Episode 10 - Continuous Improvement: How to Have a More Productive Workforce with Mark Graban from KaiNexus

What is Kaizen and how can that help your team do more? On this episode we talk with Mark Graban an author, consultant and podcaster that helps teams in many industries build systems for continuous improvement. Mark shares the tips for teams to adopt a Kaizen culture and how to keep things on track. 

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Ben (00:00):
This is get more done a YouCanBook.me Podcast and I'm Ben your host. Each month. YouCanBook.me, helps millions of people save time and get more done by automating their scheduling. Because of this we wanted to understand and explore other aspects of productivity. On every episode, you will meet business leaders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and managers, and they will share how they help their teams and customers level up and how they're doing more with less. On this episode, I sat down with Mark Graban. Mark is an author speaker consultant, and podcaster. His main focus is around the Japanese philosophy Kaizen or continuous improvement. During our conversation. Mark explains why companies should adopt a Kaizen methodology and how they can set it up. Enjoy.

Ben (00:54):
Great. Welcome back to the, Get More Done podcast. A podcast, all about productivity and just doing more with less on today's episode. I'm sitting down with Mark Graban, the author speaker consultant, man of many trades Jack of all trades. So Mark, welcome to the podcast,

Mark (01:10):
Ben. Hi, thanks for having me.

Ben (01:13):
Awesome. So what you may have, seen from our previous episodes is we start with an icebreaker question. So this, this episode we want to talk about if language wasn't a barrier for you, because you're, you know, a traveled man, where would in the world would you live right now and why?

Mark (01:30):
Um, the right, well the right now part of that makes me think because you think of COVID times, but I mean generally, uh, a country that I've, I've visited five times in the last 10 years and I would love to spend some extended time living, uh, living there, uh, is Japan and currently language would be a barrier, but um, but like you said, if language is not a barrier, I I've, I've only had 10 day stints in Japan and I realize I have this sort of maybe idealized outside's view of, of the country, but I, I really would love to spend more time there. I have some friends who have lived for a year or two in Japan and um, you know, so maybe

Ben (02:07):
Yeah, Japan is an amazing, country, great culture. And the language barrier is not too tricky, but as you get more immersed, I I'm sure it would be as you, you know, build your life there. What was one of your favorite, favorite parts of, of all your trips to Japan?

Mark (02:22):
Well so they were all work focused trips because with the work I do, we spend a lot of time studying Toyota, uh, for example, as a, a company to try to learn from and emulate whether it was in manufacturing, where I started my career or in healthcare where I've really focused a lot the last 15 years. So there's, there's a lot to learn from the organizations there, but I just, um, I, I, I love the food when you're there as a, a visitor, as a tourist, you are spoiled. Um, you know, the service, the customer service culture in Japan is, uh, is so high. Um, and so accommodating and like people, you know, people, you check into the front desk at the hotel and you, you have to let them have your passport for a minute and they have to go make a photocopy. And generally the person behind the desk will like, like run and I'm like, uh, yeah, it's not that I'm not that much of a hurry, but I think they, they just, they don't wanna waste your time.

Mark (03:16):
They, um, are, are at least, um, you know, on the, on the surface, uh, very, very welcoming and very kind. And, you know, I know there, there, you know, there's, there's a more complicated version of the story of, you know, uh, um, you know, Japan being such a homogeneous society and, um, uh, sometimes not always, truly welcoming to, to outsiders, but, you know, I, I don't mean the CRI eyes, but, you know, um, I, I, I think being there and, and just, I, I just enjoy the uniqueness of the country and I've, I've found it very welcoming and just a, a very comfortable, interesting place to be, or at least being comfort comfortable in my discomfort at talking.

Ben (03:55):
Yes. Right. <laugh> yeah, that I have fond memories of Japan, cuz that was my pre pandemic trip. That was, I got me and my wife spent, uh, spent a few days in Japan, like 10 days, like you mentioned and just amazing. Definitely be going back for sure. Um, awesome. So, so with, with all that you're doing, I mean, you know, we talked a little bit author, speaker, consultant, advisor podcaster. How do you sum all up and how do you do all of at,

Mark (04:22):
Um, you know, I'm fortunate to, uh, be able to work independently. I started doing that back in 2010, so I do some work independently through my own company as a speaker. Um, you know, I've, I've written and now self-published, I've had a couple of books go through a publisher, my most recent book called measures of success. I, uh, published it myself through my own company. Um, I do training and some solo consulting and things on my own, but then I, uh, I'm fortunate to partner up with a couple of different organizations. So one is, uh, a software company called Conexus. Um, they are heavy users of, uh, you can book me within the team. That's how I learned about, um, you can book me, um, software company that I've been an advisor to and sort of a part-time, uh, team members that company's grown over the last 10 years plus have an ownership stake in, in the company, continuous improvement software platform. And then there's a consulting firm called value capture that I do a lot of, um, subcontract work through in the healthcare improvement space. Um, so, you know, I get the dabble, I'm fortunate. My wife has a, a great corporate career path that allows me to do some things that are a little riskier and I, I don't have to provide health insurance for us. Yes. I'm, I'm fortunate for that, right? Yeah.

