do this through one-on-ones, they're very important because that's where you can really focus in on the individual and help them. And also you can do it as part of teams, of course, as part of your scrum or your huddle or your toolbox or whatever you call it, your rapid performance meeting. And it's just, but again, as a GM, you're in the fortunate position that if you start demonstrating that behavior and then you start using language that demonstrates that behavior, you will instantly get movement as long as, as long as, as long as people say, there's a big purpose to you. And I actually feel some sort of bond or connection to you.
Brad Jeavons (36m 18s):
You've got a great chance because as soon as you shift to what you're talking about, mark, where you go, okay, I want to create a learning organization. I'm going to demonstrate constant learning and improvement and reflection, you know, using PDCA well in the way that I conduct myself and improve myself and then I'm going to help others. You're in a great spot.
Mark Graban (36m 38s):
And I think having that past experiences or general manager probably helps you in working with organizations today. I mean, I would say frankly, I mean that, that's a gap in my professional experience.
Brad Jeavons (36m 52s):
It's, it's, it's good because I also reflect mark on the bad things that I did and the things that, the behaviors that negatively impacted the organization. And it gives me a level of humility in talking to others too, because even though I can, I can be talking to a leader and, or observing a leader and I could be thinking, oh my goodness, look at what's happening. But I I've been there. I've done that. I w it's it's changing habit, well, being aware and then changing habit is not easy, not easy. That's
Mark Graban (37m 25s):
Hard for individuals that makes organizational behavior change and culture change even more challenging that much more complex.
Brad Jeavons (37m 34s):
Yeah. Especially if you've got the pressures coming at you, because as we know when you're under stress, your conscious mind stops working effectively. And so that's where it's so critical as a leader that you've like you said, mark, that you've got standard systems that help you break out of that. I can't think of any other way, especially if you are a leader and you have a lot of pressure coming at you, you actually need to block out the hour at the end of the week where you're going to reflect and you need to hold to that like crazy, like to me, for a leader, I don't know if you, this might be hard for the late for listeners, but Steven Coby had that quadrant of important, important, not important, and then urgent, not urgent.
Brad Jeavons (38m 15s):
And you know, he, he spoke how the quadrant of, to be highly effective is actually being in that not important, you know? Oh, sorry. Important, not urgent. So being an important things that are not urgent, because these are the things you drop, but a lot of the things as a leader that you need to do to be able to really create that lending organization, to keep improving yourself, to improve others, to really be effective. They're not, they're not urgent in the world of noise and everything we've got coming at us. So without structuring something, to keep those things sacred and make sure you prioritize them, they can get lost so easily.
Brad Jeavons (38m 56s):
And I think we, we mainly call that leader standard work. Don't we like it's, I think it applies to a CEO as much as it applies to her or president, sorry, as much as it applies to middle management or frontline leadership, latest and at work
Mark Graban (39m 10s):
And for the, you know, the use of the word reflection as, as you did there, Brad and, and people will. Yeah. I, I tend not to throw around the Japanese word for this people say, ah, it's talking about Han say, just say reflection. I think there's maybe a recognition that sure. Reflection is important, but now given an hour, if you were to say to me, okay, reflect, I might wonder, well, do I sit back in my, do I sit back in my chair? W what's the structure, or is there standard work for reflection, as opposed to just saying, okay, create the space and I'll reflect and something magical will happen.
Brad Jeavons (39m 54s):
Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right, mark. It's important that you've also got that time blocked out, that you're going to important areas your organization to see now today in the virtual world, that's a little bit more difficult, but in some regards, it, isn't also like if, if organizations are really living transparency, everyone's doing meetings and teams, meetings really need to be open. You know, they need to be public. And you've also got so much technology now with virtual Google, virtual reality and all sorts of things that you can easily get your hands on. But I think one of the best starting points is to have that building, that transparency, where every meeting's open. And so, you know, a CEO can go to gemba and go to a huddle that's happening in any team throughout the organization.
