Session Information:

The Wheel of Sustainability – Engaging and empowering teams to ensure their solutions live on

We spend so much time trying to solve problems in our business. Why is it that after investing countless hours, effort, energy, and resources, the problems we think we have solved come back again and again? There must be a better way to sustain the results you work so hard to achieve.

The Wheel of Sustainability is the better way.

In this workshop, you will learn how to utilize your leadership commitment to engage and empower your teams with the Wheel and sustain their solutions. With case studies and exercises, you will have the tools to help your organization win.

What attendees can expect from the session:

• Understand all components of the Wheel of Sustainability.
• Identify real-life applications that you can take back with you.
• Case studies and stories of teams who used the Wheel of Sustainability.
• How the Wheel enhances leadership commitment.
• The one key question to ask to drive sustainability.

Session Transcript:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the main stage at the business transformation and operational excellence world summit where we accelerate culture business and digital transformations so I'm very excited to introduce our next guest speaker and workshop leader as well this is the first of a series of workshops that we're going to be running here at the main stage we're going to talk about the wheel of sustainability engaging and empower teams to ensure their solutions live on with Adam Lawrence.

So ladies and gentlemen please welcome Adam Lawrence very grateful to have Adam with us he is the managing partner of process improvement partners LLC Adam has over 30 years of experience in process improvement activities targeted manufacturing and business processes having facilitated over 300 kaizen events in multiple industries around the world item aligns with leadership engages teams and creates sustainable results Adam has mastered the use of many different process improvement methodologies over his career allowing him to identify the best strategy for each organization's goals and objectives Adam develops sessions that are fun engaging and laser focused on helping teams win he's married to his wonderful wife for over 29 years peggy who i understand is even supporting the session today which is very exciting and together they have one son who is also his IT department so Adam.

It's a great introduction great great to have you here very much looking forward to your workshop well thank you Jose appreciate that and and thank you all for joining today at the we build workshop invited to be able to share this with a broad audience and I appreciate everybody's interest so with that I'm going to move into the presentation um so a number of you answered a question on the poll for me.

So I appreciate that and what I was asking is what keeps you from sustaining your results and the top the top poll answer was as probably not unexpected was leadership support and commitment so a full 29 percent of you said that followed closely by time and effort required focus resources a little bit of money and other and not surprisingly none of you said that you have no issue sustaining your hard-earned results so certainly not shocked by that I guess if you could you wouldn't be at the workshop so appreciate that a good number of you joined.

I saw a bunch of you know great backgrounds for everybody hopefully your expectations for the workshop are based upon what what we laid it out to be and give you some idea of how we can sustain so with that I'll introduce myself a little bit Jose did that for me too i kind of like to think of myself as a bit of a kaizen ninja so jump in and help teams solve problems defeating waste right find it out and solve it and then have a good winning experience as he said and then you know come back out like he was never there because the goal.

When I'm done is the team owns their solution and they're able to keep it moving forever more so with that I want to talk to you about that system that I developed to help them do just that so what i will tell you this wheel of sustainability was built over many many years just learning my way through things and i also want to encourage you we're going to have a few question breaks through this process so if you if you use the live discussion portion on your app you can chat in at any time your questions and you're going to see some markers to take questions during the session but until then you know I'm just going to give you a little bit of this overview.

So give you a little bit of background used to work with a lot of teams, we'd go in and we'd solve problems or so we thought we'd spend a lot of effort and teams were extremely creative and I'd leave and go away come back two months later and find out the problem had resurfaced well that really bothered me I felt like I could do better for those teams I felt like they put in all that effort they deserved something that was gonna help them and keep that problem solved.

So started to do some research and understand what was helping teams win and over time developed this system that I call the wheel of sustainability and as you can see there are eight spokes in one hub so the hub is leadership commitment and the spokes are these eight that I'm going to go through one at a time on subsequent slides the way I like to think about this is that a wheel is only as strong as the hub in the spokes.

I could remove a spoke and the wheel would still be okay be a little weaker if you remove the hub of leadership commitment everything just falls apart now as an example of the power of this wheel. I was working with the company about a year and a half two years ago and they were trying to solve an issue delivering products to amazon and for those of you whose companies do that if you're late that's a problem.

