Structural Readiness and Real Change with Kirk Harper

Dan Swartwout: Today we are lucky enough to be joined by Kirk Harper. Kirk is the author of the book on successful transformation. A Long time practitioner in the world of Operational excellence and continuous Improvement. Kirk, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.

Kirk Harper: Dank. Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure.

Dan Swartwout: Uh, the pleasure is all mine. We are excited to have you here today. We've talked about a little bit before today's podcast and I've had the chance to, to look at your book and look at some of the other things you're involved in. So I am really excited about this conversation today. Before we dive in, could you just give us a little bit of background about who you are and all of your experiences?

Kirk Harper: All of my experiences. You don't really want to go there. But, uh, I started off doing my, I started off doing my lean work, um, with um, automotive tier one suppliers. Um, I got, uh, educated by the Kaizen Institute of America, um, and went on to become one of the, uh, three facilitators in the plant of continuous improvement. Um, working for that company taught me an awful lot and also give me a five year, uh, indoctrination into lean manufacturing and continuous improvement. Um, I look back on those days with great fondness, um, and learned an amazing amount from uh, my then mentor, um, who's gone on to bigger and better things of himself. So, uh, that was a really strong foundational start. Uh, I went off from there into consulting because I found a natural flair to actually educate others and show others how to do what I'd been taught to do. Um, and it felt quite naturally to me to be able to pass that on to other people. It felt important to me as well. Um, the ability to actively want to show people how it can be done. Uh, I've seen so many how it shouldn't be done. I wanted to enlighten people on how it could be done and just nudge them in the right direction when they started to wander off track a little bit and move them forward. I've worked in defense. I've worked in, um, secret, um, bases. I worked in pharmaceuticals. I worked in fast moving consumer goods. I've worked in yellow goods as well, which is, um, off road vehicles. So the work that can be done by a competent practitioner can span any industry really. I'm getting to, because, uh, I see so many times must have this experience, must have that experience, must have the other experience. You don't need that level of experience to understand how to fix something. Once you know it's broke, you can Recognize it's broke and get on with it straight away.

Dan Swartwout: Kirk, one of the things I know you are most interested in is the culture of an organization and an organization being ready culturally to implement change. So what first convinced you that something deeper than tools and methods was broken in the way organizations do transformation? Because people talk about tools, people talk about methods, but if you implement the tools and methods and you don't have the right mindset of your organization, it probably won't work, right?

Kirk Harper: Probably won't, no. Um, one of the things I noticed on my uh, experience of why it wasn't working was the fact that the engagement wasn't there and people weren't safe to us, the dangerous questions, um, they could ask the question, but very quickly it became obvious that that wasn't the right question to ask. So they didn't feel particularly safe or um, empowered to ask those questions of their teams and their leadership. Because sometimes leaders get it wrong. Um, and those that put their hands up and say, okay, I've got that wrong, guys are the ones that generally find are more successful in the transformation itself. So fundamentally it's the ability to trust what the leadership are going to do. And that trust in the leadership is then a, uh, two way street because the leadership can trust what's being given to them. Um, and I have actually um, planted seeds. I've told leaders that I'm going to send up a disruptive message, um, that isn't actually factual, but see how it gets, um, disseminated to them. After all the filtration that it goes through, uh, and how long it takes, um, it's surprising how gentle that message becomes by the time it gets to the leadership, uh, that is actually aimed at, and they turn around and say, I did not believe that would ever happen in this organization. And that's a bit of an eye opener for them as well.

Dan Swartwout: I imagine it is. And that's the second time recently I've heard of that approach. Can you give an example of some type of false or misleading information that you wanted to spread and what it ended up with when the leaders finally heard it?