Brad Jeavons (40m 41s):
And just, you know, you need that culture that people know this is our culture, and this is what we do. And that they're aware of what's going on. Anyone could turn up. And I think the senior leaders as far up as you can go need to demonstrate that to where people can come into their meeting. And that, that creates that real easy ability to guide again, by listen, learn, observe at least in a meeting and then come back and reflect. And also of course, going to the front line, you can then set up scenarios where certain people are willing to be at a, you know, to around with virtual virtual reality or with just a fake FaceTime meeting or whatever it might be.
Brad Jeavons (41m 24s):
I've seen a lot of the quality and safety organizations now are doing that well, you know, doing their audits and their, their walks using virtual now also, and it's, it's a lot more efficient. Like when you think of a CEO who might be based in Seattle or might be based in Tokyo, it's a lot more efficient and easier now it's not going to be as effective because you cannot beat being there on the floor. But the efficiency goes through the roof. They can do a lot more of them and cover a lot more turf, more rapidly.
Mark Graban (41m 55s):
Yeah. There's efficiency in that we can figure out how to also have effectiveness yeah. Related to all of that.
Brad Jeavons (42m 1s):
Yeah. And not be come across. Like you're spying also, like you could go with, with cameras and things like that. It's just getting the cultural element. Right. And I guess what you do with the learning will demonstrate whether people see it as you're spying to beat people up, or whether you're actually doing it to learn and adjust your own behavior and help people to grow and develop. So I guess I've sort of answered my own question there that, you know, maybe there is a space where there's cameras and you can go out again and just stand and observe through the cameras. It's what you do, what your behavior is off the back of that. That's going to determine positive or negative factors.
Mark Graban (42m 39s):
Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely it's, it's the behaviors. Cause I can think of instances where a leader went out into the shop floor, or we might use the jargon of a, they went to the gemba, hooray. Then they acted very badly. Yeah. Right. So not all factory floor or workplace visits are, are created equally. I think the behaviors matter greatly, are we, are we building trust? Are we being a helpful supportive servant leader? Or am I being, you know, kind of punitive focused cop,
Brad Jeavons (43m 14s):
If you will. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen one organization mark, where they've got, they've got cameras in the organization, but they also have a TV screen next to it. So the video of like you see myself would shop on the TV screen while I'm there at Gamba, which is similar to being in the circle. You know, the old traditional put the circle on the floor, stand in the circle. It's similar to that. So the team members on the floor or wherever they may be, can see that the, a particular leader or someone is there and that they're just doing their time at the front line. And so you can get, you can get by fat comes through that. How low cost TV screens are nowadays too.
Brad Jeavons (43m 55s):
It's not a big investment,
Mark Graban (43m 57s):
But I think there's an important point there about the respect that's shown by giving transparency in all directions. It's not just that as the leader, I have visibility into the work, but I think there's a challenging, provocative question around, well, how much transparency is there about the work of leaders to let people within the organization? I assume that's what you meant when you say public, you mean relatively public within the baggage of the workforce.
Brad Jeavons (44m 26s):
Yeah. I think that's, what's important and there's ways to be public and still like say you're on acquisition and there's conversations about an acquisition happening. There's ways to give that acquisition a code name and, you know, cause no one really should probably know who it is apart from certain people. But there's ways that you can still talk about some touchy topics that are need to be kept confidential and still have it transparent. And that's been used so much throughout history because that's the often lawn all we'll get from a senior leadership team, all this stuff we talk about that can't be public. It's like, well, why is it? You can still do that and create transparency and, and keep that.
Mark Graban (45m 5s):
Yeah. I mean, that was an argument against open bullpen layouts for offices or, you know, the idea that the CEO is also going to be in a cubicle. Well, yeah. If they really need to have a confidential conversation, there's a room they can go to, but that could be done by exception instead of letting it dictate.
Brad Jeavons (45m 28s):
Everything has to be locked down. Yeah. Yep. There's ways around it. It's sort of always discussing that next. Why? Well, why it does it, is there otherwise around this? Yep.
