Every Moment Matters: How Leadership Behaviors Shape Results Every Day | Anne Frewin

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to today's webinar. It is part of the Kynexis Continuous Improvement webinar series. I am Mark Graben, uh, your host, uh, senior advisor with Kinexus. And I'm really excited for today's presentation by Anne Frewin. It's titled Every Moment How Leadership Behaviors Shape Results Every Day. Let me tell you about our presenter, Anne Frewin. She is a speaker, coach, facilitator. She's the founder of Employee Centric Leadership LLC where she helps organizations strengthen culture and performance by equipping leaders with the behaviors and systems that create engaged high performing teams. With more than 15 years of experience implementing lean principles across healthcare, biomedical, manufacturing and professional service industries, Ann brings uh, a practical operational approach to leadership development. Ann's work focuses on helping leaders create clarity, build credibility, communicate with courage and continuously improve the systems that shape the employee experience. So with that Ann, I will turn it over to you. Thanks again.

Speaker A: Thank you Mark. And thanks for inviting me here today into Pinexus for having these webinar series. And uh, thank you to everybody who's on the call for taking the time out to um, be part of this today. I really appreciate uh, I know everybody's got a lot on their plate, especially coming off of a long weekend. I hope everybody had a great weekend. Um, if you've just joined us, feel free to keep dropping your location in the chat. Be fun to see where everybody's calling from and we'll get started here. So yeah. So um, I'm Ann Frewin, Chief Engagement Architecture, Employee Centered Leadership. And so today we're going to talk a little bit about some of those behaviors that Mart mentioned that I help organizations implement. Well, let's start off by talking about some improvement efforts. Take a deep breath. So a lot of times when we are uh, working on improvement efforts, right, they tend to may stall, they may fail, maybe they're successful and we get uh, some great opportunities out of them. We might get to the end of the improvement efforts and then they may, we implement some stuff but then it peters out afterwards. Maybe we don't get the impact we wanted out of those improvement efforts. And so I was thinking about what are some of the reasons I hear from my project leaders, from my, from the other leaders I work with as to why those improvement efforts failed or stalled out. And a few of them I've listed here and you guys could probably come up with some more uh, as to reasons why these would fail. But uh, one of the big ones I came up with was we have an unclear problem statement. So we end up solving the wrong problem. Or we spend so much time spinning around what the problem is that we don't really get very far. But defining that problem clearly is a problem in and of itself. Data's, uh, unavailable. Blows me my mind that in 2026 we are still having trouble getting data. That I work with organizations and they're like, yeah, we don't have access to that information. Like, how do you not have access to that information in 2026? But it's a pain point that many of you probably experience, uh, team members, inconsistent. What I mean by that is you invite 12 to 15 people to a project, six show up one week, six show up the next week, and it's not the same six. Right. And so you're not able to move the needle on your projects. There's too many other priorities and projects, which is probably why you have inconsistent team members. Those are probably tied together. But we all know we're doing a lot of firefighting, addressing those projects. Maybe the improvement. They remember that you have that. Have that person who walks in and they know the solution and they want to implement it. Even they'll let you get through root cause analysis and then they'll say, oh, well, let's see. This is the solution we should implement. I knew it already. And it's probably still not the right solution. Or the last one that I came up with, which really breaks my heart, is when your team puts a lot of effort into the project, you get to root cause analysis, you go in front of the stakeholders and they reject the countermeasure. We don't have time for that. We don't have the resources. That's not the right answer. We're going to, you know, did you think about this instead? Um, all of those are so frustrating and demoralizing to your project teams that have put so much effort into it. But those really, to me, are symptoms of bigger problems. They're not the true root cause of why our improvement efforts fail or stall out. So I'm going to take a little bit of a leap here and follow me through this. I'm going to share with you some statistics here. First statistic is that 79% of employees in an organization are disengaged or not engaged. Comes out of the Gallup 2025 State of the B, um, global workplace. And so this is a global number. But it's, it's pretty true across boards and it's not industry specific. But there's another related metric that stood out to me, and that's this, that 70% of the team engagement is determined by the manager. That means 70% of the reason why those team members are disengaged or not engaged is because of how the manager leads. So what is it about the manager that's driving? So I want you to think about this for a second. What does this, these metrics have to do with that first slide of, um, the spiraling improvement efforts? Who's responsible for the success of a project? If it's a project manager, who's responsible for the project manager being successful? See, I believe that a lot of those improvement efforts stall or fail out not because of the project manager, but because of the environment that they are working in, because leadership behaviors shape the environment. And another quote that I got grabbed out of Gallup is that every moment of the employee's experience either drives engagement or drains it. So what is the impact of this on an organization? Let's talk first about key stakeholders. Here's my challenge to you. When you think of your stakeholders in your organization, what comes to mind are these three in your stakeholder list. I would imagine that owners and shareholders are the top of everybody's list, right? They're the ones that are investing money into an organization and they're expecting a return on that investment. Even in nonprofits, right? Even nonprofits are investing. Sponsors are investing money, they're investing time volunteering, they're looking for an event. They want that to be successful. So owners and shareholders are a key stakeholder. Customers are a key stakeholder, right? We are. As a, as an organization. If you're in manufacturing, you're producing a, uh, product of value to a customer, they're looking for the right product at the right time for the right customer. If you're in healthcare or service industry, it's the right service at the right time to the right patient or person. Right? Customers are a key stakeholder of an organization, our employees a key stakeholder of your organization. So often they're just at, uh, an expense on the P and L, but truly they are actually, they're investing time, they're investing skills and knowledge and, which should also be considered a stakeholder of the organization because without the employees, you're not going to be able to deliver that value to the customer and you're not going to be able to give that return back to the owners and the shareholders. So I want that first shift of paradigm shift that you have today to be considering the employees as a key stakeholder. And we. So let's think you're probably already doing it on some level. Most organizations, especially if you're in lean and if you're here on this call today, you're probably implementing lean or some form of continuous improvement in your organization and you probably have at least four or maybe all five of these on your dashboards, on your daily management boards. Safety, people, quality delivery and financials. These are the traditional key stakeholder key uh, improvement indicators that people have that they measure their improvement work, their day to day work. They are aligned uh, with the Shingo model of