The book, The 7 Kata: Toyota Kata, TWI, and Lean Training, was published in 2012 and authored by Pat Boutier and Conrad Soltero. It received the Shingo Award for Research and Professional Publications from the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence. It discusses the blend of Training within Industry (TWI) with Kata in a very unique way.
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Podcasts: What is the 7 Kata? & How to Apply the 7 Kata
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 Pat Boutier. Pat is a Business Solutions Specialist and co-author of the 7 Kata. Pat, I would like to welcome you and would you start out and maybe tell me who you’re co-author is?
Pat: My co-author, it’s Conrad Soltero and he is a long-time consultant, much longer than me as far as background and has worked with TMAC for probably 15 years since its inception, working always in Texas and helping companies do much better, and has done a lot of ISO and Lean implementations and Toyota Kata implementations and is certified in all the TWI Kata’s and many other things besides that.
Joe: Pat, long time connecting but thank you very much. I enjoyed your book. It’s one of those books that is always in my carousel on Kindle that I use for reference.
Pat: Well thank you. Thank you very much.
Joe: Yes and is there anything as far as with TMAC that you would like to mention?
Pat: Both Conrad and I are with TMAC; he’s with a different region than I am. He used to be with the El Paso region, he’s now with the Austin, San Antonio region and I’m with the Dallas, Fort Worth region. I’ve been there 10 years, and my actual employer is the University of Texas at Arlington. I only work as a member of TMAC because TMAC is part of the manufacturing extension partnership that goes throughout the United States. In Texas, there’s one TMAC with seven regions, and I’m in the Dallas, Fort Worth region. And so I’m basically a Consultant for the manufacturing extension partnership of the University of Texas at Arlington called TMAC, and our mission is to help small manufacturers or the extended manufacturing enterprise to become more competitive within the Texas economy. That’s what we do, so every year I work with perhaps, as many as thirty different companies doing different things.
Joe: I’ll just ask you, you’re a Business Solution Specialist at TMAC and could you tell me what that incorporates?
Pat: With no disrespect meant, I tend to refer myself as ADD Engineer. I can’t make up my mind what I do and have done many different things. I started off my career as an Electrical Engineer for Motorola for 16 years. Originally a Design Engineer, Microwave Design, and then moved into manufacturing, as an Engineering Manager and Production Manager. Later, I was the Vice President of Operations for a contract manufacturing in Dallas for a year and then a Group General Manager for Tandy Electronics in the Fort Worth area running three different plants making computers, owned my own company for 12 years designing manufacturing vision systems. For the past 10 years, I’ve worked with TMAC, helping companies get better.
In that process I have become a Black belt in Lean Six Sigma, I’ve become certified in many different Lean approaches, I’ve got my Lean Bronze certification, and I actually help people learn more about Lean Bronze so that they can take the test and get certified. I do Lean implementations. I do RFID implementations. One of the few things still directly connected to my original background, and I do Training Within Industry.
We help companies learn how to use those, and that’s how really how Conrad and I got involved in doing this book. We’ve both been doing TWI for quite a while, and we’ve had read the book Toyota Kata by Mike Rother and thought it was pretty striking. We then signed up and went together to Michigan to go through his course with him. We got to know him and found out that he actually worked in the manufacturing extension partnership in the beginning of his career, and learned some more from him, and that’s when we saw in discussions with him the connection that we believe exists between TWI and Toyota Kata. We felt that that was worthy a book to put out there and let people hear about it.
Joe: Pat, what is that connection between Training Within Industry and the Toyota Kata?
Pat: Well Training Within Industry, the history of that was a program that came to fruition in World War II actually by government consultants to make the industry in the United States extremely productive to meet the war effort. There are articles and papers that talk about it being the largest experiment in the world ever for consulting programs and the most effective one. Most people, when they hear about TWI know about Job Instruction; how to teach people a job so that they learn it and can do it, and that was extremely effective in World War II and many companies talk about how they became very productive and shortening the learning curve. They also then of course used the Job Relations for teaching new people and evolve in the industry how to deal with people issues, how to handle a problem involving people, and then use the job methods to learn how to improve the existing manpower machines and materials available, rather than trying to come up with something that would be extremely costly or not.