Mark Graban (45m 37s):
Yeah. Why or why not? Why not have more transparency?
Brad Jeavons (45m 42s):
Yeah. It certainly plays to that. Now what I've heard different studies that 70% of organizational behavior comes from what people see leaders do. I think it was actually Australian lady that did that study, but I can't remember her name. Sorry, but it's so true. You know, because especially if a leader says one thing and then people see them do something else that'll destroy culture quicker than anything will because then it becomes that whole, they're a hypocrite. This is just rubbish. But if people see a lead, I demonstrate the behaviors that they want sort of that old lead from the front, you know, you'll, you'll more rapidly get that cultural change that you want. So we've
Mark Graban (46m 22s):
Talked about purpose and people you've touched on process a little bit. I was running a few again, share some more thoughts. I'm again, kind of in particular, in a COVID remote workplace environment, how can we learn about our process? How can we improve that process?
Brad Jeavons (46m 45s):
I think this is one of the best outcomes of being remote with process is the amount of platforms now like that allows us to map in different technologies like Miro lucid chart. There's thousands of them. I could name, I couldn't name them all, but it's so easy for a team to come together and do whatever mapping technique is most pertinent to really try and understand that process. And also the way to visually represent process for employees who need to refresh themselves like everyone's got at their fingertips, a computer now. So I've been doing so many events on customer journey mapping to help teams really create great a flow throughout the whole organization for their customers.
Brad Jeavons (47m 27s):
And I've just been using templates out of lucid chart. I've been doing value stream mapping for factories and just using big picture mapping, even out of Vizio, there's been that used just again on teams or zoom or whatever it might be. And then nowadays with having technology at your fingertips, the benefit of being able to do video work instructions, rapid video work instructions, or make your work instructions more visual to update your work instructions is so quick because everyone's got them right there with them. There's just so many benefits. Like the most important thing I'm finding. But mark is that when people define that new process and they define that future site and I achieved that future state, I see a lot of teams where they don't put the right measures in place throughout it to show, is it actually sustaining?
Brad Jeavons (48m 22s):
Is it getting better? And that's a real gap. Like I think teams, we need to be able to look at that the goal we're after what's our process. What's the goal. Who's the process for, okay, what are the lead measures we need in this process? Or the quality, the control points for the critical control points to be able to measure. Okay, how do we make that transparent and have cool second then channel into transparent dashboards, which again, so much easier in a virtual world. So it's just, it's just upside when it comes to process in the virtual world.
Mark Graban (48m 54s):
Yeah. I mean, there seems to be kind of a pattern through this for every challenge is also some sort of opportunity wherever when we can't be in, let's say healthcare process improvement, people who are told to work from home for their own health and safety, trying to work with people who by the nature of their work in healthcare have to be physically there. Right? There's a lot of telemedicine that's happening and that's been one of the opportunities, the acceleration of that that's happened because of the pandemic, but you can't give an injection through telemedicine and then there's some other, you can't there, you know, different ways of helping people's breathing and, and obviously other treatment and testing that has to be done in person.
Mark Graban (49m 46s):
So there, there are challenges for people trying to help support improvement, work in those realms, but there's also been a lot of creativity and a lot of practice that I think will remain even when we get back to a semblance of normal or get back to the way it was.
Brad Jeavons (50m 4s):
Yeah. Yeah. And my home I'm working with a, a large refinery in Australia, you know, big, heavy manufacturing. And I'm even finding the remote world helping there because you've got this massive site where people are spread kilometers away and in a way, bringing this virtual processes and virtual approach enables people to not have to travel for meetings in the efficiency games and people may feel more connected. But the one thing you need to do about is keep considering that human bond bit, that quantum entanglement patent out of agile is how do we do things to create that bond that's deeper than just work and that, and the purpose element to that too.
Brad Jeavons (50m 47s):
So I think it's going to help industry right across the board if it's done the right way, because it always comes back to that behavioral bit that, you know, I've spoken a bit about today is what, what behaviors do you do based on the new systems.