Kirk Harper: Um, one instance I used um, the data surrounding a decision that was made at the top level. Um, I manipulated it a lot, um, and presented it to somebody who should have been able to share that information quite easily with the leadership. Um, I told the leadership what I was going to do. The data was good, but they were fed in the first place. But I was going to teach, show this person that the data that they fed was wrong not to Catch them out, just to see how soft the message became as it went to the top. And it became very, very soft. And it was like, well, it might have made a bit of an error, slight marginal error. Um, you might want to reevaluate that sort of message that actually got through rather than, I've dropped one. We're not, we're not going to, we're not going to recover this. We're in a mess. I'm really sorry. And that sort of thing that exposes an awful lot of. Care and consideration, uh, on my part for the person I'm disseminating the information to, but also for the, um, person who's actually trying to run that information of the chain command to get to the leader. Um, they are naturally trying to limit the damage, not just for them, but just for the business as well. Uh, and sometimes that isn't the right thing to do. So if I can give somebody some really bad information and that goes straight to the leadership, I know that that business will succeed at the transformation because that pain is felt straight away, immediately. There's no hiding it.

Dan Swartwout: You've said, Kirk, that the same approaches keep producing the same outcomes. What patterns do you see that make different organizations end up with the same maybe disappointing results?

Kirk Harper: Um, the safety aspect of being able to say what you kept, what you want to say, that's fundamental. If you can't actually tell your bosses, your leaders, your line leaders, your managers, exactly what's going wrong in a clear, concise way, that message will never get to the right place. If that confidence is there, if that safety is there, they feel that, uh, the business will support them, then that message will fly straight through the business really quickly and they will feel supported. If they feel supported, the messages will work. If they don't feel supported, or if they feel judged just by mentioning it, it will collapse very, very quickly.

Dan Swartwout: So your book, the book on successful transformation, which is available on Amazon, you put structural readiness at the center of the book and the core message. How do you explain structural readiness in simple terms to lean and OP X leaders? They understand, they hear this term, and you just have to sell it to them quickly. What do you say?

Kirk Harper: Family business withstand, um, the challenges that it's about to undergo? Is it ready to for structural change? And what will happen once that structural change starts to the structure itself? Will it return back to its original programming or will it allow the change to happen? Because if the change is allowed to happen, the structure will modify to suit the new world order. If the structure isn't Ready? It will stay exactly as it was. And no matter how much you bang on the wall, bang on the floor, bang on the table, it will not change the structure of the business.

Dan Swartwout: One of the things I like about your book is that you actually set up structural readiness as almost a mathematical equation. Could you explain that to me and how you came up with that, that structural readiness equals psychological safety plus emotional safety plus the cultural foundation times the multiplier. And can you explain the multiplier as well too, please?

Kirk Harper: Yeah, uh, that's the uh, RPEC times pull, um, mathematical equation you're talking about. Um, the fault is a multiplier. When all of those systems align, you'll automatically find, without realizing it, that people automatically start to wanting more information, to learn more, to do more, to help more they want. They actually start pulling for better information, for upskilling, for retraining, to do whatever they can do to help the business become more and more successful. It doesn't, it stops being, becoming a transformation moment, it becomes a transformation engine. And people then go on a journey because as soon as that transformation they think is finished, they've just started on the journey. And with the pull that is the multiplier, that everybody in the business is aligned and wants to do more and carry on doing more. And they don't really know how to turn it off then. So that's where, that's where the Japanese continuous improvement did so well. They just wanted, they had the structure there to want to be, be better than themselves. And that, uh, is an amazing sight to see. And I've only seen it done twice.

Dan Swartwout: Twice you say?

Kirk Harper: Yeah.

Dan Swartwout: Tell me more about those.

Kirk Harper: Well, the first one was when I was being trained, that actually happened there. Um, and the second time was at, uh, a company that has now gone bump, um, because they were taken over by somebody who didn't care about profits over, um, culture. So I'm not going to mention that company too much, but I've seen it work twice. And that is, um, where my book started. Um, I thought, right, I've got to capture this now. This is how it works. This is how it doesn't work. And the book is a result of 30 odd years of doing what I do and two years of thinking about how I do what I do, um, putting that to into black and white.

Dan Swartwout: Kirk, we will have information about your book and how people can get it in the show notes. The subtitle of your book is the Governance of Integrity under Pressure. What does integrity under pressure look like in a real transformation? And why is that a structural issue and not just a culture or ethics issue?

