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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.
Patrick Adams 00:00
How much of the responsibility is on the improver versus how much is on the coach?
Dr William Harvey 00:04
I'll say it's 100 percent both of the responsibility. I'm not going to split it. I think the improver has to do the work and the coach has to do the work. So in this, I'm going to add 100 plus 100 is 200 in the story, and it's a shared responsibility in my experience. If I'm the senior manager, the manager of this direct report, and as a leader, it is my responsibility to support that person. It doesn't absolve them of doing the work, experimenting, and meeting with me in between. But ultimately, it's a shared responsibility as I view it.
Patrick Adams 00:47
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Lean Solutions podcast. My name is Patrick Adams, and I am joined by one of my favorite hosts. I think they're all my favorite, but I say that for all of them. Sorry, Andy, but one of my favorite hosts, one of my three favorite hosts, Andy Ulrich. Andy, great to have you back on the show with me.
Andy Olrich 01:06
G'day, Patrick. It's always great to catch up, even over the air waves, mate. How have you been?
Patrick Adams 01:10
I've been good. I've been really good. Thing summer's starting to come to an end here, so you know we're. It's kind of like bittersweet. You know, I do love the winter, but you know summer is nice too. So kids are getting ready to go back to school, and my wife works in the school, so she's getting ready to go back. And so you know they're a little bummed that the summer's over, but it's it's all good. It's part part of the how how things flow through the year, you know.
Andy Olrich 01:38
Yeah, awesome. Well, we'll gladly take it off you down here because we're we're coming out of winter, so yeah, I'm looking forward to it to to some warmer days. But yeah, awesome, mate.
Patrick Adams 01:46
Well, we we we have a great topic for today. There's a lot of discussion around the lack of sustainment when it comes to CI initiatives and organizations, and I think it's something. It's a topic that we can't we can't talk too much about. I think it's important that we're open to hearing all different perspectives and experiences from people in different industries and how how they're leveraging different tools and principles and just approaches to sustain continuous improvement because it is such an important piece. We don't want the flash in the pan, and we we really want to achieve the real measurable results long term, and so it's important that this topic is something that we're visiting on a regular basis. And so I'm excited for the topic and for our guest today, Andy. Do you want to tell us a little bit about our guest?
Andy Olrich 02:39
Yeah, love to. So we're very fortunate to have the wonderful William Harvey on the podcast for this episode. So, a bit about William: he's program manager of strategic initiatives at a specialty chemical company, drawing on two decades of plant floor leadership and doctoral research on Toyota Carter Sustainment to build operating systems that hold. He teaches supervision and managerial finance at the University of Cincinnati, and serves as conference chair of AME Milwaukee 2026 2026. Yes, William, great to have you on the show, mate. Welcome aboard.
Dr William Harvey 03:12
Yeah, thank you, Andy. Pleasure to be here, and Patrick, nice to see you. It's been four years or three years. It has been. Yeah, you you were on the show
Patrick Adams 03:18
a number of years ago, and we're happy to have you back and semperfy to my fellow Marine friend.
Dr William Harvey 03:24
Absolutely, I love the shirt today. By the way, yes, I
Patrick Adams 03:27
wore my I wore my Eagle Globe and Anchor for those of you that can't see it. So just just for the for William being on the show today, I appreciate you and and your service.
Dr William Harvey 03:37
Likewise, Patrick, and I would just add to that, it's not even just the Marines you served with-it's any Marine, any time, any generation. Yeah. So for me, it's just fascinating where you just go, okay, well, I can hear the stories of those that came before me. Love hearing the stories from those that are serving today. So, just a wonderful passing of tradition from A to B to C.
Patrick Adams 03:54
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, and one of the things that Andy mentioned, just kind of shifting gears a little bit here, is you as the chair of the 2026 AME conference, which is coming up in October? I don't want to pass that over because I know you're, or pass over that. I know you're just, you know, you're ramping up. You're getting really busy. How are things? How's planning going? How's how's the event kind of shaping up? Do you want to give us a quick kind of down and dirty on that.
