Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This podcast offers business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for lean process improvement and implement continuous improvement projects, cost reductions, product quality enhancements, and process effectiveness improvement. Listeners come from many industries in both manufacturing and office applications.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 0:04
What are some core leadership principles from your military experience that you see directly translating into the world of continuous
Lee Campe 0:12
improvement? I mean, we have a whole school that back when I went through, called pldc. It was like a month where you literally just learned to be a leader, how to march, people, all sorts of stuff. You know, what are your roles? So going to continuous improvement, leader, standard work, you have clear roles and responsibilities in the military. General, none of this continuous improvement is going to succeed without leadership, buy in and and them being participants of it and make sure they drive that cultural change. Right? You Sheridan,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 0:51
hello and welcome to another episode of Lean solutions podcast. I am one of your four co hosts. Shane doffenbaugh, I am very happy to be here. Thanks so much for dropping in either to watch or to listen to this podcast. One of the things that I love about continuous improvement is that it can apply to anywhere literally, from agriculture to machinery and manufacturing to zoology and all the letters in between. But also, the other great thing about continuous improvement as it can be informed by many other things. And what I'm very excited today about our topic is that we're looking at military leadership principles as they apply to continuous improvement. Our guest today is one of the nation's leading experts on metric development, KPIs, problem solving and process management. Lee campy is a master black belt in Lean Six Sigma. He brings a vast experience in so many industries, including retail, whether it be online or big box, pharma, medical devices, food manufacturing, healthcare, hospitals, food service, automotive, space exploration and many more. I'm very excited to introduce to you, ladies and gentlemen, once again, back on the show, a US Army Airborne Ranger and father of two beautiful daughters, Lee, campy. Lee, welcome to the show. Thanks again.
Lee Campe 2:15
You finished with space exploration and reminded me I trained the Johnson Space Center Director and her direct reports. I was extremely nervous, because I wanted to bring up the normal distribution. I was afraid some mad scientist would yell out, wrong theory of dynamics says otherwise and so
Lee Campe 2:35
right sleep
Lee Campe 2:36
well that night, but it ended up being all right, no pressure whatsoever there. Huh? I got to see the Mars Rover Landing Live, which was kind of cool. That's
Shayne Daughenbaugh 2:45
really cool. And if you can just give like one other like experience that the rest of us, plebes, and, you know, normal people, wouldn't have in your vast experience. I mean, I just mentioned 1-234-567-8910, more, just different industries you've been involved in. What's another crazy one? I
Lee Campe 3:04
would say the greatest thing about doing Lean Six Sigma, or continuous improvement, at least from the consulting standpoint, is the ability to be in a chicken plant one week, and then the next week I'm in a bank looking at the mortgage process, and then the last few weeks, I've been in a steel mill watching rebar be made. But then in between, I did a online session for a company that gets people access to drugs that they can't normally get access to through the healthcare system. So I think the key there in all of that is all industries have mathematical metrics that need to be improved,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 3:42
right? Interesting, interesting. One of Lee, one of the things that that I remember so much about you I've only known of you and known you for maybe two years now, is right early on. My first introduction to you is about training Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma training. And you said something that was just crazy to me, that I never use PowerPoint when I train. I just bring people along. And then you explained to me, you know, the Starbucks experience where you just had, you know, give a quick example of how we can still use training, and how you've used continuous improvement to improve your training, but now you don't even have PowerPoint
Lee Campe 4:20
slides. That's a good point. We should continuously improve ourselves. You know, when I was a director of Lean Six Sigma at Johnson and Johnson, we actually did a Lean Six Sigma project on why projects took so long, yeah, and what the one of the one of the root causes was it was poorly scoped at the beginning. Sure, it too broad. But as far as so, he was about 2008 where I realized, I guess I became more of an expert on adult learning, and adult learners only retain 5% of lecture. So we have. I've always used Lean Six Sigma training as auto mechanic school. And if you spend a week just looking at screwdrivers and wrenches, but never fix a car, right? What have we done? So yeah, and your example, I take people to. Our bucks, and we time how long it takes to get our drinks, and then we come back and apply the demand methodology to the data and see if we have a problem. And it students love it, one, because they get out of the classroom for two, they get free coffee. And then three, it's so much easier to apply the learning to data that you collected, versus some fictional data set like in college, when we're learning statistics and you have to predict television sales, and you've never done it.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 5:29
So, yeah, yeah, get it. I mean, I was just like, blown away by that, and then it just opened up, just in my head, all the possibilities of, hey, this could be so much better.
