The Goal Calabosession #1

SPEAKER_02 0:00

There's lots of mechanisms and actually the goal how these focusing steps. Maybe maybe we're on to some. This could be the intro here. But like letting go removes constraints. It does. You have to, but like when you let go of like, especially with shame or grief or things that you're in your past, and it just it's hard because it just like it goes away. And then when you don't know it, it's like boom, right back at you.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

And for me, letting go requires label. Like you have to study and you find the the problem, label it, put the label on it. And once I have a label on it, whatever it is, right? It's like, oh, that did poorly on the test. So label that. Or like like I was embarrassed on the situation because I wasn't prepared. Label. Like start to start to label things. And then it's like when that thing comes back at you, you're like, I already figured out the issue on that one. I'm gonna swipe it away like an iPad. You know how satisfying that is when you like get like a bunch of apps and you just like there's probably some PhDs that designed it that way. Yep. But I try to do that. That that visualization technique is is really helpful for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Oh man, this one has been a long time coming. Uh the seed was planted by Thomas, Thomas Lemay. If you don't know Mr. Thomas Lemay, you're gonna get to know him. Uh super deep intellect, excitement around systems thinking and the theory of constraints. Uh, the seed was planted back when Felipe and I were recording the collab sessions on the Lean Builder. He dropped a little comment on the chat, and we went ahead and challenged him to go ahead and jump in and record a collab session of the goal. And I don't know, maybe it's been a year uh since then, but we did it. I gotta let you know, like this is not the only recording. We got several episodes because the book is like 20, 30 something odd chapters. Uh, and we're not just rereading the book. The amazing thing is that when Thomas began reading this book, he actually put the stuff that he was learning into practice on the job side, like on the job side that he was the superintendent of. I think it was in San Francisco. And what's even more special that I think we're just super fortunate is that he was keeping note, he was journaling about the experience, about what he was learning from the book, about what he was applying in the field, and what he learned from the application. So, really, what this is is Thomas's translation of the book, the concepts, the ideas that are in the book into construction language, into like real life application of this stuff in the construction industry, which is super damn exciting. Of course, this conversation is colored with flashbacks and stories and different personal things that he and I went through. So buckle up because this is not a short one, and none of our conversations are short, they're all at least two hours long. So, and that's after editing, so you know we were like nerding out big time. Another super cool thing is Thomas's another super cool thing is Thomas and I began recording these episodes as the Lean in Love Five S Love Letters was in production to be printed. And so we got to talk about the book a little bit, and also I drop a little myth buster in this conversation uh regarding, we'll just say regarding lean in love. If you actually caught the mythbuster, you get two gold stars if you can get it and point it out on the socials, etc. And of course, you know, we've we've got to shout out our patrons. Thank you all for your support, definitely helping. I'm here in Greenville, South Carolina, doing the final touch up of this episode. I was able to serve my buddy, Mr. Adam Hoots, because I got all this fancy gear, and all the patrons' contributions have contributed to me, you know, upgrading some of the gear. So thank you for that. Thank you for your contribution to learnings and missteps and the broader community. So here we go.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

I do that with my dad a lot. Yeah now, especially that he's retired, so he could kind of reflect. But when he was when he was he's very successful and business person, very successful, and uh, he always and I really appreciate my father for for never trying to to guide me. I mean, I was very successful in sports, and he was always there, and he would he would always be supportive to and same with my my mother, but they would always be supportive, they would go to all the games and all this stuff, but they weren't like hey, you need to change your stance, or like they would none of that, none of that ever happened. They're just only supportive. And but they what they taught me was if your coach gives you a lesson or there's a referee or whatever it is, focus with them, yeah. Learn from them, they're the experts. Yeah, and also they're like they have the strategy and the expertise and stuff, and uh, I really appreciate that. So, like if if I ever have a kid, and but basically when I teach people or or or help them at work now, I do that. I only do that. I only try to just I don't say here, do this, do this this way. I try to just feel like, hey, listen to your project manager, ask these questions. I'm not gonna get you out of your situation because of my rank and whatever it is now. But but follow these basic steps. And if you follow these essential principles, yes, and whatever it is, accounting, is it like survey control or like making sure that your all your fittings are are closed and testing the pressure before you put the put the water on. Those fundamental principles, when we if we learn those, then you can learn for yourself and grow. And then I'm not the person who comes and fixes everything. Right. So I try to do that more. Plus, I'm lazy.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

So that's the thing, right? Is when you give the answers, you create dependency. Yes, right. And you're the answer person, and it's just it's the never-ending cycle. And then you get to a point where you're like, Man, we just we need better people because my people don't have initiative and they don't make a decision. And it's like, well, because you don't let them, you give them all the answers all the time. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

And the the goal, the the character in the goal, the Eli character Jonah embodies that ideal or that person.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Only ask questions. It's like if Jonah goes in and be like, Hey, you need to move this machine over here, we need to do this over here, blah blah blah blah blah. Like there, there could have been some local optima, right? And and Jonah could have been highly paid in that or for his time consulting.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

But they went as soon as he leaves, it's gone. You go back, you revert back, right? So that's why I I love the idea. Humble inquiry. Where did I learn it? I learned it right here. Yes, right. The art and science of humble inquiry, leading by only asking questions. It's all in here. It is Jonah.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

But it takes practice. We started a group call with me, Kirby, Adam, Sean Moran, Jen, and Alicia, who's here from San Antonio. I had a had a crazy idea. Kirby and I, we had connected at Congress last year, and I and I was like, Hey girl, I want to talk to you. Okay. We ended up talking for like three and a half hours. Like, we missed the rest of the sessions. We just talked and talked. She was telling about her stuff, you know, just all the good stuff.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

And she's like, Man, we don't do that enough. It's like, yeah, you know, we don't. And then like the question was why? It's like, oh, I know why, because it's not on our calendar. And then she's like, but you know, just the you just ask questions, you just don't stop asking questions. It's like, I know, well, yeah, I was interested, of course. But I have practice. So I started thinking, I said, what if we people comment on the way I ask questions and and the how rapidly or comfortably I get vulnerable? And so I started evaluating this. Okay, how did I do that? Because I know I learned that, like I didn't have that, like that wasn't a natural thing. Oh, like a David Verbal or somebody. Exactly. Yeah, so I learned it from David Verbal in one of his humble inquiry classes, where you sat down in the treat, right? And one person is the problem owner, one person is the coach, and another person is the observer. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

I've I've done a similar one.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Met David in Nashville. I think maybe you were there.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

I'm not sure, but I know he's amazing. Yeah, and so I say, you know what? Um, and then the other, like the vulnerable part was because you know, going to 12-step meetings. Every meeting I go to, I gotta say, hey, I'm Jesse, and this is something I'm dealing with. Right? So getting used to saying I have a problem and just saying it without fear of judgment or whatever, just getting it out. I had repetition upon repetition of that. So I said, you know what? I send an email to everybody, say, I want to invite, I want to try this thing. Okay, we tried it, and we've been doing that about once a month for I don't know, five months or so. And it's awesome because, like the rules are no solutionizing when you're the coach, you can only ask questions, and you gotta ask open-ended questions, no yes, no, no sneak, no, you know, none of that crap.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah, you're not you're not running a deposition, you're right. Leading questions, right? Although there is time for leading questions, absolutely like you're trying not to steer them into a corner. Yes, let's both practice his his name, his first name.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Okay, you go first. Well, I always just refer to him as Eli Goldrat.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yes, but you gotta say it at least once.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Eli I've never even tried that Eliyahu M. Goldrat.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Eli Yahoo.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Eliyahu.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

I don't know if that's right. Somebody out there in the cyberspace world, please correct this. Eli, the dude guy is he's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yes, he is. You know, we always wonder with folks like that, like, were they vampires? How did they get that much knowledge? And like, there's a lot of people out there that have tons of knowledge, but then the ability to articulate it so that other people can digest it.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

That's it. He's so smart, he can put it in a way that a person like me can read it. Exactly. Oh man, let me pull up my uh I do a training to when I introduce the the theory of constraints to people because I use this is like this is legit. I use this at work. I am not an expert. Let's just go ahead and put a disclaimer, let's just get this out of the way right now. I am not a TOC expert, I am not a theory of constraints uh system person. I'm not classically trained, I haven't attended any seminars with Dr. Goldrat or the Goldrat Institute or have any affiliation with the Goldrat Institute disclaimer, but I uh I really enjoyed the goal. The goal for me was a turning. What about you, Jesse? Yeah, man. Are you an expert?

SPEAKER_00 11:40

I am not an expert. I think the only real certification I've had for any period of time is my driver's license, and I've even had that suspended a few times. Not at all. You you know me in construction guy, plumber background. Most of the stuff that I think I know, I learned as a result of just bumping my head around and trying stuff to the best of my understanding. Whatever it is, the theory of constraints, last planner system, humble inquiry, whatever it is, all of the magical things. It's just like, okay, that sounds better than what I'm doing right now. I'm going to go try it. And my day got better. So I was okay. I'm gonna keep doing more of that. And then, you know, right when I think I understand something deeply, like, oh, now I know there's another level that I was totally unaware of. Like lean, right? When I when I I got introduced to it at uh TD Industries, and I swear, man, I really thought that T D created the last planner system. I thought it was like their own business. They never said that. I just thought they did. And I thought last like pool planning and last planner system was lean, like like the end all be all of it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and then left started learning more. I'm like, oh, wait a minute, there's like this whole universe. And then I mean, more the more and more I play around with it, I start learning different nuances, like the six-week look ahead. I didn't understand, like, why are we gonna do a stupid six-week look ahead or plus deltas? Why are you gonna do a plus delta? What's the point until I learn like another level of it? Like, no, no, no, no. Yeah, the six week you're gonna show, visualize whatever's coming up, but we're gonna focus on the things that are happening on the sixth week and make sure those things are constraint-free, like blew my mind. They're made ready. We're gonna make what do we need to do to free those things up, ready to go. Plus delta. Oh, so what we should do is review the deltas, do something about them for to make the meeting better next time. And plus, is let's make sure we keep doing that. Keep doing that, blew my mind. Like before, it was like we're gonna do plus delta. It's like, why do we do this crap all the time? Because I yeah, I couldn't see it, but anyhow, yeah. The answer to the question is I am not an expert at anything. I could talk, I'm pretty good at talking.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yes, okay. All right, so let's let's let's talk about the goal. Yes, the goal, it was written before Dr. Womack wrote. I mean, what is it? Thinking, yeah, this was written in the 80s. I don't know. I I I'm not like again, I'm not part of I know these these these books are dogma to some of us. They are sacred, and they're sacred to me. But I like how they're like there's universal truths, and we're gonna talk about some of them. Some of these truths are like they've been written in into law, and a lot of it, a lot of it is in Toyota production system. A lot of it, and I don't know if it's if they learn from Goldrat or vice versa. That's the best thing about Lean. It doesn't matter because it's like who cares? Yeah, and that's the that's the best part. And that's like when you're telling me, like, when you're talking with Kirby, and it's like, why does this feel so good? Because it's like you're learning, you're learning, and you're getting you're sharpening your your you're sharpening your knife or whatever. What's the sharpen your saw Stephen Covey? Yep, yep. But like very it's another one, like to just get all these stuff. And uh if you actually start to really think about the the the laws of constraints, it applies, it applies to everything. Everything everything. So the first five words of the goal right out of the intro says the goal is about science and education. He goes on, he goes, I believe that that these two words have been abused to the extent that their original meanings have been lost in a fog of too much respect and mastery. Science for me and the and for the vast majority of respectable scientists, because Dr. Goldwratt was a uh a PhD physicist. It's not about the secrets of nature or even about truths. So we were talking about truths, right? Science is simply the method we use to try to postulate a minimum set of assumptions that can explain through a straightforward logical derivation, the existence of many phenomena of nature. That was I I got that on one take. But but I broke it down because I those are like SAT words. Yeah, I love it. So I had to like check some definitions. So the last sentence is the straightforward logical derivation, the existence of many phenomena of nature. So straightforward, it's just direct, right? It's like direct, logical, it's you have to be have proof. Remember, he's a physicist.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

So logic is like you have to have proof. So I grew up in the Midwest, and in the Midwest, there's a state that's called Missouri, or if you're from Missouri, you'd call it Missouri, depending on the part. They have on their license license plate, it says just show me state. And I listen, I like it so much because it's like logic. Show me, show it to me. I will believe it when I can see it with my own eyes. So so logical is like there's some proof to it. And then derivation, and this is the kind of genius of Dr. Bull Red, I think. The derivation is something derived, it comes from mathematics. But it says it's something that originates from something else, right? So it's like the chicken or the egg. And what that what that meant means for me is this is a book about flow.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

And it you're a plumber by trade. Yes. What is this? What is the logical proof of plumbing? There's one. Well, yeah, in gravity systems.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah, crap rolls downhill. It rolls downhill. How do you know? Because you've seen it.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

