Episode 10 - Agency and Empowerment
August 2, 2023
Story Time! Andrea shares a story about giving agency to a group of workers and the changes that followed.
Story Time! Andrea shares a story about giving agency to a group of workers and the changes that followed.
(Transcript Start)
[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name. What a dumb
[00:00:07] spk_0: name. So stupid.
[00:00:22] spk_1: All right, we're in episode 10 started up. Uh We have a, we're gonna start with, I think you were about
[00:00:31] spk_0: to say a special guest for some reason because we don't,
[00:00:34] spk_1: I always think because we do this at my house that you, you are the guest and you are the
[00:00:39] spk_0: least special
[00:00:40] spk_1: guest. Uh But thank you all for, for listening. So we have um we're going to recap some homework. We tell a story pretty excited about that. We have a lot to cover in a short amount of time, which is totally arbitrary because we pick how long these episodes
[00:00:55] spk_0: are and we pick what we're gonna cover
[00:00:57] spk_1: exactly. But we'll figure out a way to make it sound like there's some time pressure. Um ok. So homework last week, what was it?
[00:01:06] spk_0: It was. Um Well, we were talking about accountability and the ability to create a high accountability environment which allows people to be able to feel agency. So our homework was trying to create some place some space for someone to have agency or take ownership where we normally wouldn't do that.
[00:01:30] spk_1: And we sort of illustrated that by talking about battleship cakes. Obviously, that's
[00:01:35] spk_0: the easiest way to talk about,
[00:01:37] spk_1: which I don't think we realized back then that I would be making cakes for my brother slash your husband's birthday. I
[00:01:44] spk_0: did it but it was not in the shape of a battleship. I did,
[00:01:48] spk_1: they were normal cakes. Two very normal cakes. Um Stop. So um we talked about it and then we, we practically preached. But you actually have a really good story of when you started operationally learning and what it was like to try the interaction and trying to give agency. So let's jump into the story because I think it is, it is a really good representation. And I will ask you a million questions that I think the listener might have while you're telling the story. So be prepared. Don't get too comfortable. I'm
[00:02:21] spk_0: not, I'm never comfortable. OK. So this is the first time this story that I can remember very purposefully trying to allow for ownership and it, it was difficult. It did not go really well at the beginning. Um I had done a learning team after we had had a near miss on a delivery dock and the near miss was between somebody on a tricycle, which once again, Matt, those do exist.
[00:02:53] spk_1: I also just saw a commercial for the new saw movie which is of a little doll riding. No, I don't
[00:02:59] spk_0: want to hear about it. I don't know. Ok. So there was, it was a near miss between a tricycle and uh someone on a forklift and apparently the collision was so close that it was reported that the tricycle actually ran over the forks of the forklift. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that was what I was told. So allegedly, so I uh ran a learning team, learning teams were new to me. Um And we did all of the first piece of it, which is the understanding what normal work looks like and, and talking to folks about what it takes to get the job done. And in doing this, we found a bunch of different problem statements, but one of the problem statements, the one that we're gonna focus on for this story was the fact that during a specific time of day, which happened to be 10 a.m. at this location, there were a lot of people that were trying to walk through the area while a bunch of trucks were being unloaded and there was a lot of near misses when that was happening where, you know, people were on foot and then you're, you're trying to back out of a of a trailer with a forklift and there's people right behind you. And so out of all of the times of the day, this is the time where the potential for something catastrophic to happen was quite large.
[00:04:08] spk_1: So we took a, a tight quartered area that you have large machines moving and we said, let's add, here's people and that made it. Yeah.
[00:04:20] spk_0: Right. And so all of the folks that are in the safety space are like separation, right. So that's why everyone's chanting that right now.
[00:04:25] spk_1: Um I mean, I would know
[00:04:27] spk_0: that which, which no Matthew you would not know that. Um And so the problem that we are trying to focus on and trying to come up with some solutions was the ability to try to separate out where people were walking from where the forklifts were. And in this case, people were trying to go to break like they were on break, they were trying to get outside. And so the fastest route to get outside was through this dock area. There's a lot of context behind, you know, historically, this wasn't always the case and there's other ways around, but that's where we started with, hey, it is difficult for us to operate these forklifts when there's people walking through this area. And so all of our idea generation was around trying to allow for people to have a different path that they were willing to take and what that was going to look like. So we defined that problem together and then I just said, so what do you want to do about it? And the people that I'm talking to are folks that are on forklifts in this area. There are about six or seven people that worked in this area. And, um, so I said, what do you want to do about this problem? And then they, they just stared at me and I started to sweat because my assumption was if I like gave ownership of people to brainstorm that there was just going to be this beautiful brainstorming session and, um, that it was going to be lovely and we were all going to sing Kumbaya together and that is not what happened. They just stared at me and every ounce of my being wanted to solve the problem for them. I had four or five different solutions that I thought would be quite functional in the area of to try to separate folks out. And uh I kept my mouth
[00:06:11] spk_1: shut and, and I'm imagining in the situation that historically one, they might not have been even asked to define the problem this way and given that much freedom to talk about. And two, they certainly weren't the people who then had to solve it.
[00:06:26] spk_0: No, I think in general we probably would throw around statements like what would you do to make things better historically? But in terms of like attempting to do any sort of structured problem solving together. But I think this is the first time that we had ever tried it. And so I decided I was just gonna come back the next day and see what happened. So I said, hey, well, why don't we have some time to think about it? I'll come back tomorrow, which I had the luxury of doing that because this was a fixed facility and I was at the facility, right? So I said I'll come back tomorrow, same time, same place. Um, which by the way was at like six o'clock in the morning. So we better, but I mean, it was normal time for them, but I was willing, I was going to get up early and I was gonna be there. So I came back. Thank you. Thank you. I need credit for it. This was so many years ago and I still need credit for being there at six o'clock in the morning. Um, so I came back the next day and recapped the problem. We were trying to brainstorm solutions for or at least improvement ideas for. And I said, so what did you think about? What, what do you, what do you want to try? And they said nothing, they, they just stared at me and I said, well, I'm not going to try to solve it for you because I don't have to live with the solution. Um, so I'll ask again, I guess any ideas of what you want to do and one of the people out of the seven just kind of looked at me arms crossed and said, we, we could just put up some signs now for anyone who is in the safety space. My brain is at this point saying signs, signs are probably not going to work, right. This is, this is not a great line of defense. Signs are just signs, you know, that's sirens going off in my head. But one of the sets of rules that I had given myself is if it wasn't going to hurt anything and we were physically able to do uh to try something, we were going to try it
[00:08:22] spk_1: because you were physically able to try crazy, you know, leap to make.
