The Goal Calabosession #2

This is the second installment, the second issue, the second recording with Mr. Thomas Lamay on our collab O session over the goal. So far, the feedback on the first one has been amazing, and I kind of knew like, yeah, it's long. This one's almost as long, 

But it's so packed with his stories of how he applied, what he was learning, like in the moment. He makes references to his journal that he was keeping as he was going along, building this project in San Francisco and jotting down what he was taking away. His obs personal observations and the little experiments he was running on site.

It weren't very little. They were actually pretty darn huge. I'm feeling like that little journal's gonna be worth some money at some point in the future. Hopefully he'll leave it to me or the LnM Family. He'll leave it to us in his will at some point. Anyhow. Another super cool thing like have you ever been in a situation where people are kind of dropping hints or doing something pretty awesome and you just kind of miss it? Well, that was me. Like the whole time Thomas has given shoutouts to the nobs tribe. Steve Martin, Jennifer Lacey, uh, Adam Hos the rest of the crew, and he keeps plugging like this book.

There's this book out there, known as Lean In Love, and he keeps referencing it. It didn't occur to me in the moment, but going back and editing, I'm like, Man, this dude's just like. Just the kind of people you wanna be around. So if you haven't caught the first one, go back by now. The, the YouTube version, the videos, you can see our bright shining smiling faces will be available.

 So go check that out if you wanna see that. We got a whole bunch of clips that we've been posting on all the socials, just outtakes of some of his wisdom, some of my goofiness. Uh, we deeply appreciate the support. And speaking of support, we're gonna give a shout out to all our patrons who have been faithful in their contributions.

And if you're interested in being a patron and contributing. To the effort of enhancing the image of careers and the trades, you can go to the learnings and missteps.com. Uh, click on the Become a Member, Click, click, click and choose the way you'd like to contribute. Also, any likes, any comments you make on, on the post that we have out there on the LinkedIn or the, or the Dick Talk, or the Facebook, whatever, those all help too.

 We are extremely grateful for all of the support, all of the encouragement, all of the takeaways, all of the things that you're doing with the knowledge that you get from these interviews. Uh, paying it forward and making things better for people out there in the world is exactly what we're looking for.

 And here we go a little bit more of Mr. Thomas. Lame. It ain't over because there's several more sessions to come.

connect with Thomas at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaslamay/

Engage with a community of Industry Professionals focused on expanding their leadership skills:   https://www.depthbuilder.com/a/2147560101/25qqpH4D
Coupon Code JESSE