Dr William Harvey 04:23
Yes, the events in Milwaukee, and it's october 26 to 29th. And to say it's going well is an understatement. Supported by chairs is the volunteer group that I get to lead, and they've been doing a phenomenal job. And we've been at it for over a year now, planning for this October event. And at least in recent years, this is the furthest along we've been in terms of the speakers engaged, ready to go. The marketing's out, so people know what they're going to get this year in the conference. And then separately, the AME home team, which are those that work for AME on a day-in and day-out basis, a small but mighty team-have been taking all that work from the 20 or so volunteers. That put the work into the conference and turning that into what you see on the website. So if you went to ame.org, you can see what that looks like for this year, and it's roughly 1,100 or so folks showing up every year, and it says Association for Manufacturing Excellence as you learn about it. But the reality is, it's all about continuous improvement for any industry.
Patrick Adams 05:18
Yeah, yeah, it's a great event. I agree with you. It's definitely not. You don't have to be in manufacturing to to come and get some serious value. You have to change the name to like Awesome Makers of Excellence or something like that.
Dr William Harvey 05:33
Yes,
Patrick Adams 05:34
that's basically what's happening there.
Dr William Harvey 05:37
42 years now. This year in the conference, yeah, they've been in it a while for the work, and that's all contributing back to the early '80s with Doc Hall and a few of the others that founded or co-founded A.M.E. at the time.
Patrick Adams 05:52
Love it. That's great. Well, well, I'm excited to to kind of hear how things pan out and see how the event goes. Yeah, we're we're our event is fairly-it's like a month, a little maybe, yeah, about a month earlier than that. So we're separated enough where I think people will be able to attend both conferences if they want to, and I think both are definitely worth going to. So I would definitely recommend AME. It's a great place to connect with some of your friends, some of the people that you interact with on LinkedIn, but you never see in person. That's the place to go, and and it's definitely a great way to just re-energize yourself and your team, and yeah, launch launch into 2027 in a good way. So appreciate that you stepped up and took that position on the chair, chair there. That's that's a lot of work for sure.
Dr William Harvey 06:44
Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Patrick Adams 06:45
Well, let's get into the topic for today, William. We're we're talking about sustainment, and you have a lot of experience in this area, and you you get around to different places and get to see kind of some of the tools and approaches that different organizations are using. But the first question I wanted to ask was why. So I want to know why do you think that organizations struggle? Let's start with that and let's kind of define the reason behind it, and then we'll go to maybe some some tools or techniques or approaches on how to combat the why. So what do you think, William? What's the why behind it?
Dr William Harvey 07:21
For me, and this is just my experience, so you got to take it for what it's worth. When I did my research years ago, it was fascinating to me when I got to the sustainment piece, and very few people had anything to say about it. We were really good at starting, and we were really good at doing the work, but we weren't necessarily good at sustaining it. And come a few years later in my career, I came across three things that I believe are really at the root of it. The work isn't meaningful. People don't feel safe to do the work, or they just simply don't have the availability or the time
Patrick Adams 07:51
to do it.
Dr William Harvey 07:52
So those three are the big ones. Is it meaningful? Is it safe to do the work? And do I have the time to do the work?
Patrick Adams 07:58
I love it. Yeah, that's a just a quick follow up question to that before I pass it off to Andy. But when when you say safe, what does that mean? Like, do you are they getting physically injured? Are they like, what's the when when you say that it's it has to be safe? What do you mean exactly with that?
