Oscar Roche believes the long term success of any business lies in the development of people capability. It is this belief, combined with extensive operations management experience, that permits him to add value to any organization he works with. Oscar is is the Director of Training Within Industry Institute in Australia. 
Oscar believes passionately that these leaders have been ignored for many years, and now is the time to support their development in order for businesses to survive and develop. The practical nature of the TWI program makes it the ideal vehicle to commence leader capability development. So much so, that Oscar practices the skills in his everyday working life.
Note: This is a transcription of an interview. It has not gone through a professional editing process and may contain grammatical errors or incorrect formatting.
Transcription of Interview
Joe: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager, the host of the Business901 Podcast. With me today is Oscar Roche. He is the Director of Training Within Industry Institute in Australia. Oscar, I would like to welcome you. And the first question I’d have to ask is, how did you get started with TWI and how long have you been at it?
Oscar: So about 2009, we’ve been working in Continuous Improvement for five or six years, and we were being pressured by senior management. One customer, in particular — what was happening was that we were having too much trouble convincing the workplace leaders to come along and follow what we were trying to help them do. We were being paid by senior management of the businesses, so that was okay. The thing we were struggling with was middle management were becoming a sea anchor in the word we were trying to do. We weren’t really catering to their needs and building their capabilities if you like. There was one company, in particular, actually it’s a company you guys would be familiar with. It was Casella Wines who sell Yellow Tail in America. I was working there, and there was an operations manager who had a lot time for it and he said to me, you guys do a reasonable job, but he said you’re missing something, you’re missing something in the middle and it’s with the development of leaders at lower, floor level, middle manager level. He said; “I don’t know what the answer is but you’ve got to find something and people like yourselves have the same issue.”
About two months later, I was getting the Target Magazine from America at the time and about two months later, I read an article in there about this thing called TWI. This was mid-2009, and I’ve never heard of it. The odd thing was that I’ve read Toyota Talent about three years prior, and the penny hadn’t dropped. It should have dropped, but the penny didn’t drop. I don’t know why the penny didn’t drop but the reality was, it didn’t. I didn’t make the connection which I should have done. Considering we adopted quite a bit of the stuff in Toyota Talent; anyway, the penny didn’t drop. There was this article about Patrick Graupp about TWI in the Target Magazine. I read it, and I thought, this is the same thing that we see here, and this particular operations manager at Casella Wines had said to me.
I contacted the institute in America, Bob Wrona, and we had some initial discussions with Scott. As a result we went to the TWI Institute, the TWI Summit in Las Vegas in 2009 or 2010, I can’t remember. The purpose of that was to learn more about TWI and understand a bit more and also if we were interested to try and see if we can affiliate with an organization in the States. And at the end of that summit, the institute — the summit was in Vegas, we then went over to Syracuse over in New York, and the institute took us around a couple of their clients. As a consequence of that, we signed an MIU, and they had sent the master trainer over here.
Actually we convinced two other organizations to partner with us. One of which was Casella Wines and the other was another winery, the Boutari Wines, and they hosted the training. So we convinced them to put in some money; we paid about half and they about 25-25% of the rest I think, if I remember rightly. It might have been a third; it doesn’t matter. The training was hosted over here, and they sent Richard Abercrombie, the Master Trainer over here from the institute and he’s trained and we’ve been working in that and that’s how it developed and started and gone on from there. We were very rural back then. If I look at some of the stuff we did at the start, I shudder but it’s learned by doing isn’t it, like everything else and that’s how we’ve developed.
Joe: I find that very interesting on how people attach themselves to things. You know one of the things, I’m not sure who attached or what attached each other but it seems like Toyota Kata, and TWI is starting to see a blend or attaching itself in many circles. What do you think about that? Is that a natural fit or how is that working?