Ben (05:44):
Give you some, some room to explore all these great things. So one of, one of the aspects of your work is teaching about Kaizen mm-hmm <affirmative>. So can you tell us a little bit more about that and how businesses and teams

Mark (05:57):
Can use that method to improve their productivity? Yeah. Um, so Kaizen is, uh, a Japanese word that translates pretty directly to mean good change. Um, it's usually used in the context of, um, continuous improvement in a workplace. It could be a personal philosophy that you apply in your own life, but, you know, um, you know, there, there are mentors of mine. Um, you've helped me learn that, you know, in a lot of ways, Kaizen is self-initiated like, what can you do to reduce frustrations in your work to make your work go more smoothly? Then you can also target that to what would benefit customer me, you know, what would benefit the organization that you work for? So, you know, Kaizen is as much a mindset as it is a, a methodology. There are tactics and there are methods, you know, one of the key methods, one of the key tactics would be to not use a traditional suggestion box, like don't lock up people's ideas in a suggestion box that then maybe on a monthly or a quarterly basis gets reviewed by some committee or management team.

Mark (07:04):
Like Kaizen is more, uh, you know, participatory with you and your team and your direct frontline manager to identify problems and test solutions to those problems in a, you know, sort of increment iterative way. So this methodology applies, uh, you know, the, the roots would be maybe considered in manufacturing. Um, Kinaxis is a software platform built on these Kaizen mindsets, um, and, and methodologies. We practice what we preach internally. Like we are very focused on creating a culture of continuous improvement and that starts with our CEO. Um, and, and the way he treats people, the way he listens, the way he empowers people to, to experiment and try new things. And then, you know, there's, there's the broader, um, you know, kind of again, like trying to create that organizational culture so you can practice Kaizen individually or within a team, or at think there's greater effect when it's done companywide.

Mark (08:02):
And, you know, one of the things I shared, um, on my blog years ago, and I re-shared with the 10th anniversary of you can book me, was applying, um, Kaizen, if you will, to some of my own meeting scheduling process, like I'm in a lot of ways, a solopreneur, I don't have a virtual assistant. I'm often scheduling meetings with people who do have administrative assistants. And I, I realize like a lot of my time was being consumed with back and forth about proposing meeting times. And when are you free? And when are you free? And that does, oh, that doesn't work for me now. And, um, so you, you can book me and I, you know, I can share more detail about this. If you want, can book me has been, uh, such a helpful tool for me in terms of saving time and just more managed, more smoothly managing meeting booking, whether it's for podcasts or for consulting or other stuff. And, and I think my use of it has created a, a good impression with people to say, oh, well, this Gmark seems to practice what he preaches.

Ben (08:59):
Yeah. And it's great to see and, and awesome that you are, you know, you've been a customer of ours for so long and, and have grown, grown with the tool, you know, alongside us. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and great that you're practicing what you preach at at Ky nexus as well. Cuz it's, you know, one thing to say, Hey, you, well should be doing this, but if you're not doing it internally, <laugh> now on, on the vein, how, how would a team get started with that Kaizen principle? Like what, what are some early things that they could do to, to start for that continuous improvement?

Mark (09:27):
Yeah. I mean the starting point, you know, when I've worked with organizations in different industries can vary a little bit, depending on like what some of their street has been. Do they have a suggestion box is a suggestion box being used and is it effective? Usually not. And that's not the fault of the employees that comes back to culture and leadership mindsets. So sometimes the first step is to maybe almost ceremonially tear down the suggestion box and reflect on what worked or what didn't work with that. I think an effective Kaizen methodology involves transparency. That could be as simple as, um, you know, note cards, uh, you know, pre-printed note card forms that go up on a bulletin board so that everybody can see the problems that are identified, the ideas, the things that are being stood to help prioritize and track and manage what's being done.

Mark (10:19):
A lot of organizations use software like kin XUS to help give web-based visibility to, to everybody in their team. Especially when you have a multi-site multinational organization, a bulletin board only give so much visibility. So you've gotta give people some Mecca for here's, how we're going to, uh, collect ideas and, and track them. But then really it's on leadership to, to encourage people like I've found some very helpful questions to get started would be a question like, Hey, what, what bugs you? What causes frustration in your day? And in helping people learn the difference, like a workaround or a bandaid or a papering over of a problem, and really, you know, getting better at identifying, um, sometimes the root of a problem. And, and that comes through practice, you know, to make sure we're not just addressing the symptom of something, but encouraging people, uh, to speak up, making it safe for them do so, being welcoming, not being judgemental, not being negative.