The lowest point was where the water goes. Then the water will flow to the lowest point. That is that is a proof of yeah. So the so what Dr. Goldrat, what he talked about in his in the book and in his mini seminars, and they're all over YouTube, like you want to geek out. And I got that kind of time, but I don't watch like people playing video games. I like check out like old 1970s and 80s uh video of Dr. Goldratt. The guy is like there's some gold in there, like speaking of his last name. But he talks about in the seminar, he talks about effect, cause, effect. You can use it for like a several related purposes in the theory of constraints. So a little controversial with the Toyota production system, because they're about Ishikawa, like fishbone, right? Go to the root, the root cause. So if you think about cause and effect trees, the the root cause is the root of the tree. Like if you think about a tree, yeah, the problem are all over the the contributing factors, or all the branches. They all it's like a big tributary system. Since we're going doing Congress in in New Orleans, it's like we're going to the we're going to the tributaries, right? We're making our way down the Mississippi, mighty miss. But the cause and effect. So how do you know, excuse me, that the base of the Mississippi flows into the uh Gulf of Mexico in New Orleans? Well, you can see it, right? But but you could follow that all the way back to all the the tributaries. So that's the that's the Toyota map. But but Goldrat says, no, you gotta dig a little deeper, you gotta understand there might be multiple cause and effect trees that are competing. And so he goes, and sometimes the cause and effect trees, if you solve the root problem, but you've solved the wrong root problem, you you you do nothing, you only optimize in a local area. So you have to study the entire system. I think that's why he put the cause first, because there's there's a cause and then there's an effect, and then there's another cause. So the constraint is a core issue, or it's a core problem. So if you don't fix that constraint, waste.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yep. What do you think about that? Well, you know, I I I often and I get twisted up because I see people, I've seen tons of people, just the words root cause. The root implies singular. And so I'm I'm from the school, like people spend, I've seen speech, I've done it myself, spend enormous amounts of time finding the perfect, like the one. But while we're doing that, we're finding the root cause to a particular deviant outcome. And so then there's there's this kind of tripping point where okay, if we're trying to solve the deviant outcome, we were there's going to be multiple causes. There's never just one. There's never just one. There's a multitude of causal factors. And so there's some analysis, you can get as scientific as you want to prove which one is the biggest. And then you can go after that one. But I don't I haven't seen a whole lot of problems where it is the one thing, it's usually multiple things. I think the language right now, my what my understanding is this thinking of it as one singular root cause is problematic because what it does, or what I've seen it do, is the team that's working on it, most of their effort is around hockeying for who has the rightest root cause. Right. And I had had an awesome coach, Bryant Sanders, who taught me the sweat equity, right? How to study work and how to really improve work to make it better for the human being. And and I remember me and David Solomon, you remember David Solomon. We that was a piece of the work that we had.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

David, you you're a you're an awesome dude. You're listening. I hope you are. I miss, I miss your I miss your face. Please, please, please, please recome back into my life.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

I need to reach Yeah, say hi to somebody, bro. And so we're like, oh crap. Like we didn't get we missed like 28 seconds of video that we couldn't see the person. Like we had a bad angle. And and we're like, damn it, now we got to go back and record them again. So we're like, okay, we're gonna go record. And our coach was like, Why are you I'm like, well, because you know, we didn't get this little piece of of the thing. He said, Okay, so you're gonna go out and you're gonna record them, you're gonna disrupt their work, you're gonna capture more videos, so you can come back in here and sit down in the air condition and pick apart their work. In the meantime, they're out there dealing with poorly designed, miserable work. I say, got it, let's do something. Right. And so for me, that was that was powerful in the moment because we spent, I think there's a trap in getting into this pontification about what's the root cause. And it's like, I agree a hundred percent that you may only be optimizing a very local point and big picture, you're not having a grand effect. But I also know that if I'm not doing anything, life sucks for a lot of people. So back to the root cause, like the fishbone diagrams and this type of root cause analysis. I push very hard to like let it be plural. Let's look at all of them, let's not discount any of them. Let's just understand what are the contributing factors first, and then we can look like then we can super simple analysis. Let's pick one based on frequency. Which one happens the most? Or let's pick one based on our locus of control. Which one are we? Can we make a decision to go in effect right now? Um, because the root, like the singular root cause thinking for me is home run thinking, meaning I'm gonna hit a grand slam every time I go up to bat. And the problem with home run hitters is they have a low on-base percentage and the low batting average because the number of times they make contact is lower, but when they do, they hit it out of the park. And what we need is to get on base. We don't need the grand slams, and so let's get on base a bunch of times in service to others.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

I guess that that's kind of what I'm wearing giants, but you're talking about Billy Bean, Oakland A. Yes, yes, yes, just remember who wins the World Series more on than the Bear. Yes, but yeah, you're right. You gotta get on base. There's uh we gotta get into this book. There's this other awesome book. It's called The Brothers Kane, it's about baseball. It's uh a professional baseball player, and they're at a funeral, and he's you know, I'm trying to think of the story. So he's he's describing that it's not about hitting home runs, or it's not about that perfect pitch that you can just nail. It's about wanting the pitch that's being thrown at you. That's the one you want. And if it's a curveball, and you so that means if you have so that means you have to be very well rounded, hit curveballs, breakers, fastballs, sliders, off speed, all of the all of the the pitches. Some people think it's boring, but you gotta get into the deep stuff. But uh yeah, you gotta want every pitch, you gotta want them all. You can't just get picked, it's it's not a la carte. If you go a la carte and just just hit bombs, you'll strike out more often. And the if the idea of of winning a game is runs, not hits, or not not home runs. Let's talk about the goal. No expertise on this call. So talk about problems. Like everyone in construction, we're faced with problems. It's it's like, oh, it's overwhelming. Some of us even lie and say, Hey, these are opportunities. Like, get out of here with that. Oh, and yeah. These are opportunities. Like, yes, they are opportunities if we if we approach it in the correct way, but man, we got some we got some issues. And if we've if we don't label those core issues, remember I was we're talking about cause and effect. Like, if when you get close to a core issue, when you get real close, and you're like, ooh, I'm close to this issue, uh, people will get violent. They get violent, or you shine lights where you shouldn't want to shine or get into budgets, or those kind of things. I mean, you get close to core issues, people will push away. So, a leading indicator for me is like the pushing away factor. The more angry people get, or the more that's like, oh, okay, I'm on to something here. You can't just be you can't just go after core problems out of the gate because people will armor up, right? They'll armor up. So you have to think about things and flow. When we're talking about the goals, remember I said the goal this book is about science and education, it's about flow. What what are constraints? So there's a psychologist, and he has a fancy name. My collie skizmi, I'm not even gonna try it. He wrote this book about flow, and he described it in a uh in an interview with Wired magazine. He goes, as a state of complete immersion and activity, the ego falls away, time flies, every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like like playing jazz. You know how people like jazz because it's like it feels kind of like sporadic, like it's like it's never the same. But like the thing about jazz, you have to understand underlying theories and the chords and the tempo and those kind of things, and that's flow. You ever been in a flow state? I have I've very few times. You I think you told me about this once you like spread drawings on the floor and you like got into the drawing.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Yeah, yeah. I you know, look, thinking of flow state under from that understanding, yes, many, many, many, many times. So the time that you you talked about is back back in the day when I'd get a new project when I was a plumb informant and and mechanical superintendent, what I would do when I got a new set of drawings is I'd pump up my air mattress, so I can lay down on the floor, and I would clear the floor and lay out my drawings on the floor, and I'd have my ISO paper, my highlighters, my colored pencils, and I'd just dive into the drawings. And like for hours and hours, like I wouldn't even my baby brother would he, I remember he would watch me, right? Because I'd do it, he'd come over sometimes, or I'd be at my mom's house sometimes, and like, okay, I just need to focus, I need to do this stuff. And he would say, I want your job. I was like, Why do you want my job? He's like, Because you all you do, you draw in color, like that's an awesome job. Like, I was drawing isometric drawings of the system so I could do my takeoff, highlighting you know, the notes and the spec book and like the whole thing. And like I didn't like in my head, it wasn't like okay, let me set up the conditions so I can get into flow state, but that's what I did, right? Like, I would it was a ritual, a new project, air mattress, conditions. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

There are things you must have. It's like setting up for a pull plan. There are things you must have, and and there's patterns involved. So when we talk about flow, it feels so good. It's it is like the ultimate state. There's like and there's drugs that you can take that trick your mind into thinking you're having flow. Yes. And when I was reading this book, I was using those, that that medicine. I was using that type of medicine that that it it it corrects some chemical imbalance in my brain and in my body. And I use medicine to treat my anxiety. I have anxiety. And one thing I learned was I thought I was crazy because of issues, because of I can't get people to and I was like project superintendent. I was like 30 when I picked up this book, 32 years old, very, very young, but also very young. And but I I at this at this point in time I was also struggling mentally. So we talk about like mental illness, it's not always there's this there's a spectrum of things, and right. So for me, I recognize that I have anxiety and I I went and got some medication for that. So I sought treatment, which was good, but the treatment that I got was only in drug form and not dealing with the root cause or the cause-effect cause or whatever. Right, right. Right, you're just treating a symptom. So I picked this book up and I was like, okay, there's the system to it. So flow is is this, it's like jazz, or it's this it's this very enlightened state of mind and in body. And then when we do that in the workplace, it's like it's like teamwork and organization, it's all the stuff we put in marketing, our marketing campaign, like all of the pictures, there's synergy, it's all of that stuff. Like we've got compute, there's pictures of people communicating so well, and it's like we have we've we've we figured out the problems in the supply chain, and we're listening we really try all of that stuff, and it's just it's an imperfect world out there, so we have to be agile too. So what I would struggle with, what my struggle with at work, I had I have many demons, but the one I had struggled with most, it's called overproduction. Ooh, is there such a thing? And I didn't I didn't understand overproduction. I've only maybe I I went to like a lunch and learn or something, and they showed the the eight wastes. Yep. But have you ever thrown a problem at a single resource? I I would write RFIs when I was a project engineer, and I would, I was young, I'd be like, oh, I'll wake, I'll work all night and just load it up. Just do do do do. And while that while the person who's about to receive these questions, these requests for information, they're sleeping in bed. They're they're they were they were about to get ambushed. They didn't have any defenses up. And I'd launch them over there because I knew, and I would do it on a certain day a week. Like I would do it on a certain day a week. Don't do more because you feel good about it. You have to think about a system. And it's hard when you're when you're when you don't value that. When you actually value, it's like I'm just output. I'm just gonna I'm gonna put some stuff out because I'm gonna produce. I am a high performer. I am a somebody told me to like you're like a stallion. I was like, damn, hell yeah, I'm like a stallion. Yeah and uh though like my coach, excellent my coach, she told me that. She's like, You're a stallion. I'm like, hell net. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I am like, she's like, you should be an eagle. I was like, ooh, I like that even more. So think about an eagle elevated, super good vision, and can take swift action, and it's got some pretty gnarly, gnarly stuff. It's a claws and a beach. So eagle, I like the eagle analogy even better than a stallion. So a stallion just runs, just output out, just go, win the race. The one who runs the race goes the fastest around the track. Oh, yeah. The eagle. So, anyways, so instead of stopping and and solving one problem at a time, if you don't solve that one issue and you just keep shooting them over, you create more problems. You create more, makes stuff more complex. Yep. And then when things are more complex, then all the bias, just all that bias comes in because people are we're we are we are animals too. We're we're eagles and we're animals, and complex systems are terrifying. You don't understand how things are, it's it's it's frightening. We want we want to understand how systems function and do it simply. So what we do is we we we hire third parties and consultants and principals of companies. We hire these high performers and like sock computer software to help us like manage the chaos. And it's yeah, listen, we need we need all of those. I'm not I'm not saying we don't need consultants and we don't need computer software. Yes, we do. We live in a world, we live in the real world, we need all of this stuff in the in in a flow state, uh, or eventually we'll get into this dang book. They call it a balanced plant, and a balanced plant is a system of inputs and outputs, and if you're balanced, it's one-to-one, right? System in, one in, one out, one in, one out. That's a balanced plant. So that's like the goal in in production theory. So yeah, but anyway, so so overproduction is just so damaging, just so dang damaging, and often we refuse, and often it's unknowingly refused, right? We don't even know what we're doing, and we devote resources to solve the problems we should correct, right? Because we remember that my map, I go to judgment, my judgment, and then I go to go to cause. I go straight to should you should. Yep. And uh when I was a superintendent, when I picked up this book, project superintendent, I was all should, should, should, should go talk to the plumbing foreman, the electrician, the the steel, the raising gang. Like if we're doing this project, this photo behind me. This is when it happened. Yep. And uh what happens is we starve resources because we're diverting, we're making decisions. And we made those decisions are made on judgment and or worse, false. Because we we're we're full of bias. We don't take a second to look at the entire system, it creates more problems, and it's it compounds, it's this compounding, it's like the worst kind of compounding interest. So left alone to fester. If we just leave stuff alone, excuse me, leave stuff alone, big problems show up. So all these like little, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's a gambling, and you you can't win. There's this Irish guy named Murphy. He just comes in at the worst possible moment, right? And those big problems, they they make unvisible problems just incredibly visible. It's like boom, like what were we thinking, right? Yeah, yeah. And uh so there's there's I I wrote down a couple of them here. I said, number one, when big problems become visible, when a customer submits a complaint, right? Like, I got an issue, you you are late, you are wasting my money, you are this is a complaint. That's number one. Number two, problematic processes come to a halt, they just grind to a halt. So problematic processes, they grind down to and they stop. So we can't even move forward because we uh we have so many issues that that process come to a halt. Number three, when materials and inventory start piling up, indicators, indicator of problems, inventory, materials flooding the job site with all of your ductwork. Anyways, we'll get to that story in a minute. Uh, number four, when repetitive errors or deficiencies in quality are uncovered, it's like, oh shit, embeds are off by an inch. Oh yeah. So get the chipping gun out. So and it's repetitive. When it's repetitive, we can't be perfect. We're we're we're human beings, we're not perfect. But if it's a repetitive error that shows up, it's like we got we have constraints. So so to quote Dr. Goldrat: if a process of continuous improvement is to be effective, we must first of all find what to change. You have to find what to change.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