Mark Graban (51m 1s):
Yeah. Yeah. And kind of the final piece to talk about. I think, you know, purpose people process are leading to the ends or the performance. Yeah. So that's where if you could talk about some of those connections and, and why as much as we talk about process, I mean, we, we focus on purpose people process for a reason, how do you connect things to PR to performance
Brad Jeavons (51m 29s):
With performance? For me, it comes back to the Mike Rother and Jeff Liker Toyota Kata model, where does every team have their challenging goal? And then off of that, have they defined, they lead measures of criticality to be able to improve the draw of that challenging goal. But once I've got that setting up the rhythm where they can collaborate and inspect, you know, that data becomes transparent. The challenging goal becomes transparent. The lead measures become transparent. And also the work they're doing to improve becomes transparent. And then from there, how do we set up a way that they can inspect it regularly?
Brad Jeavons (52m 9s):
And that's United the scrum, the one-on-one between a leader and the person that's about the person and helping them. And then there's the scrum all the huddle or toolbox or whatever you call it, which is about the team. And then as you mentioned earlier, mark, how do you then add you then scale that through the company. So how do you get that from the front lawn? Anything that needs to be escalated came because teams are going to come up with ideas to improve performance, and we want them to be coming up with the ideas they can do and the small ones and just enacting them and making them happen. But then what happens if a barrier comes up or a challenge or an improvement idea that is outside their capability to just enact, where does that go and how can it go there rapidly and get acted on rapidly?
Brad Jeavons (52m 57s):
And then feedback come back to them rapidly. So in, in, in the agile world, you're getting these really flat organizations like, you know, companies like Amazon and Tesla and these sort of companies so flat because you've got that cross functional set up at the front lawn, these cross-functional high-performance teams. And then it goes to, you know, what's called a scrum of scrums or the scrum above those. And then eventually get up to an executive scrum. And then of course in the lean world where it's a traditional waterfall structure or divisional structure, it's about those multi-tiered huddles and having those clear delineation of who can handle what, at what level, like if you're going to have that hierarchy and not give complete empowerment at the front line, the front line need to be clear on what they can enact.
Brad Jeavons (53m 48s):
And then what they need to escalate in the middle management needs to be clear on what they can enact and what they need to escalate. I think a lot of this multi-tiered approach breaks down where that clarity is not there and what ends up happening. Mark is everything ends up being pushed up because no, one's willing to make a decision. Cause maybe there's a bit of fear in the culture, but also there's no clarity, again, no standard that says, look, this is your, this is your boundary line. You know, you got that goal down the end of the field, there, here's your boundary line within these boundary lines here on the field. You can, you can just do it and go. And so I think that's a key to performance is having those key elements happen.
Brad Jeavons (54m 28s):
And the final thing is a C is the ability for leaders to coach. You know, I really love the grow model, mark. I don't know what model of coaching you like, but I, I find the grow model really simple. And I find if leaders can develop that capability to use that style of approach more and ask more open, open probe questions with humility, not leading man, it makes a difference because it instantly creates that empowered, but also that high performance focused culture where people are focused on the goal and why we're going for it. And yeah, I think that's important too, is leader's ability to coach and ask good questions. I think it's sort of an area of constant development.
Brad Jeavons (55m 9s):
I know for me, in my role as a consultant, or even as a podcast host like Mark, one of my constant reflections is on my coaching capability, my questioning, how do I go? What could I do better next time? What do I need to learn more of? It's one of those critical aspects, I think plays a big pot and successful failure.
Mark Graban (55m 30s):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, there are a lot of good coaching models out there. I, you know, the, the work of Edgar Schein is meaningful to me, you know, the idea of humble coaching, humble consulting, humble inquiry. You know, I also think of, you know, earlier when we were talking about reflections, you know, there's a firm I work with called value capture that teaches a reflection model. It's kind of, you know, a series of questions of like basically, you know, we could reflect on the podcast this way, even like, you know, what did you expect to happen? What actually happened? What was the gap?