Dr William Harvey 08:17
So for me, it's two things. I do need to be physically safe, and equally important, maybe even more so, is I need to feel safe. So it's a it's a yes and or a both and kind of conversation here. I could have it one without the other, but I don't think you get the full benefit of the person's engagement without both being there. And for me, the the psychological piece is so important. But then I think about the physical safety, and I give you just a real example. Is you know, a firefighter may feel psychologically safe, but not physically safe running to a burning building yet. They do it anyway, so it's not necessarily that you need both at 100% but you do certainly need that psychological safety to say, if I did take an action, I'm supported by my team, my coworkers, my leader, etc.
Patrick Adams 08:57
So, so possibly there. I mean, there's probably a lot of different ways that this is can be sliced and diced. But an organization goes in, you know, maybe learns about lean and starts to head down this path. Lean is brand new to them, and maybe their leadership is driving some initiatives. But people, because the the culture maybe is one of not having psychological safety. The people are doing what they have to do to appease leadership, but they're not necessarily going to sustain that long term. There's no ownership. There's no engagement. They're just kind of doing what they have to do to not get yelled at. You know, that was that kind of accurate. Again, just one one example. I'm sure there's multiple examples of psychological safety. It could be an organization that's farther along on their lean journey, and maybe a new leader comes in, or maybe it's just always been that way, and they've been lucky enough to to get past maybe some of that. But there's still this sense of people not being safe to raise their hand or to bring. Problems. I mean, there's probably many different reasons why, but that's really the the basis of not being able to sustain lean long term when there's when there's not psychological safety. Is that accurate?
Dr William Harvey 10:11
I think it's one of the many reasons. And just one specific experience from my life, the way that it was experienced by the team when they presented to me was lean cut their friends' jobs, so whatever happened prior to my arrival, that's what I was told, and I figured this out pretty quickly. So for the next year, I didn't use the word lean. I simply just did the work, made the work easier for people, made it better, made it faster, made it cheaper for the company in long term. But the really big piece for me is I didn't use Lean, and that was a, a bit of language change for me because I was so used to working in places that called it that. But at that point, I made a commitment to say, don't even say the word, just do the work. And to me, if I can do that, then I'm talking at the right level to the right person with the right problem. I don't need to put any new vocabulary in because I simply walked out and said, "You know what's getting in your way today, Patrick? You'll tell me. If I say what can make your work easier, Andy, you could tell me. And I don't need any fancy words for that. I just simply need to ask a really good question and listen.
Andy Olrich 11:09
Yeah, interesting. Like where we've started there. Like I was running some training yesterday, and there was a lot of new people there. That was part of the reason we were doing this was a 5s uplift that they're looking to to do in this factory, but there's a couple there that would have been there for over 15 years, and and I knew it would come up, but if not, I was going to raise it, and and one of the guys said, "Look, we've done this sort of stuff before, and you know what's what's behind it this time, and so I said, "Oh well, there's definitely a direction, all those things where we want to go from leadership. But then I just said, "Well, help me understand why it didn't stay. What happened? And yeah, those those reasons you gave, that a few of those did pop up, and it was really about well, the leader stopped asking me about it. I didn't have time, or you know, no one else had to do it, and we all got paid the same. So I just said, "Oh, there it goes. And that was that was really, yeah, really true, and rings through with what you said there. So even just an example yesterday in a place I'm doing some work now, yeah, and and just a quick analogy that someone hit me with a few years ago is he just looked me straight between straight in the eyes and he said, "Oh, the circus is back in town, and I said, "Oh, help me! Okay, where you going with? Help me! I want to hear that one. I haven't heard that one before, and it was all about you know. There's he said every few years someone like you rocks up, and there's all the fanfare and the the posters and all that. You know, here we go. This is it, and this is what we can do. And then he said, "Oh, I just got to sweat you out for a few years, and Blake's like you go away, he said. "No, I can just go back to doing what I've always done. I know where this is going. He said, "Hopefully it doesn't this time. But and I thought, "Yeah, that's a great analogy about the circuses back in town because he'd been there long enough to see it come and go and come and go. So really great topic, and I agree, Patrick. We can't talk about this enough because it's always after that sugar hit wears off. It's the grind of keeping it going when things change, right? So awesome, mate. So, and just on that thing around leadership, right? So that was one of the key reasons. I mean, sometimes it's a throwaway to blame the boss or blame the leaders, but it is such a key part of it, right? So leads into the next question I have for you here is okay. So around the leadership behaviors in in particular, but what daily leadership behaviors make this thing a habit instead of the the flash in the pan or the the initiative that you know is seen as just a separate little thing for a while.
