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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 0:13
All right, I think we are live. It's always, there's always a little bit of a lag, so we'll, we'll kind of give it a little bit of time here and make sure that we are live. We should be live on both LinkedIn and on Facebook, on our Lean solutions Facebook page, so either one of those should be live. And then we'll, we'll look to see as people log on. Let me just, let me just check, check LinkedIn here and see, see if we are up and running.
Patrick Adams 0:40
Welcome to 2026 right? I think there's a little bit of a lag. I don't see it just yet. It's still 2026 though.
Patrick Adams 0:48
There we go. Okay, now it's coming live super. So we'll give everybody just a few minutes to log on. If you're catching the re record on this, it's going to take a few minutes again for people to join, but when you do join, if you could just we're going to ask a couple questions. Actually, we're going to do, we're going to do a little voice of the customer on the podcast. And since this is a live episode, this is a live podcast episode for the Lean solutions podcast, we want to ask a couple questions of you. So whether you're watching the live or you're coming in maybe on the replay, drop in the comments and let us know. First of all, where do you listen to your podcast? So we want to know, do you listen on Spotify? Do you listen on YouTube? Apple? Do you have a different location that you listen to your podcast? So that would be the first question that we want everyone to answer, as we before, as we're waiting for others to jump on Shane, where do you listen to your podcast?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 1:54
Either Spotify or cast box, I think is, is what it's called.
Patrick Adams 2:01
Okay, okay. Catherine. Where do you listen to
Catherine McDonald 2:06
Spotify as well? Yeah, because I have all my music on it too, so it's just easy,
Patrick Adams 2:11
nice and Andy, what about you?
Andy Olrich 2:14
You just used to be Spotify, just moving things over the title, but I'd like to catch him on YouTube.
Patrick Adams 2:20
Okay, okay, good, good, good. Yeah, I see Rob bull said Spotify. So again, if you're just logging on, if you're just joining us, drop in the comments. Where do you listen to your favorite podcast? We're giving everybody just a little bit of time to to join before we dive into the the content for today, specifically around goal setting that sticks. That's what we talking about today, and looks like Thomas Bauer said, Apple podcasts. Okay, that's good. Hopefully your favorite podcast has the words lean solutions in it. Lean solutions podcast, but if not, you should go check it out. We have been, what are we in season five now, right? I think into this year. Man, it's crazy. We started the podcast. Actually started with during covid. We were having conversations, obviously online, and we just started recording them and and then turn those into a podcast. And obviously it's developed quite a bit since then. And now we have four amazing hosts. Well, I guess I could say three amazing hosts. I can't really say that for myself,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 3:28
and then three amazing hosts send me. So
Patrick Adams 3:33
awesome, awesome. Well, we, if you're just joining us, we're a couple minutes in here. Now I'm going to, I'm going to ask the question one more time, where do you listen to your favorite podcast? What is the platform? Do you use YouTube? Do you like video? Prefer video? Do you prefer audio? Do you listen on Spotify, YouTube, Apple? Where is it that you listen to your favorite podcast? And then the second question I was going to ask is, What is your favorite length of podcast episode is it, do you like micro learning, like, you know, 1015, minutes, or do you prefer 30 minutes? Our episodes are normally around 40 to 50 minutes, I think, on average. So they're a little bit longer than your average episode. But I'm curious to know what's your favorite length of time. So drop that in the comments as well. Anything What else do you guys, any other anything else you guys want to know from from the audience as we're waiting and allowing people time to log on here,
Andy Olrich 4:31
I'd love to know where in the world are you? If you can chuck that in some stage as well.
Patrick Adams 4:37
There you go. That's, that's another good one. It's always, always good to see. We have people from all over the world that listen to the Lean solutions podcast. In fact, our top countries were the US, Germany, and what was the other one? Mexico?
Andy Olrich 4:53
Was it Mexico? Mexico? Okay, yeah, we should know we've got you. K, yeah, UK
Patrick Adams 5:01
is a big number. Ireland, I know is up there. Catherine is in Ireland. We need to get Australia on the on the list there. Andy, what's going on? On your in your side?
Andy Olrich 5:11
I did notice that must be in p6 something like that. Yeah, maybe it's just the economies of scale working on it.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 5:19
So look at some of these, some of these answers, like YouTube is there, we're looking at, in regards to the length, 1520 minutes, max micro, prefer 15 minutes, average, 30 minutes, 30 minutes. We got, we got a little bit of work to do in 2026
Catherine McDonald 5:39
we do. We do. I see, I see Cindy Danielle's name popping up. Hey, hi, Cindy. I met Cindy at the Lean Solutions Summit. So hi, very cool.
Andy Olrich 5:50
Who else? Nigeria, Canada, New Zealand,
Patrick Adams 5:54
France, Tennessee,
Patrick Adams 5:57
yeah, anywhere from France to Tennessee? Oh, Uganda, that's a good one. Switzerland, good to see everybody. Andy, I feel like you got to shift over a little bit. The comments are right. No other way. Other way. Yeah, there we go. I want to be able to see your your handsome face. You got to go more than that.
