This episode is a perfect example of Inventory and Excess Processing due to Felipe and Jesse going through their memory banks, but it is entertaining. These Lean Maniacs do share their years of experience around learning, coaching and combating the 8 Wastes.
Access the Lean Builder book at:
https://theleanbuilder.com/
Connect with Felipe at:
https://www.theebfcshow.com/
Find all of our Social Media stuff at:
https://www.learningsandmissteps.com/
Support the Mission at:
https://www.patreon.com/learninsnmissteps
This episode is a perfect example of Inventory and Excess Processing due to Felipe and Jesse going through their memory banks, but it is entertaining. These Lean Maniacs do share their years of experience around learning, coaching and combating the 8 Wastes.
Access the Lean Builder book at:
https://theleanbuilder.com/
Connect with Felipe at:
https://www.theebfcshow.com/
Find all of our Social Media stuff at:
https://www.learningsandmissteps.com/
Support the Mission at:
https://www.patreon.com/learninsnmissteps
What's going on L and M family and fellow Lean maniacs. We got collabo session, number three for you, which is the review, or maybe not really a review of chapter three from the lean builder, which covers the eight wastes. Felipe and I of course get all excited, get all gooey and gushy about this wonderful topic And if you haven't heard Calabosession 1 & 2check them out, they're pretty good. as you go through this episode, you're going to, you're going to see how much trauma I have around the waste of non utilized talent. And I'm not the only one withissues, Felipe has got some issues too. And they come out when we start talking about weekly work plans, Hang in there. I'd love to get some comments from y'all, letting us know how nutty we really are. Now, if you're brave enou gh and ready for some fans only magic. Hit us up on patreon.com/learninsN missteps. You'll get some exclusive content and you'll also contribute to us staying commercial free. Now time for some action.
Felipe:So we're here, man. It's a beautiful Saturday. I'm glad That you're healthy and you look good. It looks like it's a little chili. Is it a little chilly? It is.
Jesse:I, you know, it's probably me being cheap. I'm more cheap than it is chilly. So it's like, I can do something about heating this room up, but I'll just put a jacket on. Yeah, we got, you know, we get weird weather. It's it's probably what 60 degrees outside.
Felipe:Oh my God. It's like freaking hot. It's only 48 degrees out where I'm going. No, no,
Jesse:no, no. It's 54 degrees. It is a blizzard outside right now.
Felipe:So did you read?
Jesse:Yes, I did read you know, I was out you and I, we, I got to flake on you on our last scheduled engagement. And I was like out, out for about two and a half weeks. Like didn't even work.
Felipe:I can't even believe with two weeks, two and a half weeks went by that fast man
Jesse:The strange thing is the brain fog. I edited a whole podcast episode. Don't remember doing it at all. Is it good? Of course. It's amazing. Anyways, my point and all that is, I'm still playing catch up on work and house, you know, all the stuff that we got to do, but I knew I was meeting with the masterful. Felipe . So I got up extra early this morning. Got my reading, done, reviewed my notes. So I am prepared.
Felipe:Excellent. Yeah, I got up over an hour ago, It's pitch black, dark outside. I said, wow, Jesse's been awake for like over an hour. Yes. I could just tell you you
Jesse:already up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to do it. Gotta be ready and ready for the, for, for the audience. Right. I mean, want to give them something good? We want to provide some value to their, to the time they'd take out to, to listen to us ramble.
Felipe:Let's kick it off. Let's do it. We're reading the lean builder. Chapter three V8 way.
Jesse:The deep stuff here. maybe you should lead it off because you already know. I like skipping ahead all the time.
Felipe:I know you do so here, I'll set the tone and then skip us ahead. So in chapter three, you're only a third way into the seven chapters of the book and it, chapter three, Sam doesn't get it yet, which is real life. Like it takes a while to get some of this stuff, you can walk past a eight waste poster a thousand times and never understand. What it is, even if you read the whole thing a thousand times, and in chapter three sam gets this call and this happens every day to superintendents all over the world where one of the trades will call you and say, all of a sudden, I've got some extra material I'd like to bring it to your site. And the superintendent just gets it. Yes,
Jesse:yes.
Felipe:Don't even think about it. And I don't know, Jesse for at least a decade have been anti bringing things just because
Jesse:Felipe Phillipe I agree. But I think it's important, for the coaches out there to really take into account, what's driving that behavior, right? Like they're not doing it to make their life harder. They are getting some kind of reward from that behavior., and the reality is, or rather my theory is it's a result of us working in this system, that's all jacked up because it's all jacked up. There's all kinds of pinch points. You know, there's all kinds of cliffs to fall off and die in the idea of having just getting it early is better because typically. And this is nationally, right? I'm in San Antonio, Texas. You're in California. And we all have the same experience because people are so used to having a break in the supply chain, wherever that may be. And so the default is, hell, do you get here early? So that way, at least we don't have to wait for it when we actually need it. Again, another indicator for some problem solving, but when you're in the middle of it and budgets are telling you, you're running out of money and schedules are telling you, you're going to start paying out of your pocket. What do we do? We revert to our comfort zone and release the
Felipe:crackin.. And for people like reading along in the book, Sam gets a call from Hank. Who's running the duct work and he's telling them, you know, they have a little joke back and forth. Appreciate that humor, Joe and Ken, we like that back and forth humor. Some military humor in there as well. Offense, if we're going to just jump over the fence, getting blown over and allegedly ran, allegedly ran over by Hank. And they're going to bring an entire floor is worth the duct work to the building, like in what, two weeks, two weeks later. So in a matter of a couple of days, the entire buildings, duct work is going to be on the floor in the building. So everyone listening, like just imagine walking through a building now, imagine all that you just walked through. You can't just walk through it because duck works in your way everywhere. Everything that would be up in the ceiling is now on the floor, in your path to travel. It's impossible for it. Not to be in your path to travel
Jesse:oh yeah. Plenty of stuff. But at the onset was like, what? You can get it early. Bring it, bring it baby.
Felipe:With excitement. The first thing that Sam thought when all the duct work was going to get there, as what, what do you think about the schedule?
Jesse:We're gonna finish early. We're going to catch up. We got to go.
Felipe:That happened on my last last job I was a PM on. Same thing happened. They brought all the duct work for two. Floors. You know, cause if one floor of duct work is good, Jesse floors even better. I feel like it caused a one month schedule delay.
