Improve Corporate Culture with Lean Leadership Principles | The Uncommon Leader Matt Sims | Ep. 223

Most leaders don’t mean to burn people out, but it happens the moment we stop listening and start managing by pressure. Matt Sims calls it the Sea of Discontent: that place where talented people feel undervalued, disrespected, and unheard, so they coast for the paycheck and quietly detach. If you’ve ever wondered why a team “has everything they need” and still won’t take ownership, this conversation puts clear language and a practical path to it.

I’m joined by Matt Sims, founder of Ever So Lean and an award-winning continuous improvement leader with over 25 years in lean leadership, operational excellence, and transformation work across major organizations like Amazon and the Royal Mail. We walk through the turning point where Matt realized the shadow a leader casts can shape someone’s entire day, and how that pushed him from command-and-control habits toward authentic leadership built on respect for people.

• The Sea of Discontent and how leaders create it without noticing
• Moving from command-and-control to authentic leadership
• Why Lean tools fail when people feel disrespected
• The four pillars: respect for people, authenticity, engagement, empowerment
• Writing leadership books in plain language for real operators
• Listening to frontline teams to find real root causes
• Lifelong learning, feedback, and letting go of “I know it all”
• Using AI as a colleague while staying grounded in people skills
• Calling out misleading “lean expert” content and staying humble

From there, we unpack Matt’s “bridge” framework and the four pillars that keep teams above the Sea of Discontent: respect, authenticity, engagement, and empowerment. We also get real about lifelong learning, feedback that used to feel like criticism, and why “listen to people” is still the highest leverage tool in any Lean Six Sigma or change management effort. Then we go modern: how Matt uses AI as a thought partner, where AI content goes wrong online, and what leaders must do to stay credible in a world of instant answers.

So if you're ready to stop settling and start owning your own health, go to coachjohngallagher.com forward slash own it and set up a free call with the own it coaching team. That's coachjongallagher.com forward slash own it.

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𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 Matt Sims👇

➡️ LinkedIn (primary): https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-sims-38173427/ 
➡️ Website https://eversolean.com/?ct=1781582274025
➡️ BOOK: https://eversolean.com/bridge-to-inspirational-leadership/?ct=1781582278402
➡️ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@matsimsuk

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Transcript

The Sea Of Discontent

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So this is where you end up when you feel undervalued, you feel disrespected, you feel like you're not listened to. You you just you're in work and you are just going through the motions day to day just to get by for the salary at the end of the month. You're not you're not really loving it, you don't really like it, you don't own it. And we've all been there. I've been there several times. In fact, I've put people in the sea of discontent without even knowing I was doing it at the time. Constantly smashing them with deadlines, pestering them, harassing them, burning them out. That's the sea of discontent. And once you end up in the sea of discontent, it's really difficult to get out of it unless you some people leave, they leave the organisation. You could lose great talent because of you are managing them or you're trying to manage them when you can't manage them, you need to lead them.

Meet Matt Sims And The Mission

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Hey Uncommon Leader, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I'm your host, John Gallagher. Yeah, you probably know the two of my favorite topics to talk about are lean and leadership. And today I'm going across the pond for a guest who specializes in both. He's Matt Sims, the founder of Ever So Lean and an international award-winning continuous improvement leader with over 25 years of experience. And he's led some massive transformations for global giants such as Amazon and the Royal Mail. Combination of lean and leadership are outlined in his book, Building the Bridge to Inspirational Leadership, that we're going to talk about today. And it's a framework that proves when your people thrive, your performance follows. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So let's get started. Matt Sims, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. How are you doing today, friend? Thank you very much for having me. I'm really good. Really good talk. Good, good. Matt, as I said kind of in the in the intro, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Anytime I can chat with a fellow lean and leadership passionate individual, I know the conversation can A go a lot of different directions, but secondly, be one that I can probably over talk as well. So this is going to be

A Childhood Moment That Shaped Anxiety

SPEAKER_01 2:03

great. But I've been doing this for a few years, and one of the questions that I always ask my first-time guests is to go back in time and really dig in. Tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today as a leader.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Well, it's quite deep, isn't it? You go in deep straight away. Yeah, right off the ball. I guess look, um, I think as adults, we're heavily shaped by what happens in our childhood, even if we don't aren't even aware of it. And I had an experience when I was about six or seven years old, and I didn't want to go to school like many six or seven-year-olds didn't. So I pretended I had a stomachache. And by lunchtime that day, I was in the emergency room and they were trying to basically diagnose that I had appendicitis and I needed my appendix removing. And it was heavily traumatic. Like I was obviously petrified. And I uh I told them, look, I'm making it up, it was all lies, I just didn't want to go to school. And then they were saying, But you're just saying that now because you're scared. And I was going, No, no, no, generally, I'm making it up. I still remember it like it was yesterday. Eventually they did tests, and obviously they did find that I was making it up, but uh it it totally changed the course of my life because from that day on I suffered with crippling anxiety, health anxiety initially, anything to do with medical stuff or anything, it was it, I was done. Um and then going forward, that anxiety spread more into my social life and me as an individual, which right up I mean, I'm nearly 43 now, and right up until a couple of years ago, it was still a major player in my day-to-day life. And I think through age and wisdom, I've I've learned more about it, I know how to handle it, I know that it passes, but it's definitely stuck with me. It's definitely shaped who I am.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

