Bob Petruska of Sustain Lean Consulting brings 24 years of experience helping a variety of customers including Health Care, Aerospace, Automotive, Food, Office and Service industries improve their performance. He is a consultant, presenter, trainer and published author of Gemba Walks for Service Excellence: The Step-by-Step Guide for Identifying Service Delighters.
Note: This is a transcription of the podcast. It has not gone through a professional editing process and may contain grammatical errors or incorrect formatting.
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Transcription of the Podcast
Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of the Business901 podcast. With me today is Bob Petruska. Bob is a well-known consultant and author of Gemba Walks for Service Excellence. An international presenter, Bob is best known for helping teams make business impacts fast. He has a way of transitioning from ideas to practice that are really unlike anyone else in the industry. Bob, thanks for joining me today and what are you up to lately?
Bob Petruska: Thank you, Joe. I’m thrilled to be on your show as always. Lately, I’ve been focusing my efforts on rapidly improving the improvement process and by this I mean, I think there’s an opportunity for us to explore Kaikaku, which is the Japanese term for massive change or step change. And so, I’ve been interested in what Facebook has been doing with the Hackers way, for example, and also applying Trystorming to the work that we do. That way we make change happen really fast in real time and the people that are working in the area get a chance to make the change happen. When they do it themselves, they don’t argue with the outcome. They learn and they move on. And so, I think that this is really the future for me as it pertains to improvement efforts.
Joe: You’re always coming up with these great new things. Let me deviate from what I wanted to talk to you about a little bit. What’s Trystorming?
Bob: Well, Trystorming is like brainstorming on steroids. The basic idea of it is that we allow people to experiment and this is the area that seems to be a sticking point for many organizations. It’s sort of like we get to a certain point of our processes and we don’t want to touch them. You know, we don’t want to go back and say “Well, what can we do to make it better?” Instead, we’ll just say “Don’t change anything.” Or, “Don’t surprise the boss.” And, until we create the conditions for a surprise, we really won’t improve. And so, what Trystorming does is it gives people a safe playground, so to speak, for them to test their ideas out in real time besides just brainstorming. They actually try them out and prove ‘Does the idea work?’
Joe: Oh, so, try is try it’s not tri, right? It’s not a 3-step process, is it?
Bob: No, no, no. It is not 3 steps at all. It’s basically what you can use for your creativity, what can you do today? You know, we’ve had teams come up with things that they’re like “Well, we had this fixture in the back and they think about it and it’s “Wow, you know, hey, let’s bring that out.” They bring out the fixture and then that’s sparks a new idea, “And, if we change this, then, you know, we’ll eliminate the problems that we’ve been having with the formation of the product.” And, these are the kinds of things that I think really matter. It’s that people are given the chance to put into practice something now today because they want to see the improvement. People want to see the results. They don’t have the patience for endless meetings. Like, we might have done 10 years ago.
Joe: This is really just putting it out there and doing it and with a little thought behind it, though, right?
Bob: Well, the thought comes in through the Gemba, so we focus first on the place of work, go to the place of work. We observe with an eye for what we can do better, what we’re good at, what we can leverage and then we ask people to come back and say “Alright, how can we do even better? What can we do to make it difficult for people to make mistakes?” So, that’s the kind of thing that we’re looking at and I think it’s fun because it’s rapid. It happens in real time and it isn’t a long drawn out process. But, we do create the conditions for it. So, about working closely with those sponsors to help them understand what they need to do to enable improvements to happen. And, sometimes it’s getting out of the way, myself included.
Joe: When we look at change management, alright, and we look at all the different disciplines of change management and we think of how many consultants are out there doing change management, they all kind of seemed very similar and I, you know, both of us are real familiar with Kotter’s approach and the ADKAR approach and the other ones but they really haven’t seem to impact anymore. Every study I see, they seem to still be stuck at 30% success rate.
Bob: I think that when you look at change, if it’s being put on you, so there’s a quote that says “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.” So, what we do with Trystorming is we allow the people working in the area to come up with their own change. And, when they own it and it’s their idea, my Gosh, all you got to do is get out of the way because they’re going to adapt it. They’re going to make it happen. So, I think the concept of change management as it pertains to ‘at the process level’, ‘at the system level’ if you can allow the people themselves to create it, to experiment with it and to perfect it, then they will not argue with it. They will adopt just naturally, just it just happens like that. So, that’s what I like about the approach of the Trystorming, the Hackers way and the Kaikaku.