Mark (11:22):
You know, the, the role of leader shifts from being, you know, like the decider to being more of a coach and facilitator to get people participating. So we can ask what bugs you. Second question that pairs up well with that is what can we fix so that we're not running, you know, uh, big, huge ideas, uh, up the chain to the senior leadership team. A lot of it is very much focused on what can we do, what small changes can we make to our work. Um, there may be a time to reinvent the way we do our work, but just encouraging that participation, making it safe for people to experiment and, and making it safe to try things that don't work out is an important part, um, of that mindset and that culture. And then giving recognition and celebrating when people are making an impact to their work, to customers, to patients, to the organization, you, you start getting a positive dynamic.

Mark (12:15):
You notice I said, uh, recognition not rewards. You don't have to pay people or bribe them, or like financial incentives can very quickly get dysfunctional. That was one of the traps with the classic suggestion box system. But anyway, tho those are, I think a few of the key tips that I've seen help organizations get started, but then the, the, the final thing I'll add is that leaders can't just ask, once you can't just put out a memo or an email or give a speech, once you've gotta ask people continually to identify problems, to think about possible solutions, to go and test them and evaluate them. And, and really, you know, with within months, the, the culture can shift where now that becomes the default people speaking up and being given permission and safety, uh, to start working on improvement.

Ben (13:02):
Yeah. And, and it makes sense that it's a, a cultural thing, cuz it's a self-fulfilling flywheel where it's like, as you start seeing these improvements, then people get more motivated to do it. But if it's, you know, not an actual loop and the feedback goes in, nothing happens then the culture starts to disintegrate. That makes total sense. Yeah.

Mark (13:19):
There's um, there's a, a professor at UT Austin. Um, who's done research on, um, you know, why people don't speak up in the workplace, why they don't, uh, whether that's with ideas, for example, a lot of the one big factor is fear. They're afraid they're gonna gonna be blamed for the problem they're pointing out or they're gonna be, um, ridiculed or punished or if they don't have psychological safety, that actually the biggest factor of why people don't speak up is a different F word, uh, futility I spoke up before and it just wasn't worth my breath or time or energy. So why bother? And, and that's sad and that's where it has to start with leadership to try to break some of that negative cycle and say it is going to be worth your while let's, let's build this culture of improvement.

Ben (14:05):
Yeah. And, and as you mentioned, maybe that comes in the form of changing the collection method from something that wasn't working or didn't working to a whole new new thing now on, on that, on that note, you know, with Kaizen being more of like, uh, improvement, is, is that the same as like lean operations as you've explored with like researching Toyota and all the same thing? Or is it a bit different?

Mark (14:27):
I would say Kaizen is one of the core, fundamental foundational principles of what we would call lean manufacturing or lean a blank, going back to what Toyota would describe as, uh, the Toyota production system or more broadly, they use a banner, uh, a label of, uh, the Toyota way. And Toyota says the two key pillars of the Toyota way are one Kaizen or continuous improvement, two a concept and a mindset that they either will translate as respect for people or respect for humanity. So I would say you can't have a quote unquote lean organization without Kaizen. You could use Kaza and practices without any of the other lean terminology or lean practices. I think creating a culture of continuous improvement is, uh, incredibly powerful. Um, whether it's within the context of lean or Toyota or, or not. Yeah.

Ben (15:27):
And have you seen any challenges that that teams have, have run into when trying to adopt these new, these new processes

Mark (15:34):
And these new principles? Yeah. I mean changing habits, um, often on, let's say the frontline managers or middle management, trying to change some of their habits of not jumping in with the solutions. Right. I mean, they, you know, people, we, we, we don't want people making, just making suggestions. That's one of the traps of the suggestion box. You're maybe literally jumping to solutions. I think in the Kaizen mindset, you're, you're taught first to identify what you can call, you know, a problem or, uh, an opportunity or a gap or an issue or whatever word you use and first understand the problem, because then there might be many possible solutions you could consider. Right? So suggestion boxes based on here's a solution somebody says, yes, no approved, rejected where in Kaza. And again, it's much more iterative where, um, our focus is on solving the problem, right?

Mark (16:26):
So the team has an idea, the manager, like, unless the idea is unsafe or wildly expensive or violates regulatory guidelines or something like your, your bias should be to let the team try and see. And, um, that that's a habit that's difficult to break. Um, a lot of times managers are used to being the boss, or that's been the expectation in the organization to have all of the answers. And sometimes, uh, uh, one of the things managers, leaders have to work through is that they sometimes feel kind of ashamed of like, well, I, how, I didn't know that problem was there and I didn't come up with a solution when I think, you know, for one, like, you know, a, manager's just one person. If you've got a team of 20 people, 20 people can come up with so many more ideas, 20 can go and test so many more ideas like that scales well beyond, um, what any, any one manager or leader could do.