Kirk Harper: If the business isn't prepared to, uh, uh, ask and answer the tough questions, it no longer leads to governance. It's the structure itself. Um, the governance is there to provide some guide rails. But if the structure isn't there to actually address the fact that people are going to ask tough questions, that starts wandering away from the core ethos of the transformation. The transformation will fail. So when it's, when it's structured correctly and put under pressure, it is quite resilient. If it's structured incorrectly and put under

Dan Swartwout: pressure, it will collapse in a really big transformation. Kirk so we're talking about a big transformation that an organization is undergoing. What usually happens, in your view, when the pressure really goes up? How do people and structures start to behave when that pressure is building?

Kirk Harper: Uh, it reverts back to safety. They know what they know. They know what is safe. They don't say but them. It's almost, um, self preservation. Uh, it declines to, um, they know what actions are not threatening. They know what actions don't lose them, their job. They know what actions are safe. Uh, so when the pressure starts coming along and they start feeling pressurized, if the culture isn't there, if they don't feel psychologically or emotionally safe, they will revert back to what they know.

Dan Swartwout: I want to talk a little bit about ixform, and that comes from the structural readiness model in your book. Can you explain just a little bit about what IX form is? And am I saying that right? Ix form?

Kirk Harper: No, it's I transform.

Dan Swartwout: I transform. Okay, great. Thank you.

Kirk Harper: Yeah. Uh, iTransform is a gate methodology, um, with some, uh, seven categories of questions. The seven category of questions you don't get to see unless you've answered the first six reasonably correctly. Um, the seventh one is about data and its integrity. But the first six categories of questions challenge a company's thinking on where they think they are. Uh, the actual, uh, itransform methodology can be taken by a single exec, uh, but realistically, it's designed for the board to be taken through with a mentor or a coach, uh, to help them understand better themselves what the questions are alluding to. There's no explanation of the questions, but the scoring has to be done in a black and white environment. There's no gray area with the iTransform Gateway, but if it, if it gives one or three results, that's the result you get. That's the result you get to live with. It's either a stop, a, uh, proceed or proceed with caution. So if you get a stop result from your itransform, uh, assessment, realistically, if you do try and go through a transformation, there's a high likelihood it will fail because you are not structurally ready for those tough questions. There's very little in the way of trust. There's very little in the way of transparency. There's very little in the. Possibly very little in the way of um, open communications amongst the entire team. So that's where several of the areas can fall over. They can cause it to go, not quite proceed, but it can cause it to go to do not immediately have Pasco, do not collect £200. Um, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a stop. A uh, stop condition can, um, be remediated. Um, but you do not do the transformation is the suggestion from the itransform assessment.

Dan Swartwout: But Kirk, um, what about stabilize? How does that work in the itransform gate? What does that mean?

Kirk Harper: Uh, that means there's some areas where you're not quite as um, advanced as you'd like to be or need to be to go to a proceed, uh, condition. Um, so the I do AI suite is then rolled out to the entire workforce that's going to be involved in the transformation. And the IDO AI is an alignment engine. So everybody signs up to it. Um, there's the ability for the management team to oversee exactly what's going on. They get, um, information about where alignments are. Good, strong, week poor, um, across the entire um, facility. What does also happen when somebody signs up to it? It's called I do AI uh for a reason. Because when they sign up to it, it transforms to we do AI so immediately they feel like they're involved in something. And that is scheduled to run for three months. Because the brain needs three months worth of repetition to start picking up a habit and making a habit, rather than just two or three weeks or a couple of visits. But the, uh, visitation by the people is measured and quantified. And if somebody's not doing it, some pressure can be brought to, uh, bear on those people. You've got to do it. It's part of what we do our business. So we're trying to everybody get on the same page and move forward. Um, those that aren't, I'll leave that up to the management to take care of. Those that are great, but they can only proceed at a certain pace. They can't race ahead of everybody else because at the end of the day it's an alignment engine. So you've got some people that are very quick, they could potentially race ahead. You've got others that aren't quite so quick. They'll feel left behind. So everybody proceeds forward at the same pace. Um, at the end of the three months, they then do another itransform assessment, another gateway. If they then get to proceed, great. If they stabilize again, they've got to go through it again. But once they get to proceed, the uh, wedo AI becomes, then the wedo AI, um, engine keeps them on track, constantly monitoring them through the transformation cell, through the evolution and through up until they get to the pull condition, which under that circumstance, you just give the horse's head and let it go. Take a step back and look in awe at what you've created.