Dr William Harvey 13:33
So I think there's two things happening here, right? One is there's some leadership action, as in Andy comes and he does the work, and then the person says, "I got this problem, and to me, that's the trust building or trust breaking moment. And if the leader gets this right at this time, and honors the fix whatever the person needs done, delivers that, and goes back out and asks in and again, my experience says after you do that enough times, I can eventually walk out and just say, "Andy, we fixed all the things that were getting in your way. What do you think about X, Y, Z next? How do we make this better? And at this point, I've removed the barriers that once existed because they were these were the real things that a person faced. So for me, it's just that practice every single day that you go to the workplace, you talk to Andy, and you say, Andy, what's getting in your way today? And if I have a corporate objective that we need to get somewhere, I can just say, "Hey, here's what we're trying to achieve, and here's why. How do we do it? And the way that I've always thought about this is a concept that I say is "bend, don't break. And with that, I mean it's really this n plus one math, right? So, Andy, I'm going to push you every day. We're going to get one better, and I don't care how far we go together. I just want to make sure we're better than we started, and eventually I'll hand off to another leader, or you become the leader, and you're doing this with your team. I mean, as long as we're advancing the line together, I think that's really where the work stays and grows. And without that conversation of going and seeing, showing respect, asking questions, listening, and then delivering, I think any sustainment. Effort in any organization is going to falter. It's
Patrick Adams 15:02
great, great, great point. Yeah. So, and how do you make that a habit? I know you said go out every day. Is there? I mean, things come up. You know, other priorities pop in. I get sick one day. Whatever. How do we? How do we make sure that that sticks? How do we ensure that that it's not just something that I commit to for a couple days and then it's done? Because I agree with you, William. Like if you were to do that, even just pick one employee a month and just every day you're out there and you're pick you're fixing one little thing every day, that would be huge. I mean, that would add up to massive change for that person, and and you would win them over very quickly. But how do you stick with that as a leader when you have all these other things that are going on around you?
Dr William Harvey 15:51
So leaders set direction. So ultimately, it's looking in the mirror. Is this really where I want to spend my time? Is this where I see value? When I think about me adding an extra hour to my workday that only gets me so far. But if I can go out and make improvements with the team, then we can multiply that effort, and then I don't even need to work the extra hour. In fact, I get an hour back to my life to do more improvement work. But I go back to that availability piece that I mentioned earlier, which is: Do you protect your time? And a lot of times, I hear people say improvement work is on top of the work. If it's ever viewed as on top of the work, then it just adds to my day. So the person doesn't have the time to do the work. So I would say the leader's responsibility is to make sure his or her team can do the improvement work that's required, and then where that work just became or needs to be done, find the resources to do it, divide the work appropriately, but preserve the team leader's time, preserve the you know, continuous improvement team's time to go do this work. Otherwise, it becomes an impossible task for them.
Patrick Adams 16:46
Yeah, what would you say to somebody? I just think of a client that I'm working with right now, and when I was I was out there with one of the value stream team leaders, and he literally was running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Like he was in and out of meetings. He was at at the visual, you know, production boards filling things out. Back in meetings again, you know, it's like a lot of people. I'm sure that are listening in, you know, are in similar environments where they they have all these conflicting priorities that are happening, and you know, you can say that you want to make that a priority, but how do you get out of that? You know that that and that way of working where you know again it might not be his fault. It might be leadership or you know whatever it is that's happening. He doesn't doesn't have enough enough team members to do what they're being asked to do, I don't know whatever it is. How do you stick with it, though? How do you make it something that is that's not going to go away? How does it become that non-negotiable item that I'm going to do every day, no matter what?