It's amazing how some of those stories stick with us. I mean, I've heard of white coat syndrome before in terms of you walk into a doctor's office, you're like, I see that white coat, and things start to go really bad. But it's certainly something that uh it's it's certainly something that as uh as an adult, when you can recall back all the way to six or seven, very easily can be something that haunts you. I I bet I can dig back. It's funny I asked that question. I don't know if I do my own self-reflection as to going back that far and what that really means, but it helps us today and some of the things that you're looking at. I mean, the first thing I thought of when you're talking about appendicitis and not really having it is like what diagnosis protocol did they use to really figure this out and do a five wise and and say that I really needed to have my appendix removed, right? Like, who's the doctor that goes through that? But my goodness gracious. So we're gonna talk about two of your books today, and that's fun part too. We're gonna talk about why you're an author as well. What drove you to try and uh or drove you to write a book and what happened. But your book that we're gonna talk primarily about today uh is how you are helping organizations to continuously improve, and that's the a bridge to inspirational leadership, a framework that proves when your people thrive, your performance follows.

Unlearning Command And Control Leadership

SPEAKER_01 4:50

So let's start right there. When your people thrive, your performance follows. What in the world has that meant for you and how do you communicate that to an organization that really needs to get better?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah, it it's meant an awful lot of work over a number of years, is what it's meant, and I learned the hard way. So when I when I first went into leadership sort of 25 years ago, I um I thought it was all about the boss says you do and you do as you're told. And if you don't like it, you leave. That's basically how I was brought up to believe it worked. So I was very I behaved in a way that I'd seen my leaders behave. So I would tell people what to do, I would discipline them if they didn't listen, I'd be very direct. There was no engagement, it was very much a I'm better than you attitude. And it didn't work, funnily enough. It caused a lot of friction, a lot of challenges for me, and it made my very first few years as a leader the steepest learning curve of my life. I learned so much from telling guys that were double my age, some of them more than that, to do something and then standing in front of them, watching them do it to make sure they didn't run away. Shocking, unbelievable. And then even as I progressed through my career into continuous improvement and lean activities, I still wasn't engaging people. I was telling people, I was doing it to them, and then I would swing in on a rope with a ballaclava on. I'll solve your problem, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

I'm in there, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

I'm gonna be the hero, I'm gonna solve it for you. I know you do this every day and you're the expert and you've been doing it for 20 years, but I don't care. Do it like this, and then I would leave. And it was hard work, and as my roles gained more responsibility and I had bigger territories that I was responsible for, that gulf between me and the people doing the work got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I was despised. And I thought to myself, one day, there has to be a better way of doing this. There's gotta be. And I was on a site visit one day, and my boss said to me, I I basically went down on the on the shop floor, and the way they were working was horrendous, right? It wasn't the process as it was designed. And I unplugged the machine and I told them to stop, and I went off on one about how rubbish they were, what they were doing, and why this was pr a problem, really went into one. And afterwards, I plugged it back in and walked off with my boss. And he said to me, Matt, I don't disagree with anything you've just said, right? You're spot on, but you need to think about the shadow that you cast because those people have never seen you before, and now they're gonna go home and their partner's gonna go, how did work go today? And they're gonna go, Well, this random English guy came in, started shouting at me, tell me I'm rubbish, and then he left. So I changed after that and I started to engage people, to really listen to people and to be my authentic self rather than trying to be what I believe the leader should be. And I started to see results. I started to see just silly little things, there was less friction. I would engage people or other departments and stakeholders before the project started rather than during the project, and people reacted differently. And I quickly learned that if you give people the environment to thrive and and they enjoy what they do and they participate and they have an input into it and they own it, then you get so much better results off the back of it. And I found I was working, it felt like I wasn't working as hard because I wasn't having all the calls and all the friction, but I was getting more back from it. Do you see what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

I'm following you, absolutely. Now that I love that as the moment, because that was gonna be the question like, was there was there a moment? It's this intervention that comes in from a mentor or from a guide who says, dude, like you just you uh are not gonna get anything done that way. And one of the things, look, with us as lean practitioners as well, and recognizing that leadership immersion, getting things done through people was very key. Did you have the lean experience before you had that moment, or was your lean after that leadership moment? What came first, leadership or lean for you?