So they had put in a system to make sure they would stay on time they were trying to meet a four-day uh delivery cycle to amazon and their system wasn't really very well sustaining and the problem was they were getting fined on the order of more than a million dollars a year brought a team together through and looked at that same process with that team we implemented the wheel sustainability and at the end.

All the fines have now gone to zero so that pretty much convinced them and it certainly convinced me it keeps convincing me that this system is is viable and is helpful so that's my goal of today's workshop is to take you through all of those spokes in the hub and kind of give you ways to think about it and give you an image for that, so I'm going to take you into leadership commitment so as i told you the wheel is only strong as the spokes and if the hub goes away everything falls apart so you must have that leadership commitment.

So what do I mean by that what I mean is leaders need to be visible and supportive they need to be there for their people trying to make complex changes to their systems they need to be willing to give their teams anything necessary to win and the way that I assess that is through a chartering process and I want to take you through that because it's a great test of our leaders truly committed to putting the best team on the field to solve these complex problems and also are they willing to give them everything they need to win so the chartering process is a linear process the way i approach it and i start off understanding what the problem is so oftentimes.

I'm visiting with a potential client and we're talking about and we're looking at the issue that they're dealing with and what we're trying to do is understand the problem from the standpoint of their customer as well as the people in the process oftentimes it's a very vague problem statement to start off with and what we're really trying to do is understand what's the what's the actual business impact what what's the financial the safety and the quality impact on the on the customer and on the people that deal in the process.

We'll typically take a walk out into their process whether it be in an office or a manufacturing environment or virtual and what we want to see is let's see evidence of that problem let's see if we can't figure out what what does that really look like and how bad is it once we determine what that problem is that we want to solve now we're going to talk about what are the clear objectives for the team what are the things that would tell the team if they solved the problem it's a win and i call that objectives so for example if something took eight days to get to amazon what if we could get it to four and what's that worth to the business.

So in the prior example that was worth just over a million dollars annually so pretty compelling you want it to be urgent and compelling enough that it's the most important thing that the team works on during a set period of time I always like to add a safety objective there's always a great opportunity to improve safety in any process so I like to challenge the team to come up with ways of improving safety in whatever they are doing whether it is a virtual process or a physical process once we truly understand those objectives and they need to be clear and they need to be measurable as measurable as you can be what's the team now that can help us solve it what's the best team we can put on the field that has the knowledge and the experience and the and the desire to work on that problem they care about it they're frustrated by it it bothers them.

This is what i call the winning team and typically it would be people in the process and it would be people responsible for the process and maybe even customers of the process so they have the experience they have the knowledge and they have the desire but there's one last question and it's who owns this output so at some point i go away the team owns the solution but who's going to make sure every single day every single minute of every single day this solution will live on and that to me is the owner of the output they're not going to allow us to do anything.

That we're going to regret so i always challenge leadership to name that person as the team leader they're the person that isn't going to let the team do anything they can't live with and they have enough knowledge of it and they know they're going to own it they have enough skin in the game to make sure we do the right thing now i can facilitate what i believe is the right thing but the team and the leader are certainly going to know if we do all that well.

We're going to have winning results and it's also a great test of the leadership sponsorship to say are you willing to give us the best people to solve this critical business problem if they are we're going to move forward and we're going to plan the best possible session to help the team do that if they're not willing or they're not able to provide the resources to it then let's not frustrate the team let's let's decide to do it at some other time maybe it's not as important as we thought so i think this is the first so this is the first question break and my wife is sitting right next to me and if she's in the chat or the questions if anybody has any questions i want to give you a few few seconds to type in if you feel like you want to and then I'm going to have her hand it to me just to see if anybody did and if not i'll move on to the next slide but I want this is a workshop.

So I do want it to I do want to give you that opportunity so let's see if anybody has chatted in so so far i see nothing which is okay so I am going to move on and if there is a question that comes up in the next slide I'll come back to it okay so that's the hub i told you that that's the most important thing the strong it's what holds the whole wheel together usually it takes about four to six weeks to design the session.

That's going to try to accomplish that charter and i help leaders understand the wheel so they know what's going to be expected because they're going to be expected to support every part of the solution that the team develops okay okay so it looks like we got a question so which of these steps have you found to be the most challenging and how did you measure manage it right great question so as with any continuous improvement question the answer is it depends right so the first the most challenging is leadership that's truly not understanding of the commitment expected of them the good news for me now because I've done so many of these is that.

I can provide an image of what the session looks like what's the team look like what is the role of leadership what's challenging is when they when they want to put less resources time or effort into solving a critical business problem it's challenging because they don't have that experience sometimes to understand that we need four days and they want to give me two what i don't want to do is frustrate teams.

I want to give them the best possible chance to win and because i've done so many events i'm able to able to give them that image and explain what they're going to have to do but if they're flinching if they're unwilling to do that then the challenge is we should not move forward and sometimes they want to anyway we don't want to frustrate them we don't want to frustrate the team so that you know the spokes I'll tell you some stories about them and you'll find out that each one of them has its own challenges okay so hope that answers.

We're going to move on to notification so this is the first of the spokes the idea is that this comes after the event but the team helps design what it looks like how are we going to explain to the greater organization the changes that we've made the improvements. we're trying to make things safer more productive simpler more stress-free and better for our customer but the people that weren't part of that solution they're not familiar they just think we were all in a room just having a grand old time so how do we notify well the first thing to do is to explain not just the what but the why why did you do.

What you did why do you think this is better how does it align with our vision does leadership participate in this notification excuse me is the melody is the message compelling so we did all this we were in a room for three days we just made a lot of money for the company but we didn't do anything for the people that work in this facility or in this office it needs to be compelling to the audience and i often say that talking in front of a hundred people is not very compelling people can get distracted it's hard to get their attention so sometimes you need to have one on one one one-on-three type discussions people want to truly understand and they want to know that they're that they have the commitment and support to do the right thing because they're going to be asked to work differently.

So that's notification it seems simple enough but email notification is not powerful a big room of people is not powerful us talking together face to face is the most powerful because now you can see if I really believe in what I'm telling you so here's a question break right here let's see if any other questions have come in doesn't look like so.

So we're going to move on to the next one that's fair so the next spoke so we've now come up with changes in our sessions we've described it to the greater audience but now we need to teach people we need to train and review the changes how do they impact the individuals so i use a method called tell show do it's modeled after training within industry that could be a whole workshop in and of itself.

So I won't bore you with that but the idea is the team during the session very early starts thinking about how are they going to train people in their new methods they've got to make it as simple as possible they've got to make it easy to understand and the method is tell show do which means i'm going to tell you about a change and how to do it and I'm going to show you how to do it by showing that i care enough to learn how to do it myself and I'm going to spend time with you to let you show me that you know how to do it that's typically a one-on-one one-on-two type situation there's no place to hide you can't just nod your head and pretend that you understand because you're gonna have to show me that you do understand and I'm gonna spend the time with you and care enough about you that I'm gonna correct you.

If I see issues so it takes a commitment once again leadership has to be committed to allow us to take the time you can't have one trainer and 600 people to train you're going to have to have dozens of trainers and they're going to have to be able to take the time to demonstrate and then see that the person understands by letting them demonstrate so again a big test of leadership commitment okay that's the second spoke and I have a question stop right there and my wife is indicating yet there is nothing new out there.

So I appreciate that but if somebody does have a question I'm giving that opportunity all right so I'm going to move on to the third spoke and the third spoke is visible evidence so again the team is working on things that are going to improve the changes that they're going to make and what I'm challenging them to do is figure out ways to develop visual evidence and visible evidence that somebody is either following or not following the change and I call it the 20-foot rule think of a parking lot you can drive into a parking lot and from far away you can tell there's a space open i don't think I want to park next to that that person because they're over the line that's a little too far from the store I'm going to so parking lot designers have just created a way to give us that ability to see whether everything's okay or not okay.

So I challenge my teams to do the same thing with the changes they're making the system that they're going to implement should be easily assessed from long distance away and then the question I ask them to develop their systems and solutions around is how do I know so if I were to walk into a space is it easy for me to tell that somebody is doing the right thing how do I know what is the evidence what would tell me that they are do i have to ask or can I can I see it now let's give people visible evidence so that they can't do the wrong thing let's make it almost impossible to do the wrong thing.

So I'm going to give you a little demonstration and I'm going to normally if we were together and i could hear you which I can't I'd have you shout out but maybe you could do it through the chat and we'll give you an opportunity to do that so let me first click on this right so question break on visible evidence bigger visuals are better I don't know if there's something new there yet no questions coming in yet so let me take you to the demo so I challenge anybody to type in somebody already did.