I heard I don't know if somebody told me the story. Anyway, the story was one of the godfathers from Toyota had come down, visited a project, or visited a plant, and the manager kept asking him, like, okay, walking up through the plant and asked, so are we lean? And he said, I don't know. Kept walking, asked again, are we lean? He said, I don't know. End of the day, they finished the plant, they're at dinner. He's like, Okay, so you spent the whole day here, you got to see everything we're doing. Tell me, am I are we lean? He's like, I don't know. I would have to come back tomorrow and see if you improved.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

I was like, Hollywood lean. Yes, fixing the job. You Windex the job. Don't Windex the job.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Yep. What are you changing? What are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 38:33

One of my stories in this in my in my notebook is when a senior vice president from the East Coast came out, and I didn't know it was the senior vice president until after we did the job tour. But I'll I'll I'll drop that one in there at the at the right moment. And uh it was great, it was a great story because it was like I he had never seen because when he shows up, this is a this is the number two guy at Turner Construction, the world's largest construction company by by revenue and building construction. He's like the number two guy. And I I was fairly new to Turner, so I didn't know everyone. So right, right. But I'll tell that story because I didn't Windex the job, right? It was we walked we walked this project site, and this is when I was doing some of this theory of constraint stuff, and it has an organizing effect, and it it does you you do see improvement, yes, so we'll talk about that. But uh so so Goldras says you have to choose what to change, and then once you choose, oh it's like okay, we gotta change this. The next step is like how to cause the change. So it's like okay, we're gonna we the this is a problem, and now we're gonna be like, this is the not how we're gonna the solution, just how we're gonna go at that issue. You have to how to cause the change. It's like if I have a lever big enough, I can move the whole world. So you have to how to cause the change. This is the system, and then you have to clarify to ourselves what to change it to. So it's like this needs to change, how we're gonna apply a resource, we're gonna do that, and then it's like the output in theory of constraints is what you're gonna change it to, but otherwise, it's just leads to panic and chaos. If you don't do the system approach, so that's why there's a worksheet that we often use in construction. It's it's the we call it the constraint law. If you don't answer those three questions, you're just taking notes. Or worse, rip I call it reporting the news. Like this is all the stuff that's not messed up that we have to deal with. So it's like what to change, what to how to cause the change and what to change it to. That's that's the those are the those are the steps. So let's just go. So I picked this book up in 2012 and it was on my project executive's desk. It wasn't this book, but I was like, what's this? And and and that person will rename nameless, I will protect them. But the binding was just crisp. It's crisp. There weren't I was like looking at it, there wasn't any highlighting or notes. It obviously had not been read, like it hadn't been cracked over. And this was 2012 in the in the San Francisco Bay Area. So this was like this is like the epicenter of the last planner system kind of taking its shape. Though UC Berkeley was is on the other side of the bridge. A lot of a lot of the names and lean and construction kind of originate from there. So I was kind of in that ecosystem a little bit, but at that time I've been just failing with last planner, just like trying and failing. Just miserable and just getting crushed. And I was like, I was like, I like this concept of visualization and pole planning, and like you do all these steps, but I didn't get it. I didn't get it, I didn't get the goal, the goal, right? Yep. So I picked this book up and I was like, I just was curious, and I hadn't read a book, Jesse. I hadn't read a book probably in since college. So I graduated college in 2005.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

And then you said you picked like the thickest dang book.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Yeah, and like there was people at Turner that had read this and were like, oh, that's great. So I'm like, all right, I'll check it out. I'll check it out. This sounds cool. Like there was like study action teams happening. Yep, like it was it was it was the time, it was a good time to be alive. 2012 in San Francisco Bay Area. So, like the the the Salesforce Tower was being the excavated, the the all this just that little little peninsula seemed special for me, anyways. But the goal is relevant for all types of situations because it's about learning what makes the world tick so that you can improve it. You have to learn. Let's remember it's science and education. There's a characters, and there's this book is a novel, like it's a novel, and there's characters, it doesn't, it's not a textbook. What did you like that that feature?

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Man, absolutely. Well, I can't remember if I read it before I listened to the audio version, but I know that when I listened to the audio version, like it totally came to life, and it was, I think I did read it first. I can't remember why who turned me on to it, but I was like, Oh, let me check it out. And I was like, Oh my, like, I just had to keep because it was multiple characters, me and like the dynamics that the situations that that the the lessons are built around was like, oh yeah, I know that life. Like I was having flashbacks of all the problems and the arguments and the butt chewing, and like it it was you know, the whole thing, the story was beautiful and perfect because like yes, theory of constraints and yes, processes and yes, systems, and I get all of that, but what the book did or does is it shows it from a human perspective, right? And and so for me that that was important because I've always been biased to people and how people feel and how people communicate or don't communicate, like I'm biased towards that, and so it's easy for me to cut people off, turn the systems thinkers, because it's almost like either or you're either a system process thinker that doesn't account for the human and says, Well, if humans would just follow the process, or you're kind of a human type person and say, Well, the processes are nice, but you don't really need them because people are people. And I know both of those to be false. Like it's the combination and figuring out. The education, the learning. Yes. Yes. Because people are people. They're unpredictable. We're driven by ego. We're driven by status. So just because it makes sense to follow the process, because it'll be better. But if my new boss says that process is bullshit, I'm gonna do what my boss wants because I want to raise, right? Like that's the reality. That these things like that are combating is process systems, and then damn it, I'm a human being. So all the characters in it was like, oh yeah, man, now we're now we're talking. It was it was great.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

Yes, the characters makes it so personal. So Patrick Lencioni writes novels like that too. And perhaps someday, maybe I'll make a novel. But uh see how that goes. I think it's it's it's it's a journey, and for me, like why was I failing with Last Planner? Because I was going by the book. Like I and and listen, and thank you. The professors at UC Berkeley, thank you for the book. Thank you. You they literally gave it to me. Wow. Yes, Dr. Ballard and Dr. Tomalin. Thank you. We're gonna connect. I think uh definitely in New Orleans. I owe them a lot of credit. But they gave me the book, and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna follow the steps. It's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it just crushed, just got crushed, just failed because it's a social process. I think yeah, and when I came back and and to their credit, like they were like, Yes, you now you also have to master master this social process of like gaining trust and like organizing people and all this stuff. So uh, but the goal is like you think logically about your problems. Logically, remember this logic thing again? Like, if you have problems, you have to prove that your assumption is wrong, and that's that's the scientific method. And uh the what is the Greek philosopher Socrates, who kind of I guess designed that the the Romans or the the Greeks they made them drink poison, right? They were like, This is what is this sorcery, this study and making assumptions and all this kind of. I don't know the the the whole trial process, but but when you start to think logically, people are irrational, human beings are irrational, and so like you have to approach it, you have to approach it that way. And the goal for me finally was like, hey, you have this different way to approach things. So it uh so I read the goal and light bulbs, they just cut on. And suddenly the core principles of lean they became clear, yeah. And it was also at the moment, I was kind of early middle career, so like I was finally I had some authority, like I had authority, and I'm not saying like I could can or fire people or hire people, I had major influence, like I was a project superintendent, so I could like if we wanted to do stuff, we the pretty much they had to do it, like we're gonna do it, yeah, and I was like encouraged, and it was like a it was like I said, it was like the golden time. It was like, oh, this is cool, this is innovative. So it was like it's like all these stars or all these roads met, and and then for me, that was the moment when I was kind of middle of the road, like Jesse. Like I've been laid off, I've been written up. Oh wow, yeah, like I am just I was not a high performer, I was like okay, and and that and then when I read that book, and uh again, it was a whole bunch of it wasn't contributing factors, cause effect degrees, but my trajectory and my career like changed shot off rapidly, and so did my earning and a whole bunch of other steps after that. So my life just kind of made a it didn't turn around, it just just just course corrected a little. And then I started meeting people like you very soon after that, in like was that two 2016 or so, 18, maybe like 18. I think it was 18, yeah. So if I if I didn't do that, we probably would have never met. Jesse, here's a here's a crazy thing. That's just crazy. I never even thought about it. Or maybe I would have I would have been a student at one of your uh seminars, right? Like I would you would be teaching me last planner and be like Thomas is doing this all wrong. So it's it's it's really crazy. But it like at that at that moment for me and my career and uh all my earning and all the potential and all the stuff, like it just it it it changed the trajectory for me. So now I'm a I'm I'm at a different company, but I'm an operational leader, and my focus is construction quality for an entire region. And we do right now just my region is a two billion dollar business. So just my region. So it's uh it's it's it's just a great time to be alive. Yeah, but I attribute a lot of it and a lot I use this stuff every day. Every day. Yeah, let's do chapter one. Let's do it, baby. We talked about the intro. So chapter one is ambush! Ambush! So he this the scene starts, and did you know there's a movie or there's a film? I didn't know this, but there's a film. But the scene starts. Let me just set it. So the the main character Alex, he's a plant manager at Unico, which is a which is a I think they make some kind of components or electrical system. It's a manufacturing plant. He's the plant manager, the guy's top dog at the plant. And uh he pulls into the the parking lot, and his boss, Bill Peach, parked in his spot. He put like Bill Peach has parked his car in his spot to like like you know how like reinforcing cycles work. So when you pull into work, and uh I don't think we do much uh assign parking anymore. But uh back in the 80s, this book was written in 1984. So it was written in the in the early 80s. I was also created in the early 80s, but uh he shows up unannounced, his boss shows up unannounced, and he's waiting for him in his office sitting at his desk. So his boss totally ambushes him, and uh one person I haven't met, but uh I hope to do so soon is Brian Winningham. I think you've you've interviewed him. Dude was an army ranger, dude. Army Ranger, like yes, uh Memorial Day, like Memorial Day coming up, like the 75th, like airborne all the way. Like, thank you, Brian. But uh ambush is a combat technique, and it's very effective. It is very effective in combat. And I don't I have not been in the military, I don't understand it, but what well from what I understand, ambush is a very effective technique, and and not in a I guess it's effective in combat, but in a business sense, like do we need to attack each other? Like, really? So Philip Peach sitting there in his desk in the 80s, he's attacking him. He's like, he comes out out of like the first chapter. He goes, I'm dissatisfied with productivity in your personal performance, and he's scrutinizing like the use of this robot, the index 10 hands, and he's like demanding. So like I've belittle you, I've torn you down, I've just like I've ambushed you in combat. And then at the end, he's like, by the way, you have to like prioritize this late order. This late, you have lots of late orders, but this this is my this is my late order. I go to Bucky Burnside.

SPEAKER_00 52:08

Sound familiar? Ever getting ambushed? Oh man, well, so two, yes, and yes, like yes, I've I've been ambushed, and yes, I've ambushed a hell out of people. So we had this process that was called job reviews. This was back when in my trade partner days, and so we would have it was a monthly review, financial reviews, health of the project, all this sort of thing. And I, you know, I survived many business unit leaders, which was I always kind of think that's interesting. There was a bunch of them, they all knew the right best way, but none of them lasted more than two or three years. I was there for 17, just just you know, some facts. And it would that was one of the leaders every month, he would get us with something different, right? Like it was the goalpost was always moving, but the way he went about it was total ambush. And then it was the same damn speech. This is unacceptable. You need to get better, and and almost to like what Peach says in this thing like, if I if you can't figure it out, what do I need you for? Like, okay, so I'm gonna show up to this meeting, so you can tell me how much I suck, but you have no idea how to help me get better. Like, what what good are you? Now, what I would do, if maybe it's counterambushing. Back when I was a foreman and out there in the field, and I knew the fancy people were gonna come walk the job, I would keep like a bucket of questions in my head or a bucket of problems. And so when they came and they started like getting ready to to attack me, I hit them first. Hey, well, what about this? And we did this and divert the like divert their attention, they get go chase that fly, and I didn't have to deal with any rush orders for their BFF or for some commitment they made that was ridiculous because I got them hooked on something else. None of which were productive, right? It was it didn't help the situation. All it did was make the situation worse. And the book talks about it, right? The the the rush orders, the yeah, like rush, rush, rush, rush, rush.

SPEAKER_02 54:14

This needs to go. Put this, you're terrible, you're failing, your your personal job performance is on the line. If you don't get this plant turned around, I'm gonna toy with it. I don't spoiler alert. And the only way to counter an ambush is have a swift reaction team, right? It's like it's like you know, this book was written in 80s, so top gun, 86.