Lean Before Leadership Lessons

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Lean. Lean.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah? See, I I worked in an environment in um it was a public sector organization. There was no money, it was heavily unionized, so you couldn't really make any changes because of the unions didn't want change to occur because it they didn't want their people identifying waste. And the organisation brought in world-class manufacturing, and that was my first exposure to anything to do with lean. But but what it did make me it worked on like ten pillars, and I was the workplace organization pillar, so I was all about making the work area more smooth, the flow improvement, reducing the waste. And it suddenly occurred to me that I'd been doing this stuff. I I knew I knew it without knowing it. So even when I was out on the street as a frontline delivery postman walking around delivering letters through people's doors, I was already removing the waste from the shortest routes, making it quicker to sort by putting it in a certain order. I was already doing it. I just didn't know what it was. And I think it was a natural thing within me. So the lean definitely came first.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

I love that. And sometimes it's process before people. Often we'll teach now, though, that it's people then process in terms of making that stand. I mean, I would say things, and it's much like your framework, you know, that we have to develop ourselves, then develop our team, then put the structures and processes in place because they trust you and they can make a change. You saw it a little bit differently, but you had somebody point it out that, you know, with a skill set, process improvement, and leadership, man, the possibilities are endless. So you've gone through this journey. You did this through the Royal Mail. You also then went on to work for another big organization, Amazon. I don't know if you can work for anybody bigger. Maybe today it's Tesla or the SpaceX or wherever it is in terms of working for Elon in terms of big organization and making that happen. But taking both those principles have resulted in this framework that you talk about.

The Bridge Framework And Four Pillars

SPEAKER_01 10:36

So let's talk about this framework a little bit. You talk about these four pillars respect for people, authenticity, empowerment, and then ultimately, I'm sorry, uh, and engagement and then empowerment. So those four together. Not a whole lot in there with regards to process, very much a people approach in terms of what's in there. You've got it set on that foundation. How did you come up with this framework? Years and years, and when did it crystallize for you?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, so it really was. I didn't know I was creating a framework. I never set out to create it. I just over a number of years became a high performer. And it was that catalyst moment that I described before that really was the spark within it. But I was consistently high performing. Then I found that through the practices that I was using, my team were consistently high performing. And even when they were underperforming, they were swinging it round and becoming high performers. So I found the recipe that really worked over and over again. Um, and then I moved into more senior roles and my my remit grew and grew and grew, and I was applying the same process over and over again. And then I found I had people who were wanting to come and work within my team, even though they'd never worked with me before, didn't know anything about lean, but they wanted to be there. And I was mentoring people, vast different departments across Amazon, like people that worked in different departments, had nothing to do with me. And even when I left Amazon, I'm still mentoring people now that I used to work with. So I found I had this recipe, like the secret spices, if you like, like the Colonel would have, that worked. And I sat and and I when I left Amazon, I went and did a bit of keynote speaking, just a little bit here and there, uh, to sort of see what the market was like out there. And when I was doing it, I was talking about the methods like Jim Collins's good to great and stuff like that. And I came off stage one day and somebody said to me, I really enjoyed your talk, but why are you talking about J Jim Collins's flywheel? And why are you talking about this and that? Why haven't you taken all of the stories and all of the things that you've learned over the years and put them into your own model that people can follow? And it was it was a moment like, why didn't I think of that? It would be so much easier to explain if I wrote it down how my brain understands. And that's where the bridge analogy came from, because you need a bridge to get you from here to where you want to be, and everything about a bridge supports what I think works as for leadership and for lean.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

You know, so if that's the second story ultimately, where this person, outside of the physician being the first one who almost scared you to death and and the resultant anxiety, but a a mentor or a voice or someone saying, you need to make a change. And I think that's so important in our leadership development as well, is that we recognize now we're now we're back to some of the things you talk about, authenticity and vulnerability in your in your first book about the emergence of an unexpected leader, right? Sometimes we need others to point out what we don't see in ourselves. And again, we teach it all day long. We're pointing out waste that we see that others can't see. You walk into a process, you walk into a restaurant, you walk into any business today, it doesn't matter, Matt. You're gonna see waste. You're wired to see what they can't see because they've been around it so long. Yet it took someone from outside your perspective to point out that you're talking about other people when you should really be talking about your own story, which I think is really powerful in terms of the people in our lives. So that's really good. You're like, man, I got something here. You decided to put it in a book. Who did you write this book

Writing A Book For Your Past Self

SPEAKER_01 14:05

for? Why'd you choose to write the book for one thing and who did you write it for?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