Andy Olrich 6:18
There you go. Well, see on my side the comments are covering my face now, for what I can see, remember, we're down under here so things and who wants to see my face at six past five in the morning? I don't think many people do. But anyway, how's that?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 6:38
Germany, I appreciate the LinkedIn user that says, if it's long, I use 1.5 speed. I start out with 1.5 speed anyways, like it sounds too weird, if it's not for me, but
Patrick Adams 6:50
it definitely takes some getting used to to listen on on higher speed. But I do the same thing when I listen to audio books as well. Awesome. Well, we've, we've, we're just 556, past the hour now. So I think it's about time for us to dive into the topic for today. We're talking about goal setting that sticks, goal setting that sticks. And it's a perfect time for us to do that as we're kick, you know, we're kicking off the new year and and everybody is always, you know, very focused on setting goals at this time of year. A lot of people do their annual goals at this point. So probably many of you have already started to write some goals. Maybe some of you are working on them now. But one of the things that we wanted to hit on right away is the problem that the problems that people experience with goal setting and goal goal or execution and realization. So I wanted to actually kick off the our time today with a question for the hosts. Okay, so I actually went on chat GPT, and I asked chat GBT, what? What are three? What are the three top reasons that goals fail, that people are not executing their their annual goals? Or, you know, what would what would you think? Can I go first? Would be the top three? Because, well, just one second, what I will say is, I think everybody can agree that when goals fail, it's rarely because of effort, right? So I'm going to give you that one right now, and I'm going to say it's not the effort that would cause you to fail, because if you set a goal for yourself, most people want to do it, and they want to put the effort in, and they maybe have the motivation to do it at least for a little while. But what would you guys say? Chat? GPT, would say are the top three reasons that goals fail, and if you're listening in, drop it in the comments. If you think you have an answer to what would be one of the top three reasons that that we fail to execute our goal. Shane, you had
Shayne Daughenbaugh 8:54
your hand. Yeah, I want to take the first one, just because I want to take the easy one, which is they're just not clear enough. They're just just vague goals, like I want to do better, like I in my business, I want to do better than we did last year, which is a little more specific, but still not specific enough.
Patrick Adams 9:10
You You took the number one. You took the number one answer. It's lack of clarity, the fog problem. So that was the number one. People don't fail because they're lazy. They fail because they're unclear. Chat, GPT said common symptoms, goals are vague. They people can't can't answer. What does success look like by when? How does my work connect to this goal? That's a big one, too. You know? How? Why? Why is this the goal that you've established for me, but also too many priorities. Everything feels important, nothing gets done, right? I've been in organizations where there's this, this pull on priorities. You know, I've have goals set, but then my boss is telling me to do this, and then, you know, someone else is telling me to do this. The customer's calling. We got a quality issue, whatever the. Case is and and we're just unable to to work on it because of the lack of clarity. What Catherine, have you seen that happen with organizations that you've worked with a lack of clarity?
Catherine McDonald 10:15
Yeah, definitely, definitely, it's as chat GBT saw it, but I think all of us have seen it. Yeah. I mean, it's clear, probably to some people. It's clear maybe at higher level, but then it gets lost in translation. So I think the clarity problem comes from a communication problem.
Patrick Adams 10:35
Yeah, I'm going to bring in a little bit of of improvement kata into this. Because I also think that sometimes we set goals, like an annual goal, I need to achieve this in 12 months. So 12 months from now I will achieve this goal. Well, you know how much, how many different things are going to happen in the next 12 months? I mean, it's so difficult for us to be able to see clearly everything that's going to happen between now and 12 months from now. So I think the other thing that that organizations need to consider is not just setting an annual goal, like, what are we going to do in 12 months? But let's, let's now back into that, and let's set some 90 day tactical actions with clarity, and maybe you know some action steps behind that that will help us in, you know, be in alignment or direction towards that annual goal. Andy, what do you think on this one, clarity?
Andy Olrich 11:30
Yeah, big one, yeah, it's unclear. Touched on, where does this fit in and the the alignment through and across the organization? So definitely, definitely see that high level glowing scorecard at the top and rolling through to the the associates or the frontline workers just get to work. They're just doing their job, and yeah, it's not. They don't have that aligned, that clear alignment, and which then leads that accountability and ownership of that said goal, but definitely some things coming through, around measures. So yeah, we're not, we're not being there was one there and smart goals. So yeah, we're not, not clear on what good looks like. It can be a feeling or a vibe, or I use the term weasel words. It's like we will participate or improve our attendance and things like that, instead of who's going to do what? By how much, by when? Yeah, it's great. And we're getting lots of, lots of aligned comments coming through, so they're definitely there. What, Where do I fit in? And where is this going?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 12:34
Yeah, I think to that point. Andy, you know, it's, it's disconnected from kind of that daily operation thing, right? Like, these are just too lofty, like you're mentioning, hey, they're, they're like, What does this mean for me, you know, as the frontline worker? Okay, so that's a goal. So what do I need to do to help, to help achieve that goal? And I would, I guess, if we're going with clarity and too vague, then another one. Because I don't know if we've gone to number two or three. We haven't. I was getting that education, like, how do we communicate that goal? Because if it's not connected to what the frontline worker does then, or, you know, across your organization, these are our goals, and here's how you can add to it. Then, you know, it's, it's not going to survive past, you know, a couple months, it's going to be, hey, that's really cool. That's great. Woo hoo. And then we're going to, you know, the next urgent thing that comes along and that's out of our mind and we're moving on.
Patrick Adams 13:30
So communication specifically is not one of the other two. However, fear, comfort and misaligned behaviors was number three. So the human problem where I guess communication could fall into that, right? So says this is the hardest one to talk about, common symptoms. People avoid raising problems. Leaders jump to solutions. Teams protect the status quo. Failure is punished instead of treated as learning. So without psychological safety and Leader Standard Work improvement stalls. People don't resist change. They resist being embarrassed, blamed or ignored. So I don't know if that communication maybe kind of falls into that one clear communication, or maybe that even falls into with that first one around clarity, but I'm curious misaligned behaviors. Okay, yeah,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 14:19
because, I'm curious what you just mentioned, Patrick, you know, which, which could be a misaligned behavior. Is what's, what's wrong with leadership, jumping to solutions, like, why that sounds like a good thing to do, right? Like we're supposed to solve problems. So what's wrong with that? Tell me, help me out here, people,
Patrick Adams 14:43
I think it's all go ahead. Catherine,
Catherine McDonald 14:46
yeah, no, I was just checking. Shane, you mean, so, so you're seeing saying that the issue is that leaders are stepping in to communicate, over, communicate,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 14:56
well, well, just with, with what Patrick was reading, you know about some of the things. Of the symptoms, you know, of why this isn't working, misaligned behaviors that leaders jump in with solutions. But you know, if you think about that, just in general, why would a leader jumping to solutions, you know, kind of tank or diminish goal setting and goal achievement?
Catherine McDonald 15:19
Yeah, well, it's not the leader's job to take over, is it?
