People First, Always

Show Notes

What You’ll Learn:

In this episode, host Shane Daughenbaugh, and guest Matt Singh discuss the importance of putting people first in Lean Six Sigma transformations. They emphasize the need for leadership to lead by example, provide support, and create a culture where employees feel valued.

About the Guest:

Matt is a Senior Project Manager at Children's Nebraska. Prior to that he spent 8 years as the director of operational excellence and master black belt for the Department of Administrative Services in the state of Nebraska. Over the last 20 years, he has served in a variety of progressive management roles, including sales and service operations and supply chain. He is certified as a master black belt in Six Sigma as well as a master black belt in Lean Six Sigma. Additionally, he is certified as a Lean Sensei and holds the Project Management Professional or PMP credential. Matt completed his MBA from Doane University and Masters of Science in Leadership from University of Nebraska- Lincoln. He is also the focus of several articles and books on process improvement including a case study from Harvard's executive education program.

Links:

Click Here for Matthew Singh LinkedIn

⁠Click Here For Shayne Daughenbaugh’s LinkedIn

What is The Lean Solutions Podcast?

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.

Matthew Singh 00:04

You know, being people focused can be very process oriented. Can be very rewarding from that checkbox perspective, too. Hey, there is a difference between getting results and being people focused. I know why. Because some people are so people focused, they don’t get results. Some people are so results, they don’t get people focused. And the problem is, if you mix them together, that’s actually what we’re trying to do,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 00:22

planting the seed so people understand where we’re going and what we’re trying to do. But also using data, giving them these things is putting them first. You

Matthew Singh 00:31

have to include the people who do the work. You have to include them from beginning to end. It’s it’s giving them a structure and a fork, like a foresight into knowing exactly what comes next, to take the guesswork out of it, knowing that if we incorporate the process as it’s created, it will bring them along. You

Shayne Daughenbaugh 01:03

Bob, hello and welcome to the Lean solutions Podcast. I’m going to be your host today. Shane Dauphin Baum, very excited to have you here with us, and as we get started, I wanted to have you do a little bit of an exercise with me. I want you to gaze off into the distance and imagine, imagine being on a team or in an organization where everything looks efficient on paper, you know, like there’s great looking KPIs. Goals are being met. Metrics are all over the place, and they’re they’re looking just smashing. But when you lift the lid or look behind the curtain a little bit in reality, you see a different story. You see a story where no one feels heard, where decisions are dragged out, so therefore there’s always a crisis trying to meet deadlines, and where the energy, frankly, is just kind of flat or maybe even gone, not a great place to be. Now I want you to look the other direction and gaze off into this sense, the other direction. And this time, I want you to flip the image. So I want you to imagine where you’re in workplace, where people actually want to show up, where ideas flow, where results don’t just happen, but they happen better. Now in this scenario, I want to tell you what the difference is between these two because what’s really driving this is not the process, is not driving the success, but instead it’s the people. And I want to share with you I have this great opportunity right now in this podcast to bring in a very good friend of mine and mentor from my previous role at the state of Nebraska, and I want to share how putting people first always is the better way to go, because when I was hired on to the state of Nebraska, and I have to give my mentor and friend kudos for great judgment and great taste as well in hiring me, what I experienced, and I’m only speaking from my experience. I experienced being invested in and and in this situation, my mentor put the focus on me and and spent time with me, spent energy with me, gave me the knowledge that he had, so that I could also turn around and then put people first in the different agencies that I worked at and in doing so we were able to create this great, really great culture where, because we’re able to put the people first and investing in them, that that’s where the progress and success was that we’ve talked about here on this podcast before. So I want to introduce you to my good friend, Matt Singh. Matt, thanks so much for coming. I am very jazzed to have you here on this show. And let me give our listening audience and our watching audience here just a little bit of background about you. Matt Singh is the Senior Manager for operational excellence at Children’s Nebraska hospital. He’s the former Director of Operational Excellence and master black belt for the Department of Administrative Services in the state of Nebraska. Over the last 20 years, Matt has served in a variety of progressive management roles, including sales and service operations and supply chain. He is a certified master black belt in Six Sigma, a master black belt in Lean Six Sigma, a certified lean Sensei, and holds the project management, professional core, gentle. PMP, so Matt, thanks so much for for being here on the show. I am jazzed.

Matthew Singh 04:40

Hey, thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. So Matt,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 04:45

we have some great history going back and and now you’re in a bit different of a place from, you know, working in state government for, I don’t know what was it about, eight years? Mm. And to now you are at a very large healthcare facility and working there, what are, what are some of the differences just right off the top? Or are there any, any significant differences to how you approach lean in state government and how you approach lean in the healthcare system that you’re in right now.

