Jesse & Felipe are rounding 3rd base as they cover Chapter 6 of The Lean Builder. Catch a heavy dose of collaboration cheat codes with a side of attitude from Jesse the grouch. This conversation touches many of the necessities for achieving positive outcomes with LPS, some of which will take practice to master. And many you can apply today.
Connect with us at: https://www.learningsandmissteps.com/
Connect with Felipe at: https://www.theebfcshow.com/
Jesse & Felipe are rounding 3rd base as they cover Chapter 6 of The Lean Builder. Catch a heavy dose of collaboration cheat codes with a side of attitude from Jesse the grouch. This conversation touches many of the necessities for achieving positive outcomes with LPS, some of which will take practice to master. And many you can apply today.
Connect with us at: https://www.learningsandmissteps.com/
Connect with Felipe at: https://www.theebfcshow.com/
Carpet dwellers are scared to get their shoes dirty.
Felipe:Okay. I'm only laughing because what he's saying is true. That's exactly what shows up. He's not filtering it because he's trying to be funny for a show. That is what people write in their dailies that become part of the permanent record of the prize. Yes,
Jesse:I I'm laughing because I can remember one time being coached on what those documents were actually used for. I was like, oh, okay, well I'll tone it down. Oh, yeah, we're back again on Calabosession , number six. And you know, I might be breaking a little bit of bad news for you. This is where we're at. Chapter six, the last planner system. I mean, there's only one more chapter to go, so it could mean less torture. It also could be a little bit of sadness because the collabo session on the Lean builder, we'll be wrapping up very soon and we've got a special surprise coming for y'all and I'm just going to leave it there and leave. Y'all hanging. You're probably gonna notice that I'm a little grouchy in this session. Not sure what got into me. I had my coffee, maybe it was all the flashbacks. Um, I'm just a little Brickley throughout the conversation Mr Felipe . And I go deep on the collaboration element that actually makes the last planner system work. it's very easy to get caught up on the tool component of it, but there's so much beautiful wonderfulness that can be achieved through the collaboration. In order to get there. It's going to require us to, to practice different skill sets and maybe skill sets that we haven't had to use in our industry because of the way we typically do things. Now, some of you may be a little bit like me in that your very first experience with the last planner system was less than awesome. And, and I promise you, you listened to this episode, I'm going to share some of my missteps that, that helped me understand how to better connect and serve the people that are involved in making this system a success. One example of that is getting to know people one-on-one securing commitments directly from the human beings that are actually planning and executing the work. And I mean, face to face, not via email, which may be a little different than how a lot of people function. And we even serve up the secret recipe behind really learning the last planner system through a progressive approach of application. When we get to that point in this conversation, it'll be more clear. And of course, I'm going to say it in Jessie speaks. So it's going to be pretty damn plain and simple. Back to the grouchiness we threw a little extra spice in this one for all of those. All those folks out there that, that, where that expert, badge of honor, I don't know about you, but sometimes it's difficult for me to, to learn from those individuals. So we've got a little bit of call out for them. Love to hear how that lands with you. Of course, we're going to give a shout out to our Patrion members who contribute to us staying commercial three, except for me and my commercials. And so if you're interested in supporting, we've got multiple levels of membership. And you can find information or all the details at Patreon.com/learnings and missteps now on to the show. There's just so many resources that you can tap into. I swear, man, when I'm listening to clubhouse are jumping on Tik TOK or even LinkedIn and whatever, I feel like Neo , right? Like I know Kung Fu , just plug in and get all the damn information and, and you know, some of it's goofy. Some of it's great, some of it, you know, whatever, but I can really take from different sources and distill what is meaningful for me and to me. Something I put a lot of energy in is. Getting all the words, right. All the knowledge and then distilling it down to Jesse, speak. As simple as I possibly can. I keep studying until I can say things simply which is good for me, but it drives other people crazy.
Felipe:Nan. I love the Jessie. Love you heart behind you. That's pretty cool too. You like that?
Jesse:That's just for you. Big daddy
Felipe:here. I got my, I got my little heart for you right here. We'll see.
Jesse:I heart you. That was PR it's always like we had to play.
Felipe:That's the one thing that the studio could benefit from is little more whiteboard. I got a whiteboard off to the side here where we wrote the podcast sprint runs there. It's not a two week cycle. Trying to accelerate it a little bit so that I can think about taking a vacation without skipping a beat. So yeah, we're getting there, just like our friends, Sam and Alan salmon, mostly Sam he's got,
Jesse:he learns a lot. This chapter kind of sums up all of the, the other pieces that he's, that Alan's been schooling, Sam. So now he's talking to him from the perspective or in terms of the last planner system.
Felipe:Talk about chapter six from the lean builder, chapter six, look at it. Just, you just only could see my eyes. What's his mouth doing? It's
Jesse:smiling.
Felipe:Don't no, I don't do that anymore, Jesse.
Jesse:Oh man. I got to say this chapter and maybe it's just cause of my arrogance, this chapter was tough for me to distill any goodness out of it or this, any goodness from like it was like, duh, right. We're wrapping up the last planner system. I don't know how, how, how did it land for you? I, I was struggling.
Felipe:No, I, I rechecked it out last night, again, that everybody who's been sticking with us the whole time I started off this book in the audio version. And then even though I had the paper copy in my hands from even before, that's just the nature of how we are in construction. Sometimes we've got to get that audio. Audio is so, so powerful. I saw, I went through it before these sessions. I read it. I read everything before sitting down with my good partner here, Jesse. And when I got to this chapter what I got out of it, I'm a huge history buff and I like context. And I like to see process, or as my Canadian friends are teaching me Jessie it's process. As you know, you have some Canadian friends yeah. It's process. And I said, what's that all a boot,
Jesse:nice two points for that one.