Mark (17:22):
So changing habits and coaching leaders through that is one of the challenges. Um, sometimes initially there there's this big, huge flood of ideas pent up sort of, oh, people say, oh, now that you ask, uh, you know, sometimes people literally bring out a sheet of paper that they've been squiring away, ideas on. And so upfront, there's a need maybe to, to, to try to triage and prioritize. But again, when you give people visibility on a bulletin board or in software, like Kyus, you're not forgetting about ideas. There's, there's this list there of like, well, as time comes up during the day, all right, well, there's okay. We're gonna go work on that one. Now let's pull an ad hoc team together. Let's, let's go test that improvement out. You know, I've, I've found, you know, generally people have ideas, you just have to draw them out.

Mark (18:12):
And again, you have to make it safe for people to speak up and participate and try things. Now, there are some employees where maybe they've worked 30 or 35 years and a bad, if not toxic environment, it's gonna take time to try to build trust in those folks. And some people, it might be hard for them and to get over, you know, some of those wounds they have from, from the workplace. But, you know, generally speaking, I mean, I've, I've just seen this approach work. Um, so well, in so many different settings, Conexus has customers, uh, in so many different industries, manufacturing, healthcare service sector, uh, people in government, not on profits use this Kaizen style of continuous improvement. You know, you you're either continuing to work at it or you've given up. Those are about the only two states that you could be in, you know, Kaizen fail. Well, I mean, like maybe you, you, you didn't figure it out and you gave up, so keep working at it, right.

Ben (19:08):
Keep iterating, like you mentioned, and, and tweaking it as you're going. And, and it's important that you, you mentioned the not going to the solution right away of just saying let's investigate the problem rather than it being this prescribed thing where it's like, well, no, we're not gonna do that rather than saying, what else could we do? How else can we exactly iterate on it

Mark (19:27):
And change? And, and one of those coaching questions, I, a leader might say that, say, Ben, you, you come to me, you identify a problem. And I might ask, well, do you have any ideas of how we could address that? And you might say, well, no. And I might coach you to, well, you know, go and think about it, go talk to some of your coworkers, you know, instead of jumping in and saying, well, Ben, here's what I think you should do, cuz that doesn't develop your problem solving skills. So you've gotta give people opportunity and, and sort of, you know, coach 'em through it. Um, give it, give it a try. And, uh, that, that really helps.

Ben (19:55):
And, and I think a lot of organizations need to, you know, work on that safety of saying we can't experiment and if it fails, then it fails. But at least, you know, so I think people are reluctant to explore things because of just the need for it to be perfect or for it to be complete or for it to be well rounded. Now in, in that framework, how, how do folks kind of navigate that and, and build that into their, their culture of making it safe for those experimentations? Is it something where you are saying, you know, what are we hoping to gain outta this experiment? What, how would we know if it's a success or can you elaborate a little bit on how, how folks are navigating that?

Mark (20:34):
Um, yeah, so the, the Kaizen card, if you will, um, that I've used and, um, shared with others and, and, and, and, you know, help people, uh, put in place. Um, my, my co-author Joe Schwartz and I wrote a book called healthcare Kaizen, and we have a, a website, uh, HC, kaizen.com where we've got free templates in either PowerPoint or PDF format. You can download them, you can use them, you can tweak them. But, you know, I think, you know, the basis of a card, like, you know, a quarter sheet of paper we'd have lines on it, what's the problem or the issue. What's your idea? What are the expected benefits of set improvement? So there are times, or, you know, and maybe the ideal would be, you know, to measure the impact. If, you know, we have an idea that we think is going to improve safety.

Mark (21:24):
Do we have data like injury E rates, uh, lost work day rates? And can we look at, um, you know, the impact on a, me a metric, if we say, well, we wanna implement this because it's going to improve customer satisfaction. Um, sometimes you keep that on sort of qualitative basis. And sometimes you can do a cause and effect of well making this change, increased average customer satisfaction rates by 10%. Sometimes if you're doing a lot of improvements, you can't directly connect the dots from this improvement made this much impact, but directionally, you know, if we're making a lot of improvements, we should see improvement in our core business metrics or balance scorecard or our OKRs or whatever you call that. And eventually that should flow through then to the bottom line. So we don't want people doing, for example, like there's pitfall of doing projects and counting up, uh, like if there's too much focus on cost savings, people will, will, will add up all sorts of sometimes, you know, dubious projections and you'll say, well, uh, our numbers show that are our Kan program saved 10 million this year.