Matthew Singh 05:24

Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of similarities, but some key differences that popped up within the first year. I’ve been here a little over a year now, and got to work on a lot of projects so far at the enterprise level, usually for the officers, the senior vice presidents, vice presidents, this kind of stuff. So very similar to what I did at the state. So you get to see kind of the of the complexity of the systems, complexity of the culture. I’d say one of the biggest differences I noticed is that in government, more than continuous improvement, there’s a lot of precursor information we need to walk through with the people we’re going to be doing process improvement with Sure some have never gone through formal leadership training before. So we go through things like communication, things like listening, coaching, feedback, this kind of stuff. Also, we lay a lot of the groundwork planting the seeds. For many people, in my eight year experience of planting seeds for the first time of, hey, this can be done better. This can be there’s this whole methodology called Lean Six Sigma. And, yeah, I know the status quo works, but we can do better as an organization. I was pleasantly caught by surprise when I came to children’s Nebraska, doing pretty much the same stuff, just in healthcare, and it was, it was a little bit different, because I found a lot of the stuff that I set out to do in a meeting, or the precursor work leading up to a big meeting was done for me, they tend What

Shayne Daughenbaugh 06:52

do you mean by that? Like you had an assistant? Or

Matthew Singh 06:57

the common culture here is very much, but I think it’s because you have the actual patients, and whether you’re on the administrative side or the clinical side, right, every day, we have 1000s of patients coming through here. So it’s very easy to stay focused on the end goal, which is not a TPS report, but someone’s live several people’s lives, right? And so there’s kind of that unity as a team, that the collaborative efforts just starts out of nine out of, you know, out of one out of 10, it starts at a nine, even four people know each other, because we all understand why we’re in the room, like even if we don’t know what continuous improvement is, we know why we’re there as we’re trying to make it better in government. Not that that mindset wasn’t there, but that’s not necessarily the mind, the shared understanding of why we were in any specific meeting, walking into the room unless you already trained, unless you already knew why you were there, unless you already knew the precursors to the project that’s going on, then you might, you might get that you might not, you might need to explain. And that’s okay. That’s not better or worse, but it’s definitely a major difference I noticed in healthcare versus the state, right? Another one here is I noticed in when I was in government, whether it be with Nebraska state government or some of the consulting activities on the side, is data. That was a big one for me, is data. You know, in government, there’s a lot of buckets that they’re not used to metrics per se at all levels organization, there’s not alignment of metrics and there’s not a lot of data to pull upon. You remember, a lot of the projects that we did together were, we basically had to go out there with time studies and your day forms and like, go through systems to see if we could figure out which reports to use, timestamps and emails, we had to kind of create the data based off of what we had healthcare. There’s so much data, so much data, because it’s, it’s based off, like an academic environment. A lot of these people that are directors are also professors at local universities and institutions. Sure, yeah, in the talent pipeline for, you know, becoming a doctor, the educational background, they come and spend time here for a year or two, kind of doing their rounds to learn the different elements of, hands on, meta, Doctor stuff, Doctor stuff, yeah. So it’s, I think those are two big ones that really popped out at me. Is telling that groundwork, but then also the data, you know, things like, you know, one of the big things we implemented state was like, Hey, let’s do some customer surveys, or call it whatever you want, but essentially a customer survey, whether it be you and me doing a project for a cab member where we seek feedback afterwards, how did we do and how can we improve? Or if it be direct feedback from the customer or the citizen or the organ, or if it’s a business organization, using the end result for like water permits and operational permits, right? But that was kind of like a revolutionary idea. Hey, let’s let’s go. Let’s go talk to them. Let’s see what they think here. This is already integrated into the infrastructure, just again, because it’s a service industry with regards to the humans. If. Especially here as children, that we already have those kind of structures in place where there’s an entire division run by some amazing leaders that focus just on the patient experience. I believe it’s even called patient experience, and they have managers, and they have specialists, and they have VPS that kind of actually focus on being that voice for of the customers to the organization, sure, which is huge, because that was what we, you know, in Lean Six Sigma anyway, that’s, that’s generally what we push for, is including that voice, the customer, through the whole process, right?

Shayne Daughenbaugh 10:33

Yeah, and I love what you pointed out there, just to make sure that our listening audience didn’t miss it. You know, when we’re talking about People First in doing Lean transformation and organization, the people we’re talking about most immediately are the frontline workers, are the leadership, are those. And you just mentioned something, you mentioned two things, you know, planting the seeds so people understand where we’re going and what we’re trying to do, but also using data, giving people that we’re expecting to work on this operational excellence thing, giving them these things is putting them first. Like, I love how we’re we’re empowering them with, Hey, this is the knowledge. Here’s some ideas, here’s the training, here’s, you know, the reason why, here’s what’s going on. But also, here’s some data. Because I remember collecting, I it was, it was like, I have a hard time saying this, because you were my mentor and boss at that at that time, but there was, there was a time there for a while when I first started that, I just wanted to push back against all the data we were supposed to be collecting. Be collecting. Like, let’s just fix things. But what I ended up seeing so often is when I collected the data and gave that to the team that, like, opened their eyes it, it gave them an understanding of what the current situation was. But then also, you know, as we started training them in these things, and not just telling them how to do stuff, but training them, here’s, here’s some tools you can use to improve this, then that data also gave them a kind of a launching pad to, oh, if this is where we’re at, now imagine where we can be, you know. And so I think, I think those things, even though we we don’t often think about, you know, the training and those kind of, you know, giving planting that seed and helping them understand that and giving them data as a people first activity. But it certainly is, especially if you’re trying to do Lean with people and not to people, like, here’s, here’s some of the stuff you know, both both government agencies and hospitals. I’m assuming hospitals, because I haven’t worked in the but I know government agencies, they have to deal with some really strict regulations and some very complex systems. So how do you think, from your experience, how can leaders balance that compliance driven processes with some people first mindset. How do you balance that?

