The Current State of Continuous Improvement with Ken Robinette

Dan Swartwout: Today we are once again lucky enough to be joined by Moore steam's Vice President of Business Development, Ken Robinette. Ken, welcome back to the program.

Ken Robinette: Great to see you, Dan. How have things been?

Dan Swartwout: Things have been fantastic. The show has been doing great. I want to get started, Ken, by talking about you've been at the ASQ World conference in Orlando and the Iise Healthcare conference this year. What's the conversation everyone keeps having? What's the topic that won't go away? I want to just really focus on the trends in continuous improvement and OPEX right now.

Ken Robinette: I think there's a couple of um, repeating themes at both of those conferences, uh, and it ties back to the discussion around AI. But what we see happening is in very large organizations, uh, the continuous improvement group, the quality teams, uh, there's a lot of movement out of centralized kind of defined, uh, structure into kind of decentralized, um, activity. And you know, I think the community has gone through uh, waves of are we, do we need to be centralized and focused? Are we decentralized and part of the business or part of the operating units? But uh, I think the difference now versus 10 or 15 years ago is that the middle management of all organizations, as technology has advanced, as information systems have advanced, uh, organizations are afflicted with busy. And when the middle management has got that one more thing, and that's either quality or continuous improvement, now it's just that one more thing. So I think the big challenge is folks are continually trying to figure out how do I manage all the tasks that I have to get done in a day. Administrative human tasks, uh, talent management tasks, plus improving the processes or solving the defect problems. So I think I've heard that uh, really for the last two years, uh, and I think as we continue through this disruption with technology, the middle of the organizations, uh, continue to get tasked with more and more and it makes it more difficult for them to actually uh, take a pause, ask inquisitive questions, follow some sort of improvement roadmap and really get to root cause. So I've heard a lot of that. Uh, and then the other, the other thing that I hear a lot of is we've got to go faster. And I think that's just because of that bandwidth issue that everyone's having. And then the second topic, and this has been around for as long as continuous improvement has been around, how do you get decision making all the way to the, to the, where the work is done, right? And so, but then once again, you know, if you've got machines that are Running faster and faster because you've got sensors and you've got robots. And now the operator who used to have a part move past them in two seconds, it's now moving past them in a half a second. How much time do they have to respond and see a defect before they have a lot of different parts that have made it through uh, the process? So I think that, that whether you're an operator being asked to do root cause or quick, quick uh, decision making, or you're in middle management being asked to put control, uh, mechanisms in place, the speed of business continues to accelerate and we haven't found exactly how to keep up. So I think that's what I've been hearing over the last couple of years.

Dan Swartwout: Ken, you've been quite the traveler as of late. Not only have you attended conferences, you've presented at conferences and you presented on game based learning at the Lean Six Sigma World Conference. Why has the field, do you think, been slow to embrace game based learning? And what does it take to get a skeptical organization to give it a try?

Ken Robinette: Right. So uh, I think tying back to the topic we just talked about, um, you know, if you think about a F1 driver or if you think about a race crew, or if you think about even college football, pro football.

Dan Swartwout: Now you're talking by language, Ken.

Ken Robinette: Right? You, you have time that is designed for you to be in simulation mode, for you to make mistakes and learn. And basically what, what I see happening in the field right now is we have some great products out there, we've got some, some great simulation tools. But it does take time to go through and do a whole day workshop, doing an inbox or a four day, uh, or four hour exercise in gridlock, or even if you're going in and using some of our case based simulations where you can practice, you've got to have the bandwidth to sit down and actually do it. And if you're a very busy middle manager or if you're a person that has uh, you know, production responsibilities, being able to get that two, three, four hours away to really focus and do cycles of learning, the bandwidth in the jobs just don't allow for it. So I think, you know, as, as organizations continue to try to look at how do we get better, some of it is you've got to make time for improvement to happen. You know, if you just took an F1 driver, took them um, out of the go karts where they learned how to race, uh, around and steer and threw them into a modern F1 car and had them go race, the results would not be that good. I mean, the time that they spend in a simulator versus the time they spend in the car, it's probably six or seven to one. They finish a race, they go back to the simulator, they make an adjustment to the car, they go back in the simulator. What we don't have in the, uh, process improvement world or the continuous improvement world is folks going in and redoing those simulations and saying, oh, I made that decision. What happened? How does that apply to what I did out on the floor and can I get better at it? And then the other thing that also happens today is folks don't get to do cycles of learning in unreal processes. We're very hesitant to give time in our processes to go experiment and learn. And so we only get one shot, and if we miss it, we throw up our hands and say, that didn't work. Let's try something different. So. Or we say, well, uh, I guess we can't solve that problem today. So, you know, not. Not going down the pessimist or negative path. But I think it just gets back to that. Being afflicted with busy. It goes right back into, we have enough time to practice, to actually go applying. And, uh, that's. That's my view on that.