Felipe:Get some Dee Cad yeah. And my, okay. Anyway, so I liked, I liked the, that the nod to Glenn Ballard and Greg howl like that. And I also liked that they tell people like this whole thing is from the 1980s, like this idea. And then it really got culminated in the nineties, which is the same time that scrum gets culminated. Hello, it's a good time. The 1990s were a powerful time. And for those of you that are just being born in the nineties, it was probably full time for your parents too. Cause that's how you were made watch out. So I kind of liked that because it shows like where it comes from. And then the other thing that I like is that it, it kind of lays down and not kind of, they go through in detail with the characters showing how last planner actually is done. From this perspective from the quote unquote textbook thesis perspective, as it was intended in the nineties, the actual raw framework the vast majority of people that say that they understand this, I think would read this chapter and see that they don't understand it. And they're not actually using last planner system. And I know some facilitators that make a living selling last planner, facilitation that don't hit all the points in this chapter. And when I talked to Joe in it hashtag IRL in real life for all millennials out there, when Joe and I talked, I said, when I came across this chapter and the second I finished it, I knew that my alignment and understanding of this was just like Joe's. And it's just like Alan and the chapter. Makes fun of, you know, one of the, he actually makes fun of Sam saying, have you read this thesis, Sam? And Sam's like, jokingly says, no, I'm in, but I'm in reading another thesis right now. Like I don't have time to read this one. I don't recommend that thesis to people. They want to read it. Now I wrote a blog post, a four link construction blog, rising lien in Spain and also on my LinkedIn profile. Right? Take the best paper ever about this whole process or process like my Canadian friends, shout out, shout out decaf process. And that paper was written by Greg Howell and the papers for superintendents and field foreman. It's less than 20 pages long Jesse versus Glen's thesis has over a hundred pages or just thereabouts at a hundred pages. And the audiences are totally different when you write something for academia that you have to defend and site, that's a certain type of literature. You know, this book being fictional story for people in construction, that's a certain type of audience and literature. And then Greg hollow writing for superintendents and foreman totally different approach. So I really liked that paper and we'll, we can put a link to that post. We're going to need that. Yeah. Cause people are going to want that. It's I think it, I think it might be 14 pages including the cover page. So it's not that
Jesse:much, it would benefit them because you pointed it out. Right. There are not only other consultants out there, but there's also companies that have corrupted. Yes. And, and it's okay. I shouldn't say corrupt that it's probably not a nice word, you know? Organizations will take the system and adapt it to their business. That's that sounds more good. Or, yeah,
Felipe:is definitely proper Texas English right there. Boom,
Jesse:baby. They'll adapt it to their business. my observation is many times that adds complexity to something that can be very simple. Right. And then there becomes, so let's say the individual, a learner that is new to the whole thing keeps hearing standard. These are the rules. This is the way you must do it. Right. And they'll lose if they don't understand the intended outcomes of the things they'll lose wind, they'll lose momentum. And so if there was this 14 page or that you're talking about, that they could access to reconcile the conflict of the complexity, their organization brought into the situation and what the original intent is. That may help them provide greater value to their teams. We absolutely
Felipe:got to link it. And Jesse, I tested that paper too. Cause I read it. I read Glen's thesis. I read the shorter paper, like years later after seeing LPs in the field for about, and for people that don't remember for me, I've been practicing with it for 10 years and I've been a facilitator of it for about the last five and a half six thereabouts. So I've got some reps with real people, you know, construction teams and design teams. It works in both. It works in both. And the paper that I, that I published with lean construction blog is actually a case study of a design team using it that had zero experience with it before for the entire team talking about like over 30 designers. Now write that paper. The first time I came across that paper from Greg. But, you know, the shorter than 20 page paper, I gave it to a superintendent for us working at a small boutique general contractor that did primarily just does a lot of school renovations. So very fast, quick hitting TIS tenant improvements in elementary schools, high schools, and then some smaller new construction schools. This is like my bread and butter. I love schools because always have deadline that you can't miss. Like school's going to open and you better be ready when those kids are coming. Right. Kids are coming like, they're going to, the buses are going to show up and they need to roll into a school that they can occupy. So that whole dynamic is radically different than so many other things, I think everybody went to school, right. Everybody who works at least got through some elementary school, junior high, high school here in the United States. That whole dynamic of hitting a date to achieve for when kids are going to be in school is, is completely different. So this superintendent, again, small boutique general contractor, he said after reading it, and we had a last planner session that I helped facilitate. He's like Felipe . This made sense. This just makes perfect sense. Man, if it can work for a small boutique GC they don't have like a three inch or seven inch or 17 inch procedures manual. They're very lightweight. I run and gun. They only can afford to do things that make sense because they don't have all the time in the world. Right. It's simple, but their model for what they do it's works. And just repeat it. Yeah. So for me, that was a really good sign, Jesse. And you know, in the book here, the salmon Allen, to kind of contrast that superintendents experience with the session we had. Oh, and by the way, that first session that we did with that superintendent, we had the designer there. We had the owner there in the last planner session and we took a month off of the schedule just doing the things that you do, like in this chapter when they mentioned reverse phase planning, which is what we just call now pull planning, which is ironically the thing that no one does. When people tell you that they do pull planning, they really just push their critical path method, schedule onto sticky notes onto a calendar ball. And they say that they're doing pulpit. That's the most often what I see in the wild Jesse, when people tell me that they're doing pool planning, I next to never see a reverse phase pool. I next to never see any kind of focus on handoffs. I next to never see any kind of conversation on the best flow to achieve milestones outside of teams that are trying to go after LPs. Yep. But there's a, there's a section here I'm on page 1 24, where they're testing what they did in the pool plan in the previous chapter, and they're looking at what's happening in the schedule and they admit that schedules are hard to read. And they also tell that in the schedule, like the durations there, they're making a Cardinal mistake, unfortunately, but a lot of GCs make this mistake. I'm not surprised that it's here in the book and it's not called out as a mistake. But I want to, I want to hear your opinion on this, the scheduler for this this builder, this terrible contractor in the story, took the pull plan and put everything in one for one into the master schedule. Ooh. Now you tell me, Jesse, would you advise people to do that?