Lee Campe 5:42
Yeah. And for the online course, I actually have videos of people getting drinks at Starbucks, so recreating it,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 5:49
right, right? I love that. I love that. So I, you know, I have to think that some of this may even go back to your days in the army, because you've mentioned that you serve both as an enlisted service member and as an officer, you know, so, so let's, let's get into some of these questions here. What are the core what are some core leadership principles from your military experience that you see directly translating into the world of continuous improvement?
Lee Campe 6:20
Well, first off, I want to add I am, I brought props so I was, I would jump that airplanes in the army, and so I just want to put the beret on correctly, so that anytime someone watches a movie now and someone's wearing a Bray, this ain't it. It drives me insane to watch the the abuse of our beautiful beret by Hollywood. You know, it's interesting. One of the ones that I repeat quite often when I'm training. So when we get to the Improve Phase, we usually, most people have to come up with a little training curriculum to teach people how to do the new thing that they've come up with the new process, the new tool. And I'll never forget, a drill sergeant would come out in basic training, stand in front of us and say, My name is Drill Sergeant Jones. I will use the walk through, talk through, method of instruction. And I remember maybe I was a little too wise for my britches, but I was like, Why do I need to know this guy's method of instruction? Now what I learned later is there was a table behind us, and anybody could come by and grade that drill sergeant on his training. Not not us privates, but another drills project could come in. A civilian could come in. So I would say that's, you know, that's step one, right? There is, you know, who's, who's monitoring your training, who's, you know, when's the last time leaders sat in and made sure that people that are providing this information to your employees are providing what they want? Or are you just passing your people off to a trainer? But number two, you know, I realized the average high school graduate in America, and, you know, I could be a little bit off on the data, but the things I've been reading has an eighth grade education and reads around the fifth grade level. And so then I realized when Drill Sergeant Jones, you know, said on the preparatory command left of Left face, I shall pivot my body weight onto the ball of my right foot, you know, just detailed step by step by step instructions. And then you'll notice and Forrest Gump. Gump was a genius as an enlisted soldier, because he did what he was told to do. And so I, you know, a lot of times when clients were doing projects, and we do find that a root cause was that a policy or procedure was not followed. I'm like, you wrote it an MBA level, like, of course, it wasn't followed. This guy is a year old boy from South Georgia. You know, he graduated high school, reads at a sixth, seventh grade level. That's an insult on the public school system, not on him. So we have to, you know, you're talking about an arm our armed forces who deal with 18 year old, 19 year old kids from all different education levels, right? They have to come up with a training curriculum that can train all of them, you know, pretty much at the same time. Now, don't get me wrong, every drill sergeant has a few three or four that they have to spend a little extra time with. I can still remember the names that my drill sergeant would call out. I won't do that in case they're watching, but he would, I'll make up some names. He would burst open the door and go all you dumb private so you know who you are, Jones, Jim and Bob in my office now. And what he was saying was, these are the three that I need to put my extra attention on, which is kind of we go to, the Pareto Principle, right? The 8020 rule, right? You know, the 80% can go through the training, no problem, and the 20% will need a little extra help. But I would say that's the biggest thing from being enlisted was the fact that they really did cater to the lowest common denominator. You know, we have a say in the military. You're only as fast as the slowest person on your team. So the army was. Really good about that. And then I would say, where I find the Lean culture is really strong. Is the same thing the military emphasizes, which is building a cohesive team, a cohesive unit. You know, when I went to Ranger School, which has an extremely high attrition rate in the US military, only about 25% of people that go graduate the first week was spent breaking down your individuality and converting you into a small team, and later, when we get into leadership principles. You know, one of the things we did was we didn't we went a step further and did peer evaluation so you could actually enough of you could get together and say this person shouldn't be on our team anymore, and you were gone, right? Yeah, I find that's another thing too. I find the civilian market sometimes a little too hesitant to take the bad performer off the team. You know, at some point you gotta, you know, that's where 5s I often find fails is on the sustain side. Okay, yeah, at some point, if we paint yellow lines that say pallet jack, and the person can't seem to get the pallet jack. There. You got to go, if it's that important. And sometimes I see companies just sort of let that lag on way too long, right?