Jesse:Joe, and Kia, and did a fantastic job of, of really laying out all the real impact that decision has. And you just can't see it. You, I mean, you're in the middle of it as a superintendent trade foremen, whatever, and it feels good to see everything there. Right. And so that takes me to kind of, to where I started is, well, hell yeah. And by the way, I've been that trade partner that was happy to flood the job with duct work and pipe and carriers and everything else, because it made me feel safe. I have everything here. I'm not going to have to wait for anything. I'm not going to have, the frustration negotiation back and forth will, can you send me some of it? What can you send me all of this mess back orders. It's all here. I could touch it and it feels great, but I touched on it a little while ago. It really is a around, right. It really is getting it early is, is a bandaid to a bigger problem. And as we go through this, , they highlight like, man, the compounding problems associated with getting all that stuff here early, you see a poster on the wall or you read the words eight wastes in a book. But until you can contextualize what that is to your day, you really won't understand. And then warning red alert, right? Alert my what's your once you're able to see the waste. You may need to get a therapist. Because you're going to see that damn waste all over the place. And it is going to give you this sense of anxiety. Like, oh my God, we're gonna die. Like, no, we're not going to die. It's been there the whole time. The difference now is you can see it and you got to do something about it.
Felipe:It's in our culture, batching, queue, big batches. We want to process everything in giant batches and we think more better.
, Jesse:I guess the best way to say is there's hazards in it. And being aware of it helps us make a better decision. They brought for truckloads of duct work, started out at seven 30. Yeah, we got it. We're putting it all over the place. I guess what's that page 44. And there's still like this sense of glee, this is going to be great. We're going to make up time. Everything's going beautifully. And then there's a dose of reality. Allen invites his mentor Sam to the huddle, like, Hey man, check it out. Things are going good.
Felipe:No, Sam invites his mentor,
Jesse:Alan to the, oh, I got them flipped. So Sam invites invited Alan to the huddle to kind of show off. I look at what I've been doing. Look at where we're at as a team. Unknowing that there is a problem about to blow up in their face.
Felipe:I'm glad Allen's there to witness it if nothing else for comedic relief, because once you, once you see, it's kind of predictable what the, the dominoes are gonna fall, reader reader for the first time, checking this out, this is not fiction. This is real Jessie. And I have seen this hundreds of times,
Jesse:well, I've done it. I've done it. So they start going through the, the daily huddle.. It eroded from a huddle to talk about what work was going to be done to a huddle that was talking about what work could it be done, which is never fun. And guess what? The main reason they, these different trade partners could not do their work was because please duct work is blocking them receiving this duct early and distributed it throughout the floors, constrained people from actually physically doing their own work. And that's when the perfect venue for some teaching arises.
Felipe:It just delivered that day, it's been less than an hour and there's already damaged duct work in less than 60 minutes, which is so real.
Jesse:Yes. You know, when, when I used to play out there, we would keep it, give me my duck, give me my duck. And you know, people would tell me, like, just aren't you worried about damage damaged? Like, no, no, no, it's good. It's good. We're going to have the ends covered. It'll be protected. It'll be
Felipe:protected. Saran wrap is going to protect metal.
Jesse:Exactly. And then even better. That saran wrap, all that does is call for people to go poke at it and pop holes in it. Right. And then after they pop the holes in it, guess what they do, they throw they're in San Antonio, anyways, breakfast tacos, they come into aluminum foil. What are you finding the duck? Lukoil it just ends up, like, it just keeps degrading and degrading man.
Felipe:Because rectangular duct work when it stood up and it's like a short piece, it looks like a perfect garbage can. Yes. Even though it has no bottom, that's just trivial consequence. No one cares about that.
Jesse:Yup. And if not, at least it's a target for us to try to throw stuff in. Kick it out. I bet you, I can make it in there. I mean, I love making fun of people, but these are behaviors. These are things that happen. Like having that extra junk stuff there, rather having it before it's needed. Yes. Triggers all these other behaviors within our people out on the job site. And we, what will we do? We will blame people. Stop, stop sticking, you know, stop popping holes in the saran wrap, stop throwing stuff in the duct. Yeah. Okay. But how about not have it there?
Felipe:And in those meetings, it's always the general contractor talking down hard on the foreman as if the foreman are the ones doing that stuff.
. Jesse:Like the foreman said today, in order to achieve budget, we've got a pop holes in saran wrap. Then on the next page, it really surfaces the largest contributing factor to that situation, the decision was made. It was a siloed decision between two people. They did not get the expertise and the perspective of everyone on the team to make the appropriate decision for the team. What do you think about that?
Felipe:That's what we call a single silo optimization. Ooh. When you're trying to benefit. Yeah, I guess I got the fancy words today.. Look, I got my fancy coffee cup. I'm staring at myself. Dude. Shout out to what happened on the job, we'll give a shout out to the sponsor Goodman insurance. Nice. No, but single trade optimization is always going to be to the detriment of the project. And like you said, sam got so excited when Hank called him or yeah, Hank called him and said, I've got this duct work to deliver. Cause we're not used to having things go our way so when, you know, when something seemingly good happens, you're just going to, you could just get swept up in it and not think like, oh, wait a minute, there's an entire project here. An, a job with this side is it seems like there's at least a dozen or more trades. So if you do something that makes one trade, very productive, or hyper productive, It's going to be at the detriment of the others. You have to always be thinking optimizing the whole project, not one single trade partner, which we often see and kind of glad he didn't do it to the dry wall or for a change I think we see that happen most often with sheet rock because there's warehouses all over the United States and the world in every major city full of drywall. So it's easy to make it just show up like magic.
Jesse:It kind of reminds me of, the evolution of my thinking. There was a point in my career when. Rather than argue about, no, I don't really need everybody. I kind of decided to just, let's just agree to disagree because I still don't know
Felipe:chip on your shoulder. It's like almost as big as your head,
Jesse:right? I mean, jeez, you talk about poll planning The other thing that happens in pull plans that's kind of invisible, is it trade partners or rather Jesse got to understand how his success was interdependent of everyone. Else's success. I got to learn that my handoffs helped people, which helped me. I get this question often, like, man, well, we already did a pull plan for one room and we're just going to kind of like, okay, but there is variation right in the rooms. There's different layouts. There's there's. Different people, all that stuff, when you have a you're on a project for 18 months, the likelihood of having all of the players stay, the duration of that project are very low. Right? Thank you. and in the pool pull we're talking, we're making commitments, there's some outcomes that we need to have, but some of the outcomes that aren't explicit is as a trade partner, I start learning how there's this interdependency in order to achieve success. So that, that whole little rant there is about how do we, how do we help a trade partner get from it's all about me. I need my duct work. I need my plumbing. I don't care about anybody else to say, oh yeah, if I do it this way, it's going to help me in the long run pull, you know, that's a reasonable expectation out of a few cycles of full planning.
