Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What differentiates companies that apply continuous improvement versus Live continuous improvement is leadership a company that says they do continuous improvement.
What you'll typically see is that the individuals that are involved in continuous improvement, they're most likely self nominating versus an organization that's living continuous improvement.
It's leadership that's identifying the people that should be involved based upon the projects that are going to deliver the greatest impact to the organization where leadership has really taken the time to look at their key business metrics and identify what I'll call those vital few projects from the trivial many. And they're going to drive those home. They're going to drive those to completion and read across and leverage the results.
Welcome to why they Fail, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on why continuous improvement efforts fail. Buckle up because we're not here for motivational fluff. We're dissecting the short sighted decisions and leadership agendas that sabotage CI success.
But don't worry, we'll clue you in to the few simple keys to success to avoid these pitfalls falls. If you're ready for the truth, let's do this.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Welcome to why they Fail where we explore the difference between just doing continuous improvement and truly living it. Today, we're tackling a huge why do so many CI programs fizzle out? You can have the best tools, whether it's Six Sigma or the Shannon Red X methodology, but without one critical element and you're destined for failure. That element is leadership. Our guest today is an expert on this very topic. Craig Hai Song is the President and CEO of Shannon, a global leader in technical problem solving.
With over 38 years of experience in manufacturing and engineering at companies like General Motors and ITT Automotive, Craig has dedicated his career to helping organizations become masters of problem solving. He's here to share the secrets to creating and sustaining a problem solving culture that actually lasts.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Kevin, thank you very much for having me. I'm very excited to spend the next.
[00:02:38] Speaker C: Hour conversing with you, and I'm really excited as well. I've heard a lot about the Shannon methodology over the years, but I've heard it from kind of an aside. I haven't really delved into it. So one of the first questions I want to ask you, Craig, to kick things off, I'd love to hear your orange origin story with Shannon. What was your first encounter with the Red X methodology? And what was that aha moment for you?
[00:03:07] Speaker A: So so it's interesting, Kevin, I'll give it to you in two perspectives. One, initially in the classroom and then two in the real world. So I, I was a young engineer at General motors, this was 1992, and I was told to attend a problem solving training class hosted by Dorian Shane. And I had no real prior background to that. I was just told, go to this class.
And so I went and I thought it was interesting.
I was kind of following along. And there was a point in the class that there was this quiz, and Dorian presented to the class a problem, and it happened to be a problem that he worked on on the canopy for the 16 fighter. And it was a problem with distortion. Some canopies were having more distortion than others. And when you had too much, it was a reject. It was really impacting production. And Dorian went through manufacturing process of the canopy. And then he said, it's the quiz, apply what you've learned. How would you go about solving this distortion problem? And everything that had taught and was taught in class kind of went, you know, out of my mind. And I made a list of all the different possible causes of this problem and put it into a fishbone diagram type structure.
And it was quite in depth. And I was pretty proud of myself. And I didn't do very well on the quiz. And because when Dorian showed his answer, it was nothing about thinking about all the different potential problems. It was looking at the defect itself and working your way backwards to really what mattered in the manufacturing process. And I was like, you know, wow, that this, there might be something to this. And I became quite interested. And so after the class, I had an opportunity to work with Dorian's son, Dick Shannon, coaching me on, on projects at General Motors. And we were, we were having some success and I was really enjoying it. And then we came across a project, it was a. A brushless blower motor. And, and the problem we were having was rejects for imbalance.
And it was very, very high number of rejects. About 30% of the units were being rejected. And in the automotive world, in terms of volume and capacity, that was just completely unacceptable. So I started working on the project and we looked at the, what we would call the best of the best and worst of the worst units for imbalance and worked our way back to what component or combination of components was driving the imbalance. And it turned out to be this cindered metal flux ring. And there was variation in the thickness of this flux ring, and it was the major driver of imbalance. And when I looked at this thickness variation, everything was to print. They're the best of the best were clearly the print, but even the worst of the worst, they were also to print, but they had the highest thickness variation. And so I called the supplier and I said that I wanted the pay a visit and see what we can do to improve their thickness variation. And in the class, Brian said, if you can make one Bob, you should be able to make them all Bob. And I have 70% that were great, 30% that were unacceptable. You know, off I go to visit the supplier. And much to my surprise, when I got to the supplier and I was on my own now, you know, Dick, Dick Shannon wasn't coaching. I was off at the supplier. When I got there, there was another gentleman from General Motors there and he was the General Motors centered metal expert and he had 30 years of experience.