Dan Swartwout: Dan, I want to talk about the practitioners and the OPEX leaders. You talk to everybody every single week. We've talked a little bit about this. Not having enough time, not having enough bandwidth. Beyond that, what are some of the bigger challenges they're facing right now? A people problem, a technology problem, or. Or something else entirely?

Ken Robinette: Uh, staffing comes up quite a bit. So, you know, if you think about the, um. And it's. It's not in the press as much as it used to be, but the. The workforce is aging, and you. You have people with years and years of experience and acquired knowledge and profound knowledge that are retiring and moving on. And we haven't necessarily had that apprenticeship program set up to where people were learning in the wings. It was like, you know what, Dan? You do a great job at podcasts. We don't need to have Dan Jr. Learning about podcasts. We got Dan. But the Dan says, you know what? Maybe I'm going to go do something else. And then organizations are in. In, uh, a bit of a scramble mode, and they're like. And then they realize, wow, I can't print these things out. You know, I can't hit the. I can't hit the 3D printer button. And Dan Jr just pops up. Uh, I can't Hit I can't make the, the Dan AI agent and all of a sudden it knows what Dan knows. So I, I think we're a little bit into this technology that we're just going to clone and create the, this, this knowledge back into organizations. And I think organizations are starting to see and whether it's a small organization, a large organization, a, a service organization, a manufacturing organization, I think all of them are in this kind of spot where really deep knowledge is walking out the door either through retirement or going to do something different and that pipeline of talent's not there to fill it. And uh, I don't think that's a new problem. I think that's a problem that's been around for a long time. I think technology has helped soften the blow a little bit. But we might be getting to a critical point where, you know, you just can't print these folks out. So, you know, we hear folks talking about, wow, my, um, master level folks are moving out the door. I probably need to get a few more. But we're not really getting past that discussion. You know, we, we, we have the discussion and it's like, okay, well when are we going to get started? Ah, uh, the budget's not there. Oh, we don't have time. Oh, we're too busy. Oh, this came up and so now we're just still talking about it. So that's kind of what I see, Dan. And you, uh, know I've got a, a small subset. We work with a lot of clients, but there's a lot of clients we don't work with. But I think all organizations in general are facing some of that. I mean, I was reading some articles in Bloomberg this week as we got ready to speak and it's funny, you know, I hear, I hear the folks at Amazon talking about calling out the middle of the organization and getting decision making down to the bottom of the organization. Uh, I hear some folks that are in some other startup type companies or technology companies saying we're going to have AI in the middle making all the decisions. And then we're going to have a handful of experts down where the work gets done, making the, making the decisions. You know, that's not all that different than what we used to talk about in Automotive 30 years ago where we said, you know, let's take a look at US Automotive. Oh, there's nine levels between the shop floor and the CEO. Oh, Toyota's got really higher quality.

Dan Swartwout: Wow.

Ken Robinette: There's only four levels between the shop floor and the CEOs. So we've been talking about levels in the organization and middle management. I think bank of America, the CEO of bank of America, is talking about that. He still has 13 levels between where the bank touches the customer and the top of the organization. So some of these things are not new. They've been around. They feel a little different now. Uh, but you know, how do we, how do we create that balance where folks can know what the work is, know what good looks like, know when something's out of condition and respond quicker to so that we don't have declines in either customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction. I mean the burnout rates and the turnover time, I mean, we used to talk about in manufacturing, if your turnover was over 5%, that was a really bad thing. Toyota was the benchmark. It was like under 2%. So think about that. If you're turning out 5, 10, 15% of your workforce a year, you're in constant training mode. You're not getting to advanced topics, you're just getting the basics. And uh, I think organizations are really feeling that right now. At the same time that we've decentralized CI, so the folks that are in CI also have other things bolted to them. I mean, I have several clients who, their title is VP of Engineering, Continuous Improvement and Quality. That used to be three hats. It's one hat now. So you know what happens. I mean, I mean people are working really hard, they're doing the best they can do, but it's three hats. So, um, you know, that's kind of, I think, a bit of the state

Dan Swartwout: of the state you've presented to the ASQ Columbus section on AI and process improvement. M. Morsteam has built AI into engine room with hexi and into the eLearning. When an OP X leader comes to you excited about AI, what do you tell them about it? What are the cautions that you have, the things that they should be excited about? What are those conversations like?