Felipe:Totally is. you know, with Sam and Alan, Alan is being very intentional with Sam because he wasn't ready to just jump to pool planning. Because it would have just blown up and then it blows up. And when I say it blows up, I mean, it's going to utterly fail. And I think if you haven't prepared your foundation for how to even be thinking differently, you don't have a chance. Your, your success ratio for Pull planning is 0%. You're not, you're not, you can't do it now. Don't get me wrong trade partners. You're listening out there. If you're on a job and the GC is currently not poor pullning pull planning, can't canutely bsolutely yourself and still be completely successful as compared to the rest. And maybe even spark some curiosity. And if you're out there listening and you know, the eight wastes and you're on a job and it's clear as day based on what you see day in and day out, that you're the only one that sees it, throw a book at somebody it's available on audible too. Find a meaningful way to engage with people. Just like Sam does here. Sam gets walked up to the second floor by Allen and he's like, let's just look at it. Let's see what that decision, manifested and they go start checking it out.
Jesse:Fantastic point. There is some foundational learning and knowledge to be had and build upon you know, we don't start with calculus in first grade, right? Nope. So, this is a recent learning that I've had, you know, we're talking about the eight wastes, the whole bunch. And as I was reading through this, it like, conceptually, it's easy for me to understand what the eight wastes are and I've spent a lot of time learning it and practicing it now when I go and interact with, with an installer let's give them a name. I'm going to go talk to Josh. Okay. And Josh is an electrician and he's installing light fixtures. And when I go to Josh and say, Hey, Josh, I've been observing you. You know, I've been watching you for about 20 minutes. Thank you , you're wearing all your PPE or lifting it appropriately. Your work here is clean. Appreciate that, man. Keep doing that. But I see an opportunity in your work. To eliminate waste. That sounds like a, a very helpful, it sounds good so far, right? No, it doesn't.
Felipe:That sounds so rude already.
Jesse:Thank you. And he looks at me and he says, what do you mean waste? Like I'm working my ass, well, let me tell you about the eight ways. You know, when you go up and down that ladder that's waste. There's a million examples. What's happening. Like you said, Phillipa, Felipe Engineer Manriquez,ing that person of being waste. That's what I hear. That's exactly what they hear and we got to be responsible with that. I have to recognize that the way that individual is doing the work is the way the work was designed. And so if I go to Josh and say, Hey, Josh is blah, opening, how are you doing everything? Wonderful. Good, great. And then I say, Hey man, you're following the process. You're doing a great job. It's clear to me that we've done a miserable job of making that work better for you. And here are some things I want to run by you so that we can make the work better for you. And you let me know, like, is this a good idea? Is this a bad idea or will you, or will you not do try the idea. That conversation is very different than saying, Hey, let me tell you about these eight wastes and they're all up in your business. Yeah,
Felipe:I think I liked that other approach most better. Yeah. I think so. Let me run this stuff by you. There's no need to be defensive, right. And that way, the other way, option one, the walls go up you will not cross that line.
Jesse:Blame the trade partner. They're just, you know, they just, there's just no buy-in from trade partners.
Felipe:Well, every time I hear that, there's no buy-in from trade partners. I translate that to, I don't know how to persuade people to try cool ideas. That's what I really hear. Or I, myself I'm not bought in. I'm not Mr. Persuasive. But when I get excited about something it's infectious. Yes. And the same is true for anybody else. I've had people get excited about CPM schedules and I'm like, I'm almost excited about it, except I just have 22 years of experience
Jesse:to be like, wait, wait, wait, come back to
Felipe:reality.
Jesse:And then we get to the acronym of downtime. So they start talking about D right. And, and like you said, the coaches walking sand through it beautifully, right? Like the first one is defects. The D and downtime is defects looking at this situation, not simulated, like real life where he's living the pain. What defects do you see? It helps them contextualize, digest that knowledge, that information in such a way that he will remember based on his own experience, not based on something he read, not based on something he heard, but the combination of the three heard it read it, felt it.
Felipe:Alan doesn't even have to even tell him to write it down. He's just, he's already in that coaching coachee relationship , you got to lay that ground, that foundation down. And you remember how Joe and Keon set this up, that foundation for Sam and Allen goes back decades. Yeah. So coaches, you figure out a way to approach people so you can get into that coaching and better coaches can do a faster so he just gets them to agree and see the defects are problematic. And right now, since it's nothing that he's directly done, they're just looking at some damage, duct work on the floor, you know, there's no reason for Sam to be defensive. Cause it's tank's problem right now but no, Sam, it's your problem too. Cause it's your job. You made the decision to interpret it early. Yeah. And then the second one is the overproduction and Alan's telling him he's just going an order Dow and T I N E downtime. Yep. And that overproduction, beautiful definition. They're having it too soon before it's ready. The opposite of just-in-time.
Jesse:I've seen a lot of people struggle with the, the idea or concept of overproduction. I think it comes from, you know, the industry that we work in. There's definitely a type of personality, aggressive, assertive, competitive type type a yes,
Felipe:That's what we hire for in the, in the business. All right.
Jesse:And if they're not type a guess what? Well, they're probably not going to be successful in, in our organization. Like we, we designed that recreate that culture environment. We are action biased. We want to do stuff, we want to go and we want to go faster every day we wanna win all the time independently. We don't really understand winning as a group. And so an Indian cater of winning is putting stuff in seeing stuff, seeing activity I get it. But if we think, if I'm out at a lake and I see two people in the water and there's, water turning up and down, ah, like, oh yeah, that's great. There's a lot of activity going on there. One may be drowning though, and we don't understand that. And so now we have, we wrecked out forms on the floor. We took all the pan deck and out, we have an empty floor. Oh, my God.
Felipe:That's the most dangerous time on a project. When a floor first gets turned over, it's one of the most chaos is coming.