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 11:10
So, you know, as as I'm as I'm hearing some of this. You know, who, who reviews. You know, the trainers. How can it? How can we make it Basic and Visual? How can we build that cohesive unit? Yeah, I got to think that as you're doing this and consulting all across, you know, the country, and possibly, I've heard even the world, you know, been around in just about any industry, is, is your military background and experience? Is it front of mind when you're thinking this, do you just go, Oh, I've seen this? Or is it so ingrained that it just comes out, you know, in these different ways that you know, as as to how you think I
Lee Campe 11:50
would say it comes out in when I'm thinking about a client wants to roll out continuous improvement, and I'm thinking of all the things that need to be done from a leadership standpoint that some companies don't do the here's a great example. I've seen some terrible root cause analysis in my day. I made a post about it on LinkedIn the other day. For example, lack of training is not a root cause. You know, you have specifically what the guy didn't do and how it caused the problem. But I root cause and a root cause analysis was they didn't read the email I sent out. Well, you know, in Ranger School, for example, you developed a plan. You then disseminated that plan to your next level leadership. They then disseminated that. They're supposed to disseminate that to the line folks here. Just think of a movie, a guy in a foxhole, sure. Well, me as a leader, I actually they're in Ranger School. You're evaluated on your leadership ability, so they're watching you, they're grading you, and you can fail and have to redo, you know, 20 days over again. And so one of the things they're watching for is, did I go down to the foxhole and say to the kid, what are we doing tonight? Now he doesn't have to know all the details. He might just say we're going up on that hill at three in the morning. We're going to blow stuff up, but that tells me he knows where we're going. He tells me what time we're doing it, and he knows his basics. And so when I heard that root cause analysis was, didn't read the email? I'm like, well, when did you go down to the line and ask an operator tell me what you were told this week in regards to an email? And they go, what email? There you go. You know that the information wasn't disseminated. You know that's, I'd say that's one of my biggest pet peeves in the civilian market, is emails are awareness messages at best, right? People use them for action. Well, if action is required, you got to go check and make sure that people are actually digging into the information and understand it,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 13:52
right, right? So that's, it's almost like a twist on, or, you know, expounding the idea of a GEMBA walk, yeah. Instead of going to watch how it works, you're just going down to where the work is done and confirm that they understand what their duties are for this week, or whatever.
Lee Campe 14:12
I guess, using terminology GEMBA walk your information like, right? Yeah. It's one thing to go watch an operator make a part, but if you just, if you just disseminated some change to the org chart, or to a new raw material or something, you should go gage whether or not they've been made aware of that, especially if their role has an impact on that process. Yeah, I think that's a great term. Gimba, the information. I like it. Yeah, let's trademark it.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 14:36
That's right. I'm writing that down right now so that we can you're gonna beat me to it. Gemma, the information,
Lee Campe 14:44
yeah, just the number of times people said, Well, they didn't read the email. I'm like, well, they got 40 of them, you know,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 14:50
right, yeah, right. So it is 2025 the Army's celebrating its 250th birthday this year. Happy birthday. Army. Me What lessons from the long history of discipline? I love this discipline and adaptability. Can organizations today apply, you know, in their own improvement journeys?