Ken Robinette: So, uh, in general, AI is really, really good at connecting words and themes. So, you know, there's these brainstorming sessions that happen and you know, as a, as a continuous improvement professional, early in a project you might have a brainstorming session. Then it might take you as the, the project leader or the mbb, uh, or whatever your title is. It might take you a long time to try to group things together. You're going through and doing that, that cognitive thing. AI does that really well. So AI can and should help organizations help performance, uh, process improvement professionals be able to do administrative things faster. So we ought to be able to get through some of the measure phases and the analyze phases quicker. Um, it can help you remember what you need to do in your statistical analysis so that you don't have to go back and clip, you know, flip through and maybe you tried the Google search. AI can be watching what you're doing and even be helping you say, well, maybe you should look at this. So it certainly has a role. Um, you know, it's not to be afraid of. Uh, but like anything, uh, that is digital or computer based taste, what you put into it directly affects what you put out of it. So if you don't spend the time to, to ask a good question or put it in a good prompt, you could get misinformation and then you could run and make decisions on misinformation which goes counter to anything we talk about in Lean and Six Sigma. So the, the, the advice is embrace it, use it, use it to make you more effective. The risk is don't just become lazy and hit the easy button and get misinformation out of it. You still gotta, you still gotta engage your brain to use it and go forward with it. So that's the, that's kind of the two takes I have on it. Um, you know, I'm not a, I'm not an expert. I use it probably two, three times a day, maybe four times a day. I've used it to help me with putting together uh, slides or report outs or cleaning up some data. Uh, in my sales role currently, I'll use it to talk about, uh, you know, who's putting job postings out that talk about Lean and Six Sigma. Because I'm trying to find companies that do what we do that I don't know about. So, uh, there's ways to use it to help you be more effective.

Dan Swartwout: I would also at this time tell our listeners to go back and listen. A few episodes ago we had Xander Hathaway from More Steam talk about AI encoding. So go back and listen to that episode. After you listen to this episode with Ken. We did a webinar last year, Ken, that was a lot of fun. Uh, by saying we did a webinar, you talked about all the technical and good stuff and I helped answer questions. So uh, I was there more as an assistant than someone as a full participant in the webinar. But your webinar was on problem statements and argued that good Lean Six Sigma projects start with good problem statements, which is foundational. But why does something so foundational still trip people up, even in mature programs?

Ken Robinette: I think it, I Think it gets into a couple of things, right? So sometimes we just don't know. So, you know, if you're sitting in a transactional process, um, you may only know that, uh, it's too slow and you might decide, you know, the problem statement is this process is too slow. Uh, the challenge with that is, is that's very ambiguous. It doesn't really say what, what's going on. So I, I think sometimes we, we get so, um, we get under pressure, something's breaking, this is breaking. The next thing, the next thing comes up and we've got too many priorities. I mean, a lot of, a lot of people working in organizations today would say the pressure of executive leadership for me to use AI is taking away from my time to actually do what I'm supposed to do. It's just an example. And I think people just get rushed and they just don't take the time to do it and they don't ask the critical questions. And um, or they'll just throw it, or they want to throw it over the wall or they want to say it's somebody else's problem, you know. You know, so, uh, so I think some of that happens. And, and that's, that's a human behavior that's been around for a long time. Um, you know, if, when you go to work and you walk in the door and you sit down, maybe you had a plan of what your day was going to look like. And for many folks, by 8, 10 or 7, 10 or 6, 10, 10 minutes after you started your job, some crisis has happened. And at the end of the day, eight, nine, ten hours later, you say, well, these are the things I wanted to get done today. And you're like, I didn't get any of those things done today. So I, I think that, that, that leads to, uh, the, the. The inability to, to slow down, press, pause, review, think. And, and I, I like to remind folks, and I still say it today, and it's probably becoming even more cliche, but you know, for, for 15 years of coaching folks, I say you got to go slow to go fast. So you got to understand, then you got to simplify, and then you've got to action or automate. And I think we're so action oriented that we just want to be able to say we did something and report out. So, uh, and we didn't necessarily know, did we understand, did we simplify, did we solve? But we certainly did something. We threw it at the wall. And so that, and then problems come back and then you just get you get into that, that kind of, that nasty cycle. So, you know, and I, I, I'm not saying this to that that's the answer for all, but it is a perspective I have through working with folks across many, many, many different types of processes, industries and challenges. So, um, physicians have this same problem, um, engineers have this problem, customer service representatives have this problem. And it's not, it's not designed or, or, or stuck to one group. It goes completely across any type of work that's being done.