SPEAKER_01 54:38

Uh when Iceman's under attack with the Russians, he calls in for Ready Five for Maverick to come and uh be the swift reaction team, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:47

So like yeah, when when you're ambushed, you your only kind of line of defense is to defend yourself, all right? Like so, so if if if we're gonna come out at people with problems and we're gonna give them other problems, it it makes this compounding issue, right? So what do you think? Does that affect your ability to so after the ambush, does it affect your ability to communicate with others after?

SPEAKER_00 55:15

Absolutely, yes, because now I'm in a crisis state, I'm in a fear state, I'm in survival mode. So just the volume of my speaking is going to be stressed, it's going to be louder. Like there's so many things, like the compounding effect, because I've been attacked, I've been threatened, my security is on the line, and the problem is not the people, right? Like it's rarely, rarely, rarely the human beings. But what am I going to do? I got my butt handed to me, so I'm gonna go to my team and say, hey, y'all got a problem. And y'all is downhill, right? Yes, I can't think logically or empathetically and say, we're all experiencing this, we're all contributing to this in some form or fashion. Let's let's evaluate it. No, damn it, fix get the shit running, this order out, period. That doesn't help.

SPEAKER_02 56:16

Yeah. So when that happened, uh, was there any thought of any long-term improvement or personal uh mastery or any other when you diverted in an emergency situation? You have to divert all your resources to put out a fire. Do you do any kind of uh continuous improvement events? Is there any time for that? You got time to go to a seminar? Nope. That's an book, yeah. A reading book to do uh mindfulness or or meditation or yoga or nope, right? No, there's no time. No, so that's how it works. That's how it works. It's it's it's like there's no like for me, there was no nefarious or malice. It's just like it's just compounding, and then we do it to other people. And when you're in a position of leadership, and if you do this, stop. Please stop this. So it's so damaging because it ripples, like you guys talk about, you and Jess talk about ripples of impact. Yeah, that's the ripple right there. It's a little, it's like this little slight I'm gonna park in your parking spot, right? To get you off, get you off center before you come in, and then I'm gonna hit you before you even get settled, before you even figure out what time it is or what your name is. It's early in the morning, and uh eight people that do that. And I don't hate like them as people, I just hate it when that happens. And the worst time to do it is like straight up in the morning because the rest of the day is wrecked, it's wrecked, and it just ripples out the rest of the day, is over.

SPEAKER_00 57:38

So well, and the other thing that's genius, like he starts the book and he starts the day, the character just in a bad spot, yes, and he does it so well, it's like, oh god, I can I'm feeling it again. But you know, the other thing that that does that whole ambushing, attacking, jump to salute or whatever, just get into emergency state and do something. What it it for me, anyways, what it did was it created like insidiously, it created the arsenous firefighter syndrome within me, right? Because fire, I put it out. Guess what? Hey, man, Jesse comes to Jesse makes things happen, and and that's that little cycle is starting along like alongside the ambush. The ambush is the big one, but this little bitty one that got in my head and completely corrupted my thinking as a result of the ambushing.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Yeah, yeah, because you have to get back, right? We're constantly trying to get back, and yeah. So that's just chapter one. Damn, that's a good chapter. But uh, that's how it works. That that's how life works. Like you get ambushed at work, and not only and it's we obviously put it put a person in a bad spot here, but it it works that easily. It's just like you get on people's cases out of the gate in the morning and ruins their job. So if you flip to chapter two, he takes it home. He takes it home. We're gonna talk about work-life balance right now. So Alex Alex takes it home. So he's like gets wrecked at the day. He's gotta like re-scope, and it's like he's the plant manager, so he's and he's gotta rearrange an entire order of a of a of a production line. So he's gotta pull people off, and then like there's a setup that has to happen, and there's milling machines, there's all kinds of stuff, and this happens in construction too. Yeah, changes happen. It's like, oh, we gotta get pull these guys over here, and this, that, like, stop doing that, and blah, blah, blah. So it's like it just takes it out of you, and then you just come home, end of the day, and it's like some scowl, like you can't listen, just take it home. It's it's you're a human being. Yes, and gets home late. He misses dinner, and in the 80s, the the the the dinner at at six or whatever time it was is very important. How do I know? I I grew up in the 80s, and before that, though, he goes and gets beers with Bob Donovan, the the ops manager. So he's the he's the GM and ops manager. They go out and they're like, Cheers, bro, we got that order out. Like, good job. Like, there's like some celebration, like it was a bad day. We gotta go do some numbing. Yes, we gotta hit the beers, and and there's culture there. This is male culture. We gotta get some beers after the after five. I do it, I still do it. Yep, yeah. It's not that that's a bad thing, but at this is the transition. So the work-life balance thing, there's a transition from work and life, right? And then what what happens is like work ends and life begins. No, that that doesn't happen. There's just transitions from the time you're at work to the time you're at home. Just a transition. Your life is the entire time. Here's here's a secret. Let me let the secret out. Life all the time, 100%. You don't need to balance that. That's the 24-hour part. You're alive when when you you stop being alive, then you don't have to worry about work, anyways. So they uh they celebrate the win. He comes home, and his wife is unhappy. Unhappy. So Rogo's wife, Alex Rogo's wife is unhappy. So sound familiar?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

You ever come home?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

Come home from work, you're feeling good about what you achieved, but also like kind of sore or getting burned. Like, so it's like eh, all of the all of the trials and tribulations of the day, they load up on you, and you come home and it's in in the day, and it's like you haven't quite gone to sleep yet, but you have to interact with the people you dearly love and care about. And the whole point of going to work, it's like to build have a roof over your head and have a stable uh home for your family. And you go and you bring you bring with you all of the things that happened in the work.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:00

So work-life balance to you, Jesse. Is it a goal? Is it a myth, or is it a fantasy?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

How about how about a mirage? It's the same mirage as time management. Like, can you manage time? No, there's nothing I can do to speed it up, to slow it down, to save it. Like it's it's happens all the time, no matter what I do. So it's not a I don't have a time management issue. I have a Jesse management issue. I need to learn how to manage myself, not time. We got clocks and all kinds of sundials and all kinds of other things that'll tell us what the time is doing. And so the like the work-life balance, I think that's where I get hung up. It it's the way I think about it is accepting the whole human, the whole entire person, period. Right? Like, because I had a lot, there were a lot of years where it's like, nope, I I'm work at work, home at home. I had very hard lines between that, but having that hard line was an enormous stressor for me. You know, I've been dated, have a lot of X's, I'll just say it that way. And the one thing that really rubbed me, because I, you know, I've done a lot of really dumb things, and I don't, I'm okay with getting in trouble for doing dumb things. I'm not okay for getting in with getting in trouble for like thinking about work because that's not a bad thing. But can't you just leave work? Can't you turn it off? Can't you just like no? I can't. Like, I am a human being. My work is very important to me. It means a lot to me, and I can't turn it off. It's what I'm thinking about. I apologize. Can you just accept me as the whole person that I am? And same thing at work, right? When I'm struggling, bring you know, I'm dealing with mental my own addiction issues, mental illness in the family, the stresses of whatever, and I come to work. You can tell me, like, dude, you need to leave your personal life at home. Don't bring your problems to work. That doesn't do anything except for add to the stress, right? That doesn't do any. And again, it's it's not accepting the whole human being. And so that's where I'm at with it. It's I'm a human being all the time. If you can't accept that, then we're we're gonna have a problem. So this balance thing, I I I get stuck on the word balance, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:28

Yeah, yeah. It's you know, we have to have something so people can kind of rally around it. So work life balance is it is important. You should have balance, and you should I I think it's a strive to have balance. Because when you get out of balance with things, then there's problems. But this is what I personally believe is that there is no membrane to to your work in your life, and and and oftentimes, and especially in the United States, especially in the United States, your work is your identity, right? Like, like if like you go to a dinner party or something, the first thing you ask is like, then what do you do? Right? Yep. As part of like your introduction to people, like so work is identity, and if you don't believe me, go on LinkedIn. It's your identity. Ironically, I when I was learning this book, we're building the core and shell for LinkedIn, but it's your identity, so there's no membrane. So the so for me, if you if you carry sorrow, if you carry grief, if you carry shame, if you carry annoyance, right, if you carry anger, you have to control that in the workplace, right? You have to control that. So it's for controlling things, you have to spend energy, you have to burn calories to be like, I need this problem at home, or I'm in debt, or I have a problem with my personal relationship. And like you can't bring that into a uh workplace thing because there's no place for that. It's like, what do you what do you want us to do with that, Thomas? So you have to you have to control it at work. You have to control it at work, and that takes energy. So you have to spend energy to hold that in and and not allow it to affect your emotions or whatever, judgment or visions. And when we and it we only have enough energy in a day to we have to go to sleep, right? So to replenish our energy and eat food and drink water. So when you're at the end of the day and you have less energy, you're tired, you're all your guards are down, you're in a safe place, you're at your home. Oftentimes that holding it down, that controlling. Behavior, you let you let it go, and all of a sudden now you're you're you're you're having a conflict with your family members or your pets or your stuff in your house, right? Like you push a hole in the wall, right? Because you're just so angry. I've done that. Like you take stuff out and you're frustrated. So like it's because that energy that you you you've spent all day long, you've run out of that. So oftentimes when you run out of energy, we have to turn to substances.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:11

So for me, I would turn to alcohol. I would turn to alcohol, I still turn to alcohol to help hold it down, right? Because it's like it you you get euphoric when you're under the influences of things, and you know, it takes the edge off. It kind of takes the edge off of things for me. That and that's why alcohol wasn't enough. I had to turn to antidepressants and and benzo, like the other antipsychotic drugs, because uh I didn't have enough energy. I didn't have enough energy to hold all that down, so I had to turn to medicine and alcohol, I guess, and other drugs, to help control that behavior to for me to stay normal, to not go crazy. That's that was for me. So uh and then you know, you transition, you go to sleep, you get up in the morning and transition back. So luckily, I never got super, it never was a problem for me, but it definitely affected things. Definitely, yeah, yeah, definitely. So five SM relationships. Uh oh. This is this is it right here, chapter two. When problems at work manage to multiply at home. What do you think? Is this why is this why you are writing a book?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

Yeah, yeah. The the so the the whole book with the live streams were based on letters of a relation, a failed relationship that I had with somebody that is not Jennifer, because for some reason, when you read the book, the way I've the way we worded things, it kind of lets you think that the relationship was before between Jennifer and I, which I think is hilarious. But anyhow, kind of the work by work-life balance, the suppression of feelings and all that, all of that turned into self-medicating, all the other things to so that I wouldn't deal with my stuff. Like I didn't want to deal with it. And those problems compounded and they they made it home. And like the balance part in my head, I can reconcile that idea with the idea of nurture and neglect. And so, what I would do was I neglected my responsibilities as a boyfriend or significant other, whatever, right, whatever the right term is. So I just didn't understand what the problem was because I'm going to work, I'm traveling and I'm working at home at 4 a.m. on the Saturday or Sunday morning. I'm up and I'm on my computer. Like, what's wrong with that? And all the other baggage that we brought into the relationship that she brought from work and that I brought from work. Like we come home and she would be telling me about a situation, and it's like, again, the same problem. Like, why haven't you done this? She didn't want me to answer the problem for her. She just wanted me to listen to her. I didn't want to hear the same problem again. I just want it to be solved, right? Like, so there was all this stuff that, because of work, because of the just the adjusted behaviors in the professional space, add these really unnecessary stresses upon the people, we would bring it home. And like you said, we're probably both of us are looking for some kind of reprieve within each other. But because we have our own garbage, we couldn't help each other, we couldn't support each other. Anyhow, relationship comes to an end. She writes these translates the 5S system and direct application to our personal relationship. And I'm just like, oh my God, like she's not a lean freak, right? I was the only lean thing in her life, and not physically lean, right? I was had some extra patting on me, but she started getting an interest in reading some of the books that we that I would read and whatever. And and she took it upon herself to like, okay, let me speak the language this fool speaks, and and wrote it out, right? Sort, set, shine, standardized, sustain. But as it related to our relationship, and it was like, oh my God, this is you know, blocking out time, being visualizing our calendar, like just all these little, little genius techniques that helped the and they did help the relationship. I was too far gone, or or maybe just not willing to make the investment it it really required, but it absolutely helped with the realities of what we deal with in work and being the whole human being, right? It created the conditions for us to be able to communicate and sort through all of our stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:44

Thank you for sharing that. Wow. Yeah, because it's when problems multiply, we're talking about systems thinking and and and and constraints. Uh we have to we have to we have to figure them out, and then we have to to what to change to and how to cause the change, right? We gotta have those systems in place. Oh, that's so good. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Yeah, and then just just chapter two, I'll wrap chapter two up. I I got the lean builder book. Page 25. You know after work events, clinking the beer. Joe and Keon, thank you. Um, I wonder if they wrote read the goal when they're writing. I'm sure they did. But the post-work vent session at the smoke pit yes was definitely is in Texas, so we're having some smoky barbecue.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:32

