Mastering Lean Principles: Lean Management Tips from Jared Thatcher

Today’s guest on the Harvest Growth Podcast helped organizations save 150 million to one billion dollars in operational costs over the last 15 years and has been assisting ambitious entrepreneurs to master the same managerial principles since 2019. He is Jared Thatcher, Host of the Global Lean Summit, a world-class conference that empowers small business owners, C-suite executives and organizational teams to adopt personalized lean management solutions and transform their operations.
 
In this episode, Jared reveals how you can benefit from these lean principles, even tripling efficiency and output, without a team of lean operations experts on the payroll. If you’re interested in growing and scaling your business with a continuous improvement in product quality, Jared’s insights and experience are an invaluable resource. Join us now!
 
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we cover:

●      Strategies for radically improving your business operations and performance.

●      How lean principles also impact personal well-being and overall happiness.

●      How to master and implement lean principles in your business.

●      Learn lean tactics for solving costly employee management challenges.

●      Ideas to improve your leadership skills and performance.

●      And so much more!

Would you like to spot and remove the costly waste from your operational processes? Are you new to lean management systems? Then, take the first step to transforming your organization by registering for the 5th edition of the Global Lean Summit at www.globalleansummit.com. Scheduled to be held 17-19 September 2024 in Indiana, this event will include a one-day full immersive tour of Toyota - renowned for its lean management principles - and interaction with top executives. You will also leave with personalized lean management roadmaps for your unique challenges so you can start implementing them immediately.

To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!

Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands totaling over $2 billion in revenues? Visit HarvestGrowth.com and set up a free consultation with us today!

Transcript

Jon LaClare [00:00:00]:
In marketing, we often speak of time spent at large, well known companies like P and G or Kraft, where I started my marketing career as helping us to become classically trained marketers. Lean management principles, perfected at companies like Toyota, are general operating principles that can help companies of any size become more efficient, more effective, and more valuable. Today's guest is a master teacher of Lean principles and shares insights in this interview that you can apply to improve your business. No matter the size or type of business today, are you looking for new.

Announcer [00:00:35]:
Ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous. Now here's the host of the Harvest Growth podcast, Jon LaClare.

Jon LaClare [00:00:54]:
Welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to be speaking with Jared Thatcher. He's the host of the Global Lean Summit. We'll talk more about that, of course, throughout this interview, but you can find out more information at Global lean lean summit.com dot. Many of our listeners likely know what Lean is for those that don't, we'll get into it a little bit and explain this process that really can be helpful for businesses of all types and all sizes. So Jared's going to teach us a lot today in this interview, but also talk about a conference that he has coming up where you can learn a lot more about Lean and the processes that can really help your business to become more efficient, have more value, a lot more that he'll explain better than I can do. But first of all, Jared, welcome to the show.

Jared Thatcher [00:01:35]:
Thank you, John.

Jon LaClare [00:01:37]:
So for those in our audience that don't know what is Lean, can you describe it?

Jared Thatcher [00:01:42]:
Yeah, absolutely. So lean refers to a management system. Basically, it's a way of thinking differently about the world and about how you do things. So in essence, lean is this idea of doing more with less. And as you learn to be more efficient so that you can do things faster, quicker with better quality, you are also figuring out how to, you know, maximize your returns on the investment that you have put into it. So when you can look at the world in a different way, which is this idea of lean thinking, then you're able to really find some incredible efficiencies. So, for example, in the course of my career, I've helped people realize that they can do things faster and quicker and better. And I've taken one group and it was taking them three to four days out of the week to do this really mundane tedious data entry process.

Jared Thatcher [00:02:42]:
And we figured out how to basically automate that to the point where it only took them 15 minutes a month, freed up their time to be able to work on more meaningful work, be able to work with customers, improve morale, you know, improve the bottom line. There's been a lot of different things that we've been able to do. Right now, I work, you know, in government, and one of the things that happens that government's well known for is red tape. Right. And it has been frustrating not just for those that we serve, but also internally, as we're trying to, you know, improve procurements and get people on boarded so that we can make projects and make things happen. And typically, it was taken about eight months to sign a contract. From the time a department says, let's go ahead and hire this consulting firm or put it out for hiring to the time the contract is signed, it was taken, on average, about eight months. Well, we've been working with our procurement group, and we've gotten that down to three and a half months, well over 50% increase in how quickly we can move things forward.

Jared Thatcher [00:03:51]:
So it's those sort of things where we're constantly looking for opportunity, and that's really what lean is.

Jon LaClare [00:03:59]:
That's really helpful. I think what I want to talk a little bit about in this interview today is how it can be used, really, by businesses of all sizes. And I think there's certainly benefits of huge organizations and there's benefits of small companies. Right. And they can be different from each other, and you can certainly learn one from another. And one of the nice things about big businesses is they have processes and structures in place, and many of them use these lean principles to, as you said, make their businesses operate more efficiently, save on costs, increase revenues. There's so much that it can do in these processes, but it doesn't mean that a small business can't also benefit from it. Now, they may not have an entire team of individuals with lien in their titles on their business cards.