Get your copy of Lean & Love at: https://www.depthbuilder.com/5s

Transcript

0:00

, I get spare time to talk about the goal. And again, I'm not an expert, but I really, I really enjoy this book. It made, it certainly made some changes because I, I, I tried some experiments out. I had a whole lot of support and encouragement. Like it was good. But and like the, we were explaining last time, like the timing was right in my life. So like a bunch of stars align. So that's a, that's kind of a point. This is fun one because we get you're, we're doing it together. Right. You're have the courage to come out and record this thing. The idea was planted months and months and months ago. And, and it's actually finally happening everybody. I was looking at my emails. I'm like, man, I remember saying that we were gonna get started in my head January or February. We're gonna start recording and then like life was happening and here we are June and I'm like, okay, maybe a little off base, but again, like just the tenacity to continue doing it. But you know, something you said. That I, we often forget, I've forgotten many times and I've seen other like lean Francos or, you know, continuous improvement, minded people get frustrated. You said that when, like, when you read, when the goal came into your life, you were ready. It was the right time and you soaked it in and trans, you know, changed your trajectory. Same thing for me, when, when I got introduced to like the last planner system, I was ready for it. And so I was like, okay, I'm tired and sick and tired of whatever I've been dealing with. There's gotta be a better way. Boom. That's what we're gonna do. But when I go and introduce it to somebody else and they're like, eh, you know, hesitant or just straight up, don't want to do anything with it. I judge 'em right. I'm like, oh, you're just a red hat. You're just a blocker. Oh yes. Instead of saying, Hmm, how did I respond when I first got introduced to it? What's going on? This is the second installment, the second issue, the second recording with Mr. Thomas Lame on our collab O session over the goal. So far, the feedback on the first one has been amazing, and I kind of knew like, yeah, it's long. This one's almost as long, But it's so packed with his stories of how he applied, what he was learning, like in the moment. He makes references to his journal that he was keeping as he was going along, building this project in San Francisco and jotting down what he was taking away. His obs personal observations and the little experiments he was running on site. It weren't very little. They were actually pretty darn huge. I'm feeling like that little journal's gonna be worth some money at some point in the future. Hopefully he'll leave it to me or the LnM Family. He'll leave it to us in his will at some point. Anyhow. Another super cool thing like have you ever been in a situation where people are kind of dropping hints or doing something pretty awesome and you just kind of miss it? Well, that was me. Like the whole time Thomas has given shoutouts to the nobs tribe. Steve Martin, Jennifer Lacey, uh, Adam Hos the rest of the crew, and he keeps plugging like this book. There's this book out there, known as Lean In Love, and he keeps referencing it. It didn't occur to me in the moment, but going back and editing, I'm like, Man, this dude's just like. Just the kind of people you wanna be around. So if you haven't caught the first one, go back by now. The, the YouTube version, the videos, you can see our bright shining smiling faces will be available. So go check that out if you wanna see that. We got a whole bunch of clips that we've been posting on all the socials, just outtakes of some of his wisdom, some of my goofiness. Uh, we deeply appreciate the support. And speaking of support, we're gonna give a shout out to all our patrons who have been faithful in their contributions. And if you're interested in being a patron and contributing. To the effort of enhancing the image of careers and the trades, you can go to the learnings and missteps.com. Uh, click on the Become a Member, Click, click, click and choose the way you'd like to contribute. Also, any likes, any comments you make on, on the post that we have out there on the LinkedIn or the, or the Dick Talk, or the Facebook, whatever, those all help too. We are extremely grateful for all of the support, all of the encouragement, all of the takeaways, all of the things that you're doing with the knowledge that you get from these interviews. Uh, paying it forward and making things better for people out there in the world is exactly what we're looking for. And here we go a little bit more of Mr. Thomas. Lame. It ain't over because there's several more sessions to come. I rejected it also. And it was when I was ready that it all actually started clicking and coming together. If you go to. Judgment. You always go to control. So if you put label somebody, a hat, give them a hat, come in. you've already judged them. And it's hard to do. I'm not saying don't do that. Actually. I let's stop. Let's stop judging people, meet people exactly where they are. That's it. That's. So I wanna talk about that if you, if you care to be vulnerable. Absolutely. We're gonna talk about fear. Cool. Yeah, and it's there's a lot to be afraid of. Mm-hmm especially right now, there is a lot to be the afraid of fear is one of the most powerful emotions. It has a strong effect on your mind in your body. And as we developed as human beings, fear was one of those instincts that we had to have. We had to have very quick thinking, understanding of that's a save two tiger. I can see it in the dark, or maybe I can only hear it, but I know what it is. I'm free of that. Cuz we wanna preserve ourself. We wanna preserve and continue doing the stuff that we get to do. Like yeah, that's it. And right now it's, it's also a heck of a time to be alive. Absolutely. Oh man, all this stuff that we have, like. I have robots at work that's stuff we do with, with technology. It's just, I get out bed and I'm like, oh, what's up? What's new. So for me, when I was reading this book, I struggled with anxiety. Oh, I wanna talk about anxiety because it's a type of fear. And the, the word anxiety tends to describe worry, cuz you're worried about something or like, like you have a job interview where you have to have you're in like a competition or like, but you, before you do it, it's like it's the right before. And you're like, for me, I get like, I get a weight weightness, like heaviness. Right, right. And center of my, center of my mass because mm-hmm, I know I do it now because I I've studied it. And I've been studied by medical professionals, but I shorten my breath. I hold my breath. I literally hold my breath. When I'm anxious, I will hold my breath. and when I hold my breath, that's because I'm being anxious. The problem with anxiety is you feel that about almost anything you feel uncomfortable about things that aren't, they're not threats. Okay. Or so your, my mind just wanders it just wanders. What's what is your. Like feeling cause like we all, it's all different for every, every one of us. Let's different for everyone. My me, I hold my brain. I do. I literally hold my breath enough. I hold my breath. I will pass out. Cause you don't get enough oxygen to your brain. So in a panic attack for me, I will literally like brown out and it's, it's not good. That's, that's not good for being healthy. It's Browning out is also like as a medical event, like it's an acute medical event that you need seek up for. So I did thankfully. But how about you? You know, so I wanna say maybe the last six to eight years-ish my response is to like, let's go, let's do this. So when I feel that that challenge or that, that situation that gets me uncomfortable and like questioning like, oh, my response is like, oh, well, let's go do that. Like, let's just jump in. Let's just do it now that hasn't always been my response. I re like before six to eight years ago, My response was run like depart leave, sever connection, get the hell out of there. And that's exactly what I would do when I started seeing different signals. I would, okay. Boom, gotta go. Gotta get outta here. Got like, I'm not dealing with this. But there's a couple of things like there, there, I used to get like the anxi, like the overthinking, the anxiety thing again, that's another thing. Like I start, it's like, I'm, I'm running a gazillion scenarios. Cause I still do it trying to figure out what the other person might say or might prefer or might not like. And the reality is the only way to find out is by giving them the damn thing. So stop wasting time and just jump into it and hand it over. And then they'll inform me of what I need to fix or what they like about it. So, but that's, that's over practice and like I do it over and over and over again. And I get a lot of flack for like, man, you're not gonna like, no, I'm not like, I don't know what they want. What they told me, this is what this, the request they made. I got some clarification. This is my understanding of the request. They may not like it, but I'm gonna give it to them so they could tell me what they don't like. Like I can't read their mind. yeah. Yeah. And that's helped me. That that's one of the things that, that helped me take the leap and going into business for myself. Right. Because like it's working, , that's worked in my career at my job. You know, the one biggest fear that I have that I wrestle with on the regular is my fear is leading people astray, like leading people down a path that doesn't serve them. Wow. Okay. Yeah. That's my big, because I've done that in my past. Right? Like I've introduced people to what's the word addictive things. And so it ruined their lives and I was responsible for that. And, and now the way I function or since then, the way I function, I have a lot of responsibility and autonomy to make recommendations and just take like you decide Jesse just lead it. And so there's this weird, weird fear because I don't, most of the things I'm doing, I've never done 'em before. And I don't know that they're going to work or maybe I don't know exactly how to make it work. And so what if I lead people off a cliff, that's a real, that's like a, my daily check when I'm doing my afternoon inventory and reflection. Like did I serve appropriately? Where did I lead people astray? And what can I do to avoid that or correct that tomorrow? Because it, I it's, again, it's such a fear that I have. Dang. That's thank you for sharing. Yeah, man. so for, for me, and this is my, this is my method. Okay. This is my method. So for anxiety and you said it action, very anxious about something. Take action. So we're gonna talk about action versus just moving around in the coming chapters. Oh, I love it. Yes. So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, the Ridge, you gotta walk down when you talk act. Right. But if you're anxious about something and we're talking about fear, so we like label, why, why no red hats? Like, why don't they ever do this stuff? Like, this is an amazing met system. It's because they're afraid. Right. And if you make fun of them or judge them, it's like, boom. Oh, you're done now. Now you're, you're making me afraid and you're making fun of me and you're judging me. Like, I'm gonna, I'm already I'm off. I'm turned it off. Yes. So, and for men, like, we don't wanna be afraid. So we'll, we'll put up an armor. So for, for me, I can counter anxiety with action. Read stuff I can study. Like if you're on a project, there's a stack of drawings that tall look at 'em right. see if they match or, or do overlays or do so. Like you can, you can, you can counter anxiety through action and action. There's there's there's some steps. Yep. With action. We're gonna talk about that. And the other and fear, fear is harder because fear is, is threat threat level, right? Yes. So fear for me, this is only me. I can overcome fear. Most fear, not like direct threat. I have to run away problem, but for fear I have to, I can overcome it with focus. Ooh. Okay. So I can, I can, I can, I can control my breath. I can control my physical state, like where I'm sitting or standing most of the time, unless I'm like in an airplane, we're gonna talk about why anxiety airplanes. Because the reason why I have anxiety and airplanes, cuz I can't control my physical state. I'm out of, I'm out of my control. Right? I'm bound by laws and doors and people in front of me. Yes, yes, yes. But I can focus when that, in that moment I can focus on my breath. I can control breath. So my control for fear is, is, can be overcome. Focus. Nice. So we're afraid of things on our job sites. We're gonna talk about constraints. Yeah. Exploiting constraints, and then you can't make, you can't be afraid of those things. Like yes, we live in a, a very funky time with the supply chain. Yes. You can't just, we can't just report the news, but we can have conversations all the way, all the way up to the supply chain. It's harder. Right? You might have to speak new languages cuz those, the, the raw materials might be in the foreign country, but we can find out. And once we focus and we understand the constraints, you can like exploit them, be like, you know what we know now we know exactly where it is and we have a tracking mechanism. Now we can, and we can also control the things on our job site. Speed and installation and all this stuff. All of a sudden, we're not afraid anymore. We're in control. We're back in control even though the world is kind of funky and there's lots of conflicts out there and constraints. If we can overcome our fear through focus, man, it's so much powerful. So those are my two kind of systems. And I wanted to set it up before we talk about chapter seven because it, this is that this is the, the moment Alex goes home. And meets his family. so we talked about last time, like, and I said, there is no membrane work life. There is no membrane. Right. You just cause your life is all the time. So Alex goes home and meets his family. Right. Who loves him. And there's also frustrated with him. So he kind of does a little reflection. He kind of looks around and sees some, and I'll quote the fives in relationship series, but like relationship clutter. Yeah. Oh God. Like inventory, so to speak. And he, he thinks about his, his family's like other, like he does some comparison to his brother and his parents. Like they live on the other side of town and smaller homes, less exotic. They have simpler jobs. One's a general manager of like a, a, a small grocery store. I think his parents are retired. They used to run the store. Yeah. So it's like thinking about it. It's like, what if I just did that? Like, is that, that just be easier? but it's, he is like looking around his house and he's like big shot. Like he's the general manager of a, a manufacturing facility, like probably does pretty good. But he like, when you, when you do that and I have the same problem, like how much is enough. The whole man stuff is enough. And then you, so you have lots of stuff. And for me, it's clutter, cuz it clutters up. It's like, I gotta change the oil on the Buick and this cut the grass and da, da, da, like if we start to clutter our lives up. Yes. What do you think? You introduced this to me? This concept. I didn't understand until Dan and Jess introduced this concept, the chapter seven, just right over my head. well, thank you man. That's all my story about seeing clutter in your personal life. There's two that come to mind. So one, cuz I'm looking at like relationship clutter and quotation marks and I don't know why I'm going down memory lane. But when I was in high school, I was popular with the ladies and I was selfish about that and, but I thought I was like super smart. Right? Cause I, if I had a, I didn't date anybody like after my freshman year, I didn't date anybody from my high school until like my senior year. And whenever I did date a gal, they just made sure they went to different schools because the likelihood of me getting busted like was zero, except I didn't factor in football games. And so we had gone to a football game. I can't remember who was playing and, and I went with the gal super nice, super sweet young lady. So we're watching the game and, you know, we're there and my group of friends are there. And then another friend shows up with his cousin who went to another high school that we, she and I were familiar and I'm like, oh, damn. Like it was, we weren't like boyfriend and girl, but you know, it's, it's just, wasn't cool that I was doing that anyways. So she looks at me and I'm like, oof, okay. Super, super uncomfortable. And then another gal we went to we went to the damn concession stand and I see another one. So those of you who were born after 1990, this is the phase that we called it talking. We're like, Hey, we're just talking. Yes. Because Facebook, social media didn't exist. We had to talk. So this was the talking. Yeah. Oh, that, you know, we're not, so yeah, this is the, I am dating myself very much, but I went, I went to high school in the 1990s and we called this was the talking phase. So, yes. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to interject a case. Some. Millennials are younger. You lost them, so yes. Can please continue. That's perfect. No, no, that's a perfect clarity. Cause yeah, like we, that's what we did. We talk on the phone and we flirt and hang out when at parties or whatever. And, but, and we were in person quite often. And, and so when we were the first gal, when she showed up, my date was she could tell like something was up and then that other gal was like, Hey, I need to talk to like, oh, she gave me a hard time. And she's like said, no, like it's fine, whatever. Then we go up to the concession stand and there's another one from another school. Like, what is she? She like, she really didn't no re she was there and she just runs up hugs me and kisses me with, with this other nice young lady next to me. And I'm like, oh, damn like this it. And she just looks at me and she's like, you're just not the guy I thought you were . I'm like, okay, you're right. So anyways, clutter, I didn't need all those. I didn't need to be talking to all of those young ladies because the reality was in that situation, that was super extreme. But the reality was keeping track of who I was with and who I made a commitment to, who I was gonna meet somewhere. What I told. That was like, talk about extra processing. like, it was all this energy and stress that I didn't need. So it took a few more years for me to maybe another decade for me to like, stop, figure that out and stop doing that. But the other thing that, that comes to mind, like clutter in my personal space, and you touched on it, there was a time like when I was a foreman all the way to when I was a superintendent for the trade partners in my mind, if I had a two car garage, three bedroom house, a truck, a car vacations, all those shiny things. Like all of those things like that was going to be, that was life. Right. That was the goal. That's when things were gonna be amazing and awesome. And the reality was accumulating all of those things for my prison, because with those things was that right? Like I had, oh, wow. Yeah. Like I got 'em. I had to finance the house and to finance the car, the truck, cuz I, I don't mind driving no beaters. So it's like whatever going on Vaca, like all the, having all furniture and TVs and like all the junk that you gotta have in a house was debt. And so I, my job, I was hating my job because it was always the same story, always the same arguments. But I needed to do the job to make the income, to live the life that I thought I needed. And, you know, a lot of things happened at that point in my life. And my focus after that was like, okay, I need to get outta debt. And as soon as I get outta debt, I am going to find and do a job that I love do some meaningful work. And I did that. And I'll tell you, Thomas, from, from that point in my life, I can trace it to where I'm at today. And what I mean by that is the depth of fulfillment that I'm experiencing today. Is it direct, it tied directly to that decision I made. So I decided to filter out all of these superficial collectibles that enabled me to get outta debt, which enabled me from that point forward to always choose the work that I do always choose my boss and always choose the people that I work with. But I had to sort all that junk out, man. yeah, it's enough. Mm-hmm it's enough. I, I I'm the same way. Yeah. Luckily I've met a really amazing person. I better have angel who, an architect who kind of who designs our life. But so I wrote down. Some things. I think that some listeners could take away. I wrote, I wrote eight things and I, and I, and I wrote this kind of after listening to five relationships. So this is a little gold rat, little Jen and Jess little sprinkling. What does the number one make a decision about what you value most in life as a person? It's, it's a decision because we're gonna the chapter eight, we're gonna start getting into throughput and inventory. So you have to take an inventory. Yes. Personal finance, especially like if young people please learn how to balance sheet, please. I wish I did. Yes. But so make a decision. What you value, what you are, what are the value things make a list of two, once you do that, evaluate your relationship at that moment. Oh yeah. Like the current state of the relationship and it's, and it's that focusing step? Cuz you do like, these are my values. Yes. So you kind of put yourself in the framework and at that point you have to do the, you have to do the inventory. First, second thing you evaluate do the, do the reflection. Steve, Steve Martin do a reflection. evaluate and it's looking in the mirror cuz you it's on it's here and. The only time you can see yourself in the mirror is when you're stand in front of it. And it's easy to reflect on the happy times, right? It's like, oh yeah, this is exciting. But you gotta, it's the, it's the sour in this week. You gotta think about the painful times too, because this is, and that's because of bias yes. So it's like, these are my values, my priority matrix, whatever you want to call it. And based on that evaluation, let you do that evaluation remove anything that consumes your emotions or lowers your self-esteem. Ooh. Yes. Is the, and that's the, this, this takes immense courage where this takes almost, it, it like you need somebody to let their hand on your back. Like what I would say when I was a lean manager, once you make an improvement, drive a freaking wedge under that thing, make it sick. Like don't let it roll back. Then the only way to drive a wedge is take whatever you were doing last time, straighten a bin. Yep. Straighten a bin. throw that thing in a dumpster, whatever it is. If these things that you want to remove in your life are, are people or family members. Yes. So you have to set boundaries yes. Around yourself and start saying no, or start saying yes, but. Or saying no. And those kind of things. And it's, you have to do it, these for me, again, this is not like life hacks with Thomas lame, but this is kind of like my learning from listening to Jen and Jeffs and, and, and whole bunch of stuff. Yeah. But you base that base set evaluation on two things. If it's consuming your emotions, right? In a, in a, in a negative way, I should say. Right. Or if it's lowering your self-esteem, if you do something that, that makes you feel bad, stop doing it. Yes. And it's hard. Super hard. So, and then, so this is the step, step four increase the quality of inner interactions. And I, I am terrible with interactions. So in any, any increasing of equality is probably measured in micro millimeters, but it's like turning off the TV or focusing I'm listened to you. I'm gonna look at yes. I'm not good at that. I, I will tell everybody right now, I struggle with this. But, but my thing is like, if you evaluate something, you truly value it focus the quality. So quality is if you're with someone you're not staring at your phone, so then it's like, okay, if you're trying to. Your interactions. There are quality of interaction. There's gonna get some constraints, start to pop up. And we're gonna talk about chapter eight. So treat your relationship like a garden. If you have a garden, do you have a garden? I, not currently, but I have had gardens in the past. Yes, I have. I live in North Carolina, so everything just grows like crazy here. So I'm like constantly, but you think about it or think about a farmer. They prepare the soil. First thing they do is prepare the soil plant at the right time, remove the weeds, water, and fertilized, and then adjust. You gotta look at the dang plants. If they're drying out, give 'em some water. If they're looking spiny, they need some sun or whatever, but you have to look at it and make some adjustments from there. And so how do you do that? You give first that's step six. Oh yeah. First and expect little. Yes. And for me, that's my ego. Just, just, oh man. I'm like, Hey, Hey, wash the car, give some loving, right? Like, thank you for doing the thing that I wrote on the scrum board a week ago. Congratulations. You can move it to so the, so my thing is that's I call it smart. But if you're doing like a pull plan, it's that I give, I get yep. Or if, if you have trouble, if you have a, if you have a terrible ego, like flaw person, no, I I'm right there a hundred percent. Like, but if you, if you have that, if you have that inner struggle where you're like, ah, give some kudos once in a while, then do a little like ninja moves called smart compromise. And it's like, Hey, I give, but I get, and then last thing is empathy. So it's like, how do you, how do you knock it outta the park? Once you've done the first seven empathy is a critical human ability. And if you, if you get stuck, seek professional help, thank you, Jen, Lacey, for teaching you that, you're stuck in your relationship. And I need, I need professional help in my garage right now. Like I need a cleaner I'm like, yeah, come in and just throw just all of it. Just throw it away. Just throw it away, saving that for, I don't really know what throw, so I need professional help or third party friends, neighbors take stuff away. So yeah. So if you have clutter and you get stuck see help. It's clear to me that doing it in order. Is going to reap the best results because it's like the first one facilitates the second one and so on that like all the way down to empathy and, and you're right. Like empathy's not the easiest thing in the world and getting help may be necessary. Well, actually we'll say, I'll say it differently. Getting help is only going to increase the, the depth of the empathy. Right. Understanding from an objective perspective, because I could tell myself I'm empathetic. I could say that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I need objective an objective perspective to confirm or deny that. Yeah. So you have to do it in that order, at least for me. But, but before we get to chapter eight, I I'd use that analogy because it's, it's all these prescriptive steps. And if you follow them in order you will, you will improve. You will improve. So nice. Do chapter a cause we're this is the step. This is that this is the first step in fear. Because you, you confront it the only way to overcome fear. You have to face it. So chapter we're gonna go back to Lou and some accounting principles. And I like young people listening. If you wanna like network within your company and grow like your bounds, find a controller, find an accountant, find a finance manager, find someone who is not in operations and ask 'em what they do and listen. It's it's really awesome stuff. Yes. So Alex, he goes to his parents' house and he's like, I need Jonah's personal phone number. And he is like, it's in this notebook. And I, I wrote the number or some kind of contact information in a notebook when he was in grad school probably. And he threw it in his desk at his home. So he goes home. He tears the house apart. Speaking of clutter. And he finally, like, he finally gets a hold of Jonah and he goes, and they, they finally, I don't know. I think they talk on the phone. I think what it's and Jonah says he won't, he goes and tells Alex that he won't make any improvements to his plant by following the same old methods. You can't. And Einstein has the same thing. Like you can't make any improvements to the situation by using the same amount of effort you have to use more effort to improve, or you have to use new methods or you have to seek professional help. Yes. Right. You have to because like you'll fall into the same traps, cuz it's really hard. We're all we're me mortals. So so Jono gives Alex three measurements. This is really cool. Because I actually tried, tried to do this when I, when I read this chapter like 10 years ago. But it's paid 60. So it's three measurements, a measurement not clearly defined as worse than useless yes. So if it's like, Hey, we're going, we need to improve our, profitability, profitability. We need improve that. Like, okay, what does that like? What's what does that mean to me? Yes. I mean, we like, we have to like, so there's three number one, throughput, accounting principle, one controller throughput. The rate at which the system generates money through sales sales, not production sales. Yep. So sales effort I'm we get into a business agreement. So you're gonna buy a hundred units. Can you pay me for that? A hundred units? That's throughput. So it's sales equals acceptance production or excuse me, sales equals acceptance. Sales is acceptance. Like you've fulfilled the deal. Yep. Production is just the work you put in place. That's a county principle. Number one, according to, and again, this is not financial advice. This is according to the book pay yes, yes. To inventory inventory, all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things. Cluttered your truck out, parked out in driveway. And maybe I had to go to the bank and borrow my report that my vehicle or my house or the couch, and like all of your inventory, it's all it costs money to buy it, purchase it, move it, move it, get it on yourself. So if we have inventory lane around job site, that's not installed. Generally speaking, generally speaking, I don't want to upset some of our financial gurus in the construction industry, but generally speaking, we bill for that material once it's set in place. Yeah. Typically speaking, yes. There's probably some, some bills that are going. Or this was the second of the month. So they're probably being reviewed right now. But if it's being delivered to the job site often we can charge for that. We can, we can put in a bill and say, this is, we have fulfilled the material portion of this order. It is on the job site we can go for. So that, that now represents throughput. But now we have inventory sitting around place. So inventory is money that you've spent in things, operational expense, number three, operational expense, all of the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput. Yeah. So that's hiring plumbers. Yep. It's hiring an architect. That's hiring Thomas to go around and take pictures of trash. that's that's yeah. That's all of the, all of the stuff we gotta, we have to get permits. We got to burn diesel and we have to have electricity. We need water. We need sewer. We need, we need stuff. Mm-hmm we need internet. We got, we got bills to pay, right? Swag. You need project swag, right? Swag. Dinners, all of the stuff to turn inventory into throughput. So those are the three rules. So in construction, the equivalent of throughput, inventory and operational. Are exactly the same as manufacturing threw me wrong. no argument here, sir. Okay. And yes, yes, there are nuances obviously. Sure. But in the fundamental of those things, inventory, operational expense and throughput and I'll, I listed three here. So application for progress, payment inventory, operational expense throughput, like we have we percent to complete on this task or this operation. We have these sets of materials on site or in bonded warehouses. Here are the photographs or the drone video that proves it. Right. Operational expense, here's the backups, the pay stubs, all the stuff. So we, yeah, we paid these suppliers. This is our application for progress payment. I put it all there. Boom. Submit it over, please. DocuSign this and then wire me money. yes, that's that's the application. That's the first application two. Sometimes we order stuff that is manufactured. Prefabricated systems. I work