Dan Swartwout: That's awesome. And Kirk, I want to point out, I did not mention that you are in the United Kingdom and you, um, made a statement a little while ago where you referenced Monopoly and you said, do not pass go, do not collect 200 pounds. Uh, clearly in the United States we say do not pass go, do not collect 200. So I'm kind of curious, what other differences are there in, in Monopoly in the United Kingdom?

Kirk Harper: What's, what's, all the streets are different.

Dan Swartwout: What's, what are some of the streets?

Kirk Harper: Uh, Trafalgar Road, uh, Old Kent Road, New Old street, uh, the, the railway stations are all different names. Um, they're British based. Uh, so it's, it's quite a, quite a different game to the American version, which has got Wall street and Times Square and all that sort of stuff on it.

Dan Swartwout: So, yeah, we'll get back to continuous improvement. And I, uh, just thank you, I think, thank you for that little sidetrack right there. One of the things about I transformed is that being strong in most areas does not cancel out one fragile area. Right. You got to be strong in all the areas.

Kirk Harper: Yes.

Dan Swartwout: Why did you design it that way? And how do leaders sometimes react when it says do not proceed or stabilize? Are they, uh, are they a little

Kirk Harper: confused, to be honest.

Dan Swartwout: Right.

Kirk Harper: Because in their mind their business is doing really well. Um, but then they get this, uh, stabilizer or stop, and they go, well, good in everything apart from that. Well, yeah, that's, that's a key aspect. You've got to be good in everything or at least not bad in that things. If you're not bad in that thing, you'll get a, uh, stabilized. But being as though you're really not good at it, it's not a good precursor to begin a transformation. There's something fundamentally holding you back and you need to look at yourselves as a business and be honest about yourselves. You, we can, we can remediate, we can do stuff, but you are not really ready to do a transformation. We can help with that, but you're not fundamentally ready. So any money that you put into that 10 million dollar for your um, main customers ears, $10 million transformation is $10 million down a pan because it ain't going to work.

Dan Swartwout: Kirk, when an organization gets stabilized first or do not proceed, what does the 90 day alignment work actually look like? And then how is the behavior changed when the next wave of pressure hits after that three months, the iTransforms uh,

Kirk Harper: platform actually begins the training on day one. As you scroll now, it begins the training and the alignment. It starts asking almost pointed questions, steering people to the right answer. Um, it gives them um, indications of where they should be going. It helps them rethink their answers, um, once they've made possibly the wrong ones. And it gives them a bit of a nudge in the right direction or um, over the course of three months. By the end of the three months they're also learning how to use AI tools, believe it or not, which is why it's called I Do AI. They're learning how to use AI tools in their work. So they're distracted by learning that. By the time they finish learning that, they understand that they've learned something and it's something quite valuable to them. They hold on to that. But what I've also been doing is being realigned on their thought process on um, okay, I like this. I want to get, do some more. That's where the pool starts. So they want to do more, they want to develop, they want to learn more. That's, that's how it all works ultimately.

Dan Swartwout: And so then they're ready for the pressure that comes after that period. They, they're able to adapt and maintain the structure that's in place. Correct?

Kirk Harper: Yes. But they're also um, guardrailed by uh, wedo I as well, which is still, still um, helping them maintain the, the uh, cadence of the meetings, the cadence of the um, challenges and still distracting them away from what is actually happening around them. And to them, the whole team are being realigned en masse. And rather than just sending the managers off to get realignments and a bit of training and a bit of two weeks away from the workplace, the whole team is going through it, even the managers, um, and the board members. So it helps everybody talk exactly the same language at exactly the same pace with exactly the same cadence.