Oscar: Absolutely; very natural. What I understand is one of the realizations and we’ll go back a little bit, when Lean was discovered by the consulting industry, and it was given that name, and I would assign that to you guys. The Americans did that from what I understand. Took a picture of what they visually liked, took a picture of the Japanese in the mid-eighties from 30,000 feet, but they saw the good manufacturing companies needed to sell it, so they gave it this word Lean to try and help sell the concept. I think we’re all realizing now that the mistake made there was that we took this photo, and all we have to do is teach companies just to copy that photograph. I think what we’re all — copy what they see in that photograph. 5S and Kaizen events, and Heijunka, and blah-blah-blah. I think what we’re all realizing now is that that photo was a product of what had been going on for the previous 30 or 40 years and was enabled by what was going on the previous study for years.
I think what we also realize now is that one of the things and certainly not the only thing, but one of the things that was embedded was the TWI mentality, and the TWI culture, and the TWI thinking within Japanese industry, and I think Kata’s the same. What is Toyota Kata, it’s the way they think; it’s the way they think through improvement. Mike Rother has done a great job of identifying that and putting it into something that the world can understand, but I think you’ve got to think the same way. The reason that he’s been out to identify that and see that is good, but what was happening in the previous 34 to 40 years, it’s enabled that to be so successful in their organization. Again to think it can just be copied might be a little bit risky, a little bit dangerous. My view is that TWI lays very strong foundations for whatever mode of continuous improvement you’re going to deeply. It really doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter to all PDCA-based.
Joe: How would you go about introducing TWI to a company then? Do you need to go to training first or should you do it all together, or should you try implementing it yourselves and then find out what you don’t know? How would you go about it?
Oscar: Well you got to be driven by the need first; there must be a need. What we do is we go into an organization, and we spend two days there first to identify where they needed to go and what they’re basically doing first. Well that’s starting with. And the point is, you just got to get started. What you start with is very dependent on the situation at the time and what’s driving them forward and what problems they can solve by deploying whatever tool they use, because at the end of the day, JI and JR, and JM — the three skills or tools used to solve problems.
But to answer your question, one of the things I find and I certainly found it when I’ve come to the States and I’m finding it elsewhere is that people talk about TWI and really what they’re talking about is JI, Job Instruction. So when I say TWI, they’re referring to JI only. I had a view in 2009 or 2010, whatever it was, when we came to the States that JI was going to be much more important for us. I had been in trouble convincing Bob of that, and I’ve discussed it since. It was not something — we couldn’t find anywhere in the States that deployed JR or used JR. What I’m now finding over here is we’re starting with that more and more and more. In fact we’ve just started with the County Council doing some work with them, and all we’re doing is JI for the first six months – first four months, sorry and particularly focusing on the four foundations. The more work we do, the more I see the need to start with Job Relations and particularly the application of the four foundations. I think and certainly in this country, we’ve become very good at training managers in the technical sense of whatever work they do, but I think we’ve just forgotten all about training them and how to lead people. You can write millions and millions of books about that, I’m sure there is, but what I see is that JR’s four foundations are a very, very start point, and they’re not rocket science.
Joe: I smile when you say that because one of the questions there, a couple down here that I have here is how quickly do you start with JR, Job Relations?
Oscar: Well that’s changing and quicker and quicker, and more and more often, we’re starting with Job Relations. I was at a company; I went to New Zealand last week. We’ve just started over there with a guy, an institute guy over there and we went to four different places initially and I would say three of them if we proceed, based on the one hour discussion which is only scratching the surface, we had an initial one hour discussion, there will be a need for JR. That’s no surprise for a couple of reasons. One is we tend to promote our good operators to be leaders and assume they’re going to be able to manage people, assume they’re going to be able to manage through people which is what they have to do if they’re a leader. We assume they don’t have that capability which is a drastic assumption. Our training our universities and our vocational education are not focusing on helping someone how to get results through other people, so the need for Job Relations is huge.
Joe: Can TWI coincide with human resources or is it at odds with HR? I mean how does that dynamic work?
Oscar: No, 100%. My best customer over here is a company called Tatura Milk Industries. What they recognized was that if their supervisors and middle management got a handle on Job Relations, then what the Human Resourced Department in Tatura Milk realized was that if the supervisors and middle managers in that organization got the heads around Job Relations and practiced it, then the Human Resources Department jobs would become easier. Because what the Human Resources Department was doing was receiving hand passes of people problems. So people problem wouldn’t be addressed, it would get out of hand, and then the HR would get it as a big fire ablaze and they would have to deal with it.