for a company. We have many factories within our own within our own control. So we have material and prefabricated systems and procurement and delivery. The stuff needs to move towards us, but sometimes prefabrication is like the job site, but we put the job site in Arizona or Florida or California, or up in Northeast, and then labor in general conditions, operational expense. Right. We have to hire Jesse, we have to hire electricians. We have to hire things and then we have to put electricity to drive the hoist up in there. So those are those three things. What do you think Dr. Gold doesn't measure in his concept about throughput. The schedule. Yeah. PPC. Yes. Yes. I don't want, I just a little teaser there. I just teased it. Yeah. Yeah. We have a CPM schedule and, and we also, if we're using last planner, we have some other metrics. Yes. But we're only talking right now about accounting principles in chapter eight. So what do you think about those? Or should we just get into that? No, no, no. I have a thought about it. So my thought about that is when I think about schedules and like full disclosure, I am not a, a CPM schedule master. I am a CPM schedule critic. because I've, I've had so many of them that I had to like, what the hell are we think? But it's not the it's, it's the thing, right? It's the way we use it, et cetera. But I think we treat them like they're actually measuring throughput, but if looking at this thing, what they really do is give an up at best, give an update of the current state of inventory and operational expense. They have it, that's it like it, it doesn't accomplish anything else. That's my thought. Got it. We're gonna get into that. Get your steak knife out. So I really want to talk about, so chapter nine cuz now we know, we know Jonah's basic measurements in there, like, okay, I got Lou, I got printouts, we got a computer. We got, we got machines. We can, we got, we got stopwatches. This is the eighties with actual right hands. So they go back to the plant in chapter nine. And my summary was sometimes new and improved is biased. yeah. All the time. Right? It's like, oh, let's try something new. And it's like, that's a trap too. So when, so it's two things you get, you get stuck in this weird. Where it's like, Hey, we don't want to go back to the old ways, according to Jonah. But if we get super excited and we we, we try all this new stuff. Ah, we might lose sight of things. So I wrote myself a note. I gotta find it. I gave this is I did my a self-diagnosis number one in my self-diagnosis. And I was like, I was, I was reading this, maybe not this chapter, but one of the chapters, I did little self-reflection. I wrote a note to myself. I said, number one, daily conversation is, oh, no, this is this, not this again. this is the daily conversation. Oh no, not this again. That's in your notes. You were writing is back down self analysis and then number two. Oh, this sounds cool. I wonder how it will work out, like being optimistic. So you have this, I had this weird inner monologue in my, its like I foreign between this conform. I wanna follow industry standards. Boom, blah, blah, blah, boom. I wanna try new thing. Yeah. So what I did, I was like at a seminar or something, there were like, they built the empire state building in New York city in 18 months. And I looked at my schedule and I'm like, this, this building is half as high and it's 18 months. Like, what are we, what are we doing? What are we doing? This is the 1930s. So I went, I got a book that showed all of the methods that the empire state building did. I don't want, cause I'll go an hour just on that, that book but one of the things was line of balance schedule, we call it flowline. Yep. So I was like, there it is, this, this is the way right. Young Thomas was like, they were doing line of balance with like, they didn't have Excel. They had, they had drafting tables. So, but you can measure flow. So in that book there's a whole bunch of 'em and I was like, oh man. Yeah. So let's go back to the book. They go back and they challenge the team about the NCX 10 robot has been done. Like tell like, what is this robot? Like? Like I wanna challenge it. I don't think we, we have these accounting principles now Jonas spun me all around with like spun me in circles, thinking like this is. I'm running my plant into the ground, cause I'm not looking for the right thing. So they calculate the new technology has only been efficient in its local department. Like this, like this, this it's probably like a CNC milling machine, I imagine. So it's computer driven, but so they can, it can crank out some parts and milling, but it doesn't improve all the other fabrication steps after it. So it hasn't led to overall improvement. So what it does, it just pumps out stuff. Yeah. Locally and they face, they face the reality that the NCX 10 causes more problems because I'm inventory mm-hmm because it costs more money to run the dang thing. Cuz it piles up inventory. We gotta, we gotta keep buying raw materials and pumping it into this machine and it cranks it out. It's a robot. Yeah. You can run it three shifts, but they they come to the realization that the, the robot is a constraint. They're like, oh my God. Like they look at it. and so I go back to the empire building if you chart production in a vertical building. So if you, you know, you stack the terms of in flow line scheduling for line of balance. There's a pitch, right? Cause you go, you go from location one to location two, and if you're X, X, so that's the Y axis is on your location. So floor 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, all the way to 88, I think the empire is maybe it's 89 and your X axis is time. You can plot as built progress in vertical or in location and time and it's, and it makes a pitch. And I read that in that book and I was like, I gotta, I'm building a vertical building like these guys in the thirties, they got it. So I I tried it and I measured each crew for like a couple weeks and I just charted it. And the pitches weren't the same. They were not the same Jesse. Oh, was there a lot of deviation? Right? Their pitches were not the same. So they would, so when the flash line of balancing, when they touch or they cross problem that's problem. That's a big problem. Yep. And I read it in that book. Wow. So that was my realization of the theory of constraints. It's probably the wrong for the TOC experts out. There was probably the wrong realization, but , this was my realization that if we have, we have a system of, of locations and production and if we can chart them and we'd look for the locations where they, they bottleneck. Or they actually cross and that's they stop, then they stop. That's a constraint. And I was like, oh my God, this is, this is it. This I'm an expert now. what was, what was your realization, man? It, I don't know if it was ever, I, I don't know if I can call it a realization cuz I know that I repeated it over and over and over again. And then I just got like sick and tired of that. What was happening, but what I would do because so I think I was I was transitioning like I was on the transition phase from form into superintendent. And so what that mean is I had multiple projects. Like I was the like specifically just the plumbing foreman put on multiple projects. And what I would do is I would get my team or get additional personnel and work to a bottleneck and then downsize the team, take 'em to another project. Like I just kept working to the bottleneck. The problem with that is it was peaks and valleys in labor. And so for me, I didn't care. Like I just called the office and said, Hey, these fools are gonna be back. Find 'em a job for next Monday. Right? Like I called Tuesday, you got four days find 'em a home. Well, but what would happen? Like I felt like I was winning. Right. I'm catching up. I'm I'm waiting on you. I'm waiting on you. I'm waiting on you, but what would happen. is those bottlenecks would clear up sometimes at different rates, sometimes all at the same time and the worst part was when it opened up all at the same time, because I could not resource them. And now I'm getting yelled at now the pitch, your pitch goes flat flat because I'm not, I can't, I can't get people over there. I'm taking care of this bottleneck and that kept happening. And I was talking to, to Jim he's like, Jesse, what are you doing? And I, so I I'm telling like, yeah, you know this job, but that's son of a gun. And I, I stuck. You just really bragging about it. And he is like, well, you realize that you're creating your own problem. Right. That fire, fire arsonist fire Arsen firefighter. Yes. Cause I'm creating my own problem by rushing to the bottleneck and create like stopping at bottlenecks everywhere. And there's, I have no influence over their rate of, of opening up. And so they would open up whenever they opened up and boom, all of a sudden I got three projects saying, where the hell are you? We're ready for fixtures? Where are you? We're ready for test and balance where like all these things like, oh, and that's, I'm like, ah, he's like, you need to like, look at your whole thing and manage your production. So that you don't have to pull people off the job and I'm like, oh, so back to the pitch, right? Adjust my production, adjust the, the head count, whatever I needed to do to maintain an even pace so that I didn't hit the bottleneck because the problem was when I pulled people off, I wasn't always gonna get the same people back And when I got a different crew back there, even though they were being production or productive, it wasn't like their rate of production was low because they were still learning the damn job learning, you know, where the porta potties at, where do we park where's lunch. Like all of those things that are important, getting to know everybody, the painter and everybody's life story, like the production was killed. So that was you're talking like you're talking like Fred Brooks, right. With his law. yeah. If it's hard in the beginning, if you throw extra people at it, because you gotta learn no job. Yes, yes. A hundred percent. You gotta learn the project. It's not like you just plug them in and they, everything happens. Yeah. So when I realized that I actually had the had someone in our organization at the time who knew how to do line of balance very well. Ooh, very well. Yes. Janie winning. Thank you, Janie. If you're listen. She put our, our, our CPM schedule into a computer program that, that did the visualization and it was Jesse. It was like choirs of angels, really? So, because I was like, now I have my own charted line of balance schedule. That was the baseline. And I was like, oh, they, and they were not parallel lines. Our plan, our original plan. They were, we did it. We did the study because early on we knew, but I was like, eh, what is that? But I didn't understand flow the flow line part. Yep. Until I came to that realization. So we went back, we pulled that thing out. We're like, oh, this is interesting. Can you load the last month's update into it and see, and it was it looked like spaghetti, but here's the thing about confronting the facts. Mm-hmm now it's not like the stair crew. He is slow, man. They're slow. Like we're looking at stair crew. No, they're they're they go, eh, stop, eh, stop, eh, stop. Cuz they would run out of structural steel to land their stairs. And they were, they were telling me this, right. Like, but I wasn't listening. Nope, Nope. Oh yeah. I got all kinds of stuff. And then we got into this overtime discuss. Ooh, because some of our trades weren't in, we didn't say tacked then I guess we tried to, we didn't understand that, but they weren't parallel with everybody else. So if they were more flat, if their, if their flow line was more flat, they had to, they had to get to the next level. So they had to work overtime. Yes. That'll work Saturdays and Sunday. Geez. We work our steel decking crew seven days a week. Yeah. Seven days a week. Just go, just go, go, go, go, go, go. And it's nasty work. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever, I'm sure you have that deck saw. Oh yeah. It that's. They cut it opening. It's loud punch. Yep. They're banging around. They're banging and clanging. People that do steel decking. Like I, yes. Thank you. That is a, I mean, you're, you're on the top of the, you're doing roofs. You're basically standing on a mirror all day and don't matter what floor they're on the sun under you're the, it's not ergonomic. Like you're not walking on the concrete floor. You're walking in the decking, right? Yes. So we realized that and we're like, we gotta go talk to Carlos. Carlos is the decking team like Carlos man. He's like, I'm like, I've been looking at this all wrong, Carlos. Like we, like we're, we've been running you guys raw and blaming you for are problems. Yes. And like he's, I don't know. He was probably. She like what? This is egghead , but he was like, yes. And I'm like, Carlos, let's figure out how it make you move faster. Before we start talking about a hike in Herbie, I want tease it. Cause Carlos was our was, was our herbi and in the, in the upcoming check and and I'll leave it there, but we started that discussion. I'm like, look, look at the chart. Like you're clashing with the steel guys. And you're also clashing with the concrete or the rebar and the other trades. Because you have to constantly go back, like you're doing up and down too much movement. You're going back. And he's like, yeah, like some of this information, Thomas, I'm not getting until late. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna control the information flow. So, and I tease that, we'll go back to Carlos. But I came to that realization there, cuz that was the constraint was information and I'm like, boom that's that's that's our job to get Carla's information. So number one, why do you think prolonged overtime is dangerous, man, because you get damn tired, right? I mean just fatigue in itself. When we're working overtime, there's only been a few times in my career. Like maybe four times. That we worked overtime because it was going to have big benefits for us and big, like it was not under duress. All the other times we were working overtime. It was under duress to like we're behind everything else is in like trades are stacked and six, seven days a week, you never get to recover. And now you're being exposed. Your exposure to risk goes up, cuz you're physically present longer to whatever the hell that risk is. So the likelihood for injury starts skyrocketing. It is sleep is important. Yes. And especially in the bay area, the workers don't live near the work. Oh yeah. Cuz the, yeah, so they're so expensive. So, and it's a super commute. Some of our workers out there commute two plus hours from Modesto and inland. So, so when we prolong our work hours, usually where they make that up is in their sleep. Cuz they have to get up at four 30, make start making their way into the bay area. and it's like, Hey, we started at seven. We have all these rules. We have the meetings right out of the gate. So if you miss, if you're late, you miss everything. So, so being prompt. Is important, but it is dangerous to yes. Prolong and it's very easy. And, and I've done this to turn when you're doing your CPM schedule, turn the calendar to seven days. Yes. Like I want a seven day calendar on these three activities. Yep. These are words I've said many times. And it's, it's easy. It's like, yeah, sure. We save three days. Cause it's like work Saturday, Sunday, weekends, you turn off all the time off. It's a struggle. Yeah. It's a struggle. And I will say that it's, it's it's all the time. It's every day. It's not like we're, we're, we're being malice or whatever. There are just constraints that we're faced with. And oftentimes we use the easy button of overtime yep. To make up for the, the makeup for our unparallel flow lines. So that's that's one way. How about inventory? Oh, Jesse, you might, you perhaps have a story about this. Have you ever flooded an entire floor of duct work? Because the duct guys and gals said it would be faster for them. So, it's ki yes and no. So yes, I would flood the project would duck not because we said the team, the install team said it was faster. Most of the time that I did that was to