But Sam and Alan, talking it out over some beers and some barbecue. So that's that's good. I think I think uh having a having that system of venting is is good. It's just if it it's it's that transitional period, it there's a cost to that. And if it if it if it's costing time at home, then it's right. You have to so you have to kind of manage that. So I thought I thought that's interesting, and it's a lean builder thing too. So it's it's all part of it. It's just being human and being what we do. So that's kind of chapter three. Chapter three is good because it goes to the headquarters. Uh yes, excuse me, Alex Rogo. So he said he goes to this meeting, and it's like totally 80s style. But he goes to the meeting, the corporate office at headquarters, and then we learn the backstory with uh Bill Peach and Alex Rogo. They actually worked together until and they were close, they were friends, and then Peach gets promoted to I think like CEO of the division. So he's like, Ghost, see it, see it, see it, dude. And but it it's also so so Peach gets promoted. Bill Peach, he's like he's the top dog at Unico and the headquarters. But it's also revealed that in this chapter that uh they're in financial trouble, the whole company. There was and and it's true in the 1980s and and and it was a recession. Early early 80s it was a recession. And uh so at the time of the writing of the book, Alex Rogo he he takes these troubles. The these are these these are trying times, and here we are 2022, here we are in trying times again. But Alex Rogo takes this this economic recession personally, right? He feels he is contributing himself. They're they're a manufacturing, so they they build stuff for people to buy, and if in a recession, there's fewer people wanting to buy things. So it's it's uh he takes it personally, and but he's at the uh this is the 1980s, so you wear a suit and tie at the uh at the AQ, and uh he finds a cigar in his suit pocket from Jonah, his old college professor, speaking of Dr. Tomalin and Valor, but finds a cigar, like what's this? Remember something like I like the do like the little Easter eggs, you find somebody and you think about something, you're like, Oh yeah. So yeah, this is but when you're at the HQ, you get lots of imagery in the HQ, right? About culture and core value, and those are important things, you have to have those. But Jesse, you you told me this one, and it's about say do ratio, and why that's a really important. So I call it the say do leadership index because you can actually factor it. Yeah, but what's a say do for you? Say do ratio for you, or you own you own your own company, you must have just amazing core values.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:31

I I have some core values, you know. It that's that's really great. So here's one that I'm striving to, and I've I've been brainstorming the conditions to make to make it happen. So what the say do ratio, like I've started, I'm launching the business, and the business is not to make money. Money making money is gonna be an outcome. The business is to facilitate me serving people in the way I believe I'm best designed to serve, right? The gifts and talents that I have, I can choose to deploy them appropriately whenever I want, as much as I want, or as much as people will tolerate. Now, in that, the money thing is a real thing, right? Because I need to eat. But how do I select my client? So here's a say do ratio that time will tell. I want to work with leaders that are ready to get their hands dirty in fixing the problems that they're dealing with. And I say it that way because you we've all worked with leaders. I mean, hell, when you when we were in the regional lean manager role, there were times where I'd get asked, somebody had a problem. They wanted me to go fix the problem for them. And I could, but that fix was not going to hold. As soon as I left, the fix was going to dissipate. And so now I got to go back again and fix that. So there's leaders that want people to come and fix their stuff. And that's okay. I want to work with leaders that are prepared to get into the situation and understand the problem, understand how they're contributing to the problem, and help develop the capabilities of their people to mitigate that problem away forever. It's very easy for me to say that right now because I still have the money that I saved and I don't have to take bad customers. But as my money gets spent paying bills and maybe not having a whole lot of revenue coming in, that say due ratio is is at risk. Right. And I've people, um it's beautiful. I'm fortunate because people have been reaching out for services, and everybody so far is that type of leader. I haven't been faced with a situation with where a leader's got a big checkbook, but they ain't gonna get involved in the work. So I haven't had to say no yet. So right now my say do ratio is a hundred, but it's it hasn't been tested yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:02

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, I work for a very large for-profit organization, and uh you know, we talk a lot about our our core values. And uh I'm I'm so thankful I work for a company that like when they at their founding, they had a lot of this was in the 1990s and in near Stanford University, and they worked with Jim Collins, a good to great author. So a lot of the the foundational values was with really forward thinkers and the three founders, Doug, Peter, and Ron, they're just really super people and like outward thinking, and they're not in it for for for to be to be like the biggest or the most profitable. But like we we do like our say do ratio, we we have to be really careful when we communicate that because now we're huge. It's very like DPR is now in the top 10 E and R. So they're we're we're we're no longer the company that we were in the 1990s, and a lot of new faces like me are there. So like we have to, we we can't that our core values we are challenged constantly because of growth, because of we're entering into new new places of work that we're out to do, and uh so but what what is really important is like you can't have mixed messages in your communications. Yes. So it's like so if if we're if we're being like, I really like the R value of ever forward, but that gets contested if we're being conservative, rather like, oh, we gotta tighten the belts, and this is so it's it's we can't be mixed, we have to be very clear with our with our communications. And then the second thing with say do is being assertive when face of conflict, is when when our values or whatever at the head HQ, right? Because a lot of decisions get made there. When we deliver bad news or we we confront conflict, do we take it head on or do we do we try to try to avoid it? Or worse, like wait. So I wrote down a note and I said delivery of bad news does not age like fine line.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:15

Oh yeah, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:17

So so yeah, so the say do leadership index, if we're if we're not being very clear and concise and consistent, then our say do ratio gets gets out of whack. We get we get more into say too. So we have to constantly check that. We have to constantly check that. And uh really glad I worked, and many companies are like that too. Like almost all the ones I work with. So but it's it's a constant challenge when we're at the HQ. That's the chapter three thing. So I so the last one with the with the uh with the cigar reference in the suit pocket. Have you ever realized a concept like way long after you were taught, you're like, that's why. Oh yeah, man, years. I mean, you have like find I I call them Easter eggs, but you're like, yeah, so do you have a story of that?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:04

Yeah, you know, this one's it's an easy one, but it may be a stretch. So my baseball coach in high school, he I said I can't. Uh we were working on some kind of I don't know what it was, some drill, and I was struggling with it, and I said I can't. And he said, Okay, then after after practice, meet me on the track. Like, okay. So we practiced, put everything up, and I went to meet him on the track. I didn't like I was still in my cleats and whatever. And he's like, All right, I need you to go like run, like give me a lap. Okay. So I gave him a lap and he sat there watching me. He says, Okay, now can you? I'm like, what are you talking about? He said, Okay, run a lap. I ran like eight laps, seven or eight laps, and it wasn't until the eighth, like the final lap when I realized, like, oh, he's doing this so that I can change my language and not say I can't. It that's kind of dumb, but I didn't get it. I'm just like, I'm thinking he's gonna teach me how to do the drill, whatever the drill was. And I needed to run some laps to get warm, like total bonehead thing. And then I realized, oh, he's teaching me not to say I can't, because if I believe I can't, it's gonna be true. And he's like, okay, Jess, can you? I'm like, Yes, I can. Okay, I'll see you tomorrow. And totally missed the concept until later on. I I don't know if that's too far of a stretch, Thomas, but that's what No, you need it, you need some like the 5S relationship.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:40

And I talked about this on your live stream. Sometimes you need third-party help to to get you to where to get you to see, to even see. Yes, like because we're blinded by our problems with constraints, with we can't even see our own problems, and worse bias trickles in and it messes around with our brain. Yeah, you can't even see, like even if you're looking at looking at it, yes. They call that the aha moment, right? Because some I think it's it's a it's a it's a mnemonic thing. It's like aha! I get it now. So I had I had I had one. Ah, yes. When when I read the book, so I was and it's it was the the idea, the idea of the six trying to trying to back up. When you're when you're getting into look ahead planning, I wouldn't I was like following the steps. I'd be like, okay, you go to the master schedule, pull the things down, bring in your butt, like you do all this stuff, but I was like, if we had productivity, if if we like made some changes, like we we went faster or we went slower in the schedule, I wasn't updating the schedule that way in the look ahead. I would be like, No, you're behind, you need to pick up speed. Like, no, I'm not changing the schedule. Yep, I'm not changing the schedule. The schedule was our business agreement, and I wouldn't let go of that. I was like, I'm holding on, like I'm talking about letting go of things. So the so the lesson that I learned when I'm reading this book, even in this chapter, is it's chapter three, this corporate shenanigans. Because I was taught from people who were who were teaching me this CPM method, and we're gonna talk about CPM last planner. Don't worry. But they're like, this is the schedule, you don't you don't touch it. In fact, we're gonna grade. We have a we have a mechanism to to grade every stop, every time you start and every time you finish, if you change any of that, you're you're gonna get in trouble. Like we're gonna have conversation, like, why are we changing start dates and why are we not finishing when we plan to? Like, well, I'm like, I'm also in the system of like we have this fluid thing of like if we make improvements to the system, we need to bring stuff in. And if we have problems, and we gotta we gotta put that outward. So I like I wasn't doing that, and like I was having failures. My aha moment came way later and being like, hey, we actually have to, if we find problems and constraints, we gotta put those in the we gotta plug them in P6, whatever your system is, and see how that plays out. Run a simulation, do the what ifs, do them, and then if it's true, that's the new schedule. Sorry, yes, reality. So I had to face reality, and uh, we get stuck in that loop a lot, and it's a lot of this corporate shenanigan stuff that's uh core beliefs, and yeah, so it's it's really tough. Don't we're not going to get quite into the the the Jason Schroeder main event, but it's coming. But uh I will say that my aha moment was like we need to we need to update our plan too. Like if if we're getting feedback from trades and we're going out and we're studying and we're updating weekly work plans, we're really trying hard. If we don't use that feedback mechanism to update the the overall plan downstream, six, eight, twelve, two years from now, we're in trouble. We're in big trouble. So that was my that was my say do ratio that I was way out of balance. Oh all right, chapter four. We're only like we're not into this, we're gonna go forever. It's a marathon. It's so good. Alex goes to Chicago, he's like, Well, cigar, I gotta get a hold of uh Jonah. Yes, Jonah, the the jet setting college professor. He's fancy guy like you, Jesse. Uh oh. Fancy guy like you, consultants, jet settings, getting all the the the got the credit card going, got the expense account, getting wind and dying. I'm going to Chicago. Oh, who am I kidding? Yeah, I'm I'm literally planning on going, taking a trip to Chicago too. So I'm giving you a tough time. But uh yeah, so Jonah is a consultant now. He's he's moved on, he's moved into the private sector, he's left left the academic world, and he's a for hire, very for hire consultant. And he meets Alex and Connects. He Alex reaches out and he's like, Hey man, we need to meet. He's like, Hey, I'm in Chicago, you can meet me. So he goes out to O'Hare. Shout out to Airport Projects. Before we leave tonight, let's tell the story. But for O'Hare, Jonah, Jonah goes out, and or I guess Alex meets uh Jona in Chicago, and they they they they they talk, and Jonah does this thing about asking questions. He provides advice by only asking common sense questions. And what he's doing, he's learning, he knows the technique. Like Jonah's got it. He's he's a he's a mensch, right? He's a good guy, and uh knows the system. He doesn't know all the problems, but he kind of knows production law. He knows these things, so it's like bottleneck law and other things like that. So he's like, ooh, okay, I want teach me, teach me. I'm a learner. So Jonah is not only a teacher, he's a learner. So he starts asking the questions, and he asks Alex if he understands the difference between productivity and playing a lot of games with words and numbers. Yes, specifically going at the robot, the expensive corporate priority. HQ robots.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

He says it might be the source of his problems. I was like, oh, and this is this is real because like when you're when you're in a project environment and you're you're constrained by policy, right? Yep, yep, you blame corporate. You're like, ah, these corporate guys are blaming me. They they gave me this dang robot. And it's super expensive, and I gotta figure it out. I get all these technology and all these stuff. So Joan asks him after he you know kind of figures it out. He goes, What is the goal? Talk about productivity. And like I'm I'm imagining like this would be a uh this would be a sit-down conversation with Dr. Goldrad. I'd be all like nervous and starstruck. Yeah. He gets in, he's like, okay, if you've ever listened to Dr. Goldrad, he's got a he's got a very Israeli accent. It's very, it's it's South Africans and Israelis, they have like the best accent. That's my butt anyways. Okay, ask him, what's the goal? What's the goal? So humble inquiry, what's your story, Jesse, about leading by asking questions?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:26