Mark Graban (56m 10s):
What do we learn from that gap? Or from that difference, what do we do differently next time? And you know, how will, how will we know if that's led to something better? So I think, you know, that thought process incorporates you could call it a PDCA or PDSA. There are elements to, you know, other, other frameworks that are similar or familiar
Brad Jeavons (56m 35s):
To that. Mark. I think one thing I'd like to add to that performance bit and what you mentioned about reflection, and this might be good for the listeners who haven't come across the agile techniques before agile has this technique in it, where you time block, what you got, what you're going to improve. So you time block within a month or a week or every day, this we're going to execute this improvement effort in this time. And there's a whole, he protect Nate behind this, right? But it's time blocked at Amazon. They're doing two a day. So they're releasing an improvement, iteration of improvement to what their business twice a day. Like it's extremely rapid, but at the what in agile, there's a key that technique in scrum, I should say, at the end of every iteration of time blocked the team performance, what's called a sprint review, which is where you're gaining feedback from stakeholders and customers.
Brad Jeavons (57m 26s):
And you're learning from that. So you're using that sprint review to learn from stakeholders, customers, and internal based on the work you've done. And you're reflecting on that and using that for your next, you know, you're, you're putting more ideas and information into what's called your backlog of improvement on that. But there's also another rapid sort of conversation that happens, which is called a retrospective. So this retrospective is where you're looking back on the sprint and the scrum that you've run and the, the, even the team culture, and you're going, how do we improve how we're improving? So that's what this retrospective on the improvement system and the team culture. And you then using that to feed more improvement in, to get better and faster at how we improve.
Brad Jeavons (58m 9s):
It's, it's a really good technique and that some links directly to what you're saying about that, you know, reflection and review. Yeah.
Mark Graban (58m 21s):
So before we wrap up again, our guest has been Brad Jeavons. The book is Agile Sales: Delivering Customer Journeys of Value and Delight. So you can find that on Amazon for sure. And other booksellers SA Partners. I was, if you could tell us a little bit about the firm. I know Peter Hines is one of the co-founders, I've had a chance to talk to Peter before, and I've talked to some of your other colleagues from SA Partners, but if you can tell the audience a little bit about the firm and, and where they can learn more.
Brad Jeavons (58m 55s):
Yeah. Mark, that's Peter exuded this passion for sustaining improvement. How do we really help people and create cultures of sustaining improvement? And I think that's just disseminated into the company. You know, Peter, Peter is now running the enterprise excellence network and doing a lot of great work on training and other work that he does. And SA Partners still exudes that culture of how do we help organizations establish and sustain culture of continuous improvement excellence. They linked to the Shingo Institute and they do a lot of the work with the Shingo Institute. And that's what drives me is that, that purpose to the organization. And I really, really love working with them for that reason. You know, it's, it's, they're not just a training organization, you know, it's about how do we really help and tailor to that particular company.
Brad Jeavons (59m 43s):
And I'm, they're all over the world. Like you can look them up sappartners.com, a lot of great content online. They just share freight freely. And there's just a, a really great purpose to the organization. Some great people. Mark, if you had Kievan Zokai on the show before
Mark Graban (1h 0m 2s):
He is, I was just looking up, he has done a guest post on the blog about lean and green. He had me on to do, it was sort of a hybrid webinar podcast that he hosted. I, I should have Kievan on, on this podcast for sure. Peter, I went back and looked. I knew for sure. I had interviewed Peter. He was the guest in episode 373. People are going to look for Peter Hines, just scroll down in the podcast app. Or you can go to leanblog.org/373.
Brad Jeavons (1h 0m 35s):
Yeah. Especially if you're, if you're struggling at all with how to really make it stick, the work of Peter Hines is, is amazing.
Mark Graban (1h 0m 43s):
Yeah. So we talked about the concept of Staying Lean. Yeah. I remember it as a title of that. That's the title of a book he wrote.