Jon LaClare [00:04:43]:
Right. But they can use the principles as well. Any examples of businesses that are smaller in size or scope that have. That you've worked with and helped use these principles?

Jared Thatcher [00:04:53]:
Yeah, absolutely. So there was a, you know, a local bakery that we were talking, and they said, hey, can you come take a look at what we're doing? I said, absolutely. So the first thing I did is I mapped out the entire establishment. Where is the equipment of the counters, all of their inventory. And from that, I had a good roadmap of what everything looked like. And I used a tool called spaghetti mapping, and basically all it is, is you follow and track somebody as they're doing their work. So there was an individual that was getting ready to make some peanut butter cookies, and I said, hey, I'm going to watch you. Just don't worry.

Jared Thatcher [00:05:29]:
I might be asking you questions along the way, but, yeah, just go about your job just like you normally would. And so they knew I was watching them, which means they were actually going to be more efficient because they knew somebody was watching them. They're not going to go off and talk to one of their coworkers. So their entire job was concentrated on making these peanut butter cookies. And so as they were walking out to the cooler to find the egg mixture, to realize that it wasn't there, and then having to walk around and ask people, hey, have you seen it? You know, where it is? Track it down, bring it back, use it, put it away, you know, looking for the different, you know, ingredients, finding out that, hey, they're out of, you know, the flour, they have to restock it, you know, all of these things that they were going through. I'm drawing this map, and pretty soon it literally looked like an octopus that went out into the entire, you know, bakery as it was, as they were moving around to. To do this. And so at the end of it, we, we measured, you know, how long it took for them to do that.

Jared Thatcher [00:06:26]:
And. And I showed this to the owner, and they were blown away. They did not realize that there was that much movement. They thought, oh, well, they must be going out and talking to their friends. I'm like, no, they didn't do any of that. They were strictly trying to make the peanut butter cookies. And I'm like, well, how do we improve this? I said, well, we need to remove the waste. There's a lot of transportation.

Jared Thatcher [00:06:46]:
There's a lot of motion, and if we can get that down. So instead of them having to go all over the bakery to get everything, what if we were to put all of the ingredients within reach of the individual in one spot, have the mixer right next to the table? So literally, all they're doing is they're just pulling down the right ingredients. They're mixing up the recipe, they're pouring it into the mixer. It gets mixed, they put it up back on the table, scoop out the cookies onto the tray, and put it into the refrigerator. It removes so much of that work that we're doing. So we did that. We went ahead and completely reorganized the shelving. We put in all the ingredients that were typical to the different types of cookies they were making in one location, and it reduced the amount of time it was taking them to make cookies by 60%.

Jared Thatcher [00:07:38]:
So basically, they could now make three times the number of cookies in the same time it used to take them to do one. Now, for a small business owner, being able to reduce the labor cost by that much, I mean, that's significant. So it allows you to make more, to do more, to be more efficient in how you're doing things and really to gain that efficiency. It's phenomenal, especially for a small business.

Jon LaClare [00:08:07]:
And you think about that process at a small business multiplied by 1000 or 10,000 or whatever to these larger organizations, the levels of efficiency that they can reach. Most famous organizations that implements lean on a. I don't know if I say a perfect basis, but a well known basis for sure is Toyota. Can you talk a little bit about why are they considered sort of the gold standard in lean?

Jared Thatcher [00:08:32]:
Yeah, that's a great question. So Toyota really is kind of the gold standard. And I think that the biggest reason is, if you think back, they did a lot in terms of innovation, in terms of continuous improvement, you know, pre World War two. But then, of course, World War two comes at the end of that time. The entire japanese economy is decimated. Right. All the factories have been bombed. You know, it was, it was in shambles, and as they were rebuilding, I think it was like, I want to say about ten years afterwards.

Jared Thatcher [00:09:05]:
So around, you know, 1950, 319 55, somewhere around there, they ended up taking a trip to Ford. And what they noticed was that in one day, Ford was producing the same number of vehicles that they were producing in an entire year. And they have this really big, hairy, audacious goal, which is, hey, we want to be able to meet that type of production within the next ten years. And so how do we do that? Well, they don't have the same equipment, they don't have the same infrastructure, and so they had to get very creative in how do we do that? How do we increase our quality, our efficiency? And that's where this idea of lean came from, where they started looking and realizing there's a lot of inefficiencies in how we do things. And that's really where lean came from. So they took a lot of the principles that we ended up using during World War two to quickly rebuild our infrastructure and produce phenomenal rates. It used to take at the very beginning to build a ship, well over a year to build a ship, and then we got that down to within a month. Or two, we could have a ship built.

Jared Thatcher [00:10:12]:
So there's huge efficiency gains that we figured out how to do. They took those same principles and then really kind of enhanced them. And it was that that led them, you know, as being basically a no name small, you know, third world, and at that time, third world, you know, country, building cars to being, what was that, like the mid seventies? They really kind of came onto the scene as, as being one of the number, you know, one of the top car manufacturers. And then all of a sudden, they were the number one car manufacturer. And they've maintained that position because of the quality that they ended up bringing to the product. So where we see other car companies having all sorts of defects and issues, and it doesn't mean that Toyota's excluded from that. We have seen things that have happened, but the main principles of what has made them successful is there's a saying that they actually don't have people that build cars. They build people who build cars.