Andy Olrich 15:22
Yeah, and are they the ones actually connected and doing the work? Yeah, they best place to come up. I mean, you've led me down the path there. Sorry, I couldn't,
Shayne Daughenbaugh 15:31
I mean, I gave you a softball pitch. Come on. That was,
Andy Olrich 15:34
yeah, that was a softball question. Sorry, but well done. Yeah. I think, I think also communication, just try such important part. But even, sorry if this crunches into the technical but it's like, what is a goal and what, when we use the terminology is, this is our target, this is our goal. This is our deliverable, our KPI, our OKR. Sometimes I find that it's just like, hang on, we call them that here. I think even just the terminologies we use can, right off the bat, can bring that bit of fuzziness into what is the thing that we're here to deliver as a group, as a team, as as an individual. So I think that communication will will thread through all of these because, yeah, it's, it's such an important piece of getting clear on what, what am I here to do,
Catherine McDonald 16:18
right, right? And I think linked to that. So you mentioned the behavior side and fear and everything that comes with the problems when goals aren't shared. So I think behind that, then we have to look at meaning and purpose. So people will feel fear. They will feel blame when it goes because ultimately, goal, goals never go to plan the first time. So if there is a blame element there, which often happens, which gives goals a bad name, well then you know, that's obviously going to upset the apple cart and and goals won't be achieved because people won't follow leaders. And will, there'll be more focus on the conflict than there will be on the goals. So I think the shared meaning and purpose has to happen, but that's part of clarity and communication as
Shayne Daughenbaugh 17:02
well shared meaning and purpose.
Patrick Adams 17:06
Yeah, that's that's a great point. Catherine, real quick, I want to just pause us, because there's more people that are logging on right now. If you're just logging on, we are. This is a LinkedIn live podcast episode for the Lean solutions podcast, and we would love for you to drop a comment where you're calling in from, or where you're logging on from. And then also, we have a question that we're currently asking, what are the top three reasons for lack of goal execution, for not being able to accomplish or achieve a goal that you've set for the year. We already have two of those identified, so I'm going to ask anybody that's listening in can you guess what the third one is? Drop it in the comments below. So the first one was lack of clarity. That was the first one so unclear on what I'm supposed to accomplish. What does success look like? Goals are vague. And then the other one that we were able to identify is fear, comfort and misaligned behaviors, the human problem. So this would be, people avoid raising problems. There's a lack of psychological safety. Failure is punished instead of treated as learning. Leaders are jumping to solutions. So what do you think is the third, the third reason that chat GPT gave us on why goals are not executed. Any guesses from anyone
Catherine McDonald 18:32
in the comments? Yeah, right, yeah. Rob said. Rob bull said earlier he mentioned systems. Is that on chat gpts list? I hope it is.
Patrick Adams 18:40
That is the number two. That is it okay, no system for execution. This is my favorite one, and it's such an important piece. But chat GPT says even clear, goals fail without a system to support Daily Execution. Common symptoms, goals live in slide decks, not in daily work, no standard work tied to the goal, no cadence for follow up or adjustment. Problems are noticed but not addressed. So goals fail when they are not translated into standard work, visual management, daily or weekly, PDCA cycles. So most organizations don't have a performance problem. They have a management system problem. So this is huge, because for those of you out there that are
Patrick Adams 19:25
like a players, you are a driver, you you, you can mold, you, you have self motivation. You're able to accomplish goals a lot of times because you have you have this internal drive that's pushing you, this motivation that keeps you going. But for the majority of us, that's not the case, and we have to have systems, because we can be we can motivate ourselves. But how long is that going to last, right before we get overwhelmed with conflicting priorities, or, you know, too much? Work, stuff, home, life, whatever it is before the motivation starts to wean off, right? So we have to have good systems in place that don't allow us to drop behind, right? So what would some of that look like, if you have any ideas about systems that might help with goal planning or goal execution, not goal planning, but goal execution. Drop those in the comments as well. What do you guys think? Anybody have any ideas on what would be some good systems I'm seeing I'm seeing some in the comments, right?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 20:31
And as those are coming in, you know what it makes me think of? Patrick, and this goes back to something. Craig Coyle,
Patrick Adams 20:38
everyone can just rely on sheer motivation. Sorry, that was my chat GPT answering when I didn't question
Shayne Daughenbaugh 20:50
what you mentioned that Patrick, as people are kind of answering that question about what are some systems that might work. It brings me to back to when we when we had our our summit and and I think it was Craig Coyle that talked about mission. And you can also just, you know, reduce that down to goals. But if a goal doesn't change priorities, of what, of how people or how they do things, or what they do, basically, if it doesn't change their priorities, then it's not going to live outside of that slide deck. So, yeah, just just to comment on what you're talking about, as people were talking about, you know, they're chiming in with what some good systems might be,
Andy Olrich 21:36
just on systems. I mean, that's your motor, right? That's really the engine that you can be the most motivated, passionate race car driver that just wants to win, but if you set up with a, you know, less than ideal vehicle, or the pit crews not in tune, or your preparations not right? Well, yeah, and then that that, then we can see how those three link, right? And then it leads to whether you kind of lose motivation, or there's that fear there, it's like, oh, I'm going to get everyone's going to blame the driver when there's some other deeper someone mentioned in here, I think Michael put systemic issues in the comments. So we've got the we've got the checkered flag to get to, but yeah, that systems is such and again, if they're not clear, or they're not well aligned, there's no, yeah, that's definitely, and we're getting some feedback through the comments too. It's definitely, definitely some, some quality answers there from our AI friend.