Brad Jeavons (1h 0m 53s):
He wrote that. And recently he and Chris Butterworth have written a book called The Essence of Excellence, which is really, you know, it brings everything together. It's sort of my, it's my main base for everything now. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Graban (1h 1m 7s):
Okay. So yeah, it does seem like a great group from the, I think the reference, I think the sample of people that I've talked to must be representative of the group as a whole.
Brad Jeavons (1h 1m 18s):
Yeah. I think it's too part of our community. Isn't it like the work you do and the work so many people doing it now, our space just comes from a real place of purpose and helping people like, we are very lucky to work in the arena. We work in, whether it's lean or agile, it all exudes the same. It's just this way, we're in it for the bigger game of trying to help our future. It's great. Yeah.
Mark Graban (1h 1m 42s):
Yeah. I mean, it's been it's, I mean, I think of other bloggers and podcasters there in, in the lean space, there's the spirit of collaboration and support and abundance, or, you know, I don't, I don't look at you or, you know, Paul Critchley or Jamie Parker or others who have launched podcasts about lean. I don't think, oh, they're going to steal listeners from me, I think. Oh, great. There's something else that I can listen to. And, you know, I think there's there's room for people to listen to all of these different podcasts and, and included. And, you know, we've had this, you know, networking group, you know, mentioned a little bit at the, the front of some episodes, Lean Communicators, and we have a website, LeanCommunicators.com and Brad and I were, you know, we're talking about getting him involved in that effort.
Mark Graban (1h 2m 35s):
So yeah, I mean, at Sansa, it sticks out like a sore thumb if somebody is being territorial, when it comes to lean and not being supportive and collaborative with others. So, you know, thank you for, for sharing that spirit of collaboration with the spread.
Brad Jeavons (1h 2m 50s):
Yeah. It's kept me in the industry. I love it. If you can enjoy what you do for work, you're enjoying a lot of your life. So I I've been very blessed.
Mark Graban (1h 2m 57s):
Yeah. And, and I mean, one of the example, you're going back recently, the episode 400 with Jeff liker, you mentioned earlier Toyota Kata. And, you know, I think the relationship and the collaboration between Jeff Liker and Mike Rother sets an example where, you know, Mike was literally Jeff student and then, you know, Mike went, you know, wrote the Toyota Kata framework. And then, you know, Jeff realized going from the first edition to the second edition of the Toyota way, I think, you know, he got a lot right in that first book, of course, but he learned a lot in the process and he gives a lot of, he very graciously gives credit to what now he has learned from Mike Rother. So when the student can open the eyes a little bit more of the teacher, you know, cause look, you know, that relationship, I don't know that relationship between them all that.
Mark Graban (1h 3m 47s):
Well, but clearly it hasn't splintered into like this sort of competitiveness of like, no, don't, don't, don't read his book. That's rubbish. My book is the only one that's good. Like there's, there's a great learning and collaboration demonstrated that.
Brad Jeavons (1h 4m 0s):
Yeah. Mike, that's a great example. That's a really good example. Yep.
Mark Graban (1h 4m 5s):
Well Brad, thank you so much for coming, being a guest on my podcast. I'm really glad that we could have a second conversation and build upon what we talked about the time. Not too long ago, you, you hosted me on yours. So again and again, for the listeners, that podcast is the Enterprise Excellence Podcast.
Brad Jeavons (1h 4m 27s):
Thanks so much, Mark. I really enjoyed the conversations as I did when you were on my show and everyone that is again, episode number 20, if you want to listen. Thanks so much, Mark.
Mark Graban (1h 4m 38s):
Again. I want to thank our guest, Brad Jeavons joining us from Brisbane Australia again for show notes, links, and more to his book, his podcast and everything else that he does. You can go to leanblog.org/416.
Intro (1h 4m 52s):
Thanks for listening. This has been the lean blog podcast for lean news and commentary updated daily, visit www.leanblog.org. If you have any questions or comments about this podcast, email mark leanpodcast@gmail.com.
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