All those three major programs were created following the Charles Allen 4-Step Learning Process, and it was very, very effective. All the companies or I shouldn’t say all, but a tremendous amount of companies in the United States used it and it was brought over to the UK and many other countries during the war and after the war. Now it fell out of favor in the United States after the war and there’s a lot of discussions about why and the one that seems to have the most tractions, basically, United States have this huge engine of productivity and could make products that the rest of the world needed. So it didn’t matter how well or how much it was, plus they had a growing workforce because all the military people were coming back into the workforce, so it just absorbed it and it produced like crazy, and in a sense they didn’t really care anymore about the particulars. They could sell everything they could produce, and so they did.
Japan was wondering how the hell America was so successful, and their industry was devastated with the end of the war. MacArthur and other people brought Deming, and a whole bunch of other people, including people that were very much the beginners of TWI in the United States over to Japan, then trained in Job Instruction, Job Relations and Job Methods. There’s a lot of history that goes through it and describes that and talks about different people who, people in the Lean philosophy and Lean organizations will recognize, but the importance was they took it to heart, and they took it as how to make better habits. I think that’s where the connection with the Kata comes in, is we have never thought of TWI as Kata’s. We kind of thought of them as habits but we haven’t really talked about it that way. When Mike Rother shows that really the basics of Lean in Toyota is about habits and repeating them and then that’s how people actually learn, it made sense to us that that’s really what TWI was, is giving people new habits that are in a sense simplistic, in that it’s easy to follow the basic pattern. From that you’re able to easily enlarge it and make it strong and learn from it and adapt it to new things. That’s where Conrad and I saw the connection for us is that the Improvement Kata, the Coaching Kata and what we call a Problem Solving Kata from Toyota Kata, are just like the Kata’s in TWI. They’re all habits. They’re all prescribed or proscribed habits that follow this pattern and repeat this pattern, so you’re doing it by habit, and you can adapt it and make things different, and make a difference.
Joe: I think that’s a good description but when you do about the 7 Kata’s, the four principles of let’s say TWI, are those four separate and then there’s three Katas or are they kind of melded together? Can you explain what the 7 Kata’s are and how they’re combined and intertwined?
Pat: Certainly. We kind of organized them in the way that it’s perhaps one methodology. You could utilize them if you’re trying to make a transformation in your company, and part of it is we say, well we think you should start with the Improvement Kata. From our view that’s Kata number one, and we call it the Kaizen Kata because it’s A, the first Kata you should begin working on and it’s about improvement, which is what Kaizen is, it’s really continuous improvement.
Then we believe as you’re taking Mike Rother’s Improvement Kata and figure out what you need to do, often you need to instruct people. Then the TWI Job Instruction is the learning to teach Kata, and that becomes extremely handy to teach people how to do the job the way you want them to do the job. We think that’s extremely important and we think the Japanese saw how important that was, because really the goal in instructing people isn’t like you typically see in education where you teach somebody in grammar school or high school or college, and you test them, and you see how they score, and if they score 70 or 80, or 90, it’s okay. In the work environment, that’s not okay. In the work environment when you teach somebody you want them to have it down a hundred percent the way you want it done. Because otherwise anything less than that increases your cost, decreases your quality, creates problems, and just is an issue. So really learning to teach on a 101 job basis is more important than in the educational system because it costs right away.
Then for us, of course, the next Kata is the Coaching Kata which is what we call the Teaching to Learn Kata; how to coach people in learning improvement, how to coach them in doing better and learning to teach and teaching, and coaching people. The Coaching Kata from our viewpoint, also is an extremely important one because it shows people how to coach anybody and mentor anybody in any aspect of work. That’s something that’s extremely important because those questions that Mike Rother put forth there in that Coaching Kata are extremely powerful.