Dan Swartwout: Kirk, can you walk us through a transformation that was structurally unsafe at the start? Tell us what you saw, what changed and what the outcome was after going through the process, um,

Kirk Harper: one of the first things you notice is the uh, willingness to go through the uh, itransform gateway, um, and do the assessment because they believe they're in a good place. Um, when they get a stop or um, stabilize condition, it causes a bit of a pause in the room. Um, and at that point I just walk away. I say, right, there's your result. I'm going to leave now. You've got some things to talk about. Um, then they reach out to me generally, um, within the next 24 hours and say, right, what can we do? We want. We need. We need to transform before falling behind. We need to transform. Okay, well, okay, you now need to look at yourselves honestly and start asking some tough questions and answering some tough questions because, uh, if you're not going to be honest with yourself, I can't be honest with you either. Um, the realignment happens sometimes. Ah, the cost of some of the board members, to be fair, um, they. They've been indoctrinated into that role and uh, they are stuck in their ways. They can be very, very difficult to realign. Uh, but that does come out quite quickly, um, at the start of the um, itransform, um, assessment. Um, but as an outside observer, I can see quite clearly. But people inside a forest can't see the forest for the trees, so people inside don't see what's broke. People outside can. So, um, that's um, highlighted in a professional, ah, way. Uh, and the team has to deal with that before anything else happens because that is ah, a typical constraint and a typical, um, red flag for anybody even trying to do a transformation. There's people there that will fundamentally push back and undermine it and go out of the way to do it. So that's highlighted and uh, comes out quite clearly, um, during the itransform. And the ide also, uh, brings out some naysayers, shall we say, uh, people who are, uh, actively rowing in the opposite direction, uh, for want of a better description. Um, they are again managed one way or the other. Nothing to do with me. They're just dealt with by the business. Um, some of them stay, some of them go. It's down to their own personal, um, preferences within the business and to the business themselves. Um, ultimately the alignment Happens quite subtly, but it does happen. You start seeing people being happy coming to work. You start seeing people laughing and joking and smiling and singing as they're walking through the office or down to the shop floor. It's a good place to be, it's a happy place to be. And the feel in the environment itself is completely different. Everybody's far more upbeat, Everybody wants to talk to everybody else. Everybody wants to help. Not just me, but the people around them too, because they're all on the same journey at the same time. They've just done the same bloody test that they've done. And wow, this is how I did it. This is how I did. And uh, they helping each other. And the change in the room is stunning to watch. It isn't overnight, but you know when it happened, you can tell and it gives you such an amazing feeling. And the outcome is a, uh, transformation that not just holds, they accelerate. That's the part that it's very, very difficult unless you've actually experienced that. That's difficult to quantify. It's like uh, Neil Armstrong telling you what it's like to do a spacewalk. Unless you've been there, you've got no frame of reference. It's just that difficult.

Dan Swartwout: Neil Armstrong from right here in the state of Ohio, wapakoneta, about maybe 70 or 80 minutes from where I am recording right now. Um, Kirk, I want to ask you about, once readiness is established and the Ascend transformation methodology, assess, strengthen, cultivate, enable, navigate and develop. Can you explain a little more about that and tell us what that is all about?

Kirk Harper: Um, fundamentally that came about from a, um, top to bottom, bottom to top, right to left, left to right methodology because an awful lot of transformation happens top to bottom. So the, the leaders get this, this great idea. We're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to spend this, this much money and we're going to get this methodology. It's going to finish by here. So, uh, it's a right to left methodology as well. So it's the top, right to bottom left. This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it. This is what it's going to finish. And we're starting now. Okay. And the people have been consulted when that they're happy to do this, they're comfortable to do this. Not really, because they have no idea what's coming. So there's no consultation, there's no safety, there's no anything involving the people who actually Going to have to do this transformation with the business, not for the business, with the business. So my methodology goes from the bottom left to the top right in an ascent. So you get the foundations right, you get the people happy, you get the people comfortable with where they are, you get them able, empower them to pull the and on cord to stop the line, to say, right, this is not working. Something's fundamentally wrong. Put the ownership with them because they're at the pointy end of the stick, allow them to make that decision rather than wait for the information to travel up to the senior management team, which can take days or weeks or months, that there's something fundamentally wrong. Do it the way other successful companies have done it. One I name quite easily is Toyota, one of the m most successful transformation companies in the world. They allowed the people at, uh, the pointy end of the stick to make the decision, stop the line. This isn't right. You start from that foundation and you will very, very often, often succeed in a very successful transformation. That's where the send comes in and make sure that that happens. Those people are, uh, allowed to make that question, to make that decision and to make that choice.