Lee Campe 15:12
Well, you know, we have, we'll say when you hear some of the folks, you know, the last year that we've gone after fraud, waste and abuse, there's plenty of it in the US military. So I don't know that we're the most adaptable. I would say, you know, Ukraine has really taught what a horrible, horrible thing that is. But Ukraine, if we're talking about adaptability, I think every military in the world knows that they better start investigating drones, right? And I mean, if you're in armor, which is our tank groups, we call them armor. I mean, just this year, everything's changed. The game has changed, right? So talk about the military needing disseminate information, but there's always been something that I wish civilians would do more of, and that is we have we evaluate. Like, if you go to a leadership course in the military, they have these little events set up and they're watching you, you know, like there's a creek and there's a broken bridge on each side, and there's some stuff laying around, and they'll evaluate someone's ability to get everybody together and get across and make a bridge. You know, it's very interesting to watch. And when I went through, we had the 19 leadership characteristics of a US Army officer. And by all means I cannot remember them all, but you're literally being graded on those as they go through it. And I will admit, you know, my transition from being a, you know, a badass Army Ranger, enlisted soldier, to becoming an officer. I struggled with number 19 when I went to the ROTC advanced course, because I knew everything. I'm a ranger. I've jumped out airplanes 30 times. I've been in the woods for, you know, 180 days I've been in all sorts of crazy places. And then here's a college kid that's never held a compass, you know. So I really had to learn this leadership trait called followership. And I wish only more well good leaders follow when they're not in charge. You know? And so there was a couple times where I didn't get the best rating because it was like, Hey, you tried to take charge. You didn't let him explore his opportunities. You know, you need to step back and let this kid stumble. So for me, followership is really for the senior leaders. Like, I've had a senior leader sit in the room and students are pitching their projects. They go, Well, no, that one that we don't need to do. That one or that one won't work. Well, you know, time out this. This person does the actual job. You don't know that. Like, hear them out a little bit at least ask, you know, we know, go to the gym, but don't go there and tell people what to do. Go there and listen and ask questions. So to me, that's followership. You're a senior leader, but be a follower for a minute. Let that first shift supervisor who's doing their first project lead you along through the domain methodology or something like that. And you know, the other one, I thought was really cool in Ranger School, like we plant. So basically, you just be sitting there in the woods, you know, there's no enemy, but you had to pretend there was you're in the woods of Georgia. You don't know when your name is going to be called, all of a sudden can't be. Yes, you're in charge. And, I mean, the adrenaline just rushes. And you're given a mission, and you're graded on the ability to disseminate that information, because if you don't disseminate it, you're going to fail. You're also graded on delegation. If you don't delegate, there's no way you can pass, because they give you too many tasks to do at once. So you can see a kid that's going to fail because he's not asking anybody to help him, because you have to make a terrain model, you have to plan the mission. There's you have to make sure all the information, it's been disseminated. A lot to do. So if you like the kid, you'll get up and say, Hey, let me help you. Let me help you out. But before you leave, you gotta inspect everybody, make sure they have their gear on, correct. So there's Leader Standard Work in the military, right? Everyone's gotta have their gear. I would say a big one today in the woods in Georgia, is, is your canteen full? Right? I'm gonna shake your canteen. But then what I love about some of the things, at least I was taught, is I turn after inspecting my group, I turn to a soldier and say, inspect me, and let that kid go through everything that I just did to include making sure that I have water. One, because I may have messed up and I don't. And number two, it sends a clear message to the group that, you know, I'm not, I'm not better than you guys. So in that example, it's like, Why? Why don't you do a project yourself, Mr. Leader, you know, if you're you're gonna have a 25 person Green Belt class. Maybe you can't make all of it. I understand. But what's your project?
Speaker 1 19:40
Yeah, yeah. As you were talking, I don't want to, I don't want to go into it too far detail, but the things you talked about, I have just a sliver of experience with doing GORUCK endurance events. Oh, yeah, if you're familiar with GORUCK and you know, and it was, it the things that are. Her, just like, checking off my brain, just all the things that they did to teach leadership, to teach break down the individual, to build up the unity, to build that cohesive unit. So, so all of this is like, yes, yes, I can see this. And I love that you're like, then making that transition into, well, this is what it looks like, you know, in in in the private sector, this is what it can look like for the leaders. You know, how they can be disciplined, how they can find adaptability, you know, for the organization, since
Lee Campe 20:28
we know none of this continues, improvements going to succeed without leadership, buy in and and them right, being participants of it and make sure they drive that cultural change, right, right?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 20:40