The next one we see is the Problem Solving Kata, and that’s really tied in with the PDCA that Mike Rother talks about all the time and many other people, Deming, etcetera. But I tend to want to use the PDSA version because I think too many people in America, they take that C, and they think ‘check’ and they go through it too fast. I think if you do S like Deming did it near the end of his career, S is more about study; it’s more about reflection. If you think about it that way, it forces people really to reflect. When you’re working on a problem, you really need to reflect to understand and learn from your failures. If you just follow the ‘check’ thing or at least Americans or Western are more likely to breeze right through it, so that’s why I prefer the PDSA version. But any alphabet suit, DMAIC or whatever works, it’s just how you apply it and do you really think about it and go through it.
The Job Relations Kata, we call that the 5th Kata and that’s really how to handle a problem, how to handle people problems. For us, that’s extremely important but it seems to get short shrift in the United States in many companies because people think they know how to manage. Managers in charge of companies seem to believe that, ‘Hey just do it the way I do…’ and it works. But they don’t recognize that people can’t just emulate you or emulate other people without having something more concrete and that’s the real key in Job Relations, the Respect for People Kata, because it gives you a standard pattern to approach people problems. Having that pattern makes things work so much better because when you’re dealing people who have an issue, if they know what to expect from you, you can deal it without all the extraneous, mercurial emotion that usually comes with people problems, and you can get through it and then find out what do we really need to do to take care of this.
Then finally, not finally but the next one is the Job Methods Kata, the Job Methods from TWI, we call that a Socratic Kata because of the Socratic methodology of questions there of asking the Why, What, Where, When, Who, How and continually asking questions. And to us it’s a good methodology to use to get improvement moving, along with the Improvement Kata. So it’s all depending on what you do and then who’s working on it; it’s a good way of doing things. Some people might use the Improvement Kata instead of the Job Methods but to us, I think it’s really dependent on people, who you’re using, and what level of expertise they’re at. The Job Methods Kata has its place and is very useful.
Finally, to us the TWI Job Safety, the Compassion Kata, and we call it that because we don’t view safety from the OSHA standpoint of “We’ll do this. You will not do this, Those things are important because people have done crazy things, but job safety is really about a passion for not harming anyone. A passion for also decreasing your cost, because safety if you don’t pay attention, is indeed a cost. You need to anticipate what might go wrong, and that’s what the Job Safety Kata is about. It’s a simple way of looking around you, being aware of your surroundings and anticipating what could lead eventually to a problem, and so if you take a simple, easy correction now, it can save you all sorts of time and trouble later on. So, it’s really about being aware and understanding that safety incidences are caused, and there’s a chain of causality and if you couldn’t go through that and be aware at the beginning stages, you save so much in costs and so much in people issues.
Joe: Putting Kata with TWI, was that a method to kind of modernize TWI and modernize our thinking sort of moving out of old school and moving forward?
Pat: Yes, I think you could put it that way. I think it was more of a way of connecting it to the Improvement and Coaching Kata’s that Mike Rother has been promoting, and showing that each of these are simple, straightforward habits and that teaching people to right habits is what’s important. If they have the right habits, they can then adapt and solve the issues you have in the workplace, and you know that’s true in any place. The Kata is really habits, in the framework that we’re talking about. From the music, or from swimming, how do you learn to do these things – you repeat over and over. It’s the same thing in how to improve, how to instruct, how to work with people, any of those things; it’s a habit. How do you create a habit so that you just naturally go there, and follow a methodology that you know will work and keep you focused on what you’re trying to do.
Joe: I always thought one of the problems with Lean as part of a business culture that there wasn’t necessarily a method to follow or to institute it within a company. If I was on a Lean journey and they’d introduce some tools and they’d started to address Lean, but do you think the 7 Kata in your book offers you opportunity to be the method to introduce Lean to a company, would it be helpful?
Pat: We believe it is. We believe that it’s one. We don’t believe that it’s necessarily the only way. Every company, every group of people is going to be somewhat different and how they choose is always very particular and that’s what we want to point out, it’s not about duplicating Toyota. It’s not duplicating Lean. You can’t replicate Lean from one company to another and expect the same results. You can’t do that because you have to recognize that your workforce is a unique resource within your company. You have different cultures and how do you affect that culture within your workforce. Our belief from looking and working with companies is that the Improvement Kata is one way of changing that culture and making it one of continuous improvement, reinforced with good Job Relations. Do you use the TWI Job Relations? Well, we think it’s there and it’s rather easy to use and if you don’t have something, well then that’s something that you apply, and that will reinforce the culture change that you’re trying to make. Because most companies are indeed trying to change their culture by making improvements in quality, the productivity a prime focus.
How are you going to do that? We believe that taking the Improvement Kata and the TWI Kata’s and applying them, you can get there. We’ve seen it work. There are a lot more companies trying it and doing it and like anything, the Improvement Kata is about looking at an obstacle and deciding what tool will work on this obstacle. And we believe that TWI Kata’s are good tools to use because they’re habits, and if people learn those habits, then they’ll be able to apply them at the next obstacle that might need it. It’s not, ‘Take this hammer and hit everything with it.’ It’s ‘Pick the particular one.’ You mentioned Lean applications in the past, not to beat a dead horse but most people now are beginning to realize that the way most people took the Lean approach is they took these tools and start using them wherever they could, rather than thinking about what was that really what they needed. Part of the original Lean approach through the 80s and 90s I guess, because I wasn’t the Lean practitioner back then, was really just look for waste and fix any waste. I think Mike Rother’s book Toyota Kata and his teachings since then, are showing that, ‘Hey, don’t just pick any waste. Pick the waste that are on the path that you want to take towards your vision.’ Which then ties into really the Lean ideas and what company ideas talk about of having a strategic direction and what is your vision and how you marshal in your resources to work towards that, rather than getting distracted and doing all kinds of things. I think that’s where a lot of Lean companies, or companies who have attempted Lean had problems because they get distracted by all the waste they see.
Joe: In the 7 Katas, is this a prescription that you go through one through seven, or do you use all seven of them at the same time or, how do you do introduce the 7 Kata to an organization?
Pat: We would suggest that you introduce the Improvement Kata, and when you’re doing that, you’re having somebody that’s doing the Coaching Kata, so you’re doing that also. But that may be from an external force at first because you have to learn the Improvement Kata before you can really become reasonable at using the Coaching Kata. We see Job Instruction very important there because in the Improvement Kata if you improve something, you’re changing something. Usually you’re changing how other people are doing things, and maybe you’re using one person to be the prime person. ‘Hey let’s all do it like Mikey.’ Well, how do you then get the other people to do it like Mikey? Well that’s where Job Instruction comes in, because you’ve got to teach these other people to do it that way, and make sure that they’re doing the important steps and the key points that provide the quality and productivity that you’re attempting to do it in this new fashion, to the expertise that’s there.
So to us those first three Kata’s are the important ones that you have to utilize. The rest of them come in depending on what problems, what obstacles are you facing now. When you look at the Toyota Kata process, it’s all about knowing your vision, what’s your current challenge, what’s your current obstacle, and what will work on this current obstacle, what experiment are you going to use. Well, part of that experimentation is figuring out what tool, what things you should do. Should it be a Lean tool? Should it be a TWI tool? I mean if one of the problems you’re dealing with is that people hate each other and don’t want to work with each other, well that sounds like a really great opportunity to start instilling Job Relations and figuring out how to deal with that, unless you don’t care and you’re just going to fire people. Working with people and having respect for their issues is what’s important and if that’s the obstacle you’re dealing with, and then Job Relations would be something that’s there. If it’s not that and people are afraid to do something because there’s safety issues, well then job safety might be the one. Maybe not, maybe there’s an OSHA rule you’re just ignoring, then just apply that. It’s all situational.
Joe: I think what’s really interesting, Pat, what jumps at me is this is not the tools approach like you said, kind of the old Lean way of introducing things as, ‘Oh let’s go in there, draw a current state map, then we’ll value stream map, get rid of the waste, and we’ll go through this process…’ because we’re introduced to it. These are still good things to do, don’t get me wrong but you’re taking a step back and saying, these are really cultural training the soft skills, let’s say.
Pat: Yes, that’s a good way of saying it. It is indeed the soft skills to get people to move the organization forward. Now you mentioned value stream mapping, I think value stream mapping is a very important probably first step, because where are you going? You have to know your vision of strategy and having a value straight map kind of shows where you’re at, at that current state. Then you can then decide what your future state, which then helps you decide well which obstacle do I want to work on now? So the value stream mapping is a tool that helps you align yourself to your strategic direction when used properly. Many people just use it to identify waste, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but which waste are you going to work on and why? That’s where the Coaching Kata and the understanding of the strategic vision of the company is important because why work on anything else, you should be focused there. Like many people are found with accounting, working on any waste intrinsically feels good, intrinsically says, ‘I have made a difference. But it doesn’t show up in moving towards the goal or if it doesn’t show up in improving productivity and cost, then it’s not as effective as you could be, which is why you have to have an idea where you’re going and then pick the waste, just not any waste and that’s the part of the key in all that. The Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata tries to help you guide you on them.
Joe: What did you learn from writing the book? I mean, where was the struggle with one of the connection points or did it just flow and make sense to you all the way through?
Pat: That’s an interesting question. There was a continual struggle in figuring out how did we want to organize it and how did we want to present the information. We tried to organize it along the path of perhaps the best way we could see of implementing it, and so we organized it as we have as far as Kata number one, Kata number two. Not to say that that’s the only way, but that was one way and it was a pattern that we could follow in the book that made sense to us that flows, that create some flowing in reading and thinking about it. I guess that would be the question. The difficulty, I don’t know that we had a difficulty in our heads as far as the combination, because both of us kind of had this epiphany when we went through Mike Rother’s training was that, ‘Yes, these are all habits. These are all things that people need to learn.’ The only issue is when and how do you get them to recognize they need these habits. That was the purpose of the book was to get this out there and get people to start talking about it and thinking about it.
Joe: When you talk about Training Within Industry and the popularity of it is coming back, is it because we’re moving more into behavior change and habits and that we think that — I think there’s a lot of things outside of Lean. I mean in sales and marketing, that’s what we talk about now, habits and behavioral changes and things. Do you think that’s what has caused TWI to kind of rise back up into the Lean lexicon?
Pat: I wish I could say I’m a visionary and yes I know the answer to that one. I would tend to say that one aspect of that was Bob Wrona and Patrick Graupp. Bob Wrona was the founder of the TWI institute in New York and he and Pat Graupp saw a need that people weren’t utilized in this methodology and that it existed, and it was a methodology that is very useful and started promoting and teaching it and getting people involved. Now, why people are latching on to it? I think people still today — because that revival started basically in the year 2000, I think people still today gravitate mostly to Job Instruction and I think they gravitate to that because it is such a different approach to teaching people, and it is anchored in trying to help people have a standard method of doing what they need to do. Most management systems keep talking about that but don’t seem to have a method to ensure that people are following it. The real issue there is not in having people follow it, but having people expose to what it is and the why.
Job Instruction points out that there are important steps, key points, and reasons, and we have to tell people those so that they know it and know it by habit, not by having to look it up in a book. I don’t know if this is the right combination but if you look at Math, when I took Math a long time ago in Grammar school, we were taught the multiplication tables. Those were habits that you didn’t have to waste time calculating minor things; you just knew what the answer was. Now with calculators, I don’t know if people are still learning the multiplication tables, but if you have to spend the few seconds to bring up the calculator and multiple 9 times 99 let’s say, you’re taking up time that maybe could be better spent on other things. Having certain habits ingrained are important and knowing what the tricks are in building something or in doing something so that you get it right every time is pretty important.
Joe: I think you explained those ideals, the Kata, and TWI very well in the book. I’ve talked about before the podcast; it’s one of the books that I keep close to me, that I refer back to. You won a Shingo Prize for it, did you not?
Pat: Yes we did. We were very fortunate in doing that. We handed it to the Shingo Organization, and part of the reason we did that is we were aware of the Shingo. I’m a Shingo examiner and also a Shingo award examiner, so we understand – and so is Conrad – we understand part of what is important in the Shingo approach to understanding the overall Lean approach to things, and we tried to ensure that our book had those approaches there so that people would recognize this is about Lean. This isn’t just some unusual thing and that this is how to make continuous improvement happen. We were very fortunate in that the reviewers seeing that same spark that yes, this is important, this is good and so we were very, very happy to be included and receive a what we consider a prestigious award, first time out of the box.
Joe: Would you say the 7 Kata would be a starting point for someone that’s interested in Lean or would you say that it’s a second book that you need to understand Kata and TWI before you read it?
Pat: I think it’s a second book. I think Toyota Kata or one of the TWI books is important to read first because otherwise you may not make the connection. I say that may not because I don’t want to denigrate people’s intelligence or their ability to do things. The Seven Kata, the way it was written by Conrad and me, it made the presumption that people understood at least one of those, if not all; that they had exposure to it and so that they would follow along so that the book doesn’t go through and doesn’t try to make detailed descriptions of one or the other. It goes through and talks about them in what’s there.
Now in the Appendix, we added a exaggerated history of everything we could think of that had to do with Lean and TWI and Kata and the different people who had done different things throughout the years that may have a tie in. Because this book stands on the shoulders of obviously Mike Rother and obviously Bob Wrona and Pat Graupp, and also all the people before that actually created TWI, Deming, and all these people. Without that work, this book wouldn’t have been able to be anything because we didn’t create anything new except how to look at it together and that’s what we think we brought to the history, is showing how these things can work together and are similar and that they’re all habits and then the habits are important. But there was a tremendous amount of work before us for creating these things, these simple but strong methodologies that people can learn and utilize.
Joe: I think that’s well said, but I will add the fact that after I read the 7 Kata, you really got me to go back to Toyota Kata and TWI and re-read them. I had read them in the past, but it was like I really want to dig deeper, which is a compliment to the book.
Pat: Well thank you. I’m happy at that because that’s what we want people to do is to dig deeper. That’s the only way you can be effective and do things is not just take somebody’s prescription and run with it. It’s to think about it and think it through.
Joe: I have to ask you, do I need a TWI coach? Do I need a Kata coach to start implementing this stuff, or should I get started and see if I can really do it before I grab a coach?
Pat: That’s an interesting question, and you’re asking a consultant. I would say no, you don’t need one if you’re willing to spend the time and effort, but you have to spend that time and effort. You can’t just go crazy, and you have to reflect. You have to learn the Improvement Kata, and you’ve got to practice the Coaching Kata. Because if you just go through it quickly, like I talked about earlier, people who do PDCA, they skip through that C all the time, which is why I prefer PDSA, and so you got to spend the time on each of those. If you spend the time, you can do it.
There are a couple companies I know of that I’ve worked with here in the Dallas, Fort Worth area and a couple of people who have done this, and they have gone off and accomplished wonderful things without having a real coach. They have done it on their own. They’ve taken this; they’ve understood it intrinsically. They’ve studied it. They ask questions at times, and sometimes they ask questions of me, which was great. It made me feel good that they’re working and what I’ve seen them implement in their companies and I’ll say multiple companies because then they’ve moved out to other places, they’ve done great things in improving those companies and improving the people in those companies. The people working for them were appreciated and understood and enjoyed that improvement and hopefully, they’re doing things with it. So the answer is no you don’t need an external coaching person but it can make it a lot easier and can help keep you focused. So depending on what kind of distractions you’re going to have and everything else, it’s certainly as helpful.