[00:08:27] spk_0: So now, Old Andrea would have said, ok, and then gone back to my office and designed signs and ordered them. But New Andrea was trying to allow people to have agency and ownership and empower them. And so the next question I said was, oh, ok, what do you want the signs to say? And they just stared at me and then the same guy who suggested the signs grabbed a napkin that was on the table. We were in a break room area. So there was a napkin on the table and he had a pen in his pocket and he scribbled, do not enter on the napkin and threw it at me that,
[00:09:04] spk_1: I mean, I'm just imagining the flight path of it. It probably wasn't great, but it was
[00:09:08] spk_0: like it was the gesture, right? It just sort of fluttered in my direction 2 ft. So I picked it up and looked at it said, do not enter. And I said, OK, so you'd like some do not enter signs. Who would you like them for? And he said, well, for the people who are walking. And I said, ok, I'll come back tomorrow and why don't you show me where you want the do not enter signs to be. So once again, trying to take a piece of this puzzle and hand it to somebody instead of me going and scrolling away and coming up with my own solutions next day came in once again, six o'clock in the morning, right? You
[00:09:43] spk_1: must be really tired three days in a row.
[00:09:46] spk_0: Um But I actually got to my desk at 5 30. And the reason I got to my desk at 5 30 is because I was planning on printing out a map of the area so that we could mark on the map where they wanted the signs to be. And what I found at my desk was a map of the area already printed and some circles and carefully written out specific sign language for each of the areas that was not done by me. This was done by someone on that team of six or seven people. And to be honest with you, I didn't even think they knew where my desk was because this is a multiple, like a campus setting. There's multiple buildings, my desk and uh area is not anywhere near where the dock area is where we were meeting. And also it had been printed on a plotter, which I don't know, I don't know if you, you've probably never experienced this, but in the work world that I came from printing something on a plotter is extremely difficult to do. And there's only like six people in it that know how to do it. And I had come in with half an hour to spare because I was going to attempt to print it on a plotter
[00:10:52] spk_1: use technology. It would have been an attempt and then you would have probably had a nine by 11. You just roughly sketched what you thought it looked like and like, can you tell me where to put the athletes?
[00:11:03] spk_0: So it'd already been done. So I'm super excited and I, you know, I take all of the, there was post it notes on it and circles on it and the, and the actual map itself. So I take it with me to the dock area and we lay it out on the table and the signs had actually created like, um a new path for people to walk through. So it wasn't just do not enter signs. It was a picture of like with an arrow that says, follow the blue path. Please follow the blue path and the arrow um, showed the new path that you would follow so that people would go around the dock area and outside, not through the dock area Now, once again, in the back of my mind, it's still screaming. Signs aren't gonna work. Signs aren't going to work, but we're going to try it because that's what giving ownership looks like. As long as we can fail safely in the circumstance, we're gonna do it. So I said, I thanked people for putting that all together. And I said, how big do you want the signs? And they said big and I said, how big? And they said as big as you can make them. So now this is my turn. They can't go order these signs. I actually have to do something else about about. So I um I made the largest signs that we could make. They were 8 ft by 10 ft signs to hang from the rafters so that they were not going to be missed by people.
[00:12:18] spk_1: That's a pretty big sign. But you had, in this situation, we started saying, here's agency like take some and they were quiet and then they took a little bit and then clear, they're taking a little bit more and now to the point where they don't have the resources to go and do the thing and you have to step in as someone who has access to some resources, right?
[00:12:38] spk_0: So this is where the boundaries of like someone's job function comes into play of like, well, I would love if you could take agency here. But in the current constructs of how our organization worked. They couldn't, I had the tiny budget to do it and the decision rights to make it happen. So it's maybe three weeks later after I have ordered these signs and I walk into the dock area, I just happened to be walking through it and not at 6 a.m. because we didn't have to, we were not meeting at 6 a.m. and I noticed that there are 8 ft by 10 ft signs hanging from the rafters, which
[00:13:16] spk_1: you told me that getting something done through maintenance can take a
[00:13:22] spk_0: while. Well, especially if it's like low level consequence, things, right? Like I'm not trying to get a machine fixed, I'm just asking them to hang signs. And so it would have, I mean, it probably realistically would have taken me three months to get on to the like ability to actually have somebody hang them and that's not
[00:13:40] spk_1: a knock on maintenance. It's just the meta stuff they're doing every day. And kind of where this falls
[00:13:45] spk_0: priority that we could have had was actually even if we marked it with our special safety script and we might have gotten it a little bit higher in the priority list. But um and so I asked, I went over and asked, you know, the, the folks who actually work in that area and I was like, when did the signs come in? Like because they work in the dock? So they would see them, they came in that morning. So they came in that morning and then the folks who worked the dock called maintenance themselves and got it hung before I was there, which was like about midday. So I would have even said no, no, I was doing other work somewhere else. Um, so I would have, I didn't even know like when it comes to who can call maintenance or who knows how to call maintenance. If you talked about like the confines or the constructs of like whose job that would be? I would have told you that none of those folks would know who to call and I was completely wrong, right? So they not only called but then got them hung that day. Much more power than I got.
