1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:03,240 The bigger you grow. Nowadays, all the big companies 2 00:00:03,240 --> 00:00:07,880 tend to promote execution. How to make sure that we execute 3 00:00:08,160 --> 00:00:12,560 a deliverable, a project, a task, whatever, Well and in time 4 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,160 and we need to do execution, of course. 5 00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:20,680 But what Toyota has been pushing really, really strongly is how 6 00:00:21,280 --> 00:00:29,610 each one in the company is also exploring better ways of 7 00:00:29,610 --> 00:00:33,050 working, better understanding of what the customer is doing with 8 00:00:33,050 --> 00:00:35,930 our products. And this is how it leads to the 9 00:00:35,930 --> 00:00:40,170 education system, because if you want to have people think you 10 00:00:40,170 --> 00:00:44,490 Start learning from your solutions or from the problem 11 00:00:44,490 --> 00:00:49,530 solving. Hey everyone, my name is Henry 12 00:00:49,530 --> 00:00:53,690 Surya Virawan and you're listening to the Technique 13 00:00:53,690 --> 00:00:56,850 Journal Podcast, the show where I'll be bringing you the 14 00:00:56,850 --> 00:01:00,000 greatest technical leaders. Practitioners and thought 15 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:03,400 leaders in the industry to discuss about their journey, 16 00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:08,160 ideas and practices that we all can learn and apply to build a 17 00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:11,720 highly performing technical team and to make an impact in your 18 00:01:11,720 --> 00:01:14,920 personal work. So let's dive into our journal. 19 00:01:19,880 --> 00:01:22,400 Hello again to all of you, my TLJ listeners. 20 00:01:22,520 --> 00:01:24,880 You are listening to the Tech Lead Journal Podcast, the 21 00:01:24,880 --> 00:01:27,200 podcast where you can learn about technical leadership and 22 00:01:27,200 --> 00:01:30,480 excellence from my conversations with great thought leaders in 23 00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:33,600 the tech industry. If you haven't, please subscribe 24 00:01:33,640 --> 00:01:36,320 on your favorite podcast app to get notified for future 25 00:01:36,320 --> 00:01:38,400 episodes. Also subscribe to Tech Lead 26 00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:42,000 Journal's various other contents on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, 27 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:45,080 YouTube, and Tiktok. And please consider supporting 28 00:01:45,080 --> 00:01:48,760 this podcast by either buying me a coffee at Techlegional dot Dev 29 00:01:48,840 --> 00:01:53,400 Tip or becoming a patron at Techlegional dot Dev Patron. 30 00:01:54,240 --> 00:01:57,880 My guests for today's episode are Catherine Chalbiron and 31 00:01:57,880 --> 00:02:01,160 Fabrice Bernhardt. Catherine is a lean expert and 32 00:02:01,160 --> 00:02:04,560 the co-author of Learning to Scale at Theodu Group, while 33 00:02:04,560 --> 00:02:07,360 Fabrice is the cofounder and CTO of THEODU. 34 00:02:07,920 --> 00:02:10,960 In this episode, Catherine and Fabrice shared their lessons 35 00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:13,840 learned from implementing Lean at a fast growing scale up 36 00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:17,320 company and that is Theodu. Catherine and Fabrice first 37 00:02:17,320 --> 00:02:20,400 started by sharing the Big Company Disease challenge and 38 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:22,480 how Theodu started its lean journey. 39 00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:25,920 We then discussed Lean essentials that include some of 40 00:02:25,920 --> 00:02:29,280 its principles such as obsession with customer value and lead 41 00:02:29,280 --> 00:02:31,400 time. We also talk about lean 42 00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:34,480 practices adopted from the Toyota Production System that 43 00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:38,400 include Gamba Jiroka. Ron, Don, and Kaizen. 44 00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:41,880 Along the way, Katherine and Fabrice also emphasized the 45 00:02:41,880 --> 00:02:44,920 importance of always building quality right the first time. 46 00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:48,640 I hope you enjoy listening to this episode and learn many 47 00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:52,040 insights on Lean and how to implement it at a large scale 48 00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:55,200 and fast growing organization. If you enjoy listening to this 49 00:02:55,200 --> 00:02:58,120 episode, please share it with your colleagues, your friends 50 00:02:58,120 --> 00:03:01,600 and your communities and leave a 5 star rating and review on 51 00:03:01,600 --> 00:03:05,360 Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your small help will help me a 52 00:03:05,360 --> 00:03:08,600 lot in getting more people to discover and listen to this 53 00:03:08,600 --> 00:03:11,080 podcast, and I really, really appreciate it. 54 00:03:11,600 --> 00:03:14,240 So let's now go to my conversation with Catherine and 55 00:03:14,240 --> 00:03:18,880 Fabrice. Hello everyone, Welcome back to 56 00:03:18,880 --> 00:03:21,120 the new episode of the Techni Journal Podcast. 57 00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:22,720 Today I have Catherine and Fabrice. 58 00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:26,920 Today we're going to discuss about Lean, specifically how 59 00:03:26,920 --> 00:03:31,120 Fabrice's company Theodu Group implemented Lean during their 60 00:03:31,120 --> 00:03:34,480 fast growing scale. So yeah, really looking forward 61 00:03:34,480 --> 00:03:36,360 for this conversation. Thank you so much for the time 62 00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:37,760 here. Great. 63 00:03:38,440 --> 00:03:40,440 Welcome. Thank you for having us. 64 00:03:41,160 --> 00:03:43,080 Right. So I always love to ask my 65 00:03:43,080 --> 00:03:44,560 guests first to share about themselves. 66 00:03:44,560 --> 00:03:47,360 Maybe if you can highlight some of the major turning points in 67 00:03:47,360 --> 00:03:49,880 your career or maybe just tell us more about yourself, that 68 00:03:49,880 --> 00:03:52,440 would be great. To make it very simple. 69 00:03:52,440 --> 00:03:56,360 I've been in the industry all my life and particularly at the end 70 00:03:56,360 --> 00:04:00,400 of my career in the automotive industry and this is where I met 71 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:05,200 lean because the automotive industry could not try and do 72 00:04:05,200 --> 00:04:08,400 what Toyota is was doing because they really showed us another 73 00:04:08,400 --> 00:04:13,400 way of doing productivity in in manufacturing but also in 74 00:04:13,400 --> 00:04:15,800 innovation. It's not just manufacturing, 75 00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:20,120 it's also how they they address innovation as well. 76 00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:22,960 So I was in the Automativity equipment. 77 00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:26,640 I discovered Lean, actually discovered it also applied to 78 00:04:26,840 --> 00:04:30,800 quite a number of other activities, and I've made my job 79 00:04:30,800 --> 00:04:35,800 of it to go and help other companies to try Lean as a 80 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:39,560 framework for their company. And my name is Fabrice 81 00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:42,000 Bernhardt, so I'm the Co founder in city of Theodore. 82 00:04:42,280 --> 00:04:44,040 I start coding when I was about 10. 83 00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:47,440 And I'm very lucky to have grown up in a little village called 84 00:04:47,440 --> 00:04:51,120 Sissy, which is where Tim Benesley lived when he invented 85 00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:54,480 the World Wide Web. So I got very early access to to 86 00:04:55,040 --> 00:04:57,800 the World Wide Web. Fast forward, I studied computer 87 00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:01,720 Science at university and met Benoit, my Co founder. 88 00:05:01,720 --> 00:05:05,520 And we launched our first start up called anomatch.com which was 89 00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:09,040 the website to find all the pubs, cafes and restaurants 90 00:05:09,040 --> 00:05:11,880 where you can watch sports. So that was our first start up, 91 00:05:11,880 --> 00:05:15,520 a product like typical Internet product start up, it was a lot 92 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:17,920 of fun. We reached break Even so that 93 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:20,640 was that was really cool. But we also realised that the, 94 00:05:20,640 --> 00:05:22,480 you know in terms of ambitions it was limited. 95 00:05:22,480 --> 00:05:26,200 So we created a second company called Tsiulu which is a company 96 00:05:26,200 --> 00:05:29,000 we're talking about today, so a tech consultancy. 97 00:05:29,640 --> 00:05:33,760 And now we've been doing this for 15 years, helping clients 98 00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:37,880 design code and deploy tech solutions to their business 99 00:05:37,880 --> 00:05:40,760 problems. And we are based in Paris, 100 00:05:40,760 --> 00:05:44,560 London, York and Casablanca. This episode is brought to you 101 00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:46,600 by Miro. As you will learn in this 102 00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:48,640 episode later about Lean methodology. 103 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:52,360 One of the core principles of Lean is about visual workflow 104 00:05:52,360 --> 00:05:54,480 management. You may have heard techniques 105 00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:56,760 such as value stream mapping and Kanban. 106 00:05:57,280 --> 00:06:00,200 Although there are maybe plenty of tools available that support 107 00:06:00,200 --> 00:06:03,160 these techniques. One tool I find that allows us 108 00:06:03,160 --> 00:06:06,680 to do awesome visual workflow management and to do so in a fun 109 00:06:06,680 --> 00:06:11,640 and collaborative way is Miro. Miro At a first glance, it might 110 00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:14,640 seem just like a simple digital whiteboard, but Miro's 111 00:06:14,640 --> 00:06:16,680 capabilities run far beyond that. 112 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:19,880 It's a visual collaboration tool where the whole team can build 113 00:06:19,880 --> 00:06:23,160 on each other's ideas and create something innovative together 114 00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:25,920 from anywhere. Brainstorming and strategic 115 00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:29,360 planning becomes easier when it's visual and accessible, and 116 00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:32,880 it all can happen across teams. In Miro, you can quickly start 117 00:06:32,880 --> 00:06:35,880 collaborating within 90 seconds without having everyone 118 00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:37,720 registered as a mirror user before. 119 00:06:38,280 --> 00:06:41,640 There are also more than 300 predefined templates you can use 120 00:06:41,640 --> 00:06:44,200 to kick start your collaboration within seconds. 121 00:06:44,600 --> 00:06:47,360 So the next time you're looking for a digital tool to support 122 00:06:47,360 --> 00:06:51,000 your visual workflow management, brainstorming, planning, and 123 00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:53,520 online collaboration, do give Mirror a try. 124 00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:58,800 You can Sign up today at mirror.com Podcast miro.com 125 00:06:59,200 --> 00:07:02,720 Podcast and your first three mirror boards are free forever 126 00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:05,680 when you signed up now. And now let's get back to our 127 00:07:05,680 --> 00:07:08,600 episode. Thank you to both of you for 128 00:07:08,600 --> 00:07:10,760 sharing your journey, right. I think 1. 129 00:07:10,880 --> 00:07:13,280 Catherine is from the lean background, learning it maybe 130 00:07:13,280 --> 00:07:17,200 from the first place where this all like Toyota Production 131 00:07:17,200 --> 00:07:19,840 System became like the trend these days, right. 132 00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:23,760 And also Fabrice, from the the Theodo Group perspective, right, 133 00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:26,520 like 15 years, that's a pretty long journey for a company. 