Jesse:I would advise them if they have a full time scheduler to be onsite and play around with that damn thing every day, every time something shifts and only if they're actually, I mean, they're really taking it all the way down to the daily huddle and tracking hard nets as progress of what's happening. And what's not happening aside from that. No.
Felipe:What do you think? Why was that such a long answer to say, no, you should've just said
Jesse:no at the beginning, well, there's two reasons. I don't know, pick that,
Felipe:unpack that why that's important
Jesse:for people to hear. Yeah. There's a lot of organizations out there, not just organizations, but people that need or feel a need to have the pole plan or whatever, updated into the master schedule or tied to the master schedule directly because you know, there's some logic and it'll surface some issues and it'll show it does some it'll do its job if you put it in there now. Let's do some root cause, right? Why are people so dependent on that type, the PCIX scheduling or whatever it's called that software scheduling software. Because the client likes it, right? The client has a requirement to use a certain degree of scheduling software. Okay. Okay, good. Y I believe you keep going down. It gets, it's a, it's a, it's a tool for litigation. And if you have this disconnect between LPs and the scheduling software, there's an assumption that things are being hidden or the job won't get done without the scheduling software and I've seen Oregon that are trying to reconcile the two, I've talked to lots of people when everybody's wrestling with it. How do we get the pull plan into the, the project schedule, the contract schedule. And my response is this, and I'll probably get reprimanded. Last planner system came out as a result of the failure of CPM scheduling. And now all these people are trying to marry them, get them, not married, get them back together. And it's kind of like getting mom and dad after they've been divorced for five years to try and be cool with each other. It ain't going to happen. Oh
Felipe:yeah, there was a conference, like in a mixed conference where there were construction professionals. There were insurance professionals and there were lawyers. Yeah, that represented people in the construction industry. One of the presentations that was being shared was last planner system. Somebody was sharing what last minor system is, what it does, what the benefits are. they had a really healthy Q and a and many of the lawyers expressed concern that this was going to mess up their business model. And that if, if contractors started having reliable schedules, that was going to totally undermine what they do in litigation. And I'm going to tell everybody out there, if you've never had the good luck of being sued in your career. And I say that with sincerity, I consider it a privilege to be sued by a client over a scheduler. Everyone should have at least one law. In their career, unfortunately, just so you could understand what I'm talking about. The first thing that the lawyers are going to do is they're going to undermine your schedule and throw it out. And the way I'll tell them, I'm going to tell them all the lawyers, how they do it. I've given out that free knowledge to everybody right now. So pay attention. If your schedule updates, change multiple activities, there's a threshold. I don't remember what the threshold is, but if they see significant change from one update to the next, they use that to invalidate your schedule and then your schedule gets taken off the table. And then what's left on the table are what people said in daily reports and what people said and meeting minutes and correspondence. So then it'd be just becomes a game of what each side said to the other. The schedule gets invalidated right away. Right away like instantly. So if you think that your schedule is like airtight, if you've made significant updates where durations change, logic changes, especially logic changes, they can find logic changes in your schedule. Once you hit a certain threshold, you just invalidated your schedule and it will not help you. Even if you have fragments, even if , you've put the owner on notice, contractors lawyers will undermine that. If you don't believe me, go talk to a lawyer that you know, now, if you use last planner system and you create a reliable schedule, even when things change, if the owners involved in the design teams involved, and people are part of the change, there's no reason to litigate. You're all working it out at the project level with the client. I've been on jobs where there's a schedule fragment. With the team for a month delay due to X, Y, Z, the team's using LPs and they finish more than a month early. They have to pull that schedule request back because it wasn't necessary. But the critical path method schedule said, we're going to finish late by a month, but they're using LPs. And over the course of a year, they finished more than a month early. So by that token alone people, that CPM schedule is not a good predictor. It's not a good predict. And Jessie's right. LPs was invented to make originally to make CPM schedules more reliable originally, but unintended consequences that it completely replaces it. If you get people that do the work. Making commitments. There is no better predictor of when things will happen. Then the human being that is in control of leading people, equipment and materials, there's nothing better than that. Person's commitment. As far as I'm concerned, no piece of software is going to be a better predictor of whether Jessie's going to do something than Jesse saying I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it now. Nothing beats that. And like he said, like some companies have, because they still haven't let go of this idea that I need to have it. And clients too, it's in most contracts, I've only seen one contract so far that does not require a CPM schedule. Only one, one project. That's about to start in 2021 so far. So, but it's happening. That's a, that's a, that's a signal that the shift we're seeing the shift Jessie, I would advise. Schedulers be smart, whether you're full-time or part-time you're out there. You're listening to this. Be smart about what activities you bring from the plan into the CPM schedule. Use your tools. Use hammocks use milestones. Do not do not. Let me say this in a different way. Forget going one for one. Oh God, because it's not going to help you. You should not go one for one. Your schedule needs to maintain detail at a high level so that we can predict when we need things for procurement in the future. It that's valuable a hundred percent. That is completely valuable. So I'd say the milestones are good for one, for one, I would hammock at phases, two connected milestones. And then as far as the additional detail, don't.