[00:14:43] spk_1: I need to think a
[00:14:44] spk_0: lot of things at that moment. Um OK, so now this is the tri storming portion of this, right? So try storming. If you're not familiar with the term, it's a lean term and it's, we try things out to see if it's gonna work. It's usually low budget. Sometimes we model things. Sometimes we just try a small solution set and then we, we test to see if it works and we observe to see what's happening a bit of like forming a hypothesis. And then, so the hypothesis that we were hoping, you know, if
[00:15:07] spk_1: we can, I just throw in like a baking idea, like you would, you would say let's try this recipe and we'll make a small cupcake before I make a three tiered cake that's going to go to an event. You got it.
[00:15:17] spk_0: Ok. Which in this case, probably if we had done that really well, it would have been a smaller sign than an eight by 10 ft sign. But in my mind, there was much more important to empower these folks than it was to not spend the little bit of extra money to get these huge signs. So I told them I was going to come back in a week and I would love if they would tell me if anything had improved by these signs hanging. Right. So, here's our little experiment that we're doing and we're going to observe to see whether or not there's less foot traffic in the area came back in a week and you probably could guess not much change. Right. Even though the signs were hung marginal, right? But not enough that it was like observable and for, for their, without, you know, maybe doing strict person count day, day to day, but that's not what we did. So, um I said, ok, do you have any more ideas of how we could try even more? And they said, well, why don't we have the plant manager tell people to follow the signs? Ok. So that's doable. Not going to hurt anything. I don't know if it's gonna help anything, but it's certainly not going to hurt anything but instead of me going and talking to the plant manager and saying, hey, can you send out a mass email or tell people about this? I said, ok, I will ask him if he can come to this meeting this week and you can ask him. So once again, attempting to do this empowerment of, I'm not going to go do it myself. We're going to do it together. Um I prepped the plant manager. He was more than willing to come. So within that week, he came, they asked and they said, hey, we're trying to get people to follow these signs. They explained what the problem was and he said I would be more than willing to email the entire campus and to put you all on copy to make sure that you also see that I've sent it out.
[00:16:53] spk_1: It feels like a pretty big
[00:16:55] spk_0: thing. It was a big thing that he was willing to take the time because this is 1000 plus person location, right? So this was a kind of a big moment in our ability to make folks that are close to the work, understand that we respected and valued their, their attempts to fix something and, and their, their expertise and their thoughts on this, that the plant manager was willing to take this time. So I told them I'd come back in a week after that email was done and for them to let me know how momentum. So I came back in a week, you can probably guess not much change,
[00:17:29] spk_1: marginal change. A couple of less people,
[00:17:30] spk_0: maybe small amount of change. Um And so I asked him and they didn't reply. I remember this so distinctly. They said, well, I guess the plant manager isn't as important as we thought he was because nobody listened to the, I mean, they're probably not wrong. But yeah, and I said, ok, um, so what else do you want to try? And they said we need a full time security guard.
[00:17:55] spk_1: That's a small change from a sign.
[00:17:57] spk_0: So at this point in time, this is when I knew the bounds of what I could achieve. And I just explained them and I said, I appreciate you that idea. It probably would work, but I am not confident in my ability to get us a full time security guard. So, do we have any other ideas? And they said we thought you would say that, um, so what we did is we actually got some cones and some safety chain that we found in the back. And what we're gonna do is during 10 o'clock, when it's really busy, we're gonna take the cones and the safety chain and put it across the walkway that people are using so that they hopefully then notice the sign and see that, that it's cut off and that they have to go the long way around
[00:18:39] spk_1: it. Yeah, I mean, and, and, and to recap. You have never said, hey, let's try signs. Hey, let's try an email. Hey, let's try safety cones. They have come to you each time and said, let's try.
[00:18:50] spk_0: And they had found the cones and safety chain already, by the way, had, like, looked in the shop, found them sitting in a corner and put them together. So I said, ok, I'll come back in a week and let me know, came back in a week significantly had cut down the amount of traffic because people just didn't want to either get out of a vehicle if they were using a vehicle to get outside to move the cones or at least now, it felt like there was a physical barrier that it felt like they were rule breaking instead of just doing what they had normally done. And so it was, they said it was at least 50% better than it was before.
[00:19:23] spk_1: But are we happy
[00:19:24] spk_0: with 50%? I, I asked him and they said in having it 50% better. They said honestly, a problem that we didn't talk about but is becoming clear is even with less people here, we still don't have enough room to maneuver ourselves. So even when we're not hitting people, we're almost hitting each other. And I said, ok, well, we can add that as a problem statement. Do you have any ideas of what you would want to do to improve that? And they said, I would like to move our break room now for context, their break room was right in the middle of where this dock area was. And it was probably the nicest break room we had in the entire campus. It was originally built for about 25 people, but there's only six or seven people that actually work in the area and it's got a stove in there and a refrigerator in there. It's got like a half wall. It, it's a lot of work to move the break room. But the only other places it could be would be much farther away from their work and much smaller. And so I asked them like, where would you want to put it? And they said, well, there's an area in the back that we actually don't use very much. We'd like to put the break room there. And it's like this small dark, dirty dingy corner, which at this point in time, I'm thinking, I, if I had suggested this as a solution set, I do not think I would have gotten any buy in at all. Right, because I'm taking away something that is objectively lovely and making the solution into this would be at this icky corner instead, but they wanted to do it. Now, I don't know if I can make it happen, but it's definitely, it's cutting into a significant amount of the space that they could be moving around in. And so I said, I don't know what I can do, but I will bring it to the plant manager and I can ask him to come and have a conversation with you about it when I went to go prep the plant manager and, and make the request. What I learned is that they were actually planning on doing a lean activity in this area. Um And part of what they were going to look at was how much space there was. And part of the solution sets, they, they had already started thinking about as a leadership team was moving this break area. And so I asked them who was on the team? I said, who's on the team? And it turned out that none of the folks who were working in that area were originally on the team, which folks that work in the lean space, you know, that is not the original intent of how we do any sort of lean