Mark (22:31):
And, and executive might rightfully ask, well, where where's that flowing through to the bottom line, right? So, you know, we, we, we've gotta let people focus on, uh, improvements that matter to them, not everything necessarily has a measurable impact, but a lot of improvements will like, so cost reduction is fine, but the pit fall, um, to avoid is only asking for cost reduction. You've gotta let people work on improvements that matter to them. And, and again, like the idea is that we're not implementing things that are wildly expensive. We want to do, you know, there's a, a cliche expression from Toyota and, and, and the lean methodology that says use your creativity before capital. So part of the brain in storming, if somebody has an expensive idea, we might try to ask, well, is there a more clever way of solving that problem? Can we do a small test of change to reduce some of the risk of people wanting to implement a big, expensive solution that has to be perfect, doing a small test of change and with one customer or with one part of the organization allows us to test and validate ideas before, you know, trying to scale it.

Mark (23:35):
Yeah. Breaking it

Ben (23:36):
Down to the smallest, uh, smallest step. So then you're not investing like you mentioned, or you're not setting yourself up for failure because it's missing that mark. That makes total total sense. So the other, the other aspect of that is that measurement, uh, side of things, and there's that old saying, you know, what gets measured gets managed and in your book measure of success, you talk about how organizations need to adjust their metrics to reduce noise. So how are companies doing that or how should they be doing that?

Mark (24:04):
Well, yeah, so there's, you know, a whole methodology that I was fortunate to learn, uh, 25 years ago. Um, there's a, a statistician Donald Wheeler, um, who was at the university of Tennessee and he's been a active consultant, uh, an author for a long time, um, a methodology that he calls process behavior charts, and it's a way of visual business metrics or other performance data. So I think, let me frame it in terms of like the Kaizen discussion, right? So we're talking about a solution called process behavior charts, and I've written a book, uh, about that. And, uh, Don Wheeler was kind enough to write, uh, the forward, um, for, for that book, the, the, the problem or the issue might be things like relying on two data point comparisons, customer satisfaction metric is higher than it was last month array. And then it's lower than the month before and people get upset or they lecture people, or they, they demand a root cause analysis and, or, or, you know, things like this where they may be just overreacting to is statistical noise in the performance measure.

Mark (25:10):
Um, there, there, there are other traps, but, you know, the main thing is looking more than two data points looking at 12 or 15 or 20 plotting them visually, right? So in Excel, you, you know, it would be called just a line chart, visualizing more data and visually looking for, are there trends? Does it seem like our performance is just fluctuating around a stable average? That's often the case, uh, or are there points in time where performance has shifted upward or downward? And so process behavior charts, there's a little bit of math involved, but basically sort of calculated in some guardrails horizontal lines that you would draw on the chart. So you've got your business metric that may be changing or fluctuating or whatever. And then you calculate and draw in what are called lower and upper limits. You calculate and plot the average. And now visually, and you, you know, you can use a couple of statistical rules where let's say, if your baseline was that the customer satisfaction metric would just fluctuating around an average and all the data points were within those calculated limits, you would call that maybe a predictable system, that metric is predictable within that range of performance.

Mark (26:19):
But then suddenly you see a data point outside of those limits. That's very strong statistical proof that says, Hey, something changed, whether it's for the better or for the worse, it could be something that you did as an improvement, or it just happened as an external factor. Right? So a quick example on the last healthcare organization I was working with up until the start of the pandemic last year, um, had a, a call center metric. So, uh, patients calling in for scheduling and questions and what have you. And one of the metrics was call abandonment rate the percentage of people who get fed up and hang up. And so that number had been fluctuating around an average. It was pretty stable. It was predictable, it was higher than they wanted it to be. But then that number showed a significant shift downward where like now, instead of fluctuating around an average of let's call it 5%, it was fluctuating around an average of 2% something changed.

Mark (27:16):
Was it something that they did or that they could take credit for? No. What changed? COVID fewer patients were calling to go appointments because we were staying at home. And so, you know, they, they avoided the trap of somebody wanting to pat themselves in the back. And this is where the politics was more complicated than the math of like, look at this great improvement, but they realized like the cause and effect was not anything they did. It was something that happened and their prediction. I asked them, well, what do you predict will happen when things start to get back to normal? And they're like, the call abandonment rate will probably go back up and sure enough, it did, you know, but they, so we, we wanna make sure we understand cause and effect relationships in our business, in our organization. If we made a change, that was that we predicted was going to reduce, um, the call abandonment rate.

Mark (28:06):
We would look for statistical evidence on that process behavior chart, instead of doing kind of a fishy two data point comparison. Like we implemented this change and the call abandonment rate fell from 5.5 to 3.9. That those two data points could be within the range of the typical noise or fluctuation in the metric. You wanna make sure you're not declaring victory based off of two data points that you're not fooling yourself inadvertently or intentionally, um, you know, we can use statistical measures as a way of connecting the dots between our improvement efforts and the measures that matter to our business.

Ben (28:41):
Yeah. It makes total sense to zoom out and see a larger, larger pick. Sure. Instead of, you know, just the, the couple of data points like you're mentioning and then having those guard wears makes a lot of sense, cuz what's the variation mm-hmm <affirmative> cause then if you're drastically outside of that or underneath that, then you can zoom, you know, zoom back in and figure out what, what changed that really, really good. Yeah.