Joe: Bob, before you stepped out into the world of consulting, okay, you worked in the food processing industry?
Bob: Yes.
Joe: And, can you describe the type of facilities you’ve worked with in this industry?
Bob: The types of products we made were frozen foods. So, we would start with fresh ingredients and there would be typically like a dough process, mixing the ingredients for making dough and then turning that into sheets. And then, cutting the holes and applying toppings of some sort. They might be finger foods that are like pouches or pockets or something like that, that you would give to your son or daughter to, you know, feed themselves when they come home from school, for example. It’s something simple they can make. But, making those on a mass production basis is a process that I was working with. So, there was basically after the rolling of the product making it, you know, into the finger food or pizzas, for example. Then, it would go into the oven. It would be heated or cooked. And then, it would go into a flash freezing process. And, from there, it changes from kind of a continuous process into a discrete process because as soon as the product is, you know, transformed from a big sheet into individual finger foods, then they had to be wrapped and then put in boxes and so on. And so, there’s really like 3 main process steps in there and the most challenging seems to be in the end of the process which is where, you know, the product is finished. It’s already packaged and it’s going into the boxes and cases and so on and into the freezers.
Joe: When I hear that the first thing I picture is the old Lucy TV segment where she was doing the chocolates and they were putting them down and they were sorted. Is that how it works there?
Bob: I think it’s still the same, really. I mean except people aren’t going to eat the frozen food. Maybe, it’s kind of comical in a way. Lucy’s, I mean that’s a classic example of, you know, production and then mindset of “Hey, let’s turn this up and crank this dial and go faster.” And, to a large part, where you have very razor thin margins in industry like food, you do have to work on improving the effectiveness. So, the challenge becomes, can you do it right the first time. So, when I would challenge people in the food industry to take a Gemba Walk and look at the last step of your process first and what I mean by that is look at what’s coming into the freezer or the storage room or wherever it is and then work your way backwards and look for the areas where things didn’t go quite the way you wanted them to. An example of this is if you have a production run of let’s say 5,000 whatever products you’re making and you produce at the front end of the facility, let’s say 8,000, what happens to the 3,000? Well, they can’t be wrapped because you haven’t bought enough containers or cardboard and, you know, all of the different things that they need to go into. They’re going to be put into bins and brought somewhere else. Well, people think “Well, that’s really okay because we’re going to eventually bring them back to the packaging area when we get all the cardboard and the packaging materials and run and them again.” But, it’s not okay. We should get it right the first time. Understanding and managing the flow of the process and that means every little complex piece is very important. Do you have all the things you need to do the job and can you stop producing if it’s a destroying it process going from mass, you know, continuous process to a discrete process, can you stop in time?
Are your incentives encouraging people to overproduce? We talk about overproduction as the largest cause of the waste, the 8 waste. It results in waste of every other thing out there. All the other wastes are the result of overproduction or can be a result of overproduction. It goes back to what are you asking your people to do and are you setting them up for success? By looking at the Gemba Walk, then we walk away back and we say, “Are we doing this correctly and can we make an improvement here and how should we improve communications across a large production process?” That type of thing.
Joe: So, you’re saying that we really, you know, we start at the freezer, okay, where we’re storing, let’s say, the packages and we’re going to walk back and we’re going to find a pile somewhere, right?
Bob: Exactly, you’ll find an imbalance and you know we talk about making an impact. We’ve got to be good at spotting the biggest problems, right? And, you think it’s easy but the people working there. They’re so used to the way things are, Joe. They come in every day and they do the same thing over and over. And, no one really challenges it and says “Hey, can we do better? Can we take a fresh set of eyes at it?” So, what we do with the Gemba Walk is we will open people’s eyes to the reality that there is improvements to be made and sometimes it’s shocking what people see when they finally see the reality.
Joe: I always think about Lean. One of those things that I see in a processing part is visual, you know, is being able to take that current state and make it visual of what’s happened. Has that worked in food processing and do you, is that a way that, I mean I think it’s really the first introduction of change is knowing what you’re doing presently. Is there any truth to that?