I knew nothing about centered metal and the manufacturing process. I'm some 20 year old kid. And he informed me that what was being done at this supplier was world class and that you could never reduce the thickness variation below where they're at because they are benchmark in the world. And so, you know, here I was at this supplier, one of my own fellow GM employees had just shot me in the foot and I was like, what do I do now? And even this gentleman that, that informed me of this, he even wrote me a letter and formally said that this was the best you could do, you couldn't do any better. And I was like, boy, I'm going to really return home empty handed. And there was a young quality engineer, Kathy Cuneo, working there. And she said, I'll work with you, Craig. Let's, let's give it a try. Let's see what we can do. And so there was a glimmer of hope. And so I worked with Kathie and I followed the process and we looked at their manufacturing process. We understood where the families of variation were. We set up a multivariate which is a stratified sample of the manufacturing process and we let it run for a couple of days. And what we could clearly see, see in the manufacturing process is there, there were these jumps in thickness variation. And some of these jumps were for the better, some of these jumps were for the worse. And each time it was when they were making an adjustment in a parameter that they called plate float. And so we looked at this plate float and we understood the relationship between plate float and thickness variation. We set up a tolerance parallelogram and we told the operators, stay within this range and we should be fine in terms of thickness variation for what we needed for imbalance of the brushless flower motor. And they were willing to do it. They were Willing to ship product that was always below the required specification. And we virtually eliminated imbalanced problems on this brushless flow motor. And it was clearly my aha moment of how powerful these tools can be. And I was just even more motivated and excited to learn as much as I could learn and become the best at solving problems.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: Wow, that's a great story.
I can make some parallels here and this is why I was drawn to the Shayna methodology. I met one of your students, Brian St. Pierre, and we both lived in the same area. He found me on LinkedIn and we had lunch and he started talking about the chain methodology. And I saw a lot of parallels between what I practice, which is lean 6sigma, but in particular the 6sigma parts. In this case, working back from the variation in your part and that variation then determining. Let's, let's get a multivariate sheet, let's, let's get a stratified data set of all the effects on that part and then letting, letting data and analytics really help us understand what those, what those true effects are. When you find the, when you find what statistically has an effect, that's, that's data telling you that's where it is. And then, and then going from there and finding the SMEs that know why is that happening and that's where you find your problem.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yes. Dorian would, would very much say in his vernacular, we go in and we look for the Bobwell contrast, the best of the best and the worst of the worst for the output Y that you're trying to control. And then we work our way backwards to the X input that matters the most.
And so you're really talking to the parts in the process to really find out what matters and really being able to make dramatic improvements, you know, and I had, I had no idea when I was at this sindered metal supplier whether I could be successful or not. I mean it just kept in the back of my mind. All I could see was this expert from my, my own company telling me this is world class and we're not going to do any better. But as we started talking to the process and really seeing where the variation was coming from, I, I got more and more excited that, that yes indeed, you know, we can make this substantial improvement beyond what was considered world class at the time.
[00:11:42] Speaker C: Wow, that's amazing. So there seems to be a lot of parallel with the methodologies like six Sigma starting with the why, getting back to data and the multivariate sheet to really start to understand through, through analytics what, what's wrong, not just sitting in a boardroom and saying, okay, we've got this problem. What do you think the problem is? So I, and that's, that's why I love this methodology so much and that, that's why I was drawn to Shannon.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Kevin, this is where you're, you're getting into the differences between the, the red X problem solving and, and six sigma. So if you think about six sigma and you have a Y output and you have a transfer function and, and you're going to look at all of those input variables to that transfer function and try to reduce as, as much variation as, as you possibly can. Where the red X problem solving is all about really understanding that X that has the biggest impact on the why and understanding that rapidly and efficiently to make the biggest impact possible. So we're, we're going to go in and we're going to look at what Dorian referred to as the big red X.