What they’ve done is they realized that if they helped their people become better at handling people issues and leading people, they would get far fewer people problems come to the HR Department that they then had to deal with and at that point, it was out of control. They started working with JR about 18 months ago or two years ago and we’ve trained about 35 or 40 of the middle managers, and it’s had a huge impact on the HR Department. They’ve got data showing how the drop in HR incidents if you like, they get on a monthly basis, and it’s significant. They get very few now.
Joe: I’m not sure how your unions are set-up in Australia but does TWI work in a union environment?
Oscar: Tatura Milk is a union. It’s not heavily unionized, but there’s definitely union presence.
Joe: You have a tendency it seems that you really like the Job Relations part of it, what had made that different than all these other leadership books and how to lead and how to train? Is it because it’s so central to maybe middle management?
Oscar: I think there’s a couple of things. I think one thing is its simple. There’s not a 150 to 200-page book on it because it doesn’t need to be. You look at the four foundations and a lot of the training that we do, in a group of 10 which is the group size, generally there would be someone in there who reads the card and says, “Yes but I do this. This is common sense.” It might be common sense to 1 in 10, but it’s not common sense to 10 out of 10. So one thing is it’s very, very simple and straightforward, particularly the foundations. Two is; good leaders do that stuff anyway. Job Relations in my experience helps a good leader become even a better leader, and it helps an average leader become a good leader, and a poor leader become an average leader. There’s not a silver bullet, but I think its simplicity is probably one of the things it can offer.
Another bit of feedback we’ve had from an HR person is that there’s a tendency to look for complexity. So we’re having leadership issues, so we look for weak causes or six-month part-time course or something in how to build leadership and respect, but what we doesn’t do and it’s all good concept and great knowledge, but what the leader has difficulty is when I walk out of the training is, what can I actually do now? Whereas that pocket card gives them something that when they walk back into the workplace, they can actually do some specific things that will change that Job Relations line. So it’s very focused, it’s very simple, and it’s very direct and its four things are not complex, and I think that’s the value it adds.
Joe: Is Job Relations something that you do just when there’s a problem or is it something that you really should review and use it every day in the way interact with the people you supervise and other leaders?
Oscar: Well there’s two elements to Job Relations. One is the four foundations of good relations, and those four foundations are things that you can practice hour by hour, day by day that will reduce the chance of people problems. Then the other side of the pocket card is the four-step method for how to handle a people problem. One of the learnings I’ve had in the last probably 6 to 12 months is I’m pretty sure I used to say how to resolve a people problem, well you don’t always resolve them. There have been excellent cases with the companies I’ve worked with where they’ve applied the four-step method, and they haven’t actually solved the problem. The method is actually a means of handling the problem. And sometimes and it is PDCA; the four-step method for JR is PDCA. So what that implies is you may not always resolve the issue. You may have to go around two or three times, and that’s normal PDCA. So to answer your question Joe, there’s two sides of the card. One is the four things you should do on a daily basis to reduce the chance of people problems.
Joe: Could you name them?
Oscar: The four foundations are, let each worker know how he or she is doing — that’s prime, and then each of them has sub-foundations. That’s the first foundation. The second foundation is to give credit when due. The third foundation is to tell people in advance about changes that will affect them. The last foundation is to make best use of each person’s ability.
Joe: That’s being proactive in things you should be doing all the time.
Oscar: That’s exactly right. Every minute of the day thinking is one of these — many will get it, but that’s what I’ll try and do. Which one of these foundations need to be used — is there an issue now? I’m working with people now, which one of these foundations if they need to, I need to be practicing right now?
Joe: And then when you do the reactive on how to handle a problem, the four steps there is get the facts, weigh and decide, take action, and then check the results. Those are good things, and I think the one intriguing thing that you really said about that is that handling a problem is at iterative as a hypothesis as PDCA is. It’s something that you may not get it right the first time.