Bob: Oh, absolutely, Joe. Understanding the current state and dealing with the reality that you currently have is the very first step. You have to, you know, become aware of the situation before you can even address it. So, that’s what getting out with the Gemba really does and we really want people to take a look at it with a fresh set of eyes and in a way we really want them to not only identify the constraints or those things that are bottlenecks are getting in the way but we also want them to identify things going right to get a balanced perspective. Because, all too often if all we ever do is look for problems and deal with problems, it wears us out. We can’t get always excited about it, but we can get excited when we look at things from a fresh set of point of view and say “Wow, can we really do that differently?” What I like to do is bring in people that know nothing about the area as, you know, 1 or 2 and they can really get away with the really dumb questions. Why do you do it that way? No one else that would be on the team that works on a daily basis could get away with asking that question because they would be considered “Oh, that’s a dumb question.” Somebody from the outside, say an accountant, they could ask a really stupid question but then it just triggers a whole bunch of ideas like “Oh, well, why don’t we do it that way?” It gets people, their creating juices going because it’s really what we need to do is unleash that creativity.
Joe: One of the things that see though is I see the people will look at that low hanging fruit while they’re starting to develop a current state and they’ll start making changes based on that low hanging fruit or why are we doing this and they quickly change and it seems their current state starts evolving before it’s ever defined. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Bob: I don’t really share that experience so often that people are in such a hurry, I mean there may be some small things that get done. Oh, I’ll give you an example, one that I thought was very interesting. We had a team that was just starting and they were all excited, you know, “Hey, we’ve identified what we want to improve.” And, they had it planned and they were going to do it the next day and it was a simple improvement but it was one that would reduce the amount of motion a person was going to have to take, a repetitive motion. They had to get off a fork truck, walk over and flip a switch and, you know, it was manual process and they had a way that they could, an idea for how to improve that. And, what was funny was when that team reported out and what they did was they brought in a cross-section of people and that’s what we’d love about report out and asked them for their ideas, “Hey, what do you think about this?” We’re working on improving this. They have their maps and they showed it to the people. Well, funny thing was that very night, the maintenance people on third shift went ahead and implemented the solution.
The team came in and I walked in the room and they all were, “We’re all bummed.” I’m like “Woe, why are you guys all bummed because you should be excited, you know, you had a great report out last night?” They said, “Well, we’re bummed.” I said, “Why?” “Well, it got implemented last night. I go, “Well, that’s great.” And then, I asked, “Why are you guys really bummed?” They said, “Well, it took, you know, we’ve been talking about this for 2 years and it took us all getting together to do this.” And, I think that’s the ‘Aha’ moment is that people have to come together and when they reach out to the people in the area and spread the ideas, things are going to happen overnight and that’s exciting to me.
Joe: It’s not about sitting there just thinking about it. It’s like let’s make these small changes and see what happens. It’s kind of back to that ‘try’ thing again, right?
Bob: I think that we can make all the plans we want to in the world, Joe. But, unless you execute, you’re not there and I think organizationally we look at execution as being one of the major component that separates great companies from good companies. It’s the ability to execute. And again, I have to say this, sometimes we need to get the Senior Leaders out of the way and the third shift maintenance person get the job done or, you know, the accounting people, the Finance people, let them do their job. We have helicopter parents, we don’t need helicopter managers, okay.
Joe: When you look at training individuals, then we talk about that lot that we have to train individuals and teach them about Lean. Is it so much training or is it just, like you just said, getting out of the way and leaving them try a few things and encouraging it?
Bob: Yeah, that’s interesting. The training has certainly evolved. What we think of is training or what I used to think of is training as you go to a class and you learn something and then maybe you use 5% of it, you know, and then you’ll forget 100% of it in 2 weeks, you know. So, training’s not effective unless you’re doing and I think learning by doing is a great way. And, what I encourage people to do is not only learn by doing but then teach other people. So, to put it this way, if I teach you something and I say “Okay. You can do this job now.” But, I’m going to ask you, Joe, I want you to train someone else.” That’s a whole other ball game. You’ve got to really raise your ability up to another level if you train another person.