Jesse:Don't do it, let it be the last
Felipe:best practices. Right? You've had training schedulers. Most controllers had some really good training and they have approaches that are best practices rely on those best practices. Don't fall in love with the idea of thinking like, I'm going to sit back here and just go one for one, the client, isn't paying your company extra money to have you sit down for 40 hours a week and just type into a computer. The client is paying you to deliver a building. So do things that help you deliver the building and don't do things that don't sorry, Jesse. I had to just jump on that soapbox for
Jesse:no we're we're on the same box. I'm glad there's plenty of room here. I've mentioned before when I was working on the trade side of the business, We did last planner system without the GC, even like every time, how one time we did a pull plan for some stuff that was going on in a mechanical room in the floors, it was a renovation. And the GC said, take that kindergarten, bullshit off my wall and go, go hang duct. We can't because you haven't finished coordinating the mechanical room and we need you to coordinate the classroom space, forget the mechanical room that equipment's freaking 12 weeks out. Why are you coordinating that and not coordinating the corridors, please? So we're trying to help them get there, but we can't, we're able to do it. And I couldn't like we did it. It wasn't beautiful. I mean, it was great damn unstable, right? Cause we would do our coordination internal with the plumber pipe, fitter,duct guy and equipment and long lead. You know, we did it with our stuff and then we get out to the product. And the GC was, you know, just doing the typical stuff, right? Everything's an emergency push planning, push, push, push, hurry, hurry, stop, go, stop, go. All that mess. so that eroded the planning that we did, but we still had some pretty darn good success. I was able to manage manpower over mold, like all the projects at a more fine tuned level because we weren't having the peaks and valleys that we would have had we not done our planning. It could have been better if everybody else played anyhow, fast forward to now I'm in the GC landscape and it's almost like, oh my God, we can't do last planner system. Not every there's some people. We can't do last planner system without figuring out exactly how it would be perfect with the CPM scheduling, what, like, I, it does, it, it, I understand, I believe that need comes from the client. Right. The client wants that the client values that and I get it, but to believe that it it's impossible for it to work without it. I'm just like, wow, we're totally disconnected about what the purpose is. Now. I know there's bigger efforts, right? There's LPs 2.0, coming out and it's already, or
Felipe:is it officially out? It's officially out.
Jesse:Okay. And there's supposed to be some reconciliation between CPM scheduling and LPs. But again, like you said, you said it beautifully. Does it help put shit in place or is it helping us prepare for litigation? If it's helping us put work in place, let's do it. If it isn't, let's move on.
Felipe:Completely agree. You hit on something that I think a lot of people jump over. So for everybody listening, human beings are having to make decisions and trade-offs on different projects. And most of the people playing in the commercial space have multiple projects going at the same time. Like when you were running crews, you had crews on job, a, but you also responsible for crews on job B job C job D. And yet you could shuffle people from one to the other, but that has, I mean, consequences, like when somebody new shows up to the team, Yes. It changes the whole dynamic of the team. And you can't just crew up in crew, down at a whim of somebody looking at a piece of paper that says we should be in this mechanical room right now today. And they just completely jumped over the fact that the equipment ain't coming for 12 weeks and like that type of stuff needs to stop. And that is actually in the book in this chapter. There's an example that Alan, you know, in his mature wisdom, he brings up the stuck work example with insulation. And I thought about you when I was reading that nice and he's and he asked Sam as the superintendent for the general contractor. If this occurred before you're doing pool planning, how would you find out about it? And Sam says, I'd find out about it because there'd be a fight in the field. Where people would be fighting about why they can't finish something. And that type of stuff would show up on a daily report. The, the, what would a, what would a foreman write in their daily report if they couldn't complete installation due to missing work or some other thing? Tell me in your own words, Jesse
Jesse:dumb ass is holding me up. GCs, not doing their job.
Felipe:Yeah. These are the type of sentences. You know, I've read thousands of daily reports in my life and that's exactly the type of stuff that you read in a daily report.
Jesse:Carpet dwellers are scared to get their shoes dirty.
Felipe:Okay. I'm only laughing because what he's saying is true. That's exactly what shows up. He's not filtering it because he's trying to be funny for a show. That is what people write in their dailies that become part of the permanent record of the prize. Yes,
Jesse:I I'm laughing because I can remember one time being coached on what those documents were actually used for. I was like, oh, okay, well I'll tone it down.
Felipe:The difference here when you're using this approach, the last planner system production controls or LPs, you're really doing something unique. You're having five connected conversations, five human conversations between and among people that are working towards a singular goal, finishing a project that they will all be proud of. And that's a big difference. A lot of people will point to CPM and. You can do everything you do in LPs in CPM. And I say, yeah, you said that the key word there is can, I don't see any examples in literature stories, even at the bar of people talking about how they used a critical path method schedule successfully, I just don't see it. They ha you have to employ other tactics and techniques. that whole process is just software that is supposed to guide in forecasting. That's it? It is not like a checklist or a guarantee or promise. It's not any of those things. Right. And different people. And even like our friend, Jason Schroeder, who's gone to like advanced training on critical path method, scheduling and has been a superintendent for a long time. Even he says like nothing in the training. Actually teaches you to, or encourages getting commitments and making reliable promises. The only thing we know of is LPs.