easier, better, faster, cheaper rate. It's easier on our people, it's better for our customers and it's cheaper. As you see, I've color coded these because they line up with our stakeholders. Safety and people traditionally are measuring how we are treating our customers. Are we being uh, providing a safe environment? Are they happy? Are they engaged? Those are the measures that tell us about our employees. Quality delivery, that's telling us are we getting the value to our customers? Financial, that's telling us are we getting our uh, return to our owners and shareholders? So those KPIs that you're already measuring already telling you that employees are the first and a key stakeholder. But are we treating them that way? So if we're measuring things, are we really looking at those metrics or do we tend to skim over the blue and just focus on the red and the green? But what happens if we start to focus on that and we really drive that concept of improving to the engaged employee that we're really trying to make? An organization where our employees are engaged. Guess what happens in an engaged, uh, in an organization, sorry, in an organization where you have engaged team members, your safety incidents are going to be 63% lower. Your turnover rates are going to be 21% lower. In high turnover organizations, your defects are going to be 32% lower. This is against organizations have disengaged or not engaged employees, your productivity will be 14 to 18% higher and your profitability will be 23% higher by having engaged team members. These are numbers of an organization I'd want to work in. I want to work in organizations where we've got more safer. Our uh, people are happier, our customers, uh, are getting good product on time and we're making money. So here's the second paradigm shift we need to make. You have probably heard this in other presentations over the years, but we need to move from a traditional management where managers are telling employees what to do and how to do it to more of an employee centric culture. Where leaders are coaches. They're encouraging problem solving and learning. They're creating those psychologically safe spaces for employees to try and experiment and have ideas and to fix things. And I wish I could say that in 2026, we no longer have to think that people are following the traditional management. I was just talking to my neighbor yesterday, and she actually works. She is, uh, a user interface person. She talks to the customers to find out are they, how's the product working, what could they do better? And she got a new boss this past couple of weeks, I think, last month, who came in and said, I don't want to hear about the customers. I just want to be told, you know, what's going well and here's how you're going to do your job. I thought, seriously, we're still doing that to people, and I know we are because I've worked in those organizations. But I can't believe I've heard this. I've heard other people talk about this shift, and yet we're still talking about it. We still need to keep driving toward leaders, being coaches, those leaders, developing people. Um, if you haven't heard Simon Sinek talk about what's the role of a leader? He says, he goes, he talks to a CEO and says, what's your top priority? And the CEO says, my customer. And Simon Sinek says, you've not talked to a customer in years. The role of a leader is to develop the people who. Develop who, sorry. The role of leaders to be responsible for the people who are responsible for the customer. And I'm sure you've heard about Toyota, where Toyota says, we don't build cars, we develop people who build the cars. It, uh, all comes back to our first job as leaders is to develop our people to be responsible for our people, to make sure, uh, our people have what they need to be successful. So I put together this model called a lead model, with four mindsets in it that are needed by leaders to create those psychologically safe spaces to allow for good, solid improvement efforts to take hold. And I'm going to walk you through these four mindsets. But really what I want to do is we're going to talk about one behavior from each of these mindsets and give you an application so you can take that back to your offices, to your work tomorrow and start to apply this. And I'm going to ask you at the end of this presentation to think of one behavior you are going to take back and you're going to work on. So the first mindset is leading with Courage. When we lead with courage, we're trying things, we're experimenting, we're having hard conversations. And the behavior here I want to talk about today is talking about problems. You hear a lot about make problems visible. I was, uh, in a presentation with Jamie Benini from tssc, the Toyota company, and he said, every lean product, every lean tool, is designed to make problems visible. Think about that the next time you're applying some of your lean tools. What's the problem that that lean tool is making visible? It's a different way of thinking about it. I loved that. But making problems visible is the first step. Talking about problems is the more important step. You've got to start talking about problems. So this dashboard I put up here, does this look familiar to anybody? Uh, have you. Maybe you have something like this on your walls, on your. In your meetings, where everything is green, or almost everything is green. And you go to the meeting or the huddle and the leader says, hey, great job, everybody. We're still knocking it out of the park. Fantastic work. Everything is green. You guys are doing great. Gold star for you. Keep up the good work. See you next meeting. And everybody goes back to their work, and they're like, I have so many problems. I don't understand what those metrics are telling us. I don't feel like we're green. I feel like I'm living in red. But all we're talking about is green. And he's not listening. He or she's not listening to the problems. When we start talking about problems, we're in this. Well, before we start talking about problems, we're in this firefighting mode, right? I think everybody can relate to that. Any organization I go into, somebody's fighting a fire. I also like to call it whack a mole. If you're tired of the firefighting prince, you know, whack a mole. There's a problem. Whack. There's a problem. Whack. Great way to think about it. But the reason we have fires is because we're not getting to the waste beneath the problem. We're not taking the time. We don't have the time to get to that, to fix those problems, to even look at what those problems are, and they just turn into fires. So as we start to talk about problems and talk about the waste and identify it, we're going to move into that smelling the smoke segment, that proactive. And when we see that waste before, it has a substantial effect on our metrics, we can address it. That's why talking about problems is so critical. But you have to be willing to have those conversations and address the problem before it becomes that firefighter. And, uh, as you continue to develop your people and you have those conversations and you encourage them to fix things before they become fires, they're going to move into that preemptive state, which to me is where idea systems really take off. It's when people can see waste and remove it themselves right away without having to go through the management team for approval. We're going to talk about that. That's going to be one of the behaviors we talk about at the end that you can take back with you. But we have to be talking about the problems. So here's the application on this. I don't know if there's anybody in health care here today, but one of my favorite metrics is falls per 1,000 patient days. This one is always a little bit obscure to me. It's a great metric for vice president of operations and higher ups, right. Senior management and up. They need the bigger picture. They need to have a better sense across the board. Falls for 1000 patient days tells them something. If we were in a room here today, I would ask somebody to describe this chart to me. And what I've heard when I've done this with other groups is they'd say, well, um, it looks like medical and surgical have too many falls per patient days in the month of April. And I'd say, how do you know that they have too many? Well, it's