Catherine McDonald 22:29
There's people mentioning Rob is here, mentioning Standard Work accountability, which links into systems, again, but I think you mentioned Patrick, that Patrick something that is so simple, I suppose, for everybody to understand, but it's not always used properly. P, properly. PD, SA is my preferred version for this one. So if we think about what we need to do is get more scientific about our goals. Because oftentimes, I think they're just they're romanticized. There we talk about something. We really want to achieve this, and we care about it so much, so we have this romantic spin on it, but we don't think then about the practicalities of how it's going to be achieved. So I think this kind of critical thinking and scientific thinking, if we simply take PDSA and we look at that from a sort of a scientific lens, and go through each stage using a scientific lens, I think that is a great way to actually achieve your goals throughout the year. And often, the one that's missed, I think, is that the s the study part, we plan, we do, but we don't come back and look at how we're getting on, and then we fail to adjust, or we get fed up and we stop. So I think the scientific thinking and practice is huge here. Anybody else? There anything similar,
Andy Olrich 23:42
I think, I think we put the D in front of the P, or the P is kind of like this little short bit in a lot of cases too. We just get to doing because we're busy and we're under pressure, instead of that study piece where you've got to zoom out, and again, how you structure the goals is, there's that helicopter view, and then we can zoom in or out to really nail in, I think that romanticizing or develop a nice, beautiful brochure, and then we'll have a an all, an all hands meeting, and it feels good. And then, rather, back to, back to kind of work, it's, it's, it is a grind to try and build all that and play the catch ball with the teams. Instead of, we've launched a strategy. And are we that's good and, and, yes, as the measures have come through strong, so we don't even really know where we are to start with, let alone look back and measure well.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 24:30
So, and I think, I think Eddie, you're both of you are kind of like touching on this idea that sometimes busyness, you know, that do part we just want to be busy that takes the place of actual, you know, progress and productivity and like, you know, the the achieving those priorities is because if we feel busy, then we just, you know, we're good about it, right? Like, hey, at least, at least I'm busy. Like, but is it moving the needle? Is it, is it moving toward or are you just moving. Making a lot of dust, you know, just like spinning your tires kind of a thing. Actually, I
Catherine McDonald 25:04
agree, yeah, the do part can be a huge barrier, because what I see happening in the do stage is I see leaders setting the goals and expecting other people to do the work, but very rarely. Well, from what we know in general, do managers look at their own behaviors here when it comes to the do part, in terms of what do they need to do to support the people doing the work to achieve the goal? So for instance, are they having their town halls and communicating, as we said earlier, the goal properly? Are they having their one to ones where they're aligning people to the work? So I think the do is extremely important for managers as well.
Andy Olrich 25:39
Here, there's a great combination. Great comment in here is it just says, LinkedIn user, I apologize, I haven't got a name there, but it says the best system depends a lot on the type of goals, so different goals do need different structures around them. So, yeah, I think that's a that's a good point to call out. We're certainly, there's a lot of common problems and themes here, but yeah, solutions, if we're diving into that is, it depends, and I think that's a good thing to call out as well. So thanks.
Catherine McDonald 26:09
What's another what's another structure that might work? Then what? What are we talking about?
Patrick Adams 26:16
Well, I'll just say for for us at lean solutions, I think the structure or systems around accountability is important. So, you know, not that, not that we micromanage or have to, you know, babysit. It's the complete opposite of that we trust and we understand that we need to hold each other accountable in order for us to meet the goals. And we all are aligned and understand because we help create those goals together as a team. So we know the importance of those goals as a team, and we know the importance of holding each other accountable. So then we set up systems that align with that help us to align those goals to the the Ultimate Direction for the organization and the way that we we do that, we hold an annual meeting, which I know many people who are listening probably do that, but we have a very structured annual meeting that helps us to identify our long term goals, and then we back into, you know, basically end up with some 12 month goals that we then create our 90 day actions around those first 90 days. So then we break that into quarterlies, right? We create our 90 day action items which are very much built together and in alignment towards those 12 month goals. And then once we have those 90 day actions, which are written as smart goals, we actually fill out what we call an impact filter that helps us to understand the importance of reaching those goals, and what will happen if we don't reach those goals? What's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario kind of thing? And then, how do we measure success? And this is an important one, but how do we measure to ensure? How do we what does success look like at the end of 90 days? How do we know that we've arrived, that we've actually been able to achieve that? And then, with within that that quarter each week. How are we measuring? What are the leading indicators that we're measuring and looking at regularly to know that we're on track? And this goes back to, I think, Andy you mentioned, and Catherine talked a little bit about reflection and and being willing to be flexible, because if we've established the right measures, and we see that maybe a metric isn't being, you know, isn't being achieved, or isn't on track, maybe it's heading in the wrong direction, then we have to, we have to be able to take action accordingly, to adjust ourselves so that we don't wait until the end of the quarter and then go, well, oh well, we didn't meet that goal, right? Which is what a lot of people do at the end of the year, the end of the year, they look back and go, Okay, what were our goals again? And did we hit them? No, we we look at that on a quarterly basis, and then we look at it on a weekly basis, and we're making adjustments as we go, so that we ensure that at the end of the quarter, we're checking the box for success, not for, okay, we're now, what do we do? Right? Let me, oh, go ahead. I'm just going to ask
Shayne Daughenbaugh 29:04
him to interject and just kind of ask a question as you're describing that, you know, we earlier here in this discussion, we talked about behaviors and goals that impact behaviors, and measuring those behaviors rather than measuring the busyness. Can you give some ideas, you know, any, any three of you, as to what that would look like. How do we translate, what would translating a goal into a behavior look like? And, and, Patrick, from your perspective, I mean, you've kind of gone through it. How you're backing in from the year? What are the behaviors that your team is coming up with? Saying, Hey, these are the behaviors, not just we've, you know, I have this stack of things that I started with, and now it's smaller, you know, but the behaviors, I think, are a better indicator, you know, then there was, then results, kind of doing busyness, kind of thing. Can you help, help us understand that part?