Jared Thatcher [00:11:23]:
And the difference is they work at making sure that the people are really the foundation of the improvement, giving them the ability and the empowerment to say, hey, there's something wrong here, and to fix it. And so what happens in most companies is they're firefighting. There's an emergency that pops up here, there's an emergency that pops up there, and they have to figure out, well, what's happening, and then they solve that. And really what they're doing is they're just putting a band aid on the problem. Toyota, on the other hand, takes a different approach. They have their people say, why did that problem happen? Why was there a fire in the first place? And then they get to the root cause of that and they either eliminate it or they mediate the problem so that it doesn't come up or it doesn't come up as often. And so what happens is they don't have these same issues coming up again and again and again, where a lot of companies will have the same problem occurring over and over again. And so it's because they empower their people to really own their work, to constantly look at how do we improve, how do we make it better, how do we improve the quality and the efficiency of what we're doing.

Jared Thatcher [00:12:31]:
And that's really, I think the strength of Toyota is they've ingrained that in the culture. They've ingrained that and created a learning organization where it's actually okay to fail as long as you're learning from that failure. You know, I've actually seen this in, you know, large corporations where somebody makes a $10,000 mistake and they fire them and they hire somebody else, and that person then goes ahead and makes $100,000 mistake and they fire that person. Yet if they'd kept the first person that made the $10,000 mistake guaranteed, they wouldn't have made that hundred thousand dollars mistake, because they learn from it. They want to be better. And I think everybody has a desire to really add value and be the best that they can be within their job. And so when you trust your people, when you give them that empowerment to make mistakes, to learn to grow and to add value to what they're doing, the end results are phenomenal. So that's a huge long answer.

Jared Thatcher [00:13:28]:
But really, I think that's what makes Toyota different, is that they focus on building up the people who then build the cars. And that is a fundamental transformation of how I think most people do it. Most people look at, or most companies, I should say, look at their people as human resources, right? They don't even look at them as people. Whereas within Toyota, it's the people that make what we do possible.

Jon LaClare [00:13:55]:
I love how you describe the people as such an important element, because so often when we think about quality, efficiency, it comes down, down to the process, and that certainly is part of it. But the process can't happen and certainly can't improve without the people element, right? So it's so important to realize that the biggest cog in the wheel or in the system is the people in your company that are going to make the changes. A process. You can have a perfect process until something happens. A problem is going to happen in your organization, outside of the process, whatever it might be. So having the right people that are trained, that are passionate about it, and that they are striving to be efficient, improve, change, alter, optimize the process, whatever it might be. So I love that, how you describe that part of the system. So let's talk a little bit more about Toyota.

Jon LaClare [00:14:44]:
You've got an in person conference coming up fairly soon here, mid September in Indiana. And part of that three day conference, it's an extra day you can do, et cetera. But the main three day event is a visit to a Toyota material handling plant. And it's an all day experience, which for any of our viewers or listeners is a very unique opportunity. You can do a tour sometimes of a Toyota plant, et cetera, but to get this level of engagement and really visibility inside an organization that does lean so well is a very unique opportunity. Can you talk a little bit more about that experience that is coming up in September, especially the Toyota visit for now, and why that is such a unique opportunity.

Jared Thatcher [00:15:26]:
Yeah, John, so it really is. It's a phenomenal opportunity. I had the opportunity last year to go to Japan, and one of the things I was looking forward to was visiting a Toyota plant. And on the initial tour that I went on, that wasn't a possibility. They were just coming out of COVID you know, the plants weren't open. I did have a consultant friend of mine that reached out and said, hey, you know, would you like to come to a Toyota plant? I'm going to be touring, you know, the following week. And I'm like, heck yeah. So I did get to see a Toyota plant, but that was on a special invite.

Jared Thatcher [00:16:00]:
And recently, just a few months ago, in fact, Japan or Toyota shut down all of their japanese plants. So you can't even get a tour of a Toyota plant in Japan right now. And it's true, you can get tours, you know, in the United States, but typically those are like hour and a half, you know, tours. You're on a little tram, you go through. We have really unparalleled access to the Toyota material handling plant. This is going to be a fantastic opportunity. One thing that I didn't realize at the time is when I first visited that plant was Toyota actually makes forklifts. Not only do they make forklifts, but they're the number one manufacturer of forklifts in North America and I think the world.

Jared Thatcher [00:16:41]:
And so we have the opportunity to go to one of the top plants, really, I think, in the world that practices and utilizes these lean principles. And to not just be there for a tour, which we're going to have a walking tour, that we get to go around and see and interact and meet with people that are actually on the floor, but we're going to be able to see their training dojo, their obea room, which is their large war room, where they are looking at all the strategic things that are happening both on a day to day basis as well as long term 3510 year plan. And we're also going to be able to sit down, have lunch with some of the execs. We're going to be able to ask questions of different people. We're going to have people coming in and talking to us, some hands on activities that we're going to be able to do. It's literally spending the entire day at Toyota learning from them, experiencing and seeing firsthand and then talking, applying what we're learning and sharing that with each other. So it's going to be this opportunity to learn, to grow, to see and to apply that learning so that we're able to take that back into our organizations. And just, even if it's just one thing, help us to make our work, experience our people better and stronger and create that lean culture within our organizations.