above the line. How do you know above the line is wrong? Well, because we know that patient falls are bad. We intuitively know that. But if I was to walk up to, uh, this, see it on a board, I'd have to take about 10 to 15 seconds to really process that through my mind. What am I looking at? Falls? There's a line, it's not clear, right. It's all blue. So that's one thing. The second thing is medical unit, the medical department, that's probably made up of a lot of different units, surgical as well. How do we know which ones? And then do we really even know how many? I'm a math major and I could not tell you what 2.5 out of 1,000 patients in is, how many that actually is. I probably could. So here's what I want to offer you. If you've got, and I've seen stuff like this, sorry, this on the units, this is greater, high level. But when you put a picture like this on a unit level board, it's not actionable. A Nurse on a unit cannot decide. No. How many, uh, fall they actually had. So here's what the application is. If you have those high level metrics, can you make it more actionable, more measurable for the people on the floor? So here's a, here's the chart. It's first shift on the east wing in the month of April and they are doing really well for the first seven days. And then they have some reds, they get better, and then they have some reds. Here's. Sorry, I forgot to tell you, the other part of this chart here is that the manager sends it down to the head of the medical department and says, hey, fix all of your patient falls by the end of May. And I say it's May 26th. I can't fix May, but I can fix June. So I'll send this to my team and say we have to bring our patient falls down by the end of June. In our next staff meeting, tell me what you're going to do to bring your falls down. And somebody gets this and says, I don't even know what my falls are. Or I didn't have any falls, but I still have to come to a meeting with a list of things I have to do. We've just created more fires that we have to put out more whack a moles. So back to this chart. If this is what we're looking at every day at our daily huddle, this is actionable. We can start to track what are our reasons are for the falls. And we see here that hours lead checks missed is, uh, trending pretty high. So now in the middle of April, I can start working on why are our hourly checks being missed. Probably going to hear people say it's staffing and that's probably a factor. But what can we do to make sure we're not missing our checks? Because we have to have them. So now we've got an action. We're going to put an action item on our board. We're going to address this root cause and we're going to have this fixed, if not on its way to being fixed, within a few weeks. This is what we need to start doing when we're talking about problems. Make it visual, make it colorful and talk about what's going on when you're in your, when you're in your groups. All right. The second behavior is embodying trust. This is where we have to show what trust looks like. Trust is an essential part in any team. Patrick Lencioni in 5 dysfunction of the teams has it as the foundation of his pyramid. He says, without it, we cannot have healthy conflict. We cannot have commitment, accountability, which is a word everybody talks about, and results. We don't get the results if we don't have trust in our teams. And we as leaders have to model that trust to have people trust us and then for them to be able to trust each other. It starts with us as leaders. So what does trust look like? Trust is being present, it's being consistent, and it's caring. I worked with a, uh, director once. When he started work with the organization. He came onto the floor, he got his, Went through his onboarding, and then he said, I want to be trained to work on one of the machines. So he got the training, he went down to the floor and he worked on the machine under supervision, side by side with the people doing the work so he could understand how the process worked, he could see some of the issues. But really, to get to know the people as well, he was present. And then he would learn people's names. He'd see them in the hallway, he'd say hi to them on a regular basis. And he went to Gemba regularly. And he was consistent about it. Not just going to Gemba M, but going down. Every now and then he'd go down. He'd make a point of making sure he was still getting on the floor. He was working on the machine, you know, maybe once a quarter. But going to Gamba, he did weekly, if not more than more than once a week. And he went to multiple shifts. So that's your action item. Gemba, if you don't know what it is, means where the value added work is done. And we talk about going to Gemba and the traditional phrase for that is, uh, go see, ask why. Show respect, right? Take it a little deeper. When you go see, you have to go look. Look for things. Observe process, observe people stand still. This is not a time to walk through the hallway shaking hands and kissing babies. Like I enjoy saying, it's a time to go and observe what's happening around you. I'm a bird watcher. I walk through the woods, I hear all of the birds, but I don't see them. I have to stand in one place and watch them flitter from branch to branch before I can actually see where they land. And if I have my binoculars with me, then I can get a closer look at what I'm looking at. I also live on the coast in Maine. I go to the ocean and I look for tidal pools. And when I stand on the tidal Pool. First thing, I just see water. And then eventually I start to see hermit crabs moving around, and then I'll see water spiders. But I only see it because I'm standing still, watching. That's what going to Gemba is about. You have to go and stand still and observe the people, observe the process of the. The product. If somebody in. Like I work in, I've worked in laboratories, I watch hands because the hands are the things that are moving, not the body. So watch the hands, watch the eyes. But you have to observe people. The second part of that is asking. You have to go with curiosity. Be open to learning and understanding. Ask questions that clarify what you're seeing or maybe what you think you know. The process is if they're going through an improvement effort, ask them how that's going, what changes they're making, how it feels to them. And then you're going to listen to them because they're going to share their problems with you if you ask them about them. But don't just listen to the words. You have to listen to the tone of voice. So I've been down to Gamba. I was watching this person walk through the. Take, uh, some boxes off, put them in a box on the pallet. The box got filled. He pulled the box off, had to replace the pallet, took the pallet around. At some point, he left the floor and then came back. And I was. I watched him for a while. I saw them do that a couple times. So I said, why are you going? Why are you leaving the floor? He said, oh, every time we touch the pallet, we have to change our gloves. And we don't have gloves on the floor. We have to go off the floor to get the gloves. And I'd like. And, um, do you know why you can't have gloves on the floor? He's like, no. We've asked. They said no. So we stopped asking. So not only did I hear the problem that there's no gloves and they have to change their gloves constantly, but I also heard apathy. I've asked. We were told, no, I'm done. He's not just done with the gloves, he's done asking for things to make his work better. So you have to listen to the tones and the words and then the questions they're asking. The other thing I like to do is I've worked in places where you can. People can actually talk to the partner next to them about whatever they want to be talking, and the work still goes on. When you have that kind of environment, listen to what they're talking about. Because if they're just kind of having fun banter, maybe they're. They're. That's good. They like what they're doing, they're enjoying it, they're relaxed. Oftentimes you'll hear, I'm so frustrated with this. I've been trying this. This doesn't work. You'll hear those conversations. You'll hear what's really bugging them, what's frustrating them, or what they really love. They will tell you that, too, but you have to listen. So going to Gemba has to