Patrick Adams 29:56
You bet, yeah. So, one thing that I'll say is, when it. When it comes to behavior. So we do have structured meetings in place that are non negotiable, meetings that we do attend. So on a weekly basis, we have a leadership meeting that we review those 90 day actions. Are we on track? Are we off track? Do we need to adjust, you know? And then I'll go back to I think it was Rob bull who posted a couple couple items standard work, accountability by peers and routines, consistency, right? So when it comes to behavior, not just from leaders, but from the entire team, you know we're establishing we're using Leader Standard Work to establish consistency and disciplined action or behaviors habits. I guess that will help us to meet those goals. So what are the things that I need to be doing? What are the inputs, if I'm looking for a specific output, like I want to reach my goals, the results are that. What are the behaviors, the inputs that need to be happening on a daily, a weekly basis in order for me to achieve that goal? So I'm I'm actually putting that into my Leader Standard Work, and then we have one on ones where we review those our Leader Standard Work together. So I'll be reviewing it with my peer and reviewing theirs as well, and making sure that we're staying on track or making adjustments as necessary. So those are just a couple. I think someone said GEMBA walks to daily stand ups, gamble walks. Those are all things that we are actively doing to make sure that we're, you know, working towards meeting those goals. When we get into our leadership meeting on a weekly basis and we go around the room and we say whether we're on track or off track, if someone says that they're off track, that's not the first time that the team know has is hearing about or knows about it, because during that week, or maybe in previous weeks, we're doing one on ones. We're, we're doing GEMBA walks together. We're, we're having those open coaching discussions together, so we are all abreast to knowing what's happening with everyone's goals and when they say they're off track. We might, we might dedicate a little bit of time to discussing it during our leadership meeting. We've probably already have some actions in place to start to make adjustments to get that back on track, right?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 32:07
Yeah, I love, I love that. What you're talking about are things that people can control. Yeah, you know. So the goal isn't something so far out there that, you know, I have to pray to the Goal, goal gods and hope it works like no, I have control of by these things you're talking about, and that gives me agency and ownership of the goals that I have. Like, that's huge in my head.
Catherine McDonald 32:30
I might, I might just throw in there. In terms of PDSA, there's a because I bring it into coaching. When I'm coaching individuals and teams, there's a few coaching tools that can really help here. I'll just call them out. So in the plan stage, a lot of people are probably familiar with grow, G R O W, gold, reality options. Will I actually like to use the growth? G R, O, W, T, H stands for time and habits. Think that's really important when you're working with peoples and people and teams in the plan stages to get to the questions, do you have time for this? Are you sure What habits do you need to, you know, make or break in order to do this? So that's growth in the do stage. I think you reminded me of this. Shane, control. What can you control? So see, are you CIA, what can you control? What can you influence? And what might you have to accept here, we may have to accept that things won't go our way. And this is back to the behaviors of leaders, acceptance that things don't always go, curiosity as to why. And then in the study phase, I use the four what's where we get together and go, what did we expect to happen? What actually happened? What did we learn and why, and what will we do differently next time? So I know we always talk about tools, almost as a kind of a negative. We can't focus on the tools, but tools actually bring structure, so I'm a big fan of using them in the right way. I don't know if anybody else's thoughts on that. I just
Andy Olrich 33:47
wanted to jump in. I just want to jump in here with tie a couple of threads. So, Patrick, you talked about the accountability and just going back to Rob's comment around daily, yeah, I'm passionate about the daily visual management. And again, we already know that we're not on track. So that's just in part of this discussion is not only we measuring well, but that leading versus lagging indicators piece, especially when you plug that into daily visual management, which relies on latest standard work and that there's non negotiable interactions that we have or ceremonies with the teams. Really do find it powerful that when we've got those goals coming right down to the micro level, is if we're not doing, when we do our GEMBA walks, okay? We measure that, okay, we actually capture on our latest standard work, if we don't do that, like, like a hazard in walk, or something like that, it's like, well, we know if we're not doing our hazard identification walks history tells us that we're probably going to have an event, which is then a lagging measure, and then we've got to, we're scrambling. We're trying to then work out how to put the fire out, metaphorically speaking, hopefully. But I think again, having those tools, Catherine, yeah, you've got to have some sort of structure. And. Way that we communicate consistently again. So I think that's really important. But I just wanted to bring in that leading indicator piece. If we're talking about measures for those in the group, I might just throw it out to the group. What's a, what's a great leading indicator that you might use yourself or have seen around behaviors, if you want to pop that in while we get going, because I think that's yeah, culture,
Patrick Adams 35:22
think about, think about an answer to that, and for those of you that are listening in, drop it. Drop your answer into the comments. I want to just take a minute. We're just over halfway through our time today, and I want to just kind of take a pulse, check on everyone who's listening in. If you are enjoying the conversation, give us a thumbs up. Hit that hit that thumbs up button and let us know that you're still with us. And things are things are going in the right direction. And if you're not enjoying the conversation, then just, just hang on, because it's coming.
Patrick Adams 36:00
So let's go back to to Andy's question. Who has a who has a good answer for for Andy on his question to the group here,
Andy Olrich 36:10
yeah, what's it? What would be, what you've seen, or you think would be a good leading indicator of how a team could measure behaviors, and whether that's in, yeah, whatever lens, let's lift up. But their leadership, Are we, are we doing the right things, or are we just doing things right? How would we know before it's happened?
Patrick Adams 36:29
Yeah, from from a leading indicator standpoint, I'll just give you one that pops into my head right now for for a sales team, for example, you know, they have a goal at the end of the quarter on, you know how much sales that they need to bring into an organization. Their leading indicator might be activities. They might be tracking number of activities. And when I say activities, I mean like phone calls, meetings,
Patrick Adams 36:56
emails, WhatsApp, conversations, whatever it is, you might be tracking those activities that are happening on a weekly basis. Now, will those activities turn into sales? If the if they're value add conversations? We hope so. But that that's, you know, that's something that a sales team has to work on, is improving those conversations, but the more of those touch points, more of those conversations that are happening as a leading indicator, the hope would be that the lagging indicator of an increase in sales would be happening, right? So that would be just one, one example. I don't know if anybody else has any other ways of tracking behaviors.
Andy Olrich 37:32
Rob, put one in here. Thanks, Rob. It's around you. Lead indicator time allocated per day linked to orientated action. So I think that time pieces is important. It's we could have the checklist or the latest standard work. But again, how much time are capturing? How much time we're spending on those things to what outcome is there value in that one hour meeting every day? Because we've been told that's best practice in our industry. What's that performance look like if we cut it to 30 minutes? How we know whether that's better or worse and it's more impactful. So Thanks, Rob. That's some, some great ones there. We've got another one there, layered process audits. So that's from David. Thanks, David.