I wrote it because of I found that most of the leadership books that are out there tend to be oh, what's the word? Very technical and very prim and proper, and how you expect a leadership book to be. And I found that when I was doing the mentoring and and the coaching with people, people were really able to connect with the way that I would speak and and the way that I would portray things and and how I'd get it across. So I thought I need to write it down. Like I've I've got this thing that works, I know it works, I've used it in the coal face, I need to write it down for other people to follow. And I drew the bridge on a scrappy bit of paper. In fact, the image that you see on the front of the book is my first scrappy drawing that I drew on a um, it was on the back of a receipt for a restaurant, and it got me thinking that people people need to visualize something like that. And I think a bridge gives it to you. But I think putting it in layman's terms that people can actually understand without all of the buzzwords and all the technic technical side of it, I just think people connect with it. So I wrote it down for my younger self. So I thought to myself, what did I need 20 years ago? What would have really helped me move forward? And it's that book. Because if I'd have read that, I think I would have gone in a totally different direction to what I did.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Of that. You know, I th there's a quote, and again, some of my listeners probably get tired of here, the regular listeners get tired of hearing us. We're most powerfully positioned to help the person that we once were. That's exactly who you wrote that book for the person you were 20 years ago that really needed it and said, if I would have had this 20 years ago, maybe I'd have cut that time in half that it took me to get where I needed to go. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Exactly. That's so good. When you think about all those journeys, I mean, and and that framework, okay. Within that framework, whether you're teaching it now, whether you taught it before and you weren't even aware of it, is there a story that comes back to mind of you know success in that space that you really like to talk about?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

I I've always been the sort of person that likes to be in front of people telling stories and talking through real life experiences. And I think that's one of the ways that I dealt with my anxiety over the years is I've always been open about it. And I will laugh at myself about the situations I've got myself in. And I do the same with my leadership journey. You know, there are things that I've done, mistakes that I've made, that I look back and think, Matt, what were you doing? Like someone needed to grab hold of me and say, What were you doing? But even if they had have done, I don't think I'd have listened. I don't think I'd have been ready to listen. I think it's something that's come with age and with I think as you get older you slow down a little bit and you reflect on yourself, don't you? You it's wisdom. It's all about wisdom. So Well, you talk about that too.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Like you got the second book, right? I mean, the the emergence of an unexpected leader, your second edition that came out as well. Like you rewrote it already. Yeah. And it's very close to the release of your current book. What's the how's that book connected to or not connected to uh the bridge book?

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah, and that's a I love that question, okay, because it really tells the story of how it was born.

The Story Behind The Second Book

SPEAKER_00 17:09

So I wrote the the the Building the Bridge to Inspirational Leadership to share the the practicalities of how to drive high performance, right? How to use continuous improvement and leadership skills to get there. But as I as I started meeting people who were buying the book, I'd meet them at conferences and I'd go to um I'd deliver training in certain organizations and they would buy copies of the book for everybody. People were coming back to me saying, How did you how did you come up with this? Where did this come from? And I thought I need to share my story of what made it, where where did it get born from? So I started writing from my being a baby. I started writing all the way through the 40 odd years that I'd been alive and and it just flowed. It just all came out, all the stories, all of the mistakes I'd made, all the some of the horrendous things that I that I'd done and the predicaments I got myself in were flowing. And I released that book about six months after I left Amazon, the uh building the sorry, the emergence of unexpected leader. And when I read it back earlier this year, I wasn't happy with it. And and at the time I loved it. I absolutely loved it. But when I read it back, I felt like I didn't go deep enough and I wasn't as authentic as I think I could be. So, me being me, I didn't go, oh well that project's done, let's move on. I sat down and rewrote the entire book, and it's got like 300 pages more than it had originally, and I absolutely love it now. It's got photos in it that relate back to the stories, and I just felt that I'd grown as an individual and I was able to share more, and I felt comfortable doing that.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

What's the favourite story in that book? Come on, you gotta have one.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

My favourite story in that book is probably when when I was at the Royal Mail and we were doing the continuous improvement, the world-class manufacturing, we used to have this Japanese professor that used to come over and he would uh do audits with us. So we'd all be in this auditorium and we'd get up one at a time and present what we had done within our pillar. And the very first time he came to the unit that I worked in, there was all of these stories, the legend of the professor and how he behaves and what he does. And uh I was on immediately after lunch. So at lunchtime you'd have the professor sitting there eating his plate of carbs that he had taken off the table on his own, and everybody else would be over this side of the room. And they said, Don't talk to him, don't talk to him. So I made a beeline for him, and I just spoke to him and I'd googled him before. So I was reeling off all this stuff I'd read on Google about him, and he just stared through me, no reaction at all. And then went back into the auditorium and I walked up on stage and he was just sort of sitting like this. And then uh I went in, I went in and then hi, I'm Matt Sims, I'm presenting the WordPress Organisation Pillar. And he looked up and he went, The one I've been waiting for. And he was really excited and really buzzing, and the energy was amazing. And that moment, that was it for me. I was off, absolutely off. And I used to look forward to him coming, and other people used to dread it.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