Man, I here's the story. I got introduced to humble inquiry via David Verbal. And when I first got introduced to it, I'm like, oh my god, like that is that's magic. Now, the reason I was able to like see, like, ooh, that's a whole new level. When early in my days of understanding or becoming aware of my influence, it was a result of me picking up women at the bar. And how did I do that? The way I did that was not talking and listening. I would ask questions to signal to them that I had some kind of interest, and then I just shut up. And all of a sudden, I'm a different special kind of person because I'm listening. Now, and what was also happening is as they were talking, they were giving me the cheat codes to what they were looking for and what made them happy. So all I had to do was pretend that I was that person and I got what I wanted. Now, that's not a good thing, but that's what I did. So I knew how to do that. Humble inquiry is a totally different thing. And so I've done some study on it, right? So the way I understand or explain humble inquiry, it's asking the question to which you do not know the answer to, right? It's one now, in order for me to do that, I've got to be totally connected with the person in front of me, like totally present, so that I'm connecting, and now I'm really interested. I really want to understand like what's going on, what's their thinking. And so, what happens when I ask that type of question, they examine their own thinking. And that's the magic, right? When somebody starts examining their own thinking of what are their assumptions, like it's free of assumptions, it's free of opinion, like just what are we talking about? And then within that humble inquiry thing, there's like two buckets. One bucket of questions are technical questions, right? Like detail information that's important, right? Because it's context. The other one is pure inquiry. And those are the ones that I uh have the biggest lasting effect. Now, so I was learning this, and it's okay, I'm gonna go practice this because I'm a coach, right? I was coaching people, and this is maybe a warning to people that get intrigued by the idea. There's a sliding scale. Imagine a sliding scale of coaching. On one end, it's humble inquiry, on the other end, it's telling, telling people what to do, right? So when I learn, and that there's no right or wrong, it's situational. But when I learn this humble inquiry thing, I'm like, man, this is the answer. So I would humble inquiry people to death. And I remember I had I was coaching one individual, and he's like, he said, Jesse, would you stop the Jedi bullshit and tell me what to do? Because I am completely lost. I don't have any idea what to do. And it was in that moment when I'm like, oh, okay, I went too far to this side. And and so the way I kind of explain it to people that are learning the difference is when you're teaching your kid to tie their shoes, do you ask them open-ended questions until they figure it out? No, they don't have the skill. So you have to do it for them, you have to demonstrate it, you have to show them, you have to walk with them until they have a command of the skill, then you get into this humble inquiry thing. And it's not the leading questions, it's not the statement with the question mark at the end, because I was an expert at that too. It's really being present and just asking questions.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:07

That's that's like you're a witness on on trial, the leading question. Yes, yeah, the the the questioning attorney already knows the answer, right? Yep, yep. Yes, and it's when you're when we're when we're trying to problem solve, we have to. I wrote a couple of these down. You already said leading. Like, okay, when you're doing problem solving, you have to ask leading questions because you have to draw out the truth. Yep. Tom Cruise movie. You can't handle the truth, right? But uh you have to add you have to ask leading questions because you this is this is uh Dr. Goldrat's logic, right? You have to you have to prompt or encourage this is people, right? You have to encourage the question, you have to encourage someone to say that the the the truth. And then another one I wrote down was rhetorical questions. And these are I'm the king, I am the the rhetoric king, maybe the prince. Maybe that maybe I'm the prince. I'm not I'm not the king. But uh, these are questions for dramatic effect or to make a point. Uh what do I call this? What do I call this? I call this it's not it's uh it's hiding aggressive, it's being it's it's being aggressive, it's not and it's not passive aggressive. It's not passive aggressive. There's a word for it, and it's escaping me, but it's like it's being like like it's being like a spy or something that you're super aggressive, but you're you're you're you're shrouding that and so you've asked these dramatic effects. There's another, it's like why is this always in like courtroom dramas? Because these are rhetorical questions. That happens a lot in uh in government as well. I don't want to go down that route, but it's questions asking questions to make a point. You're making a statement with in the form of a question. That's rhetoric. Your rhetoric is rhetoric. And then the last, and I guess that's that's also if you make a statement, and this is this is what is this? This is the uh Kruger Dunning-Kruger effect. Yeah, there's two there's two psychologists, and this is the loudest person in the room, or the person of the of the perceived highest authority. They uh they make all these statements in the form of questions, and your only response is yes. Like, hey, we're gonna get after this the schedule problem, and it's like you're sitting there with the operations band. Say no, it's like you're gonna be punished anyways. So just say yes. So don't do that. I'm and I'm the I'm the rhetoric king, but I I try not to. It's hard to not because when you're asking questions, you go down these paths, you follow these paths. So you have to catch yourself uh when you when you do that. And and and there's a really good book by Ed Sheen. It's called A Humble Inquiry. It's really it's really good. And then David Verbil from Lean Enterprise Institute used dude and used to work at work at Toyota, and he's like he's like the Jedi Master. Dude, David Ultimate. Like ultimate the person who I am most like if you look up emotional intelligence in the book, like in the dictionary, it's like, well, David, what's up, man? So yeah, you got a channel, so Ed Sheen or some David Verbal when you ask questions. The only way to do that, active, listening. Yes, listening.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:23

That's a good segue, but yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:25

No, I was uh one uh cheat code that David Verbal shared with me because I signed up, he he was him and Mike Orzin, were they were running this coaching pod, and I was trying to figure out like you know, I'm I'm kind of this lean coach thing in construction, but how do I baseline outside of construction? Right? Like I needed to have a benchmark, and so I found this pod, and he was him and Mike were were facilitating it. I signed up for it, and it was a bunch of coaches from just every like healthcare and whatever, everything. Like, okay, all right, now we're now different, different league. Let's see what we got. Anyways, we learned a ton. One of the things they a practice like they recommend is like when you're sitting down with the coach in in a coaching engagement, recognize, audibly recognize something that you see. And so, Thomas, when you and I got on the call, like, man, that's a cool ass lie, right? Because it does two things, it signals to the person that you are they are your number one priority. And subconsciously, for me, that brings me into notice any other intricacies of what's going on, most importantly, what is the body language of the person in front of me? Like, if I can't, people have asked me, like, Jesse, how do you when did it happen when you started getting into coaching and getting into humble inquiry? And like, I don't remember the date, but what I can remember is the faces of people. Before I got into this coaching practice, I can't remember people. Then the the point is I didn't pay attention to them. I was I was focused on outcomes, focused on output, focused on go, go, go. And when I made the shift, I can remember seeing people's faces because I was paying attention to the person. Is that crazy? That's that's the step.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:18

What's it's active listening? You have to it's action. Yes, yes. Regular listening is just waiting until it's your turn to talk. Active listening is body position and focusing, and yeah, it's it's you have to you have to burn calories to do. Man, that's good. Thank you, Jerry. Activist does that is like oftentimes is a is a constraint. Yes, we can't hear or work, especially now a lot of our stuff is virtual. We can't do a bunch of the active listening techniques because we're not just not physically there. And at least the technology has improved a little bit. That like the definition of the video has improved and the audio, those kind of things are have improved, so it makes it a little bit better, but it it's still not, you still don't get the deep connections of being in person. We are human beings, we have to connect with human beings. Yes. So this is a great segue to chapter four. We're like 30 pages in, by the way. Like, this is gonna be it's gonna be just start at your own this the goal podcast. This is just I don't care, I'll I'll talk about it all the time. It's so much fun because it's just so relatable. But we're gonna talk about let me let me change my voice. Jocko. This chapter five is the extreme ownership chapter, and it's kind of funny because there's like a bunch of undisciplined. This is not like Jocko's uh this is not his disciplined approach to uh work, but he talks about this all the time. And and and chapter five is so Alex he blows off the meeting, he actually gets up and leaves the meeting in the middle of the important to Bill Peach meeting. This is Bill Peach, like this is my meeting. I got slides, and this is what was before PowerPoint. So you had to print out some slides on on transparent paper, or I don't know, it had to be transparencies. I'm sure there was like there's all kinds of administrative help with this thing, and and like binders had to be print, and like it was all indexed. Cell wasn't even a thing in '84. Maybe, maybe, but probably not. It was it was terminal computers, probably some uh cards with with with holes in it, you know. People born after 1995 have no frame of reference. No idea. No claim. Anyways, so I won't go there. I'll go back to Jocko. So, anyway, so so what he does, he blows off the I mean he leaves and goes back to the plant, but before he goes in the plant, he goes and sits on the on the hillside. He grabs some food along the way, a whole bunch of food, kind of ridiculous amount of food, by the way. Yeah, but uh he goes to an Italian restaurant, gets pizza, gets some beers, and he uh he sits on a hill with an elevated view of the plant. So he's like, you just sit on the hill, and he theorizes all of this technology, all of this endless production on inventory, right? All of the graphs and charts and transparencies and overhead projectors and and all this stuff. So much waste. I mean, just they probably took down half of Oregon with that one meeting with all the binders. But this this actions suggested by corporate are not advancing the plant that he's looking at. All of this this sedu stuff, even though it's really good, it is. You got it, you got it. So what Jocko says, he's like, You got it, excuse me, you gotta detach. You gotta detach, right? And that's what that's what that's what uh Alex does. He actually elevates, he goes up and sits on a hill, so you can see you can see the plant, and he detaches himself from a situation, doesn't go on the plant, doesn't talk to anybody. Cell phones weren't even a thing, so forget that notion. Can't can't text, and he detaches himself from the situation. He's like, you know what? I'm thinking about making some changes here. Like he starts to he detaches himself from the situation, elevates himself. So Jocko, Echelon Front is really good company, and by the way, here's a cheat code. If you reach out to those guys and are are honest, the Echelon Front guys, they'll they'll write you back. It's really cool. Yeah, to Dave Burke, by the way. Good to Dave. Anyways, yeah. So but they they constantly one of their uh planning or their one of their training sessions, they go to Gettysburg in Pennsylvania or it's New York. Where is it?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:54

Where's Gettysburg? Jeez. Over there.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:57

Oh, in July 1st and 2nd in 1863, there was a battle on that battle site somewhere in the northeast of the United States. And there was an advantage, and National Front, they'd take people there and they talk about this. But the physical advantage, the the Union spoiler alert, the Union Army won this battle. And it was a very important battle in the Civil War. And many of the reasons why was because the Union Army's planners, the people who made the decisions and organized the troops and those kind of things, they had a physical advantage. They put their troops and their guns and all the stuff up high on the hill, up high. And they got there early. So I'm not going to talk about getting there early, but planning and arranging things is if you're early, that's fine, right? Being early and waiting is not fine. But if you get there early and you start deep cleaning, you start making plans, get yourself situated, have an advantage. Being elevated just from the just just from the the the extreme ownership example, being elevated has an example, even if it's in the book they say just six inches, right? He was like just in the training module, and all he had to do was hey, tap this young soldier or probably Navy SEAL, say, Hey, step back for one second, just elevate, and all he had to do was lift his head, and he can see the battleground. So he understands a couple things, and these are these are universal with with construction as well. Visual management, see the battle site, see the job site, see the crane, all the things, understand physical logistics, understand laws of physics. You have to see all that stuff, and uh in the next go-round, I'm gonna channel some Brian Winningham because I got this Ranger handbook, and I'll make it I made an example there, but I wanted to keep it on the Navy side today. Yeah, and uh, but Jesse, here's a question. This is this is getting there early and detaching, but have you ever noticed you can give your friends advice but not follow it yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:45:08

100%. And even better, my I have a my baby brother Renee, he's 18 years younger than me, and he'll come he'll call me for advice like but about his wife, like his relationship advice. And and I'm like, okay, first disclaimer, I'm the guy that's got two ex wives and is chronically single. So you're getting advice from a guy who is single because I'm I'm third party, right? I'm objective. I don't have any emotional attachment to that outcome. So I can give them really sound, thoughtful advice, but I know if I was in that situation, I would not ask for advice and I would screw it up big time.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:51

Yeah, so the detaching piece, like the Alex on the Hill or or or or Jocko with his uh in the training or even in Ramadi, geez. But so it it it's it's a big deal. So you have to number one detach yourself from the situation. If there's good advice, if you're giving good advice, you should follow that that step. And it's really hard. So for me, in in this when I read this chapter, I I went and I went and I walked, and this project, there's a hill. There's a hill. You walk up second street, and it's been to San Francisco. Hello, it's uh it's built all kinds of crazy hills, so you can actually get a better view. And I I never went that way from my commute was always towards towards the north, towards BART. But never rarely would I ever walk up the hill. There was no reason to except to get a detach and get it, get a uh elevated view. Yep. And what I saw, I saw two things. I saw the hoist. I rode the hoist all the time, right? But I saw the hoist, and we're gonna talk about variation. But I saw it would go up and stop and stop, and then it would go down a floor, and then it would go up and then and then go up like 10 floors and then go back down and then start over. And there was no like, I was like, that's that's a that's that doesn't seem right because whenever I go and walk to the hoist and I push the button, hey Thomas, Project Super, like right talk about patterns. Like, yeah, and it was no factory be like, all right, but Thomas is here because I trained the operator, hey, because I had to walk inspectors and the owner, so I say, hey, when I call, come down and get me. I try not to take advantage of that, but uh but I trained the operators that way, then they would learn my voice. I have a very nasally, very distinct voice, so it's not too hard to recognize. But so so I never felt like I was never detached from a situation because I wasn't in the same situation everybody else was, right? Right, because it was different for me. So I didn't until I walked up the hill and looked at the hoist, I I didn't understand it. Like it took that well, number one, reading this chapter, and two, like going at you, you have to do it, so you have to actually be like, go and look at a at a situation that in in Toyota they call it an oh no circle. They paint a circle on the floor and you stand there and silent, and you write down. I cheat code for everybody out there. If you have a hill or a drone these days, we we fly drones over our job sites, it's such an advantage because you you get away from just the day-to-day stuff, and you have to stand there and silent. Take a notebook, and you have to sit there for a while and try to clear your mind of all judgment, but you start to think. And uh, my question when I walked away from it, and I'm looking at my notes, I was like, I need to figure out the feet per minute on the hoist. Like, what? Like, I'm like, it's a hoist, it goes up, it goes down, it's a prescribed path. How fast does it actually go? And then I'm like, how many hours in the day? How many people can you put in it? Because it was at that point, like people were like complaining because we didn't have any rules. It was it was like call the hoist and it'll come pick you up. But there's some laws about production, and that I was about to learn, but my the story for for this chapter for detaching was I had to be curious, I had to elevate myself, I had to detach, and I have to remove my own bias because hey, when I get on the hoist, I push the button, it comes against me. I had to remove myself from that thing. That was my ego getting in the way. That was a constraint. Once I accepted that fact, then I was like, I got super curious about motion and time.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:40