Dan Swartwout: I'm glad you mentioned coaching because that leads me into your presentation at this year's More Steam BP for OP X conference on coaching and mentoring CI leaders. What's the gap, Ken, between someone with strong technical, lean, Six Sigma skills and someone who actually becomes a great CI leader?

Ken Robinette: I think, uh, you know, I've got, I've got a couple of slides in a, in a leadership deck that we sometimes share here at Morstein. And the picture is there's a toddler. Uh, and in picture on the left hand side of the screen there's a parent reaching over the toddler and tying the shoes. And then in the right hand side, it shows the toddler struggling to figure out how to tie the shoes. I think the effective, uh, the, the, the, the answer lies in that picture, right? It's being able to make that decision, when do I have to do it because the person is not going to have the ability to do it? Or when can I stand back and allow the individual to struggle, make some mistakes, but learn and still then be able to get to the point where they do it? And I think it's, it's, you know, it's, it's probably a little bit too. But as a parent or as a coach, there's a lot of similarities, right? If you, if you're doing, at what point can you step back and allow a child to do things that they need to learn to do on their own? Same concept in how do you become a really good CI practitioner versus a CI coach developer. And you know, sometimes, and I've heard this from, from many people that are very successful, uh, and, and you know, I might even catch myself saying it's just easier for me to do it, right? To be enough, to be enough to be really effective in the CI world. You can't, you can't lock in under that and say that I'm going to be the functional expert. Nobody else is going to know. You have to be willing to basically let things go and pass on that knowledge so that folks can take it. And go further. And it's, it's very difficult. I mean, because knowledge. Knowledge in a lot of cases is how you're kind of valued or rated by your organization. And if you're giving all your knowledge away, you might be. There might be a part of you thinking, oh, I'm giving away my, My negotiating, uh, point or my value to the organization, or it might put me at risk. So there's a lot that goes into that, Dan, and, uh, I think it's a great question. But for me, I've been very successful where I try to assess the situation, uh, understand where the person may not get the task done immediately, but they're learning versus just doing the task for them and getting the checkbox that the step is done. So, uh, you know, back to that tying the shoes example. So, um, you know, how long. How long as a parent do you want to be sitting on the ground tying your children's shoes? That's a personal decision, I guess.

Dan Swartwout: Ken, we had on the show a few months ago, A.D. godinez, who is someone that you coached as A.D. went through his, uh, Master of Business of Operational Excellence. And we got to talk to AD on the podcast about having you as a coach. And when he came into More STEAM HQ and gave you a presentation, that was really cool and a really cool moment. And we got to talk to AD about it, but we haven't had the chance to talk to you about it on the show, where AD Came to Morsteam headquarters after you coached him through the Master of Business and Operational Excellence program at the Ohio State University and in front of all of the employees here at Morsteam, talked about what it meant to have you as a coach, gave you a symbol of his appreciation. It was a really cool moment. What was? Something like that for you as a coach to experience that. Because we've heard from AD side. Now I'd like to hear from yours.

Ken Robinette: So, so first, uh, you know, he, he. I worked with him for a year, and he knows I hate surprises. So he worked behind the scenes.

Dan Swartwout: Yes.

Ken Robinette: And pulled it. And pulled it off as a big surprise. So, uh, you know, so I had no idea. You know, I was like, on the phone call, and somebody's popping in my window saying, you got to come to the lobby.

Dan Swartwout: You got to come to the lobby.