Jesse:Yes, because then it becomes like, oh, well, I know our plan was to do X first but for some reason, trade the material to do that is two days behind schedule. Well, we're going to do Y and Z because their space and they have their material ready
Felipe:I couldn't even stop. I couldn't stop laughing. Yeah. I'm just seeing an open floor and hearing the people whispering in the back, like. Oh, it's wide open. It's available. Where are you at? Where are you at with this? Go get on it. Go
Jesse:get up there. And that is absolutely a trigger to overproduction.
Felipe:Don't forget that it's encouraged by the owners to own an owner or walk your job after a milestone, like a floor being poured out and they don't even stop and say, good job. First thing they do is where is everybody? Why, why isn't everybody working on here? It's like, well, it just cured like minutes ago. Oh yeah. Everyone thinks the construction is like turning a light switch on or turning a faucet. You know, let's not forget the plumber love it's not a flip of the wrist and it happens. It's a massive coordinated effort.
Jesse:And so this overproduction ID, like it is very counterintuitive to the people in our industry.
Felipe:And I don't want to leave out the designers too, Jesse, because the designers overproduction is the number one way that design gets behind schedule. And I don't care if it's architectural engineering and I've pulled people and they'll often will not want to admit over production, but as soon as we make their work visible with either scrum or pull planning, all of a sudden it becomes clear that you've got people working on massive amounts of things, way in advance of when it's necessary. And they're almost happy to hand it off in this gigantic stack of stuff, even though they know it's just riddled with defects and they're going to have to rework it and a second time. And sometimes even the third time, over production, just drains so many things. It has so many horrible consequences, but I think it is the least recognized waste. And when I pull people, I pulled designers, architects, engineers, contractors, trade partners. Overproduction never makes the top five, but when you do a root cause and how these dominoes fall, the eight wastes are all interconnected, right? You never just have one. They're like twins and can templates octuplets. Yeah. And who is coming a gang.
Jesse:Them laced road. Deep baby. You gotta be careful.
Felipe:To this point, Sam's a green, as Alan is dropping the knowledge of what these, you know, first-hand flow wastes are, he just completely understands how it's, it's going to slow his job down.
Jesse:We know what that feels like. Yeah. That sucks. That's a waste. Let's stop. Let's get that out of the system. That was super easy. And then w where do we go? So then we go to, oh, my cut me off when you need to. Because this is, this is one of my favorite ones I put my
Felipe:book down so you could just go.
Jesse:So non utilized talent. in the book, it talks about non utilized talent in terms of a trades person or craft person moving trash around or moving inventory around. And which is keeping them from exercising their expertise by installing stuff, which is a beautiful image and a real thing that happens all the time. it's not just that, there's so much, it's more for me in that idea of non utilized talent and one that this book does an excellent job of equipping people to start attacking is. When we don't get the expertise of the craft workers that are doing the damn work, right? They have an immense amount of knowledge that we do not tap into that is non utilized talent, the decision that was made to release the duct in a conversation between two people was a failure to tap into the talent of the rest of the trade partners and understand how this was going to make the point project better or not. Now here's the other part, eliminate the nation and minimizing or removing waste. And having a stable system create a venue for us to develop capabilities within people. And I'm going to say right now, I've seen it over and over and over again where an individual, my, my buddy, Fernando, she got a mechanic. Fantastic. Installer never knew how much of a caring soulful individual he was. And our early interactions were hurry up. Right. What's your problem? What do you need? I need more to like, okay, stop whining and get your work done. And it was, you know, I was, I was, if you can't tell I was a coddling nurturing type of guy, or
Felipe:I thought you were like a pushy boss,
Jesse:man. Okay. Well, you know, some people call it that,
Felipe:authoritarian, dictator tyrant.
Jesse:Yes. And in my mind functioning that way for Nando was the problem. And as I learned and, you know, tripped over myself a million times, I discovered that if I get these barricades and minimize the waste in his work, all of a sudden, Fernando was this really insightful, thoughtful person that was fantastic at training and guiding apprentices. It wasn't that all of a sudden Fernando was there. Hernando always had that, but because of the way I lead or managed, right. Cause I wasn't leading, I was managing and dictating. I was failing to tap into that talent and, and, and through many years, and a lot of patients on his part, I was able to mature to a point where I was like, oh, let me get all this junk out of his way. And all of a sudden this talent that he had, that no one, like we just don't think the craft workers have a capability of teaching or communicating or, or problem solving and innovating. The reality is we can't see it because of the systems that we are designing and we, and, and live with the caveat of, you may not have intentionally designed it, but your behaviors and practices. By default or designing a system that keeps us from tapping into that talent. Okay. Rant over.
Felipe:No, that's a good rant. I feel like, I'm Fernando and I've been mistakenly called Fernando a bunch of times too. So it's like extra, extra good example. People in charge, you know, the leaders don't know what their people can do. They have no idea. And there've been books written about the untapped potential in the workforce for people to do things. And if you look at how, you know, we talked about that type a personality, even those people have creativity streaks in them and they do things like. Leaders out there listening to this to really understand nano utilize talent. You have to get to know your people, just like Jesse had to get to know Fernando. How did you find out that he was good at teaching? When did that, when did that light bulb go off Jesse?
Jesse:It was one time that I, a couple things I had to slow down and when I say slow down, what I mean is spend like 10 minutes observing him in his area and just, you know, being present, not physically there and staring at my phone or on a call, I was there for a few minutes. He's like, Hey, bro, I want you to come and check this out. See what you think. Cause I think this could help other projects. I was like, well, yeah. Okay. We can save time. I'm going to come see it. Yeah. And as he was doing this thing that he wanted to show us, that was a new apprentice on the job. Like the first day on that project, he had some experience, but it was his first day on the project. And I he, I was there to see the way he was gonna, you know, elevate the duct so that he could seal it and do all the stuff that he needed to do and then hang it. And there was some tricks, right. So little tricks. He had a little stand that he built and that's okay. So let's go check it out. So he gets the new apprentice and he tells the appraise like, Hey man, like straight up, have you ever Pooky duct before? And th the guy says, yeah, I feel like the duct sealant. Right. Okay. Well, show me, like, I just want to see how you do it so we can make we're on the same page. So the apprentice shows him and he says, okay, that was good. But here's a couple of things that I noticed you didn't do on the corners right here. You need to like pack it in and you need to do two to two and boom, boom, boom. Right. And if you want to keep it off of your body, Here's how I would recommend you set up your little Pooky bucket and your brush. And I was like, and this, that took like two minutes yeah. I was like, oh my God, this guy's got magical skills. Like he can, he's a teacher, you know, he'd always been a teacher. I just failed to see it. And me pushing, yelling, screaming typically means a to seal the duck. We got to go cause Jesse going to come and scream and yell. And then because he didn't teach the person how to do it appropriately. Guess what? When we went to duck test, there's going to be a ton of leaks because he didn't train or teach the individual. And we're going to go back and on a damn live through ceiling grid and fix all the stupid leaks in the duck. And why, because of me. Back to your question, how did I discover that I had to slow the hell down? Which is very difficult. And then even more difficult. I had to listen, like listen with my eyes and my ears, understand what was actually going on.