134 00:07:26,920 --> 00:07:30,840 And today we're gonna talk about how Theodo actually implemented 135 00:07:30,840 --> 00:07:32,920 lean, right. So 15 years is a long journey 136 00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:36,840 I'm sure you have gone through. Many, many major stages in the 137 00:07:36,840 --> 00:07:40,000 company's life, right. And one in particular is about 138 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:41,760 when you grow really, really fast. 139 00:07:41,760 --> 00:07:44,960 Because I think there are many companies, even startups today 140 00:07:44,960 --> 00:07:48,880 that went through the same growth stages, but they face 141 00:07:48,880 --> 00:07:51,840 maybe the same challenge like what you had last time, which 142 00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:55,160 is, you know, like how to scale this rapid growth in the more 143 00:07:55,160 --> 00:07:57,520 effective way. So maybe in the 1st place I 144 00:07:57,520 --> 00:08:00,200 would like to discuss about this thing you mentioned in the book 145 00:08:00,200 --> 00:08:03,400 called Big Company Disease. So maybe one of you can 146 00:08:03,400 --> 00:08:05,120 elaborate what do you mean by that? 147 00:08:05,840 --> 00:08:09,720 Maybe I can do that. It's not our invention, it's 148 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:13,880 something that flows around on the web, but it's usually 149 00:08:13,880 --> 00:08:17,920 summarized with four IDs. The the number one ID is 150 00:08:17,920 --> 00:08:23,760 eventually when you grew you grew complex so you will import 151 00:08:23,760 --> 00:08:28,320 in your startup CTOSCOSCIOSCFOS and so on. 152 00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:31,800 Each of them are needed for the expertise, but they will build 153 00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:36,960 silos and eventually they will try to improve their own silo of 154 00:08:36,960 --> 00:08:39,600 expertise to the expense of teamwork. 155 00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:43,799 The the first symptom will be that you will be defending silo 156 00:08:44,120 --> 00:08:47,920 than teamwork. The 2nd is as the complexity 157 00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:50,960 grows and families will be able to tell you about that, you 158 00:08:50,960 --> 00:08:55,080 start developing processes because you want to align people 159 00:08:55,320 --> 00:08:58,080 on the rules on the ways of doing and things. 160 00:08:58,560 --> 00:09:01,520 But eventually the process wins over the customer. 161 00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:04,840 You know when you get a hotline and you give them a call, you've 162 00:09:04,840 --> 00:09:08,600 got a problem and you hear them answer, this is not me, you 163 00:09:08,600 --> 00:09:12,240 should call this or that number and this is typically process 164 00:09:12,240 --> 00:09:15,760 telling you you're not in the right channel and then you have 165 00:09:15,760 --> 00:09:19,160 to do the effort yourself. So it's process over customer. 166 00:09:19,520 --> 00:09:24,160 The third one is usually that we will be more thankful for 167 00:09:24,160 --> 00:09:27,600 compliance than initiative in. In other words, we will promote 168 00:09:27,880 --> 00:09:31,400 people who are very compliant with our rules and processes and 169 00:09:31,400 --> 00:09:36,080 we'll say yes to the boss rather than promote people who are 170 00:09:36,560 --> 00:09:41,240 exploring other ways. And possibly the last one more 171 00:09:41,240 --> 00:09:43,920 difficult to understand but maybe we can take an example is 172 00:09:43,920 --> 00:09:47,520 legacy versus heritage. Maybe everybody remembers when 173 00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:51,800 Coca-Cola wanted to change their recipe because they thought it 174 00:09:51,800 --> 00:09:55,120 was just a legacy they had and they could change the product as 175 00:09:55,360 --> 00:09:59,200 needed to just go along with the new ways. 176 00:09:59,560 --> 00:10:03,160 It turns out that people didn't want the new recipe, they just 177 00:10:03,200 --> 00:10:06,560 fought against it and Coca-Cola had to step back. 178 00:10:06,840 --> 00:10:10,280 And this is typically confusing legacy with heritage. 179 00:10:10,520 --> 00:10:14,680 The recipe was actually the heritage, not a legacy that it 180 00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:17,880 could dispend on. That's roughly the story about 181 00:10:17,880 --> 00:10:20,280 the big company disease. Right. 182 00:10:20,520 --> 00:10:23,400 So I think maybe from Fabrice point of view, right, I'm sure 183 00:10:23,400 --> 00:10:27,120 you have gone through this stage where you think they'll do is 184 00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:29,200 having this big company disease, right. 185 00:10:29,200 --> 00:10:31,720 So tell us more at that point in time, what was the challenge 186 00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:36,520 that you actually encountered and what makes you think this is 187 00:10:36,520 --> 00:10:39,560 a problem that the company should try to solve and hence 188 00:10:39,560 --> 00:10:43,720 you will try lean afterwards? Yeah, I think to understand. 189 00:10:44,120 --> 00:10:47,280 My journey and the journey of Theodo like a big turning point 190 00:10:47,360 --> 00:10:51,760 is about 2011, 2012. We started the company because 191 00:10:51,760 --> 00:10:53,640 we didn't want to join a corporate. 192 00:10:53,960 --> 00:10:57,400 So really like the whole premise from Benoit and I was we don't 193 00:10:57,400 --> 00:11:00,360 want to work in the bureaucratic environment, you know, that 194 00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:03,600 stifles innovation. There is risk of us and you know 195 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:05,200 where your creativity is not welcome. 196 00:11:05,600 --> 00:11:09,160 So we start our own start-ups, Anna Manche and then Theodo, and 197 00:11:09,160 --> 00:11:11,320 we realised that actually very quickly. 198 00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:14,880 When you start having quality issues, the, the standard way of 199 00:11:14,880 --> 00:11:17,960 dealing with them is adding processes in Yara Key. 200 00:11:17,960 --> 00:11:20,800 So we're like, wow, with a small company and we're already back 201 00:11:20,800 --> 00:11:22,240 to square ones. This is not OK. 202 00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:26,280 And so the turning point is we get so frustrated by this that 203 00:11:26,640 --> 00:11:28,960 we think, OK, maybe what we're not doing right is we're not 204 00:11:28,960 --> 00:11:31,920 doing Agile correctly. So we had been kind of playing 205 00:11:31,920 --> 00:11:35,200 around with Agile, but we were quite young and probably not 206 00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:37,680 mature enough at the beginning. And so there's this really 207 00:11:37,680 --> 00:11:39,520 turning point where it's OK, we're going to try Agile. 208 00:11:39,560 --> 00:11:42,640 Buy the book. You know, disciplined and either 209 00:11:42,640 --> 00:11:45,320 it works or you know we're going to reconsider what we're doing. 210 00:11:45,720 --> 00:11:49,000 And it was really like it and it was a game changer like really 211 00:11:49,000 --> 00:11:51,840 doing Agile in the disciplined way. 212 00:11:51,840 --> 00:11:54,720 You know, really implementing Scrum and Extreme Programming 213 00:11:54,720 --> 00:11:58,320 best practices got us into this stage where the clients were 214 00:11:58,320 --> 00:12:01,960 much happier, the teams were much happier, the profitability 215 00:12:01,960 --> 00:12:05,840 was much better and and we could really scale all of a sudden 216 00:12:06,160 --> 00:12:08,360 horizontally because for every new project. 217 00:12:08,840 --> 00:12:12,880 We could have fully empowered agile team working directly with 218 00:12:12,880 --> 00:12:15,400 the client embedded in the team and it just worked. 219 00:12:15,400 --> 00:12:18,120 You know, I before that I used to be the chief firefighter as 220 00:12:18,120 --> 00:12:21,640 the CTO who is trying to solve problems and all of a sudden I 221 00:12:21,640 --> 00:12:24,560 was, you know, I almost had no job because the teams were doing 222 00:12:24,560 --> 00:12:27,600 all the firefighting themselves. That was really the first game 223 00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:31,160 changing moment and I think what happened very quickly after that 224 00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:34,880 is we were like OK. If there are things, frameworks 225 00:12:34,880 --> 00:12:38,360 like agile that can change your life at a team level, what can 226 00:12:38,360 --> 00:12:40,400 we do? Scaling the company level. 227 00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:44,520 And this was way before you know Safe had been invented and stuff 228 00:12:44,520 --> 00:12:46,640 like that. And so we realised that you know 229 00:12:46,640 --> 00:12:50,240 if you just try to implement Scrum on very large projects or 230 00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:53,360 even was at like the whole company scaling level, you 231 00:12:53,360 --> 00:12:54,920 realise it was not designed for that. 232 00:12:54,920 --> 00:12:57,320 So Agile methodologies like Scrum and Extreme Programming 233 00:12:57,320 --> 00:13:01,120 have really been designed for empowering a small team of super 234 00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:03,960 talented engineers. But at the same time, we'd seen 235 00:13:03,960 --> 00:13:07,080 that, you know, you can be working in a way that is like 236 00:13:07,080 --> 00:13:10,120 the standard way and then discover a new way which is much 237 00:13:10,120 --> 00:13:11,800 better. So we thought, come on, it can't 238 00:13:11,800 --> 00:13:15,840 be possible that nowhere in the world, you know, no one has like 239 00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:18,800 found a solution to that. And to be fair, you know, you 240 00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:22,200 can feel that companies like, you know, Google or Amazon or 241 00:13:22,200 --> 00:13:25,040 Apple work differently. So it was all about trying to 242 00:13:25,040 --> 00:13:26,240 understand what they did differently. 243 00:13:26,560 --> 00:13:29,000 And that's when we met our first Lean coach. 244 00:13:29,440 --> 00:13:32,840 Who said, you know actually that he had a similar experience 245 00:13:32,840 --> 00:13:35,080 because he said, you know, I tried to do Agile in a large 246 00:13:35,080 --> 00:13:39,080 company in large telco and you know it was just structurally 247 00:13:39,080 --> 00:13:41,480 impossible to get the full benefits of Agile. 248 00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:45,280 And I discovered Lean and that brought me like the answers to 249 00:13:45,320 --> 00:13:47,360 the problems I I couldn't solve with Agile. 250 00:13:47,800 --> 00:13:50,200 So we got very, very excited and that was really the turning 251 00:13:50,200 --> 00:13:52,880 point of adopting Lean. And you know to come back to 252 00:13:52,880 --> 00:13:56,160 your question, the big company disease, even with Agile what 253 00:13:56,160 --> 00:13:58,920 you realize is. You know you can't deal with 254 00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:02,680 teamwork of multiple teams easily, and actually you have 255 00:14:02,680 --> 00:14:04,880 very empowered teams, so everyone wants to do, you know, 256 00:14:04,880 --> 00:14:07,400 their best. But at the team level, agile 257 00:14:07,400 --> 00:14:10,400 doesn't really tell you how to structure the fast scaling of an 258 00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:12,560 organization, but in a smart way. 259 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:15,840 So you've got all these issues that you know that typically 260 00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:18,680 arrive as soon as you grow and that Agile alone is not enough 261 00:14:18,680 --> 00:14:21,240 to solve. It's very, very interesting what 262 00:14:21,240 --> 00:14:23,520 you mentioned, right. So you have tried Agile fully 263 00:14:23,520 --> 00:14:25,680 and it work really, really well at the team level. 264 00:14:25,680 --> 00:14:28,560 But when you try to scale it at the company level, although 265 00:14:28,600 --> 00:14:31,120 these days have many flavors of Agile out there, right? 266 00:14:31,320 --> 00:14:33,880 But I think when you try to scale it to the company level, I 267 00:14:33,880 --> 00:14:35,400 think it has some challenges, right? 