Jon LaClare [00:18:15]:
And correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's the second day of three. So you've got a day of learning, and then you visit the Toyota plant, and then there's a third day. And the structure of that I really like, because if you think about it going into this, you learn together and you go and see it in action, and then the next day talk about what you learned and learn how to apply it in part. Right. There's so much more to your conference as well, but at least how to really put that in as experience. It's not just a field trip. Right. It's really one of the strong tools that you can use for all of the attendees that will be there to really learn.

Jared Thatcher [00:18:48]:
Okay.

Jon LaClare [00:18:48]:
How does Toyota do it? How can I apply that in my business? Among other things. And let's talk about some of these other things. Right. You've got a lot of speakers that are very well known in the lean space. Right. These are experts in the field that are speaking on day one and day three as well. Roughly how many speakers are going to be at the event?

Jared Thatcher [00:19:08]:
Yes, I believe we have 15 speakers this year at it. We have a number of other industry professionals coming in from different companies. So I know we have Costco that's on the line. There's the possibility of having Eli Lilly, which is a pharmaceutical company. We have a bunch of other companies, smaller companies like cost Taylor that's planning on coming. And these various organizations are going to be part of the panel discussion that we're going to have. And so we're going to be talking about, you know, what and how they're applying lean into their lean management system. You know, what are the differences? What are the successes they're having as well as what are some of the challenges and how are they attempting to overcome those? So, yeah, it's really going to be this great opportunity to learn from not just, you know, some consultants that do this and help, you know, you know, hundreds of companies, but also working with industry professionals that do this for a living, for an organization.

Jared Thatcher [00:20:12]:
So we have Dirk Fisher. He's a coo of the hoof group out of Germany. And so he's going to be flying in and talking to us about the lean management system that he implemented within hoof, and you're probably familiar with them. I mean, they make all of the, pretty much all the key fobs for all the vehicles, the automatic doors. You know, if you have one of those cars that if you kind of swipe your foot and then the door will automatically open up, who makes that technology that goes into all the different car manufacturers? So, yeah, there's a lot of really cool things. We've got the United States Postal Service. They're going to be talking about how they're implementing it to improve their efficiency and the ability to deliver letters cheaper and on time to the right locations, all those sort of things. So it's going to be really a fascinating, you know, look into real companies and how they're applying it and the successes that are happening that they're having.

Jon LaClare [00:21:14]:
And the speakers are going to be there as well. What are some of the topics that are planned to be spoken about?

Jared Thatcher [00:21:20]:
So all sorts of different things. You know, I'm going to be talking about using the situational leadership model and how to apply that as a lean leader. What does that look like? How do you use that in a way that really one of the fundamental core principles of Lean is this idea of respect for people. And so as a leader, how do we show up? How do we make things happen? So that's one of the topics I'll be addressing. We've got other people talking about how to use lean and communication because a lot of times you have failures in projects because things are unclear. And so how do you address that? We're going to be talking about how to get to the problem statement, to the root cause of what the issue is. I think it was Steve Jobs that said, until you understand the question and you get the right question, you can't come up with the right answer. So you have to understand, are we asking the right question? And then we have other topics where we're going to be addressing different tools that we can use to make the improvements happen, to make the lean management system successful.

Jared Thatcher [00:22:34]:
We're going to talk about the challenges that you have and what are some of those roadblocks and those obstacles that prevent you from really changing the culture within the organization. I think a piece of it is the reason Toyota is so successful is there's a cultural element to how the Japanese are raised and grow up, how they view things. And so it's really more of a natural progression for them to be able to work collaboratively and to embrace a lot of these principles now, it doesn't mean that we in the west can't do the same thing, because I also think that these lean principles are very natural. It's just a little bit awkward on, I think, trust, right. Being able to trust other people with having that vulnerability and being able to say, hey, this didn't go right. We're afraid of losing our job. There's that fear that overhangs a lot of people, that if I mess up my job could be on the line. And so to be able to admit that there's opportunity for growth and that there's a mistake and that we need to fix it, it's difficult for a lot of people.

Jared Thatcher [00:23:47]:
One of the things that we teach is not to be afraid to see red. And so that's huge because there's been company after company that have declared bankruptcy. And then when people go in to try to save them from bankruptcy, right. These consultants come in, all of their metrics, all of their dashboards, they're showing green and yellow, and there's hardly any red, but yet they're in bankruptcy. And really, the green that they're showing is what we call watermelon. Right. It's green on the outside, but it's red on the inside. They're afraid to show what's really happening.