Jesse:I'm getting excited. You know, the, the it's this, you it's the human element, right? The human component. We, you know, that, I know that the challenge with, with CPM scheduling and the other stupid software, and I mean that like fricking email, right. Texting, we have, we need to go faster and I get, we all have the need and desire to go faster until we start using technology to accelerate things, which I get it. The one thing that cannot like processes yes. Process go faster installation, go faster. People, you can go faster with people. Now you've got this scale. Here's where people think they're using CPM scheduling with commitments. We got this schedule, right? This, the stupid Gantt chart and all 300 stupid pages of all the crap that you can't even read, because it's so small, like tiny, tiny words. And anyways, we got that. We signed with the trade partners. They signed the contract. I emailed it to them. That's the commitment, like no stupid. That is not a commitment that they're business development managers. Yeah, we could do that. We're great. Ooh. Wow. Wow. Their executive in the office. That's never going to walk the job. Same that contract. The men and women that are going to live the pain of all the ignorance and short-sightedness did not sign the contract. So you do not have a commitment. You got to talk to the people that are living through the pain of getting the damn job done every day in order to get that commitment. An email does not qualify as a damn commitment if it isn't clear yet, talk to people one on one. That's what last planner system ensures happens.
Felipe:Amen. That that's accurate. That is completely accurate. A lot of general contractors have clauses in their contracts. To the trade partners that say you owe me because at least in litigation, all of these lawsuits they've learned that they have to give on opportunity post execution of contract. After that executive signs, it there's typically a window of time where the trade partner can reply to the general contractor and give schedule feedback. Yes. Now the number of trade partners take GCs up on that offer tends to be only those that are sued the hardest. You'll see a drywall contractor reply and respond with feedback on the schedule. You'll see the mechanical trades and that's about it. The rest of the organizations typically don't have the time or care, right. They just will put up with it and make it happen and the best way that they can. So I feel free. Mechanical electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and framers. I feel your pain. I appreciate you taking the time to reply to a general contractor schedule and giving them constructive criticism. Don't stop doing that. That's a good thing that starts the conversation. On page 131. There's a drawing. Where else? Yeah.
Jesse:Well guess where I have a
Felipe:note. Oh, you have a note right there. Why don't you drop, drop your note on me,
Jesse:Jesse. So my note there is in reference to Alan saying patients, you know, aggress hop off.
Felipe:Yeah, you actually, you actually says that. Yeah. Straight up.
Jesse:It's in the book right up. It's because Sam is like, well, what the hell? Why didn't you tell us about all of this? And, and Alan's like patients, you know, you, you to crawl before you can run. And it's my note is about how the application of last planner system should be approached progressively. Yeah. You know, a lot of folks will go to LCI Congress or go to a bootcamp, you know, with some of these amazing consultants out there. And the executive goals are, you know, several people will go and say, ah, I got it. We're going to go do all of this. And they go back and set an expectation. We're doing all the things, all we got this menu and we're going to eat all of this and it's hard to try and digest. Cause here's, here's, what's happening. Is the general contractor, those people that just got exposed to these ideas, they have some degree of awareness. They have zero degree of mastery. They've got some vocabulary that they can start thinking around. They have to learn more about the system and the intended outcomes of each element and how they're all related. Maybe not even related how they're intertwined. Yeah. So that person, those people need to learn that. And then they need to learn how to do it, and then they need to learn how to teach and lead it. And that's why I say the progressive nature of the whole thing is get good at a piece and give yourself permission to maybe not be so great on the other pieces. And then progressively stack and build your LPs prowess to many people out there. I'm going to say the vast majority of people out there get introduced to this thing and they catch fire, which is good. And then they approach it, trying to do all of it and, and they can't, and it's painful and they quit. And in their head, last planner system never worked. So again, slow down young grads.
Felipe:Yeah. Like, like I said before, I've been doing this for over a decade. The first time that I did, I did it. I still can remember how I feel seeing it. We spent four hours with the consultant teaching our team, just the general contractor only because, you know, we mistakenly thought we needed to learn it by ourselves first, which is a mistake. You should totally, if you're going to learn it, bring your client in that same learning environment and just get all on the same page. Like stop thinking it's us versus them. Yep. That was a red flag that I would not make that mistake again. And I remember feeling awkward as all get out. It was like, oh, we're going to do what, you know, even me, I was like, whoa, what? I got to do? What? I got to get people to do this. Ooh, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta sit in a conference room for a day.