action workouts or Kais and events. So my suggestion was that they take at least a couple folks from the dock and put them on the team so that they can be part of the solution for making more area. And so that's what they ended up doing. They ended up actually being part of that team and the team determined to reorganize the area. They did move the break room and then they actually put, instead of the cones and the chains, they put a sliding door like a half wall with a sliding door that you could actually just cut off the entire area during that 10 o'clock space, you could physically roll a door across, um, to make sure that you didn't have traffic coming through in that area. And then when people were not working in the area, they could open it back up to allow traffic to go through. So the signs actually turned out to be extremely helpful because it told people when that door was closed, the other way that they could go around in order to get out. But that's not actually the whole reason that I tell the story. Oh, really? No, no, no. So this was a waste of 22 minutes of, of people's time because the reason I tell this story was what happened after that because I felt really accomplished. So I kind of like dropped the mic walked away and I was never planning on coming back at six o'clock in the morning again. Right? I'm done. I'm done. Um, and it was a couple of months later, I happened to be walking through the area at about six o'clock because I had to be there for something else at early in the morning. And I saw the same group of people sitting at the table and I walked over and I was like, hey, what are you, what are you guys doing? And they said, Andy, um, you stopped coming, but we still had problems to solve. And without me, they had been meeting to talk about other ways that they wanted to improve. And this sounds honestly too good to be true. But I promise you, it's true
[00:23:26] spk_1: because
[00:23:27] spk_0: you're gonna have to take my word. They had actually already already, um, gotten new windshields for their forklifts because their windshields were scratched and really difficult to see when it was raining with, there was rain hitting them. They had um gotten engineering approval to redesign a ramp that they were losing a little bit of traction on when they're going up and down. Those are the two that I remember off the top of my head and they had done that in the matter of a few months and I had not been there to orchestrate anything at all. And that was the moment in time where I was like, oh, all of that energy was worth it because I am no longer the bottleneck for planning or coming up with ideas or brainstorming.
[00:24:05] spk_1: We also use this story today to illustrate what it's like to, you know, try to give agencies to a group of people and we, we experienced it um recently where we tried it and it didn't go to plan.
[00:24:21] spk_0: No. And I would say that it certainly didn't go to plan at the beginning of the story either, but we did try it. So we were, we were guests for an organization and we had done some operational learning and there was a discrete problem statement and a discrete possible solution of basically outlining some criteria like a go no go gauge, basically of being able to use a specific piece of equipment. And um we asked the folks that were there that did the work. If anyone was willing to draft it up, there were
[00:24:52] spk_1: six or seven people there too. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:54] spk_0: And nobody was willing to draft it up. They just stared at us, which felt very much like the first time that I had ever done this. And so I guess in my mind that no longer felt like a failure, it felt probably normal because in this circumstance at this specific location, similar to where I had been, this had not like this problem solving together was not something that was historically done, right? So if we were there for longer, and I'm guessing that the team that we left them with, right, the leadership team and they were able to encourage more. I I have full faith they could get to a place of being able to empower folks to actually want to take on that ownership because I know if the leadership team wrote the criteria, it would not be nearly as accurate as the folks who actually have
[00:25:42] spk_1: to use now. And maybe we can, maybe we'll tell a little more about that story next time because there's a lot to that and we learned a lot, we were there but it just, it just also illustrates the fact that just because someone listening or a leadership team decides we're going to try operation, learning the people you're learning from have dealt with the opposite for however long they've been there and they've been told no or they've, you know, they've had to deal with some struggle. So we have to respect that and also be patient while we're doing this. It's not that we decide it's changing. They have to change with us. We have to show that we're going to be consistent with it. So let's do this. Let's give some homework. OK? And then uh I think next week we plan on talking about some operational learning and, and questions. We'll, we'll give a little, that's what we're going to talk about next time. Um In case you're wondering, and I think it's also as we started talking today, I realized we also just maybe do five minutes in the beginning next time as well, describing what a learning team is in case anyone doesn't know, we said that we would do that in case we missed it. So we'll do that next time if you're wondering what that is. But homework go, what is it?
[00:26:45] spk_0: OK. So we're gonna stay on this idea of agency and ownership. And last week we asked you to try to create space to kind of give ownership to someone. And this week, what we're suggesting is that you try to create some space where someone can take ownership because realistically ownership is something that someone has to feel and own. And the more that you can involve somebody in that thought process of taking it, the better off we're going to be. Um so pick something that maybe there is a plan for, right? You don't have to start from scratch of trying to like core plans. But like if you do have a circumstance where you are an owner for any type of plan, this could be at work, this could be at home. Then instead of delegating in a place where you might delegate, encourage someone to tell you what parts they think they could own.
[00:27:36] spk_1: And we do this a lot and we're going to do this as soon as we stop recording because we have to go to the airport tomorrow morning and we have no plan. So we'll just, we'll kind of get the plan and I'm like, all right, who's gonna own what? And, you know, we usually volunteer, um, or if it's something silly like getting the kids to the beach.
[00:27:54] spk_0: Right. Yeah, if we have a plan of, you know, my husband and I of getting the kids to the beach and then instead of one of us delegating what the other person is going to do, we often say what parts of this can you own and, you know, he'll say I can get the kids sunscreen up and I can pack up, you know, Fiona's bag and I can do this, um, as opposed to uh one of us dictating what the other person is gonna do,
[00:28:16] spk_1: which tends to change the interaction types. Um, a little bit. So, thank you for listening. It's our longest one yet. 28 minutes. Uh We appreciate your time for all of Andrea's ramblings and, um, we'll see you next time. Thanks so much.
[00:28:41] spk_0: Well, that's it. Yep.
[00:28:44] spk_1: Another one in the books. We did it.
[00:28:47] spk_0: If you, uh, want to send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do so at the website www dot hop podcast dot com.
[00:28:59] spk_1: That's Hoppo DC A ST dot com. It's still
[00:29:06] spk_0: such a stupid name.