I think it’s that helping relationship that we nurture by allowing people to train other people that really propels it and makes it stick because you really get a deeper understanding if you have to teach another person. I’m always on the lookout for those early adopters and people that really want to latch on and that want to carry the ball forward. Many times it’s often the person that is the least susceptible to the idea in the first place. They’re the ones that are kind of grumpy and saying “Well, that’ll never work.” I have people tell me “Bob, that’ll never work. We’ve tried that before.” I love people like that because I want to flip them because they become the biggest advocates of any improvement process.
Joe: I think of it when you’re talking that way is training within industry or TWI, is that because you don’t go out and try to train everyone at once, you actually get someone to master it and become your advocate and train more, you know, through the different programs of it. Is there any truth in that, I mean are you familiar with TWI?
Bob: I certainly am and I know there’s a component in there for the supervisor and we learn that that first-line supervisor is really key to any of these things. Again, we need to get ourselves in a position where we can step back and let other people shine. That’s not to say we can’t set them up for success. A big part of TWI is setting the person up for success because if a person is successful from the beginning they build confidence. You’re trying something new and we want you to be successful. On the other hand, we also want to correct your mistakes immediately and we do this in a non-confrontational manner. We just say, “Look, when you’re learning this, try it and see how it goes.” And then, come back and review. Watch them. If you see them making a mistake, correct them on the spot because they won’t take offense to it. They actually, “Oh, here let me show you how this is done. Wait let me show you again.” So, that they really can master it and once they demonstrate that they can do the job, then you’ve pretty well got it. So, I think TWI is brilliant and really it’s foundational.
Joe: Is TWI a strength-based approach?
Bob: I think so. I mean it’s not looking at deficits, is it?
Joe: No, it’s not at all. Is it?
Bob: It’s looking at best practice, right? It’s ‘let’s document’ the best practice that we know of. And then, let’s deliver it in a way that’s palatable for adult learners. You know, there’s a lot of people in the industry that have grown up teaching elementary students and that’s a totally different game than in adults. Adults don’t want to be treated like children, so we have to be really careful about how we approach them and TWI really fits the bill.
Joe: Along this line, is there anything that you’d like to add that maybe I didn’t ask you?
Bob: When we talk about food processing, I think that there’s a huge opportunity there. There’s you know product that falls off, product that gets contaminated. You’ve got language and cultural issues because, generally, the jobs are very manual and they don’t pay very high, so there’s, usually, a lot of turnover in the industry. So, you’ve got all these different challenges, language, cultural, those types of things. So, your point earlier about the visual method, ‘Make it visual, make it easy’ I think is really important. A good friend of mine is Mick Wills and he runs a company called Sure Seal and that’s a very big center of his approach because he suffered, himself, with dyslexia. He made things visual, so he could understand it. But, it turns out that those visual single point posters, he would make one poster that would show an idea and in that idea people could really learn. So, I think your point about visual really ties into addressing the unique opportunities there are in food processing.
Joe: I have to ask you about this, is that do we hide, you know, you work a lot in the service industry so I’m sure you’re very familiar with things getting hid within a computer and files getting hid in there and stuff, can we make what happens, you know, with our software, is there ways to make that visual to everybody else? Are there components there that interrelate with electronic data?
Bob: I think that the SharePoint has some promise or tools such as SharePoint for elevating those plans and the types of work that people are doing in the service industry. But, more important in service to me than just software is really getting out there and finding out what your people are doing. So, this weekend I took my son to interview at a medical school. We stayed at a hotel and what was really nice about it was the people there when I checked in they said, “Look, we have a hundred percent happiness guarantee.” And I said, “What’s that?” He said, “If you’re not a hundred percent happy, you don’t have to pay.” I was like, “Wow, what a cool concept.” But, everything about it was top class. I paid, I think we paid $100 for the night for the 2 of us and it wasn’t that expensive, but it was done brilliantly. It was executed well. And, that doesn’t happen by accident. For example, when I went to check out they had pre-printed my receipt and just handed it to me. So, I mean little things like that. You don’t think about, you have to wait for somebody to print out your bill and swipe your card again and sign something. I didn’t have to do any of that. They just handed it to me. Those are small examples in the service industry where it comes up and out of the computer into the customer. So, you think about the customer as the most important thing.
Joe: Well, I think you do a great job at that, Bob, and I compliment you for that. I noticed that you were going to be putting on a workshop at the AME Jacksonville 2014 coming up in, I think it’s November 10th through the 14th. Great topic, you’re going to run your pizza game that you created.