Dr William Harvey 17:55
Thank you. When you start that question, I just got this image in my head. One of my mentors, his name is Ray Atia, and one of the the really cool videos he put out, he just says, "You just stop running. And I think that's the first awareness: is I'm running. The second part, at least to my experience, is figuring out like why am I running, and I realize it's because I haven't built the capability of my team to solve those problems yet. That's a leadership and a William problem. What I'm mindful of, and I want to be clear here is I don't blame leadership for the failures that exist. I look at it from the perspective and say, well, why are they doing it? And if my work as their junior isn't aligned with leadership, that's a thing for me as a junior to align to. So slightly, you know, tangential here, Patrick, is that I've got to make sure I'm aligned with my leader, not simply just pushing my own agenda. So when I coach people to be the you know the first time they're out doing improvement or coaching other improvers is to go to their leader and ask for the most important thing they can solve in the next 90 days. That is where I get the support. And if I don't do that and I just push my own agenda, of course I want my work to be done the way I want. I mean the beauty that I found at least in this is when I do the work that the leader needs, I then get the time to do what I want to do, which are these you know called pet projects for lack of a better term. And now I've got the support from my leadership because I solve their problem, and I've got the support of my team because I solve some bigger problem on the day-to-day basis. To me, I think the sustainment can be pretty simple if we don't overthink it. It's really just saying how do we remove the obstacles in our way toward the goal we're after, and that exists whether I'm talking to a CEO or I'm talking to a frontline employee who just started on day three on the factory floor.
Andy Olrich 19:31
Yeah, it's that blame culture, right? Instead of okay, let's just lift up. Let's look at the process. What's happening here? Why? Why the conditions that the there's an environment that is producing, or a system that's giving you the results you get. Got to deal with it. Rip the bandaid off, as we say down here. Like you've just got to, yeah, have an objective view of it and have a look. But there's there's people working a certain way for a certain reason, and if you're not prepared to to have that moment to really get under the surface and try and understand why they do it a certain way. Most people aren't trying to bring the company down or hurt someone, right? It's just I feel like I'm forced to work this way, or I've been doing it this way for such a long time, and and why should I change? So, just kicking into that about change and and how we can can move on, and as you said, get one one better every day. One of the things we we touched on in your bio was around Carter, okay, and experimentation and that deliberate practice of daily routines and things. So there's some leaders out there. I know down here in Australia we don't hear a lot about Carter in in many circles. Okay, so can you just, if you don't mind, if you could just say just give me a couple sentences on what Carter is, and roll into something around. Okay, how can we? How can leaders in particular use tools and methods like Toyota Carter to develop and build that army of problem solvers? Like you said, so you can stop running. I'm
Dr William Harvey 20:56
going to answer concisely. There is a four-step improvement pattern that the improver does, and there is a set of five questions that the coach asks the improver each day, and the intent is deliberate practice toward some larger goal. That's the end of the answer. What I want to answer the second part, Andy, which I think is the more valuable part. Like many people listening, you're probably like me, where you got trained in so many tools, and then to get certified, you had to go show people you could do that work somewhere. It didn't matter if it was solving a real problem; you just needed to verify that you could do a 5s event or run a Kaizen somewhere. And what was true in my world, it was taking it from six to 18 months for a black belt to get trained and be out and be proficient and really adding value to the organization. Then came Cada for me, and the short story of this is, three coaches plus seven improvers launched 10 different improvement projects. At the end of a three-week cycle, we solved eight of those 10 problems, and we had a couple of these folks sign up and say, "I want to be a coach, and I thought that's interesting. What just happened? Then I went and watched them coach, and they were getting their coworkers to improve the things in their workplace, and that blew my mind because I didn't expect that to be the answer, which is the genesis of my research. That I never got to that answer, but for me, that was the fastest transferable way that I could give somebody to go out and do the plan-do-check-act cycle, which underlies all what really is in the improvement kata and the coaching kata is really just a way for the coach in the story to understand what the improver is thinking, and ultimately guide that next step with some rationale that makes sense. Is this is the next experiment we're going to run?