Ken Robinette: So I have, I have zero idea what's going on. And then I see A.D. and, uh, you know, I hadn't seen him. He'd been out of the program for a few months. And I'm on to the next person. Uh, but, you know, AD Is a very interesting individual, and, um, we connected in a way, and I think some of the things I did for him was I gave him some structure. You know, we had a meeting every week. So. But in that meeting, it was his time to talk to me, not me to talk to him. And as a coach, having someone take that extra effort to call that out, uh, you know, it feels good to know that at least in that sphere of his. Of his life, I made some impact, some influence. So, uh, that. That's. That's awesome. And, you know, sometimes it's, um, you don't see it when you're in the. In the throes of it and you're doing it every day. So it was really good to stop and reflect and get that feedback. So, um, and it's why. It's why I continued to coach in the Masters, uh, of Business and Operational Excellence. Uh, I think I'm up to 20 people now. Over the years that I've done that with. Um, I started in what was their cohort too. Uh, I took a couple of cohorts off, but I think I've been involved in 18 cohorts. So, um, and. And I've had sometimes two or three students, sometimes just one. So I've. I've touched a. A big group of people and, and honestly, around lean and Six Sigma and continuous improvement, uh, looking at the time over my career, it's opened so many doors and I've gotten to meet so many people. Uh, it's really interesting. It's a universal language, right? So if you're a cpa, you have the universal language of business. If you're a lean professional, a master black belt, uh, a CI Professional, you've kind of got the universal language of process. So it gives you the ability to be able to network and work with people of all different types of processes, uh, activities. I mean, AD Was working on a school bus scheduling, uh, issue with the Columbus City schools as a consultant brought in as part of his internship with mboe. So talk about someone that couldn't go and do command and control. But he's also a retired colonel from the United States Army. So most of what I coached him on was this is not the army. This is civilian life. So we. We have to approach civilians different than we approach soldiers. And it was an interesting and fun journey. So, uh, it, you know, it just. It let me know that we had a good relationship and that we made a difference.

Dan Swartwout: You definitely made a difference. And I think it Made a difference for everyone who was watching that. Those moments of coaching, those moments of being a mentor, have a profound impact on the people involved. And for me, that was one of my coolest moments here at uh, More Steam was seeing that. And I'm glad I had the chance to talk to AD about it. And I don't think I've really talked to you about it aside from here on the podcast. So, uh, I'm glad we had that opportunity. And I'm glad you also talked about this being sort of a universal language. Because here at More Steam, you deal with all sorts of industries. Has that broaden your view of what makes continuous improvement stick, dealing with all sorts of industries? Or does the same stuff keep derailing continuous improvement, regardless of industry? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Ken Robinette: My perspective is, is that it, it does tend to be the same things that derail it and, uh, how it can be derailed. Uh, it usually gets down to, uh, either length of time. Oh, we've trained all these people and yeah, we used to really get excited about it and we used to be able to roll up and talk about all the benefits we're having. But haven't we trained enough people? And shouldn't we be able to step away from this training? Uh, or why do we have these folks in central roles and doing governance and talking about certification and really making sure that the tools are being applied? Uh, or it's just like, well, we got to cut somewhere. Uh, we can't cut the production floor. So let's go look in this middle management world and see where we can make a cut. And that happens in health care, that happens in automotive, that happens in chemical processing, banking, you name, uh, happens. And you know, I think the discussion where we started about middle management and, you know, continuous improvement, even at the times when I first got exposed to it back in the early 90s, uh, at the Danaher Corporation, it was being primarily run by supervisors and managers. I mean you were going down and doing Kaizen events with hourly employees. But the people facilitating and doing the teaching and passing on the knowledge and figuring out how to get through that improvement project were middle management. And I think just in general, middle management over the last 30 years, 40 years, continues to be squeezed. You continues to get more tasked. I, uh, think I read somewhere that, you know, 20 years ago, the average number of direct reports for a entry level middle manager was 7. Today it's 17. So if, if in the past you had 7, now the ratio is 17. And now you've got AI, you're supposed to push down. You've got this, you've got that, you've got CI. It really gets into organizations are trying to do too many things all at one time and sometimes CI is the one that falls out. Another, um, one that sometimes get pulled gets pulled is R and D. I mean, you hear about companies going through funding the R and D and then not funding the R and D. So that same kind of ebb in, ebb out is the same that I see in CI from time to time.

Dan Swartwout: Ken, this has been a fantastic conversation. Uh, sometimes I think of you as Morris Team's Vice President of Business Development, which you are. But I don't often think of you enough as a Lean Six Sigma master black belt who is an expert in all that we are dealing with. So I love to have these conversations to remind me and our listeners of the types of experts in the field here at Moor Steam who understand continuous improvement and I appreciate your views and your glimpse on the current state of continuous improvement. Opex Lean Six Sigma thank you so much, Ken. This has been tremendous.

Ken Robinette: Have a great day. Dan, thanks for inviting me back. Talk to you soon.

Dan Swartwout: More Steam'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 at qualitytime at moresteam. Com and if you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast service. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Quality Time with Moor Steam. Thanks again.