Patrick Adams 38:13
Yeah, I think, I think for those that are doing using Leader Standard Work, I mean, if you're if you're keeping track daily on again, those inputs are those things that are going to help you to achieve the results that you're going for. If you're tracking those and you have someone that's holding you accountable, and you have good systems around that, then again, those can be leading indicators that would leading indicators of the right behaviors that will lead to, you know, meeting those goals down the road. Yeah. Catherine, sorry, I think I interrupted you.
Catherine McDonald 38:42
No, no, you actually answered the question for me, but I was thinking of something else as well. What was the third did we get to the third top three that chat
Patrick Adams 38:49
to be, yeah, with systems. It was systems.
Catherine McDonald 38:52
Oh, yeah. Sorry, okay,
Patrick Adams 38:55
but I do, I do want to go to we have a couple other points that I want to make sure that we cover that we had in the agenda. So let's and also we want to have time at the end for some questions. So just a couple things I want to hit on real quick. The first one is leaders who are tired of goals that sound good in January but fade by March. How many of us that are listening in have experienced this where the goals sound great? Everybody's excited. We're motivated, and then here comes March, April, and we're not, not only are we not meeting our goals, but nobody's talking about them, they're kind of a lost cause, right? So I guess I want to open up to the group, what are some some things that we can do to
Patrick Adams 39:39
to make sure that that's not happening. I know we talked about a little bit of this already clarity of goals, tying it back to behaviors, right? And having a good way of tracking those so a way to measure those, those leading indicators for behavior. What are some other systems or ways that we could ensure that the goals do not fit? Fade away as we go through the year.
Shayne Daughenbaugh 40:02
I have heard someone say something about, I was, what was it? Keep it simple. Keep it visual. Is that? I mean, I think, I think making that visual like that's something that I hear you saying all the time. Patrick, about, you know, keeping things visual in what we're, you know, we're talking about tracking things. But if all I'm doing is tracking it in an Excel spreadsheet, that's nice. We're tracking we have data. But if it's not in front of people, you know, then I don't know where we're at. Like, if I'm part of the team, I can't see where we're at, you know, make it as in the part. In regard to the simple, make it as easy as as it can be, so that I just have to glance, not so that I have to hunt and peck and find, you know, in our shared drive, where is that? That we talk about goals again. Let me find that again and make sure that I'm that I have that, you know, put it out there, make it visual, make it simple to follow, okay?
Catherine McDonald 40:55
And herein lies the problem of there being too many goals. Because if you've got too many goals, you can't visualize them all in one page in one place, so they're just going to get stuffed in a document and of reams of, you know, digital paper, and nobody looks at them. So I wonder, does that bring us to the discussion of, how many goals should we have in an organization? Yes, we need more than one. We've different departments. But what? What's ideal here?
Patrick Adams 41:22
That's a really good question. I'm going to, I'm going to put that out to the audience as well. So anyone that's listening in drop that in the comments. What is the right number of goals for someone to be working on at any given time? How many goals should someone be working on at any given time? And I'm also going to, again, just go back to the audience here and just say, if you are enjoying this conversation, if you're if this is adding value to you, and you think it could add value to your team, hit the share button and share this out to your network so that more people can take a listen to this. They might not catch the live, but they might be listening to the replay, and so hit the share button, get this out to your network and and then drop a comment below and let us know how many goals are the right number of goals that that one person should be working on at any given time. We're looking for those comments to come in here. But any thoughts? Shane Andy, any thoughts on this one?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 42:22
I shoot low. I shoot low because I feel like we can always add more, but if we have too many to start with, then I'm overwhelmed, and my attention is spread across, and I just, I just hardly go anywhere, you know, an inch deep and a mile wide. But if I have, you know, three, maybe five goals just because of the way my work works. You know how things work? I'm I'm most comfortable with three, and then if we need to add more, hey, you accomplished those fantastic bro. We got halfway through the year. We're already done. We're setting up more goals. We're going to crush those as well. Then we celebrate. Rather than November going well, we're 75% on six goals, yeah, but we're not going to achieve any of them, because a goal really doesn't matter until you achieve it. Like, that's when that that's when the magic is, like, bam, now we can celebrate.
Catherine McDonald 43:13
Yeah, there's people saying three to five, five, even five is a lot. I think I kind of disagree. Cindy, you say three to five? Abadola says five. I when you break down a goal and what's involved now, depending on the goal itself, these could be small goals, fine, but if these are big, and these have to be broken down into so many actions per quarter, per week, so it may be, you know, I asked an unfair question because I wasn't specific, but five seems a lot,
Patrick Adams 43:44
yeah, and I think you have a good point Catherine, it does depend on the scope and the size of the goal, right? If it's a massive project, you know, a bigger goal, we should break that down and and one goal may end up becoming multiple goals if we break it down and, you know, into smaller chunks. So I agree, we always say no more than seven, and seven is massive. That's that's a lot. But we also do, we have company company goals, and then we have personal goals. And so the company goals are worked on by multiple people within the organization. And so we end up receiving, you know, tasks, you know, or sometimes those become smart goals within a company goal. And so you end up getting more than your personal goals anyways. And we all know throughout the year things are going to pop in that we didn't know about right now, right? So you got to take that in consideration. But we always say less is more. And if you have very clear, only a couple goals, very clear, you have systems in place to back that. The most important thing is that you're executing and achieving what you're shooting out for. And if you're, if you're not, if you're, you know, inch deep, mile wide, and you're not able to accomplish your goals, then you. Need to Talk with your supervisor, or, you know, obviously, pull the team together, whatever might be, and you need to have a conversation, and need to make changes right away, because you don't want to wait until the end of the quarter or the end of the year and have not reached your goals because you had too many. So you have to be willing to bring out. And this goes back to the what we talked about earlier, with behaviors or psychological safety. If you don't feel safe to say, Hey, I got too many goals, then that's a big problem, because what's going to happen is you're going to get burnt out, or you're going to get to the end of the quarter of the year, and you're not going to reach your goals, and then you're going to, you know, again, if you live in an organization that has a fear based culture, probably going to get yelled at, right instead of getting assistance or help or support. So you have to be able to raise that question and say, hey, who can help out? I got too many goals. Yeah.