Bob: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it. It’s an honor to be selected by AME to do this workshop and, you know, the pizza game is really fun because it gets people up out of their seats and doing and actually running a factory on a table top.
Joe: It’s not a workshop where I get to listen to you. This is going to be a real hands on experience.
Bob: Right. The main part of this is the experiential piece. What I want people to walk away with is see step change happen first hand or Kaikaku, right? I want them to participate and witness in the whole scale change adoption and just see how we backed into making change stick without going through all the different steps that you normally would have to go through to make change happen. And then, finally, I want people to understand and leave with the key tools in order to run the pizza game themselves in their own organization so that they can take the ideas and help others learn from it.
Joe: This is really being able to transfer the knowledge they get in your session and really take something that’s doable that they can transfer, I’ll repeat myself, but transfer the knowledge within their organization also.
Bob: Yeah, I woke up one day and I said, “What’s important in life?” I came up with a list and one of the things on the list besides friendship and family and all those things was making a difference, making an impact. And, I think what we’re doing is making an impact. The more we can spread the ideas, the simple ways, and the easy way to get the result, measurable result, I think that’s what matters. And, if I can share what I’ve learned and what I’ve created with other people and they can take that in their organizations, imagine the impact that’s having. It’s all positive. It’s all good and that’s what I’m really all about.
Joe: When you’re using the pizza game and I take it back home with me to my organization, is it just a game, that a structured game that I show other people how to find ways or can I relate it to things that I’m actually doing at my facility?
Bob: Yeah, that’s a great question. We have always been focusing on taking the ideas from the pizza game and applying them to your situation. What we do is we say, “We want to get you out of the weeds. Right, we want to get you up elevated to the 20,000ft point of view, where you can see what’s really happening from a macro standpoint. And then, you can identify the biggest problem or constraint. I think it’s in identifying the biggest constraint is what really is the key to this because if you’re working on the thing that’s causing you the most headache all the time, you’ll get it. You’ll improve the process and I think taking the game back to your home front, you might have to tweak it a little for Finance groups or HR, you know, like recruiting process or something but it gets people thinking about it, “Wow, you know, how do I relate or how does my process relate in some way to the pizza game? Do we overproduce?” People will and it doesn’t matter what industry they’re in, they’re like “Oh yeah, we do that.” That’s the connection I want to make, the ‘Aha’ moment.
Joe: The one complaint I hear about going to conferences and conference attendees is that “Gee, we go to this conference and we learn this. But then, when we take them back nobody lets us implement them, okay, or nobody lets us move forward with them.It’s kind of like why did we go.” And, they’re very honest and frank about that. Is this a good way to get your boss and other people involved? I mean, does this allow everybody to participate when you take it back to your place?
Bob: I think it will help that. I know that there’s a piece in there that has to do with, you know, if you’re stuck in a situation where you’re not allowed to try anything different. That’s, you know, the condition of the environment you’re working in. That’s going to be tough no matter what, okay. So, let’s be frank about that. If you’re working in a situation where your boss is “I want you to go to a conference but don’t try and implement anything when you come back.” Well, it’s going to be, you’re going to be dealing with an uphill battle and you have to work on it. “Okay, can I do a skunk work or, you know, do it on the side or down the sly or get his permission or her permission to do an experiment somewhere?” What we always tell people is that do it like an experiment, “Hey, I want to do a lunch and learn on Thursday and share what I learned at the conference and invite people.” You don’t force them, you invite them. You might want to treat them to a sandwich or something, right, to kind of sweeten the deal a little bit so they get a free lunch out of it.
That’s maybe the way you would approach it if you’re dealing in an environment where you’re told “Hey, you really can’t implement anything here.” And, by the way, I would struggle with that. I would want to change that situation myself or I would want to consider different options, implement elsewhere, for example, would be one of them I would consider, so.
Joe: Can you explain what the pizza game is? What am I going to come and do at your workshop?