Matthew Singh 13:07

Yeah, you know, I you listed all those certifications I have earlier, business analytics, project management, Six Sigma, lean, Six Sigma, MBA, masters, leadership, all this kind of stuff. There’s a lot of different trains of thoughts, and there’s a lot of overlap. I think the one thing, and this is the system we use at the state of Nebraska, for the center of operational excellence, is Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma is pretty cool, because to answer your question, how do you incorporate all that, right? How do you take this need for success results, and still make sure that at the same time, we don’t leave the people behind. And I love Lean Six Sigma, because it’s a system where if you can even get good at the system, even if you don’t understand it, it’ll work. The reason being is it’s based off the idea of to get a sustainable project, like successful project, 1224, 36, months from now, you have to include the people who do the work. You have to include them from beginning to end, right? And as you include them, that looks different, right? When you’re still engaging the front end with a sponsor, you’re still kind of doing behind the doors meetings of clarifying scope and boundaries, sure, but then you use that information, worded and presented correctly to the project team from the very get go. That’s very unique to systems like lean and Lean Six Sigma change change management focus. Project managers fall in the PMP, and by including that team the entire way, it’s a pretty strict process, right? It we’re not saying to willy nilly stuff for the sake of people being happy, the exact opposite. It’s it’s giving them a structure in a for like a foresight into knowing exactly what comes next, to take the guesswork out of it, knowing that if we incorporate the process as it’s created, it will bring them along, even if your execution is. 80% as a practitioner, the system is built by people much smarter than myself who took into all those considerations that you know help us achieve that. A great example, a specific example. And for those of you that are not horribly familiar with Lean Six Sigma, basically, you get your project, charter, your scope, your boundaries, your true north, whatever it is, their direction you’re gonna head. And then you map the process using little post it notes, and you stick them on the wall, tons of pictures, and she got them over here, as I know you had pictures on the on the internet. You put them on the wall, and you get the current state map, so now everybody can visually see what the process is. Well, I seem silly, not really, though, when you have this cross functional team of people upstream and downstream that have never, like, I know my bucket of the process. I’m even guilty of this, my girl. I know my bucket of the process. I don’t know what goes on out here, because it doesn’t impact my paycheck, my bonus performance. So I’m just going to stay focused. When you stay focused on that’s an opportunity for really, like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that when I do this, it impacts them. Talk about people focus. That’s that first, like, collaborative team, humanitarian mindset of, hey, we followed the process. Now we can all visually see how we’re doing. And then when you go through and use data to identify pain points, talk about some humanitarian something, people focus. How about we take away all the rumors that have accumulated over 40 years. You know, if you guys have seen that research where they took monkeys, they put them into like this little cage, and they put a little ladder, then that soft ladder, they put a bunch of bananas, and the first group of monkeys, you know, every time a monkey would go up there to grab banana, they’d spray it with cold water. All of them got sprayed with cold water. And so it became a culture that the monkeys that were there would just beat up any monkey who tried to get the banana, because they didn’t want to get spread the cold water. Well, one by one, they would take those monkeys out and place new monkeys in. The new monkeys didn’t know what’s going on. They go get the banana and the other monkeys beat them up because they don’t get spread the cold water. And one by one, they took all the monkeys out to where none of the original monkeys were there. There was no monkey that was ever sprayed with cold water. And they took away the banana, the bananas, and they just knew not to whether the bananas they’re not. They just knew not to go up the ladder. Nobody knew why, but they just followed that kind of historical knowledge, right? Historical like mindset and and that. I think that’s a great analogy too, and that’s real research, but I think that’s a think that’s a great analogy to the organization of, let’s break that down. Why do we do this? Here’s a process map. Does anybody? Can anybody tell me why we do this? And that helps people understand and question themselves, and that can be a tough process, you know. Again, the people focused is not always about feeling great, you know? I mean, I think sometimes that’s where people get this kind of, you know, hey, there is a difference between getting results and being people focused. I know why. Because some people are so people focused, they don’t get results. Or some people are so results, they don’t get people focused. And the problem is, if you mix them together, that’s actually what we’re trying to do, you know, then we collect data. Hey, is that really an issue? Joe, you said that’s an issue. Data suggests it’s not an issue. Tell me why you think it’s an issue. Oh, the person I trained you told you. Oh, well, okay, who trained them? You did. Why is the niche? Oh, the person trained you told you, is your train? Oh, your trainer left 20 years ago. Oh, well. So I guess the question is, is it still an issue? Right? And then we go through and like, we eventually we come to, like, what better looks like, and this is the clear distinction for me, like, how a process, because it just happened here recently my job where, you know, being people focused can be very process oriented. It can be very rewarding from that check the box perspective too, and still be people focused is there’s a process called clean sheet redesign, where basically, you’ve discussed your failure modes, your problems, your pain points, your opportunities, whatever you want to call you’ve discussed what needs fixed, and you kind of discussed like what needs to be done to make it better. Well, in clean sheet redesign, you break into two groups, three groups, four groups. You break into groups, and you assign failure modes, and you all come up with your own future state maps focused on those opportunities unique to each group. And then you come back together and kind of mush it together, have the discussion, scrimmage it out, but then you kind of put it together, you come up with your future state map. And that’s a map that the team came up with. I had an engineer one time. He’s a high level executive, great guy, great guy, really good executive. You know, he was kind of a role model for me, kind of as I worked at the state super smart, but he’s, he’s an engineer, right? And so in engineering, they learn redesign, but they don’t learn like Lean Six Sigma redesign. They learn like, engineering redesign. And he told me, you know, Hey, Matt, that seems like a giant waste of time. Can we just skip it? No, I know what he’s saying is, again, that’s that kind of numbers and results oriented. Hey, you know, time is money, and we need to get this done true. That’s that’s not a false statement. He isn’t wrong. But I think where we need to like this whole, like people versus results discussion, I think we’re gonna take it is, it’s an investment. We are investing that extra resources of time and energy to be people focused, because. And as an executive, this is kind of where the money is. Because if we do so, the solution we come up with, when implement will be implemented, will be more sustainable. So even when you are no longer with the organization, or you’re just too busy focusing on other stuff, that solution will still be implemented. Why? Because the people that did to work are the ones that came up with the solution, and they want to do what they came up with themselves. So again, to me, in my mind, I see those two kind of old people focused with no real results. We’ve seen that. We’ve all seen that. And a two results driven and they attrition rate is like 300% I think we’ve all seen that too. And then surveys and nutrition rates are also great, you know, kind of metrics to follow. But again, I think if you find a solid system like, you know, change oriented project management, lean, Six Sigma, even pure lean, with some some structure, gumption to it, I think in there’s several others too. Don’t get me wrong. You be agile scrum practitioner. It’s very much about figuring out how to make what system you have, whatever one you use to a quality management, you know, and really focus on how you can integrate it to process being focused on benefiting the people.