Patrick Adams 22:45
Do you do you sorry, Andy? Just jumping in here, but do you when people follow that process and and the you have a coach that's coaching the improver? What? How much of the responsibility is on the improver versus how much is on the coach in that scenario? Is it is the coach responsible to drive results, or or is it the improver? Like, what what would you say?
Dr William Harvey 23:16
I'll say it's 100% both of the responsibility. So I'm not going to split it. I think the improver has to do the work, and the coach has to do the work. So in this, I'm going to add 100 plus 100 is 200 in the story, and it's a shared responsibility in my experience. If I'm the senior manager, the manager of this direct report, then as a leader, it is my responsibility to support that person. It doesn't absolve them of doing the work, experimenting, and meeting with me in between, but ultimately it's a shared responsibility as I view it.
Andy Olrich 23:46
It's interesting that when you look at the the card and the routines and how, and when you said in within three weeks you solved eight problems, yeah, what's that next obstacle and just dealing with that? What's the next step? Not the whole big thing like yeah something in the scale of a black belt project or something like that, and it takes time. And especially after three months, for example, if there isn't that really impactful visible difference, especially to some of those doing the work or being involved in the project, they can just go, "Oh, this is just I'll just get back to work. Right. Whereas it's that daily visible change and that visibility around what did and asking the questions around, yeah, what did you learn? Okay, not not did we win or lose, but okay, what did you expect? What happened, and and then what did you learn? Okay, let's let's go again. So I think I think when we talk about psychos psychological or psychosocial safety, that immediately for me when I when I see that is it's taking away that little bit of did it work? Did you get it right? You know, two. Okay, how did we go? We thought this would happen, and what did you learn? Okay, so what? And now, what's your next step? Takes that pressure off that huge behemoth, maybe what you think is the target. So I love it when we have people on here that are practicing it, and they have those real stories because it's it's. So true, and yeah, little by little, one every day, it kind of gives you that opportunity to do that, and you're documenting the evidence, not only how you went, but also what are they thinking is going to happen. So it's a really good moment to to understand how your people think, not just oh, I reckon, I reckon if we do that, it'll work. Or it gives them that moment to have their say before you step into that little project, right, or that activity, it's great, mate. And I'm just, yeah, like I said, I get really excited when we have people like you on, who practice and and can see the results, not just with yourself, but everywhere, right?
Dr William Harvey 25:31
Yeah, there was certainly the skill of these, you know, 10 improvers. I'd say the the skill of the coaches was to scope the project appropriately in the the first target condition in Kada language, which is a called a small goal to the ultimate goal, and that to me was the really important piece because we didn't go after everything. We said let's just solve this one thing, and we were fortunate enough that those were able to be solved within our team. There's a couple that weren't were really just engineering projects where you say, hey, we we got to the answer, but we or the problem that we defined it well, but we just need engineering support to solve this next thing. And like many things, we get put in a queue and just say, okay, hey, you're number seven on the list. You're number two on the list based on the opportunity for the team to get to you. But ultimately, the the scoping I think is critical, particularly when people are practicing kata. And your point, Andy, about learning the part I didn't share in my explanation kata for me is when Mike Rother, the author of Toyota Kata, talks about it, he's really just trying to move people closer from their mental model to reality, and that to me is the life experience. So if you can go out and find a way to disconfirm a theory, not confirm it, that's going to be much more valuable in learning. Where I say, what would make this not true today? And I'll give a shout out to Gemma Jones who really inspired that thinking in my own. And I said, okay, that's the way I'm going to start practicing my own work because I can go find a bunch of evidence to say it's working. It's much more challenging to say, let me go disconfirm it because then I can come up with a new idea and then go experiment further. It's not the one thing that works. It's learning that the 99 don't. Yeah. So it's a challenge for the coach not to give you the answer when you want to get results faster. So part of it is really saying: Is somebody going to get hurt? Are we going to miss a critical customer order? Are we going to destroy equipment? If the answer is you know unfavorable to any of those, of course step in. But if the answer is not, it's really just a leader's desire to step in. So we'll just hold that and just let the person learn because they're going to find five, six things that become beneficial in their future problem solving.