268 00:14:35,840 --> 00:14:38,400 I think for many companies now that are going through this 269 00:14:38,400 --> 00:14:41,280 journey, they feel like they want to innovate faster, they 270 00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:43,720 want to maybe transform themselves and they're still 271 00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:46,520 looking for like agile as the solution. 272 00:14:46,520 --> 00:14:50,200 What will be your advice maybe for companies to probably don't 273 00:14:50,200 --> 00:14:52,520 try this? We have tried before and maybe 274 00:14:52,520 --> 00:14:54,280 this is a better way of approaching the problem. 275 00:14:54,280 --> 00:14:55,800 Maybe. Any kind of advice here? 276 00:14:56,720 --> 00:14:59,920 Or maybe just to conclude on on that experience, I think Agile 277 00:14:59,920 --> 00:15:01,520 is amazing. Let's be really clear. 278 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:04,920 Scrum and Extreme Programming. Which for me are like the two 279 00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:08,080 mythologies we we worked with the most are really an amazing 280 00:15:08,080 --> 00:15:10,280 framework and amazing guidelines for teams. 281 00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:13,520 And yes, I mean my experience having tried the different 282 00:15:13,520 --> 00:15:17,800 flavours of Agile at scale is that they're not the right path. 283 00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:20,800 I mean, some of them are better than others, don't get me wrong. 284 00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:24,960 But the the whole problem is you want to scale the Agile 285 00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:27,120 manifesto. You know you want to scale this 286 00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:31,840 essence of adaptability and you know customer first approach and 287 00:15:31,840 --> 00:15:33,680 delivering fast and high quality. 288 00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:37,640 And the people who've thought about doing that at scale the 289 00:15:37,640 --> 00:15:40,640 best are Toyota. And that's why lean is so 290 00:15:40,640 --> 00:15:43,920 popular, because there's been for the last, you know, 70 years 291 00:15:43,920 --> 00:15:47,000 or let's say 50 years, people have been trying to understand 292 00:15:47,280 --> 00:15:51,040 what Toyota has done so well and trying then to to, you know, 293 00:15:51,040 --> 00:15:53,200 adapted to their own companies. And that's lean. 294 00:15:53,240 --> 00:15:56,760 I mean the definition of lean in a way is the body of knowledge 295 00:15:56,760 --> 00:16:00,440 of people trying to understand and adapt Toyota practices to to 296 00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:02,840 the industry and to give you a few examples. 297 00:16:03,840 --> 00:16:05,880 And that's I think really key for your audience. 298 00:16:06,360 --> 00:16:09,480 When you look at the history, for example, of Steve Jobs, you 299 00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:12,880 realise that when he gets fired from Apple and creates his next 300 00:16:12,880 --> 00:16:16,120 company called Actually Next, he's actually wondering how 301 00:16:16,120 --> 00:16:18,160 could I, you know, scale quality. 302 00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:20,880 Because he, you know, he's been replaced by John Scully at 303 00:16:20,880 --> 00:16:22,720 Apple. And like they, they start having 304 00:16:22,720 --> 00:16:25,680 quality issues and he realises that, you know, the way he did 305 00:16:25,680 --> 00:16:27,840 quality at Apple was like not very scalable. 306 00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:30,320 And so he hires Duran to help him. 307 00:16:30,800 --> 00:16:35,600 And Jurin is one of the founding professors that influenced 308 00:16:35,600 --> 00:16:39,000 Toyota in the 50s. So you realize that Steve Jobs 309 00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:42,120 actually had first level source of lean and that really 310 00:16:42,120 --> 00:16:43,880 influenced him. And he does a video of him like 311 00:16:43,880 --> 00:16:46,560 sharing how much it's influenced him and he can see a lot of 312 00:16:46,560 --> 00:16:50,440 these principles then that, you know, got adopted at Apple once 313 00:16:50,440 --> 00:16:53,200 he came back. Another amazing example is Jeff 314 00:16:53,200 --> 00:16:54,920 Bezos. There's there's this amazing 315 00:16:54,920 --> 00:16:57,280 book called Working Backwards and there's this clear anecdote 316 00:16:57,280 --> 00:17:01,840 that in I think 99, two thousand around this time, Jeff Bezos 317 00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:04,839 starts getting very interested in the Toyota Production System 318 00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:07,640 and starts implementing a lot of the, you know, principles and 319 00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:10,040 ideas on Amazon. And to the point where he 320 00:17:10,040 --> 00:17:14,599 actually then hires Marco Leto to really deploy lean at scale 321 00:17:14,599 --> 00:17:16,920 in their whole operations. So. 322 00:17:17,599 --> 00:17:20,119 It's a very long answer to your question, which is if somebody 323 00:17:20,119 --> 00:17:23,599 wants to do Agile at scale, well, Lean is probably the best 324 00:17:23,599 --> 00:17:26,920 place to start. Maybe a little point that I can 325 00:17:26,920 --> 00:17:29,960 add. Agile stems from Lean. 326 00:17:30,360 --> 00:17:33,960 It picked up a number of the concepts of Lean for good 327 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:37,280 others. So going back to Lean is going 328 00:17:37,280 --> 00:17:42,600 back to the original framework, which is just added experience 329 00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:45,480 piled up by Toyota on innovation. 330 00:17:45,480 --> 00:17:50,040 On the one hand on customer focus, on the other on lead time 331 00:17:50,040 --> 00:17:52,440 obsession, Customer lead time obsession. 332 00:17:52,440 --> 00:17:55,560 It's not just pushing forward to go faster, it's just to make 333 00:17:55,560 --> 00:17:58,360 sure that the customer gets his product in time. 334 00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:02,760 It's finding out also experience about quality and how to unleash 335 00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:06,640 the creativity of everybody in the company, not just some 336 00:18:06,640 --> 00:18:12,960 experts and how to build trust and respect and mutual trust to 337 00:18:12,960 --> 00:18:16,080 keep the engagement everywhere because you don't serve 338 00:18:16,080 --> 00:18:20,160 customers well unless you are treated well yourself. 339 00:18:20,600 --> 00:18:24,520 So first make sure that you build trust and you develop 340 00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:28,360 trust and you develop engagement and then you can take care of 341 00:18:28,360 --> 00:18:30,680 your customers. So there is a whole framework 342 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:34,960 which we're trying to explain in the book how Fyodor is using 343 00:18:34,960 --> 00:18:39,440 this original lean framework. Maybe we'll go through some of 344 00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:42,920 the items later. Very fascinating hearing what 345 00:18:42,920 --> 00:18:45,600 both of you said, right. So I think it's a good segue to 346 00:18:45,600 --> 00:18:48,320 go into the lean itself, right. First, I must admit. 347 00:18:48,320 --> 00:18:51,080 So I also know very shallow in terms of lean, right. 348 00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:53,640 Whenever we encounter lean resources, they always talk 349 00:18:53,640 --> 00:18:57,400 about Kanban or maybe push versus pull and maybe all these 350 00:18:57,400 --> 00:19:00,560 tools or maybe processes on how we can optimize stuff, right. 351 00:19:00,800 --> 00:19:03,160 But I think the first few things that I encounter by reading the 352 00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:06,360 book is that the first thing you said that lean is actually is 353 00:19:06,360 --> 00:19:09,480 not to organize work, but it's actually to organize how we 354 00:19:09,480 --> 00:19:12,440 think about problem. And the second thing is not a 355 00:19:12,440 --> 00:19:15,280 production system, just like Toyota Production System, but 356 00:19:15,280 --> 00:19:17,040 it's actually an education system. 357 00:19:17,320 --> 00:19:20,240 I think these two things are key for me when I read the book. 358 00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:22,960 Maybe if you can elaborate a little bit more so that people 359 00:19:22,960 --> 00:19:27,520 are enlightened what Lean is all about, maybe I can try and 360 00:19:27,520 --> 00:19:32,160 outline a few items. Why we say it's thinking people 361 00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:33,960 system. And I'm pretty sure if I always 362 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:39,040 will elaborate on that is again the underlying assumption that 363 00:19:39,040 --> 00:19:45,160 you will not be as efficient if only 10 experts think, whereas 364 00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:49,160 you can have thousands of frontline people think with 365 00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:53,360 their hands, their heads, their eyes and bring improvement 366 00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:55,960 together. So how do you get people to 367 00:19:55,960 --> 00:19:58,760 think? This means you have to open up 368 00:19:58,840 --> 00:20:02,880 exploration, not just execution. The bigger you grew. 369 00:20:02,920 --> 00:20:07,160 Nowadays all the big companies tend to promote execution. 370 00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:10,800 We want to make sure that we execute a deliverable, a 371 00:20:10,800 --> 00:20:14,360 project, a task, whatever, well and in time. 372 00:20:14,760 --> 00:20:16,920 And we need to do execution, of course. 373 00:20:17,320 --> 00:20:22,400 But what Toyota has been pushing really, really strongly is how 374 00:20:23,080 --> 00:20:28,200 each one in the company is also exploring better ways of 375 00:20:28,200 --> 00:20:32,000 working, better ways of doing a technical gesture, better ways 376 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:35,560 of understanding the material, the product, better 377 00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:38,320 understanding of what the customer is doing with our 378 00:20:38,320 --> 00:20:43,240 products. So this ever ongoing thinking 379 00:20:43,240 --> 00:20:48,160 system is really the difference that Toyota has been promoting 380 00:20:48,480 --> 00:20:51,120 and this is how it leads to the education system. 381 00:20:51,120 --> 00:20:54,800 Because if you want to have people think, if you start 382 00:20:54,800 --> 00:20:58,200 thinking and observing, you start doing problem solving, you 383 00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:02,560 Start learning from your solutions or from the problem 384 00:21:02,560 --> 00:21:07,200 solving and therefore you start sharing the learnings and 385 00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:11,360 educating the others. That's roughly the ID and it's a 386 00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:14,040 big, big difference versus what we see elsewhere. 387 00:21:14,240 --> 00:21:16,400 Somebody's here, you may want to elaborate on it. 388 00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:19,280 No, it's it's interesting hearing your words kind of 389 00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:21,800 reminded me and the word is not used very much. 390 00:21:21,800 --> 00:21:26,320 But I think what you want in Agile is to really leverage the 391 00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:30,160 talent of everyone in the team. And what you want to lean is to 392 00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:33,400 leverage the talent of everyone in the organization, because the 393 00:21:33,400 --> 00:21:37,280 idea is better thinking by everyone will lead to better 394 00:21:37,280 --> 00:21:40,760 products or customers. Let me give you maybe just one 395 00:21:40,760 --> 00:21:43,720 illustration, because it's not so easy to understand what this 396 00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:45,880 all means. Just to tell you, when I was 397 00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:50,280 writing the book, I was visiting Theodore and doing a number of 398 00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:54,040 what we call gamba visits, visits on the field with some 399 00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:56,960 key people. And there was one of the guys 400 00:21:56,960 --> 00:22:00,360 told me of a story. He had a city of one of the 401 00:22:00,360 --> 00:22:04,160 entities of them, and he said he had encountered a guy who was 402 00:22:04,160 --> 00:22:07,560 developing a mobile app. He was ready to test it. 403 00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:11,160 He had to test it on a number of smartphone devices. 