Felipe:That shouldn't be a, tick-tock listen with my eyes and my ears. We'll make that song. Shout out to Fernando teaching, teaching that next generation. Non utilized talent is that hidden potential on every team, every person, even yourself, like, you know, both of us, Jesse, you and I talked to each other. I think we. I think we equally mentor each other. And we tap into in these conversations or we're intentional to discover things inside of us that we didn't know. We had, like, I I'm finding out new things about myself every day. It's it's I mean, if I can do that yup. That anybody
Jesse:can, yeah, we got to do the Rocky Rocky five, if I can change and you can change, everybody can change. The non utilized talent. I'm going to hit it again and then I'm going to stop getting it one more time, hit it. You know, people ask me like, Jess, why do you do, why you do this lean stuff? Like, why do you like coaching in and teaching it? And for a long time, I didn't have a re an answer. And then, so I really had to think about it. And the truth is when I was a first time foreman and I got introduced to tools, right? Weekly work plan, six week plan, then I got introduced to 5s. And then I got introduced to the rest of LPs. And the more I practice that used, well, rather practiced the tools because it took a lot of iterations for me to, to be able to use it in such a way that it produced a better result. What that did was it created some bandwidth for me to learn more things and understand things deeper and listen to people and build relationships. And so, as a result of practicing the lean stuff and continuing to learn. It helped me discover a, a talent for teaching and, and obviously talking is, is maybe not a talent, but it's completely good
Felipe:talent there also I'll say it for you since you can't do it for yourself. Jesse is a talented speaker.
Jesse:Thank you, sir. Thank you. But I never would have discovered that I discovered it as a result of practicing the different tools, learning the concepts, understanding the philosophy, the purpose, the intended outcomes of all of these things. And as a result, my career trajectory was like, like to the moon baby. And so practicing learning, adopting this lifestyle or this way of thinking has enhanced my quality of life over and over and over again. And I know for a fact that it's done that. And that's why I want to coach and support people in their learning because I can help them make their day suck less.
Felipe:Absolutely love it, Jesse. Okay. Yeah. You're you're already, we couldn't even get through all the ways before we had to jump on, like, why you'd even pay attention to it. I, early on when I, when I learned this stuff and I, and I had it, I got it down. I would just jump over it and be like frustrated with people, obsessed with eliminating waste and it took me like three years of just crashing against the wall on why is it so important to remember that you don't have capacity when you first start. Yeah, you're at, you're running, you're running yourself like too close to a hundred, and you can't sustain that. I can sprint maybe across a crosswalk, right. But I'm not going to sprint a hundred meter dash, and I'm definitely not going to sprint a marathon. So when you're first starting out recognizing the eight wastes and then avoiding them, getting them out of your life is a massive capacity builder. Yes. And for some people, especially newer people, 90% of your Workday is in waste. And it's not learning curve. It's like Jessie said, you're in a system designed to make you do these wasteful things, and it's not, you you've got to recognize them and learn them. So, I mean, the readers out there. Reread chapter three multiple times until you get it and put them into play so that you can increase your capacity to do more of what you want and discover those talents, develop those talents. I always do this Jessie, here's my fleet based dirty trick to see if people get it. Okay. If you understand waste and most people just nod politely and tell you that they get it. I asked them like, what are you learning during the Workday? And that's the response. I get dead silence. If you are really doing it, you have increased capacity to learn and you can learn anything you want. I I've even told people, like, if you want to study some biology on the side, or if you want to get good on Tik TOK, you know, shout out to Shannon. I was like really good at math, social media posts. I just learned from her this week that you can do donut yoga. Oh, yeah,
Jesse:I saw that. That was awesome. Yes. I'm jealous. Like, come on ladies. When do I get invited to do donut yoga?
Felipe:I've never been invited to donut yoga, but I want to be invited. Can you can get your work done. You can learn, you can experiment and you can have better relationships at work that doesn't happen until you have that learner's mindset and you're putting it into place. So check out this chapter multiple times.
Jesse:So that takes us to transportation. And transportation. It's the movement of the stuff, the material. And one thing to make that easier would be to have everything on wheels, right. Anything that's it's delivered to the job site, make sure it's got wheels on it or under it. In that minimizes the impact, right? Cause if it's on pallets, yeah. You probably have a pallet check and everybody else is using it or it's on the other damn side of the building. Or that sheet rock is in my way or that pallet of fittings is in my way and I'm not going to move it. I'm installing duct sheet, rock and pipe fittings. That ain't my stuff. So that's a phone call, Hey man, look at this store a picture text, like, Hey, they need to move their crap. I can't do much
Felipe:worse of a photo put into some management software platform that goes to the superintendent,
Jesse:And then you piss everybody off or that's a whole other thing. But if it's on wheels, I'm more likely like, oh, I'll just move it out of my way. It's still waste. It is, has been reduced. It's still waste. But the movement of that material, I mean, ideally the M the, the transportation of that material should be off the truck onto the floor and its final resting place within three days, I say that never having achieved it, but that's what I'm working towards. No, get it off the truck, wear it to the place of installation to its final resting place. Within three days, it takes a lot of damn effort, a lot of coordination and whatever, but you're minimizing the transportation off the truck under the first floor for six days, moving it around because zillion times up to the second floor, moving it around a gazillion times and then actually installing it three weeks later. I didn't need it. I didn't, I got it too early,
Felipe:And you know, all of these definitions, these eight wastes that we're uncovering, they all are sitting on top of this definition of the flip, the inverse what's valuable. I think Joe and Keon jumped over it cause they just assume everyone knows the value is, but the wastes don't make sense to people. Transportation. I got it. And the reason I'm, I'm sensitive to transportation Jessie, because I got into an argument with somebody recently about transportation is a type of waste. I said, let's agree. First on what's value value. In my definition that I learned from Jim Womack, shout out to Jim Womack, author of the machine that changed the world. Love you, Jim. Also your buddy at the lean enterprise Institute, right? Yeah. Jim Womack's taught me a long time ago in a book. He said value is the beneficial transformation of information material, or a combination of both that's value. And he's like, if it's not transforming nothing's happening, there's no action. And I love that definition because it's so action oriented. My type a side is like,
Jesse:yep. Got it. And got it. Right.