hog up space so that the plumbing and piping didn't have any other trade underway either. so, because we were, you know, mechanical contractor, oh, you're doing both. We did all three. We did plumbing, the hydraulic piping and the sheet metal work, the duct work. So the best way to keep everybody else out of our damn space was to flood the damn job with sheet with duct. And, and we'd shake it out and lay it out on the flood. Like, no, no, no, no. Just lay it out. Just stage it. Just stage it. Be like we test, we can hang. I was no, no, because as soon as it goes up, the framers and everybody else is gonna come in and we still gotta run all this pipe. So let's just, and that's why I did it. I did it to hog space. Did it really slow anybody else down from coming on the project? No, what it did was I got yelled at all the time and our stuff got banged up and kicked around and pushed around and we had to work over it. Like, yes, I flooded the project all the time. I thought I was winning. And when I had to come back and take things down and there was damage dug and there was damage insulation, cetera, et cetera. I didn't get ahead. Like, and all I did was piss everybody off right out of the gate. Yeah. So that's, that's one way , I'm, I'm worse. And I have a story teed up of teasers, but we're gonna start talking about controlling flow with limiting inventory. So I, I would slow, well, I'm sure the statute of limitations over, but I'd slow trades down by limiting their access to loading dock. Ah, so it would be like, and limit I'd limit their time. And that is in some ways that's also smart to do but I would be nefarious about it. I wouldn't tell them what I was doing. No, that's a good point. Like it, they were, when, when everybody's aware they would be frustrated. Yeah. Yes. Cause they didn't know. Yep. Carpet carpet installer was special. Yes. I am sorry for doing that. They're so fast. Yes. Especially, especially rug type. So the way to slow down finish flooring trades is to limit. Cause once they run out, they're done, they go home. So number three, rework, talk about talking about constraint. So I have a constraint. I have an, I have an information problem I have, or there's a change or there's a alignment problem or there's a clash. We skip past that. We're like, ah, I can still do the whole floor. Let's not worry about that. We'll come. We'll do the go back thing. Yep. Why is that dangerous to human beings? And I. My note here was because when you go back and do that work, it's no longer designed the same way when you were gonna do it first time. So the ergonomics, yes. Especially at height. Yep. Especially at height. And especially if there's other encumbrances yes. Around your head. Yes. Those are the trades that work above their head. Like that's, that's some hard work. And thank you for doing that. But like one thing we could do to help serve those people is if there's a problem, we don't put more stuff in their way. So they have to do like yoga poses right. Or worse, like put themselves in harm's way, because there's really no physical way to safely do that task. Yep. Very, very hard and time consuming. It's hard on a human body. And often we do that. We, we design that system for that person. Right. We put them in that we create the condition and say, go do it. And then we walk the job and say, what the hell are you doing? Isn't there a safer way to do it? Like, yeah, there was, there was last month when there was nothing here. So it's, it's it's this is, these are constraints. Yes. These are constraints and there's consequences. To making decisions to go around stuff. I'm not saying we can't do that. We can't make smart choices and we can't use contraptions to protect ourselves from falling. But Hey, if there's a issue we have to get in front of it before we put a person up there. So that's, that's the thing. So, oh yeah. And then I put number five. Don't ever sit next to me on an airplane. and the reason why when you get onto the airplane is if you ride Southwest. Get on. You get, get on onto the airplane. Cuz it's very important for airplane to leave on time. Cuz they have to there's a cycle time they have to achieve. Yes. Cause they have to reach their next destination and hit that same cycle time. Deboarding I think is or Delan doesn't matter because they got other stuff they gotta do. They gotta gas up the plane. They gotta take the luggage out. They got, they got time and they know about how long it takes. But if you're me sitting in like row 22, the way people deboard. The planes is there's ABC D F on typical like 7 30, 7, 6 seats. All those people have to de deplane. And they're like, they gotta get up. They gotta figure out. I was like, oh, did I leave my phone here? All this variation. Mm-hmm And it's like there's, there's a way better way. And the Army's already figured this out, how to get off a dang airplane and a hurry as you get off in columns. So all the A's go, go. Nobody else get up just the A's and you get off the, the, you get off the plane, like paratroops or Rangers or Navy seals and they get off and they go off and roast and you go to all the beats. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, and I know this and I have anxiety and I know this method of, of getting out the plane and, and I just get frustrated yeah. With that. And so it was a funny story that someone was like, I bet you, like when you're sitting in the airplane and people are getting off, like, I bet you scold them. And I'm like, I'm like, I literally pulled people back down. Just, just, just, just chill for, for a second. You're you're giving me anxiety. I bet I tell em, that story. That's awesome. So I guess you really like, did you like the pictures? I said too, of deep board who sent me one too the same day. Oh, did he I guess I'm probably like gonna. Everybody's gonna start texting now you're gonna guys pictures. Yes. just, just please United Delta Southwest. Just eboard the way you onboarded. Yes. If you're in section five, leave in section five and that way, if you're like, oftentimes I'm trying to connect to another flight and I get anxious about it. I can't control it. I can't focus. I'm going on crazy. So I start to start to try to, you know, fix the situation and use best known practices from the United States army. Get off the dang plane in columns. All right, I'll get off my soapbox. Let's do chapter 10. Let's do it. Chapter 10. Ooh. Ooh. This guy, you know who this guy is? Demy Demy oh yeah. Actually I work with a gentleman who went to Dr. Deming's seminars. Really? It's so fun. Yes. That's awesome. So chapter 10 links. It starts to talk about the new economics. So Alex, I'm just gonna very, very briefly summarize this cuz we're getting along. I love this book. Alex explains the principles. So the new economics, it's a whole bunch of principles about changing the way we, we look at how we manage. Here in the United States and there's, there's other methods that are non-traditional to the United States at the time when he wrote that, I think in 1950s or sixties. And he said, we need to, we need to evolve into this, this state of economic. So at chapter 10, Alex faces these same issues and local optimums don't matter. So if you're locally Optima, you're, you're just, you're just knocking it out. It feels good. It does. Yep. But it really, in the grand scheme of things and new economics, they don't matter. And this is a tenant or maybe a principle of theory of constraints. So lo local optimums don't matter results must always be measured against the goal. Yes. So any results that you have that you've that any KPIs dashboards? And I do, I do with this every day and I constantly, and trying to focus a project teams or a business unit into always trying to measure yourself against your overall goal, whatever, all of your other metrics, those are good. But if those aren't talking to the goal, then that's, it's a distraction, right? So it's a local Optim. So if, if we need to do, we need to look at that and we do this constantly that's, that's why it's such a good time to be alive. Throughput, inventory and operating expenses should be reflected in financial metrics. And the reason why financial metrics are really good because they're controlled they're they're yep. They are principle based accounting laws. And and the best thing is like, if the goal and the goal in this book was we wanna make money because once we have money, we can pay people. We can we can keep the plant open. we can keep doing our job. So we need to make some money. So the goal of whatever, whatever your, your primary goal is, if you set your financial controls to those same goals, like if you're, if you're personally trying to save some money And personal finance, you start to take inventory of all your expenses, right? Yes. And your inventory, and be like, Hey, this 62 inch Samsung TV that I never watch. That's a, that's the inventory I could sell that. Mm-hmm . And, and turn that into some throughput. So if you reflect, if you reflect that in financial metrics, and this is what happens in chapter. You can optimize because you can, you can see where you're spending money. So when the plant Alex is like in CX 10, we got a milling machine. We have all kinds of due adds and gizmos and manufacturing processes, heat stuff up and cut stuff down and all this kind of stuff. Install components. Yeah. We build factories. So I get, I at least get to see the friend, but explain the great project manager versus the superintendent argument regarding schedules, budgets, staff, and working weekends. This is the this is the PM and super conversation because talking about goals and traditionally speaking project managers care about the business deal. Mm-hmm right. Keeping the client aware of the situation, maintaining the schedule, maintaining the controls, making sure things are being paid for making sure, making sure the business end that the deal is being managed. That's they're managing the project. Generally speaking, they're oftentimes a leader, but they're main focus is managing the business in the deal. Superintendent. Their primary mission is manage the physical operations. Right. Of all the, the operations. So all the physical things that are happening out on the job site are about to like, they're coming towards the job site. We're managing that. So you have kind of differing sense of values, so it, we deal with this all the time. It's like, it's like this, this constant tug, like you're like open your dang wallet so we can buy a, a crane to install the things on the roof. Like, we want us to float this with air balloons or what do you want me to do? Oh, God, I got a great story for that. Okay. So there's a, there's there's differing sets of values and that's why metrics come into play, but tell the story. Oh man. So classic right project manage. We had we had a team. It wasn't a big, it was a small retrofit. They were changing out the chillers, putting in brand new chillers. They had a totally enclosed chiller yard that did it allow enough space for us to fabricate the chill water supply lines in that space. It was just, you know, everything was in there. So we had to fabricate them outside of this space and we needed a. A crane. Like the ideal situation was to fabricate, like minimize the number of welds we had to do in the chiller yard. And so we wanted to build it all out and we were like, Hey, project manager, we need a crane project manager. Like hadn't even walked a job, his responses. Well, it's not in the budget. Okay. Well, in order for us to make the labor budget, we're gonna have to do all the fabrication out here and not in there. And so there was this argument back and forth. So anyways, the team, the install team decided, you know what hell with it, we're gonna fabricate it. The way we know is best for us and to help us get the thing done. And then it came time. Like we needed, like, it's go time. We were supposed to be starting these chillers up in a few days. We need to get, we need to get the damn crane again. It's not in the budget. So what the guys did, it was awesome. They went to wherever and bought some balloons, helium balloons, and tied them around the. And took pictures of it and say, Hey, we tried the cheapest route possible to get this pipe into the chilly yard and it's not working. I think we're gonna need a crane. it was, it was awesome. But that picture got around and, you know, went further up the, the org chart and the, our, the boss was like, get the damn crane. Well, we're gonna have a crane for a day. What are we talking about? Couple thousand dollars. But the argument was there's it wasn't there wasn't a line item for the budget. Can't they just, you know, put, hook up a grasshopper and, and take it around the bend and our leaders like, no, like yes, they could, but look at how much risk is there. They can get hurt. They can damage the existing space. Like that's not a good idea. Spend the $2,000 just because it wasn't a budgeted line item doesn't mean you can't spend that money. And so anyways, that was that was the deal. It was, it was amazing. I loved it. Yes, we, so this it's operational expense. The, the, so always the argument, we're not arguing about inventory. Well, let's not go there cause there's oftentimes there's pressure on a project to get inventory moved to the site. So we can bill for that so we can have cash flow. Yes, that's important. But if we, if we, if we're not careful bring in too much inventory, we can't move. There's this struggle and it's a dance and I know how to dance. Yeah. Yeah. There is a support club for all the project managers who have worked with me in the past. so if you're, if you're interested, they, they talk and commiserate together. Cause I know how to dance, but but the reason why is because I learned their metrics yes. Learned their language, right. Learn their language. So mm-hmm chief code for every super enterprising superintendent. General superintendent. Yes. How to level up level up your argument game, learn their language, look, look for their cash flow reports. Look for, I mean, they leave this stuff on their desks or yeah. So yeah. Or they have, they go to lunch and they leave their screen open, but it's there learn it's available. So learn, learn the metrics and even better learn to share. So. If we can share those important metrics being like, Hey, like we need to make cash flow this month. I know like we've, we've curved this out and like, we need to, so like, we need to get some inventory on the site so we can, we can have, we can, we can pay our, our trades on time and not like put ourselves in a financial problem. Then we have to do other kinds of financial stuff. So and that's a local optimum thing, right? So we like look at the job site over overall. I know, I know it's really important to get the, this operation and you're really into it, Thomas, and there's an entire system, entire project that we have to worry about. So there's a give and take. And we talked about that, that smart compromise. When we're talking about 5s in relationships, there is, this is, this is what happens in real life. You have to make some compromises. So it's, it's incredibly important to share your metrics. So if I'm the superintendent, I'd be like, I got this planned out. Here's the steps. Here's the logistic plan. If we bring in this, if we bring in this air handler, so the we can pay train or Marley or whoever and pay the mechanical trade with that bill, cuz it's, it's, it's probably a big ticket. Yep. Yep. So we can have some cash flow. We're not gonna spend the owner's money, not wisely. Right. We need, we need to have stay cash positive and be like, well, it doesn't work because we're doing this other thing, but you know what, like what if we set that thing there and we changed our schedule so we can put the dang thing on roof where it needs to go. Yeah. That, that would be like, you know what? And matter of fact, we need the thing up there anyways. That's we're just burning off work. Now we can do that later and we can, we can get that crane. Yeah. Both. Yeah. It's like, Hey mechanical trade. How much money did you have in your budget for hoisting? Yeah. Yes. We had this, this amount. Okay, awesome. Now give you change order. I'm spending, I'm now spending our owner's money very wisely because I'm not double