Mark (29:01):
I mean, if I, if I can, one quick example and I, and I love the way you said zooming out is a great, great way of stating that. Um, let's say, uh, you step on the scale every morning. Here's a good experiment. You've got a scale and let's say, you're happy with your weight. You're not trying to lose weight or gain weight step on the scale every morning and write those numbers down and chart it in Excel. And you'll see, you know, maybe with the holidays coming up, you know, we may have a change to our, our system of eating more exercising loss. I don't know, but you will see, you do not weigh the exact same number every day, especially if your scale's got one decimal point after the weight, right. And you can start to look and see and under start understanding your body as a system of what you're putting into it and what you're doing with your body, uh, that number's gonna fluctuate.

Mark (29:47):
And you can learn to stop overreacting to every up and down, you may gain eight tenths of a pound and then lose seven tenths of a pound. And you start to understand, you know, you've got fluctuations, don't get too excited about every up or down and understand for you that noise. And then you may go away on a vacation and this, this didn't happen with me last week, but let's say you go away on a vacation, you step on the scale. And now that number's up five pounds. Yeah. That right. Could be temporary. Now you're gonna make some adjustments to get that back down. You know, um, you, you can start to understand cause an effect between your, your, your actions and your lifestyle and that, that number on the scale, if your weight changes it could, because it could be because of something you're doing. Or like, if you don't understand, like that could be a sign of a medical problem of weight going up weight going down, you may want to go to the doctor, but you, you're not gonna call the doctor and say like, oh yeah, I'm down two pounds today. Well, I mean that, there's lots of physiological reasons why that could be, and then you weight maybe goes back up one and a half pounds the next

Ben (30:49):
Day. Yeah. That's an amazing example. And cuz that, that will fluctuate and there's that looking at the, that variation, right. You're looking at the variation and then it's a cause for alarm, like you said, if there's something outside of that, but it's all inputs and outputs, no pun attending, but <laugh>,

Mark (31:07):
I mean, in a hospital they will talk about patient inputs and outputs. That is a clinical term. Uh <laugh> I, I know

Ben (31:15):
All, all within that system, you know, the self in this case, but you know, at a P apply it to, to an organization as well. Makes total sense. So speaking, speaking of hospitals, a lot of the work that you've done, you know, in, in your past is improving their process and creating lean operations within, within the hospitals. Um, and we spoke a little bit about, about COVID, but how are you seeing, you know, hospital systems navigate the change with COVID, um, since the start of the pandemic.

Mark (31:39):
So there, there, there seemed to be a couple different camps and approaches. Um, and, and first off, you know, I, I've not been on site with a health system since March of, uh, 2020. Um, so a lot of what I'm hearing is, uh, you know, secondhand talking to people I know who work at health systems, that these have been incredibly exhausting if not demoralizing times for, for people in healthcare. So going forward and trying to recover from that. And we're not out of the woods yet. We're gonna have to figure out how to create a workplace that that's more engaging and less frustrating. And for people who are staying in healthcare, because, you know, there's so many people quitting and leaving. Um, and I, and I don't, I, I, I don't blame them for that and I don't walk in their shoes, so I wouldn't even try.

Mark (32:30):
But for the people who remain in healthcare, there's gonna be a lot to recover from. Um, I don't think we can just fall back to the old normal, I think a new normal better path forward would be around creating an environment. That's more respectful, more engaging, not overworking people to, to help keep the people that, that we still have. But thinking back to, to COVID times though, the, the, the, the two categories, there are sadly some hospitals that have fallen back into the habit, or they've never lost the habit of cost cutting the biggest cost in a hospital system, 60 something percent of cost is labor. So sadly, a lot of hospitals when revenue is down, um, financial problems are there. They, they, they will cut staff, which can be short-sided or counterproductive in all sorts of different ways. Um, not to ideal, you know, I'll idealize Toyota a little bit, you know, Toyota doesn't lay off employees like if they had supply chain problems right now, like every automaker is dealing with and production is down or during the great recession or other times they will pay employees to do continuous improvement and training and improvement and things like that.

Mark (33:42):
Um, you know, Toyota has the money in the bank they've planned for that. You know, uh, a lot of times hospitals don't have the money in the bank, but then there's the second camp of hospitals. The more positive side of things who have doubled down on lean and continuous improvement during the pandemic unprecedented times, we need to be more, are adaptive and, and, and, and agile tapping into everybody's expertise instead of the executive team, trying to dictate everything in a top down way. You know, I've heard so many reports and in some of my podcasts that I do have interviewed hospital executives who say, you know, the years of investment, we spent building that culture of continuous improvement really paid off during the pandemic, cuz we were able to be more adaptive. People were more resilient because they were involved, their driving change, not just being a victim, um, of change. Those are the organizations that I, I really admire and appreciate those who have, um, you know, doubled down on their investment in their people and their continuous movement capabilities. And the organization, you know, ends up better off for it as well.