So that but you're exactly right, because I I remember those days too with the teachers that you would dread those teachers. But if you're really listening, they were always listening for one thing. I love that story. Uh, and I you know, I had a teacher that did something similar to me in a restaurant uh when we were having dinner. He wasn't Japanese, but he was trained by the Japanese and uh absolutely embarrassed the ever-living daylights out of me uh talking about leadership. But those those guys, those teachers uh were unique in their own right. I don't know. I think they had to go to odd schools uh to to really teach some of the uh mind games they would play as teachers inside of that space, no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

It's hard some of it as well. It could really break you. It's I saw people like that. I saw people get broken.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

It's it's absolutely I mean recognizing that you know some of their styles were very unique. And part of that, how I ended up in the organization I was with for many years in consulting, was they thought there was a better way not to be teaching like that. And I hear that in your leadership style as well, is that you don't have to beat people up to get them to make improvements. I there was a picture in your book, so I feel like I'm going back and forth a little bit, but that's okay because that's part of the stories when they trigger things in

Why People Sink At Work

SPEAKER_01 21:06

my mind. It goes, you have the four pillars that sit there, but then and the foundation, but they're kind of in a sea of discontent. What's a sea of discontent?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

That I've a sea of discontent is where most of us have been or currently are and we don't realize it.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Are you tired of being tired? I know I was. That's when I was glad to find own it coaching. Now my resting heart rate's down 20%, sleep quality up three hundred percent. You know, I just ran my first Spartan rage at age fifty-six. I feel better than I ever have. So if you're ready to stop settling and start owning your own health, go to Coach John Gallagher.com forward slash own it and set up a free call with the own it coaching team. That's CoachJonGallagher.com forward slash own it. Now let's get back to the episode.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

So this is where you end up when you feel undervalued. Valued, you feel disrespected, you feel like you're not listened to. You you just you're in work and you are just going through the motions day to day just to get by and for the salary at the end of the month. You're not you're not really loving it, you don't really like it, you don't own it. And we've all been there. I've been there several times. In fact, I've put people in the sea of discontent without even knowing I was doing it at the time, constantly smashing them with deadlines, pestering them, harassing them, burning them out. That's the sea of discontent. And once you end up in the sea of discontent, it's really difficult to get out of it unless you some people leave, they leave the organization, and you could lose great talent because of you are managing them or you're trying to manage them when you can't manage them, you need to lead them. And that that that analogy of the bridge growing out of the sea of discontent is this is the way to stay above it, get out of it, and cross it. And that's the sea of discontent. And thankfully, since I left Amazon and I've been self-employed, I've could be nowhere near that sea of discontent. The boss is good now.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Yeah, yeah, we think, right? That self-reflection. Ask the boss. I I've been through that as well the past several years. So I like that. Like the sea of discontent. You know, as we teach, it's the problem we're trying to solve ultimately. And those four pillars are our lifelines, our are uh themes that are going to, to your point, keep us out of that sea of discontent or give us the opportunity to get out of that sea of discontent. Ultimately, with the road being focused on high performance and continuous

Lifelong Learning And Taking Feedback

SPEAKER_01 23:33

improvement. Now, in continuous improvement, that's both in your processes and your business and in your leadership. And I know you talk about that as well, but you say that the most effective leaders are lifelong learners. So, Matt, I mean you're young, you got a few more years to go. What's a behavior? Uh and you guys spell it odd over there with a you. We don't use that you over here on this side of the pond on behavior, but what's a behavior or practice that you've implemented uh to ensure that you remain a lifelong learner on your journey as well?

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Yeah, do you know what? As a younger leader, I thought that I would knew it all. I thought that, you know, you put me in a certain even with workplace organization, I know it all. I've read the books, I know it all. And I wouldn't accept that there was any more to learn. And now anything I do is I learn and I know I will master it, but then then what? What's after that? How can I keep going? What's what's next to learn? What's the next level? What's the next version? That's come out significantly within me. I call it a hyper focus. Since I've been self-employed, you know, I don't have an IT department, I don't have a finance department. I have to do everything.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

So you are that IT and finance department.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yes, exactly. My laptop doesn't work, I raise myself a ticket and then I go and fix it. I think so. I think knowing that you don't know it all and be willing to take any advice, not as a criticism, but as an opportunity to learn and and grow. Whereas I think when I was younger, if somebody gave me any kind of feedback, I would take it as a criticism that I'm not good enough.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