Felipe:I'll often tell people like when you order something from Amazon, shout out to Amazon, when that thing leaves the, where it's held the warehouse, the distributor or the, you know, the direct seller and it, and it's on its way to you. Are you happy that it's on its way to, you know, you don't get any ha you don't get satisfaction until you have it in your hand. Transportation is a necessary evil because you don't live in a warehouse, sorry. You have to wait for it to, and there's, it's coming to that. Another waste that we just passed, right? They're all related. They're all interrelated. We want to minimize transportation. That's why Amazon is an organization. When they say, when they scaled created distribution warehouses outside of most cities are right on the city limits of most major cities. And they, they can do that, that two day shipping that they, they tell you that you get it free as part of your membership at any free you're paying for it. You're paying for it a hundred percent, but they can bring the cost down to deliver rather than a centralized place where everything's coming from one spot. So that's a, that's a different thing to think about beneficial transformation of material information, or combination of both. When you have that value definition. Then it's easier to see why transportation's a waste. Cause I've had a lot of people have a lot of trouble with the T in downtime. It's got to have it gets right. We pay for it too. Like we pay for shipping and people just assume, because you pay for it, it's valuable, like, right. Just cause you pay it, that's a necessary evil.
Jesse:I pay for, I pay for the doctor right. When I'm not taking care of myself, it doesn't mean it's value it's because there is a, I have wasteful behavior that is creating an unhealthy situation. Like yeah. It's keeping me alive. It's going to help me live a little bit longer, but it didn't have to happen. It's a result of bad decisions.
Felipe:Yup. Completely preventable. Oh, that's
Jesse:a better, thank you. That's a better definition. Not bad decisions, but preventable behavior. Right? I like that. Ooh, man. I'm writing that down.
Felipe:Yeah, transportation, Jesse, you got me inspired, man. I started running. And that's that's transportation of myself, transporting myself all over planet earth,
Jesse:transporting the calories out out of Philly. And
Felipe:it's cause I have too much excess inventory in terms of fat cells. All of these wastes are interrelated. So now I have to spend all this transportation, right? Yes. Because he
Jesse:overproduced when you were at the table. Yup.
Felipe:Overproduction putting in more food than was necessary. Defect was I tried to put my pants on and I couldn't button them up. I wanted to blame the pants. It was defective thinking that caused me to not be able to button pants that I used to wear for a decade.
Jesse:Oh man. The afflicted, when you are afflicted, you will have these types of conversations. Right. And so that takes us to inventory the sixth waste. Allen is, you know, still schooling Sam. So having inventory may not seem like a bad thing at first, but having too much of something on a job site can kill flow. So that's an important like that it can kill flow. Yes. We'll work happen. Yes. Will people be busy? Yes. Will things get installed? Yes. But is it flowing? And I think that's a real, that's a good anchor point to, to, you know, get a sense of what inventory, a good or an indicator of. Oh, I have too much inventory because inventory is helpful when the buffer or that inventory is right-sized. Yup, but I don't, I don't you know, for me in my early, earlier in my career, I just needed material. Cause it made it, it was my hobby. Right. It made me feel good. Cause I got a
Felipe:security blanket for those of you that don't speak Jesse.
Jesse:Thank you. Thank you. Security blanket. And then I went, then I got introduced to all these concepts and I said, oh zero inventory on the job
Felipe:delays
Jesse:delays, because we needed, this was for real, I ordered half-inch copper. I did a bunch of stuff anyways. So I only ordered exactly what we needed for a specific thing. And because of the way the team was cutting the pipe, it caused us to need more couplings. But I only ordered six and because we needed two more. They had to stop and wait, cause we had to go get some couplings that, you know, you could trace it all back to the fact that my inventory buffer, there was zero inventory buffer what did it do? It disrupted the flow of work because they were clicking and then boom, hard stop. So inventory is an indicator, but we've got to right size that buffer, right. It rather, I should say it this way. Inventory can be used as a buffer, but it's got to be right-sized and understanding the whole scope of work or the, some of the work in the material and you know, our output, what can we do? How quickly can we do it helps us rightsize that inventory buffer.
Felipe:Absolutely. And we see the same thing in design as well, in early design, sometimes the design team wants to engage the client stakeholders. With a lot of meetings. The clients like trying to optimize for their stakeholders are busy. Like, especially if it's a hospital or a school they've got day jobs. Right. But they were like, let's just do this. Let's get these meetings over with. So we're going to have like five meetings, you know, one week, or even I've even seen like all day sessions that just burn people out. And you've created this massive inventory of information. So now that they've pulled this massive amount of information, they've got these like pages and pages and pages of notes or flip chart papers, or an entire room is plastered. Whiteboards are just filled to the, to the kilt where you've run out of space. And then someone has to process all that information. It was way too much. And then they look back and they're like, God, you know, th the, from here to here, this doesn't even make sense anymore. Like, what were we even thinking? What were we talking about? It's just too much. We see the same thing with punch lists these management systems that allow you to create issues. It just encourages excessive inventory going way beyond what's necessary and what people can handle, because holistically, we haven't looked at our system that we've created that we're living in how much information, how much throughput, how much flow what's our flow rate of, of good, valuable in place, high quality work. You can't exceed that throughput until you make changes to your system. Right? So if we're on a team, Jessie, like your crew, how many people were on that group doing those fittings, three people, three people. So that three person crew, they have a certain output and you could, you could have stepped back and said like, based on the rate am I in my feeding them with enough stuff so that they can continue to have a smooth. Flow. And if you need to speed them up, you don't think just throw more material at them. What changes can we make so that the work and flow easier and faster will be a consequence, but star with making it easier first and reducing that inventory within that buffer. Thank you, Jesse. Yep. See how aligned
Jesse:we are. Yes, oh, here's a good here's one. Tell me what to think about this time is the shadow of motion. Tell me more you like that. So I got introduced to that by a coach, mentor, Bryant, Sanders, and we're just learning how to study work. And he kept saying that I'm like, I think I know what you mean, but no, not really. So it took a while for me to digest it. So what does it mean? Break it down time is the shadow of motion. What I tried to do in my improvement efforts previously was cut time, go faster, and all that was, was really pushing, grinding, adding burden to the person's day. It took me a long time to discover that if I reduced the motion, take out the things that are causing the movement of that human being, the result is as that motion gets smaller, the shadow gets smaller. Time is reduced, or you like that.