Ben (34:46):
Yeah. Investment in your people. I can't be understated cuz like it's, that's the basis of any successful business and culture are the people that show up. And I like how you mentioned that they're involved in the process of improvement. Like it's not just a top down thing. They can spur innovation and make change from, from their, their day to day work. Um, really great. So, you know, we talked a bit about all the stuff that you've got going on. So what, what's your secret on managing your day to day? You mentioned you can book me, which helps you save time when the scheduling side of things, but how are you staying organized outside of that? How are you, how are you able to stay productive? Yeah.

Mark (35:22):
So like, you know, you, you can book me is a hugely important tool. You know, I've learned how to set up multiple calendars that are all driven off of the same Google calendar for, uh, visibility. But you know, as meetings drop into my calendar, they're clearly labeled, here's a pre-call for this podcast, with this person. Um, here's an episode of my favorite mistake that I'm scheduling. Here's a meeting a inquiry about consulting or speaking. So looking at looking at the calendar instead of just seeing meeting, meeting, meeting, or name, name, name, you know, that, that helps me mentally plan my day. You can book me, populates a lot of the stuff on my calendar. Um, the workflows of generating, uh, zoom meetings and different, uh, reminder emails and follow up emails that are, that are automated based on those different types of calendar appointments. Um, those, those are some things that, that are really useful.

Mark (36:18):
You know, I try to limit the amount of time I spend on, on social media. And one way I've done that is, um, basically deleting apps off of my phone and, and sort of trying to limit like I'll use my web browser on the computer, but I don't need to be nervously fidgeting through my phone. Um, some maybe that's, that's a productivity tip that I've tried embracing recent years. I, you know, I don't know if I, I don't know if I have any magic tricks. Uh, I'm not an inbox, zero guy. Many of the, many of the people at Kinaxis are really into that methodology. Um, I don't know if I have any other, you know, particular methodologies or frameworks that, that I use, but mean I'll give credit to, uh, my friend Dan Markovitz, who's written a couple of books on applying lean concepts to personal productivity.

Mark (37:05):
Uh, encourage people go, go Google, uh, Dan Markovitz and his books. And, um, one, one tip from him is to live in your calendar instead of living in your inbox. What's the default application that you have sort of in your face, um, on, on your computer. Um, having the calendar in front of you, I think is, um, a better way of tracking time and, and not being constantly distracted by emails, but I, I like anybody I can do better, um, with my own productivity, but, uh, again, like I, I I've blogged about, and I shared with you guys on social media, you can book me is a huge time saver. I didn't measure the before and after how many hours a week was I spending scheduling meetings? How many miscommunications were being made about timing time zones? You can book me, handles that beautifully time zone back and forth. So I, I bet I know qualitatively been a huge benefit to me and it's a, it's a time saver and a stress reliever. So, so that's, that's been great.

Ben (38:05):
Yeah. And, and as you mentioned, just living within your, your calendar, cuz you have so many things going on. It's like, what, what's my day look like? What do I need to prepare for? How do I stay focused on that and everything fueling together and, and building out solutions with different, like you can book me all, helping, helping keep that calendar up to date. Um, and you know, one of your many podcasts, the, my favorite mistake, you allow your guests to just open up about the mistakes that they've made. So I wanted to ask you what, which was one of your

Mark (38:35):
Biggest mistakes from your life and what did you learn from it? Yeah. So my favorite mistake, um, you know, generally, um, you know, we, we, we ask people to talk about workplace mistakes as opposed to broader life mistakes. Sometimes there's an overlap, um, in that, um, you know, so, you know, a favorite mistake is one that I think, you know, influences us in some way. We learned from it. It's a mistake we've learned to avoid repeating. It's a mistake that led to some unexpected, you know, benefit. Um, you know, so one, one story I've shared before, you know, going back, this is like 2004. Uh, the last minute, if I actioning company I worked for, I was still not, I had not cured myself of the engineer trap. I'm an industrial engineer, uh, undergrad of a, uh, master's degree in engineering and an MBA. There was still that trap of like, I need to be the expert.

Mark (39:32):
I need to have the answers. I'm going to calculate the right answer. I'm going to have the right answer. And so I wasn't as good. I think now I'm a better experimentalist. I put less pressure on myself to have the answer instead of having well, here's something I could try. Here's something I could test and what, what I wasn't good at then was engaging other people. Now some of that was my own practice. Some of it was the culture. I was a part of that was still more of a us, them salaried, hourly engineers and managers come up with answers. Employees are just executing things. Um, but I made some mistakes where, you know, I, uh, you know, developed some solutions, us to problems that were too too much of, of my own, not engaging people, which, you know, and having people participate in ideas makes the ideas better and it helps people buy in to change.