be with all of these things in mind. Not just going and walking through and taking a cursory look at things, but really going with curiosity and openness. So you're present with people, you're consistent, you're going, uh, if not daily, please go daily. But if you can't go daily, go on a regular schedule. And then if you tell somebody you're going to do something, follow up with them. So with those gloves, once I went back and I talked and figured out why they couldn't have gloves on the, on the floor, I went back and I let the team know. And they also. I also talked to my peers about how are we going to make this better for people because they can't be leaving the floor five times, ten times a shift to get gloves. So we have to follow up. So that's building the trust, right? By going to Yamba, having conversations and helping your team members, you're building that trust, and they're going to really be able to turn to you when they need help. All right, I'm keeping an eye on time here. I promise. The third, uh, mindset, anchor and clarity. I'm going to give a plug to Karen Martin. If you have not read her book Clarity First, I highly recommend it. It's one of my favorite books in the business world. She talks about clarity, starting with your strategy, your mission, your vision, your values, and all the way down, right? You have to have the clarity across the board. Communication is at the core of it. And communication is the number one complaint from employees. So here's some more statistics for you. Only 13% of employees strongly believe leadership communicates effectively with the rest of the organization. And 91% of employees say communication issues prevented leaders from being effective. And I had to read that a few times. It didn't say that it prevented employees from being affected. It prevented leaders from being affected. So even employees will say, look, we need communication so our leadership can be affected, because right now they can't be because we don't know what's going on so we can't help them. So I'm going to spend a whole talk on communication, but I think I only have about 10 minutes left. So here's the application and the behavior I want you to take with you on this one is having effective communication. When you are communicating with your teams, you make sure you're following key effective communications. So here's four things that make up effective communication. First and foremost, it has to be frequent. Once and done when you communicate is not good. I always say seven times in seven ways. I learned that in my training. Repetition solidifies the message. You tell me something once, I probably have a bunch of fires behind me. I'm trying to put out lots of things going on. I may not remember and I promise you I won't. You have to tell me multiple times. But here, go to visual. Make it visual. When you use visuals with your words, hearing and seeing helps comprehension and retention. So use the visuals to reiterate your message. You're seeing a visual on my screen right now. You've got words, you're hearing my voice. But by seeing it on the screen you're retaining it better. You're understanding what I'm telling you better. Use it in addition to maybe you're telling somebody something. You make it visual on a TV screen or a poster on the wall. It doesn't have to be at the same time. It's just another way to reiterate your message. The third is purposeful. Your communication has to be purposeful. What is it you're going to tell people? And then create a structured plan. Who are you? Who's your audience for this information? What's the message you're going to give them? How will you communicate it? Um, how frequently will you communicate it? If you're going to do it through email and a one on one, a town hall, a newsletter, what is that communication format? And then lastly it's two way, right? We've talked about listening already, but listening is just as important as telling. So do you have a listening plan? If you have a listening plan, it's the same as your telling plan. Who are you listening to? What are you listening for? What ways are they going to give you that feedback again? Survey, email one on ones and then how are you going to close the loop on that feedback? Who's responsible for that? So having those in place will really help your communication and build tie back to our last mindset of trust. It'll build trust with your teams when you are communicating with them effectively. So that brings us to our fourth mindset, which is driving improvement. Right. This is what we're all here to do to drive improvement. The people doing the work should improve the work. Um, we do not want to make have our supervisor sitting in a room and having people on the floor. I, I've worked places where we, it's hard to get people off the floor. The more we can make that a priority, the better. But sometimes I'll take the improvement work down to the floor. I'll do it there. Here's the behavior for you today to take with you. It's that to invite ideas, help employees fix what bugs them. So instead of just having an idea system, and I know Kynexis has a great idea system and oh, it works really well. Are ah, the people fixing what bugged them or is it still going up to a management level to have approval when employees can fix what bugs them? We're moving in that preemptive section. But when they fix what bugs them, your everything is so much, you're making improvements faster, your teams are engaged. So I use these three questions as guardrails for people who want to make improvements. First and foremost, the team has to decide that it's something they're going to improve. They ask is it safe for the customer and for the employee? Right. So we're not going to harm our customer and the product. We're not going to harm our employees in the process. Does everyone who needs to know know? Not does everybody who needs to know will find out? But how have we made sure everybody knows like uh, everybody on the team, my manager, the people downstream if it's going to impact them, the people on the other shifts. Right. Because we want to make sure they're knowing we're making changes. And the third question is my favorite, can it be undone? We're not talking about making engineering changes to a machine. We're not talking about changing the value add parts of the process. We're talking about getting scissors at every machine because we have to cut labels every time. Getting a step stool to help somebody reach something on a shelf. Right. Things like that, that if you put it in an idea system it's, we need to put it in an idea system, we need to track it. Uh, but we don't need managers to prove it except for the buying our uh, stuff that we need because it's not as important to a manager if I have a step stool to stand on as it is to the employee. So make sure that you're allowing the employees to fix those small things that bug them because the more they fix what bugs them, the fewer fires you're going to have later. So back to our improvement efforts. Here's our tornado we started with and all the reasons why these fail. When you apply these leadership behaviors, talking about problems, going to Gamba, uh, going to see with curiosity, with respect, and you're letting employees have an opportunity to fix the ideas, you're going to have more success for a number of reasons. Your employees are going to be more engaged. Your leaders are not going to have as many fires to put out. Because when you more. You deal with problems small, do small incremental improvements, the fewer, larger problems you're going to have to, to address. And your culture is going to change. Your environment is going to change because there's more trust, right? There's more engagement. Here we are. Leadership creates the environment. We want an environment where we're all working together to achieve the goals and the objectives of the organization. The environment drives or drains engagement, and engagement drives performance. So I leave you with this question, and I would love you to put in the chat. What is one leadership behavior you will start working on to change your environment? So I know there's a few people out there on chat. Drop into chat what you're going to change to start changing your environment. And thank you very much, and I'm open to questions.