Shayne Daughenbaugh 21:11

Yeah, I mean, you made you made me think of a couple things. One, I remember the the training that that you put us through when we first came in. And this was intense training, ladies and gentlemen, this was two weeks, eight hours a day, every day, we were going there. We were learning things. We were being drilled every day to give us the principles, but also, you know, the tools and everything that was involved that we needed to really to do what we were supposed to do for the state. But you drilled in so many times and so well that it’s not about me as the facilitator and as the leader of whatever you know, process improvement thing we’re doing. I i Give the tools and step out of the way so that when I leave, they’re not going to be pointing to, well, where’s that guy that’s supposed to be doing this? This is his thing, you know, or her thing, whatever it was. And the other thing that you made me think of as we were talking, you know, especially in reference to balancing compliance driven processes with people first mindset, is we had, again, drilled in to us the three questions we had, the value questions, you know, of hey, does this step? And after we would map it out, I remember going through each of them training. The team had to do this. All the frontline workers had to do this, and then having them come up and ask the question for each of these steps that we have up there, does this transform the product or service? You know, is it done right the first time? Is the customer willing to pay for it? You know, if it didn’t have any of those, or if any of those were a no, we had that second layer, which is really, goes to the compliance thing. Is this a requirement, a statutory requirement, in that, having that idea safeguards and gives the team, you know, the boundaries they have they need to have to be able to reimagine and redesign like you were talking about, you know, because they knew that if we can ask those questions and really think about that, make sure if It was required, if this was a compliance thing that, you know, statutorily or regulatory, you know, we needed to have, we keep it in, but everything else is open for, you know, a reimagining of how we can do it. And, you know, in doing that was a great marriage, like you were talking about, you know, Lean Six Sigma being great about hey, let’s look at how we can make this process better, but let’s also focus on, you know, what’s going to be best for the people? And I think a what I want to make sure that we communicate with our audience and just together, is that when we do process improvement. There is an external customer, there is an end result customer. But where I’m at right now, you know, in doing the consulting work that I’m doing, in seeing all of these people that you know are facing burnout, that are facing disengagement, you know, can we make the work better for them, not just the end result, you know, because, and again, something you you drilled into my head years ago, was sometimes the customer isn’t that final customer, you know, it’s not that final external. It may not be, you know, Joe, who’s walking his dog down the street, who wants the sidewalk, you know, and make sure the sidewalk is taken care of. It might be the downstream. It might be the upstream. Can we make our processes better for the people that have to do them, so that we can get better quality to our customers, and just that idea of putting people first in. Way, I think, you know, is, is amazing, well,