404 00:22:11,160 --> 00:22:14,920 So he had different models of smartphones, but he didn't know 405 00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:17,480 where those devices were in the office. 406 00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:21,320 He didn't know how to upload the test app so well. 407 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:24,600 He was losing or wasting a lot of time doing so. 408 00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:28,320 So the CEO could have come and told him, OK, there's this guy 409 00:22:28,320 --> 00:22:30,760 here, or I can tell you how to do it. 410 00:22:30,920 --> 00:22:34,400 And I have got a sheet of paper where it's all marked down and 411 00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:38,640 you just follow the rules. What he did instead is tell him 412 00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:42,120 why don't you think about it? Look, those are not normal 413 00:22:42,120 --> 00:22:43,200 conditions. You agree? 414 00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:47,240 You spend 17 minutes looking for devices and how to upload the 415 00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:49,920 app. Why don't you think about it and 416 00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:53,240 find another way? And the guy went found another 417 00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:56,760 way, saved half the time in looking for devices and 418 00:22:56,760 --> 00:23:01,200 uploading apps, and shared the findings with others, saving, I 419 00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,760 don't know, minutes per day for everybody in the company. 420 00:23:05,200 --> 00:23:08,000 So this is what we call learning or education. 421 00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:12,240 It's not telling people what to do is raising questions on 422 00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:15,480 what's normal, not normal, and making them think about it. 423 00:23:16,280 --> 00:23:19,200 Well, I think that's a very good example as an illustration, 424 00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:21,400 right. And you also mentioned this term 425 00:23:21,400 --> 00:23:24,080 called Gamba. So when I read your book that 426 00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:26,520 the word is kind of like spread all over the chapters, right, 427 00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:28,960 Because I think this is one of the key practice in lean. 428 00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:31,760 So tell us more, what is this Gamba or Gamba walk? 429 00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:35,440 So maybe that we can all learn about this important concept. 430 00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:38,680 I'll just give the definition and then I'll let fabulous 431 00:23:38,680 --> 00:23:42,720 answer this. So the Gamba in Japanese, we 432 00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:46,840 keep using this term because it just means the place where the 433 00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:50,560 things happen and more particularly the front line 434 00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:55,080 things happen for the customers. It can be a production area, it 435 00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:58,560 can be a team doing a project and developing an app. 436 00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:02,800 In the case of Theodore, it can be a place where we are handling 437 00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:07,440 your invoices, or dealing with customers, or answering customer 438 00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:11,920 calls and so on, say from line areas where things happen to 439 00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,240 produce value for the customer family. 440 00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:16,000 So I'm sure you want to elaborate. 441 00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:19,800 Yeah, I think you know as you mentioned before, when people 442 00:24:19,800 --> 00:24:23,120 speak about lean, they will come up with like aspects of lean. 443 00:24:23,120 --> 00:24:27,320 Lean is such a wide and rich body of knowledge that you know, 444 00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:29,560 it's a journey of learning. We've been on this journey for 445 00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:32,520 now, you know, 1213 years and we're still learning stuff all 446 00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:35,320 the time. But if there's one thing that 447 00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:39,760 is, I think, so critical to lean and to this mentality of 448 00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:43,520 thinking of the workplace as a a place to learn, is for 449 00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,400 leadership. Leaders in the organization to 450 00:24:46,400 --> 00:24:49,040 actually go and see how things are done. 451 00:24:49,520 --> 00:24:53,080 And it's fascinating because you realize that as simple as the 452 00:24:53,080 --> 00:24:56,760 instruction is, it's like whenever you tell that to like a 453 00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:00,520 big bureaucratic corporation, the leaders look at you and say 454 00:25:00,520 --> 00:25:03,320 weird things like, oh, it takes too much time and too much 455 00:25:03,320 --> 00:25:05,000 money. You're like what does take too 456 00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:07,400 much time and too much money and just, you know, walking and and 457 00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:09,520 going to see. But there is a lot of like, 458 00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:11,840 issues and reasons probably not not to do it. 459 00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:14,280 But anyway, the point is Gamba is. 460 00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:16,440 If you're a tech leader, it's simple. 461 00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:19,080 It could be like, you know, you pair program with your team on a 462 00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:20,520 regular basis at least once a week. 463 00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:23,680 If you're the CTO, well, you could pair program with one 464 00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:25,880 person every week for example, or every day. 465 00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:29,160 Or you could just, you know, observe someone coding or. 466 00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:31,800 But basically, it's always the same idea as having this very 467 00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:35,880 regular discipline of saying, OK, I might have, you know, more 468 00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:39,600 responsibilities now. But I have to regularly look at 469 00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:41,960 how things are done back on the ground. 470 00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,080 You know, what does a junior engineer in my organization do? 471 00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:47,640 Yeah. So if I understand correctly, 472 00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:50,840 right, so Gamba is like the practice, the discipline where 473 00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:53,960 the leaders, like maybe the executives or the leaders always 474 00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:55,960 go to the place where the real things happen. 475 00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:57,400 You mentioned about frontline, right? 476 00:25:57,400 --> 00:26:00,360 So not always in the ivory tower, maybe some people call it 477 00:26:00,360 --> 00:26:03,360 right, but you actually go down and, you know, work together and 478 00:26:03,360 --> 00:26:05,320 collaborate with the frontline people, right? 479 00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:07,360 The one who actually does the actual work? 480 00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:10,480 And I think in the book you also mentioned that the performance 481 00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,520 of the whole company is kind of like limited by the way we 482 00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:16,040 think, right, Just like the example mentioned by Katherine, 483 00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,120 right. So instead of giving solutions, 484 00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:21,040 you actually ask questions, you actually try to challenge what 485 00:26:21,040 --> 00:26:23,800 is normal and what is not normal, so that people can think 486 00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,320 differently, so that they can solve the problems better. 487 00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:29,160 I think that's also another key trick of this game bar, right. 488 00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:32,560 You don't just go and give people orders, but they actually 489 00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:34,640 give them the orientation and support. 490 00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:36,680 So which is another thing that you mentioned, right? 491 00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,680 So about these normal conditions, you know what is 492 00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,040 normal, what is not normal, maybe if you can elaborate a 493 00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:44,920 little bit more, right. So how can people understand 494 00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:47,880 much, much better what is normal and what is not normal so that 495 00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,400 they can actually raise the question or the escalation to 496 00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:53,800 the leaders, right? You, you, you're pointing at a 497 00:26:53,880 --> 00:26:57,800 really key issue in our complex world. 498 00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:02,200 Because if we don't know what's normal versus not normal in 499 00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,960 terms of value for the customer, in terms of time spent on the 500 00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:10,400 task, in terms of quality of what we're producing, Of course 501 00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,440 there's no reason why we should alert and get help because we 502 00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:19,080 don't figure we are in a normal condition and we continue our 503 00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:20,880 work. And this is where the customer 504 00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:24,880 starts waging or this is where the customer starts getting bad 505 00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:28,680 quality because we have no clue what's good quality or versus 506 00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,760 bad quality is. And the whole lean journey is to 507 00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:37,360 try and define at each step, everywhere, every time in each 508 00:27:37,360 --> 00:27:40,960 team what normal versus abnormal conditions are. 509 00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:46,560 And you mentioned GIMBA. GIMBA is really not giving 510 00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:49,800 solutions, it's asking questions about the conditions. 511 00:27:50,120 --> 00:27:54,400 Do you understand whether those are normal or normal conditions? 512 00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:56,800 Is there another way of doing it? 513 00:27:56,960 --> 00:28:01,240 As you thought about it, it's really questioning all the time, 514 00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:05,880 not giving answers but pointing out two things that are not 515 00:28:05,880 --> 00:28:09,360 clear in terms of normal conditions in manufacturing. 516 00:28:09,360 --> 00:28:12,920 You will find for example pictures or what is a good 517 00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:16,000 palette, dresses and bad parts encourage. 