Oscar: You may not, and one of the instances I’ve had recently was a supervisor followed it and didn’t get it right. Let me go back a little bit. The key thing you’ve missed there Joe is, you’ve obviously got a card in front of you, what does it say at the top of the card, just under how to handle a problem?
Joe: Oh, get the objective.
Oscar: Exactly and I look back on my time when I was a manufacturing manager and a production manager, and me of course had people problems, that’s the thing I never did. I never sat down and thought before I open my mouth, before I do anything here, what’s my objective? So actually, if you want to think of it as a five-step method because you must determine your objective and that must happen before you open your mouth; before you write anything down, you got to sit and think that through. It’s very challenging because when you do that, people think, “Ooh, hang on…” People find that difficult and the reason they find it difficult is because they’ve never done it before, and it’s critical to this.
What occurred in this particular case, it was that the supervisor determined their objective, followed the four-step method perfectly and didn’t achieve the objective. I said to the supervisor, “You haven’t failed. Please don’t think you failed. You have not failed. You’ve actually been very successful because you followed the method. What you have learned is that you now have to change your objective, which you did. So you change the objective and follow the method again.” I said, “Don’t think that’s failure. That is PDCA. That is exactly what this is about.” You’re not going to get it right the first time every time, but follow the method, and you’ll be consistent in the way you apply method, and not only you but your peers will as well and that’s the value in it. Then the worker sees consistency in the way that there being treated, and managed, and handled.
Joe: That reminds me of the Toyota Kata, and when you think about that a little bit is that target condition, and maybe you did pick an objective that was too big of a step. Maybe you had to break it down a little bit and get a few more steps in line to really get to the end and solve maybe that target problem versus the objectives along the way. Is that correct thinking?
Oscar: 100%. What’s Toyota Kata? It’s PDCA. So Toyota Kata is determine your target condition, your objective. Step one in JR, get the facts. Toyota Kata understands the current condition. Is that any different? Step two in JR, weigh and decide. In the Kata, locate an obstacle. And then step three in JR, take action and Kata is do something with PDCA to address the obstacle. So is it any different? No, of course, it’s not because it’s PDCA based. And that’s one of the things I love about TWI is it goes JR or JI, they go back to fundamentals. They’re not a reinvention of something that’s out there. It’s just fundamental stuff that’s based on something that’s extremely solid for many, many years ago, and that’s PDCA.
Joe: I think so many times that we are doing the same things, but we’re putting a different wrapper on it, but it’s basically very similar to the roots of it; the roots of TWI maybe and Charles Allen’s 4-Step or even before that. One of the things we talked to just briefly about Job Instructions and Job Relations primarily, but Job Methods seems to be a forgotten child sometimes. It’s where an engineer definitely typically wants to jump to right away. We want to solve problems. But what’s different about Job Methods and let’s say regular improvement efforts? Is there anything?
Oscar: No, I don’t think so; not in principle. Again, not in principle. It’s PDCA. I guess the real value for me in the Job Methods is the 6 Questions and the order in which those 6 questions are asked. So that’s the value I believe in Job Methods. Look reality over here, say for I don’t know how many JI and JR’s we’ve done, I know I’ve got it on the database, but I couldn’t answer this because it’s quite a lot. We’ve done two JM courses in three years and four years, and the reason for that is because most companies are not stable enough to start this and to get into JM anyway to start with. Those that are, usually have some method of driving improvement anyway and perhaps JM would just confuse the issue. We haven’t done very much JM at all. But the value in JM is I believe understanding the detail of the work even more than JI, but also asking those six questions and in order which they should be asked.
Joe: Why is the order so important?
Oscar: The reason the order is so important is because the first two are why is it necessary and what’s its purpose. In our experience of applying and half the time, you find out that it’s not necessary, and it has no purpose in terms of delivering value to the customer. So what we tend to do is improve what we’re doing now rather than question whether we should be doing it at all. So we tend to run in blind and just improve what’s happening rather than first saying, do we really need to be doing this at all.