Patrick Adams 27:26
I love that, and the the other thing too that it does is not only does it take the the fear of failure away, like you know failure. If I if this doesn't work out the way that I expected, it's not that big of a deal because I'm I'm going to ask myself what did I learn, and that's a good thing. But the other thing that it does when you have that level of psychological safety, and you're not worried about failing or how many times you fail, as long as you're learning along in your journey, you you're also more apt to move quicker or take take steps faster than you know the old paralysis by an or yeah paralysis by analysis. It's like no, I I I I have enough information here to at least experiment to try something, and then again, like maybe I rule this out, maybe I learn something new, and then I move to the next thing. And because of that, we're able to get to the solution much quicker because we're going to learn so much in the beginning as we're experimenting and shifting forward, without having that worry of you know I have to have it right the first time and I got to go to leadership and tell them that I solved this problem. No, go to leadership and tell them what you learned, and they should be happy. And you know that's how they should respond in a psychologically safe environment. Is wow that's amazing. I can't believe how many different ways that you've been able to rule out. Look how much closer you are now, and look what you've learned, and how you've developed those those thinking skills. I mean, that's the value in it, right? It
Dr William Harvey 28:54
is. Is just spirit of thought, and this goes back to many years ago. But in the military, there are enlisted people and officers. In this case, I have a senior enlisted person who is just chewing me up and down because he didn't get to go to a professional school that he needed to. And this is after me pleading with him to submit his paperwork in time, supporting him in my my role. And fortunately, there was my my direct officer who heard this and came out and talked to that senior enlisted person, and it was one of those closed door meetings. I didn't get a C, but I could certainly hear it. And then my senior officer comes out and he says, "Come in here real quick. I was like, "Okay, man, I I didn't do anything wrong, but what stuck with me was that that major in this store, the officer, made sure I upheld the standard that we put for us in the Marine Corps, and that to me was one of those things where I said, "Well, the standards, the standard in this case, the the first sergeant was the one who didn't meet the date that he needed to, and to me, that reinforcement from that senior leader just made me think, "Okay, no, that major's got it. I can certainly go on and keep pushing forward with this. Had that not happened, I just. Yelled at, I'd been like, man, this isn't cool. So I'd been less likely to push that, you know, the next time toward the standard because the leader didn't support me. So I think you've got so many of these stories where leaders are good at supporting you and not. And if you're not that, if you haven't had that experience where leaders support you wholly, you really haven't fully experienced psychological safety because once it's that, it's just so inspiring for me as a person, and obviously I'd say energizing to go out and try to do more and better for that leader. Conversely, that enlisted person that was yelling at me, I lost a lot of respect that day for that person, and just said, "You know what? If you're not going to meet the deadline, it's hard to listen to you tell me that we need to hold a standard when you're not meeting them yourself. So that leadership by example became so critical, which is why I go back to that you know that comment about going out and seeing, asking questions, listening, and trying to solve problems with your team. It becomes so self fulfilling in that prophecy. So then it's just like, well, improvement never ends if I do the same things every day. The moment I decide to stay in my office, the moment I decide not to go ask those questions, that's the day improvement starts today.