paying for two cranes, right. One time. So, but if I wouldn't have known that as a project manager, if I didn't talk to the field operations staff and vice versa. There was no compromise. So we have to just share our metrics visibly and without redaction, this is hard cuz it's there's strategy, right? There's strategy. Yeah. There's a whole other conversation about, yeah. I'm not gonna go down that road. Drive poor behavior, right? Like when, when like it, it baffles me now back then it didn't. But now all of these players don't understand it. They all have the same goal to build the stupid building. Yes. But they're combating against each other. Cuz wait, I need to protect my budget. I need to protect my schedule. I need to pro like no, no, we need to build the building. yes. That's what we need to be doing. Yes. Yes. So I mean, yeah, the goal is to build a building, but if we run out of cash, we can't pay your trades. Yep. Then the trades go away. Yep. Yep. We're like, oh wait, we're not making payroll this month. All right. See you later. So, we have, so we have there's there's a business end of the thing that we have to understand. Yes. And we have to take that into consideration and that's what I wanna upset the experts again with w Edwards ding who I was wrong. He was, he was working in the fifties and sixties as a I think he was a consultant for the United States government mm-hmm but he wrote new economics in 1993 after the goal, by the way, 10 years. So well, Dr. Damon maybe took a lesson or two by Dr. Gold at maybe. But Dr. Deming, he derided traditional Western management techniques and said, and what he said was what we need is cooperation and a transformation of a new style of men. This is that. Yep. This is that. Hey, you got metrics. You've got a schedule. You've got a strategy financially. You got a strategy for operations. We gotta, we gotta talk about, we gotta use our words. Yes. Put stuff on like draw pictures on walls, like S-curves of cash flow. Mm-hmm and perhaps a Gantt chart or perhaps a sticky note or two yep. On the wall. So how can you control flow on your job site? Through the management of inventory? We just talked about that. Yeah. Well, yeah. Story. And I did it, this was a poor, like, it helped me understand we're doing a renovation of a brewery here in San Antonio and I, it was the first project. Wow. You know what? That was the very first project that out of the gate, myself, my project manager, we decided, okay, we're gonna do last planner system, full last planner system to the best of our understanding. And, and I know that that means something different to everybody that's doing last planner system out there and we're gonna do fives and I'm gonna do just in time delivery. Like we're gonna do all of these things on this project. And, and so I challenged my team. I said, guys, we are going to do this project with zero conexes, zero storage containers on site. And of course they, they looked at me cross side, cuz we're used to having six, eight damn storage containers, but they were all just dumpsters, right? Like dark and hot dumpsters. So we compromised and said, okay, we're gonna have one Conex. And what I did like this, this inventory management, we broke down all the work that we were doing. We had isometrics for every single, all this stuff. And I released material based on that. And I knew what we were gonna be working on the next week. So I would receive the material the, the week, the Friday proceeding. And it was just for the work that we planned to do next week. And it was, there was no bundles bundles of copper. It was all TA bagged and tagged specifically for an area. And this helped, right. We didn't have a lot of clutter minimized our time on the, on the, the buck hoist. Like it was clicking until we started, like, I don't know what it was. It could have been, I miscounted how much pipe, a particular package needed or it got left lane around somebody snagged it and took it to sell it like who knows? But we started running outta copper. I didn't have any inventory. So they were working and if they didn't install it exactly as I drew it per the ISO. So for example, if I drew in their nine inch and a half nineties, and they had to route it differently or didn't follow the isometric drawing, I didn't have an extra, yeah. I didn't have an extra and half 90. So what they would do is like, we go to home Depot every time I try to you got it. And so they would go to the package that we're supposed to be installing Wednesday or Thursday and pull scab out of that. And so at the end of the week, the weeks, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we're smoking Thursday, Friday, we're sucking like, what is going on here? Why are we short, mature? So my takeaway from like, it, it helped minimize like deliveries. It was super awesome. Except for that, we, I had to get a small amount of inventory to be able to absorb those kinds of decisions that they actually had to make so that it wouldn't stop production. And, and it was the guys. And again, we are trying, it was like, we're gonna do everything that we ever read on this project. and son of a gun man, was it painful? And my team was like, Jesse, you're making our lives miserable. I'm sorry. We're we're learning guys like shut up. I don't wanna Yeah. No, but it's real. Yeah, actually that's that's So I, I was reading my notes cuz I had the same kind of realization. What I was figuring when I was doing my flow line or my line of balance studies, one of my notes is, put, put the cost of downtime on the balance sheet. That's the cost of downtime. That was that's my note. Yeah. And again, this was like early in my journey. I don't think I understand, but my next note on the next page, I said the cost of getting better should net less than zero, because if you do any improvement, it shouldn't, it shouldn't cost. It shouldn't be more. Right. Right. Like if, if, if you're, if you're, if you're doing process improvement and your, and your downtime or whatever, your metrics, your financial metrics are increasing your profit, whatever, all those, if they're not, if they're not increasing and your, your cost that operational expense of paying people to stand around. Yes. So what I did and I'll go back to my little walk up the hill study. Yes. Yes. Cause I was like, we have to maximize the crane, the hoist and the loading dock. Because all of these are fixed, these are all fixed. They can only be used in a, like the, especially the, the loading dock, because we had, we had rules about cuz we're on Howard street in San Francisco. We couldn't close all the lanes. So we're limited on the time we used that, that area. So I figured that out, I wrote it out and I time blocked deliveries. Yeah. And what I did, I came to the realization was when I did that flow line study, I also tried to figure out when they did the delivery, like the raising gang on the, and it created this little chart in Excel and it said the delivery. And then what, like what the, the expected production was that. So if it was steel delivery, it was number of pieces. If it was decking, it was square feet. If it was stairs, it would be number of number of floors. If it was, mechanical pipes, it would be number of floors if it was boom, boom, boom, boom. I went down, I created this little list. I was like, and I went from raising gain. So setting steel frame all the way through concrete placed. And then on the side of that, like, so I did the chart and then on the next thing I did was said every time it was some, something was planned to be delivered. Based upon this rate, there was a real date, cuz I knew the dates on our schedule when things need to be done. So I said, this needs to be delivered no, no later than mistake for us to make that. So I did a very, very simple calculation and this is probably some T trains happening in my brain. I was like, I need to know how much time it takes to drive a truck in, pick the, pick it up from the crane, drive it over and load it down. And so I started to look at the cycle time in the crane. So how long it would take to move on. I'm like, so I would talk to the crane operator and be like, how many moves? Cause he's, he's doing this stuff. Like he's making those and be like, Hey Brian, about how long are you doing action? And about how long are you just sitting there not moving mm-hmm and he, he was honest. He'd tell me. And I'm like, okay, this is cool. What we did. And this was like experimental we were like, what if I gave you. The loading plan. So like the, the crane operator was separate from the rest of the trades. Like they, I think the crane worked for the steel tors. Right. But then we bought time with the other trades. He was like, you can do that. And I was like, yeah, I'll give it to you. So I gave him the spreadsheet. I'm like, these are date the first week. It was like, he was like, this thing sucks. Like all, nothing worked. Of course. All of, all of your proposed delivery times, no one followed the rules. I was like, good. And it was really good feedback. Like he wasn't, he wasn't a pain about it. So I was like, okay, we need to have something that's more agile than Excel spreadsheet. And I print it out and I give it to him at five in the morning while he is climbing up the hoist or climbing up the crane. Yep. And at that time, Google calendar, ah, was kind of a thing. It was very early for me. And I'm like, I'm gonna create a Google calendar and we're gonna time block the, the loading dock. So everybody at 20 minutes, half hour, whatever it. And everybody got a color, but then if we made like minor changes, like, oh, this truck is stuck on a bridge or this truck like slide this up, slide this guy around, usually what normally traditional construction we'd talk on the radio. We'd be like, yep. Hey crane operator, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then that way they know, but I was like, no, we're gonna shoot it into his eyeballs from his cell phone. yes. Yes. And so do I, we, like, I made that note, I'm like, we need to optimize. Cause that was the bottleneck was the hoist. It wasn't the crane, the crane sent idle. The hoist. It was, was moving up and down. Yep. And when it worked yeah, but, but the loading dock was the bottleneck. So I'm like, we have to optimize there. This is the spot. Cuz what I was seeing was we weren't following the rules. We were not disciplined about the loading dock. We were just like, use it or lose it. I was like, Nope, no longer. This is no longer use it or lose it, your schedule. And we're, we're going to be very militant about and what we did, guess what we did said crane operator, he's got the hook, right? Yep. So if it wasn't your time, you don't get the hook. woo, woo. Yes. And Brian he's great guy. Probably still, probably sitting on a crane right now, but. He was, he was like, no, this is, you're not on the schedule, like go away. And yes. So yes. So that way we wouldn't back up or have major lulls. So people started to, once we were very clear that, Hey, when it's your time, you get the crane. No, no factor. But when it's not your time, it's not your time. Go drive around the city. go back when it's your time. And people align to that very quickly, very quickly. So then we got less downtime on the crane. We had this much flow. Like it, it, our increased this much more flow. So we did that for like a month and I was like, Hey, I just read this book about metrics and financials. Like, how are we doing in our, I guess it would be operational expense and inventory. Like, how are we doing against that? Like, cuz we're billing for inventory. I guess we're billing for throughput stuff is getting up into an install and we're like, our cashflow is ahead right now. I was like, mm-hmm, interesting. Interesting. Like I was like, I was probably like, I went home and I was all bragging about it, but oh yeah, head. But I was like, that is really interesting. So it was a minor experiment, but we found, it found its way to our financial. Yeah, because we did, we were, we started to get ahead of our original planned billing cycle. Yeah. Because of, of a little bit of Optim optimization. Yeah. Yeah. So it was the new economics. So that's, that's that's that's session one, by the way. Woo. If you wanna keep going, I could keep going, but I wanted to say, let's say this cause I wanted to go back to the theory of constraints and there's five steps. And we kind of talked about all of them. Number one, identify your systems constraint. You have to confront fear. You have a constraint. It's something you're uncomfortable about focus. Do action, focus, do action, focus, do action. If it's very, very, very, very threatening get professional help. Right. Talk to your vice president of operations or, or principles of the trade companies or the crane operator or yeah. Hoist operators or your safety personnel like or project manager, project like elevate, I guess that's the next step coming up here to decide how to exploit constraints. Right. Once you say like Thomas figured out the floating dock is the issue in this particular phase of the. Yep. All the downtime associated with the, the, the tower crane was wasn't being utilized enough because it was either we had a traffic jam of trucks or we had major windows of nothing. So we can, we can optimize that. So you have to decide how to exploit it. And the exploited example was Brian left the hook 400 feet in the air that, nah, not your time. you have to make that decision three subordinate, everything else to that decision, right? Yes. That's not like the, when plumbing four was like Thomas, all of your pipe for level 22 right here. It's right here, man. It's coming, babe. Load it right now. Why did it load it now? I'm like, no, it's rebar. This is rebar for 30. Yes. I guess it was that tall of a building. this is rebar for 28. That's and, and they're right behind you. So you have to drive around the flip block and get behind the rebar. That's the deal that, that is cuz it's for our flow for us to get into line. We have to subordinate. That means when you feel conflict and you feel anxiety, you feel pressure. You have to go back to your first decision. We're optimizing this, this this tower. Right. So , you have to be steadfast. That means steadfast. Like you have to not wave like hand. Good. So that's like, that's power, like being steadfast is being super calm in the face of university. That's power. Not being violent or like going around the corner and beating somebody up. That's not our, no. Right, right, right. And then if you're, if you get stuck on step three and you can't subordinate your decisions, elevate it, go level up, go two levels up. And you have to take, you can't hand the problem to your, to the person above you. but saying like, but you, when you come into that situation, figure out the issues. Do some study being like, this is the thing, this is the thing we need you to, we need a referee to make a decision so we can move forward. And once, once you get to that point and you make that decision it's leadership, yes. That is the leadership step. So if you, if, if, if you're a leader listening to this and somebody comes to you and they're stuck and they have, they've done the study, they have they've figured out the root cause they've, they've, they've talked to people. You don't make a decision. You put it back on them. That's bull. That's BS. Yes. You're a poor leader. yes. Yes. So like no BS with Jen and Jess. That's BS that we talk about straight you're confronted with a decision and you, and I'm not saying you make a bad decision or good decision. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, if you put it back on the person being like, no, go figure it out or nah, or like, eh, or don't take action worse. Oh, that's BS. cuz that way you've just, you've just elevated the constraint. yep. You've not fixed it. You've not relieved. It you've just made it worse because now it's sitting in corporate land. That's how we lose trust in each other. And that happens. So if we can make that decision, if, if you get a, if you get a constraint that's elevated to you take it very seriously. And so the trick is the fifth step that Dr. Gold teaches us and he says, this is, this is inertia. And this is the new economics thing. Says, if all of those steps didn't work, you didn't remove the constraint. You've elevated to principles of companies. You've, you've done all kinds of studies and you've, you're stuck because of policy or a business deal or. Just, just some kind of red tape, tertiary thing. Yep. Yeah. It'll get stuck there. So , if, if that happens, you can't change laws. We can't get Congress to act fast. Right. It's so hard to get through red tape. If that happens, go back to step one. Yep. Okay. Go all the way back to step one and see like you're at the, you, you didn't find the constraint. You didn't go back to cause and effect cause and effect. You found a, you found a route, a problem that it was a business deal that we made, or it was a, you know, it's like a policy or it's a safety concern. Like, Hey, we need to get this crazy zoom, boom, contraption. That's really expensive to do this safely. Do this work. That's not the constraint constraint is we didn't design the work to be easily installed. Yes. That was the constraint. So, and it's not, it's not the budget. That was the constraint. It's our planning process. And so we have to go back to step one and start over. It's hard and it's it's but Dr. Gold rat says, do not allow inertia to cause a system of good strain what's inertia to you, movement or lack of. Right. Like, if I'm moving in a direction, there's just a natural, there's gonna take energy for me to slow down or divert my path. And so that's, that's the, that's when I feel the inertia. And so if I'm moving in a path of, eh, that's just the way it is, like, that's I gotta combat that. That's the inertia. It's the way it is. Yeah. That's the inertia. So when you're confronted with that and you get to that, it's really hard to make changes. Right? People dig their heels and when you get to inertia, so don't get resentful, don't get frustrated, go back to step one and look for new constraints. that's, that's the advice. And that's what they do in the book. They go back. And that's the next chapter. Wanna keep going one or two more? Well, before we go, I'm gonna say like, I don't know if you, you may not be able to, cause I'm listening to you and I've worked with you and I see the way you care, you represent and the way you show up, like these are all system processy things, but for the listener, like if you're not picking up on. Thomas' humility and openness, like the fact that he went and studied, watched from the hill and then went and talked to the crane operator. And when it talk, like knowing all of these processes and these laws is, is it's a only the tip of the iceberg, because if you can't connect with the human beings yes. Talking to Carlos, the decking foreman. Yes. You're like, Hey, we need all of your, your openings. We have to detail all of that. This a mold, they're building a mold for concrete, right? Yeah. So we need to close the mold and there's funky curtain wall dimensions. I call 'em critical dimensions. It's all that need. If you don't have the, what I mean by critical dimensions, if you didn't have the dimension could not, you're either gonna do it wrong. You can't move forward. Yep. So, and decking, they do all the detailing yes. Around open. So the, the mild steel, the, the rusty iron looking stuff that gets set around elevators and stairs, but around. Mechanical openings and other smaller openings. Oftentimes that's done with gauge metal or sheet metal. Yep. And that has to be, and that dimensions also have to be done. And so we have to give those dimensions. And at that time, the, it wasn't good enough. The big openings were fixed. Like we knew that as you can set that up, but this was an office building still being designed and developed. So changes were constantly happening. So Carlos and this gang got spread out. So they were having to go back, go back down. And we were working them on crazy hours, crazy hours. And they were getting, getting burned up. So then I was like, how are you guys slow? You're tired playing. And but when I went and I talked to them, he was like, Hey, when we cuz they have lots of gear, they have Nelson studs. Oh yeah. It's heavy. Right. And they have welding leads. Yeah. That's and they have welding machines, they have lots of stuff. And when they're done on a floor, they gotta get all that stuff off and move it up. Well guess who's in control of the hoist mm-hmm right. Boom me. So we had that conversation. I was like, yeah, You have a human being connection, that's it caring and about? And it wasn't about, Hey, we're behind schedule, blah, blah. We were ahead schedule at that point. It wasn't. It wasn't about being behind at that point. It was about now all of a sudden we weren't, we weren't panicked about time. Yep. Because we were doing optimal things. We were starting to optimize things and get things in the flow. So at that time, and I thank you for bringing this up because then it was like, we no longer have to look at things. We can look at people, human beings. Yes. And Carlos, seven days a week, Hey, a long, a big part of their when they go from Florida to floor, they have to take all their gear. And if they have to go back down, they have to take their gear from boom, boom. Yeah. Well, that's that? That's not right. like, no, that ain't cool. We do better. Like how can we do better? So saying, Hey, when we move our stuff, we need some help. We're like, Hey, I have some, we have labor. Like we have, we have, we can optimize a hoist and just monopolize it for decking team and just do that. When they, when they need to make their move, we can make it very, very efficient for them. So they're not sitting there waiting for hoist and stuff like that. And that happened with human connections conversations and observing their work in a, in a objective manner. Meaning like, I don't, I'm not going down to that floor and thinking that they're slow. I'm going down to that floor and thinking, how can I help them? Yes, yes, yes. That's that's what that's but that's it optimizing does. Yes. That's what optimizing does. All of a sudden, we're not arguing over lines on a piece of paper we're arguing about, Hey, we need a, we need a, I need to get a, a hoist at 1230 and park it on nine so we can load our gear and then take it up to 12. Yes. It's like, boom, put that on a Google calendar. We got so all of a sudden we didn't even only had it for the grain. We had a Google calendar for hoist, both cars. There's two, yeah. One color, one color. We had it for the parking parking or the, you know, the loading dock. Yeah. Where like we started to use colors. To designate it. Cuz you like, it takes too long to read. Yes. What's on the little time block. So use the color being like, oh the hoist. And it was like, the hoist was painted red. So we made the hoist blocks red, the crane painted yellow, made the crane yep. So it made it really easy. But yeah, like we all, the only way we did op optimizing was through study of the work. So we'd go observe. We would make, make human connections being like, Hey, was this, this seems. Seems to take a long time, or this seems to take you extra time. And we we're seeing that in our metrics, like our flow lines are colliding or we're getting behind in cash flow or those kind of things. Like we, we can start to see that. And once we do that, there is no blame. Right, right. There's no blame, right? No. Cause we can all redesign the work. We can redesign the work, the people period, period. Yeah. So step four. Yep. Yep. Your gold right. Go back. Or I guess step five. If, if you can't, if you're completely stuck and you're, you've run against science or law, go back and find a new optimization. Yeah, yeah. Yes sir. Well, I think we wrap on that, Tommy. Okay. Yeah. I think we actually did. Oh, here I'll do the visual. In terms of time covered four chapters, you can get a screenshot on my flow line. Oh, let's check it out. So simple. Maybe I'll take a screenshot and then I'll do a brief discussion and see if it works. This is my early sketch. Cause I didn't even know what was didn't. You can get it. No, come up. Oh, no, hang on. I'll turn off my Oh, here we go. Oh, damn it went away. I can see your fingertips. That's it. Give me a second. I'll turn off my background. Okay. Oh that's oh, there we go. I see it. Got it. Mm-hmm oh yeah. Full plan. Yes. So you see the inputs. So I was trying to be like, What you're seeing there as I was trying to think about, and I have very poor handwriting, but I was on, on one sheet. I was writing, what are the inputs to, to planning? Ah, schedule. This is our CPM schedule. So I said, I it's the business deal, right? Say what you want about CPM. They are linked to our contracts with business deals. We have to. Yep. Every, we have to be addicted to them and make them 5,000 lines. No, but we have to do that for business tickets required by contract, right? This is how the world works. yes. Two, the master schedule sets up your strategy. So if you have a, if you, if you do it very well, you can set up all your location, all your locations, all your location data is set up in your work breakdown structure in your, in your, in your P six gig. So you build in your location base. So that sets up your Y access. So now I have both and now I have my X axis in time and I have Y access in locations. So now I can, I can train a computer program or you can do even do an Excel, right? You can do it by hand back, like yep. Shout out to empire state building. They would chart it out by hand. But if you understand location and you understand time and you understand when things are completed, you can chart that out. Yep. And last planner system comes into play. So I wrote that one input was your poll plan, because there's not enough information in, especially that project. We didn't have tons of items in our master. But, but we had, it gave us, the structure, gave us our milestones to do poll planning. So the input to adjust our location data, because there wasn't enough information in our schedule to get more data points and finish plan starts and actual finishes. We had, we had to get the, the look ahead plan input. And then we also had our, what the cartoon input was our visual management system. So that was our zones. So we planned the work in vertical, in chunks based on, based on your production rate. So like a steel rectors, their columns were two stories high. So there their zones. So everybody was in that, that phase of work in super structure, you worked in two floor zones. And then if you were in mechanical or plumbing or H B a C, or most of the other trades, you don't work in two floors. You work one because you have you're installing stuff to deck. You're installing stuff to walls. You're working out one floor at a time. Yep. So the, your zone chain. So another input for that was was our cartoons. We call 'em cartoons, but other people would call them. I don't even know T trains yep. Color ups. And then the, the one on the right. I could barely read it, but it was it was our productivities. So it was our plan productivities. And we got that from our BIM model. So if we knew our, if we knew location and we knew, and we knew time, we needed to know the number of units. Yes. Number of, and luckily we had this project, this is why it was like, kind of like the golden era. We had really good VDC manager, Nathan, he would pull all this metric, not metric. He would pull all the quantities. Yeah. Yeah. Quantities out. Be like, this floor has 320 concrete. This floor has this many tons of steel. And it was like, yes, we can back into rates. Yes. Yes. Right. So only question we asked that pull plans was number of number of head heads, number of people. Yeah. That, so I was like, then we can, we can, we can back into productivity rates and we were damn close. Yeah. Looking and, and I did once the project was over, we, we did a couple LCI Congress studies. This is all published. We went back and we crunched the data and we looked at variation between plan and actual. And that's kind of another story. Maybe you go back and look at the, go, go back into the archives at LCI. But but the other input, the input coming in from the bottom, I don't know if you saw it. It says trade partners provide produ predictions. right. So we did the poll plan, but we actually, we, what we did was we figured out our rates and we had our pitch lines and it wasn't like, super, this was not, this was Thomas, like I'm from Nebraska. Like I don't, I'm simple. So we just had simple conversation, but we're like, Hey, can you predict based upon this information that I'm giving and we know about your rate of, of production, we know your throughput, we figured out throughput close. Can you predict where your next move is gonna be? And that, yeah. Tell we did that until we made that human connection because they know they know all of the stuff, they know how long it takes to roll up the leads this, right? Like this is if we don't, if we don't include our human beings into these production systems, they won't be accurate. Correct. They won't be accurate. They cause you're not including because there's a human. And that's what we learned in the goal was yes, you have a robot it's super productive and it just cranks out stuff, but it's only local. Yes. So the out, so those were all inputs and the output from doing all of that study was a six week. Look ahead. Yeah, we did this in Excel. Like this was nothing fancy. Yeah. And there was like, why don't you put it into this robust? I'm like, I don't have to, it's not gonna move. We're good. Right. We're good. Once we have optimized and we've done this now, I, now I know like, like Jason Schroeder does this in Excel. Now, you know why you don't need any logic once you've done all of that study and you put all your tax drains and it looks like a waterfall. The reason why that works is because it's super reliable. Yep. Super reliable. And it's not gonna move. And even if it does, it moves like little bit and you use your buffer, let, let put a buffer on the end of the buffer, eat it. Yep. Yep. And that's, and and we did the LCI Congress event and you can see our, our PPC just went skyrocketed. It went into, and I get the number cuz the number doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the number is. I'm saying it was the same week after week after week after week after week. And, and we had some issues beyond our control, whether. There was some union rumblings at the time and you can see, and, and I charted it, the dates when those things happen as well. Mm-hmm , that's when we had the variation. Yep. yes. So the number, whatever our PPC didn't matter, I'm not gonna brag about it cuz it doesn't matter. The, the metric was that it was flat. Yes. So reliable and reliable when we got and the, the first, what are we in chapter 11? yep. I learned all of that in 10 chapters or at least learned how to like go look for stuff in the front half of this book. And that's why I'm so compelled to talk about it. Yeah. And, and I'm not saying it did happen on one project and it happened again and again and again. Yeah. It's every project is not the same because we didn't have all the optimizations. Right. Because other constraints, but I will say we found success and we, we were made incredibly reliable through those inputs and I'll word freedom again. So your, your visual visualization, you do pole planning, like last planner steps. You get quantities out of your BIM model. Get the actual quantities, actual quantities, linear feet of pipe. Yep. Tons of rebar cubic care is concrete. Get those, get those quantities. And then once you do that, go talk to your trades. Yep. have individual conversation with trades later. Iris Tomlin has this whole prescribed method that she would teach me to do this. This would be years later. Yeah. But but so then once you do all that, do your optimization only then do you print a look ahead? Yep. Look ahead. Plan. Yes. And after that, I mean, I think the last planner, they call that making work ready? Make ready planning. Yep. Yep. Because then you don't have to worry about making new schedules every freaking week for hours and hours. Now, all the, all of a sudden you have time to go look for other stuff. And like all of a sudden you can go to your baseball, Carlos. Hey, yes. We'll help you roll up your welding leads or, Hey, let's go to the baseball game. Yeah. Like go home. Let's go home.

Let's go home before 9: 1:44:13

00 PM. Let's go to my, my cousin's baseball game. Now you can really do some really meaningful stuff. Like, and we had, yeah, we would, we would have conversations yep. About not work stuff. Yep. And so the, so my thing was what is the reliability? The feeling it's a vibe. It is a vibe it's energy. Yes. You can see it in 10 seconds. Yes. Yes. You don't even see it. You feel it. Yes. You feel it in the air. So if, if there is, if you have flow and not like perfect Nope, no, cause won't have it. But if you have flow, people are generally interested in fixing stuff. Yeah. Right. Or being like, Hey, let's go study this issue or let's go talk to this third party. Like they're generally people generally get in interested over that last, that self assessment I did to myself. Right? Yeah. Like, Hey, let's, let's be optimistic at things and try it and see what happens. Right. Or on the flip side of the coin. What's the, what's the indicator for, for, for poor, poor metrics or poor leadership or bad flow. It's another vibe. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. That's the common vibe. That's the bad part. That's the most common vibe out there. And what usually works in that environment is the loudest person. Absolutely. Yes. Or leveraged deals. Right. We make leveraged deals. And what I mean by leveraged deals is like, we will, we will pick favorites. Yes. And then everybody else is second, second. And then start playing, pitting them against each other, like, oh yeah. Like that's most of my career Thomas. Yeah. I've worked all over the United States and it's exactly the same. I haven't worked. Yeah. It's, it's not that we mean to do it. That's just how the system works. Right. Which we're all pitted against each other. Cuz it's super complicated. There's all kinds of moving parts. And if we're not optimizing we'll have problems. And if we don't face those problems because we're afraid of them and not because like we're scared, like we're weak. It's that we are uncomfortable. Cuz we have anxiety around confronting our issues. If we don't confront those problems, they won't, they get bigger. They did bigger and bigger. Yeah man. Awesome. So take away folks, if you're listening, humility, be cool. Talk to people. And then at this last end, you're talking about how you, you collected the quantities, you collected the different inputs to create this beautiful plan. And then you talk to the traits again. Right. And so I, I gotta go there. I gotta hammer that because all of those other things, I think people are very skilled at. They know how to like, okay, let me pull quantities. Let me go count. Let me go measure. Let me do all those things. And then they produce a. They never talk to people. It's hard. That's the hardest step in last planner is that make ready planning session. Yes. Because you need, and it's hard because you have to gather all those people together. Yes. You need, you need iron worker, you need concrete, you, and like you have to get everybody focus together at the same time and care about each other. Yep. But what I, what I I'll say on that particular project, the, the stars kind of aligned and we got along. And then, then all of a sudden it's like, it lowered the barrier of entry. So when we did our trade partner, meeting our coordination, our make ready session, people gave us really good input. Like it was really helpful. And when we got that input, cheap code, the reason why it's hard is if we did all this work and we VDC was involved and we talked to like, we were, we talked to the accountants, right. It's like we did all this work. And then the trade was like, no, like I can't, I can't do that. That doesn't, that doesn't physically work. And Jeff Landry called me out in a meeting, Jeff Landry, Harrick, Harrick steel called me out. And he's like, this, this is, this is wrong, Thomas. This is, this doesn't work. And I was like, damn, okay, go check. But you know what, you know what we did, we changed it. Exactly ex that's the, yes, you did all those steps. And at that last point, if you don't change right. Step, step five of, of theory of constraints, if you don't change and inertia happens, go back to step one. Yes. And so that's why, why make ready planning is so incredibly hard cuz it takes all that effort. Yeah. And at that last moment, that last planning moment yeah. I guess the last plan would happen at the, at the huddle, but at, at a particular moment, if you don't make that modification to your plan, all of that is for wasted. It doesn't matter. It won't happen anyways. You want an incredibly reliable plan. You have to do all that stuff. Do all that study. Cuz you need all that information to make a determination and you have to give it to the trade so they can make a decision. Yes. In, in a very simple and easy to digest manner. Yes. And just throw worksheets at people. So we have to use cartoons. Yes. And spreadsheets and graphs and charts and colors and patterns and all the, all the, all the focusing steps. Yep. Evaporating clouds. Yep. Once we do that and then we make the change. So in the book they're like, we need, we gotta figure something out about this robot. This is not this isn't this isn't the, this is the bottleneck. This is the constraint. Yep. So in, in the next few chapter, They take steps to, to around the robot, which was a big no-no at corporate, at the HQ. Right, right. Yeah. So that's the, that's the fear. That's why I wanted to start with fear was like, when you're confronted with fear, you can take action. Yeah. And you can also focus, like these are two things you can do if you lock up or we revert back to our traditional methods, we won't get any better. Oh, I love that. Yeah. I love the, had a potential client ask me, well, like, do I have a guarantee around, you know, the, the improvement that's gonna happen? I say, yes. So you, this is my guarantee. I guarantee if you con, if you choose to leave things as they are, you are guaranteed to continue getting the results that you're getting. that's my guarantee. Oh, all right. Well, we'll wrap it up next time. We're starting on chapter 12, 12 chapter 12, baby. It's Coleman.. Oh man, what did I tell you? Like it's just the storytelling of what happened on the job., he never really said it directly. But like his true care and compassion for the human beings and the discovery he had around connecting with the people out on the job. Yes. All the processes, yes, all the magical formulas. But when it really came to life was right after he started really spending vulnerable, intimate, courageous time with the folks out there on the job and. Y'all know me. That's the way I roll. It's all about the people. People before processes, all the time, every time. That's how you make the processes work. So, man, I can't wait for the next one. And we're gonna give a shout out to our LnM Family member. I didn't get permission for this one, so I might get in trouble, but y'all know I'm okay with that. This one comes from Ms. Christine Fuentes. She sent me a text and, and it just lights me. Her text says, Started reading Lean in Love. Uh, you and Jen, y'all's short term goal on page nine, and I had to let you know that I feel you have accomplished it said. And the goal is to help enhance the quality of life for at least one person. She says that one person. Is her in a sea of many, Like I have tears already, right? Like when I read it I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. She also goes on to say, I also am a working professional and care for folks in and outside of work. I'm not giving myself enough credit, but will continue to work on those ripples of impact. Thank you Christine. Cuz yes, that is the goal to help one person and you and I have worked together and so being able to contribute into your life and, and you giving that feedback and letting me know. Um, letting me and Jen know that we have helped you in some way is like the ultimate. I appreciate that. The only ask I have is that you pay that forward because you got plenty to offer to the world, and so does the rest of the LnM. Family Keep on making them ripples of impact. Let people know you care about them. Let them know what you appreciate about them, and then the rest will take care of itself. Thanks again. Be cool and we'll talk at you next time. Peace. Oh my goodness. You're either driving down the road or just so enthralled with, uh, with this whole podcast that you went all the way down to the very, very, very, very end of it. And we appreciate you and just, we're going to take this as an indication of your dedication so we got a little special request of you, a call to action, because everybody tells us that like, you need to have a call to action. So here's the call to action. Be kind to yourself, go out there and share a smile with someone