Speaker B: Thank you. Anne, let's leave your adorable dog on screen here.

Speaker A: That's Mojo.

Speaker B: That, uh, is Mojo. Uh, well, let's leave, uh, Mojo there for a minute. Um, Anne's email address and website are there. And when we go into Q and A, there'll be, uh, a different slide with, uh, that same information, uh, on screen. I'll encourage people, please do continue submitting questions. We'll keep an eye on the chat and see if there are responses to your question there. And, uh, the first one, what are we going to do differently? Lead with clarity.

Speaker A: Thank you, Mohamed. Thank you, Mohamed, for leading with courage and being vulnerable to share what behavior you're going to change.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, we'll leave that open and we'll see what, uh, else comes in. So before we shift over into Q and A, we've got a lot of time for a pretty robust discussion here, Anne. Um, let's go through a couple of quick announcements. Um, what breed is Mojo?

Speaker A: Mojo is a goldendoodle.

Speaker B: A golden doodle. Okay.

Speaker A: He was very much a puppy there. He's, I think now. Yeah.

Speaker B: All right. Well, hi, Mojo. All right. I hate to move forward. But let's mojo on every slide. So thank you. Um, again Ann, uh, this is ah, a webinar, uh, part of a series that we put on roughly uh, once a month. We invite you if this is your first time uh, participating, please do join us in the future. You'll be notified of future webinars. You can also go and view well over 100 recorded webinars in our Webinars On Demand library. They're all free, so you can go to kinexus.comwebinars click on the Webinars on uh, Demand button or, or you uh, can go to the Kinexus YouTube channel. Our next webinar coming up June 18th, uh, at 1:00 clock Eastern, uh, is going to be on the theme of Lean and CX or Lean and Customer Experience, Customer, um, experience practices, uh, in particular. So, um, we'll be sending out more information but we want to give you a heads up and if uh, you want to save the date on your calendar. If uh, you can't make it, of course these sessions are all recorded. All right, um, moving on. I want to invite you to come check out other free resources that are available on our website. Uh, Kynexis.com has something on there, uh, multiple times a week, if not more often. Uh, tips and articles and case studies. Um, not just about Kynexis software, but it's really mostly about leadership and continuous improvement and themes that are important to all of us. Okay, uh, next, um, we also have a podcast.