Dan Swartwout: It seems like one of the fundamental themes in continuous improvement, as I talk to all sorts of practitioners, academics, is that nobody understands the work that's being done quite like the people who are actually doing the work. And it sounds like that's a lot of the core of what you're saying as well, right?

Kirk Harper: Pretty much, yeah. You've, uh, got to involve the people. People are key to any successful transformation. And if they're not involved, you might as well not spend the money.

Dan Swartwout: I like that. That was short and sweet, Kirk. And so is this short break. Moorsteam's enterprise process improvement platform includes the tools, training and software you need to transform your organization into a problem solving powerhouse. Join the Ranks of Fortune 500 companies that trust More Steam for their enterprise process improvement. Visit Moresteam.com to learn more. Also, I want to take just a moment to thank you for listening to Quality Time with More Steam. You can email the show@quality timeoresteam.com and if you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast service. And now back to my conversation with Kirk Harper. For Lean and OPEX leaders, what are, uh, one or two early warning signs that their system just isn't safe for the level of change they're planning? They're just talking about change, they're thinking about change. How can we do change and before they even put any methodology in place, what are some things that they can look for to see? Whoa, we're just not there yet, we're not ready. What can they see out there? As they go and observe people doing

Kirk Harper: the work, Watch what answers, um, people get to their questions.

Dan Swartwout: Okay?

Kirk Harper: If the questions that people asking are high risk questions and they get straight answers, you're in a good place. If they're high risk questions or even low risk questions that get, uh, obfuscated or dismissed or ignored, you're not in a good place.

Dan Swartwout: If one of these OPEX leaders wants to move the conversation from tools and activity to what sits underneath, what's one practical step that they could take in the next 30 days? Something they could do right away to help prepare their culture to be ready for change.

Kirk Harper: Ask the people what they want. What can I do for you today? Make it personal, make it at their level, make it important to them. Everything else flows from that. If they feel evolved, if they feel consulted, if they feel part of the M mechanism that they're about to embark on as an entire workforce, they will move heaven and earth, uh, to help. People are, uh, often classed as part of the problem. They're never part of the problem, and more often they're not part of the solution. But the solution isn't looked at in that way.

Dan Swartwout: Kirk, once again, that was fantastically put.

Kirk Harper: Another sound bite.

Dan Swartwout: That was fantastic. If you could rewrite how leaders define success at the very start of a transformation, what would that definition be and how would it change their decision to proceed or not?

Kirk Harper: Um, they need to ask themselves the question, are they structurally ready to be put under pressure as a business? Because if they're put under pressure and they're honest to themselves, they can, um, navigate the transformation. If they're not structurally ready and they're not honest to themselves, when the tough questions come, they will revert back to safety.

Dan Swartwout: Kirk, I would like to change directions for just a little bit and I appreciate all of your fantastic answers and this has been a great conversation, very enlightening, but I want to change direction just a little bit. For listeners who haven't seen it, what is NeuroSync Technologies? And in simple terms, what are you trying to do with that company? Because I find this fascinating. So could you tell us a little bit about this?