Mark (40:31):
And so coming up with what you think is a great solution and then convincing people to go along like, no, that's, that's too late. Um, so I've, I've shared examples like that, where, um, you know, I sort of reflect on some of these projects I was involved in earlier in my career. If I could go back in time, I would do it differently. Um, I've I've I can't do that. So I've tried to be better now going forward. I, as I a consultant, I, I won't myself to be put in a position where somebody wants me to come in and be the expert and tell them how to change their process. I'm like, well, no, I'm not, that's not effective or it's not sustainable. If I could come up with the quote unquote right. Solution. So anyway, I think sharing stories like this, maybe give some comfort to people who are new in a field, younger in their career to recognize we all make mistakes.

Mark (41:24):
Don't put pressure on yourself to be perfect people aren't successful because they've avoided making mistakes. I think of anything, the podcast illustrates people who are really successful acknowledge their mistakes. They reflect on them. They don't beat themselves up. Right. They don't dwell on it, but they learn from it and they move forward in a more positive way. So I, I try sharing stories about that personally. Um, I, I have a habit now with people I work with now, maybe it's annoying will freely admit, Hey today I made this mistake and let me, let me tell you what I was thinking. Let me tell you why that turned out to be wrong. Let's learn from it. Let let's let's let's move forward. So I think there's something to be said for sharing mistakes. I'm not really anybody's boss quote unquote, but I think if you're in a workplace, when you have a leader who has the humility, the openness to share mistakes that does a lot to help create what we then might describe as a culture of continuous improvement.

Ben (42:22):
Yeah. And having just that vulnerability to say, Hey, this is a mistake, but like you mentioned in talking about continuous improvement, be like, what have we learned from it? So it's, it's never, you never win it's you win and learn. Right. As long as you're keep, keep learning things, but, and not making the same mistake over again too. That's really, really awesome. So, so what's next for you? What are you, what are you excited about? I know you just got back from a, from a busy trip, so probably no trips, but what's exciting. What's exciting

Mark (42:49):
Coming up for, I am scheduled for the first time in the middle of December to go, uh, your class in person for the first time, since March 20, 20, I've been doing so much zoom time, uh, a lot of virtual stuff, but I'm excited that, um, this class that I had taught virtually a couple times, I get to now return back to, um, kind of a healthcare, uh, classroom conference room type environment. Um, so I'm excited about that and, and knock on wood that still, uh, happens. I'm optimistic, you know, as we go into 2022 of being, I'm excited to get back out on the road. Like I've enjoyed being home a lot over these last to 18 months. And you know, I've taken a little bit of a hit business wise, but it's survivable. Um, again, I mentioned, I have a wife with a great corporate career and that provides us a sense of stability that, you know, a lot of people aren't fortunate to have. Um, but I'm, I'm looking forward to, you know, striking the right balance of yes. I would like to be able to travel for work that's fulfilling and places that are interesting to go to without being on the road all the time. That's one thing I'm looking forward to figuring out more.

Ben (44:05):
Yeah. Sounds, sounds great. Big year ahead for you. Um, navigating all of that and for everybody listening to all, all that you hopefully taken away from Kaizen, the continuous improvement, everything there. So where, where can folks go to learn more about everything they're working on and check out, you know, all of the, the books that you you've read

Mark (44:23):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks for that. Um, my website's mark gray.com, uh, G R a B as in Bravo, a N like November mark, gran.com. That's got links to, uh, different books and podcasts. My main blog is a different website, lean blog.org. Um, I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. I think there's one other mark Gran in the country who is, uh, an educator in California. So, um, you're not, if you, if you, if you just, I'm not him, but if you Google mark Raven, you'll, you'll, you'll find me maybe this other mark. Raven's happy to not be found. I, who knows, but, um, I'm pretty easy to find online, uh, or again, mark raven.com. Yeah.

Ben (45:08):
We'll throw everything up on the blog as well. Mark's so thank, thank you so much for taking the time to, to fill us in on everything that you've been working on and, and educating us on Kaizen and lean operations and all that good stuff. So, uh, we appreciate you being on, get more done and we hope you have a good rest of your day and a good rest of the year, too.

Mark (45:26):
Yeah. Well, thank you. And, you know, thank you to, um, the whole team that you can book me for helping me it more done. And, um, I, I really do appreciate your service and, and what you do. It's great. Awesome.

Ben (45:37):
Thanks for being a customer mark. You're great. All right. Thanks Ben. Take care. Thank you for listening to get more done. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast, if you or someone you know, would like to be on the show, you can visit, get more done dot. You can book that at me, reach out to us on twitter@youcanbookmeorvisitusontheforumforumyoubook.me. I'll catch you on the next episode. Cheers.