Jared Thatcher [00:24:22]:
And so what we want to do is get people to not be afraid to see red, that they see red as an opportunity to make it better, to improve it. And that's actually a good thing. And so it's just changing the mindset, changing how people view things. And so all of these are topics that we're going to be addressing. In fact, you mentioned something that's, I think, one of the core fundamental leadership techniques, and that's this idea of Gemba, which you said, go and see, being able to go and see what's actually happening at the place that it's happening. In Japanese, that's called Gemba, the place of action. So a reporter might be, you know, talking at the scene of the incident, right? Or at the Gemba. Far too many people, they sit in the back office, they hear about a problem.

Jared Thatcher [00:25:11]:
They don't even go out to see what the problem is. They go ahead and give directions. And those directions could be completely wrong to what's actually happening because there's a failure of communication. You have to get up out of your chair. You have to go and see what is actually taking place, because in watching things, you can see, oh, here's why this thing keeps on happening. And so you can make adjustments if you do not go and see, if you do not go out and observe and really understand what's going on at the source, you can't really solve the problem. And so that's, that's one of the, you know, the key elements of lean. One of the key principles is this idea of going and seeing and getting management out of their chair and onto the shop floor.

Jared Thatcher [00:25:53]:
I mentioned Koss Taylor. They're going to be coming. They did something interesting when they first went down their lean journey, when the founder, the dad, was off playing golf, you know, one day, the son who is in the process of implementing, who's now the CEO, he went ahead and, well, right after he left to go off and play his 18 rounds of golf, he and the rest of the company, they tore down all of the walls in the office, which brought the office out into the shop floor, and then he put all of the desks onto wheels and wheeled them out there. And literally, the office, with the exception of HR, that does still have offices for privacy, everybody else is out on the shop floor. So when somebody comes and says, hey, I'm having an issue with this, they're already right there. They can walk out, they can go and see what's going on. And so that was kind of a radical change, but it was a change to get people out of the idea, oh, hey, I'm corporate, and to get the, sometimes the animosity from the frontline workers to say, oh, they're corporate, they're suit, they're a tie. They don't care about us.

Jared Thatcher [00:27:04]:
By breaking down those barriers and literally removing the walls, they were able to achieve that. So, yeah, there's a lot of cool things you're going to learn, a lot of cool things that we're implementing. And at the very end, we're going to be building a roadmap together of what does your lean management system look like whether you have one or not, and how do you go ahead and make that better? So there's actionable steps that you're going to be able to do the moment you get back to the office.

Jon LaClare [00:27:33]:
I want to drill down a little bit more and talk about that actionable roadmap. I think that's such a value. I know you've been to a lot of conferences yourself. I've been to many over the years as well. And sometimes they're great. I feel like I'm writing stuff down, like I'm trying to change my life when I get back, and it's just words on paper. At the end of the day, and I learn things. You get back, you forget, you get distracted or it's too much.

Jon LaClare [00:27:55]:
There isn't that actionable plan of what to do with all this information that you've been able to digest and you've been doing this or hosting this specific conference, and similar conferences for quite a while had great success, have people coming back to it year after year after year because they get so much value out of it. Let's talk a little bit more about that actionable roadmap. What can attendees expect to walk away from this event with?

Jared Thatcher [00:28:20]:
Yeah, so I think there's a couple things that make us different and a couple reasons that people keep on coming back to, to our conference. I think the first is we don't just have a theme, and then we put it out to the speakers, you know, and say, hey, anybody want to speak at our event? And then we get, you know, all these people we choose, you know, what we think are the best ones. And. And then maybe their, their topics align, maybe they don't, but they're close enough. And we just have all these, you know, people speaking on kind of whatever they want to speak on. I go about it a different way. I outline basically a journey map from where we are to where we want to get to, and how do we bridge that gap. And so each day is moving us closer to bridging that gap.

Jared Thatcher [00:29:01]:
I go out and find really the best speakers, the best participants, the best people that know their stuff, and then we work out and figure out what are those topics? What are the things that we need to help people to understand with actionable steps, making it as interactive as possible. So it's not just hearing a lecture. We can go to school for that. We can go on YouTube and get that. What we want is to be able to hear the successes and failures that other people are having and help them break through and understand what they need to do to change or to tweak what they're doing to be successful. So many times I've gone to a conference and I have an issue that I want to solve, and I might even network and talk to a couple people, and maybe they have a solution, maybe they don't have. But at the end, I'm kind of frustrated because what I went there for, what I was trying to solve, I didn't get an answer to it. I might have even attended a conference or a session or two that looked like it was going to be relevant.

Jared Thatcher [00:30:02]:
And then I get there, and it's just, it's either too basic or it didn't address, you know, what I thought it was going to address only later to find out that something that did not look like it had anything to do with my topic might have been the session I should have gone to. For me, that's, I think the biggest difference of what I try to do different in my conferences is one I want to have people speaking to bridge that gap from where you are to where you want to be. The second is at the end, we do a workshop and we give people that opportunity to reflect, to think about what they've been working on so that they can implement solutions and have these ideas of action steps of when I get back, I'm going to do x, Y and z. I'm going to go talk to this stakeholder about this thing. I'm going to share this information with the team here, and then we're going to go ahead and try to implement this. Those are the things that are, I think, really powerful that you have something. And as we did, voice of the customer talking to people at last year's conference, the one thing that was universal is all of them said that last session was the most powerful thing that they'd ever experienced because several of them went back, continued to expand on the layout of what we had done and had it up on their wall. And that was actually the roadmap that the entire year they've been referring back to that session and the things that they learned there and the things that they put on there, and they were following through on those action steps that they had, you know, come up with in that session.