Andy Olrich 45:48
And just to wrap that, we talked about too many or whatever. I think about the dashboard in your car, right? It's there's some very clear things that you need to be made aware of. Unless something changes and it can flash up, you don't have all the lights on it once, and then you've got to look at them all the time. We have an example down here is a large, let's just say technology retailer. And there's some studies have been done on it, because of just how this business operates. You go in there and there's just signs everywhere, like, here is this. There's all these. There'd be, honestly, no word of a lie, there'd be probably 500 signs hanging from the roof in a, not in a fair size shot, majority, there's, they've done some studies on that. A lot of people will walk in and just try and find an employee just to find out where stuff is okay, because it's just, you're saturated with information, and it's, it's overwhelming. So I think that ties in well with when we're talking about the goals, but also how we display those goals, and the three to five second rule, you can walk into an area and know at a glance whether we're winning or losing. I think that's so important. And ask the audience to reflect too is there in your organization or you've seen or even where you do your shopping? When you go in and there's just too many blinking lights or too many things coming at you, you kind of just give up, and then you're consuming someone else's time to just tell me what's going on instead of we all know, and we are all kind of connected without those every time has to be a conversation type thing.
Catherine McDonald 47:13
So and that's back to behaviors as well. Andy and Shane asked the question early, what behaviors we need people in our organizations who are not afraid to say, No, I can't do that right now, or Yes, I can do that. And to Dr M and Rob bold point, we need to be able to say, what do you want me to drop if you want me to focus on this? And we all need to be having those conversations regularly. Instead of everybody saying yes to everything, it is landing us in trouble. So really important to speak up and not be afraid to say that. Yes, I'll do that. And what do you want me to drop if I do that?
Andy Olrich 47:47
Yeah, with me saying yes to this, what are we saying no to? Because I think most people are running at 100% 110% so if we talk about improvements, and we want 10% to be discretionary time to do that, if we're stuck in the busy, great analogy around Monte pert horse, if anyone's heard of that, but it's it's an image of a rocking horse, and it says, Do not confuse motion with progress. A rocking horse moves a lot, moves a lot, but it goes nowhere. And someone told me that years ago, and I was like, That is me. I was in an operational leadership role. And I was just, yeah, 14 hours a day getting buried, but then I'd still come in and go, Well, I don't think you'd I don't think you're doing your job properly. Yeah. So Monte per horse. Look it up, but it's just one of those images. It's really stuck with me about, yeah, the rocking horse does lots of activity, but has it actually gone anywhere? Now, is it meant to no but in the horse example, but that's a cool analogy around this stuff. Yeah, it
Patrick Adams 48:46
ties right into leaders, leaders who feel busy but unsure if the work moves the needle. I wrote down a couple of things here. Busyness is often mistaken for productivity when priorities are unclear and then without focus, people default to urgent tasks rather than important ones. Sorry, Catherine, were you gonna say something?
Catherine McDonald 49:05
No, no, I didn't want to interrupt you. Patrick, no, I was just going to say. Cindy, made a point about accountability as well accountability partners. So having somebody like a mentor or coach in your life to actually get this stuff out of your head, how much you how much you're working on, what your workload is like, how many goals you have, talk it out loud with somebody you know. Talk about the issues with it, figure a way out of it. I think that helps as well, especially with the busyness that you talk about. I mean, that's most of the clients I see. The biggest problem is workload, but what to focus on? So get it out. Work it out with somebody. Don't keep it all inside. Yeah.
Andy Olrich 49:39
Catch balls. Psychological safety catch ball. So I'm in Australia, for those who couldn't work that out already, but it's we actually have legislation now that talks about psychosocial systems and and a mental or a psychosocial incident is actually classed the same as a physical injury in the workplace. Now down here, it's in it's in law. Because of those negative things that come out of the silos and the fear of speaking up and those things. So there's just a free hit. I don't know whether anywhere else in the world has got that in place, but yeah, very much. The psychosocial piece is part of a must be part of a safety management system and measured right?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 50:20
Patrick, we are, we are 10 minutes out. I think it'd be great while we as as hosts are kind of wrapping up to open it up for questions.
Patrick Adams 50:27
I agree. I was just looking back at the comments to try to see, I knew, I know there's a few questions that popped in. So if you do, anyone's listening in and you have a question, go ahead and drop it in the comments. We're going to go back and pull a couple questions here. Try to answer. If you guys see any, here's one right here. Let's put this one in all right. Do you think different departments can develop communication patterns based on what is most convenient for them, leading to siloed behaviors and internal competition that ultimately complicate or undermine overall alignment. What do you guys think?
Catherine McDonald 51:05
Yeah, it happens. Yeah,
Patrick Adams 51:09
statement, right then a question. But absolutely, this definitely can happen and and this is something that we have to be very intentional to fight against and not allow the siloed behaviors, the internal competition. We like healthy competition, but not the kind of competition that diminishes communication right? So you have to be very intentional to develop the right communication patterns. And this can be something that you even build into your Leader Standard Work Again, one on ones should be part of your Leader Standard Work, where you're having open communication with your peers, with those that report to you, with those you report to and there should be some a plan for those conversations. It shouldn't be just show up and have a you know, just talk like, what? What is the point of the conversation? What are we going to achieve? What's the outcome? What do we want to walk away with? What does success look like for one of these? One on ones has to be very intentional and very clear, and it has to be in alignment with, again, meeting our goals. What are the goals that we're trying to achieve? We have to have that trust built up to be able to have open conversations and challenge each other on you know, why we're not meeting our goals, or what's getting in the way of us, and how I can help remove roadblocks. Those types of things have to be happening in those communication, in those one on ones, right?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 52:29
I got a question that I'm pulling up from Dr M, perfect. You know, in regards to goals, because sometimes to to achieve a goal, we do improve what we're doing, right? So, how do we have, and this is what I'm taking Dr m to be asking, you know, how do we encourage employees to have that Kaizen mindset, that improvement mindset, that, Hey, what is the small thing? You know, Paul acres, the two you know, the two second lean idea that can get us closer to that goal. What have you guys found in in your consulting work that that you can share with leaders to encourage their employees to have that kind of mindset, as in regards to what we're talking about for goals,
Andy Olrich 53:15
help them have a win. You know, in this space, like even there's there's some quite large, complex improvement projects that happen, but the quick wins get the ball rolling, and then they can see that, you know, it's actually going somewhere. Or, hey, they actually let me do that. I think that mindset around, okay, well, I raised that idea, or we allowed someone else to and it's gone somewhere, or it didn't work. And we, we've learned that that doesn't help us? I think, yeah, you've got to, they've got to want it. They've got to feel it here, that it's actually the Kaizen mindset is around those incremental improvements day to day. Doesn't have to be all the big stuff that you'll get there. I think that's really what's in it, for me, is where a lot of people come back to and go, Well, me just spitting out the same thing every day, because that's my job. That's one way to look at it, and that's all I want to do. But others feel empowered and inspired, and they can see that that actually contributes to the long term success. I think that's it. Give them some wins, help them, help them win, and see that it's actually pointing at something real. If it's a no, it's a no, because or not yet, because here's where we're actually going. These are the measures our customers are telling us. And then again, the whole communication piece is the why. So that's my Yeah, yeah. I want to, I want to do it.