518 00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,760 You could have the same. So how do you make it very 519 00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:23,160 intuitive and very clear what is normal from the normal, which 520 00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:28,000 means investigating in detail every single task and gesture. 521 00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:32,440 So it's a big challenge, but it pays off fantastically because 522 00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:37,280 when people start seeing the abnormal, they stop pushing bad 523 00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:40,040 quality to the next step and they repair. 524 00:28:40,720 --> 00:28:42,360 Yeah, no. But on a very practical level, 525 00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:44,720 what is interesting is. What is good and what is not 526 00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:46,280 good comes from different sources. 527 00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,280 You've got one which is top leadership saying, OK, this is 528 00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:51,720 what we need to achieve as an organization, and so to be on 529 00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:53,400 track, this is where we need to be. 530 00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:56,880 Then there's the part which is, you know what the team decides. 531 00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,200 So typically you know when you're in tech it can be like 532 00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,600 coding standards, that the team agrees together. 533 00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:06,200 And then there's the notion of quantity, which can be partly 534 00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:09,600 defined by top leadership, but it's also very much usually 535 00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:12,720 carried by the tech lead. And I love the example on that 536 00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:17,440 of Linux where you know, what is the definition of OK code. 537 00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:20,600 They call it good taste. And basically the Linux 538 00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:24,120 organization is about promoting to the maintain a role. 539 00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:27,920 People really understand what good taste is whenever that is. 540 00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:31,520 And it's really key, like, you know, defining what OK and not 541 00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:34,920 OK is, can be sometimes easy, can be sometimes hard, but it's 542 00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:36,480 necessary. Or you get like weird 543 00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:39,320 organization where people don't actually know how they 544 00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:41,680 contribute. I think it all makes sense what 545 00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:44,200 you just explained, right? But I think the key challenge 546 00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:47,720 still to what Fabrice mentioned earlier, right leaders may not 547 00:29:47,720 --> 00:29:50,720 have time to spend for doing all this game bar. 548 00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,560 So maybe from your first hand experience doing this game bar 549 00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:56,920 now for multiple years, what will be your invitation to 550 00:29:56,920 --> 00:29:58,640 leaders who hear this episode right? 551 00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:02,760 Why they should do more game bar walks like release schedule time 552 00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,760 or maybe dedicate effort to actually do this game bar work. 553 00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:09,400 Yeah, I think, I mean, there's no way you can argue that you 554 00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:12,000 don't have one hour a week in your calendar. 555 00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:17,080 That's one answer. And the other answer is I was in 556 00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:20,880 Japan on a lean study trip visiting a factory. 557 00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:24,360 So I was talking to the CEO of the factory and said, oh, so how 558 00:30:24,360 --> 00:30:27,720 many game bars a week do you do? And you had this, really this 559 00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:30,680 kind of face of that, you know, Japanese people can have when 560 00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:33,440 they don't want to humiliate you, but they feel a bit bad. 561 00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:36,920 And he's like, I do 10 minutes every hour. 562 00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:42,280 And so I'm telling the audience, you can do once a week. 563 00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,800 This CEO of factory was telling me you can do once an hour. 564 00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:48,880 So I I am like, what I can't do every hour. 565 00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:50,720 But this is what good looks like. 566 00:30:50,720 --> 00:30:52,480 And you know companies are really dirty. 567 00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:56,560 And seriously, So yeah, I that's probably my I'm sharing the 568 00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:58,600 experience of. I've not succeeded at doing it 569 00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,400 every hour, but we can all probably succeed at doing it at 570 00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:05,680 least like once or twice a week. I was reading some remarkable 571 00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:09,000 one of the founders of Toyota, Kiichiro Toyota, and he used to 572 00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,720 say you should. He was talking manufacturing, 573 00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:15,080 obviously, but he's he was the engineer designing the cars, but 574 00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,200 he was very much into the manufacturing plants. 575 00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:21,480 And he said, if you don't wash your hands at least three times 576 00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,560 a day, once before breakfast, once before lunch, once before 577 00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:28,000 dinner, it means you haven't been in the plants long enough 578 00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:30,600 for Toyota. And this is what they're 579 00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:33,120 teaching us. It's a real, really important 580 00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,800 culture for sales people to come and see how the product is 581 00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:40,680 designed for designers of the product, how it is manufacturers 582 00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:43,640 and the difficulties that they have created for manufacturing 583 00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:47,520 for manufacturers to check on the delivery and the customer 584 00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:50,800 services. And so it's a really, really 585 00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:55,240 important value for Toyota and and actually it solves the 586 00:31:55,240 --> 00:32:00,240 problem of the the everlasting meetings where you you don't, 587 00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:02,560 you leave meetings in the comedy obviously. 588 00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:05,800 But Gamba will will eliminate the need for some of them 589 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,600 because you will be there on the game by preventing big issues, 590 00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,480 because you're there because we're discussing abnormal 591 00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:14,640 conditions, because we're discussing quality. 592 00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:18,560 And then therefore the firefighting will decrease or 593 00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:22,520 will be as if I was said segmented brought inside the 594 00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:24,760 teams. The teams will take care of the 595 00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:27,920 problem solving and the fire fighting, so no need for big 596 00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:31,800 meetings to discuss the consequences of a big issue. 597 00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:34,520 Right. So I think we hear both of you 598 00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:36,600 loud and clear, right. Do more gamble works. 599 00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,600 Maybe we cannot do just like the CEO of the Toyota, right? 600 00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:41,680 Like once an hour, like 10 minutes every hour. 601 00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:43,400 He will spend the time with the front liners. 602 00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,440 But I think do schedule a time to actually work with your team. 603 00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:49,720 So again, the idea here is not to give the solutions, right, to 604 00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,360 understand every details and give the solutions, but actually 605 00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:55,320 to maybe ask questions and clarify their thinking, right, 606 00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,080 if there's something that we can rectify from their thinking 607 00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:00,640 process. So maybe let's go to some of the 608 00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:03,240 lean principles, right. We have heard multiple times 609 00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:05,560 about obsession with customer value. 610 00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:07,840 So I think that must be the first thing that we have to 611 00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:09,600 cover. So anything that you want to 612 00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,760 mention about this obsession to customer value going through 613 00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:16,040 lean principles? I can maybe give you know the 614 00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:18,240 transition from Agile. I think in Agile what's very 615 00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:21,520 interesting, you've got the value of customer collaboration 616 00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:24,920 over contract negotiation. And I think what doesn't scale 617 00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:28,520 is that once you become a larger organization, it's very hard to 618 00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:30,800 get everyone direct access to the customer. 619 00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:33,640 And you know in Agile Extreme Programming says yes, put the 620 00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:36,440 customer in the team, but you know how do you do that scale. 621 00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:40,040 And also sometimes a customer is not one leader but multiple 622 00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:41,280 leaders. So then you actually need to 623 00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:43,080 understand what the different stakeholders. 624 00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:47,200 Ones and what is best for them. And I guess in lean you're 625 00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,760 saying no, it's not just customer collaboration, it's 626 00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:52,200 really obsession for value for the customer. 