Andy Olrich 31:02
I I did get just you know, and I do come across. I mean, obviously, in good mates of Patrick, but people have been in the military and now do this sort of work, right? And and I share that example because I say, how do people get into this? How did you get into this work? I say I tell some stories, and I say, look, we've got some people in the military, and they said, oh, well, that's all about giving orders. You just do as you're told. How? Why do they do they like that? Because they can have freedom to think now. And I'm like, well, when you get under the surface of it, it's it's about standards and and and accountability and those things. But there is still like once you know, I've never I've never been in the in the army or anything like that. But still the same thing, right? There's a plan, but you've you've got to rely on your teams to think for themselves and and come up with quick innovative solutions and and I just think yeah I I the more I read into this and meet people like yourself that have come from what most from the outside looking in is just like oh you just do as you're told there you're just a you know whatever and then you get to meet them and there's like that's a whole different the autonomy, and just you got to think for yourself. I find it, yeah, really, really cool. But it's about the standards, right? And so, for those who we we have guests or people who comment on our podcast that are different ends of the spectrum, one is you just get on and don't don't put any yeah, don't worry about data. Just get on and do these little quick improvements every day. It doesn't really matter about some people will say, "Don't measure; just see how they feel. And then there's others right up the other end that says, "And you know, unless you've got some statistical control or those sorts of things, they go, 'Oh, that's not a real project. There's still measures. If you do Carter for me, like you're still measuring and documenting, and and that thing that you said, you're you're measurable plan versus actual was the due date for that person to submit, so straight away you can point to that and say, "No, we agreed. And there's that number in this case takes that ambiguity out of it. You're not just being a a bad boss or someone heavy. It's like we agreed, and that's we're both looking at that thing now. So it's a little bit harder to challenge. So I just love that analogy. And as I said, I do get a little bit of pushback going, "Oh, well, if people have been in the army. They're used to being told what to do, and I'm like, "Well, you're just not getting what we're doing here, right? So, yeah,
Dr William Harvey 33:06
I think they're missing a huge opportunity because if you would ask me, I would say certainly there are orders, and those orders make sense when they're given because that's where you start. But then you're trying to understand it's really about maintaining the standard. What you learn very quickly is the leader will set a vision, and in the Marine Corps, at least, it was called Commander's intent. So, commander would say, "This is my goal. This is what I want to achieve, and that's no different than a plant manager or site manager saying, "This is what we're trying to get after this year. Leaving up the how to the team is really the the leadership strength that I've seen where organizations do really well, because at this point, I'm going to the people doing the work, and I say, "Okay, here's what we're trying to get. How do we get there given these resources? And with that, that's really where the the work matters. And I think about the the multiple kaizen practices we could employ, whether you're doing them for a moment or you're doing them for a week, depending on how your organization thinks about it. It's really just saying let's keep after that forever. And if we can do that every single day one more time, then I think you got a chance of sustaining this, but the moment any leader lets up, it's really just a. I would say it's a sad day for me because I'm like, well, now we're going to start slipping the moment that decision's made.
Patrick Adams 34:11
Love it. Well, it's been yeah, it's been been great to have you on back back on the show, William. As always, just love catching up with you, and we will have to talk about scheduling another episode, and it'd be cool to grab even a couple military members from around the world, different services, and and even just have an episode dedicated to just the learnings that come from the military. I think that'd be a cool cool show for sure. So, but anyways, I wish you all the luck with AME coming up in October, and and definitely if anyone's interested, I know William. I know you're on LinkedIn. Obviously, they can go, they can Google AME 2026 and in Milwaukee and find all the information that they need. This what's the website for AME?
Dr William Harvey 35:00
Ame.org.
Patrick Adams 35:02
There you go. Easy enough. Ame.org. So yeah, thanks again, William, for being on. Andy, great to see you, and wish wish you guys the best best of luck in everything you do this week.
Dr William Harvey 35:14
Thanks, Andy. Thanks, Patrick. See you guys next