Jared Thatcher [00:31:32]:
So that was, that's, that's a huge, you know, change. And, and really, I think that's the biggest, you know, difference. Plus, to the point where I said, you know, I might have a problem, I might have something I'm trying to solve, and I go there and I don't get that help. We do a special workshop sessions kind of in the evening for those that are interested, but you can come with your problems and you can share those with the entire group. And then we kind of do this. Think of it like speed dating, right? You go ahead and you're talking to people about the issues that you're having, the problems that you're looking to solve. And if somebody knows somebody that can help, then they help them out, saying, hey, come see me. I've got somebody that can help you.

Jared Thatcher [00:32:16]:
Or if, if they've done it, they're like, I think I have a solution for you. Let's talk at lunch tomorrow or breakfast. And so it's this great opportunity to really be able to come with the questions that you have and leave with answers that are probably going to work for you. So the entire thing is about adding value to those that are coming and really helping them to grow and advance their careers, their knowledge, and help them solve the issues that they're having back in their organizations.

Jon LaClare [00:32:47]:
So we've talked. Thank you. That helps. We've talked about what happens at the event. We've talked about what happens at the end, like what you take home, which is such a huge value. You've been doing this for a long time. You've talked to a lot of these attendees, and like I said, many of them come back year after year after year. What are some of the reasons people choose to come in the first place? Like, what goals are they entering this summit with? Answers they're looking to get over the course of these three days?

Jared Thatcher [00:33:14]:
Yeah, I mean, that's a great thing. I think the biggest one, like I mentioned, is there's a fundamental difference culturally, I think, between, you know, in Asia and Japan, how they view a lot of these principles of lean and how we view it oftentimes here in the US. And I heard this recently with a team that I was working on. They're like, oh, we're so glad that we have solved this. We've made this improvement. We're done. And it's like, no, you're not. The japanese word for improvement is kaizen.

Jared Thatcher [00:33:48]:
It's this idea of changing for good, changing for better. It has not a finality to it, but a continuality to it. So it's this idea of constantly continually changing. And so I think that's one of the fundamental things in the west. We look at it typically like a project, hey, we have to do this. We have to complete this, and now we're done. Whereas in Japan, the culture is such that it's like, we can always do better. There's always room for improvement once we've solved this.

Jared Thatcher [00:34:20]:
Well, that might impact this other process that we have over here. So now we have to go fix that. And so they understand that each thing is interrelated within the value stream of everything else, and so you impact one area and you improve one area that might negatively impact another area that. Now you have to go back and you have to fix that, or it might create some synergy that you can get some other efficiencies, but you have to go find those and integrate that into the new process. So I think that's really the fundamental difference is this idea of continuous improvement versus just improvement. And what most people are coming with is how do we bridge that gap? How do we bring this idea of lean, of continuous improvement into the culture so that it becomes part of what everybody is doing? And that's really the challenge.

Jon LaClare [00:35:13]:
Thank you. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Are there any resources that you found really helpful to you in your personal journey? Whether it's with Lean or running a business that you'd like to share with our audience, it might be helpful for them as well.

Jared Thatcher [00:35:26]:
Yeah, I mean, there's a ton. You know, I think probably one of the biggest things was, I guess, you know, my sensei, Rizzio Shingo, so his dad, Shige Shingo, you know, worked at Toyota. He was really one of the creators of Lean. And so, you know, being able to have a mentor, being able to have somebody that, you know, understands the principles, understands what's, what's happening can help you see things. And, and really, I said see things. That's. That's ultimately a big chunk of what it is. If you can't see the problems, if they're hidden, if the problems are hidden, whether somebody's afraid to tell their boss that, you know, hey, there's, there's some issues, you know, with this, this part or there's a defect or something, you can't fix it.

Jared Thatcher [00:36:16]:
And so a big piece of lean is, is making things visual, right? Having visual management, being able to quickly see, you know, if there's an error, if something is out of standard. And so, you know, having a coach, a mentor, to be able to help you see those things, to be able to take you to the next level is phenomenal. I was, in fact, super excited last year. I was been invited by Rizzio to go to his house and have dinner with him and his wife and, you know, so, so excited. And then he ended up passing away about three weeks before, before I arrived. But, you know, to me, you can read all the books you want. I mean, you see that I've got a ton, including that book right there is, you know, about the Ford manufacturing plants. And it was written, I think that's about 100 years old now, a little over 100 years.

Jared Thatcher [00:37:15]:
And, you know, the principles that Ford did with, you know, the mass production and the automation, all of that is still relevant today. But how do you get that knowledge? How do you find it? I mean, you can read through a ton of books. You can go onto a ton of YouTube. You can struggle trying to find the answer, or you can go to somebody that actually has that answer and reach out to them. So I think that's one of the great things about coming to a conference and having both industry people that are applying the knowledge as well as consultants that go out and help people. And so we have a mixture of both as our speakers. And I think that's the biggest thing in terms of books, if that's one of the things you're asking about. Yeah, there's some great books right behind my head here.