627 00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:56,280 And that has two aspects like again the gambal, so you can see 628 00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:59,200 the small problems and you can problem solve them and you know 629 00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:01,520 you can encourage the team to to problem solve the little 630 00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:04,040 problems on the ground. And because you're always, like 631 00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:06,560 you know, on the ground, you start having a really good 632 00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:09,000 mental model of what you can achieve and what you cannot 633 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:11,600 achieve. And this is what can actually 634 00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:14,440 inspire breakthroughs in terms of value. 635 00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,440 It can be like, oh, now that I see what the teams want and now 636 00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:20,280 because I also like talk to the customers a lot, I started 637 00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:22,480 understanding how I could really improve my product. 638 00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:26,679 And a great example of this I think is Elon Musk, who's 639 00:34:26,679 --> 00:34:30,120 really, really good And both always being on the Gambo, 640 00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,880 seeing you know what all the engineering limits, challenging 641 00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:37,239 the engineering limits very hard all the time and then really 642 00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:39,360 being clear on what the outcome is. 643 00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:41,280 And therefore coming with the breakthroughs. 644 00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:45,120 So this answer was pretty comprehensive, but we can add 645 00:34:45,120 --> 00:34:49,560 the fact that most customers will express themselves with a 646 00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:51,560 need. It's very often the need for a 647 00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,400 solution. They have heard that such and 648 00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:59,720 such company or such and such department has done this or used 649 00:34:59,720 --> 00:35:04,280 that or bought this software or purchased this app and so on. 650 00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:06,920 And they want the same. So they will express themselves 651 00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:11,400 in terms of solutions. And the big challenge is really 652 00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:15,520 to go back to what the customer actually needs, what is the 653 00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,760 actual need that the customer wants to cover. 654 00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:23,240 And this is really a challenging experience because you have to 655 00:35:23,240 --> 00:35:27,040 ask questions. You have to try and observe the 656 00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:31,720 customer using this product or similar product and find out 657 00:35:31,720 --> 00:35:34,840 what are the limits when using those. 658 00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:39,680 So it's really an investigation before the sale, which not 659 00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:44,000 everybody is willing to do, but it's so much more effective than 660 00:35:44,000 --> 00:35:46,800 when you come and say oh you want these solutions. 661 00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,760 We know those solutions, we've done that for so and so and this 662 00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:52,120 brand and so on. You know the, the story about 663 00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,600 pushing solutions with all the brands that have already adopted 664 00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:57,840 it. So everybody can do that. 665 00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:01,640 But if you start having a real rich conversation with the 666 00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:05,400 customer on the usage and the actual need, wow, that's great. 667 00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:10,080 And this is what lean teaches us is how to go and check the value 668 00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:13,600 and understand the value and keep the value all the time. 669 00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:17,720 The reason why we have Kanban, just to mention this word, 670 00:36:17,720 --> 00:36:19,800 everybody is worried about Kanban. 671 00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:23,560 But the Kanban is not so much to try and speed up the process 672 00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:27,520 throughout our our funnel of different features and people. 673 00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:32,200 It's really to keep the customer inside the company, in the team. 674 00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:36,200 That's what we said. The Kanban is a specific 675 00:36:36,240 --> 00:36:38,240 customer need that we need to address. 676 00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:43,920 So it tells us, hey guys, I've been sitting there 65 days and 677 00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,400 you've done nothing for me. This is what the Kanban is all 678 00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:49,320 about. Customer obsession. 679 00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:52,240 I think that's a very interesting insight. 680 00:36:52,240 --> 00:36:55,240 So I think for many people who know about Kanban, right, I 681 00:36:55,240 --> 00:36:58,600 think they just treated just a way of, you know, organizing the 682 00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:01,280 work, right. You have to do in progress. 683 00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:03,160 Done right. That's the simplest Kanban, 684 00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:04,920 probably. So maybe that's also a good 685 00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:07,680 segue for us to understand about this second principle, right. 686 00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:10,760 So earlier you also mentioned about obsession to lead time. 687 00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:13,600 And I think Kanban, apart from what you just mentioned, right, 688 00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,320 like understanding the customer need that we have to deliver, 689 00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:19,600 but it's also to help us visualize the lead time, right. 690 00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:22,680 So tell us a little bit more about this Kanban concept, how 691 00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:25,280 we can use it to be more obsessed with the lead time. 692 00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:28,640 And the story we tell in the book is very explicit. 693 00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:31,800 They switched from Accountban exactly as you discussed on the 694 00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:35,800 To Do List and the work or work in progress and done and they 695 00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:39,640 switched from that orientation which was very much output 696 00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:42,040 oriented. You know how fast can we produce 697 00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:48,040 to another one, which was I have a real customer on my account 698 00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:51,720 ban. I have the dates of his first 699 00:37:51,720 --> 00:37:57,280 contact to our group and I have those kin bands affected to 700 00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:01,120 people in the production cell, in this case in field, a group 701 00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:04,960 A-Team doing code or doing feature and so whatever. 702 00:38:05,240 --> 00:38:11,720 And I can look at it and say one, this person in the cell is 703 00:38:11,720 --> 00:38:14,960 overloaded, they have too many kin bands, they can't make it. 704 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:19,640 Second, this customer has been waiting far too long without the 705 00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:22,040 solutions or an answer or feedback. 706 00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:27,120 It can help me launch rich conversations with people. 707 00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:29,960 What's going on? Why are we stuck? 708 00:38:30,240 --> 00:38:32,200 Have we explored all the solutions? 709 00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:34,520 Don't we have a solution for that customer? 710 00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:37,800 What should we say? Did we ship back to him that 711 00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:41,960 we're working on this problem but not being able to deliver as 712 00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:45,120 fast as we thought? The feedback is very important. 713 00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,240 Customers will tell you they admit very well that their 714 00:38:48,240 --> 00:38:52,960 problem can be complex, but they hate not receiving any feedback 715 00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:56,200 about why it takes so long. This is really what this is all 716 00:38:56,200 --> 00:39:00,400 about, a discussion in a production cell about what's 717 00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,800 normal, abnormal. Again, is it flowing or is it 718 00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:05,520 not flowing? Are we stunned? 719 00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,960 Why? How can I help that country? 720 00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:13,080 And it's when we say obsession with lead time, it's really 721 00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:15,600 obsession with the customer lead time. 722 00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:19,400 And this is the challenge part for the people. 723 00:39:20,040 --> 00:39:25,280 How do we manage a decent lead time for the customer while 724 00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:28,520 producing good quality? And this is really what Lean is 725 00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:32,360 all about, creating the challenge with the lead time and 726 00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:35,160 working on the quality with what we call Jedoka. 727 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:37,280 We'll be speaking about those later, I'm sure. 728 00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:39,880 Right. So I think that's the first 729 00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:42,680 insight as well that I gathered from your explanation just now, 730 00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:44,920 right. So the idea is not to organize 731 00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:48,280 work like knowing how many cards you pick up and you can finish, 732 00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:50,480 right? But it's actually to figure out 733 00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:53,240 from the customer lead time point of view, right, where are 734 00:39:53,240 --> 00:39:54,640 the areas where we are stuck, right? 735 00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:56,840 Where are the areas where the flow is not going? 736 00:39:57,200 --> 00:40:00,080 And also make it visible by using the Kanban to make it more 737 00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:03,240 visible so that the leaders and the team can also understand 738 00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,400 there's something where we should probably look about and 739 00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:08,560 resolve the issue so that the flow is not stuck. 740 00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:12,080 So I think Kanban, if you are using it still for just 741 00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:14,680 organizing work, maybe you should dive deeper, right? 742 00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,160 Like how we can actually make problems more visible. 