Speaker A: Good evening.

Speaker B: There we go. The um, Kinexus Continuous Improvement podcast. Um, the audio of today's session and all other webinars are in the podcast feed. We also uh, publish other things there. We encourage you to go to kinepsis.com podcast or as they say, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. And if there's someplace where you get your podcast where we are not there, please let me know. All right. And uh, if you can advance that, um, final announcement here, um, your feedback does matter. I know we get surveyed to death, but you'll get a link to participate in the survey. We do look at these. We do share the feedback, uh, with Ann and other presenters. We do look at these to uh, give us ideas for topics you're interested in other webinars. So please do if you can take a couple of seconds. Um, your feedback is important to us. So with that let's put up the Q and A slide and there are some other responses to your question. I'll invite you to uh, to read off and react to Ann.

Speaker A: So I'm sorry, you want me to go.

Speaker B: There are some other responses in the chat of what people?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, Jennifer said in the invite improvement section was great. So I'm assuming, Jennifer, that means you're going to be working on inviting improvement. Uh, Mohammed, low hanging fruits will create more momentum. Denny, change effort 100%. Agreed. That's the small incremental improvements I was talking about as well. Rebecca, um, is going to be bringing specificity to the problem with the tally mark slide. Fantastic. I think that'll add a lot of value. Tim is going to be listening to listen, not to respond immediately. And, um, Edge likes the Kyensis blog. So there we are.

Speaker B: All right, well, thank you. Appreciate that. So, all right, getting into comments and again, we'll encourage, uh, people, please feel free to keep submitting those. We've got a lot of good questions to get started here. So, um, Ann, first question, uh, from Lawrence. Do you truly believe that the three stakeholders are viewed equally important as each other?

Speaker A: Uh, do I believe they are viewed equally important? No, I do not believe they are seen as equally important. Uh, I believe that they should be equally important, even though, you know, I'll say employees first, but at the end of the day, you know, they are all equally important to the success of any organization. But they are definitely not viewed as equally important.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I mean, I'll add, I mean, I agree with the generalization that this is a nice ideal, uh, state articulation here. Um, I think organizations that do really well, viewers, if not exactly precisely equal, at least approximately equal, you know, the, the idea of, uh, take care of your employees so they can take care of the customers is pretty widespread. I mean, in healthcare even. You know, there's a book with a provocative title a physician wrote some years ago called Patients Come Second. And that title was meant to spark a reaction. It's not that patients don't matter, but now that book was all about this idea of let's take care of, um, the caregivers or the employees in any, any setting.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Any other thoughts about how we can try? I mean, you know, is it through data or how else can we try to influence leaders to at least shift this more in that direction of the three equal stakeholders.

Speaker A: Um, that's a great question.

Speaker B: There's no easy. There's no easy answer to that.

Speaker A: No, there's no easy answer. I mean, I think we talk a lot about that. You know, I think one of the things that's hard is People do employee engagement surveys every year, and they don't take those seriously. They turn them over to HR and have HR try to fix the problem. So to me, it really is, uh, a mindset shift that we all own employee engagement. And that's why I titled this Every moment Matters. Because every moment matters. You have to be thinking about how you lead. And so the I m. Think, you know, it's hard for us to manage up with this topic, but the more we can bring it into our own areas and show our employees that they matter and work, then we can start to spread it that way.

Speaker B: Yeah. All right, well, thanks again, Lawrence. Um, question from, uh, Mohamed. And you mentioned that one of the challenges companies face is defining the problem. In other words, correct problem statements. Do you have any tips in the proper approach to define the problem? Any tips about defining the problem then? Second related question. Do, um, you have thoughts on how design thinking methodologies might be helpful?

Speaker A: Uh, so I can help you with the first one, proper approach to defining the problem. I am a firm believer, believer in making sure you have data in your problem statement and that your problem statement should define the gap between your current state and your future state. Then it's clear what you're trying to. What your gap is you're trying to close, what you're trying to work on. There should be some place in there, any scope. If you've got multiple areas of, uh, working on something. You know, we're just going to work on east wing first shift for right now, but that at least having that gap between current and future to me has been a game changer when it comes to problem definitions. And I don't know much about design thinking, so I can't answer that question.

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't have a good answer, uh, for that either. But yeah, the IDO design thinking methodology, um, I think there's a lot of overlap with Lean. This idea of going to the Gemba. They don't use that same language in, uh, design thinking, but going and observing, instead of assuming you know what your customers, uh, need. I mean, I think that would apply to even your employees. Don't assume you know what your employees need, but go and check that out. Right, Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Another question here related to your slide, uh, anchor in clarity. Um, Lawrence is asking, are you drawing a separation between leaders and leadership

Speaker A: on the effective communication pace? No, I am not. Leaders, uh, and leadership, uh, not drawing a separation there on the anchor and clarity side, specifically on that mindset, yes, there would be a separation because, uh, senior leadership, leadership is you talk about, I mean leadership being senior leadership, executive leadership. Right. They're the ones who are setting the mission, the vision, the values, devising the strategy that gets, you know, cascaded down hopefully through catch ball in a, uh, in a good lean organization that, that is their responsibility. But the uh, rest of the responsibility in, in anchoring a clarity is that we as leaders are continuing to support that and tying. Making sure that the work we do to. Ties back to those strategies, those visions and values. From a clarity perspective, yes, there is a distinction, but on the communication piece there is not.