Jesse:Oh, that shit's never going
Felipe:to happen. Yeah. That was a decade ago. My, my approach today, after all those reps, like Jesse said, you gotta learn it, learn it by experiencing it yourself. I don't do that anymore. I know plenty of people that still sit people down for 16 hours and before they even let them get out there and try something. Now, my approach is totally different. I expose people to a couple of definitions so that we just, when we talk, we understand each other in three to five minutes, I'll answer some questions and then we start and we all start together and we just go one piece at a time, like Jesse said, it's like, you have all, it's like being at a buffet line. There's salad first. You know, if you're a little more healthy oriented or you're from California, you're going to eat the salad first to prime your system, your digestion, before you go after that pizza and donuts, right? I'm not saying don't eat pizza and donuts. I'm just saying, throw a little salad in there first, just to pave the way. So, you know, you go after these things in pieces and get good at the pieces. Just like in the book, Joe and Keon are telling you the tricks to mastery. They're paving out one way to do it. That can, can work and be highly successful. One of the first things to start with is the daily huddle. You don't need to send a change order. And I hear from a lot of people are like, oh, you got to get this in the contract. No, you don't. You absolutely do not to have conversations with people. You don't need to have that in the contract. You already have that in the contract. People have committed people to come to this site and to do some work. You have them already just have the conversation. Just be cool. Just be cool. Cool. Grasshopper. Yeah. what I wanted to show on this page, building on what you said, being patient, when Alan is drawing this, unfortunately he's drawing it and maybe it's on purpose. He's drawing it so that it still looks like a critical path method waterfall. Right. Which is very, very ironic. So what messaging? Yeah, I think, I think it's a crutch or a bridge it's probably done. And we can ask Joe when Joe joins us. Yeah. The last one, like when you did this drawing, did you do it on purpose or is that just because that's where your mind's at? Like you're still crossing the bridge, Jesse and I are already on the island. We're on the round, the collaboration island already. Right. We crossed that bridge a long time ago and I know there's, there are superintendents out there today that didn't use early in their career CPM scheduling software because it wasn't available to them. And they still were able to build things. I mean, I talked to some older superintendents that used to get paid by the piece and they were running crews. This was very predominant in home building for decades, or they were paid by the piece, the assemblies of what they were putting up. And they use that in order to predict crew rates and completion dates, they broke down the work to the piece. And then they would take a total that back up and they can tell the other people when they're going to be there, when they were going to need that plumber to come in and frame when they were going to do electrician to do the in-wall wiring. And all of that was done by approaching it from a systemic approach of like this framing assembly is made up by these pieces. And I can do with my crew, these many pieces they're part of the assembly. And people did all that, and there was no technology involved other than it was almost always done with a pencil written on a two by four, scribbling out some, some math, and then stepping back, talking it out loud with the crew, making sure that it makes sense. And that worked for a long time, very successfully. And there's continues to be iteration improvement on top of that. But yeah, this is what I wanted. So people, people looking at that 1 31, I see this, I don't see last planner like this. I see it. Like, I see it like a circle. I see every part of this on a wheel. And these are spokes. The hub at the center is the project and people's commitment to why they're there. That's the center part, all the spokes coming off are, you know, the milestone planning. What should we do? The phase planning? What phase should we go after first between two milestones, a start and a stop. And then I go into, what can we do with the look ahead schedule? What's the appropriate look ahead, schedule for this type of work for this type of planning and then so on and so on all around the wheel. And then you have to repeat that wheel typically every month, unless you're on a very fast hitting project. Where you're scheduling by the hour. If you're scheduling by the hour, you might need to do that every couple of days. But if you're scheduling something that's longer, you know, six months to a year, even five months to a year, even for a summer, even three months, you know, that wheels going to turn you size it and go through all these five connected conversations where it makes sense, because you have to create more backlog to go after in the next time, the wheel turns, but showing it like this or having that, that master schedule on top dictating everything that I don't, I don't agree with that picture in that way. I think in the contract, there's two, there are two dates in the vast majority of contracts. There's a start date when we can get after it. And then there's the completion date that the owners expect. Those are the only two dates that I need to start doing CPM or Dan to start doing, to start doing last minor system.
Jesse:Here's another thing for, for our coaches out there and I'm going to give credit to Joe and Keyan on this. So I'm going to say that they did this intentionally to help the naysayers get closer. It was a bridge move to use your language. Yeah.
Felipe:Steal that, man.
Jesse:The, the more languages we can speak, this is for coaches, right? Let's become multilingual. Meaning everybody has a different frame of reference. Everybody has a different context. It may all be speaking English, but presenting it to them in the language that they speak. We'll get you a lot further than forcing everybody to speak your own damn language. Felipe that circle idea. Totally. Right? Cause it is cyclical. It's a whole, it's all connected and it keeps, it keeps doing this. You know, the cascading thing gives an impression that you're coming to an end and there's no, there's really no end. So that's why for me, that cycle idea, the wheel idea makes the most sense. But if somebody gave it to me this way with the, you know, the cascading thing, I can deal with it. I can hang in here. So here's another challenge to the coaches. If you can't make sense of it in three or four different languages, maybe, maybe you need to back off from calling yourself an expert.
Felipe:Yeah, I think that's right. If you can't explain. To anybody. And I mean, anybody, if you can't explain coach, if you can't explain this to people in your family, that don't work in construction, you don't have it yet. You should be able to explain it to anyone. I liked that lot. Jesse, get some coaches, coaches elevate your game. Yeah. And Jesse and I, we will, we welcome your phone calls. You can call me, call me and tell me I will listen. I will shut my mouth and listen, come on. I got Jesse on my show. It's clear that I'm not talking the whole time. That was good. And I'm not even, this is not even like my show. This is secretly Jesse show.
Jesse:This is our show. This is a collateral from levels.
Felipe:Yeah. I mean, we are in collaboration Ireland. We might as well be collaborating from
Jesse:collaboration island. We'll know how to get an island. Welcome to collaboration island. The only entry is to learn how to lean without leaning.
Felipe:I'm going to try to find some some island music , will you take me to the next section
Jesse:10, four? Well, I'm jumping all the way to 1 35 and it was subtle, but it, it, it, it kicked kind of triggered this idea of,
Felipe:oh my God, look at what page I'm on. I'm right there, man. I can't believe I cannot believe this. This happens like every single time people, we have a chat feature in this meeting, but Jesse and I don't use it. So we're not, we're not like seeding the chat to like get to the next page. We're just on the same page
Jesse:That's scary, man, but that's awesome. So right there. Right, right above the picture. He's got an quotations. Hey Roberto, I'm not trying to pick on you, but look at the six week, look ahead. You seem to be a bit long with the light fixture install on the third floor, which is fine. And then he says, don't forget, these were your dates from the pull plan that we plugged in. And of course the hair on the back of my neck stood up. And then I was like, okay, wait, that wasn't harsh. What he was trying to surface was, Hey, this was the commitment. This is going to impact our schedule. And that I think that's healthy. but the reason the hair on the back of my neck stood up is this system, the last planner system above all creates fabulous relationships, but it can also be damaging. And how. It will be damaging when you weaponize the system. So what do I mean by weaponize the system in this case, telling somebody, this is my favorite. Oh, I love these. Yeah. When they do pull plans, the superintendents facilitating the pull plan, which really is in a full plan. Right. It's straight up push. Cause he's telling them what to write on the sticky, telling them where to put the sticky and the durations. They're like, you know, the person says eight days and the superintendent like, no, man, you got six days. It's like, yeah, but it's going to take me eight. No, you got six, but it's going to take me eight. Well, you got sick. Put six on it and we'll see, and let's get closer. Cause maybe we can get it done in six. So the person puts six.