Yeah. And I love, I love that you that you finish this sentence because you said leadership, buy in. And I get that, but not only buy in, but that engagement, that participation in this in some way, you know, whatever way that that they can do that super, super important. And, I mean,
Lee Campe 20:57
if anyone's watched Band of Brothers, you see it in some of the lieutenants that they had, you know, the one that was scared to, if anyone's watched it, you know, there was the one that was scared to attack the house and really cause devastation with his group. And then there was the guy that just came flying out of the woods, you know, and just, and everyone's looking at an example, it's not he was crazy, but they're like, Wow, that's a leader. And if you watch that whole show, you know that the soldiers had extremely high respect for that, that Lieutenant, I can't remember his name, but you know they know me, neither crazy urban legends about him as well, which we don't know are true or not,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 21:31
but Right, right? So talking about military leaders again, they're trained to make decisions under pressure and with limited information. From the little bit of what I've heard, little bit of data. How can businesses apply that mindset in times, especially now, with times of uncertainty, or like we just talked about rapid change,
Lee Campe 21:52
you know, I would. So here's an interesting side story. When I left the military, I was stationed in Italy with the what is today, the 1/73 Parachute Infantry. And GE Jack Welch decided that he loved ex military officers. Now, the urban legend is he got the big 12 companies together. At that time, GE had 12 big families. You know, there's 120 company. GE finance. I mean, GE Capital had the most of them. But there's a tool we can use from a group called keppner trigo, an old school problem solving tool called the IS and IS NOT matrix. What's true about one situation, if you use it, when you have a control chart that's gone out of control, say what's true about the time where it was stable? That's not true about this time. And I love it. It's you look for distinctions and changes. And what the point is, if it's true about both situations and it's not the cause of the problem. So apparently they were just this. One group was just doing extremely well compared to the others, and the only thing they could pin it on was, he said, I am hiring ex military officers for management positions. And Jack well said, I want 30% of all new management hires to come from the ex military officer ranks. And overnight GE actually had their own military officer recruiting department. So I think, I don't think Jack knew what he wanted. I think he just saw the data. But after working for now jet, listen, Jack Walsh has positive traits, negative traits. You know, we can all agree on that, but after working there for two years, I realized what G what Jack wolf wanted was a culture of decisiveness. So listen, when you're in Ranger School, you're given a mission. You've only got a little bit of time to plan. And the IT and the it haunts me still today, because it can lead to some crazy consequences. The number one thing, if I were to Pareto out what Ranger instructors yell about, you will hear them yell, make a decision. Ranger make a decision. And that means that kids got like, this much time to make a decision. They're not playing No. It's like, go left or go right, make a decision. And if you don't make the decision, they throw like artillery simulators, and then you have to run like, 500 meters with your you talk about go rock. We're talking about we
Shayne Daughenbaugh 24:11
had to carry people like they would like, you just lost a person. Do you want to make a decision now? You just lost another one. Do you want to make a decision now we're carrying these people
Lee Campe 24:20
now, yeah, so that was the culture of GE, and that's why he was so big on six inches, was that he gave what Jack Welch wanted was all employees to have access to data, so you could not hoard data. I, as a black belt, could go to HR and say, I'm doing a project in HR, give me the payroll data. Now they could code it so you don't measure, although clearly the big numbers. CEO, right, right, right. They could certainly do their protective stuff, but they had to give you the data. And so Jack really wanted this culture of decisiveness. And I would say at least during his tenure, under Six Sigma was a very decisive culture. Culture. I don't remember having a lot of meetings where a decision was not made. You know, now, clearly the strategically, long term, GE hasn't done great. It looks like they're doing well again. But, you know, that's that's business 101, whenever someone says, you know, well, the stock price of a Six Sigma company is x, and a company that doesn't do it is y, I'm like, life is not single y, single x analysis, you know, so anyway, but yeah, I would say the big one is a culture of decisiveness. You've got to make decisions. You have to be decisive. I work for another company that shall remain nameless. I'm not joking. I worked there only a year, and I don't remember ever making a decision in a meeting other than to have another meeting. It was just, it was a crazy, yeah,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 25:44
what are, what? What are some of the things from your military again, you know, the discipline and adaptability that built that sense of decisiveness to make good decisions, not just, you know, a panic decision. Like, there's a difference between being decisive in a, you know, stressful situation and panicking, and just, you know, bold China forward, kind of a few.