Speaker B: Okay, thanks. There's another question that came in, uh, via the chat. Do you have thoughts on the book, the Progress Principle? Are you familiar with that book?

Speaker A: I am not familiar with that book, but it's on my list now.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, to Dee Olson, maybe you can put a little bit more in the chat or in the Q and A, uh, about that book, who the author is, what your thoughts are on that.

Speaker A: We do have another question in the Q and A mark from Mohamed.

Speaker B: Yes. Oh, we do. We have more questions. I had a couple questions I was going to ask, uh, as well. Mohamed's other question is how can you ensure that employees will talk about the problems without worrying about manager negative reaction first?

Speaker A: Because I want we should start with if we're a leader. If we're a leader with direct reports, we as leaders should be talking about the problems so our employees can talk. If you're an independent contributor on this call, then I would start with fixing. Talking about fixing what bugs? You just. Is there something that you can, that, that you can say this is a problem. Can I get help with it and start there, uh, at least be, you know, again, managing that, training them to see problems. Um, it might be like if you have, if you have a whole blue screen, can you go to your manager one on one and say, look, I know that our metrics are telling us we're. We're green, but, um, you know, what we're feeling on the floor is XYZ there. This is where it gets hard because when you have traditional managers who are maybe a little more concerned about their, what they, what it looks like to them or what they look like they're not willing to be hu. Lead with humility, to lead with courage, all of those things, it's going to be harder to. Than affect that, that change. So uh, maybe find if you can't, if your direct manager isn't open to it, find somebody in the organization who is because you there probably somebody out there a uh, leader, that is start talking to them and seeing how they can help you bridge that gap with your manager or at least to start having those conversations with you. On making problems visible.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think to your. To use your words about every moment mattering. And, you know, I think every, every moment, like you said, builds energy or, um, I'm paraphrasing. Builds energy or drains energy. I think every moment in the reaction when somebody points out a problem either reinforces that pointing out problems is welcomed and rewarded and it's a good thing here. Or the words or the body language that says the opposite. Right. You know, the, the huddle where somebody, you know, points out a problem and gets scoffed at.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: Not even the words. It's the, it's the noise. And I'm like, oh, do you expect that person to keep speaking up?

Speaker A: Exactly. I mean, it's, it's. There's so many opportunities where anything we do or say. Body language. I've always been told my body language. I'm not a poker player. Me.

Speaker B: Uh, me neither.

Speaker A: Language gives away way too much. Right. As a leader, I had to be very careful about not rolling my eyes in certain meetings.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But, yeah, it's really just, you know, what can you do in your own realm of control to start making, having these behavior changes and implementing a place where people feel comfortable and safe.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, we got a little bit of follow up here, uh, in the, in the chat about the book, the Progress Principle. Dan, uh, Pink. I am familiar with, uh, Dan Pink's work. He endorses, uh, this book, the Progress Principle. Uh, he calls it one of the most evidence based and humane books ever written, uh, about work. So it's about motivation. So I can see that's why Dan Pink also wrote a great book on motivation, intrinsic motivation, called Drive. It, um, says the answer from the book what motivates people, it's not perks or pressure or grand gestures. It's progress making progress in meaningful work. Small wins. I mean, that. These sound like. Yeah, that does. I can see why that book came to mind because it sounds similar to what you're talking about today. It's not the big inspirational speech that quote unquote, that motivates, but it's these moments that get people participating and keep them participating. What else would you add about that? Lay around that word motivation and this approach to leadership.

Speaker A: Ooh, what would I add to that? Yeah. One thing we haven't talked about today is, is recognition and celebration. Right. I mean, that's a big motivator. And that's something anybody can do. Anytime you're working with a team or, you know, or, or working with somebody and they do, they, they do something, that's great. And maybe they, they identified a problem, maybe they tried to solve a problem. Just even recognizing them for doing that and encouraging that behavior is huge. It's so people want to know that their opinion, their thoughts matter to people. And even if you just say, hey, Anne, thanks so much for providing that idea, that's a great idea, let's see if we can make that work. You don't even have to say you're going to do it. Just, great idea. Let's see what we can do. Or do you have an idea of how you could fix that? Do you have an idea of how you would implement that? It's so it goes those small, that small gratitude, that small recognition goes. Can go. So go far.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean the phrase, I guess it rolls off the tongue better when people talk about rewards and recognition. But I think too, you know, there's too much emphasis and I think Dan Pink would make this point that extrinsic motivation works. The problem is the side effects. And one of those side effects can be the extrinsic motivation, meaning the reward replaces the intrinsic motivation. Where I've seen a lot of cases where, uh, recognition with, with no money associated, it's not being cheap. It's, it's, it's meaningful.

Speaker A: Right. It's. And then going back to what I talked about today, right, it's my company's employee centric leadership. Uh, it's not about pizza and perks. Right. You get your engaged employees by treating them with respect, by, by creating an area environment, uh, of trust and psychological safety. Right. All of those things. Giving them an opportunity to fix what bugs them. It's that stuff that keeps people engaged.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: More than the rewards.

Speaker B: Yeah. And, and, and that creates, you know, that positive reinforcement. Um, you know, what, what bugs us? You know, thinking back to your slide about what a lot of people would call the balance scorecard, what bugs us, what bugs me as an employee very well could be related to safety, quality, you know, taking better care of the customer. And you know, I find that, that, uh, to be really, really motivating and, and, and tapping into that leads to financial performance. I mean, I'm curious. I see you nodding your head, let me get out of the way. And what you, you know, I'm sure you've got thoughts on that of where, you know, um, it's important to tap into what matters?