I love that. I mean, and that's a that's a movement, so that's the learning cycle.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I think as soon as we accept that if as soon as we think we know it all, I think the the game's up in terms of achieving high performance.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

So good. So as soon as we think we know it all, that's when we are just getting ready to begin. If we are taking that as a learner, I mean we are that's the part of that, unconsciously incompetent. We don't know what we don't know. We gotta stay out of that space. And get to consciously incompetent. We know what we don't know, and now we gotta learn. We gotta get through that cycle again and always be looking to get better as leaders in that space. Love that. Hey, I want to use that title, just one of your tools, I don't want to say against you, but in your book, as you talk about that, the uh bridge and the book test. Somebody reads your book, they set it on a shelf, just like behind me, they set it on a shelf and it kind of sits there. Using your empathy map, you know, what do you want them to think? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do after they've read your book?

The Habit That Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 26:03

I want them to, above anything else, listen to people. Just listen to people. And I know you know we people are gonna go, I do listen to people, of course I listen to people, but do you really listen to people? So I used to go to, in the corporate world, I used to go to senior level meetings on site, and they'd all go straight through the reception, straight upstairs to the conference room, and then they would sit there debating what they'd seen on a spreadsheet, you know, what why is it amber, what's the issues and and reel off all the the reasons. And I'd go down on the shop floor and I'd walk around and say good morning to people, how are you? You know, talk to me about what happened last night, or oh wow, what's the biggest pain in the bum that you've got at the moment? And they would share stuff with me. Now, initially they'd be a little bit like, oh my god, why is he talking to me? What's going on? But people get used to it. And then I'd go up into the the the conference room, I'd sit down, apologize for being late, and then they'd start talking through the spreadsheet. And they'd say, So the action is we're going to do this. And I go, but how do you know that's the root cause? How do you know that's causing the problem? And they go, Oh, because we know, you know, 20 years ago I used to work in that department, I know what's happening. And I was like, but that's not what they're saying. And they go, How do you know? I said, because I've just been talking to them. You've been talking to them? How dare you go down there and talk to people? But you learn so much from doing that. And people go the extra mile for for you as well. If they feel like they're being listened to and they feel like they have some ownership in what they're doing, they go the extra mile. You don't have to ask them to do something, they will just do it. They give them the freedom to do that. So, my biggest, biggest takeaway from the book is listen to people, and you'll be surprised at what you can fix.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Like that. So good. And and being intentional about it as well. Again, going out there on a regular basis, not just once every few years. It's kind of intentional. I say we're going to do this on a regular basis. And they're like, he actually is starting to listen to me. And my words do. Back to engagement and empowerment as two pillars. You know, those are the outcomes that that are inevitable if you learn to listen to your people and you have respect for them for the work that they do. So good. So good. The next book is going to be what?

Mental Health And Reaching More People

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Probably a r uh a third edition.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Third edition, okay. Third edition. More stories, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah, absolutely. So what's really good about the the emergence of the unexpected leader is because it tells my story, there's opportunity to add to it every couple of years and and just grow it. Knowing me, I won't just do that. I will go back and update other bits as well. But um, I think at the moment I've I've paused on the writing. I've actually sent the book to four publishers, and three of them have come back and offered me uh deals. So I'm I'm at the moment just looking at that to see because I want to get it out to more people, because I think anxiety and mental health is such a common problem, particularly in in males in the workplace, and it's not spoken about enough. People that think that they see it, particularly in the corporate world from my experience, if they feel like they are burnt out and anxious and struggling, they feel like they're failing and they don't want to tell anyone because they want to climb the ladder and and stay climbing up above the people who are competing with them. So that book for me, it tells a story of a real person that left school with nothing, feeling that they weren't going to get anywhere, told they weren't gonna get anywhere, and has overcome so many difficult times to achieve what I've achieved. I want that message to go to people. Give the I give the book away more than I sell it, because if I just want people to learn from it, I I just think there's so much you can learn from other people's experiences, and sometimes just hearing that other people have been through that or something similar makes you think very differently.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Matt, you've talked about kind of that that leader that that poured into you out on the shop for told you to listen, and now you say that's one of the most important things. You've learned that from them, and it's become a big part of who you are, or that leader that um made uh an opportunity for you uh to grow in the space you're in. Are there specific uh leaders or authors that you follow that um continue to influence you today and your writing and your style and things like that?