Patrick Adams 54:31
I think you also have to. You also have to have the right metrics in place, and everyone on the team has to be aligned and understand what is being measured and how, you know, pulling certain levers can affect those, those metrics, like, right? We just have a metric up on the wall that nobody knows what goes into that, you know, then when, when a change happens, nobody really knows how to react. So what I like is, I like to have a conversation. With someone about a metric chart that we're looking at, and when I see a big drop or a big jump, I want to know what action was it that caused that? And they should be able to tell me like, well, we we did a Kaizen event, or we did something that caused that to drop or cause that to increase. And if once they start understanding what's behind the metrics, and they and they can actually, you know, pull levers and do things to to make changes in that. That's when the Kaizen mindset really starts to set in, because they're like, Okay, when I make this improvement, when I remove this waste, when I when I adjust this, you know, I'm making changes to the metrics in the way that I want them to, or if it's not in the way that I want it to, I know why, and I can make adjustments to get it back where I
Andy Olrich 55:46
need it to be. Yeah, they feel valued, whether, whether it works or not, people are listening to them. You know, again, this is coming back to that cultural pieces, how? And there was a great question put in by Dr M, I think, or a statement was around leading indicators, how do you know if your people, how do you measure how your people are feeling about their work, or something like that? Sorry, it's way, it's way at the top. But again, things like Bradley curves or tuckmans wheel, it's a real you're trying to measure that, that vibe in the place. It's they've got to want it and feel like they're valued and they're being listened to. And that's, that's the whole piece around giving them those daily vocaes. And I feel, I think that's a, yeah, all of this stuff
Catherine McDonald 56:28
absolutely similar to Zayas question there. How do you assess the alignment between a company's objectives and its culture? That's not something we do a lot. We look at the alignment between the objectives and what is actually happening, task wise, technically wise, we don't look at the alignment with the culture. So I think that's a really interesting one, and that obviously requires feedback. It requires us to have a culture of feedback to understand how people are feeling about the goals. Great question.
Patrick Adams 56:58
Said, Yeah, I want to touch on this one real quick as well. I worked at an organization I actually wrote about in my book, avoiding the continuous appearance trap. So company continuous appearance and and I think I've talked about this before too, but the the objectives that we had were a joke, and everybody knew that. And at the end of the year, we wouldn't even write objectives honestly, because they were such a joke. But at the end of the year, you know, my boss would come to me and he would say, Okay, what did you accomplish this year? Like write those in, type those into your objectives, so that we can say that you accomplish your objectives. So when you when you ask the question, how do your objectives define your culture? Think about the culture that we have there, right? A very toxic culture, and you know that that's where you you know the appearance of things is what mattered, not necessarily the real what was really happening behind the scenes. So when you know that your culture is aligned your objectives, you have the right objectives, and your culture is aligned with that. You're seeing measurable impact regularly. You're seeing teams adjust. You're seeing the safety of the trust and the safety of people being able to raise their hand and say they need help, or when they say, Hey, I'm I'm off track. It's not people aren't mad. They're like, How can I help? You know, that's the difference that you see in the type of culture that you want versus, you know, that's how you can make the connection between the objectives and the culture, right?
Shayne Daughenbaugh 58:27
All right. We have a minute and a half so to end on time. For once in our podcast, we're going to end on time.
Patrick Adams 58:35
That's right. We are going to end on time. We have two minutes left. So real quick, if you are not subscribed to the Lean solutions podcast, go out to your favorite podcast platform, whether that's Spotify, we also post on YouTube as well. So if you prefer video, go go to YouTube, find the Lean solutions podcast, and you can subscribe there or again on your favorite podcast platform. Subscribe to lean solutions podcast. We're also always open to improvements. So let us know what we can do to improve. If you feel like we need shorter episodes, if we're missing certain content, if you if you think we should have a certain speaker or a topic that you'd like to hear about, reach out to one of us. We're all very active on LinkedIn, and would love to hear from you, and we want the podcast to be something that is beneficial and adding value to all of you. So please help us to do that. With that said, any last comments about goal setting that sticks for the year? Any, any last points that you guys want to make as we close?
Andy Olrich 59:33
Just a call to action, if there's Yeah, but, I mean, we've talked about visibility. What are the goals? Where do we see them, and how do our people feel about them? I think those three areas there, if everybody here, including myself, could go away and just jot a couple of points down on that, what are the goals? How am I measuring them, and where and how do I we feel about them? I think that'd be a good place, especially if you're doing that planning phase now. So thank you, everyone. Yeah, thank you.
Patrick Adams 59:59
Bye. You. Thanks. Write down the Write down your goals, and set up systems around that to make sure that you accomplish them. And if you're not moving ahead on your goals, then make an adjustment, right? And figure out what's going on and and adjust accordingly. So Alright, everybody, we wish you a an amazing 2026 and we will see you on the next episode of the lean solutions podcast.
Catherine McDonald 1:00:21
Thanks everybody, bye.