743 00:40:18,600 --> 00:40:21,120 And actually also the customer lead time, don't forget about 744 00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:22,640 that, right. It's not about finishing the 745 00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:24,760 task, but also delivering the customer value. 746 00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:28,640 So you mentioned about Jidoka. I think some people also are 747 00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:30,440 very interested about this concept. 748 00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:33,120 Some people might have heard about Andon, right, the concept 749 00:40:33,120 --> 00:40:36,040 of Andon. So tell us more about this and 750 00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:38,760 how should we use it in our day-to-day life? 751 00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:41,480 I'll just give a short introduction. 752 00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:44,840 The word andon is extremely used in theodo. 753 00:40:45,240 --> 00:40:47,320 They've actually turned it into a verb. 754 00:40:47,840 --> 00:40:51,360 They say, hey, he handled me or did you handle me? 755 00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:55,320 The concept of handle initially on the manufacturing line is 756 00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:58,800 just putting a cord to tell somebody that there's something 757 00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,240 wrong and the concept was ready to stop the line. 758 00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:07,040 Imagine a continuous line in a shop in a car making factory. 759 00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:11,840 This is a very new concept because before Toyota, when we 760 00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:15,440 had the equality issue, the the. From line operator, we just 761 00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:18,680 write down on a piece of paper, hey, there's a program here we 762 00:41:18,680 --> 00:41:21,600 we didn't install the windscreen correctly. 763 00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:27,160 So technically at a later stage, the Toyota way is we stop the 764 00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:30,680 line now and then to understand why we called Syllab the 765 00:41:30,680 --> 00:41:33,840 windscreen. And in the end they have very 766 00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:36,560 limited repairs of the end of the line because they have 767 00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:39,400 addressed the problem all the time. 768 00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:43,040 So in the digital or tech world, what does it mean? 769 00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:47,280 It means that if I can detect my abnormal conditions that we were 770 00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:52,800 discussing before bad quality, long lead time don't understand 771 00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,160 the feature. I don't understand the the value 772 00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:56,800 we have to bring to the customer. 773 00:41:56,800 --> 00:42:00,240 I don't understand what we're trying to do here too late could 774 00:42:00,240 --> 00:42:03,760 make it don't understand the technical gesture I have to 775 00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:06,680 make. I am done in in tech world it's 776 00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:09,520 just. Calling somebody on the phone, 777 00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:14,120 all the messaging app, whatever, but calling for help now and 778 00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:17,360 then so that we can see the problem immediately. 779 00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:19,440 Family. So I'm sure you have plenty more 780 00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:21,720 to add. I think in the in the tech 781 00:42:21,720 --> 00:42:24,880 environment Jidoka which means the right first time and which 782 00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:28,360 includes the concept of random. You could summarise it by saying 783 00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:31,840 OK, I want to detect defects as early as possible. 784 00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:34,800 And so that's one big idea we've implemented at Theodore is to 785 00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,440 say, OK, we're going to categorise defects by stage of 786 00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:41,400 detection. So the last stage is when the 787 00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:45,240 customer is complaining, that's stage E When you found it in 788 00:42:45,240 --> 00:42:48,760 production before the customer complaints, that's stage D when 789 00:42:48,760 --> 00:42:51,920 you found it during, you know, Q&A or the product owner. 790 00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:55,960 So let's say the Intel customer, Stage C when you know somebody 791 00:42:55,960 --> 00:43:00,640 else in the team found it. So, like, you know, CICD code 792 00:43:00,640 --> 00:43:01,840 reviews. That's Stage V. 793 00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,960 And we've even introduced stage A is when you as a dev you coded 794 00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,520 something and it didn't work out as expected. 795 00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:12,080 To make it like very clear, what we say is you're allowed one 796 00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:15,680 refresh in the browser or in the phone simulator and if it 797 00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:17,760 doesn't work the first time, so you're allowed TDD, you're 798 00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:19,440 allowed to do test driven development. 799 00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:22,520 But what you're saying is if it doesn't work at the first time I 800 00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:25,280 I try it in the browser then it's a a defect. 801 00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:29,000 So that's the idea like. Learning to detect defects as 802 00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:32,000 early as possible so that you can actually track the number of 803 00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:35,440 defects. And your goal is not to hide 804 00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:38,520 defects, but really to try to increase the number you detect 805 00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:42,240 very early. So detection in Jidoka so to do 806 00:43:42,240 --> 00:43:45,640 right first time and the 2nd is indeed when you have a defect, 807 00:43:45,640 --> 00:43:48,280 I'm done. So asking for help, if you need 808 00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:51,880 help, I'm really not hesitating to ask, you know your tech lead 809 00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:55,640 or, you know, escalating even more when there's issues you 810 00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:58,880 don't know how to address. Wow, it's a really fascinating 811 00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,480 concept when I read this ABCDE stages, right. 812 00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:04,200 So I think the way you classify and categorize, where do you 813 00:44:04,200 --> 00:44:07,360 actually find the box or the defect and try to actually 814 00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:10,800 minimize the D&E stages and try to push it. 815 00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:13,600 Maybe like people call it, shift left, right where you can detect 816 00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:16,560 the issues and problems early as much as possible. 817 00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:20,240 So I think this goes back to understanding what is quality, 818 00:44:20,240 --> 00:44:22,360 right? Like, I'm sure we have a big 819 00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:24,480 team. Not everyone has the same idea 820 00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:27,000 of quality, right? And in lean, I think you 821 00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:29,920 mentioned the right first time or maybe built in quality, 822 00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,320 right. How can we actually spread the 823 00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,760 same understanding of quality amongst the team and what does 824 00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:39,080 it mean by built in quality and right for the first time? 825 00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,840 Well, it's it's interesting, but I think the biggest resistance 826 00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,680 when you define quality, or rather when you define a defect 827 00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:49,680 is, you know, usual human behaviour, so defensiveness. 828 00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:51,400 So I'll give you an example I love. 829 00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:55,120 A customer complaints because there's a button and the button 830 00:44:55,120 --> 00:44:57,480 says login. And that customer doesn't speak 831 00:44:57,480 --> 00:44:58,920 English. So he's like, what does that 832 00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:01,280 mean? And so you go to the deaf team 833 00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:03,800 and you say there's a bug because, you know, we left the 834 00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,000 login word for the login button and it should be, you know, 835 00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:08,920 translated. And the deaf team was like, 836 00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,080 that's not a bug. Our responsibility is not 837 00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:14,080 checking that every word gets perfectly translated, etcetera, 838 00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:15,920 etcetera. So that's defensiveness. 839 00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:19,400 So the answer is it's not a bug, because it's not us. 840 00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,520 And one thing I've learned is to really say it is a bug because 841 00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:27,400 it is an unmet expectation for the customer and for the user. 842 00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:32,320 But let's be clear that it's not a dev bug, it's a content bug 843 00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:34,920 for example. And then you can agree once you 844 00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:36,760 say OK, there's different like sources of bugs. 845 00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,320 You know you can have an issue on the content, you can have an 846 00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:42,640 issue on the production servers, you can have an issue on the dev 847 00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,560 side, but as soon as the customer has like. 848 00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:51,040 A quite clear unmet expectation then let's call it a bug. 849 00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:53,840 And that's how we manage to agree on on this definition. 850 00:45:54,720 --> 00:45:57,160 Yeah, I think it's a very simplified way of defining 851 00:45:57,160 --> 00:45:59,920 quality, right, As long as you don't meet customers 852 00:45:59,920 --> 00:46:01,800 expectation. So coming back to the customer 853 00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:03,520 value, right, you don't meet their value. 854 00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:05,760 I think you can call it a bug regardless. 855 00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:07,600 You know, like how do you classify the bugs, right. 856 00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:09,560 I think that is very, very important. 857 00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:12,640 And I think another important stuff that I picked from the 858 00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:15,040 book when I read that part about quality, right. 