Matthew Singh 25:03

and you mentioned to like, the voice of the customer, and you talk about things like business value added, well, it’s funny, because I think that’s a term, people like this for our own voice customer. And great. I think that is definitely one of the primary steps when you do is look at, you know, continuous improvement from a customer’s perspective. But what is a customer, right? You should break it down. You know, there, there are internal customers, there are external customers. There’s something called Voice of the employee. It’s part of voice of the customer. It’s actually a voice of the employee. And so if you’re an organization like children’s, has a pretty, pretty respectable like regulation team, like accreditation regulation team, that oversees that stuff. I know the state had the auditor’s office, and they had, of course, people internally to each agency right oversee that stuff, usually Administrator role or something, but if we include them with the other customers into that project, and we empower them the same way we empower everyone, everyone’s equal in that project. We might have different titles and different responsibilities, but we’re all our voices equal. You know, I think that’s how we get to where the Hey. Is this regulation? Is this something we could change? No, Okay, moving on. That stays the opportunity to have that discussion or and change. Done this several times. I don’t know if he’s told the regular viewers this before, where he’s on some projects with agencies where we asked that exact question. We said, you know, hey, is this something we can change? And they’re like, Absolutely not, nope. There is no way this can be changed. And Shane had the courage to ask question, why not? Why? Nobody can really answer why. And so he investigated, long story short, through that kind of continual effort, again, being very people focused, James, probably most people focused person I ever met, but being very people focused, he still took that kind of drive forward. Asked those five, Whys six, Whys seven, Whys over and over again, as to why, why can’t we why? Why would you say that? And he ended up getting regulations changed by working with the executive leaders of the agency he’s working with. He figured out that, you know what, this policy can be changed, and it is monthly process, and it was probably two years for change, but a lot of work that you did, but he ended up actually changing the regulations that couldn’t be changed. And so I think that’s the kind of like, did he have to do that? No, do you have to that? No, not necessarily. But I think that’s that level, if you’re truly looking at it from a customer’s perspective, you know, things like regulations, yeah, they are important. But I think what’s more important to all the customers are Is it truly applied to us, right? I mean, all the time we see these things with different legal representation, whether it be in government or healthcare. Let’s go talk to legal and see if the previous interpretation still applies. 20 years later, because we’ve had advanced technology, we’ve had advancements in society as a whole. There’s new political stuff all over the world. Does this still mean the same thing? I don’t know if Shane’s brought it up, and I’ll keep talks. Feel free to interrupt if you want to. But you know, we had regulations early on that we worked with that was talking about communism like every other line, and this was in government, was talking about communism using terminology that apparently, decades ago was appropriate when talking about communism. And we looked at the the regulations in 2000 I don’t know, 20, maybe 2022 something like this wasn’t that long ago, and we looked at the regulations, realized, not only is this verbiage very vague today, though it probably made perfect sense back then, is very vague today, like we’re asking for reinterpretation of, how do we look at this now? And a lot of times, let’s say at least half the times, they said, You know what, you’re right. This lawyer in the position no we can make the determination, says it is something we can move forward with, with a different interpretation. And so that’s kind of, if your people focus, but results focused again, I think they go hand in hand. I really think they do is, well, wait a minute, why? And I think Shane’s a great example, probably better than me at this of keeping that curiosity, like that genuine curiosity, and sense of explain to me, I got five minutes explain why it has to be done that way. And at first, people generally get offended, right? I know I do sometimes, when chain would do it to me, it’s always fun seeing what you taught do it back. You’re like, oh, well, that is really impactful. That’s really cool. It works too. But like when they challenge your whys, if you can do it in a way where you’re truly just curious about life and trying to figure out why we do it that way, sometimes you might come back to Nope, can’t change it. Check, legal, still can’t change it. Check, leaders, nope, can’t change it. Yeah, now we know. Now we know, and that’s okay too, right? But at least we investigated the core, root of everything,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 29:44

right? And just a little side note to that, it’s incredibly helpful, because we’ve talked a lot on this podcast about Lean transformation, starting with the leadership and the leadership providing cover and what you. Just described is some of the cover leadership can provide, not just for being a champion, but also leadership saying, Hey, we’re going to allow you this asset, the legal side of things, if you come across, you know, some kind of regulation or something that doesn’t make sense and that doesn’t seem to improve the quality or the the worker experience to this process. Let’s take it up with them. You know, here’s a resource you could send it to and, and that’s, that’s just another I don’t, I don’t want to say it’s a simple thing, because it was pretty profound, but it is, it is a great thing about that. Okay, I want, I want to, I want to keep moving forward here. And I got another question. Let’s see where I’m trying to choose now, because I have too many questions, and we’re starting to read, we’re starting to run out of time. So let’s, let’s talk about, you know, healthcare now, because we’ve talked a lot about about government work in healthcare, those that’s a very high stakes environment, right? Patient Care is critical. How do you ensure or how can leaderships or organization ensure that putting employees first leads to a better outcome for the patients?