And it really stems from the Pareto principle. You know, if you think about the Pareto principle, you've got 20% of your customers generating 80% of your revenue. Well, what Dorian found in looking at technical problem solving is that there's 1x input, whether that be a main effect or an interaction, it doesn't matter, but there's one X input that's giving you 80% of the variation. And let's find that quickly and let, let's eliminate it and go after it. And that's really where the red X problem solving tools shine.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: And you can solve problems in just amazing amount of times. Very, very quick. Craig told me about, you know, solving very complex problems that companies had dealt with for years in the, in the matter of, you know, hours or days.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. And I've had plenty of experiences. I actually, Kevin, you're making me think of one that I'm kind of laughing about because I went to visit a manufacturer of alcoholic beverages. They bottled alcoholic beverages and they had a new product on the market. It was a point of sale product.
So it was a frosted bottle. It had a high gloss, bright colored label of a couple different fruits and it hit the market extremely well. And they were running 247 to meet customer demand. And the issue that they were struggling with is they had some of the bottles that were being ready to be packed, had a wrinkle or crease on the label and obviously being a point of sale product that was unacceptable. They didn't want to run the bottles back through the manufacturing process because that was going to be lost productivity. So they Had a rework station. They had set up a circus tent where they had people that were soaking bottles, removing the labels with a razor tool, and then applying a new one. And it was obviously costly to them and not exactly an operation that you want to sustain for a long period of time. And so I went to. To really go ahead and assess the situation and provide them a quote. And, and the information that, you know, I had received was that they had looked at the bottle, they had looked at the label, and, and everything was to print. And they really felt that the problem lived in the setup of the equipment because it was a new line, it was. It was new equipment. And they felt like they maybe weren't running it correctly. And they brought experts in from the equipment manufacturer, and they set it up the way it should be. And it didn't help. You know, they were still having the wrinkle labels. And I'm just looking at the manufacturing process, and at the time I was there, it was running quite well. And then all of a sudden it changed and it wasn't running so well.
And I'm looking at this and saying, okay, what just changed? Because they had five labeling machines, and they all changed at once. So I knew wasn't the label, it wasn't the machines, it wasn't the setup. What's going on? And they said, oh, well, we just introduced a new batch of bottles. And I said, that's interesting. Okay, well, give me five bottles from the previous batch that didn't wrinkle, and let's grab five bottles from the current batch that wrinkle, and let's just take a look. And, and I don't want to know whether the. The print or not. I want to know what's different. And so we did a little paired comparison of the features and characteristics. And sure enough, what we could see was the concentricity of the neck to the base of the bottle was worse on the batch that just came in that was having the wrinkled problem. And then we looked at the machines and the way the machines were operating, they were. They were rotating the bottles from the neck, but applying to the base. And if you're more concentric, your angular velocity is going to change.
And as it changes during rotation, you could bunch up and wrinkle the label. And so just in the course of a visit to deliver a proposal, we solved their problem. And so it was great that I solved their problem.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: That's. That's a great story. Shannon has an incredible history in technical problem solving. Could you talk about that evolution and how you adapted that engineering DNA to tackle complex complexities of modern business process.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: That's interesting. So, you know, if I look at Shannon's DNA, it all evolved out of Dorian's experiences during World War II. And during World War II, he worked for United Aircraft, and he spent his time working with suppliers to United Aircraft on manufacturing and performance problems. And of course, when you look at that supply base, it was a very unique situation because you had the Lend Lease act with Great Britain in 1939, and before that, there was a set volume of airplanes and airplane components that United Aircraft had to produce.
And they did that with their traditional aerospace supply base.
And then with the Lend Lease act, volumes just skyrocketed. And their components suppliers, and even United Aircraft themselves, they didn't have the manufacturing capacity to achieve those volumes. And so the US Government stepped in and assigned other companies that were not in the aerospace industry to start making key components and sub assemblies for United Aircraft. So you had companies that were previously making refrigerators and stoves and razor blades now making components for the aircraft industry. And you could imagine the number of problems that they were having. And Dorian, in his own words, as being kind of a young design engineer, was told, get on the train, visit these suppliers and make sure they're making these parts to print. And what Dorian found out was that in many cases, just making into the print didn't solve the problem.