[00:29:08] spk_1: We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.
(Transcript Start)
[00:00:00] spk_0: This is Andy and this is Matt and you're listening to
[00:00:03] spk_1: the Hop podcast with no name. What a dumb
[00:00:07] spk_0: name. So stupid.
[00:00:22] spk_1: All right, we're in episode 10 started up. Uh We have a, we're gonna start with, I think you were about
[00:00:31] spk_0: to say a special guest for some reason because we don't,
[00:00:34] spk_1: I always think because we do this at my house that you, you are the guest and you are the
[00:00:39] spk_0: least special
[00:00:40] spk_1: guest. Uh But thank you all for, for listening. So we have um we're going to recap some homework. We tell a story pretty excited about that. We have a lot to cover in a short amount of time, which is totally arbitrary because we pick how long these episodes
[00:00:55] spk_0: are and we pick what we're gonna cover
[00:00:57] spk_1: exactly. But we'll figure out a way to make it sound like there's some time pressure. Um ok. So homework last week, what was it?
[00:01:06] spk_0: It was. Um Well, we were talking about accountability and the ability to create a high accountability environment which allows people to be able to feel agency. So our homework was trying to create some place some space for someone to have agency or take ownership where we normally wouldn't do that.
[00:01:30] spk_1: And we sort of illustrated that by talking about battleship cakes. Obviously, that's
[00:01:35] spk_0: the easiest way to talk about,
[00:01:37] spk_1: which I don't think we realized back then that I would be making cakes for my brother slash your husband's birthday. I
[00:01:44] spk_0: did it but it was not in the shape of a battleship. I did,
[00:01:48] spk_1: they were normal cakes. Two very normal cakes. Um Stop. So um we talked about it and then we, we practically preached. But you actually have a really good story of when you started operationally learning and what it was like to try the interaction and trying to give agency. So let's jump into the story because I think it is, it is a really good representation. And I will ask you a million questions that I think the listener might have while you're telling the story. So be prepared. Don't get too comfortable. I'm
[00:02:21] spk_0: not, I'm never comfortable. OK. So this is the first time this story that I can remember very purposefully trying to allow for ownership and it, it was difficult. It did not go really well at the beginning. Um I had done a learning team after we had had a near miss on a delivery dock and the near miss was between somebody on a tricycle, which once again, Matt, those do exist.
[00:02:53] spk_1: I also just saw a commercial for the new saw movie which is of a little doll riding. No, I don't
[00:02:59] spk_0: want to hear about it. I don't know. Ok. So there was, it was a near miss between a tricycle and uh someone on a forklift and apparently the collision was so close that it was reported that the tricycle actually ran over the forks of the forklift. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that was what I was told. So allegedly, so I uh ran a learning team, learning teams were new to me. Um And we did all of the first piece of it, which is the understanding what normal work looks like and, and talking to folks about what it takes to get the job done. And in doing this, we found a bunch of different problem statements, but one of the problem statements, the one that we're gonna focus on for this story was the fact that during a specific time of day, which happened to be 10 a.m. at this location, there were a lot of people that were trying to walk through the area while a bunch of trucks were being unloaded and there was a lot of near misses when that was happening where, you know, people were on foot and then you're, you're trying to back out of a of a trailer with a forklift and there's people right behind you. And so out of all of the times of the day, this is the time where the potential for something catastrophic to happen was quite large.
[00:04:08] spk_1: So we took a, a tight quartered area that you have large machines moving and we said, let's add, here's people and that made it. Yeah.
[00:04:20] spk_0: Right. And so all of the folks that are in the safety space are like separation, right. So that's why everyone's chanting that right now.
[00:04:25] spk_1: Um I mean, I would know
[00:04:27] spk_0: that which, which no Matthew you would not know that. Um And so the problem that we are trying to focus on and trying to come up with some solutions was the ability to try to separate out where people were walking from where the forklifts were. And in this case, people were trying to go to break like they were on break, they were trying to get outside. And so the fastest route to get outside was through this dock area. There's a lot of context behind, you know, historically, this wasn't always the case and there's other ways around, but that's where we started with, hey, it is difficult for us to operate these forklifts when there's people walking through this area. And so all of our idea generation was around trying to allow for people to have a different path that they were willing to take and what that was going to look like. So we defined that problem together and then I just said, so what do you want to do about it? And the people that I'm talking to are folks that are on forklifts in this area. There are about six or seven people that worked in this area. And, um, so I said, what do you want to do about this problem? And then they, they just stared at me and I started to sweat because my assumption was if I like gave ownership of people to brainstorm that there was just going to be this beautiful brainstorming session and, um, that it was going to be lovely and we were all going to sing Kumbaya together and that is not what happened. They just stared at me and every ounce of my being wanted to solve the problem for them. I had four or five different solutions that I thought would be quite functional in the area of to try to separate folks out. And uh I kept my mouth
[00:06:11] spk_1: shut and, and I'm imagining in the situation that historically one, they might not have been even asked to define the problem this way and given that much freedom to talk about. And two, they certainly weren't the people who then had to solve it.
[00:06:26] spk_0: No, I think in general we probably would throw around statements like what would you do to make things better historically? But in terms of like attempting to do any sort of structured problem solving together. But I think this is the first time that we had ever tried it. And so I decided I was just gonna come back the next day and see what happened. So I said, hey, well, why don't we have some time to think about it? I'll come back tomorrow, which I had the luxury of doing that because this was a fixed facility and I was at the facility, right? So I said I'll come back tomorrow, same time, same place. Um, which by the way was at like six o'clock in the morning. So we better, but I mean, it was normal time for them, but I was willing, I was going to get up early and I was gonna be there. So I came back. Thank you. Thank you. I need credit for it. This was so many years ago and I still need credit for being there at six o'clock in the morning. Um, so I came back the next day and recapped the problem. We were trying to brainstorm solutions for or at least improvement ideas for. And I said, so what did you think about? What, what do you, what do you want to try? And they said nothing, they, they just stared at me and I said, well, I'm not going to try to solve it for you because I don't have to live with the solution. Um, so I'll ask again, I guess any ideas of what you want to do and one of the people out of the seven just kind of looked at me arms crossed and said, we, we could just put up some signs now for anyone who is in the safety space. My brain is at this point saying signs, signs are probably not going to work, right. This is, this is not a great line of defense. Signs are just signs, you know, that's sirens going off in my head. But one of the sets of rules that I had given myself is if it wasn't going to hurt anything and we were physically able to do uh to try something, we were going to try it
[00:08:22] spk_1: because you were physically able to try crazy, you know, leap to make.