So that was courageous thank you for that thanks for doing it all right so a few of you in the workshop that I know have seen this demonstration before if i would be doing this on a flip charts and the question I would ask the group first is what is that and somebody might shout out a pitchfork and somebody in the chat might type in something i don't think they did but look at the let's see if anybody's willing to do that so mike already did earlier yep yep yep so i see some questions here so in the chat I'm seeing questions okay so we didn't look in the question bar box so i'll answer that after we do this a great question um okay good.

So I'm not going to pronounce this right but somebody said it was a wrench okay so my question is how do you know it's a wrench well the answer is you really don't until we do something like this and you say okay great that's great now we know that it's not only a wrench but it's a 9 16 wrench okay well that's great where did it come from because if i see that sitting in a in a workspace what am I supposed to do with it it seems like it's lost so where where are they yeah okay so questions are coming in okay so I've me and technology okay so that's good okay so right so somebody said dividing rod that's really cool okay so this is this is a 9 16 wrench so if we all stick in the questions I'll take a closer look at those and I'll back up after this demonstration to pick up some of the ones that I missed okay so that's 9-16 right.

So the answer is if i say how do i know where that came from the answers well i don't know so let's find out so in this case the team has now put put a label on it that says it came from the weld shop so hopefully that's just an example it's the weld shop okay now it's sitting out in the facility it says weld shop and i think i know where the weld shop is but now where in the weld shop do i place it so the next thing a team might do is build a tool board and create an outline and you might say is that the right spot how do i know that that's the right spot so the answer is you really don't yet it's not yet impossible to do the wrong thing until we do one more thing and the one more thing is what a lot of teams choose not to do and i always push them to do is let's give them everything they need to put this whole equation together.

So again it's almost impossible to do the wrong thing so in this case we now know where it goes we know when you get to this weld shop there's this thing called a tool board the outline's there and it tells me the 9 16 wrench goes exactly in that space so could somebody still do it wrong of course they could but the good news it's now a lot harder to do it wrong and somebody that isn't that person could assess it and help if they see that tool sitting out in the space now i'm going to back up to some of the questions because i missed them.

So okay i won't get all of them but somebody said some visible examples in knowledge type processes mostly managed in computers especially now that we're remote okay so here's my view on that one thing is you have a thing called a task bar and you have your your layout on your computer so if you have hundreds of icons things get lost if you have your most important things in one spot it's harder to lose them i also have seen teams do things for organizing files for example this is one thing.

I do just an example one thing I do is I put the on my folders zero one dash most important folder zero two dash next most important folder what that does for me is it puts my most important information in my face so the idea of visible evidence is to put what you need the most in your face so you can't hide from it so it's easy to assess easy to audit let me see if anything else has come through oh okay backing up a little bit somebody asked what is the most issue with problem statements they tend to be quite vague people don't tend to be able to state a problem in an urgent or compelling way having done about 300 charters.

What I find is it's very difficult for somebody to say things other than it takes us too long to service our customer what does that mean and what does that cost and why is that a problem and then we can start putting data to it it doesn't have to be perfect but at least it needs to be compelling okay I'm going to move on a little bit in the interest of time so thanks for those questions so the next spoke the fourth spoke is called all tools available the idea being that people should have what they need where they need it when they need it in a logical location they should never search for a transport.

So there's a picture of a weld shop i think at least one in this workshop would would recognize it just one of the nicest looking weld shops that i've ever seen but as you can see everything is properly labeled it's easy to tell what it is and the thing in the bottom right corner is this table this was the table that all the welders used so what we did was we optimized everything they needed to that table in the old days it took them two hours to to help a line that was down by doing repairs because things weren't easy to find and now it takes seconds because everything they have is easy to find they never lose it the other idea is if i needed a computer icon in three places to remind me I don't just have one icon i might have it in three places there's no reason I can't have shortcuts.

If I need a wrench in four locations rather than carrying it to those four locations let's buy four wrenches of the type i need and let's apply them to those four locations okay this is a test of leadership commitment as well now one of the things is to get this weld shop to this point we removed 80 percent of the clutter that was in the shop and were able to identify what was really the necessary items so to do that with now I have much less to deal with to make duplications are okay but it's a test because sometimes you do have to buy more materials okay I'm gonna move on and see if there are any other questions.