Oh yeah, there's some production laws we're about to discover. Thomas said it in about 12 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:46

But but I until I stepped away and I checked my ego, no, and you detach from that situation, then you can see. Only then can you see the logic. And uh, yeah, the Union Army figured that one out very well. And they they they won that battle because a lot of the stuff there was a there was a block wall, and there was uh elevated, and then they had an advantage. And uh so the echelon front, they teach people that same the same same thing I just told everybody there and that chapter in extreme ownership. It's this chapter, chapter five. So Alex goes and he sits and he looks at it and he's like, Okay, I can I can make changes. Like he changes so Jesse, you went from you can't run the lap, so you were proven. So he was like, I met with he meets with uh with Jonah, he blows the meeting off because it's like, I'm not getting anything out of this corporate shenanigans. And then uh he goes and he sits and he detaches. I think that's really cool. Cool. So it's uh it's universal and it really happened to me. And I get and my notes to myself, I'm looking at them, go find out the feet per minute on the hoist. So I went and I looked. There was this the the hoist company gave us a semester and it was there.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:55

Yeah, so I'm like, oh, I gotta open Excel.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:57

Oh, how many floors? Right. So I'll talk about I have that that, but that moment for me was like was like my first rabbit hole into the laws of production and or the laws of constraints. So yeah, we spent a lot of time. We got I love that chapter, it's so good. And and I want to make sure that everybody listens. So cheat code, like if you have things that move at a at a steady rate, hoist cranes, scrapers, dump trucks, pumps, what other other things. If if there's a cycle time, you can calculate it, and then you can start to take advantage of it. So the project I'm going to tomorrow, we exploit that rate. Yes. It's a it's a 40 41-story building. And I didn't exploit those rates on in in 2022 until I learned that in in 2020 and 13 in San Francisco, standing on the corner of 2nd Street.

unknown 1:51:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:55

It's a nice coffee shop. There's also a hotel over there and a condo tower. And it the firefighters union hall, the marine firefighters union hall. I had to walk past all of those. So it's a really it's a good good spot to uh see some production. Or it was at that time. Yeah, back then. Yep. Yeah. So that's that's that's cool. And it also was interesting because at the time a lot, there was a lot of infrastructure that was happening in that neighborhood. So I could also compare and contrast other projects. I was like before, I was like, all that so this is the say do. I'm like, oh, I don't care. That's a different company. They're all screwed up over there. But I was like, oh, wait a second, what are they doing? Like, I got curious. So that didn't happen until you detach yourself from the situation. Check your ego, go and see. You have to go, and you have to go and see. You have to take the physical steps up the hill and then stand there in silence and write down notes. You have to write down because if if you don't write anything down, you'll forget it. Technology, you can like you don't have to write it down, you can do a voiceover or whatever. But uh, a lot of those technologies that are third parties, the the smart cranes and the black boxes for hoists and elevators, like you don't need those out of the gate. Don't need yes, that that you're paying for that. So first thing in the system is design the system in there, then you bring the technology in and make it go crazy, right? So, anyways, that that for me happened at that moment, and I like we're only at chapter five, but like that was major, major crossing. So, have you ever like started reading a book and you're like, eh, and then it was like, oh, it's like you just go crazy. It was like it was like this. I'm like, eh, sandbook's kind of silly, it's 80s cheesy stuff, and then that was like boom, god yes. So uh chapter six. I'm gonna keep going. You tell me when it stops.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:46

Yeah, let's tell me when it's no, I love it. Let's do chapter six, and then we'll let's wrap it with a teaser for what's to come on the next recording.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:57

Sound good?

SPEAKER_02 1:53:58

Yeah, this is this is a good segue. So chapter six, for me, it's uh I I gave it a a summary, it's called It Matters What You Measure.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:09

Oh man, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:10

Right? If we're not measuring things, and I do this in my current role now, if we're not measuring things because it's a pain in the butt or it takes more time or whatever, it's trap. Yep. It's trap because if you're not measuring things because we don't have enough resources or time, and if those time those if that re if those resources aren't optimized and you don't know because you're not measuring, it's it's this it's this backwards negative cycle, and uh there is no end to it. You can only just keep throwing resources at it. So we have to measure things. So so Alex, he's like he and he's now enlightened, he's gotten the Jocko book in him, and uh Jocko hadn't even gone to Buds yet at this point, but that's that's beside the point. Alex he goes and he talks to the plant controller or the finance, he's getting into the accounting and finance. Lou. And uh Lou in the 80s is your typical stereotypical accountant in his, I think he was he was in his 50s or 60s, he wears glasses, he just describes them in very 80s, cheesy, stereotypical ways, a very slow talker, and the audible version is the same thing, but we need people like that because accountants they think in systems and they think in logic, right? So it's it's a balancing act. I I I I still need to I need help. That's why I have third party with my finances too. But Lou's got it down, and he controls a controller. You're the one who controls the balance sheet. So he's like, there's something here, there's something more. So Alex is curious now, and he goes to Lou and he's like, let's have a conference about the difference of what corporate wants us to measure, the the traditional, yep, hey, the the traditional things that that that we have to measure for for sometimes for tax reasons or policies or those kind of things. And then so and my company is no different. We've got all kinds of financial dashboards going and like cash flow and those kind of things. Those are very important to do. But he's also like, what are the metrics that influence our behavior? That's a that that is right. Yes. He's like, I got it. We got the tax statement, we got the balance sheet, we got income coming in, we got sales, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm like, but Alex challenges Lou and he's like, what are the metrics that actually mean stuff to people in the plant, not to the government or the your investment firm or whatever? It's like, what are the ones that actually matter and that actually have you can measure? He's trying to get to these production laws. He's like me. I'm like, ooh, I gotta go study the up and down feet per second on the crane now, or what's the swing radius, or all this stuff. So Alex does the same thing, but he's like, he's on to something. He's like, I bet I can find real productivity metrics in the way we spend money because it's it's controlled. It's it's logical, right? You can it's a math equation, you can you can figure that out. So they strategy, and the strategy was what's the goal? They're like, We need to we need the goal, and here it is, chapter six. He's like, Lou, what's the goal? And this is a this is one of those questions that Jonah was was asking him in the earlier chapter. He's like, What's the goal of your plan? And he didn't give him the answer. He's just like, What's the goal? And on page 45, Alex says to Lou, Would you say the goal of the company is to make money? It's on page 45. He's like, Would you wait a second? The goal of the money, and I'm gonna screw this up because I am not a financial person at all. I I struggle with my own personal finances, but I have people that help me, thank, thank goodness, and technology these days. Yeah, but uh he asks them what's the goal? You think it's the goal of the company, Unico, the overall company, is to make money. Maybe they're on to something. They're like, so then you start like at the thread, like you start like pulling threads, and so this is where's this thread going? And this is cool because this is the scientific method. So it's like you have to pro you have to think about your assumptions are wrong, yeah, and you have to prove them. And you can and in in the financial world, it's very clear once you get things situated. So they uh they try a they try an equation. And uh in the 80s, could you imagine? This is like slide rules, and people don't know, people don't know that accounting software. So this is like done, a lot of it was done by hand, or you had to print out printouts. Nobody knows what printouts are. You'd have to print out all these reports nowadays. You go into Excel or SAP or all these accounting software. We use CMIC, and that like it does all of these filterings, you can run all kinds of crazy shifts. But back then you had to print out reports for every machine, and they had to sift through it like an investigator. So, anyway, so the first uh equation they do is net profit equals throughput minus operating expenses. So profit is the is all of the throughput, so all of the value creating activities minus what it costs to put pay the people that work there and the electrical company and to buy the oil and lubrication to all the stuff. So your profit is everything that the customer pays for minus the operating expenses. That's profit. Everything else, everything that's left after taxes, after bonuses, boom boom bo. There's probably some fancy acronyms I'm not using correctly, but the profit. So that was one rule that they created. The second one is ROI, return on investment. So return on investment, and this is the book, this isn't financial advice disclaimer. Probably should say that. Return on investment equals net profit over your investment. So your net profit that you figured out in that last equation, you put that over your what you were investing, and the the ratio there is your ROI. So hopefully that's that's higher than it's a higher number. Your profit is over your investment. So it's a that's that one, and then cash flow. So they're like, okay, we set that rule. We set the ROI rule, and now we're gonna say cash flow equals money from selling your inventory. And this is cash. Cash is king, liquid. We gotta have cash. If if if all your stuff is tied up in all kinds of instruments, you you you will you will perish. Like the greatest, and and especially in construction, especially now, if you run out of uh your ability to pay your bills, you run out of your ability to be it, right? Because if you were the plumbing company and you came to me and be like, uh yeah, I can't pay you this month. Uh we're a little tight. We got I got I do I did submit the bill to the owner, so it that money's coming. Like, Jesse, you're gonna be like, Yeah, okay, tell me when you get paid, we're out of here, right? Yep. So we cease to be if we don't have cash, we cease the the gears grind to a halt. So your cash flow is what the customers pay you. It's yes, what it's it's your money from selling all the inventory. So those you set those three rules, and those three rules will come back up again. But if they if he wasn't curious and he wasn't and he didn't detach, he wouldn't have gone down the path about, hey, I'm not gonna talk to the to the people at the field, or you know, the people in the field, because they're busy with the chaos, right? They're like, We're we're busy, we got we got all this stuff and we're retooling or we're doing this setup, and we have to maintain this machine. So, like, don't go burden the people doing the work with a bunch of problems when you're trying to not solve the problem, you're just trying to discover. This is discovery still. He goes and does remember my uh my tree. Instead of going to judgment, being like, these guys are lazy, and the the machines are not set up in the correct order. I'm gonna do a bunch of controlling behavior. That's that's probably normal. Instead, he went to inclusion. He went to he did some reflection up on the hill, had a couple brewskies, felt better, had some meal, got a bunch of alcohol and glucose running through his veins, you know, feeling good, goes down, and uh he's like, I want to include accounting because they got they got the computer, right? They got the stuff, and they got the smart people that can do all of this this the studying, and uh and that's the for me, that's the diversity piece, right? Like if you're in problems, if all the people that who are trying to solve the problems are the all of we're all the same people, right? We're like we're all the iron workers, like you can't solve the entire system unless you have a uh a different sets of values, and who has typically in a production world who has the the system view? It's the countants, yes, right? Because and it's like he's on to something, he's like, is the goal to make money? Like, I gotta go talk to the guys that deal with the money because it's it's the lifeblood. If we don't make money, go out of business. If you don't have cash, it's even faster. So that's uh yeah, we'll stop it there. But what do you what do you think? I didn't write any questions here, but I'll ask you like what for you I I do something every day, I get on a scale. Yeah, it's like it's like you shouldn't get on the scale because like your weight fluctuates. Yep. But uh for me, I've been trying to lose some weight. So if you don't measure consistently, and I and I understand there's fluctuations based on the water and food and and all the times of the month and all that kind of stuff. So I have that understanding, but if I don't stand on the scale, I don't know what I weigh. And if the goal for me is to weigh less, I have to measure it, right? Yes, and there's other measurements I make, like like like I wear other devices to see how well my VO2 max is doing and stuff like that. So in my in my workout journey, I do a whole bunch of measuring, look at your heart rate while you're working out, right? So you do that kind of stuff that matters, and it matters what you measure, and that will work the same thing. I work in quality. So if we're not measuring quality, that means we're not measuring all of our errors and defects and constraints and procurement, like of like stuff coming in. You have to measure all of those things. The rest we'll get really into that kind of stuff in the next session, but uh, we have to measure those things, and uh kind of get to do that all the time. It's so much fun now. So, but uh that chapter five, the the discovery sent me down the path of always be curious, always challenge assumptions. If somebody tells you no, it's not no forever, it's just not right now or not this way, right? So you gotta approach it a different way, and uh measuring for me lately is if someone has a differing set of opinion or or or difference of values or the way they they see the world is different than mine. Yeah, I don't judge, I don't move to judgment anymore. I it's hard. It's hard. But I like so now I and this is my active goal that I'm doing right now. If I'm if I'm if I come across, and it happens all the time, you come across a conversation with somebody who has different sets of beliefs, don't go to judgment, find out why they think that way. And not judgment, it's super hard. So it's super hard. Yeah, so you have to do those active listening steps. Yes, and you have to be totally open while you're doing those active listening steps. But when you do that, you make a new friend, even if we're different in views or whatever beliefs, religion, or all of those things, we make a connection, and now you see you can now understand how they see the world. So in the next few chapters, if you don't do that step, we don't meet people where they're at. You have to meet people exactly where they're at, not judge them, even if they're wrong. Yep. And in your mind, you have to be like, okay, that's the current state, that's one of my branches on my cause and effect tree. We're gonna label it, and that's what we're gonna we have to understand that piece to move to towards the goal. Alex was like, I gotta go to talk to the financial guys, and he's an old stodgy, probably didn't want to be bothered, right? This this was Lou, didn't want to be bothered, he's about to retire, he's about to check out, and Alex went in and got him excited about his work. And the only way you do that, you meet them exactly where you meet them exactly at their at their where they are working. You don't ambush them, yeah, and you ask a bunch of really good questions and you build this relationship with people, and then we can work towards the goal. So for me, working towards the goal is don't avoid conflicts, and instead you resolve them rationally.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:27