[00:08:27] spk_0: So now, Old Andrea would have said, ok, and then gone back to my office and designed signs and ordered them. But New Andrea was trying to allow people to have agency and ownership and empower them. And so the next question I said was, oh, ok, what do you want the signs to say? And they just stared at me and then the same guy who suggested the signs grabbed a napkin that was on the table. We were in a break room area. So there was a napkin on the table and he had a pen in his pocket and he scribbled, do not enter on the napkin and threw it at me that,
[00:09:04] spk_1: I mean, I'm just imagining the flight path of it. It probably wasn't great, but it was
[00:09:08] spk_0: like it was the gesture, right? It just sort of fluttered in my direction 2 ft. So I picked it up and looked at it said, do not enter. And I said, OK, so you'd like some do not enter signs. Who would you like them for? And he said, well, for the people who are walking. And I said, ok, I'll come back tomorrow and why don't you show me where you want the do not enter signs to be. So once again, trying to take a piece of this puzzle and hand it to somebody instead of me going and scrolling away and coming up with my own solutions next day came in once again, six o'clock in the morning, right? You
[00:09:43] spk_1: must be really tired three days in a row.
[00:09:46] spk_0: Um But I actually got to my desk at 5 30. And the reason I got to my desk at 5 30 is because I was planning on printing out a map of the area so that we could mark on the map where they wanted the signs to be. And what I found at my desk was a map of the area already printed and some circles and carefully written out specific sign language for each of the areas that was not done by me. This was done by someone on that team of six or seven people. And to be honest with you, I didn't even think they knew where my desk was because this is a multiple, like a campus setting. There's multiple buildings, my desk and uh area is not anywhere near where the dock area is where we were meeting. And also it had been printed on a plotter, which I don't know, I don't know if you, you've probably never experienced this, but in the work world that I came from printing something on a plotter is extremely difficult to do. And there's only like six people in it that know how to do it. And I had come in with half an hour to spare because I was going to attempt to print it on a plotter
[00:10:52] spk_1: use technology. It would have been an attempt and then you would have probably had a nine by 11. You just roughly sketched what you thought it looked like and like, can you tell me where to put the athletes?
[00:11:03] spk_0: So it'd already been done. So I'm super excited and I, you know, I take all of the, there was post it notes on it and circles on it and the, and the actual map itself. So I take it with me to the dock area and we lay it out on the table and the signs had actually created like, um a new path for people to walk through. So it wasn't just do not enter signs. It was a picture of like with an arrow that says, follow the blue path. Please follow the blue path and the arrow um, showed the new path that you would follow so that people would go around the dock area and outside, not through the dock area Now, once again, in the back of my mind, it's still screaming. Signs aren't gonna work. Signs aren't going to work, but we're going to try it because that's what giving ownership looks like. As long as we can fail safely in the circumstance, we're gonna do it. So I said, I thanked people for putting that all together. And I said, how big do you want the signs? And they said big and I said, how big? And they said as big as you can make them. So now this is my turn. They can't go order these signs. I actually have to do something else about about. So I um I made the largest signs that we could make. They were 8 ft by 10 ft signs to hang from the rafters so that they were not going to be missed by people.
[00:12:18] spk_1: That's a pretty big sign. But you had, in this situation, we started saying, here's agency like take some and they were quiet and then they took a little bit and then clear, they're taking a little bit more and now to the point where they don't have the resources to go and do the thing and you have to step in as someone who has access to some resources, right?
[00:12:38] spk_0: So this is where the boundaries of like someone's job function comes into play of like, well, I would love if you could take agency here. But in the current constructs of how our organization worked. They couldn't, I had the tiny budget to do it and the decision rights to make it happen. So it's maybe three weeks later after I have ordered these signs and I walk into the dock area, I just happened to be walking through it and not at 6 a.m. because we didn't have to, we were not meeting at 6 a.m. and I noticed that there are 8 ft by 10 ft signs hanging from the rafters, which
[00:13:16] spk_1: you told me that getting something done through maintenance can take a
[00:13:22] spk_0: while. Well, especially if it's like low level consequence, things, right? Like I'm not trying to get a machine fixed, I'm just asking them to hang signs. And so it would have, I mean, it probably realistically would have taken me three months to get on to the like ability to actually have somebody hang them and that's not
[00:13:40] spk_1: a knock on maintenance. It's just the meta stuff they're doing every day. And kind of where this falls
[00:13:45] spk_0: priority that we could have had was actually even if we marked it with our special safety script and we might have gotten it a little bit higher in the priority list. But um and so I asked, I went over and asked, you know, the, the folks who actually work in that area and I was like, when did the signs come in? Like because they work in the dock? So they would see them, they came in that morning. So they came in that morning and then the folks who worked the dock called maintenance themselves and got it hung before I was there, which was like about midday. So I would have even said no, no, I was doing other work somewhere else. Um, so I would have, I didn't even know like when it comes to who can call maintenance or who knows how to call maintenance. If you talked about like the confines or the constructs of like whose job that would be? I would have told you that none of those folks would know who to call and I was completely wrong, right? So they not only called but then got them hung that day. Much more power than I got.