And it was very time consuming and tedious to find out if they were making it to print. And so he really understood the big picture of these parts needed to work and they needed to perform. And so he started figuring out why. And he was really good at it. He spent the length of World War II doing that. And then after the war ended, based on his performance, he moved up the ladder within United Aircraft, but really realized that his love, his passion, was problem solving. So in 1947, he left United Aircraft and went out into the world as Dorian Shannon, problem solver for hire. And the business that he had was based on his past experience was very much technical problem solving in the aerospace and defense area. And as time went by, he was introduced to the automotive industry. And then it really kind of snowballed from there, where from a technical problem solving, automotive, aerospace, medical devices, electronics, building products, you name it, manufacturing and design, technical problem solving across the whole range of industries we, we've had a hand in, but it was probably the early thousands. We had several customers at one time come to us and say, we, we've had such great success with these tools in the technical realm. But we also have these really costly business process problems. Would you help us in those areas? And I'd have to say we were pretty arrogant at that point in time and we felt like, well if we could solve these difficult technical problems, it should be pretty easy to solve business process problems. But what we, what we found out very quickly is in the technical world you're bounded by the laws of physics and geometry.
You're not going to change the laws of physics and geometry is geometry. It's not going to change. What we fail to realize is in the business process side of things there's an infinite number of ways that people can adapt, modify, screw up a business process. And so it was really a wake up call but we didn't want to give up and we really adapted and involved, evolved our technical problem solving to where now we have a methodology that works just as well, just as efficient in solving business process problems. Staying true to our principles of going from the output to the input that matters the most and leveraging that Bobwell contrast. Best of the best versus worst of the worst.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: Wow, that's a good description of your process when it comes to tackling business problems. So and I like, I like the fact that you really focus on the Pareto concept. So it's, it's in your logo and I find that the Pareto concept or it's widely under regarded. I get calls every day to go into companies and, and they want you to solve world hunger, solve scrap pull facilities in a five day cousin. That's not ever going to happen. But you could look at what they value, could look at their, their scrap rate and, and find where is that one line, where's that one cell that's in one of those facilities and get down to, to that one small thing that, to the, to the management seems like it's not profitable. Right. But you solve that one small problem and then you can translate that to everything else that looks like it. But we don't tend to do that. We tend to go the other way. Let's fix the whole thing all at once. So let's just take a big bite out of the elephant and it never works.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: You know Kevin, I couldn't agree with you more. I think the whole concept of Pareto is underutilized and it's really underutilized at two levels. The one that you just mentioned and that is really using the Pareto principle to identify the vital few projects that are going to have a huge impact on your key business metrics.
And then leveraging Pareto on those projects themselves to realize there's only going to be an X or two that you really need to control to have a huge difference in the performance of that output.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: I think when you really understand the Pareto principle at both of those levels, you really have a highly effective organization in terms of driving continuous improvement.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Yes, I absolutely agree. In your view, what separates an organization that just does continuous improvement for one that really truly lives it, and what, what are the non negotiable elements of effective an effective continuous improvement program?
[00:24:32] Speaker A: You know, from, from my perspective, what differentiates companies that apply continuous improvement versus live continuous improvement is leadership. It really to me comes down to leadership and companies that, that live it. And this is going into what we call the, the rolling top five where you're really driving continuous improvement into the, the DNA of an organization. And there's some key elements there. The first one being from a leadership perspective, you've got to have your vision and plan for continuous improvement. It has to be driven out of a sense of urgency and you have to effectively communicate that plan across the organization. And then once you do that, you really, you have to have leadership engagement where you know a company that says they do continuous improvement, what you'll typically see is that the individuals that are involved in continuous improvement, they're most likely self nominating and those individuals are the ones that are selecting the projects versus an organization that's living continuous improvement. It's leadership that's identifying the people that should be involved based upon the projects that are going to deliver the greatest impact to the organization where leadership has really taken the time to look at their key business metrics and identify what I'll call those vital few projects from the trivial many. And they're going to drive those home, they're going to drive those to completion and read across and leverage the results.
[00:26:21] Speaker C: I couldn't agree more. And it goes back to your Parenthood concept. So focus on those projects that are going to have the highest return on investment with the lowest amount of resource. But before you ever do that, you got to understand what, what are we trying to affect? What's our key business metrics? I go into a lot of companies, I talk to people daily over the phone and they want to train green belts, black belts, yellow belts, and I always ask the same question. What kind of an infrastructure do you have for those belts to survive? Does your seed level understand what their responsibility is in continuous improvement? Do you have KPIs? A lot of times I'll ask, what are your KPIs and I get the equivalent of a blank stare.