Well, and so what he did there, which is a power move, right? Is understand the problem from all the perspectives of the problem, right? So you went to his finance person, and so any business problem we're dealing with, everybody is experiencing that problem differently. And all of it is true. But if we don't go and investigate and understand what is what is finance C, what is HRC, what is production C, what is quality, what is safety, what like all the different things, if we don't understand it from their perspective, we're missing it. We're gonna miss something important. And then you know the the metric thing, metrics are dangerous, like they're they're necessary, but they're also dangerous. And I got I got a story, like real, real story. There's two things, and they're very closely related. I noticed, you know, we had these task codes, right? The way the budgets were broken up, and and so the task codes, we there was a high frequency of the fixture code and the air device code of going over budget, like historically, right? And so what they were doing, the code was like, Man, we need to go and we need to study the fixture installation, we need to teach people how to install fixtures, we need to teach people how to run install grills, like all this rigamar root. And I remember somebody they were asking, they were talking about, I was like, why are you gonna do that? And like, because we keep busting the codes, like there's there's something wrong with the installation. I was like, no, that's not that's not why we keep busting those codes. We keep busting those codes because the project managers get mad at us when we go over a code on the underground. So once I run out of hours on underground, I just charge my time to the stack out code, even though I'm doing underground. And then when I get to this run out of hours in the stack out code, fixtures. And guess what? Fixtures is the last code. That's why it's busting. And I remember the guy looked at it's like, are you serious? Like, yeah, they tell us don't charge that code anymore, charge this code, don't charge that code anymore. So it wasn't a production problem, it was a system problem, right? And and here's the thing, it's kind of relative to your the schedule story you gave earlier. It was a measurement problem, right? Yes, yes, we to hide it. There's a problem. If we're going over budget, there's a problem. Let's surface the problem, yes, let's address the problem. All we did was move it to the end, and the company was going to invest resources to teach people how to install that. And they had a reward system in place. And so the reward system was designed around, you know, if you were managing as a superintendent, whatever, 10,000 man hours, and your productivity ratio was below a one, because 1.0 productivity ratio meant you were hitting budget. Anything over a one, you were over budget on labor. Anything under a one, you were beating the budget. So if you had you know a whole quarter of whatever and you were the highest or the lowest number, 0.85 or whatever, you would get a plaque and you'd get a five thousand dollar check or something. So we did that, like company wide, and all of a sudden, every everybody's looking at these printouts. Man, look at production, production, we're killing it, right? It's awesome, it's amazing until they hit 90%. All of a sudden, people were like making big cred according to the report, big gains on production. Then they hit 90, and all of a sudden it's 90.1%, 90.2%, 91%, because nobody was reporting for production. They were doing the math to keep themselves at a 0.85, a 0.86 to get the bonus. They did nothing, nothing to facilitate production. They did simple division. How many man hours are getting charged to my project this week? What's the factor? Boom. This is this is the productivity ratio that I'm gonna plug in that says that keeps me at this number. Disastrous, right? Because now back to another point you made earlier. If you don't go and see, you never know there's a problem. Like there were projects that I took over for one of the superintendents who was leaving out. I was taking over like six different projects. Everything looked great until I walked the job. And now I was like, Oh my god, we are in trouble. Like, I've got to back status these things, we got quality issues, we got relationship issues because nobody went to see.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:11

So again, detach too. You can't just go and get the tour, you have to take it, you have to be one step detaching question, right? You have to be curious.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:20

Yes, yes, yes. So metrics are important, and like the scale reference, I do the same thing. I'm I measure myself my weight daily, but that's not the measurement that gets me the results I need. The measurement, the thing that I learned, and this is after years and years, the approach. Appropriate thing for me to measure is my heart rate, the number of times I exercise. Because it's those things that translate into the beautiful numbers I'm there.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:55

The rings aren't closed.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:57

Yes. Yes. So it's what are the actions that drive the outcome? And too often, business leaders get stuck on the outcome. Give me a better number. Like, okay, you can stand on the scale a thousand times and you're gonna burn some calories, but that's not going to get there. You got to go out there and get into the middle of it and understand what are those contributing factors, what are those key performance indicators that feed into the income and reinforce those things. Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:30

So for me, I also track what I eat. Yes, there you go. Exactly. So yeah, you can't just so that's a good point. And thank you for bringing that up. Because uh oftentimes if we're all if we're looking at metrics like big corporate guy like me now, I'm detached from but I'm not I'm so far detached I can't even see what's happening. Like it's there's states away, like there's thousands like people work down in Miami. I can't even see them. And if I'm only getting reports, and if the the measuring, if they're not going out there and measuring all their rework or issues or or stuff, it looks pretty damn good on my end. Yeah. Up here in North Carolina, like yes, do pretty damn good. Pretty good. So but I I don't only look at the issue reporting, I also look at other I'm not gonna tell them on the internet, but I have other indicators because if I here's a here's a secret cheat code, tell me what you're measuring, and I will behave that way, right? Absolutely 100%. But there are indicators, and uh I'll I'll tell the two indicators and we're gonna it and where I got them from, I got them from this book, and a lot of study of of Goldrath's other other catalog, if you will. But one is stability. So we're gonna talk about variation in upcoming chapter. So if there's a lot of variation, it shows up like a gopher. Yes, yes, there's lots of variation. So if you if if yeah, one one factor of variation, it shows up in in your quality metrics, right? Like number of errors or dings in the walls or punch list items. That's one factor. There are other areas that we look at and measure, and some of the measurement is is automated these days, but we look for stability. So there's a stability factor, and those those are those you find those in other aspects. And then the other one is constancy, and we were talking about that earlier before we started recording. But constancy is a leading indicator, it's what's both, it's both, it's a leading and lagging indicator. But constancy is the things that you do all of the time. How do you know there's proof of it? So it's like the uh there's well-worn paths on job sites, right? You know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:54

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:55

Or people take shortcuts through if you're doing like renovation buildings, renovation projects, people take shortcuts through the front of house part. So the constant if that constantly is happening, there's a problem in the system. It's not the people. The people shouldn't be doing that, I agree. But the fact that they can, they will. We're human beings. And if there's a low trust environment, they'll definitely go that way. Oh, yeah. Just to do the ambush, the ambush effect and the and the get back, right? You got to get back. So yeah, so there's the constant thing. So if we're constantly having other problems in other areas, that means there's a constancy issue that that the culture on this project or whatever needs to be changed. We had to redesign the system. And I learned that from the goal and a bunch of other so that's it's stability. And we're gonna talk about this. This is like let the cliffhanger for the next session.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:56

Stability on one side, that's a leading indicator.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:59

You can have a stability matrix and or dashboards or anything like that, and then you have a constancy, and that's uh that one is constancy, is leadership, right? So the leadership index, the say do index, that's constancy. So it's it's I'll go back to one of the the chapters, or which one was it? Chapter three. Geez. Yep, yep. Uh the constancy. So, like, how are we with our core values is if we're if we're constantly checking ourselves against those? So that's that that one of the problems in Western management is we say one thing and we do another, or we say one thing and then we tell people to do another thing, or we design systems where make it impossible. It's impossible to live up to these core values. It's super hard. So the the the constancy thing is that we're constantly that's why it's uh continuous improvement, right? It's like a circle, there is no end. So let's let's leave let's leave it on that that cliff cliffhanger there. This is this book is so good. Yeah, we'll we'll we'll fire it up with chapter eight. Hopefully, we'll we'll clip through a couple more. We're gonna talk about Herbie. Oh and robots and uh theory of constraints, but I I just want to we'll leave it on this. I wanted to, we've just met this week with Adam Hoots and Jennifer Lacey. Thank you for inviting me. That was so powerful to me. It like filled my cup up. And uh, you know, I I I I went I met Adam Hoots down in Greenville, South Carolina, and we were talking about the goal, and he was like, dude, Brooks Law. I was like, what? And I didn't miss this one. This is a new one, so thank you, Adam. But Brooks Law is adding people, adding more people at the end of a project. At the end of the project, when you're already late, if you add more people, you're gonna make it even more late. Oh I'm not gonna say why, because it's in the book. Brooks Law. So thank you, Adam. See, it's just that's that's why I love this little community. Yeah, we just keep we just keep teaching each other new things, and then it's like, oh, and now I get this piece. So thank you, Jesse. Thank you, thank you, everybody out there for listening. Uh, we're having fun with this one. We'll keep it, we'll keep it going. Hopefully the lights stay at the time.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:19

Yes, sir. Got it going, got it started. It it was an idea. I thought you made a comment, I think, uh, when we were doing the collabo sessions on the lean builder, and and you you snapped up and said, All right, let's do one on the goal.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:34

Yeah, I'm gonna look for the chapter before. Oh, did you did you note it? Probably gonna tab chapter seven. Chapter seven, PPC. PC and uh you changed my mind. Like you were like, I I was like percent plan complete. I had I had I had used to have some rules about PPC, and you were like, it doesn't matter. The PC don't matter. Trust, respect. Trust and respect. You just crushed it. So Felipe, you weren't you were you weren't you weren't ready for that one, I think. I think he had think he had was thinking you had you, and you knocked it out of the park with the trust and respect. But construction, we have a trust and respect problem, and it's very pervasive in our in our industry, and it's some of it's systematic. And uh once we understand things like Brooks Law and the theory of constraints, we can we can start to systemize it and get and work ourselves out of it. And then there's not blaming a people for having to you know have another appendix on a on a contract about a set of behaviors, or even changing the entire contract rule system so we're forced into financial we're forced into making financial decisions together because of because of business agreements. I think those are good and those should happen. But if we if if we start by identifying core issues, just like we start started this whole podcast today, we have to identify those core issues, and the core issues are the ones that make us the most uncomfortable and make us like and even like push away or get angry or get violent. Yes. When we confront those in the active listening, humble inquiry, the testing systems, using science and math and accounting, and when we do that, you notice I didn't say blame human beings, any of those. There was no humans in any of that that study. We hadn't even gotten a GoPro out yet. Yep. So we can design systems and and solve problems just by using data and facts. So I think we'll leave it there.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:40

Man, did I not tell you that we were gonna nerd out? I hope we didn't lose you because you know we kept it was kind of a windy trail. We only managed to get through, I don't know, it was six, maybe seven chapters of the book, and and we had like outlined the plan was to like get 10 chapters done. Um, and just because of the experience and the memories and the real value that you can get out of the book, and of course, sharing your real life experiences, the rest of the darn, the rest of the darn episodes are just as long, but they're also just as rich with Thomas's experience and you know my goofy antics. I'm really just here for comedy relief. So, of course, we're gonna give a shout out to the LM family members out there. And yes, I'm still really excited about the Lean in Love books. Anytime we get a review on the Amazon, I've got to shout it out because you know that's like extra, extra, extra special. Somebody took the time to go and buy the book, then they read the book, and then they went back to the app and and left us a review, which is just the ultimate. So thank you so much for taking the time to do that. The folks that are dropping in them five-star reviews, thank you for doing that too. Uh, because guess what? We're batting a thousand all five stars right now. And so here we go. This one, this shout out is to Mr. Jim Gontorius. Jim says there are many books on lean out there, not many are focused on the importance of relationships. We have relationships on the job and we have them in our personal lives. Many lean tools improve our relationships at work. So, why can't we use these at home to improve our personal relationships? Jen and Jess show you how to do this. Highly recommend this book to everyone needing to improve their ripples of impact in their relationships on both sides of the project gates. Man, gangster. Lean starts with people. Thanks to Jen and Jess, I will do better today than I did yesterday. Man, that's amazing. Jim, appreciate you, my man. I know you've you've spoken life into so many careers out there, um, and you continue to do so. I appreciate you, my man. Also, deep appreciation to Miss Sandra Gontorius because I know she's right by your side um contributing to the human being that you are. To the rest of the LM family, we love you so, so very much. The fact that we are recording this collabbo session on the goal does not mean that we are no longer doing our interviews. We're just gonna have this, you know, nice period of time where you're gonna be getting one interview and one episode of the goal or of this collabbo session. So be cool, y'all, and we'll talk at you next time.

SPEAKER_03 2:24:23

Peace.

SPEAKER_00 2:24:28

Oh my goodness, you're either driving down the road or just so enthralled with the with this whole podcast that you went all the way down to the very, very, very, very end of it. And we appreciate you. And just we're going to take this as an indication of your dedication. So we got a little special request of you a call to action, because everybody tells us that like you need to have a call to action. So here's the call to action be kind to yourself. Go out there and share a smile with someone. Peace!