Bob: Right, so game itself will teach you about the work balance stack charts where you’re going to understand how to really look at an entire system. You’ll play a game. There’re different roles and I intentionally make there to be a bottleneck. I goof people up intentionally and they know it and they’re kind of cussing me “Bob, why are you doing this to me?” They know and they get it. They understand it and then we open up the door for innovation and improvement through the Hackers way and Trystorming and what we’re really after is letting people witness and experience step change that day. We want them to see what it takes to make change happen with whatever junk I might have brought in, and then I threw in the trunk of my car and I brought out there and say “You can use anything in here to improve the game and make it better.” The idea of the work balance chart that helps them to understand and how many people they need, for example, and how they can redeploy. And then, of course, we talk about some of the tools. They will learn the value stream mapping process in the game. So, they’ll be able to walk away with hands-on value stream mapping expertise. They’ll be able to do that as well.
Joe: So, what’s the pizza part of it, okay?
Bob: Well, it’s just a catchy name. You know, we were making pizzas and I was like, I wanted to teach lean to a group of logistics professionals and my boss came to me Thursday before I was leaving. I was going to a different city. It was like a 3-hour drive or something. And, he came to me and he said, “I know you’re going up there on Monday and I want to challenge you. Come up with a way to teach Lean, the counter-intuitive side of Lean to people who have not really done Lean.” And, man, I lost a lot of sleep that weekend and what came out of it was the pizza game. I said, “Well, if I can’t really teach them like a lecture, can I teach them in a way that they actually learn it by doing?” And, for me, that’s what came out of the pizza game. That was the ‘Aha’ moment for me was a real stretch assignment that forced me to use all the different skills that I have to come up with this thing.
Joe: But, why pizza?
Bob: Well, it sounds good, doesn’t it? I mean we all look forward to a slice of pizza and when you play the game, there’s no pizza involved. You got to kind of, you know, use your imagination, okay, these are pizzas that are coming down an oven and they’re falling off and they’re doing this and we’re overproducing here and our balance, you know, we don’t have the jobs balance whereas people, some person is just standing there pretty much the whole game we’re playing they don’t do anything and they’re wondering “Well, why don’t I have more to do?” And, they look for something to do and, of course, I slap them and say “No. You’ve been trained and you’ve been signed off on your work construction. You know what your job is. You can’t innovate the first time.” And, it frustrates them. And then, I unleash that energy to a future state later and that’s what really happens.
Joe: One of the things that I think is a trademark of all your workshops because I’ve been around them a few times and watched you work is the Report Out. And, I think that is such a powerful part of your workshop. Can you explain that a little bit and is there a Report Out in the pizza game?
Bob: The idea of Report Out is that there is not learning unless people reflect on what it is that they just did. Report Out has to do with what we call Focused Conversation or the art of Focused Conversations and these focused conversations are things that we focus on or a model which is subjective, reflective, interpretative and decisional. Basically, we’re saying what just happened. All right, what does your gut tell you? So what? You know, tell me “So what?” And then, “Now what?” It’s the ‘now what’ we want to get to. What are you going to do? How are you going to take this forward? And, we want people to kind of assimilate all those things together and unleash the wisdom in their room by doing the report out.
Joe: At the convention, your workshop is I believe on Friday, is it not?
Bob: Yes, it is. It’s, I think, Friday. I don’t know the exact time, but…
Joe: I do. It’s at 8am.
Bob: Oh, I meant 8am. Thanks for checking. At the time, I last checked it didn’t have the time down for me but I knew it was on Friday.
Joe: Now, would you recommend for a company to send multiple individuals to this? Or, you know, should they work together or would you separate them out into different groups during this process?
Bob: I would encourage a company to bring several people with and they could certainly work as a team. I would have no trouble with that. But, most of the time, we just let people choose which side of the game they want to play on. Usually, I run 2 of them with a group around 25 people so that everyone has a role and everyone gets their hands on it, because that’s where its fun is at. And then, you get competitions between the 2 teams that one wants to outdo the other when they get to the Trystorming and the Hackers way when they use that all that method.
Joe: Is this something that applies to just manufacturing and supply chain or can this be used from a service standpoint?