Matthew Singh 31:10

It’s a good question. It’s good question. I, you know, I, one of the things I’m working on here at Children’s is and I, I report to the chief quality officer, Dr Maloney, great guy. His doctor’s degree. He’s been doctor for many years. He has a PhD in something related to health care management as well. Very intelligent guy. I’ve been around for quite a while in the industry, and he’s a perfect example of kind of that combination of health care, of how do you drive results? How do you look at systems? How do you look at infrastructure, while also, you know, we’re doing it because of the people, our employees, but also our patients, and our patients family, and our patients family, the people they impact, like it all kind of comes together. Like, you can’t categorize this stuff, and that’s why, when he had him and I started having our discussions, we decided that it might be a good idea to take a look at creating a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt for children’s Nebraska. And it’s it’s going to be because, again, that that particular methodology, and a lot of them are good ones. There’s a lot of other methodologies used, but the goal of using the Lean Six Sigma is to, again, kind of bring that structure together of training people, you know, training people, not a class, not just an online class. Says, Hey guys, this is why improvements important for our customer, right? But showing them real results. We’re kind of in that process where we’re, we’re partnering with the University of Nebraska, Omaha. We’re looking at what kind of collaboration efforts that can can look like for the certification in healthcare, but then, like, how does it help students? Because we know those students might one day be teammates here at Children’s, or they could be customers here at Children’s, or they might be able to help us with another partnership with a different institution. So it really is. It goes back to that community building, but that Lean Six Sigma program we’re launching is that is going to follow all the same principles of people first, but results. And again, it comes back to what Shane was talking about earlier. About earlier, sponsorship, sponsorship, sponsorship. It you gotta set the realistic goals based off of who your sponsor is. I’ve had a huge blessing my last role working directly for the governor, who’s now Senator from the United States, but also now I get to work directly with the Chief Quality Officer and other officers of the organization. That’s helpful, because they are people too. They go home, they have families, they have hobbies, they go camping, you know? And so, you know, I kind of look at this, this people first mindset, continuous experiment is, well, if they’re people too, then how do we, how do we help them do what they do, right? Like when I say my prayers in the morning, it’s about, how do I provide my services and my abilities, my talent, to support their efforts? Because they didn’t get there by not caring, right? They didn’t there’s, there’s no executive at Children’s. They got there by not caring about customers. Every single one of them cares deeply, emotionally, on a personal level. And I’m sure you could say that about pretty much any organization. You’re probably going to find people that deeply care about the goals of that organization. And so again, then how do I use my skill set to make them the best version they can be of them for this topic, for whatever topic I’m assigned to, but then also using structure to do it? You know, you know, in this environment, healthcare is really interesting, because everybody has you because everybody has multiple master’s degrees. You know, we mentioned all degrees and certifications. I have, there’s, it’s like a letter salad after it is. And to be quite frankly, that’s, that’s normally in healthcare, everyone has multiple degrees and certifications. They all have 30 master’s degrees, and they know their topics well. But I think the benefit a lot of people that would listen to a podcast like this, you know, it can be kind of intimidating. I think one of the benefits is most are not trained in project management or lean or Lean Six Sigma, or if they are not to the extent that you. Are that’s what you’re doing, is you’re spending either your free time or you’ve had somebody at work allow you to spend your time watching this at work, to learn more about the industry and the knowledge you gain here with like Shane and Patrick on this podcast. You know you like to read, maybe some Deming books, wherever you’re gaining and absorbing your information, that stuff that they haven’t necessarily been exposed to at the same level that you have. And so what I would encourage you guys to do, if your goal is to be people first, people oriented, but still produce results, still be compliant with regulations, policies, is think about those leaders you can help support in their efforts in the organization. And that doesn’t mean that they have to see the world the same way as you, but just kind of respect the fact that they got to where they are, and they have the ability that sponsorship, ability to support your efforts. And you know, I think what you’re probably going to see, I’ve noticed this in 20, 3040, different organizations. I’ve done stuff, and once you start getting results, and you highlight those results, it becomes an easier buy in, you know. And so if you’re blessed enough to have that first initial sponsor, so at Children’s, it’s Doctor Maloney, you know, and other VPS here that all support it, you know, at the state, it was multiple leaders, like, you know, Jason Jackson, Governor, Matt number, all these people, Tony goings, you know, it’s easier to kind of rally around that by showing results, because then we’re not this weird little lean tribe or cult in the corner talking about how our magical system is going to make the world better for everybody. Because what happens is, you get those results, and they kid you not, if you’re truly people focused and again, following the systems and processes, getting those results their their jobs easier. They’re getting more work done. They can now take a little bit of real lunch break without stress, without having an ulcer. They can relax and talk to coworkers for the first time in 10 years. You want to talk about people, folks and results. Get the results using people for the people, and it will spread like wildfire and chains. Experience this I’ve experienced. Why do you listen? Probably experience is you get those results, and it’s like, it’s like investing. When you invest, you put in 100 bucks compounding annual interest. Well, you know, the first year you’re getting 10 bucks at 10% the next year is more than that. Next year, it’s more because it keeps adding back to the principal. Same thing with process improvement, especially when it’s people focused, I just intensely fold when it’s people people focused is you get those one or two solid projects where you you show people that it impacts their lives and the organization and the customer and the employees and all this stuff, follow a solid methodology. It’ll happen when you do that and you kind of communicate that don’t be too modest. Do get out there and communicate that via the salesman of the idea of, you know, the marriage between results and people, because there’s absolutely, they’re not two separate entities. Results is the people. People are the results. Like, that’s how we further any organization, especially healthcare. And go