So I'm gonna see how I did see if I'm keeping up so I'm going into the chat but yep yep interesting looks more like a school than a production plant yeah I agree I just heard it was interesting to hear from somebody that was in that weld shop event it's a year and a half later or maybe two years later and he said it now looks better than the picture shows so that's kind of neat nice to hear okay how do we do it in non-manufacturing setup right so tools can be supplies tools can be files tools can be office furniture tools can be cubicles offices anything you need can be visual I've seen people have all their printer supplies well labeled well organized.

If you think about what keeps your process from being productive and safe those are the things that you want to make visible and provide full evidence of and that's where the all tools available comes from all right I'm going to move on I'm going to tell you entice you with at the end I'm going to give you a way to text me to receive a couple of things. I am writing a book about this it's not done but there's a goal there's obviously more i want to say about this wheel had lots of fun stories you'll get a copy of the presentation there's a wheel handout and I do have a special site assessment offer so i just want to share that with you guys so hang in there till the end and I'll show you how to get that.

Any of that okay the next spoke is called clear benefits uh somebody said what's the most challenging piece of this well this is one of the most challenging from the team standpoint what's going to happen is we need to do something that's going to help the organization in a way that they see it as help we want to make their work simpler safer and less stressful but we also want to want them to know that we've heard what they've had to say that it helps them personally so in the old days we call that what's in it for me but very early in the sessions that I work with teams i have them go back out into the space and talk to others that weren't on the team to get their unfiltered feedback and let me tell you there's lots of stories of being yelled at by people that thought we weren't listening to them only because it's a change I heard a prior workshop or session where somebody said you know people just assume.

When you're doing this that you're making it worse well that's human nature you're really trying to do better but most people that aren't involved in the session don't understand or realize that so clearly it's the challenge to the team to go out there and start to get the input it gets more people involved and engaged and at least you get to hear what they have to say and imagine if our team was all right-handed people and they designed some a system for all right-handed people they go out excuse me in the in the work area and they find out there are a few lefties and they missed it so go out early don't wait till the end no perfect solutions anyway and learn and get as much input and feedback but it's challenging because some of the team members are a little they're a little antsy of going out and hearing what people have to think but that's the whole point you're doing it for the organization and again a tesla leadership commitment.

Our leaders when they hear some of that negative feedback are they giving it back to the team so the team can deal with it are are they portraying the message that the team is working on the behalf of their colleagues and fellow employees okay so another question break let's see how we're doing let's see if any other questions came up okay majority of initiatives I work on have financial constraints how do i get this well I'm going to tell you that the biggest cost to doing the wheel of sustainability is bringing people together the resources are worth a lot more than anything else you're going to do in these sessions.

So people pushing their their schedules to free up three straight days or two days or half a day or four days that's where the that's where the money is yes you can hire consultants and as a consultant I'd say what a great idea that is but but really the the money is in the time of the people their ability to focus and help the business and I will tell you it's not unusual to pay these things back 20 times or more and that's not an exaggeration because the amazon one was over a million annually and clearly nobody's paying me that much so the time of the team is really where the investment is okay another question procedural documentation absolutely right.

So I'm going to take you there so we are going to make changes and we do have to document and we're going to we're going to need to make those procedures visual just like i said visual visible evidence make it impossible to do the wrong thing but we're going to need to audit so laird it's the idea being that the rest of the organization not just the person doing the work auditing their own work we need to layer those audits so that people are every so often checking the work and making sure and engaging that everybody has the help they need this needs to be a help process a two-way learning reinforcing how important this is and I will tell you it's not on the slide.

I always challenge my teens the audit can't take more than five minutes anybody can get five minutes of their day people can't give an hour of their day all the time but five minutes is not asking a lot so you can't audit everything what you should be doing is audit the important things and do it with people don't don't do it from afar be with them and if if you catch an issue during the audit that's the time to learn together and correct it if it's a system issue bring that back to the team now the other thing is i like the audits to be visible and visual I like somebody to sign off that I was here and what I saw so you can't do it from you can't do a hidden audit.

You can't be a spy you have to do it with people and you don't have to audit the same person at all times and the same people don't have to audit you should rotate that so everybody will learn about the system and what's most important but those are great times to look at the procedures make sure that people can easily understand and follow them have those discussions and reinforce how important they are so i think there's a question box here let me check to see if anything new has come in yeah.