Felipe:I love that time is the shadow of motion. Yup.
Jesse:So when we want to improve throughput or output production, whatever words you want to use there, my recommendation or my learning, rather what I learned was. Focus on reducing the amount of movement that individual has to do as a result of the way the work is currently designed. You minimize that. Time's going to go down without a doubt.
Felipe:That's so gold. You like
Jesse:that? I love that Brian Sanders imported that to me and got to keep sharing that knowledge. Right. Right. You know what, that's perfect. Cause That takes us to M So another thing I discovered Joe and Keon do a good job of, of helping people understand what that is. People moving around. One thing I discovered is. In motion because motion transportation is the movement of material. Motion is the movement of the human being of the person. When I minimize the motion of that human being, I'm also minimizing risk. And when I say risk, I mean, exposure to injuries, so for example, soft tissue injuries. If my work is set up in such a way that I've got to lift this 40 pound bar and I've gotten 80 of them to install, and I've got to bend down to pick that up and install it typically, we would say, don't be a whiny boy and do your damn job. And guess what? I will do it. I'm 20 years old, no big deal. I'm 43 years old, it's it? I could feel it now. Right. And that is a result of wear and tear on the body because I've been bending down to pick this damn 45 pound, whatever it is, hundreds and hundreds of time, but there is physical motion of my body bending down and coming up. How do I minimize that motion? It's elevate that work. Let's build some platforms or something so that it's waist high and now I'm grabbing it. And you, you know, staying strong, picking it up and installing it. So by minimizing the motion, we will also improve the ergonomics of the work and people will feel better. I mean, we have real life example. We did this with, with the. But the electrician who was on the verge of retiring and did some things to minimize the motion or improve how we had to move throughout the work. And the next day he came back and said, he's like, dude, last night I had the best sleep that I've had in years. And I also was able to go home and play with my grandkids and talk to my wife because I didn't sit down on the La-Z-Boy and pass the hell out, like I normally do to exhaustion.
Felipe:yeah, we talked about that running at a hundred percent. You can't, it's not sustainable. You can't run yourself at a hundred percent. No. Nope. We did the same thing to Jesse. He was working with a team on a, on a parking structure and we looked at just. They didn't want to do pool planning. And I was like, good. You're not ready for it. Anyway, I don't want to, I don't want to do it with you anyway. And instead I said, let's bring in the, the, the lead foreman and understand where people have in trouble and not because they're whiny. Right? Where, where is it hard for no reason? Like, why are we making this hard? Like, why are we, why are we punishing our people? Did they do something bad? Yeah. I was just being vindictive for no reason. And that wasn't the case. So, you know, we looked at just where they were working and where their material storage bins were. And we said like, Hey, is it okay if we just move those closer to where they're working? Like there, it's basically on a parking structure. It's very few crews. It's three different crews, three different types of trades. So it's, it's simpler, but it still can get out of hand. And so they moved to close to where the, the actual next concrete. Placement was going to be like, I mean, closer. I mean, they were, they were traveling three levels to go back to a tool. We put the bins out, but we put the bins, check this out. We put the bins on yeah. Up where they were making that one little change. Jesse took their poor cycle from 14 to 15 days down to seven. Yes. Cut the poor cycle. So the time shadow Jesse to use Jesse's words, time shadow cut in half
Jesse:because the motion
Felipe:cut the motion and they didn't even need to do pole planning cause that the schedule they had had all that baked in problem. And by just the thinking about the wasted motion, we got all the way down to doubling the throughput. Doubled the throughput That's just one waste. So if you're reading this book and you're like, I want to do a pool planning one day, where do I start the star with wasted motion? Look at that time, shadow time is the shadow of emotion.
Jesse:lastly, we get to the E, which is excess or excess processing. And they, they refer to it as any time you need to rework rebuild, redesign, you're experiencing excess processing and in a. You know, listening or having this conversation with Dean Philipa and ma and our, hopefully our listeners are getting insight and, and our conversation speaks to every stakeholder involved in construction. Naturally, I'm going to be on the trade partners perspective because that is my background. That's where my heart is. And you being able to speak of, of your experience with engineering and design and all the GC side of it is fantastic part of the reason I was excited about doing this is so that we can help people further understand the other stakeholders perspective. so is it as that relates to extra processing. No last planner system has become this really sexy, exciting thing that a lot of people, well, there are learning to do it is
Felipe:getting
Jesse:sexy. Oh man, what did we S well, I think, you know what it started getting sexy Phillipa when you and I started.
Felipe:Yeah, boy.
Jesse:And so here's an example. This is a really real situation that I experienced in working with the trade partner we would do pull planning weekly work plan six week planning. we did that with, or without the GC, most of the time it was us internally coordinating our stuff, getting ahead of things, identifying constraints, removing them then all of a sudden GCs started in San Antonio. Anyways, they started playing with it. And so we had our weekly work plan and they had their weekly work plan, meaning different formats. Right. And naturally we have to use the GCs format because they're in charge. Well, guess what genius Jesse did. I would not accept, like if the foreman would send me the weekly work plan and it wasn't an hour format. I said, I do it in our format. Is that an example of extra processing?
Felipe:Yes,
Jesse:duh. And I
Felipe:couldn't see it. Hold on, Jesse. You're you're still in the, from the trade partners perspective. So when I, when I facilitate last planner sessions with Andy buddy, I remind them that the people that you hired already have some way. To create a weekly work plan. And I said, it is not for me to dictate to them to put that into a form. It is no benefit. And I've been across the ocean to Europe, Jesse, and had the same conversation with people. And I've asked every GC and every construction manager because they do it too. What do you do with those weekly work plans that you're collecting from all of these trades people and Jessie? The answer has universally been. We just collect them and we file them away. They don't even read them.