[00:14:43] spk_1: I need to think a
[00:14:44] spk_0: lot of things at that moment. Um OK, so now this is the tri storming portion of this, right? So try storming. If you're not familiar with the term, it's a lean term and it's, we try things out to see if it's gonna work. It's usually low budget. Sometimes we model things. Sometimes we just try a small solution set and then we, we test to see if it works and we observe to see what's happening a bit of like forming a hypothesis. And then, so the hypothesis that we were hoping, you know, if
[00:15:07] spk_1: we can, I just throw in like a baking idea, like you would, you would say let's try this recipe and we'll make a small cupcake before I make a three tiered cake that's going to go to an event. You got it.
[00:15:17] spk_0: Ok. Which in this case, probably if we had done that really well, it would have been a smaller sign than an eight by 10 ft sign. But in my mind, there was much more important to empower these folks than it was to not spend the little bit of extra money to get these huge signs. So I told them I was going to come back in a week and I would love if they would tell me if anything had improved by these signs hanging. Right. So, here's our little experiment that we're doing and we're going to observe to see whether or not there's less foot traffic in the area came back in a week and you probably could guess not much change. Right. Even though the signs were hung marginal, right? But not enough that it was like observable and for, for their, without, you know, maybe doing strict person count day, day to day, but that's not what we did. So, um I said, ok, do you have any more ideas of how we could try even more? And they said, well, why don't we have the plant manager tell people to follow the signs? Ok. So that's doable. Not going to hurt anything. I don't know if it's gonna help anything, but it's certainly not going to hurt anything but instead of me going and talking to the plant manager and saying, hey, can you send out a mass email or tell people about this? I said, ok, I will ask him if he can come to this meeting this week and you can ask him. So once again, attempting to do this empowerment of, I'm not going to go do it myself. We're going to do it together. Um I prepped the plant manager. He was more than willing to come. So within that week, he came, they asked and they said, hey, we're trying to get people to follow these signs. They explained what the problem was and he said I would be more than willing to email the entire campus and to put you all on copy to make sure that you also see that I've sent it out.
[00:16:53] spk_1: It feels like a pretty big
[00:16:55] spk_0: thing. It was a big thing that he was willing to take the time because this is 1000 plus person location, right? So this was a kind of a big moment in our ability to make folks that are close to the work, understand that we respected and valued their, their attempts to fix something and, and their, their expertise and their thoughts on this, that the plant manager was willing to take this time. So I told them I'd come back in a week after that email was done and for them to let me know how momentum. So I came back in a week, you can probably guess not much change,
[00:17:29] spk_1: marginal change. A couple of less people,
[00:17:30] spk_0: maybe small amount of change. Um And so I asked him and they didn't reply. I remember this so distinctly. They said, well, I guess the plant manager isn't as important as we thought he was because nobody listened to the, I mean, they're probably not wrong. But yeah, and I said, ok, um, so what else do you want to try? And they said we need a full time security guard.
[00:17:55] spk_1: That's a small change from a sign.
[00:17:57] spk_0: So at this point in time, this is when I knew the bounds of what I could achieve. And I just explained them and I said, I appreciate you that idea. It probably would work, but I am not confident in my ability to get us a full time security guard. So, do we have any other ideas? And they said we thought you would say that, um, so what we did is we actually got some cones and some safety chain that we found in the back. And what we're gonna do is during 10 o'clock, when it's really busy, we're gonna take the cones and the safety chain and put it across the walkway that people are using so that they hopefully then notice the sign and see that, that it's cut off and that they have to go the long way around
[00:18:39] spk_1: it. Yeah, I mean, and, and, and to recap. You have never said, hey, let's try signs. Hey, let's try an email. Hey, let's try safety cones. They have come to you each time and said, let's try.
[00:18:50] spk_0: And they had found the cones and safety chain already, by the way, had, like, looked in the shop, found them sitting in a corner and put them together. So I said, ok, I'll come back in a week and let me know, came back in a week significantly had cut down the amount of traffic because people just didn't want to either get out of a vehicle if they were using a vehicle to get outside to move the cones or at least now, it felt like there was a physical barrier that it felt like they were rule breaking instead of just doing what they had normally done. And so it was, they said it was at least 50% better than it was before.
[00:19:23] spk_1: But are we happy
[00:19:24] spk_0: with 50%? I, I asked him and they said in having it 50% better. They said honestly, a problem that we didn't talk about but is becoming clear is even with less people here, we still don't have enough room to maneuver ourselves. So even when we're not hitting people, we're almost hitting each other. And I said, ok, well, we can add that as a problem statement. Do you have any ideas of what you would want to do to improve that? And they said, I would like to move our break room now for context, their break room was right in the middle of where this dock area was. And it was probably the nicest break room we had in the entire campus. It was originally built for about 25 people, but there's only six or seven people that actually work in the area and it's got a stove in there and a refrigerator in there. It's got like a half wall. It, it's a lot of work to move the break room. But the only other places it could be would be much farther away from their work and much smaller. And so I asked them like, where would you want to put it? And they said, well, there's an area in the back that we actually don't use very much. We'd like to put the break room there. And it's like this small dark, dirty dingy corner, which at this point in time, I'm thinking, I, if I had suggested this as a solution set, I do not think I would have gotten any buy in at all. Right, because I'm taking away something that is objectively lovely and making the solution into this would be at this icky corner instead, but they wanted to do it. Now, I don't know if I can make it happen, but it's definitely, it's cutting into a significant amount of the space that they could be moving around in. And so I said, I don't know what I can do, but I will bring it to the plant manager and I can ask him to come and have a conversation with you about it when I went to go prep the plant manager and, and make the request. What I learned is that they were actually planning on doing a lean activity in this area. Um And part of what they were going to look at was how much space there was. And part of the solution sets, they, they had already started thinking about as a leadership team was moving this break area. And so I asked them who was on the team? I said, who's on the team? And it turned out that none of the folks who were working in that area were originally on the team, which folks that work in the lean space, you know, that is not the original intent of how we do any sort of lean action workouts or Kais and events. So my suggestion