Speaker A: Yeah, well it, I just am agreeing because you know, so often we think. I go back to my scissor comment, right. One of the ideas that somebody, when early on when I was doing good idea programs was we need scissors at every machine because we're cutting labels. Right. And that might not seem like it's going to impact your financials, but it will because you're going to produce more. If they're staying at their machine with a pair of scissors. Right. Buy them a 5 to 5, 5 cent pair of scissors, you're going to reap the benefits. It's hard to sometimes see the impact that the changes can have directly on those key uh, metrics and that's why it's so hard when organizations say all right, the process improvement team, the lead team, your job is to cut costs and we want an ROI on everything you do. Because an ROI on scissors at a machine isn't, it's, you're not going to see it immediately but the more of those you do, you will see that. So uh, it's, it's important to make sure that we're keep, you know, not realizing every little thing we do is going to have a direct impact on our metrics. But all of those small incremental improvements will, looking at all that low hanging fruit will create an opportunity for those metrics.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's funny, nobody ever asked to calculate the ROI on calculating the roi. It's just assumed of like well you have to like. Well you don't. I mean I, I've seen a lot of examples where certainly you can capture the situations where there is a clear and non, uh, controversial cost savings or revenue benefit. Right.

Speaker A: Absolutely you can but you don't, you don't always have to and you shouldn't always have to.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, please.

Speaker A: The, the idea system, when you have idea systems that go into managers approvals is they're going to look for that roi. They're going to see what's best, what's going to get them metrics to their metric when the end of the day is you're going to have your employee be safer and happier if you invest in them with their ideas. So it's such a near and dear to me.

Speaker B: Yeah. And tapping into that might make them more amenable to uh, a more direct request to help us save money.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Edge, put in the comments here. What's the ROI of the parking lot?

Speaker A: A great one Ed. I don't want to steal that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well Anna, I'm going to ask, uh, there's One other question I was going to ask. Um, you talk about that shift in leadership styles from being the boss, the commander to being a coach. You know, the conundrum I've, I've seen and struggled with is we're trying to influence people who have often risen through the ranks by being a boss. And it's just, it's, it's tough to ask somebody to consider shifting away from the thing that made them successful. I'm wondering your thoughts on, on that.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you, uh, I've been a, uh, I was a supervisor, then I was promoted to a manager and then I was promoted to director and now I'm vice president. And you're asking me to, to walk away from my traditional management style, Mark? Is that what you're asking me to do?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Easy right? Am right.

Speaker A: You know, that's. I, if I came in and started talking to a vice president that you need to shift from, from being traditional manager to more uh, of a coach and a people person, I, uh, would probably be met ah with a little bit of resistance. Finding. I will find the person who is open to that and work with them and then bring that other person on. I'm not gonna, I, I'm not gonna fight my battles with people that I know are difficult. Um, but I think if that person, you know, the more people are open to learning and growing in their own space, if they can see where their limitations are, then they're going to be willing to change and may, may see maybe, maybe employee engagement is a hot topic. Maybe their boss is coming down and saying you've got to fix your employee engagement. Maybe their boss is coming down. You need to make sure your improvement efforts are more successful and they want to really be open to that. That's when somebody can come in, even a peer to peer and saying here's, here's an opportunity for that. Here's shifting from. Here's what I've seen you doing that's not working. Uh, maybe. Have you tried this? But it's gotta be because they've gotta be open to wanting their own change and their own uh. Right. And so anybody on this call is probably open to learning and trying new things and wanting to learn. So maybe there's something that came out of today that they can take with them. But there are definitely people that have been raised up, uh, and it's there. They're not going to change. But I don't think that's true of everybody. I think everybody's got a piece of them that wants to. They just have to find that reason for changing what's in it for them. Right. We all have that in change manner, what's in it for them to change. If you can nail that what's in it for them, you'll have a better chance of getting them to be open to shift.

Speaker B: All right, well, again, Anne Frewen, uh, our presenter today, thank you for, uh, the presentation. Thank you for doing the Q and A. Uh, I threw one thing at you here. Um, is there something that you cut for time that you want to maybe bring up and leave us with here? I'm sure there, there were a lot of good thoughts that you sort of skipped in the interest of time.

Speaker A: I did skip quite a bit, actually. I realized as I'm sitting here thinking I should have said that there's one thing that gets me going back to the trust piece. Uh, one of the being present. Leave you with this. If you're at a daily management huddle or in any meeting. Being present. Being present. Don't be on your phone, don't be on your laptop. Be present. Listen, that's a small behavior we can all change. We're all guilty of it, but it sends volumes of messages to the employees when we are not paying attention. So thank you all very much. I'm open to connecting and continuing this conversation with anybody who would like to offline.

Speaker B: All right, well, thank you. Yeah, sure thing. Thank you, Anne. Um, thank you everybody who joined in and participated. Um, thanks everybody for your questions and your participation in the chat. So please do, uh, join us for, uh, future webinars. We'll email you about those and, uh, we will see you, as they say at Kynexis, we will see you, Kai, next time. I almost forget to say that. Not next time. Uh, all right, thanks again, Anne.

Speaker A: Thank you. Take care.