Kirk Harper: Kirk? NeuroSync Technologies, uh, in a nutshell, is fundamentally a company that uses, uh, outside the box thinking to come up with outside the box solutions to outside the box challenges. One of the current challenges that neurosync is working with at the moment is the um, last year's 38 million tonsile GASSM inundation in the Atlantic, uh, which is already 31% bigger this year, which is already hitting the Eastern seaboard of the States, um, and Mexico and also South America. Um, we've come up with a potential solution to not only stop it landing and causing a nasty smell, but um, turn it into something very valuable for the planet, the entire planet. So we don't just um, stop it getting on uh, Florida's beaches. We actually help it um, create forestation in the Sahel, uh, we actually help create fuel in the Caribbean. We actually create water for injections throughout the developing world. We actually create biofuel in West Africa. Those are all potential outputs from that. Also, um, anti cancer potential, uh, anti aging potential and restorative health potential as well, including neurodegenerative um, ailments.

Dan Swartwout: So there's a lot going on with that and of course I will have some information about that in the show notes as well. How do the marine and Environmental projects at NeuroSync connect back to your core ideas about structural readiness, transformation and operational excellence? Or do you see this as just a completely different type of experiment altogether?

Kirk Harper: No, it comes from uh, systemic thinking. Everything starts at systemic thinking and taking the bigger picture, taking a step back, what is the actual root cause? Break down the challenge to its most fundamental level and then go from there with a potential solution, an engineering solution. Um, one of the slightly off the wall things I came up with was um, how to prevent people dying in combat. Um, as a plumber, because I've been a plumber in my past life, um, if I've got an issue with a water leak on a system, I've turned the pump off. Fundamental just turn the pump off, fix it in a reasonably pressure free environment, turn the pump back on, off you go. So one of my solutions was to um, fundamentally um, if a soldier gets shot and suffers a non compressible hemorrhage somewhere where you can't squeeze and stop it bleeding, stop his heart basically technically kill the soldier. So you stop his heart, stop him beating chemically that stops him bleeding out. However, the brain is very susceptible to bleeding blood. So that is continued with um, perfect carbon, um, flowing around his brain and his blood as well. So perfusion, superfly carbon and blood which is oxygenated at the same time as it's flowing through him, allowing um, him more and more time to get back to um, medical aid, uh, theaters where they can work in a blood Free environment, fix whatever, whatever's busted and then turn the pump back on properly so they give another drug, start the heart. He's back and running again. That's just one of the ways, I think, outside the box.

Dan Swartwout: Well, that is definitely outside the box. Thinking, um, that is, yeah, I gotta tell you, it's some interesting stuff you're working on. What's next, what are some of the next steps?

Kirk Harper: Uh, for me, um, if I can develop the, um, Sargassum solution to its fullest extent, um, it will become a world changing platform. Uh, I don't mean that lightly because, uh, the amount of, um, sargassum that is currently in the sea is being fed by the global warming. The, um, poles are being melted by global warming. If we can start putting more trees into the deserts, if we can start taking some of the Sargassum out of the sea, creating more water from, uh, desalination, we're going to lower the sea levels. Not massively, just a little bit, but we can pour thousands and thousands of gallons into the desert without even noticing. So we can do that quite easily. That then creates what's called a river in the sky. So, um, evaporation causes massive amounts of water to be flown in the sky, causing cloud cover, causing shade, reducing the temperatures back down to something near normal. In a generation, potentially, we could be looking at lower temperatures than we are today. So overall, if there's thousands of these little, um, bio farms going on, but neurosync have created, um, we could definitely be looking at global, uh, recovery. That's where my heads are.

Dan Swartwout: You've got some big ideas, some big visions, Kirk.

Kirk Harper: Hell yeah.

Dan Swartwout: This has been absolutely tremendous. Thank you so much for taking the time. I, uh, reached out to you because you left a comment on a More steam post on LinkedIn and I checked you out and I said, this is a really interesting guy. And I reached out of the blue and said, I think you would be a fantastic guest on the show. So I appreciate you taking a chance on me, taking a chance on the podcast and sharing your expertise with our audience. This has been fascinating and really, really enlightening. So thank you so much, Kirk.

Kirk Harper: Thank you so much, Dan. And thank you to the audience for having the patience to listen this long. Maybe they're throwing things at the screen as they're listening now. What does he know?

Dan Swartwout: Take care everybody.

Kirk Harper: Have a good day. Uh, from England.

Dan Swartwout: We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Quality Time with More Steam. Thanks again.