Jared Thatcher [00:38:06]:
There's a whole bunch. Jeffrey Leicher wrote a book. It's called the Toyota Way. And it's basically, as an academic, his understanding of what makes Toyota different and what those fundamental principles are to making lean happen. Now, that doesn't necessarily translate very, very well to non manufacturing. It's applicable, but you have to kind of read between the lines for that to be truly helpful. But there's a lot of other books that are out there if you're looking at problem solving. A lot of people don't know how to solve problems.

Jared Thatcher [00:38:46]:
You know, you think you do, but, but really, it's like, you know, where do I start? What do I do? You know, I was just looking at a, I've got some high school interns that I'm working with right now, and I just got him this book here. I think it might even be out of print, but it's problem solving 101. And it's by Ken Watanabe. He's a former consultant with McKinsey. He's from Japan. And he wrote this book really just, you know, originally he was thinking kind of for kids, and it became, you know, wildly successful because, like, adults, like, you know, understood it, too. So he uses all these examples, you know, on kids, like which, which college am I going to go to, you know, which soccer team do I join? You know, there's all of these different, you know, problems that they have. And he helps, you know, go through and show different models of how to solve those problems.

Jared Thatcher [00:39:37]:
You know, I think in terms of overall great books, Dale Carnegie's how to win friends, influence people. It's a phenomenal book at working with people and being that one of the foundational principles of lean is this idea of respect for people. That's a great book to have to understand. And funny enough, I even wrote a book. Yeah, there you go, parenting the lean way. And that came about because I came home from work one day and my wife had her hands on her hips and was right there at the door. That's never a good sign. So I'm quickly trying to think, you know, did I forget something? You know, it's an anniversary.

Jared Thatcher [00:40:28]:
No, it's not an anniversary. Birthday? No, it's not a birthday. You know, like, oh, crap, I'm in trouble. And then realized, you know, that she was just frustrated, you know, been dealing with the kids all day. They'd been, you know, fighting. Our little daughter at the time, you know, was like the tasmanian devil and had, like, pulled every toy down and, you know, scattered around. And she asked me a question. She said, why can't you take the things that you're doing, you know, at work, you know, using these lean principles, the things that you learned in your MBA, and apply those at home? And for me, it was like this Venn diagram, right? You had home, you had work.

Jared Thatcher [00:41:04]:
And I just saw them crashing together, and I saw the synergy of, yeah, there's conflict resolution, communication, there's all these lean principles of continuous improvement, all these things that we could do to make home life better. And I'd always compartmentalize them, kept them separate. I go to work, it's work. I come home, I don't want to think about work. That really got me thinking. And the more I thought about it was like, you know, yeah, a lot of these things, you know, could apply and could make life better. So I wrote a book around, you know, using these lean principles and, you know, making your parenting, you know, better and more successful. And it's, it's, it's helped our life and a lot of stories around that that are, you know, humorous and fun and stuff like that.

Jared Thatcher [00:41:50]:
But, yeah, it's the principles of continuous improvement, whether it's personal development, whether it's improving an assembly line, whether it's proving the flow of how you do work in the office. And ultimately, all of the stuff that we're doing is to add value to the customer, which is why we're doing the work in the first place. So one of the things I think that's fundamental within lean is points you back to the customer. Everything you do, you're thinking about the customer. How do we make this successful for the customer, their customer experience, their experience with the product or the service. And that's ultimately what we're trying to do is create a process that makes it a great experience for the customer.

Jon LaClare [00:42:39]:
Thank you. That was a great answer. It's a simple question, but it's a profound answer. And I think really what you've exemplified in there, I love to ask this question, the end a lot of my interviews, because at the end of the day. It really exemplifies that the most successful people in whatever their career path or field is, are learners. Right. You talked about senseis and mentors. Right.

Jon LaClare [00:43:02]:
And you talked about very many specific book examples that have been impactful for you. I think a danger to a lot of us is our lives get so busy, whether it's our day job, whether it's parenting, we're doing things constantly. And it's so important to find time in our lives to not just do, but to learn. And that's where it's an important part of the continuous improvement process. Right. We can learn from others through books, through mentorships or sensei, whatever it might be, right. But humbling ourselves to realize we don't know. Nobody knows everything.

Jon LaClare [00:43:35]:
Right. We can always learn at least facets of things to do different and better from other people, from many sources. And I think having that attitude in life in general, that continuous improvement mindset, you know, we talk about it as part of the lean process or lean system. It really should be part of our lives. I love how you've kind of connected the two, right? Parenting, the lean way, and really just our discussion in general of making ourselves, our companies, our jobs, our roles, whatever. It might be better by focusing on processes and the people around us, but also learning. It's a big part of it. Well, Jared, this has been a really fun interview.

Jon LaClare [00:44:11]:
Is there anything I didn't ask that you think could be helpful for our audience?