Bob: When you look at service, it’s slightly different but I think that the general approach, the general idea of this will work in both manufacturing office and service. I’ve certainly used this game to explain the idea and concept of Lean, the 8 ways, that type of thing in all different kinds of settings. So, in a service environment, we would ask people, “Okay, what is your customer wanting and how are you dealing with your customers and where are you falling short in these areas?” And, you know, we look at building those relationships between the people. So, one of the big ‘Ahas’ for me in watching the pizza game is how much the teams own the outcome. And, I think that’s really what we’re after all along is we want ownership. We want accountability to happen. We want people to feel like they have skin in the game. They want this to succeed because if you’ve had people that want something to succeed, you’re pretty well-guaranteed that they are going to learn and they’re going to adapt to the changing environment and deliver that service to the customer.
Joe: Well, I think there’s even a YouTube video on the pizza game that you put up before.
Bob: I have a few things out there where I’ve showed some of the different players going through this. As well as, some of the many times I’ve delivered it. So, there’s a YouTube. And then, there’s a presentation that you can download as well, so.
Joe: Now, your YouTube channel, you have a lot of different things. You highlight the different conferences and the different workshops you put on, on it. Where do I find the YouTube video? Is it under Bob Petruska or where would I find that?
Bob: You would look for Bob Petruska, do a search for Bob Petruska pizza game on YouTube and it should show up there.
Joe: What other things are upcoming for you besides AME? What else are you up to, Bob?
Bob: Yeah, thanks, Joe. This week, I’m actually participating in Queen City Ford which is a nonprofit group here in Charlotte and they’re doing a Food Think on conference and I’ll be doing, facilitating a design thinking or human-centered thinking and social entrepreneurship. I’ll be facilitating a group there and which will be pretty cool. I’m looking forward to that. That’s this week and other than that, next year, I’m looking at presenting at the Industry Week. So, the best plants are coming to Charlotte in May and one of the organizers there, Greg Flickinger, asked me to consider giving a presentation or a workshop. I’m looking at that and there could be some others as well. For example, we’re doing a Gemba Walk at TE Connectivity in October and that Gemba Walk is going to be outstanding because this is one of their best plants in the world and they’re looking for ideas to make it better from us. So, we bring in our consortium members, people that care about continuous improvement in Charlotte and we’re opening the doors to TE Connectivity to do a Gemba Walk of rattlesnake hunt. And, we’ll look at 2 centers of excellence as well.
Joe: That sounds pretty outstanding because you have a fairly dynamic group down there in Charlotte that you’re doing a lot of different things with. What are some of the things that your group does, your consortium does there?
Bob: Well, you know, we started with this idea that there were people in the area that wanted to explore Lean and Six Sigma and Brian Loher looked at LinkedIn profiles and did a search of the region and found so many professionals. He created a network and then we realized is that when we got together as a round table, you had a bunch of people that are very high professionals but we didn’t have a good facilitator in the meeting, so instead of it being as warm and friendly as we’d like, people were kind of at each other and saying “Well, this idea works” or “That idea doesn’t work.” They were kind of doing that. We changed the format to really be about respect for people. We really grew a really cool group because center to it is respecting other people and because of this, I think we’ve really opened the door for a lot of idea sharing and growth. We get together a couple of times a year. We had a spring conference, every April, and this year we had Nick Willis come in and Dana Sednek Bowler came in from Denver and it was just a really wonderful time. We had a great time.
Joe: That sounds really interesting. You are among the great group down there in Charlotte. So, is there anything you’d like to add about your presentation at AME? I’ve mentioned it was November 14th down in Jacksonville. So, is there anything you’d like to add about it?
Bob: The only thing I could add is come down here, enjoy, be with us. We’re going to have a fun time and you’re going to experience Kaikaku. So, it’ll be step change and I think that’s one of the missing ingredients that we have in organizations today is we’re frustrated with getting things done. And, I think when you experience getting things done in real time and a real setting like that, you’ll walk away with it, with a different perspective on it.
Joe: I think that’s a great perspective, Bob. Okay. Now, what ’s the best way for someone to contact you and get a hold of you?
Bob: Well, my website is BobPetruska.com or you can send me an e-mail at Bob@BobPetruska.com or you can just pick up the phone and call me (704) 6153731. If you have any questions or just want to talk or pick my brain or just make a friend, it’ll be great.
Joe: Okay. I’d like to thank you very much, Bob. This podcast would be available on the Business901 iTunes store and the Business901 website. So, thanks again, Bob.
Bob: Sure, Joe. It’s always a pleasure. Thank you.
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