Felipe:I'm only laughing because I've heard that conversation like a thousand
Jesse:times, right? Like he's a goofball and guess what? So now we're doing the actual, we're getting close to it and it's like, dude, like there, I, you know, I thought it was going to be eight, but now we're looking like 10 and then kiss. What? Yeah. That fricking sewers we'll hold on a second. You said six days. It's right here. You agreed like, well, yeah, the dude agreed under duress,
Felipe:right? He was, he was, he was winking SOS with his eyes and worst code.
Jesse:Yeah. Right. Like dude, like, no, he never agreed. And now then it turns into, well, what cannot met are you, I can't, you, you are you aren't you a man of your word and all that. Crap. But that's an example of, of weaponizing the system. And if that is, that's like the only technique you got, again, you just don't get an, an invitation to the island,
Felipe:A hundred percent. And I think to, just to visually show it as you're talking, Jessie, I started playing with my, my busy hands, got busy here with some paper. And I think, I just want to show, like here are two pieces of paper representing those durations. Jessie just talked about if you're using last planner correctly, and you're thinking about what's happening and this waterfall approach, you have this start to finish activity where if that, that guy that says six days takes longer before the next person starts, then this is going to move out to the right. But because we're doing last planner system and we're focused on the handoff, if this activity is six days long, And we're doing, we've done a proper reverse phase or a pool plan, a pool on the phases to mile stones. We should know where this handoff is, and we should be able to predict when this subsequent trade's going to get on it. And even if this yellow sticky note takes longer, but let's say even, let's say it doubles in time and it gets this long. Okay. If it even gets this long, but the subsequent trade can still start relatively close to the same time. Then the overall impact to the schedule is zero. There's no impact, right? That's where you need to focus. Don't get hung up on the time. I remember having this conversation with the mechanical trade partner and he said, I don't think I have enough time on this activity. I want to, I want to make it, you know, for 12 days and the superintendents, like you only have a week. You're more than doubling it. And I said, let's look at the handoff and see what happens. The next person in the room was the framer doing overhead. And I asked the framer at what point, where are you going to be at this time? And I asked the HPAC when are you going to come out of this room and this room? Because we had heard from the framer that he needed two rooms at a time to be effective with his current crew size. I was like, so when will you be done with these two rooms? When's that time? And he's like, well, it's going to be here at like at day five. And I said, well, it's perfect. And then five days later you'll have two more rooms. He's like, no, the other rooms actually, it gets simpler. So it'll go faster. Yep. And I said, you know what I said, why don't you put up 15 days instead of 12, put up 15 and then that way you make sure your quality is exactly right. And then if something happens, you're planning for a little buffer and the framers going to just be pulled behind you on the two rooms at a time. And everybody was like, wow.
Jesse:Yup. It can
Felipe:happen people if it doesn't do this, take a breath. Right. And if it does this find out, where's that handoff where's that handoff so that this crew stays at the same size. And if this cruise stays at the same size, that's what you're really, that's what you want. You want to have a stable crew? We know that stable teams I'll perform unstable teams or teams with a lot of peop personnel changes. And, and the example you said, Roberto's telling Sam, I lost one of my lead foreman or yeah, one of my lead guys on the crew and that's going to a hundred percent, it's going to affect my productivity. It's undeniable. Like get over yourself, Sam, Let him, he's telling you the truth. Go let it go. If I was Sam, I would think like, what can I do to make this easier for him and his crew? Not let me just pound on him for a number. Thank you,
Jesse:Dan. One day, one day. Well, and Roberto played into it, right? Cause he knew there was a, there was a delay with his fixtures and he kind of crossed his fingers and hope that it would go away. I mean, I've done that, you know, I've had issues and I didn't bring them up because I was, I was counting on the concrete guy or the steel guy or somebody else to shit, the bed. And that would cover up my problem. You know, I mean, I did that all for so long. But the reality is bad news does not get better with age. No, it doesn't right. If you got an issue. Bring it up. I learned that right. Finally was like, okay, I got an issue. Air handlers are, are delayed. VAVs are delayed plumbing, fixtures, whatever the floor drains that y'all wants not going to happen. And by surfacing those issues early, you now have you have access to resources, additional resources to swarm the problem and eliminate it. Right. When I keep my problems to myself, I'm the only dumb ass it's losing sleep. Everybody else thinks that things are fine. And then I'm going to get my butt chewed later on when the problem actually surfaces. And it's too late to do anything about it. Bring them up, share it. Don't be scared. Scared men can't win.
Felipe:Yeah, you got the whole, the genius of the whole crew. Like somebody, somebody on this team has had that problem before. It's not going to be the first.