Jared Thatcher [00:44:15]:
No. I mean, as you were just going through that, I think there's, that is the key. It's looking to apply the knowledge in a way that can benefit your life, benefit your company, benefit your family. And often I give the example. In fact, I did for you and your team once. I had this example of, hey, you've got a glass. Is it half full of water or is it half empty?

Jon LaClare [00:44:40]:
Right?

Jared Thatcher [00:44:41]:
And often people are afraid to say it's half empty because they don't want to look pessimistic. Some are optimistic it's half full. My son is like, well, you guys are busy arguing about it. I'll drink it because I'm an opportunist. But ultimately, somebody that has a lean mindset, they don't look at it as half full, half empty. They think, okay, well, maybe you're using the wrong size glass because if you had a smaller glass, it would be full. Or they would look at it and say, well, maybe you've got some sort of an issue with the faucet that maybe the filter's clogged and it's not coming out as quickly as possible. And after initially, they kind of go through some of their ideas and solutions on what might be the issue, they'll definitely turn to you and say, hey, did you mean to have it half full? What do you want to use it for? How often do you want it? Why do you want it? What temperature do you want it? Where do you want it? They start asking questions to give you what it is that you're looking for.

Jared Thatcher [00:45:37]:
Maybe you want ice in it. They'll figure out a way to, you know, have a, you know, a dispenser, kind of like the refrigerator that dispenses both the ice and the water at the same time. Right. They look at opportunities to make it better, to provide you the value that you're looking for. And I think ultimately, the idea of lean, what we're trying to do is get people to think different about their world, to see things in a different light. Not to see it as half full or half empty, but to see, is that the right type of glass? Is it the right size glass to really understand what it is that the person needs? So if you were to take that back to the home, to the family, a good example is, when my oldest daughter was born, I was a little bit older when she was born. I'm thinking and imagining what our entire life is going to be like. Then I had this awful thought, well, what if I were to die before, you know, she gets married? You know, one of the key things I was looking forward to and as I'm imagining this journey of our life is, you know, being able to, you know, walk her down the aisle to, you know, have that first, you know, daddy daughter dance, you know, before, you know, handing her over to the husband.

Jared Thatcher [00:46:40]:
I mean, all of these things, you know, this is what I was looking at. And I got thinking, well, what could I do to add value, to make sure that, you know, that experience is amazing regardless of if I'm there or not. And so I came up with this idea every year on their birthday. One of the things I do is I buy a white dress for my daughters, and then I dress up in my tux, and I will go out and we dance, and I film that. And so every time we turn around, then I'm gonna kind of morph that in post production in the video from year one to year two. And so as we go out, we dance. We're gonna have a phenomenal daddy daughter dance, because you're gonna see the two of us dancing over the course of however many years that takes. And worst case scenario, if I'm not there, I still have that opportunity to have shared that with her through the years until that time.

Jared Thatcher [00:47:35]:
It's all about looking long term, looking, changing your perspective, looking at what's going to bring value to the individual and then coming up with the ideas and the solutions that are going to get you there. I think that's what's so powerful about what I do. I'm passionate about it. I love what I do, which is, I think, sometimes rare in a job, it's a lot of people. I have a job to me. I have a passion to be able to help people make their life better. Can't tell you the number of times that people have come. Six months, a year later, chased me down in the hall because, hey, remember when you helped us with that project? My life is so much better.

Jared Thatcher [00:48:11]:
I used to have this and this and this one person, I was getting ready to go in for carpal tunnel syndrome surgery, but because you helped me to automate it so I didn't have to do so much data entry, it got better and I didn't have to go in for surgery. I mean, those are the type of successes, those are the type of opportunities that, to me, are more rewarding than the fact that over the last 15 years, I've helped save companies over 150 million, or I was part of a project team, which still is pretty cool as a project team, as a PMO group, we saved, over the course of three years, $1.1 billion. That's pretty significant, great accomplishments. But to me, the more powerful things are helping people to get rid of those frustrations out of their day to day life and making it better. So, yeah, that's what I love about lean. That's what I love about this job. And that's what I love about putting these conferences on, is helping people to find that same joy, that same satisfaction, figure out how to apply that back into their work and giving them and helping them to move forward in their progression and their personal development.

Jon LaClare [00:49:19]:
Well, thank you, Jared, for our audience. If you're listening to this or watching this and realizing, man, I can make my life better, my job better, I can improve to learn these lean principles or master them, if you already, you know, many of, many of us already know the basics, right? But to really implement them, it is a lifelong process to continually improve. And one of the best ways to do that is this summit that is coming up in September. You can learn more about it at global. All the details are there there's a phone number on there if you want to call and chat with Jared or his team to learn more to see if it's the right fit for you. But check it out. This three day event is truly a unique experience that can change your life and your business. So I encourage our listeners go check out the website, certainly to learn more about this and how it might improve you and your business.

Jon LaClare [00:50:10]:
I also want to say, did you know you can meet with a member of our team at Harvest Growth absolutely free for a 30 minutes strategy consultation? We've launched and grown hundreds of businesses since 2007 and learned some of our strategies while growing Oxiclean back in the Billy Mays days. We're here to help too, so please go to harvestgrowth.com and set up a call if you'd like to discuss further.