was that they take at least a couple folks from the dock and put them on the team so that they can be part of the solution for making more area. And so that's what they ended up doing. They ended up actually being part of that team and the team determined to reorganize the area. They did move the break room and then they actually put, instead of the cones and the chains, they put a sliding door like a half wall with a sliding door that you could actually just cut off the entire area during that 10 o'clock space, you could physically roll a door across, um, to make sure that you didn't have traffic coming through in that area. And then when people were not working in the area, they could open it back up to allow traffic to go through. So the signs actually turned out to be extremely helpful because it told people when that door was closed, the other way that they could go around in order to get out. But that's not actually the whole reason that I tell the story. Oh, really? No, no, no. So this was a waste of 22 minutes of, of people's time because the reason I tell this story was what happened after that because I felt really accomplished. So I kind of like dropped the mic walked away and I was never planning on coming back at six o'clock in the morning again. Right? I'm done. I'm done. Um, and it was a couple of months later, I happened to be walking through the area at about six o'clock because I had to be there for something else at early in the morning. And I saw the same group of people sitting at the table and I walked over and I was like, hey, what are you, what are you guys doing? And they said, Andy, um, you stopped coming, but we still had problems to solve. And without me, they had been meeting to talk about other ways that they wanted to improve. And this sounds honestly too good to be true. But I promise you, it's true
[00:23:26] spk_1: because
[00:23:27] spk_0: you're gonna have to take my word. They had actually already already, um, gotten new windshields for their forklifts because their windshields were scratched and really difficult to see when it was raining with, there was rain hitting them. They had um gotten engineering approval to redesign a ramp that they were losing a little bit of traction on when they're going up and down. Those are the two that I remember off the top of my head and they had done that in the matter of a few months and I had not been there to orchestrate anything at all. And that was the moment in time where I was like, oh, all of that energy was worth it because I am no longer the bottleneck for planning or coming up with ideas or brainstorming.
[00:24:05] spk_1: We also use this story today to illustrate what it's like to, you know, try to give agencies to a group of people and we, we experienced it um recently where we tried it and it didn't go to plan.
[00:24:21] spk_0: No. And I would say that it certainly didn't go to plan at the beginning of the story either, but we did try it. So we were, we were guests for an organization and we had done some operational learning and there was a discrete problem statement and a discrete possible solution of basically outlining some criteria like a go no go gauge, basically of being able to use a specific piece of equipment. And um we asked the folks that were there that did the work. If anyone was willing to draft it up, there were
[00:24:52] spk_1: six or seven people there too. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:54] spk_0: And nobody was willing to draft it up. They just stared at us, which felt very much like the first time that I had ever done this. And so I guess in my mind that no longer felt like a failure, it felt probably normal because in this circumstance at this specific location, similar to where I had been, this had not like this problem solving together was not something that was historically done, right? So if we were there for longer, and I'm guessing that the team that we left them with, right, the leadership team and they were able to encourage more. I I have full faith they could get to a place of being able to empower folks to actually want to take on that ownership because I know if the leadership team wrote the criteria, it would not be nearly as accurate as the folks who actually have
[00:25:42] spk_1: to use now. And maybe we can, maybe we'll tell a little more about that story next time because there's a lot to that and we learned a lot, we were there but it just, it just also illustrates the fact that just because someone listening or a leadership team decides we're going to try operation, learning the people you're learning from have dealt with the opposite for however long they've been there and they've been told no or they've, you know, they've had to deal with some struggle. So we have to respect that and also be patient while we're doing this. It's not that we decide it's changing. They have to change with us. We have to show that we're going to be consistent with it. So let's do this. Let's give some homework. OK? And then uh I think next week we plan on talking about some operational learning and, and questions. We'll, we'll give a little, that's what we're going to talk about next time. Um In case you're wondering, and I think it's also as we started talking today, I realized we also just maybe do five minutes in the beginning next time as well, describing what a learning team is in case anyone doesn't know, we said that we would do that in case we missed it. So we'll do that next time if you're wondering what that is. But homework go, what is it?
[00:26:45] spk_0: OK. So we're gonna stay on this idea of agency and ownership. And last week we asked you to try to create space to kind of give ownership to someone. And this week, what we're suggesting is that you try to create some space where someone can take ownership because realistically ownership is something that someone has to feel and own. And the more that you can involve somebody in that thought process of taking it, the better off we're going to be. Um so pick something that maybe there is a plan for, right? You don't have to start from scratch of trying to like core plans. But like if you do have a circumstance where you are an owner for any type of plan, this could be at work, this could be at home. Then instead of delegating in a place where you might delegate, encourage someone to tell you what parts they think they could own.
[00:27:36] spk_1: And we do this a lot and we're going to do this as soon as we stop recording because we have to go to the airport tomorrow morning and we have no plan. So we'll just, we'll kind of get the plan and I'm like, all right, who's gonna own what? And, you know, we usually volunteer, um, or if it's something silly like getting the kids to the beach.
[00:27:54] spk_0: Right. Yeah, if we have a plan of, you know, my husband and I of getting the kids to the beach and then instead of one of us delegating what the other person is going to do, we often say what parts of this can you own and, you know, he'll say I can get the kids sunscreen up and I can pack up, you know, Fiona's bag and I can do this, um, as opposed to uh one of us dictating what the other person is gonna do,
[00:28:16] spk_1: which tends to change the interaction types. Um, a little bit. So, thank you for listening. It's our longest one yet. 28 minutes. Uh We appreciate your time for all of Andrea's ramblings and, um, we'll see you next time. Thanks so much.
[00:28:41] spk_0: Well, that's it. Yep.
[00:28:44] spk_1: Another one in the books. We did it.
[00:28:47] spk_0: If you, uh, want to send us any of your thoughts, actually fling us any of your thoughts you can do so at the website www dot hop podcast dot com.
[00:28:59] spk_1: That's Hoppo DC A ST dot com. It's still
[00:29:06] spk_0: such a stupid name.
[00:29:08] spk_1: We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for listening.