Lee Campe 26:08
Well, I would say the Army's emphasis on training and growing leaders. So, for example, the one of the things Jack didn't know, but the average, you know, anybody looking to hire somebody, you get a junior military officer, which is basically a lieutenant or a captain that's been Captain that's been in four or five years, they've had, on average, 26 weeks of leadership training. Wow. You know, civilian can do that. That's why they're such a great resource to pick up and grab on the market, and because you just that's always been my struggle. Like a lot of times, people ask, what makes a great Lean Six Sigma, Black Belt, someone with an engineering degree, and I go, No, a salesperson. Why do you say that? Well, because they don't have a problem talking to people and challenging their ideas. You know, it's a sales business. I don't agree with you at all, and let me go get some data just to disprove you. You know, it's those things you can't teach, which is not being timid, the ability to challenge ideas, being comfortable to speak with others. Your average enlisted, you know, Sergeant, we call them non commissioned officers. I mean, he's, he's probably had, I mean, we have a whole school that back when, when I went through, called pldc, there was like a month where you literally just learned to be a leader, how to march people, how to all sorts of stuff. You know, what are your roles? So going to continuous improvement, leader, standard work, you have clear roles and responsibilities in the military generally. And then you have very well written, like I was the arms room officer, you know, when I was in Italy, and I had very clear directives of what, at once, a month, I had to do 100% inventory the arms room by serial number. I had to do this. I had to do that. So clear lines of responsibility, but you just can't make people responsible for stuff and then not give them the training to do it successfully. And so that's what I would say, the military does a really good job. And that's some of the videos we'll look at, is where we kind of do that. Why don't you pull one up? Who do you got for us? So, so, yeah, so, you know, there is a manufacturing facility in the US military, and I'll put on, we'll kind of go through the process, you know, I'm trying to think, do you start with? It's a circular process. So this is the hat of a parachute rigger, and it's basically our Kanban, right? It's our visual signal. If I'm on the flight line, I'm the only guy wearing a hat, as people are getting ready to get on a c1 30 airplane, and you can see me, and you can wave at me, and then you call me over because there's an issue with a parachute. But if we kind of start, let's go circular. I'll present, and you can holler when it's up on the what did you call it? The Deck,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 28:40
the stage? Yeah. What do we have it up on stage? Yep.
Lee Campe 28:42
So I'm going to share my screen. I've got a little playlist I created for today, and I'm going to go back to the playlist. All right. So this is a jump master. We have a standard. Can you hear me talking? Yep, we have a very clear standard of what we have to do. These are the hand signals. He's going to check the door and make sure it's safe to jump. And there's a checklist that we have to go through. And like the Toyota system, he can stop the jump right there if he sees something wrong. You know, you remember the Toyota way was any operator could stop the line. Yep. And so there we go. Going to jump out the door, and then the jump master is going to follow. He's going to make sure everybody went out, and we'll sort of stop there. So now the manufacturing process begins. Let me go back, hold on one second here to the playlist so that parachute has been jumped, and now you have the role of the parachute rigger, which is to ensure that he or she repacks it correctly. And what I wanted to highlight here is, of course, the use of Leader Standard Work every parachute. Has to be packed the same way. Sure you also see some you'll see some great poke yoke devices up here. As we get close to it, he's folding the parachute. But I want to get to you cannot inspect the finished parachute. The only way you can inspect the finished parachute is to open it again, and which defeats the whole purpose. So here you're going to see an in process inspection. So as you and I know and lean, the user is the best inspector, right? So he has a visual signal that tells him he's done it right, and that is that he can lift this up and see light at the end of the tunnel, and we have an in process quality check, where a senior rigger is going to come and ensure that he's done that correctly. And he's going to pull this up the rigor. Can look in there and see that it's done correctly. And he's just giving an example, and we're ready to pack the parachute. Okay, all right, so then we'll go to the next one real quick. Got to do this playlist each time. All right, so I want to give you an actual example of the rigger check. This is a packing a reserve parachute. And I will go to the let's see at minute 455 he's going to have his first in so there's the rigger with the Red Hat. He's going to be your quality inspector, gotcha. And so at minute, and to make sure that this rigor has done everything right? This is an event. But see, he's looking for light at the end of the tunnel there, yep. And if you look over this guy's shoulder, this guy's getting ready for his rigor check. He cannot move forward until the rigor, senior rigor, tells him that he is has an acceptable level of quality, right there, gotcha, right? And so basically, you spend a week, you know, I went through this as an officer, you spend a week just packing parachutes over and over again, and everybody must do it the exact same way. So then that brings us to the life or death process of jumping out of the airplane. And I wanted to highlight this. So again, we talk Leader Standard Work. I can still do part of this in my sleep. I was a junk master in the army. We are the ones responsible for putting people out of the door safely. Sure, this is one of the hardest courses to pass in the US military you must inspect three jumpers. I believe it's been a while, in 15 minutes. You must call out every error that you find on the jumper, and you must use the correct nomenclature, meaning, I guess, a civilian example, you can't say the scalpel is missing. You know, after surgery, you have to say the stainless steel 174 dash three, scalpel three inch is not in the right spot, sure. So let's watch her do one jumper. And I'm not joking. I can still, I know, to start with my hands on the left hand side and go through because you just do this over and over and over again until you get it right.
Unknown Speaker 33:04
Missing suspension pad. So
Lee Campe 33:07
did you catch that? She just found the first error, missing suspension pad,
Unknown Speaker 33:17
chest strap wrapped around main lift one.