Shayne Daughenbaugh 37:56

right in. I also want to add, you know, because we’re, as you were talking there toward the end, what it, what it made me think of, is the capacity we were able to open up, you know, I’m sure you’re doing similar things there at at Children’s Nebraska, the capacity we’re able to open up for the frontline workers by taking something that, for instance, took 19 days now it takes two days to do just freeze them up. Now that doesn’t mean, however, because if we’re going to be people first, it doesn’t mean we just cram more and more work at them. We, you know, being have, having an understanding of, you know, when to put the throttle down and when to possibly back up. You know, hey, now there’s more capacity. Oh, great. Let’s just throw more things at you, but instead understanding, okay, you now have more capacity. You don’t have to do some of this stuff that we took out was waste that didn’t add value. Now let’s just have you focus on the value activities that you already have. So I think that’s, that’s a just another little side thought that I had about that. You know, doing continuous improvement isn’t about trying to get more stuff done. It’s, it’s also about getting more stuff done better, but taking care of the people is a huge, huge part of that as well. So let me give one last question to you, Matt here, and we’ll wrap this up. But as we’re talking about, you know, it’s one thing to start prioritizing people and to have that that focus, you know, in continuous improvement. It’s another thing to make it stick. So what are some ways leaders and organizations might be able to to sustain this, people first approach for the long term.

Matthew Singh 39:45

Gosh, that’s a good question. I bet you could ask every single person you have on here, and you probably get several good results from everybody. That’s, that’s a good one. I I can tell you this where my mind’s at. You know, I could go into some of the I’d call them cliche. They’re not they, they work too. There’s other things like, you know, bonus systems based. Stuff at performance. There’s things like, you know, internal promotions and stuff like this. That’s good stuff, too. It went to a point my career that probably would, would have been my response. I will say this now I have the opportunity to work with several transformational leaders right now. Just don’t know transformation leadership is just Google it totally cool. Shane probably talks about it a lot. It’s a type of leadership that just really changes a community, things like President Reagan or President Obama, things like, you know, people that really just change the entire name of the game. And at Children’s here, we have several good ones. Renee, she’s over behavioral health doctor Maloney, he’s a quality and I believe also the medical side of it, several, several good leaders. And it’s interesting, because the tone they set, not just in meetings, right? Everybody knows to be professional in meetings. I mean, yes, that’s important. But some of these one on ones, you know, being in the game for decades. I’ve had several one on ones with leaders that in meetings will be very professional, and then you get them one on one, and they’ll just be or, you know, just kind of anger or stress or anxiety or whatever it is, they kind of represent that. But I think when you have transformation leaders, whether it’s it’s it’s you in the interactions with other people, or it’s the leaders interactions with you when they lead by example. You know when, when they consistently handle that stress? We all have our moments. I’m not worried about that, but I’m just saying like, and she and I have had a couple moments where he’s