Inspiring The Next Lean Generation

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Yeah, definitely. I think from a lean perspective, people like Paul Akers are incredibly inspirational. And I read Paul's books when I was a budding practitioner many years ago. And what I love about Paul is he's done it, so he's actually been there and done it, so you he's got authenticity and credibility in what he does, but he's so charismatic and engaging, and I think that's so important. So if we think about the traditional lean leaders of the world, the people who wrote the books, the the Womac, the Jones, the Dr. Jeffrey Likers, even Paul himself, they're all coming to the end of their careers and they're retired and they're stepping back, and you know, they are quite rightly sitting back and enjoying the fruits of the labour that they've done over the years. Now we're moving into a period now with AI and and the modern generations. Now, how do we inspire those generations to become lean practitioners and work in a continuous improvement environment? And for me, we could give them the the the toilet way and books of that sort, and they are still relevant, absolutely, but I'm not sure that a younger me now would read that book. My three-year-old, she goes on YouTube on her iPad, and within two seconds she skip, skip, skip. They don't have the attention span that was there. They want on demand, they want it now, it's gonna be entertaining. Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a massive opportunity and there's a void for people to come into this space now and inspire the next generation of leaders. Because if we don't do that, then what's gonna happen? We're gonna end up with leaders that replicate people they witness and they see, like I did. And unfortunately, many of those aren't leading in the way that I believe is the right way to lead. I think they're managing people rather than leading them. So I I want to be somebody who inspires and and creates that role model, and I like people like that. People like Ryan Tierney is another great example from Lean Made Simple. Ryan is is been there, he's doing it, he's learning from it, and he's sharing real authentic stories. People like this are and like you say, when we started talking, you're like, it's great to talk to somebody else who's within lean and stuff, and it is, it's that. That's what you want.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah, and that community associates again, that's that's really good. And I think about that, and it was actually one of kind of my last questions. You mentioned AI and technology and what's out there today, and again, some of these micro learnings. So, I mean, we could talk about how AI is going to change, you know, what happens in continuous improvement, but how is it making your life better right now, Matt?

Using AI As A Thought Partner

SPEAKER_01 33:04

How are you using it to make your life better?

SPEAKER_00 33:05

So I use AI as a colleague, which sounds really weird. So I'll have conversations with AI, bounce ideas off of it, and I've trained it. It doesn't just tell me what I want to hear, it will talk back to me in the way that I've asked it to. You know, I've uploaded much of my books to it so it understands how I think, how I work, how I receive information. So I I use it not as a finished product, but I use it very much to support me and have somebody to bounce stuff off. And you know, quite often it'll come back with a different perspective. I think I didn't think of that. Like it's it's so useful. Even if I'm if I'm filling out a tender, for example, to do some training for um public sector, and that tender, I'll write the tender, but quite often I'll I'll paste that then into AI and I'll say, you know, how could I improve on what I've done here? What could I change? And it'll give me such good little tips of of how to improve. And I just think that if we ignore, we can't ignore it. Like you cannot ignore that AI is there. When I deliver my greenbelt and black belt Six Sigma training, I actually teach them how to use AI to do the statistical analysis because we can go into that room and we can use things like mini-tab and statistical tools to do it, but I can guarantee you now that as soon as they pass that exam and walk out of the room, they are not going to go and get mini-tapped to work out what they're doing, they're gonna stick it in an AI. So I think we need to teach people how to use AI in the right way, so they need to know what they're looking for and they need to know what questions to ask the AI to get to a root cause. But I do think that we are on the on the edge of a cliff at the moment where we have to accept that it's there. And in particular, I don't know how you find it, but I find that although we are change makers, we are probably the worst community for accepting change that exists.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

I am like that. Change is great as long as it doesn't happen to me, Matt. Come on. I mean, that's exactly right. You know, I mean don't make me change, but I love the idea of using AI as a thought partner, I mean, in terms of uh bouncing those things off of it, because especially as entrepreneurs, you know, we can try to join, frankly, um uh masterminds and all those different things and get in forums on LinkedIn or Facebook to discuss topics. Um, but when you can kind of build that knowledge base, especially with your uh thinking, and then it can challenge your own your thinking, that's really good. And that's the other side of it, is we have to tell it where am I wrong? What am I missing? We have to ask it to clearly say, help me understand where I could be missing it, because there it can be really good for that, and it can be used for bad things. It's not to be used to you know just improve our emails, although it does really good with that as well. It's something that I believe can be a great thought partner for us if we embrace that change. We better embrace it, or we're gonna be out of jobs as as trainers, as consultant, as teachers, I mean, all those things, because it's those stories in your you know, your book, The Emergency of an Unexpected The Emergence of an Unexpected Leader, that are gonna keep you relevant in the space that you're in. It's not the tools anybody can teach the tools out of Liker's book or out of lean thinking for Momac. Anybody can find those tools. There's no patent on the five whys or how to write an A3. It it doesn't exist. But it's the stories that you bring, the wisdom that you bring, the mistakes you've made and overcome.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