Lee Campe 33:21
So she can't say chest strap hooked up wrong. She has to use the full nomenclature. Inspecting the reserve, hold squat, that bag between his legs is what we used to bring the parachute back after you've jumped with it. Okay? The soldiers responsibility to put it in the bag and carry it off the drop zone. So again, you can see the parachutes packed. All she can do is make sure it's not had some issues right in distribution, but you really make sure the soldier has hooked himself up correctly for a safe Jump, and you see her greater to the left. You
Lee Campe 34:24
Ben. Like, I already see he's got his twist there.
Unknown Speaker 34:32
Settle inverted.
Lee Campe 34:35
Very good. So she'll go on. She has to do two more jumpers. This is her final exam. Gotcha. And then lastly, I just like, Let's go all the way through to the to the sort of the where we started, once you get on an airplane. Now think about this there in a C 17, you've got maybe 40 people in a line. The people 20 back can't hear a word this guy. Saying, so I don't know where we put this in Lean visual controls, right, right. Visual controls combine. But every jump master does everything the exact same way. I can still call out these commands, even though I've been out 20 years now. We'll just watch a few of these. You
Lee Campe 35:33
they're going to stand up and start hooking up. We'll jump ahead
Lee Campe 35:41
the soldiers, again, the users, the best inspectors. The soldiers are making sure they have not wrapped the static line around their arm. And then you're also going to check your buddy in front of you.
Lee Campe 36:00
It. So they're basically going to go up the line and tell everybody that they're okay. The guy in front will give a karate chop hand signal. You can hear that's got to be 4050, people deep.
Unknown Speaker 36:20
Yeah, that that is pretty far,
Lee Campe 36:28
by the way. Did you see the little little tap, yes? Just, just a visual confirmation. You know, again, this is everything's about doing it right first time, because somebody could die. We'll just jump ahead. Let's see if he opens the door you've seen and we just came for full circle. Lastly, just before the jump, believe I've got this. Just before the jump, I as the jump master where we started. I have to check the door to make sure it's safe to leave. If we look at the Toyota Production System, you remember anyone could stop the line when they saw a defect. And so the same holds true for a jump master. He can cancel this whole jump if He sees something unsafe. Jump master, right there.
Lee Campe 37:40
It Alright, so I think we got it. So we finished where we started?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 37:53
Yeah, interesting, interesting. The big thing in there
Lee Campe 37:57
is Leader Standard Work, like nobody can deviate from anything in those examples I showed you, a parachute rigger can't decide to pack it his own way, and me, as a jump master, I cannot change those instructions at any point in time. Understood.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 38:16
Gotcha. Okay. So with the time that we have, running, running close toward the end, I do want to ask at least one question that is immediately applicable, so a leader who's who's watching or listening today, you know, I'm just capturing some of the things you're talking about, but wanting to adopt maybe one or two military leader habits that you talked about that were trained in for the 26 weeks, or, you know, the full month, or whatever it is, you know, if they wanted to adopt one of those to strengthen their team's improvement efforts, what are some things that you might recommend for them to be able to do so well?