Joe: Is there’s something that I didn’t ask that you’d like to add to this conversation?
Pat: I guess the only thing that I can add is that I have been trying to understand why companies don’t grab the Job Relations Kata out of TWI and run with it. That to me is a glaring issue in most companies today. Because if you know anybody that works anywhere, probably 50 to 60 to 80 percent of those people are unhappy. They’re unhappy with someone in the management chain. Those things seem pervasive everywhere and they’re so easy to take care of if they were following Job Relations systematically within a company, and it seems very difficult to get companies to buy into this or managers to buy into this.
That’s one of the things that I’m looking at and trying to expand. I came across just recently that we hadn’t touched in the book was a lot of people in Human Resources are talking about they should become strategic partners with their management peers. I think the 7 Kata is one way they can do that. If they become knowledgeable on all this and start to coach their CEO, called the “C sweep of leaders.” I use that term to mean any size company, because a company that’s only a hundred people, might call himself a CEO, he/she might call themselves just the owner, it doesn’t matter. They need a coach; they need a mentor to help them. Not tell them what to do but to help them understand their strategic directions and how are they respecting people.
More to it, how are their people respecting people. That’s what I think many leaders miss, is they think they’re respecting people but how it gets transmitted through the layers doesn’t always get done right. Obviously with all the literature that goes on about how many people are unhappy at work, there’s something there that needs to change. Job Relations could help it but don’t know yet how to grab that attention.
Joe: Yes, I think that is an interesting comment because when I look at that, what jumps out of me is Job Relation, a manager job or how much of it is and how much of it is HR, and that influence of that relationship that you mentioned between Human Resources Manager and worker is how those dynamics is something that Job Relations might be able to help clear up.
Pat: I think very strongly and I think that Human Resources’ role in that, human relations’ role is to be the coach on making sure people are using that Kata at all levels, and then coaching rather than beating people up.
Joe: I think those are great thoughts there, Pat. I could go on probably for another couple of hours talking to you. I appreciate this very much. What’s upcoming for you? Do you have another book in the works?
Pat: As I mentioned earlier, I’m kind of an ADD Engineer and I’ve been tasked to do more things in the Human Resources arena here in TMAC, and so I’ve been looking at expanding that and working with companies to see what they can use, what do they need, what do they think they might want. In the back of my head, I’d like to write a book on Job Relations. I think there’s something missing there, but I’m not there yet. I’m just working in that arena and seeing how we can help companies and people.
Joe: What’s the best way for someone to contact you and find out more about the 7 Kata?
Pat: They can contact me at pat.boutier@tmac.org. I tend to reply to most emails but may take a little bit of time. There are a lot of things on the internet for TWI. The twi-institute.org I think it is. If you look up Toyota Kata in Google and find Mike Rother, he has a website that you can get more than you ever wanted to know about Improving Kata and Coaching Kata and he has some wonderful stuff there. Several people have put up some videos on how to do Kata and stuff like that; so there are lots of things online to get exposed to this. The book is available through the publishing company CRC Press and also Taylor Francis and through Amazon. So you can get a hold of the book, and you said you have the Kindle version so that’ll be good. Conrad and I don’t make really much money on this deal. We didn’t get into it to make money, obviously it’s not a best seller, so it’s not going there and on Kindle, we make even less. But we don’t care. We would love people to get it and the more people on Kindle to get it, fine. Go for it.
Joe: I think you did a wonderful job, and I appreciate it very much. This podcast will be available on Business901 Itunes store and the Business901 blog site. So thank you very much, Pat.
Pat: Thank you, Joe for talking with me and helping me through it.
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