Jesse:Oh God, that's the worst thing to do.
Felipe:Even read them, Jesse. That is a hundred percent an example of excess processing. And I do not condone it. There is a benefit. A hundred percent. There is a benefit to having a weekly work plan, but everybody I've met. I even went to a job where they told me, and this was a job in California, in the bay area where it's supposed to be like the highest leanest intensity in the whole world. And on this job, I was told that these trades just don't get it. They are completely disorganized and other bad adjectives were used when I went there to do the first session of pool planning. And we asked questions about what they're working on this week. Every single foreman, without exception had a weekly work plan in some way, shape or form that just coincidentally was not an Excel spreadsheet. And it totally got the job done. And on that first session, first single day, They pulled the schedule ahead two weeks because they could see the interconnectedness and we created the flow through the system. It had nothing to do with collecting a freaking form now for your organization. If you're listening, I'm fleet is not saying do away with weekly work plans, not what I'm saying. If you have that standard in your organization where there's a benefit, you're trying to raise the level of planning among your crews. There's a benefit to that to level setting hundred percent. There's a benefit. But if you're a general contractor and you're collecting anything from anybody on the project that you're just passing, shuffling paper, you are guilty of excess processing. Congratulations. You now have another way to decrease waste in your life because you're spending your time. You're spending time with your people to collect it, ask for it. Badger people when they don't give it to you, file it, store it, save it, build up unnecessary inventory, get it in your way. It causes defects. All the wastes come into play. They're wasting the time of people that are, you know, creative people to process nonsense paperwork. Let's reduce that down, take it down to the bare minimum. We won't get it to zero. Like Jesse said, Xero's the goal we're striving towards. Let's get there. We take a breath. Get off my soap box access processing drives me nuts.
Jesse:Clearly, especially around weekly work plans, but I think you made a great point, right? It can absolutely be used. Well, here's the thing. It's like data. If you're not going to do anything with it, don't collect the damn thing. Right. So, how do we level set? How do we use collection of weekly work plans to add value? So an example of that is I would get all of the weekly work plans and it gave me an opportunity to look at to what degree was the individual planning and communicating the plan. You know, early on it was just fill out the damn thing. It's just have a plan please. And a lot of times what I would see is installed duct. Okay. So if you install one foot of duct, your PPC is a hundred. Yeah. So I was like, oh, okay. So now I understand where you're at in your understanding of what we're looking for. So I could come back to, let's say Fernando again, say, Fernando, thank you for doing that. You know, having to plan and communicate it to you. I could see that you, you executed the work. What do you think about instead of saying, install, duct work, getting specific and measurable, I'm going to install the medium pressure duck on second floor, and we're going to have 450 feet done by Friday. He's like, well, that's what we did. I was like, I know. Well, would it help your team if they knew that that was the goal?
Felipe:Oh my goodness. He's making work visible.
Jesse:Yeah, you got it. And he's like, okay. So my point in all that story is collect it. It's a tool that you can use to help develop people's capabilities. But if you're not going to do that, I don't collect use toilet paper, right?
Felipe:Nope. I hope you
Jesse:don't. No, no, not anymore.
Felipe:I used to work for a water treatment plant and we do collect use toilet paper.
Jesse:Oh, man, we're going to have to write a book about yes, we will.
Felipe:So I want to put a bow on this chapter, Jesse. Yes, this is beautiful. Bring this, let's bring it to a
Jesse:close.
Felipe:At the end. Sam has to recover from that one enthusiastic decision to just make it rain, duct work on my job. It took them over a week to recover from that and I like in the book that, that Sam goes and engages individually with every one of the trade partners through the rest. And he's now spreading the knowledge of looking and recognizing the waste. And you know, part of that I think is so that. He can increase his accountability with his people because he has to own this mistake that he made. And then if you could teach other people to see reality for what it really is, then two people looking at something is better than just one
Jesse:some of the notes I got here in my daily they, as a group, come up with a solution to overcome the overproduction like this whole duct work fiasco as a group, all the trade partners. And what, what stood out to me was when the team, all the team members contribute to problem solving to overcoming issues. That is an indicator of a super high performing team. And. I know a bunch of people get confused and they believe a high-functioning team is a team without problems. Negative. A high performing team is a team that works together to overcome the damn problems, maybe nuance, maybe a small nuance for some people, but just like in poll planning, when people are saying I can't because they're surfacing constraints, right. They're giving you a gift they're not complaining. And so it, you got to change a little bit like, yeah, you got problems. Guess what? Every damn project, every damn relationship has problems. The differentiator is, are we going to work together to overcome them? Or are we going to stand around and blame each other? Like that interaction shows the maturation of the team there they're becoming more cohesive and they're working. To help achieve the goal that team's goal to deliver the damn project. Sorry, that that was a very powerful way that, that our authors here wrapped it all up.
Felipe:You already peppering the breadcrumbs that we're going to pick up the next time we come back. Join us next time. As we dive deep into managing constraints. Oh
Jesse:my God. Here, here's a, a teaser. Yeah. What's your constraint.
Felipe:Let's not answer this. Leave a little cliffhanger.
Jesse:As always super great conversation. And thank you for keeping us on track because you know that I can get off in my preaching. I think this is the first time we're actually going to finish within our scheduled time. What do you think? I
Felipe:think it is the first time box that we're achieving and just, it takes, it took us three iterations to get to, to finishing on time. So look, we drink our own Kool-Aid we eat our own. Thank you, Jesse. Thank youFelipe take care, everybody. We'll see you back for constraints next time See, I told you, you're going to get to see just how twisted we are and how excited we get about theeight wastes now I want to give a shout out. We've had some significant growth with our podcast and thank you to everybody. That's listened and told another friend. We need you to keep doing that, please, because we're having too much fun doing this. as it relates to these collabo sessions, want to give a shout out to our listeners up in Maidenhead, h England and Nuestros Amigos. De SurAmerica, Columbia, Peru. Thank you for listening and a shout out to a dedicated, and brutally honest listener. Mr. Sean Moran. Shout out to Sean for calling me out on titling this a book review. He said, dude, that ain't no book review You're right, Sean. It's more of a leangasm. And I just can't help myself. Thank you for listening. Be compassionate with yourself. Stay cool. And we'll talk at you next time.