Lee Campe 38:58
Walk the talk again, you know, I started with the beret. But if, you know, if my soldiers in an airborne unit wanted to take me seriously, and I'm walking around like a pizza chef, I've lost, I've lost and you see it, I've lost it. This is usually the doc that didn't have to do anything army, but we paid him 300,000 to join. But listen, I've lost all credibility at that point. It's like, you know, you know, if I don't shine my boots, the soldiers aren't going to shine their boots. So I guess I would say, be, be a part of the team, like you're a leader, but you're still on the team, and then maintain high standards, you know, like, it kind of goes back to the email. Well, don't just send the email. Go out and be honest. To make sure people understood it, you could have written an MBA level email that you know, Joe from South Georgia doesn't have a clue what you're talking about, but he's, you know, not especially he works on Saturday and you went home on Friday. So I would say, you know, top man be part of the team set. A good example in dress, attitude, tone, gimba, the information, right, right? Yeah, you know. And like in my case, do a project. Don't just tell people to do projects. Do a project, ask them about their projects. What can we do to help, you know, that kind of thing. So I think that's the big move. Now you'll hear servant leadership, yeah, although, you know it's interesting, sometimes you can be too much of a leader, like sometimes people like to just do their job, and you don't have to be around me so much. You know what I mean? Like, I'll finish with my favorite example. We have a when I first enlisted, I was an engineer, we had to clean bulldozers and stuff like that in a wash rack, and the wash rack gets clogged with mud. You know, you're washing a bull loser. And I was a sergeant. At this point. I was enlisted. I hadn't become an officer. When I came around the corner, all my enlisted guys were leaning on the railing of the wash rack, looking down in it. It's about six feet down in there was the new Lieutenant digging out the mud. And I had to come over and go, sir. Hey, sir. I need you real quick, you know. And this is where maybe, if you're, you know, senior leader, you should be open to some feedback from a good just a good employee, who you trust their feedback, you know. I mean, like, because i Lieutenant, sir, they don't want you here working. Notice what they've done. They've all stopped working. Just they want you to come check. Yeah, no, they, they're just watching you, because who is what is he doing? They, they love that you came and checked on them. Might have brought some water bottles to make sure they're hydrated, you know. But, you know, I'm saying just strike a balance too like sometimes you can be micromanaged too much, and then it really frustrates people. Like, you've given me a bunch of training, but you won't let me do the job.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 41:47
Yeah, I do. I do find that somewhat discouraging. When we go in to a company or an organization, we do some great training, but then they're never able to, or at least not encouraged to use that training in action. Yeah? Like, okay, they did their project, great. And then what happens after that? You know, I go back a couple months later, and nothing new has happened, yeah, you know, I can't speak to, you know, if they've started incorporating that in their way of thinking and whatnot, but they haven't been given opportunity you're encouraged to, hey, we trained you. We did this. Go and do
Lee Campe 42:24
it. Yeah, well, and maybe, on that note, too, don't, as much as we like the business of training. Don't schedule training if you don't have an objective and a mission for it, because you and I both know training for the sake of training doesn't do anything is have a bunch of trained people and right? It's the status quo. Right? Don't train me to jump out airplanes. Never let me jump out of an airplane. Yeah, and by the way, I'll finish. Riggers have to jump their parachute randomly. Your Parachute is selected once a year, and you have to jump it that way. We can make sure you're not sabotaging stuff,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 42:55
right, right? Okay, so in regards to the leadership, the military leadership habit, be a part of the team, maintain high standards. You dress and you're talking in the way you the way you, you know, conduct yourself. And I really appreciated the idea of listening to a trusted worker, listening to someone who may be I don't want to you. I use this term very loosely, but a subordinate, you
Lee Campe 43:22
know, listen, I outrank. I outranked as a young officer, the Sergeant Major. But the sergeant major is an enlisted man, but he's got 25 years in and if he told me to square something away like I'll admit, one time I had gotten injured, and I was in a Burger King on base in the wrong uniform, and he just straight up called me out. He said, Sir, you can't be in here dressed like that. Dressed like that. I'm like, you know, like Derek Zoolander, but I've got the black lung. Well, with all due respect, sir, get your black lung out of here. You know, sit. It'd be the equivalent of your employees. Should not be ashamed to tell a director, sir, you can't go out there. You don't have your safety boots on.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 43:59
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Excellent, excellent. Lee, this has been fascinating here. I really appreciate your service, you know, for all the years that you had in there, and then being able and being willing to share it here as it informs continuous improvement. Awesome. Is there anything, you know, we always ask, you know, how can people get a hold of you if they're interested in learning a little bit more? You mentioned LinkedIn, just finding you
Lee Campe 44:27
on LinkedIn, and I actually wrote an article on on some of the stuff we talked about this week, you know, the and then I have a YouTube channel. If you just type Lee camp, B, C, A, M, P, E, don't leave the E off, because there's a comedian Lee camp, but he's not nearly as funny as me, but I have all sorts of sort of a hodgepodge of different levels of professionalism, but they're all videos that I make, mostly for my students to watch post training. So in case of questions,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 44:51
yeah, I can attest I appreciate those videos. Yeah, good. I've watched your videos before, so
Lee Campe 44:58
follow me there if you want as well. And.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 45:01
Yeah, Okay, excellent, excellent. Thank you so much again, ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of another podcast. We hope that you've enjoyed listening or watching. If you have any questions for us, please feel free to comment to these podcasts. Send us an email. You can maybe send a message to Lee if you got some more questions and follow up on what he mentioned. But all in all, we hope you have a great and continuously improving day. Thanks so much. Thanks. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai