I'm very happy to be participating in Jared Thatcher‘s “Global Lean Summit” event this September in Indiana.
I'll be there to network and learn, which includes time visiting a Toyota Material Handling factory (an entire day!)
I'll be speaking and facilitating:
- A workshop on Psychological Safety as a Foundation for continuous improvement
- A learning session featuring Dr. Deming's “Red Bead Game“
- A fun keynote talk on warning signs and mistake-proofing
Here's a 13-minute conversation that I had with Jared about the event:
Transcript:
Mark Graban:
Hi, I'm Mark Graban. Today I'm talking with Jared Thatcher. He's the organizer of the upcoming Global Lien Summit 2024. It's being held in Indiana September 17 to 19th. You can get tickets following the link that's in the comments or the show notes.
Mark Graban:
You can go to globalleansummit.com to learn more. So, Jared, thanks for joining me today. How are you?
Jared Thatcher:
Pretty good, thanks, Mark.
Mark Graban:
So tell us about the event. I know you had started with some virtual events. You're doing in person summits, the opportunity to do this. People are wondering, why Indiana? Well, I'll just let you answer that question.
Mark Graban:
No offense to Indiana, but you're not from Indiana.
Jared Thatcher:
I'm not from Indiana, no. Originally from Oregon. I live up here in Washington right now. You know, it started during COVID I was feeling really bad. I had a lot of friends that were on the verge of losing their small businesses.
Jared Thatcher:
And I knew that if they understood some principles with lean, that they could adjust their processes to really account for customer needs, because at the time, people were afraid to touch a doorknob because they thought they'd get Covid and die. So how do you adjust your process to make sure that your customers feel safe and they're coming into your establishment? And the idea came to my mind. It was like, hey, we'll just do a summit, pull in a bunch of people and talk about it. And I was like, that's a cool idea.
Jared Thatcher:
But then I was like, I don't know how to do that. And I don't know really anybody to do it with. And then the idea, for about a week and a half just wouldn't go away. And it was like, finally it's like, okay, well, maybe I should do it. And if I don't set a date, it's not going to happen.
Jared Thatcher:
So I said, okay, I'm going to do this in six weeks. I'm not quite sure why I did that, but I ended up having to learn how to build a website, how to do things with Zoom, reaching out to a bunch of authors and different people that I've always looked up to and the work that they've done. And surprisingly, they all said yes. And it was like, it was awesome. So we put on this free event.
Jared Thatcher:
We had about 500 people that showed up, and that kind of kicked it off. And I don't know, six months later, I had some of the speakers start calling me, asking me for advice because I was posting on LinkedIn about doing virtual lean summits. And I'm sorry I was posting about doing virtual Kaizen events, and how are you doing that? What is that? And so I explained and showed them how I was doing that, and then I had a bunch of the attendees say, hey, when's the next one?
Jared Thatcher:
I was like, next one? I mean, you were lucky to get this one. And so, yeah, that started it. So for the next couple of years, I've been doing these virtual lean summits. It's just a free event that I put on so people can attend.
Jared Thatcher:
You know, it's grown. Last time I did it, we had 3600 people from around the world. So it was, you know, it wasn't too bad.
Mark Graban:
That's huge.
Jared Thatcher:
Yeah, yeah. And what happened was last year I had one of, one of the attendees say, hey, if you do this, you know, I'll bring my entire company and we'll check it out and. But I want to do it live. I don't want to do it virtual. Fair enough.
Jared Thatcher:
Let's, let's do it. So I put it on, you know, here locally, and, you know, we had, you know, a decent turnout, probably lost a little bit of money putting it on, but that's okay. It was great to actually have that live interaction. But then I was also like, I'm done with the live events. I think virtual is a heck a lot easier.
Jared Thatcher:
And my wife's like, no, that was amazing. You got to do it. And I was like, okay, I've got a full time job. I don't have time for this. And she's like, I'm going to run it.
Jared Thatcher:
Okay. So a little while later, she comes up and says, all right, so I was talking with some of our contacts, and I've got a set up where a Toyota material handling plant in Columbus, Indiana is going to host us for one of the days of the summit. They come on as a partner and they'd love to host us. I was like, wow, that's so much better than what I did. That's great.
Jared Thatcher:
And so my wife has really been behind the scenes, running everything, making, making sure the events, you know, going to go off without a hitch. And my job was just really going out and getting incredible speakers like yourself and others to come on board. And it's going to be fantastic because we're going to be talking about how to really create a culture of lean improvement. And day one is going to be, what are those elements that you have to have and what are those obstacles and how do you overcome those? Day two is actually going and spending an entire day at Toyota being able to check out their obea room, check out their learning dojo, their training dojo, getting tours of the plant, talking to a lot of the executives at the company as well as some of the support staff and the first frontline people, it's going to give us that opportunity to really see from, you know, we all look to Toyota.
Jared Thatcher:
Right? Is that shiny an example on the hill? And so it's going to give us that opportunity to really see how they do things. And their manufacturing plant there in Columbus is just absolutely amazing. I've had a chance to go there and a couple times and it's been great.
Jared Thatcher:
So really looking forward to it.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, well, and it's a great opportunity compared to the Toyota automotive tours that I've done before in San Antonio and Kentucky. The US tours, anyway, you're driven through on a tram. You can see some things. You're there for maybe an hour, hour and a half if you take in the visitor center. So I'm really excited to think of this opportunity of spending a whole day there, getting to see things that they wouldn't normally show, it seems, on a public tour, having more time to take that in and interact with people.
Mark Graban:
So I'm happy that Toyota is not just letting us in, but partnering with you. That's really exciting.
Jared Thatcher:
Yeah, no, it really is. And it's going to be fantastic. So at that plant, they make forklifts, and I had no idea that they're the number one producer of forklifts, which makes sense. Right. And it's fantastic just to see how they do it and the technologies that they've, they've incorporated in for the forklifts so that they, you know, they have anti tilt features so that, you know, reduces the risk of them tipping over.
Jared Thatcher:
They've got some really cool things that they've incorporated and done. So it's going to be a fantastic tour. And then, of course, the third day, what's exciting is we're going to have some examples from some other companies. So we've got right now a bunch of companies that are, you know, we're planning on having in. So Costco, Amazon cost tailored.
Mark Graban:
They're local.
Jared Thatcher:
Here it looks like they're going to be, you know, coming as well. And then we also have the US Postal Service that's going to be talking about their lean management system, and a company that has turned around their organization is coming out of Germany, that's Huf Automotive or the Huf Group. And they, they make all of the, pretty much all the automatic door openers and the key fobs for all of the manufacturers around the world. And so it's going to be interesting seeing how they transform their organization. And at the end of the day, we're going to be doing a workshop with everybody talking about how to improve or how to create your own lean management system and basically creating a roadmap of what do we need to do when we get back to our organization to really start taking it to the next level and to overcome some of the challenges that we're facing.
Jared Thatcher:
So it's going to be a great collaborative session and really looking forward to creating that roadmap with everybody.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, and thank you for the invitation to do two different sessions. So I'll encourage people come early for the pre conference workshops. I'm doing a half day workshop on psychological safety as the basis of lean learning. So I think in a half day we'll be able to take a good deep dive into that, have some better understanding what psychological safety is, what it isn't. I mean, as with, let's say, even the phrase lean or different lean concepts, sometimes there are misperceptions, misunderstandings, and help people go back and be equipped to, I think, strengthen their continuous improvement or lean efforts with that understanding of psychological safety and some tactics leaders can use to help strengthen psychological safety.
Mark Graban:
And then I'm doing a 30 minutes keynote talk on warning signs. It's a fun talk. I did it at the Kynexis user conference, as you know, maybe even for a lot of people. Just a fun reminder that sometimes maybe we try to rely on a warning sign as a countermeasure and we can challenge ourselves to really make sure we have some better mistake proofing in place. So that's what I'm going to be sharing and talking about.
Mark Graban:
And hopefully good takeaways for people.
Jared Thatcher:
No, I'm super excited about it. We have a great lineup of speakers and people from around the world. We've got people coming in from Europe, across North America, Asia. So it's looking to be a really good event. But of course, because of the restrictions of the tours and the number of people that we can bring in, we're limited to 120 at the event itself.
Jared Thatcher:
Yeah, it's filling up fast, and I think what we have now, about 75 days left before it's here. So it's coming up quick. And, yeah, I'm really excited. This is going to be a great event and amazing people coming and some great companies, and it's fantastic.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And I'm excited and not. I mean, it's a great lineup. But. But Hide Oba is going to be part of the event.
Mark Graban:
I've interacted with him online, interviewed him on my Lean podcast about three years ago. He's the son of the legendary. People usually just say Mister Oba, Hajime Oba from Toyota. So it'll be great to meet him in person and hear more of his insights. I always appreciate he shares a lot on LinkedIn.
Mark Graban:
Follows, follows in his father's footsteps.
Jared Thatcher:
Yeah. And he has a lot of great context for a lot of the terms, a lot of the, you know, Japanese words. You know, it's funny, every once in a while, somebody will post something, and he'll be like, I don't know how you get that out of, you know, as a Japanese person, I don't get that meaning out of it. But, yeah, interesting. But yeah, he has a lot of great insights.
Jared Thatcher:
Really looking forward to him being there, actually. Kind of cool. Tom Jackson, for those of you. I don't.
Mark Graban:
Tom.
Jared Thatcher:
Yeah, and Tom has, he's come out of retirement for this, so he's super excited. And he's done a lot on, you know, how to create a lean management system, and he's done a lot of things in healthcare as well. Talking about Hoshin Kanri. In fact, I think that's going to be one of his sessions that he's talking about for the workshop, the pre summit workshop. I'm going to be talking about how to utilize the situational leadership model in lean leadership and what that looks like and how to employ it and teach it to your people.
Jared Thatcher:
So, yeah, there's some really cool sessions that we have a lot of really cool opportunities. Looking to record some. Hopefully all of the sessions so that they'll be available to people to watch afterwards as well. So, yeah, it's going to be a great event. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
I'm looking at the list of workshop facilitators. Almost all of them have been a guest on my lean podcast. John Dyer, Adam Lawrence, Mohamed Saleh. Sam Jankelovich is going to be a guest coming up soon. Sam McPherson.
Mark Graban:
I've met Tom Jackson, a long time ago. Maybe I can convince him to come out of retirement again. Yeah, I think he'd love to on the podcast. So a lot of great opportunities, other speakers, Tracy O'Rourke, other people I know there. Hide Oba.
Mark Graban:
So, yeah, I mean, a great list there. So sounds like, you know, call it an intimate event, 120 people with this great tour opportunity, the workshops, the networking. I'm really looking forward to it. So again, that is September. The main days are September 18 and 19th.
Mark Graban:
But don't miss out on those workshops. It's a separate registration ticket option for September 17. Columbus, Indiana, people would fly into Indianapolis, is that right?
Jared Thatcher:
So it's going to be at Edinburgh, which is right next to Columbus, and it's about 40, 45 minutes south of the airport, south of Indianapolis. So it's actually Monday. The 16th is the pre summit workshops, and then 17th, 18th and 19th is the summit itself. So it's three days plus if you want to come for the workshops. And that's a pretty reasonable price, too.
Jared Thatcher:
It's just $400 extra to come for some all day workshops or half day workshops.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Well, looking forward to that. So again, we've been joined, Jared Thatcher talking about the global lean Summit 2024. Thanks again for the invitation. Thank you for joining me here to talk about it a little bit today.
Jared Thatcher:
Appreciate it. It's been great.
Mark Graban:
Thanks.
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