So I'm staying in the question area I know some people have chatted yeah so this question says what if you've heard what they have to say but for multitude you have to go another direction do you have any recommendation right okay. So what happens is this goes back to the y versus the what right so some people don't understand. What was behind the decisions that were made but if you have the principles of it in the understanding of it it becomes a lot easier to align with it if we're doing something that's best for safety or for the customer for the employees and that was our intent people will see the true intent of the person describing it to them if we're saying the company's making us do it they'll see right through it no one's going to buy into that so why is much more important than what always intent is what we're trying to get to okay.

I'm going to move on time will never be on my side the next one is accountability so how do we hold ourselves accountable this is a term that everybody uses but very few of us know so the way i think about it is if i had a small child about to touch a hot stove what would I do I'd jump up from my chair pull their hand away probably try to maintain some emotional control but I'd probably be yelling because i don't want them to get hurt so this is the type of accountability.

If we're saying that this new change is this critical to the success of our business we're keeping people safe helping customers helping employees why would we let anybody do it incorrectly so you have to be willing to correct the behavior and again engage what you want to do is help and care not say why are you doing it wrong what you want to say is how can i help you do it right and do you understand why it needs to be this way so you could be walking to a meeting that's very important to you and you see somebody about to do something.

That isn't correct they aren't going to lock out the line or they're going to use the wrong document or if you keep going to your meeting basically what you're saying is it's okay to do it wrong but if you say I'm willing to be late maybe catch a little heck for being late but I'm going to correct the behavior all of a sudden people understand this really is important they're taking the time they're providing the help and they care about me and this is what in my mind is what accountability really looks like.

You wouldn't let people put themselves in harm's way you shouldn't let people deviate from the standard that teams work so hard to create for a reason of a benefit all right I think there's got a question break here yep I did that okay so i don't see any new in the questions and in the chats yep so I'm going to keep moving so it looks like we're doing pretty good on time okay last spoke but certainly not least is what i call recognition and so this is not the giving of prizes this is about people seeing the cause and effect of what they do the telling of the story.

So I told you the story of the amazon folks I still remember that I remember how excited they were when they were able to make those breakthroughs I remember the call telling me that the fines had never come back because the wheel helped them but what I really remember is that sometimes people tell those stories that weren't even on the team that that that the team has done such a good thing that others remember it and they're promoting it to people outside of that main organization.

This to me is the win when something good happens and people recognize the reason for it we got involved in something and we solved something for ourselves and for the business and it was that impactful that they're telling that story to others that's a huge win because then it kind of promotes it promotes the good improvement work to the rest of the organization so how do we create that well sometimes people get good results and they don't even realize why that happened so what I used to do was I used to just promote those stories.

So I remember somebody i worked with many years ago she was working with the team to organize an area and she told me that it used to take her an hour and a half to find the things she needed to repair a part in the area she was working in and because of the work we had done and her team had done it now was immediate it was 10 seconds because everything was available and easy to get to easy to find i said well that's great but let's tell others of that so for a while anytime.

I was with her and i saw somebody else i said sue can you tell this other person about that story and show them and you could see the pride first she'd start off a little hesitant but then she would show them what had happened and why it was so good and you could see the pride in her and then eventually every time I'd walk up to her she'd say Adam who do you want me to tell the story to now but we don't have a laugh about it but after a while we heard people in total other areas of the company talking about what sue and her team had done and again that's a win because then people started pulling for that same type of effort so the leadership commitment comes in to this point that we want to promote these successes.

We don't want to just keep it to ourselves we want others to take the benefit of the safety and productivity and customer service improvements that we make and leaders have to promote it because they they influence more than just in us individuals right so we want them to tell those stories we want to understand the cause and effect and the more you tell those stories the more it locks in the commitment all right so I'm going to take a step to questions let's see if any others have come in so ah very good okay so a couple things here it says i attended a great presentation with Billy Taylor today yesterday used a great analogy with the baseball home plate here okay.