Jesse:Yeah, that, that touches all the points that I had from this chapter. And I'm like super, super excited about the next chapter. But before we even mentioned those three beautiful words, did you have anything else out of this chapter
Felipe:well, I, I think the only thing I wanted to close down on is that we had some acknowledgements from Sam that he didn't know exactly this whole system. And when he saw it at the end, he was like, why don't we start here? And I just want to reiterate again to everybody, everybody reading this book, like this is a good primer. And there definitely some real to life examples on what you're going to encounter out there in the real world. But don't forget what Jesse said. Jesse said, patience, grass. You're going to iterate on this iterate. I sort of want to just bring it, just beat it, beat it, hard people, people start with whatever you understand, but just get started. Don't delay. You're going to be just like Sam in the book. When you, once you do start and you get to this level, you're going to say like, I wish I would have done this before. It's so the reliability is so much better. The comraderies imagine going to work and instead of having a fight and the confrontation you versus the project, it's you and other people with you working together to make this project happen, that is just totally different approach. I'm going to give you the option. Everybody listening again, you have the option, like Jesse said, it perfectly iterate your way there. Take it off in small bites. Get up to that a buffet line and put something on your. Start and then eat it, see what it tastes like. Do you like it? You can always spit it out if you don't like it, right. You don't have to eat on me. You just don't spit it out in front of other people. Cause you know, get a napkin, spit it into it. Napkin please. All right. But go after it a little bit, a little bit at a time, little by little, get your experience, get your, your sense of what it's like and try to go closer to the source. Not some telephone game version of it. And then your direct experience with the things that we're talking about in LPs is far more valuable than you realize. Oh yeah. And people on the team are looking at you and like your idea of these things it comes through in every conversation you have with your crews, it makes a big difference. If you think that trade partners are out there trying to like pull one over on you, man, you better check yourself. Yeah, because they have a job to do too. And there was to their company too. I've heard some horror stories about things that can happen. Those horror stories always have something in common, the whole project everyone's at each other's throats. It's a confrontation. That's a different environment. If you're on a job where it's confrontational, step up and start pivoting to make it unconfrontational to make it collaborative, to make it we're in this together. Like we can all suffer together for two years or we can come here, rely on each other and enjoy this whole process. Life is short people try it. The fun wave you've been having it. The other way, the fun way is going to feel so much better because you have that great experience of the whole way. Right. So that's what I just wanted to iterate. Get started. Get started, get started, get started.
Jesse:That's it. Thank
Felipe:you, Jay. Go do
Jesse:Go do. Go try, go, go digest, go swim. You know, when you go, try to learn how to swim. Do you do that by reading a book? Like you get your button to water and figure it out, right? You gotta, you gotta do the damn thing. Don't do the whole thing. You don't go into the 30
Felipe:foot
Jesse:just to just get wet and get comfortable. You'll be all right. You gotta do it. So next chapter, we're going to be talking about percent plan complete. And if you think I got fired up on this chapter Fe;ipe I got some major issues with our stories and issues. With percent plan complete I'm I'm I'm I'm pumped, baby. I almost want to do it right now, but we'll just wait till next
Felipe:time. No, we'll wait until the next time. Next time. Come back. Join us next time, ladies and gentlemen, for the next installment of the lean builder and Jesse, and I want to hear your comments, your feedback, and we want to hear your questions, drop those questions, and however, you're consuming this. Send us a note on LinkedIn tweet at me, hit me up on Instagram. Join me on clubhouse. We'll talk about it. Find me. You can get me by emails on my LinkedIn profile. Jesse, where can people find you and give you comments?
Jesse:Oh, you know, LinkedIn, YouTube and clubhouse bay, like clubhouse would be the best because we could have like direct one-on-one. Conversation live conversation. So that one is actually where I'd love to connect with you LinkedIn all the time. I'm on it.
Usually between 4:00 AM and 6:00 AM and then 6:00 PM on and, and the YouTube. Right? You get to see all, look, look, you get to see this. And also many different ways. And it don't matter. Hit me up. I want to get to know you. I want to know how I pissed you off. I want to know how I helped you put it in the comments. Let us know, baby.
Felipe:Yeah. Tell me like we had a somewhat just to encourage had some good comments from Ian on a post recently on a YouTube video. I shared on LinkedIn. And Ian wrote, like the comments box. People typically write this much. Ian gave me some comments that were this big. Oh yeah. And I was like, oh my God. Look at how big this comment box expands to. And what did I do, ladies and gentlemen, I encouraged him to keep it coming. Keep it coming. Let's go. Once the dance started, it was a party for a good 20 minutes.
Jesse:Oh yeah. That's what it's all about, man. Yeah, baby wrapped up the last planner system on that one in the next chapter is a bit of a controversial topic and that we're discussing percent plan, complete PPC. It can be easy, it can be fun. And we're just great at making it difficult. That'll be coming out in a couple of weeks and now we want to give a shout out to one of our faithful listeners but not only is a listener, but has taken action to apply some of the things that he's been exposed to as a result of listening to these Calabosessions. Of course, I've got to read it off my phone. Shout out to Mr. Joshua cohost of the feed, me or construction content podcast. Check them out. They got some good content out there for all you builders. so Joshua says Jesse collabo session on lean is great content. And I instantly went out and bought the book. Thank you, Josh for making that investment. My man, and I know you've read it cause we've talked here is my question. As I near the end of the book and anticipate the next podcast to drop, how do I implement this into residential building? Like, if that question doesn't get you excited, you need to get your pulse check. This crazy lean maniac is looking at figuring out how to apply what he's learned in an industry that is largely untapped. Uh, talk about courage. mad props to Mr. Josh. It is leaders like you. That we need all over the place that understand that we are under-serving the men and women that build our buildings and you're committed to making a difference and getting out of your comfort zone and trying something new, like superhero powers squared. You're the man. Joshua. Thank you. The rest of the L and M family. Thank you for listening. And we'll talk to you soon. Man you are one dedicated listener, sticking with us all the way through to the very, very end. Please know that this podcast dies without you, and we invite you to share how the episodes is impacting you along with your thoughts, questions, and suggestions. You've been gracious with your time. So we added social media links in the show notes to make it super easy for you to connect with us because to yourself, stay cool. And we'll talk at you next time.