But this is the thing though, right? You can you can learn the tools and you can read the books, but the biggest variable you're ever going to come across as a leader or as a change practitioner, the biggest variable is always gonna be people. And you can't learn people, you have to experience people and you have to build bonds with them. And there is no shortcut. You could read all of the books in the world about how to manage people. I've got a book called Dealing with Difficult People. It's the very first book I ever bought, and I don't think I've read more than three or four pages of it because it was so much theory, and I just felt like I'm in the thick of it now. Like I need to know how to deal with these people. You can't take a shortcut, they are the biggest variable you'll ever come across. Just one real quick thing that you touched on just now that

Bad AI Advice And False Experts

SPEAKER_00 37:12

made me think. You were saying about the the negatives of AI, and it's something that I'm seeing a lot at the moment is places like LinkedIn is absolutely chock a block with dodgy AI images from lean practitioners and lean experts that are posting stuff, and so much of it is incorrect, it's just completely wrong, and it worries me. And and I used to be a bit of a policeman on it. I used to go and comment and say that this is nonsense, but it became a bit of a negative.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

I know a couple guys on this side of the pond that do that as well. I'm like, oh, it just gets cringy.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Yeah, it's just too much, and I just think any is one piece of advice for anybody that's coming into the continuous improvement space, right? If you go online and you find somebody who refers to themselves as a lean expert or a lean Six Sigma expert, they are not experts because of anybody who gets it and understands it will never call themselves an expert because you never are, are you? I've got it out there now. I feel better.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

No doubt about it. That's a great point, though, in terms of looking for it. When they say that, you can absolutely say we have this continuous learning mindset. Matt, this has been a great conversation. I know we could do it like Joe Rogan podcast and do three hours. I need to honor your time as we

Where To Find Matt And Slow Down

SPEAKER_01 38:28

do this. But um, before I ask you the last question, I always ask my guest, I want to ask first, where can folks get in touch with you, learn more about you, follow you?

SPEAKER_00 38:38

So definitely LinkedIn. Just search for for Matt Sims and you'll see my grinning face staring back at you. And eversolean.com is the website. Now I built that website myself, and just like the book, it's going through its second edition now. And if you'd have spoken to me just over a year ago, I'd have told you this is gonna be the end of me. I cannot put I was spending 48 hours trying to get an even space between two sentences on there. And now I'm I'm running with it, I know what I'm doing. So eversolene.com, it's got everything about me on there, and that's where you can get any information you want.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

Perfect. You also host the podcast that we can see on your microphone there, ever solenpodcast.com. So we'll put a link to that as well.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Thank you. And do you know what's really funny? That started off of a conversation with my boss at Amazon, who I was doing an internal podcast, and she said to me, Have you ever thought about doing something like this outside of Amazon? And I was no, never thought of it. And I went out and I I looked around at the time what was out there, and there wasn't a lot, and what was out there wasn't particularly great. So I just started doing it for fun and it exploded because people want to learn, they want on-demand learning, as I'm sure you're finding with your show, people just love that honest conversation, don't they?

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Yep, absolutely. They love the conversation, they just put it on the background and kind of go through it and make that happen. That's that's so good. And I think this has been a great conversation. I hope we continue to stay in touch, Matt, uh, through the many avenues that we can. I'm gonna finish you off and give you the last word. And being a lean practitioner, you're comfortable with sticky notes and sharpies and everything. I mean, that's what we do. We map process it out. But I'm gonna give you one sticky note that you can write one message on it for those that are listening to the podcast, okay, that you want to get out there. What's the message you're gonna put on that sticky note and why do you put that on there?

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Oh, it's so hard to choose just one. That's torture. Yeah. Okay, I would put slow down. Is all I'd write on there is slow down. And believe it or not, if we slow down and we think and we reflect and we then go again, we actually move faster. And I'll give you a real quick example is I could spend all day working on something for a client, right? A proposal for a client. And it gets to 11 o'clock at night, and I've been going all day, and there's certain bits that I just cannot get my head around. I cannot break the wall that I'm up against. I stop, I go to bed, get up in the morning, have a nice breakfast, set the laptop up, open it up, bang, straight away, the wall's down, and I've solved the problem. And I think sometimes if we just slow down and don't have our haste to run and run and run and just step backwards, I think we move faster and we often get a better result for it as well.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

Love that, and I'm in 100% agreement. You gotta slow down if you want to go faster, no doubt about it. I understand. Matt, I've loved this conversation. I really enjoyed it. I appreciate you investing the time with the listeners of the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Wish you the best. Up to and including your uh third edition coming out, okay? Thanks again. Thank you. Until next time, go and grow champions.