A lot of leadership just jump into this. They, they're playing golf with somebody else who maybe is a business unit leader that says, yeah, I've got some green belts and that business unit or that manager wants it too. But nobody really understands that training, training these people and setting them off take on projects that are arbitrarily picked. They're not picked by their ability to affect the metrics and they're not in most cases, not the right project. So we tend, we tend to come into this continuous improvement at the wrong level. And then over time the continuous improvement gets a bad name from people in these implementation that didn't work. So they carry that to the next organizations. These, these methodologies work. They're just very rarely ever implemented correctly.
And what you're talking about having those, those key metrics, finding out which projects have the most effect, using tools like the priority chart, finding out the vital few and then driving those home. And those have to be driven home from your top level all the way down to your bottom.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Yeah, the worst thing you can do in a continuous improvement program is, is identify someone and say you're going to go through this and go find your project. Right. I mean that's, that's the absolute, absolute rest.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: Yes, definitely. I got one last question for you. And it really has to do with culture. And I think that's kind of where we're heading next. For the leaders that are listening, what's the secret to not just developing, but sustaining a problem solving culture so it becomes embedded in, in your company, becomes part of your DNA?
[00:28:55] Speaker A: So the way that we do it at Shannon is we have something we call our rolling top five sustainability assessment. And I touched a little bit on it in terms of, you know, a vision and plan. That vision and plan is driven out of a sense of urgency. Why do I need to change? Why do I need to do something different? And then having leadership effectively communicate that vision and plan. And so that's the first part of the assessment would be, you know, how well have you done those three elements? And we look at that on a, look at it on a scale of 1 to 5. So that's the first element of the assessment. And then the second element is leadership engagement. And we look at leadership engagement both in project identification, people identification, impact to key metrics, and then reward and recognition. And so ultimately, you know, the goal of any continuous improvement program has to be impacting the key metrics. You know, it's not the number of people you trained, it's not the number of people you certified.
Those are secondary outputs from impacting your key business metrics. And oftentimes, when you, when you first start, there are some projects that might be obvious that you want to go after. You know, your metrics are saying, clearly, project A, project B, project C, we need to go after. But then shortly after that, it may be not so clear. And so we have what we call a multiple metric, like event Pareto, where we're looking at multiple key business metrics, we're looking at the different drivers under each, looking for the common denominators, and coming up with a stacked bar based on those multiple metrics to have a sustainable program. So you're always looking at meaningful projects that are going to impact the bottom line. And then from there, what you're looking for leadership to do is identify the right people on those projects and then have those leaders sponsor those projects where they have a regular review cadence. And the utopian side of that would be, you know, you got leaders reviewing the status every day. What have you accomplished? What's your next step? Are there any roadblocks that I need to address for you? And I realize that, that that's not always possible.
But at a minimum, you know, you've got leadership, the sponsors reviewing on a weekly basis.
And then you have an executive sponsor that is reviewing the status of the program on a monthly basis. And the status of those projects is being reported out by the sponsors themselves, not by the team leaders early and establishing an effective, continuous improvement program. You hear from the project sponsors that, well, I want to give the leaders recognition, so I want them to be able to present it to the top leadership. Well, that's a nice sentiment, but the bottom line is you want engaged and active sponsors, and an engaged and active sponsor will have no problem presenting to their leadership where that project stands. So it really forces that, that middle layer in the organization to be actively engaged in supporting the success of the problem solvers themselves.
[00:32:30] Speaker C: I never thought of that level of the representation from your sponsors, not from the, the actual people who took on the project. That's, that's a different way of looking things.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: It's forcing sponsorship engagement. Because the last thing that a sponsor wants to do is, is, you know, present in front of leadership and look bad. Right? Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's easy to put your team leader in front because they know everything. Right. But an active sponsor knows enough to be able to effectively present where that project stands and where it's going next.
[00:33:02] Speaker C: Well, and that, that really gets more involvement from your, from your sponsorship level, from your champion level, instead of cheerleading you from the side they're actively involved. I like that. That's, that brings in a component that I haven't really thought about.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: So we've covered two of the elements in the assessment, so that being the vision and plan, leadership, engagement. And then next in the assessment we literally look at the impact on the key business metrics. Where are they going and are you seeing what you expect to see that get that 360 feedback that we've done, what we've said we're going to do and then from there this is the part quite frankly that I think is the easy part. Once you are making the impact on those key business metrics, then you want to look at, okay, am I developing the technical competency to do that, that problem solving competency. And in the Six Sigma world you've got green belts, black belts, master black belts. In the Shannon world we've got apprentices, journeyman and master. Whether that be the technical side which is red X or the business process side which we call transactional.