I didn't hear that one but there's a lot of good stuff out there points recognition builds buy-in for the next initiatives absolutely right so you know as a consultant we always want more work and i get that but what we really want is the organization to have not just the benefit of that one activity but we want it to grow and nurture because we're really trying to build that cultural transformation we want the team to win but we want the win to keep going and i think you can see when all these things come together with strong leadership commitment the team has the best chance to win now let me help you understand.

How I put all of that together in the system so we're back to this wheel the idea is that the leadership team prior to even starting i give them this image of the wheel and we're going to talk about every single spoke and what it means to their team or what it's going to mean but what does it mean for leadership so what it means for leadership is they need to participate in the notification they have to provide the time and the opportunity for the training and review they have to be looking for the visible evidence.

So that they can help reinforce it they have to say yes when we say we need to buy three more hole punches or another printer or three more wrenches they can't say no because the team has determined this is the thing that we need to be able to do to help the rest of the organization if the leadership team knew what the answer was they would have answered it so we've given the team through the charter that's the contract to say help us solve our problem so when the team says i need you should say for sure here's my credit card the next one again is clear benefits understanding that people are not going to initially like any change.

I don't care what it is that's just human nature expect the worst and hope for the best so we send the team out but the leadership needs to know that's going to happen because guess what they're going to get some feedback and it's not going to be pretty so are you ready to support even if you don't know what the answer is yet the next is laird audits are leaders willing to participate in those audits they must be because I've had teams at their report outs tell leadership what they needed them to do we need you every week to come out to this area and verify we're doing what we said we're going to do here's the audit.

You're going to use and we want you to sign off how can leaders say anything but yes because if they do say anything but yes then this this can fall apart accountability again are leaders willing to take a beating from being late to a meeting but stopping someone from deviating from standard and then are they willing to promote are they willing to promote all those great cause and effects stories so that people know this is what we need to do okay I think I have yep.

So I'm leading you to the end I'm gonna see if there's any other questions we have a couple of minutes what i would say is you probably figured out I could talk about this all day and like I said the pandemic gave me an opportunity to write a book that was in me it had to come out I've noticed teams over these many years use my wheel on their they put them on the wall they write notes on it so i knew they were using it that always made me feel good it was time for me to try to explain that i'm trying to launch it early next year.

I learned that being a writer is not as simple as or easy as it appears and i never thought it was so that was it definitely uh told me that um so one other question I see what have you seen as the most successful recognition strategy right so I don't so I know what I don't like when people just give money money gets spent or put in the bank so recognition strategy truly is just seeing that cause and effect telling of the story.

So the team I always encourage the team you know thanking each other critically is vitally important what's really cool is sometimes when your co-workers thank you because something you did they actually recognize that's better but just people need to show up people need to support people need to reinforce and then tell those stories now okay so virtual kaizen events that is probably a question that we need to do separately because that's probably another workshop so virtual kaizen events is a great question but boy is that a tricky one there's a lot of good technological ways to do it and there's a lot of good manual ways to do it so I just want to end on this note because they tell me if I go over time they're just going to cut me off so I said in the beginning first of all I want to thank you all for hanging in there those that did I really appreciate how many of you signed up and i hope you found it interesting enough to at least let's have more conversations.

So I want to give you ways to do that so I have a virtual booth right you can set up meetings with me some of you have done that others this is my cell phone text me at 717-9475 hit me with the word wheel that'll know that somebody was paying attention and I've got a preview chapter of the book so you can tell me whether you like it or not I'm still in edit mode so I can still fix you certainly i have a wheel handout that I'll send you for those that want to know more let's set up a meeting and if if somebody really wants me to come by and visit I do I do a site assessment.

It's about a six hour to eight hour effort and basically I'm with you in your in in your space whether it be virtual manufacturing business office whatever it is and we're looking at what would help your team be safer more productive or whatever you know whatever you think you need so with that if there are any other questions.

So I got somebody offering help facilitating with virtual kaizen events that's great that's great so I'm going to hook you guys up I think that's fantastic so we're gonna make sure you guys make connections that's what this conference is all about that's fantastic so thank you all I appreciate you guys signing up i appreciate you giving me time to spend with you today and I hope you found some value in the session and i was supposed to end at 1 30 and i think i did that so I see a few of you are texting in wheel so that's cool so definitely I'll be texting you back trying to get your email information and any other information you want me to have all right Adam Lawrence, thank you very much for the great workshop great insights into uh into fighting waste uh wonderful presentation.

Thank you.