Shayne Daughenbaugh 41:34

like, Hey, man, no. I mean, that’s

Matthew Singh 41:37

just part of being exactly right. It’s very stressful. Sometimes there’s multiple priorities, multiple, you know, agendas, and they’re not bad agendas. I don’t mean the negative. I mean there’s a lot of like, that’s why they have different divisions and this kind of stuff. And so that’s there. And so again, going back to supporting them to the best of your ability. But then also, when they kind of receive that feedback, they give feedback, they take feedback, they lead by example. They are the representation of of all those kind of organizational values and beliefs that they list, like at Children’s. They truly live it. I can say that. And at the state, we were blessed to have a lot of leaders when we work there that we’re just walking examples of that stuff, right? I think when they see that, that’s helpful, because then it radiates. And then if you can be kind of a receptor for that, or some kind of amplifier for that. And even, you know, it’s called mirroring, from a body language perspective, even mirror some of that behavior or repeat some of that behavior you see them doing, which I’m trying to do now, my criminal is taking like, hey, wow, that was the really impactful I wonder if I have the ability to react that way to stress in my meetings, right? Or, hey, gosh, whoa. I’ll give you a great example. I did a data analysis not too long ago on Excel spreadsheet. I’m not a huge fan of excels. I’ve used Excel for a long time, and frankly, you kind of have to be in this industry if you’re not good at it and good at it, you know, I’m pretty decent at it. I put something together and I sent it to my my current my current boss, and the information was legit. It was good. Formatting was good. My spelling, as Shane, can tell you, or anyone who’s ever worked with me can tell you, is, if it’s not on word with spell check, it’s or we’re gonna have to have a talk with me. Um, and he had the talk. He had it with me, but he didn’t do it like, aggressively, he didn’t do it. Like, hey, you screwed up. He’s like, you know, they have, they have ways to fix those. There are things you can download to run it through before you send it to me. And you know, when you address that, that just really kind of opened me up to that idea of, or maybe remind me, I’m not sure, but that idea of how we address those stressors, those problems, because that’s, I think that’s really set the tone for me to be people first when we address those failure modes or pain points or opportunities, whatever we want to call them, but those areas for improvement, especially when it’s team oriented, right? If you haven’t done a lot of projects which you’re going to come across, and if you have, you know it resonates with some past projects. Sometimes there are like these things that are team oriented, that are people oriented, that need to be addressed. They’re elephants in the room. They’ve been sitting there for 20 years, and we gotta discuss it. Maybe we need to change our virtue. Maybe we need to change a training program that somebody created that they’re really proud of. Maybe we need to make adjustments to policy that is kind of a sacred policy, or whatever, or maybe we just need to get feedback to our peers, which sounds easy, but is not always easy, right? And so that’s kind of one of those things where the original question was like, how do you, how do you, how do we sustainable culture across, you know, we mentioned the process earlier, Lean Six Sigma, including people for stage sustainability of the actual process we fix, yes, yes. But the culture piece lead by example and surround yourself by people who also lead by example. And it’s not a bunch of robots. I’ll act in the same way. But if you do it well, or even close to Well, I think Shane are great examples of it, and a lot of people got to work with is you start compliment. One another. And then you come like this, like the little westerns, you know, like this big posse of positivity, but also results and accountability. And all goes together. And then you get more people on board as you go. Before you know it, you have an entire organization, you know, and that’s pretty hard to wipe an entire organization, or even a half of it, or even a third of it, of this, people result driven culture, you know it. It sounds kind of cliche as I say it easy, and I hear myself say it, I’m taking it, but it’s, it’s, it’s absolutely true. And that’s how it works. In my experience, that 27 years of start small and grow big, start fire and let it kind of grow.

Shayne Daughenbaugh 45:34

Yeah, that’s awesome, man. Thank you so much for for being with us here and for sharing your knowledge, it’s been great to be able to catch up again. If people wanted to connect with you, maybe they have some other questions. How could they how? What would be your preference for connecting with you?

Matthew Singh 45:53

Yeah, my email is m, A, T, T, so Matt, no spaces. M is in Matthew E as in Ethan B as in Bianca E, as in [e-mail] so Matt mibi It’s named my company. Matt [e-mail] send me an email. I love touching base. I love helping people in their paths, even it’s just a recommendation, some feedback. Just want to chat. If you want to correct me, if you heard something you don’t agree with, feel free to to let me know how it’s supposed to be I’m okay with it, but please reach out if you have any further discussion. Yeah.

Shayne Daughenbaugh 46:28

Now, what about LinkedIn? Are you on LinkedIn as well? Okay, yeah.

Matthew Singh 46:34

And also, if you guys want to explore some of the extremely successful projects and initiatives that Shane and I have worked on in the past. There’s a Harvard case study that there’s a link to it on my LinkedIn. Harvard did a piece on us and how we created into the center of operational excellence. Also, there’s several publications from like religion, some others were books and articles. Politico did an article on it. There’s all sorts of resources that have discussed specifically stuff we’ve worked on in the past. So feel free to check it out, and there should be more resources there for you. LinkedIn, thank you for bringing that up. I forgot about, yeah, yeah, no,

Shayne Daughenbaugh 47:06

yeah. I’m also thinking that. So just Matt Singh, your LinkedIn, that’s how. And for those that are listening, it is s, I N, G, H for, for finding, if you want to find him on, on LinkedIn, Matt, thanks so much, ladies and gentlemen, we really appreciate you. You’re listening, and hope that you were able to glean something from it. Let us know if you have any questions or comments, you know, thanks and have a great day.