You've got apprentice, journeyman and master. You know, an apprentice is someone that has the basic tools and can solve some of the problems. A journeyman is someone that has the basic tools plus the advanced tools so they have a complete toolbox to solve problems. And then a master is someone that not only can solve problems but they've really started to develop your internal self sufficiency to coach and develop others. The role that Dick Shannon played when I was new to the process of General Motors. Right. You get those people that now they've developed such a high proficiency at being able to solve problems, they can coach and develop others. And so you develop that self sustaining model of leadership, engagement and competent people and it just rolls from there.
[00:35:14] Speaker C: I like the, the delineation that you used between the apprentice, the journeyman and master and that follows the electricians, the pipe fitters, so.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:35:28] Speaker C: Which is very delineated and it takes a long time to get from one to the other. And so you have to really show that experience and that knowledge to get to those different levels.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: And that's probably Kevin, a key point that you, you just prompted me on something that I, I failed to mention and should have mentioned. In our training model it's very much following adult learning and, and it's more focused on learn by doing than learn in the classroom. A perspective on it, maybe even think of it as an overview in the classroom, but really where you develop your skills and proficiency is by taking on projects, going through problem solving investigations, identifying root cause, confirming it with statistical confidence, implementing the corrective actions. That's where you really learn. And our certifications are very much based upon not how much time did you spend in a classroom, but how many projects did you complete and how many different tools did you use to complete those projects.
[00:36:34] Speaker C: And I think that's the best way to learn in, in Lean Six Sigma, fortunately, methodology has become not much, not as much for implementation, deployment and improving a company, but more. Can I get a certification to put a notch on my belt? I've seen black belts out in, in my interviews that take a four hour class and a test that you can take over and over again and really skip the green belt. So they get out into companies because you hiring managers that don't really understand Lean Six Sigma.
I asked just some basic questions and most of the time they can't answer that. Lean Six Sigma, it's like anything else. It, to progress in those delineations, you have to do the project, you have to get your hands dirty, you have to know what you're doing to become a green belt. You take on several projects and we mentor our students through a project and that's, that's a way that we certify.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: And we're very much of the mindset that that certification is a natural byproduct of a successful program and impacting key business metrics. But it not the key metric.
It's, it's the byproduct. And if I think about my, myself for example, from the classroom perspective, I think back now and it's kind of embarrassing but you know, I failed the quiz on 35 canopy. I wasn't getting it in the classroom. But then when I, when I got out into the plant and I was working on problems and I was getting coaching support, that's when the light bulb went off. That's when I really got it. And then you know, when I was off on my own at this supplier with my own company kind of shooting me in the foot, you know, that's, that's when I knew I could do it. That's when I got it right. I got it from doing and learning on the job, not so much sitting in the classroom.
[00:38:31] Speaker C: That said, that's the perfect testimony to going from, from the learning in the classroom where you, you learn something but really having that, that practical knowledge out on the floor, that's really where you learn. That's where you grow. Craig, we, we've only got a couple of minutes here. If you had, if you had one phrase or one. One word to, to give people your experience with Shannon, what would that be?
[00:38:57] Speaker A: So if one. One word. Kevin, that's. That's pretty tough, right?
[00:39:01] Speaker C: What? One word a phrase?
[00:39:04] Speaker A: I'll give you the two. In a word. I. I would say powerful.
Absolutely. And, and powerful from the. The level of being able to solve problems and powerful from a leadership point perspective of being able to have a significant impact on your key business metrics.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Craig, that was a powerful conversation. Thank you for sharing your journey and the fascinating history behind the Shannon methodology. The biggest takeaway for me and for everyone listening is that true success in continuous improvement doesn't come from a specific tool set, but from the top down. It's about having engaged leadership that actively sponsors meaningful projects and stays focused on impacting key business metrics. That's the real secret to sustaining a problem solving culture. Thank you for tuning in to this episode. To help us keep bringing you these conversations, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's a completely free way to support what we do. Make sure you're following the podcast on both Spotify and Apple so you get every new episode instantly.
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