Joe: Okay, so it’s really kind of a focusing to step to begin with and starting there, it’s sort of the Theory of Constraints type thing is really concentrated on what we need to or in Kata, defining those objectives along the path that we really need to concentrate on to reach that target.
Oscar: The last four questions ‘were, when, who, and how,’ we tend to launch straight into those without saying, “Hang on, do we really need to be doing this at all? So the value of the why and what sometimes define that you don’t need to be doing what you’re doing.
Joe: TWI, standard work. Leaders standard work, Kata, okay? We have all these kind of new names flowing into Lean now and not necessarily new but becoming more the front end of Lean that we hear about. Is there a natural thread or something that’s causing these types of descriptions coming forth and kind of bubbling to the top now?
Oscar: Do you mean why have they bubbled to the top?
Joe: Yes, it is a short way of putting it. Yes.
Oscar: I think the reason for that is because most people will have a crack at Lean, whatever that is, fail and therefore people have started to try and understand why are we not able to achieve the goals that the Japanese were able to achieve back in the 80’s and 90’s. Why have we not been able to improve it when they were able to improve this? People have realized that there had to be something missing. So what’s now being discovered is these are the things that were missing.
Joe: Is there something maybe you’d like to add that I didn’t ask you?
Oscar: A question to ask in the end, we’ve got to be careful, we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make the same mistakes with Kata and TWI and those other things that are around and just then become a brand if you like and a tool, and understand that what they are — and one of the things I’ve spoken to Mike Rother in emails is one of the things I remember him saying to me was that Toyota Kata is not a methodology. It’s a pattern of thinking; it’s a way of thinking. One of the fears I have and what I see now in the development of Kata is it’s being marketed and sold as a methodology and one of my understandings from Mike a couple of years ago was that it was not his intent. His intent is to get people to the point where it’s a habitual way of thinking through whenever you have a problem. What’s my target condition? Where am I now? What’s in my way? What have I got to do to remove it? PDCA.
JI and JR are the same. We have these pocket cards for JR. I’m not expecting someone who’s very practiced in JR to be picking up a pocket card every five minutes. What I want them to do is become very practiced in the habit so that they daily they are practicing those four foundations without even realizing they’re doing it. And then when JR needs to be applied, innately they think, “Oh hang on, what’s my objective here? What do I know about this? What are the facts? What are my options? I could do this, this or this. Yes, that doesn’t contradict company practices and policies. Okay, now I’m going to go out and do it.”
So we’re not expecting through any of these that people have pocket cards and tools for the rest of their life. What we’re expecting in these fundamentals is they become innate, and I think we’ve got to be careful we don’t lose sight of that and we don’t brand these things and they join the list of all the other Lean tools that are out there.
Joe: What is upcoming for you? Are you going to the TWI Summit?
Oscar: Yes, so I’m going to the summit in Jacksonville in the States and on the Friday I’m doing two breakouts. If you have a look at the TWI Summit program, Jim’s been very kind and given us the opportunity to — Jim Huntzinger has been very kind and given us the opportunity to do two breakouts. Also earlier in the week, the institute is running a JI class. Curtis has said that I can be the trainer for that. And on the Wednesday, Scott and Patrick are doing a TWO Workshop. I’ll be participating in a small way in that as well.
Joe: Put on by Lean Frontiers and that is in May. Where is it at and what are the dates again?
Oscar: I’m pretty sure it’s the 14th and 15th of May which is a Thursday, Friday, and it’s in Jacksonville in Florida.
Joe: What’s the best way for someone to contact you?
Oscar: Our Website address is www.twi-instituteaust.com. Email is Oscar@twi-instituteaust.com. So those last four letters, a-u-s-t, the first four letters of Australia.
Joe: And they can also contact you on LinkedIn, correct?
Oscar: Yes, I’m on Linked In. Correct.
Joe: Well, I would like to thank you very much Oscar. I appreciate it. This podcast will be available on the Business 901 iTunes Store and the Business901 Blog Site. So thanks everyone for listening.
Oscar: And thank you Joe. That was good.
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