859 00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:18,080 So I just read it here. The team should not accept bad 860 00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:21,000 quality from upstream, they should not create defects in 861 00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:24,840 their own work and they should not pass low quality items along 862 00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:27,280 downstream. So this is like an extreme way 863 00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:29,480 of really defining quality. You don't accept from the 864 00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:32,360 source, you also don't introduce low quality and you don't pass 865 00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:35,160 it to the downstream as well. So I think if everyone aspires 866 00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:37,800 to do this, I'm sure the kind of quality that you produce will be 867 00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:40,640 really, really high. So another important aspect of 868 00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:42,720 lean is actually about people, right? 869 00:46:42,720 --> 00:46:46,600 So I think trust is 1 big thing. The second thing is about people 870 00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,720 growing and learning every day. So there's this thing called 871 00:46:49,720 --> 00:46:52,440 Kaizen, which I'm sure some people would also have heard 872 00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:55,080 about this concept. So tell us more about what is 873 00:46:55,080 --> 00:46:57,400 this Kaizen all about? How do you actually implement 874 00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:01,440 that in Theodore so that maybe people are more engaged and much 875 00:47:01,440 --> 00:47:04,720 more thriving in their behaviors and they wanna improve both 876 00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:06,760 personally and also for the company? 877 00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:11,640 Maybe a bit of explanation from the lean point of view, the 878 00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:14,640 Kaizen is hearts of the fun at work. 879 00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:18,720 If you are simply in execution all the time and you never 880 00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:22,840 change anything and you never think about what you do, your 881 00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:27,120 job is pretty spiritless and and not not very interesting. 882 00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,000 Before Kaizen is. Just first make sure that all 883 00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:34,360 the systems work and people have the tools to work and so on. 884 00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:37,280 Once we've got that, we've got the basics. 885 00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:38,920 So people have the tools to work. 886 00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:41,320 They have understood the customer value that we 887 00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:44,160 discussed. They are put under tension 888 00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:48,800 through the lead time and they are given the right ways of 889 00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:51,000 understanding what's normal from abnormal. 890 00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:57,680 Then they can react to abnormal and not only and on their boss 891 00:47:57,720 --> 00:48:02,040 or the team leader, but be part of the solution, be part of the 892 00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:05,360 problem solving. Therefore, learn from the 893 00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:07,560 problem solving and the exploration. 894 00:48:07,960 --> 00:48:09,800 And this is what the Kaizen is all about. 895 00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:13,120 Kaizen is ready try to improve all the time. 896 00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:17,680 It's a mindset first, try to improve all the time on any 897 00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:21,080 little things. And I remember discussion with 898 00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:24,040 families and Bruno, the other Co founder of Theodo. 899 00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:28,520 They wanted Kaizen to be something to help to add value 900 00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:30,680 to the customer. They were looking at customer 901 00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:33,920 problems initially. And it turned out that the first 902 00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:38,280 Kaizen that the team did is improve situations for 903 00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:41,600 themselves. They created Kaizen first on the 904 00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:44,920 tools and the conditions in which they were working. 905 00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:49,760 And then they were able to focus on the customer and do Kaizen 906 00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,920 for the customer value. But it's key for the fun. 907 00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:55,360 Yeah, I love Katherine's point about fun. 908 00:48:55,880 --> 00:48:58,640 One definition I was given about Kaizen, which I think works 909 00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:01,200 really well for software engineers is. 910 00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:05,480 What you want is to be in the state of flu, and Kaizen is all 911 00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:09,280 the efforts to address the issues when you're not in flu. 912 00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:11,840 So you want to be as a developer, you want to be in the 913 00:49:11,840 --> 00:49:13,320 state of flu. And every time you're not in the 914 00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:16,520 state of flu, you're like there was like something that blocked 915 00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:19,320 me or stopped me, Let's do Kaizen to improve that 916 00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:22,280 situation. And very concretely speaking, at 917 00:49:22,280 --> 00:49:24,320 Theodore, you could do Kaizen whenever you want. 918 00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:27,720 But to make sure that teams really take a step back, we 919 00:49:27,720 --> 00:49:31,040 organise one day workshops with somebody who's got a lot of 920 00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:34,840 experience acting as a facilitator and going through a 921 00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:38,920 framework called a six step Kaizen framework, where we look 922 00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,040 at the problem. So it can be like a tooling 923 00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:44,080 thing, like for example, CI is too long, you know, I don't know 924 00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:46,080 why continuous integration takes 20 minutes. 925 00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:49,880 Could we get it to like 10 or 5 minutes and then you know, using 926 00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:52,640 the six steps, analyse all the potential issues? 927 00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:55,200 And really think about new ideas. 928 00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:57,760 But what is very important in the guys end, the goal is not 929 00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:00,640 the the improvement but it's also like the learning. 930 00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:04,400 Usually when a team does that, it's not because there's a easy 931 00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:07,520 quick win, it's because some very complicated things are 932 00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:09,560 happening under the hood. And you know, they take that 933 00:50:09,560 --> 00:50:12,320 time to really understand and better understand the frameworks 934 00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:15,120 and you know the project complexity etcetera. 935 00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:18,280 I really like the way you mentioned that Kaizen is all the 936 00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:20,800 things that you do to actually improve the flow, right. 937 00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:23,960 So I think based on the recent paper as well, right, developer 938 00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,600 experience, developer productivity flow is definitely 939 00:50:26,600 --> 00:50:29,160 one of the key attribute where we should optimize. 940 00:50:29,440 --> 00:50:32,640 So I think doing Kaizen, like embodying Kaizen mindset means 941 00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:35,320 like you do everything that you could to actually improve the 942 00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:38,000 flow for the team and also for the individual, right? 943 00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:41,400 And I think another thing is when you have created this fun 944 00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:43,920 environment, right, you actually make the work interesting 945 00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:45,400 itself. So just like what Catherine 946 00:50:45,400 --> 00:50:48,600 mentioned, you don't just execute just for the sake of 947 00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:51,880 finishing the task on achieving the company's target, right? 948 00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:53,880 But actually you also make it fun, right? 949 00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:56,800 You learn through the process and you actually figure out 950 00:50:56,800 --> 00:50:58,880 something that you could improve all the time. 951 00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:01,080 I think that's also another key that I learn. 952 00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:05,760 So as we go to the end of our conversation, is there anything 953 00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:08,840 that you want to highlight from, you know, Theodore journey about 954 00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:11,320 implementing Lean? So if there's something I don't 955 00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:14,480 know, like fun fact or trivia or anecdotes that you want to share 956 00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:17,120 with us. There's one thing I can say 957 00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:20,200 about Cajun and making the job people easier. 958 00:51:20,240 --> 00:51:22,760 Fabulous mentioned earlier the login feature. 959 00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:27,400 When you develop apps, the login feature is the recurrent the 960 00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,680 most recurrent feature. Everybody starts with the login. 961 00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:34,720 And one of the things they've done to help people work in the 962 00:51:34,720 --> 00:51:39,000 flow is to actually find a a standard approach to log in 963 00:51:39,240 --> 00:51:44,000 before everybody was reinvented the wheel on the log in part and 964 00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:47,400 they have now designed standard approach, they call that 965 00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:51,520 enablers in the things that facilitate the life of of the 966 00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:54,520 people. So they do have technical 967 00:51:54,520 --> 00:51:57,320 standards. That they develop because they 968 00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:02,200 know it's a recurring feature and it will save people time to 969 00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:05,640 have something to start with rather than a blank page. 970 00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:08,320 A blank page effect is terrifying. 971 00:52:08,520 --> 00:52:12,200 Sometimes you have anything. No, but you you were asking 972 00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:15,640 about the highlights. I think clearly going on the 973 00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:18,600 Game Bar is is the one highlight I will insist on. 974 00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:21,680 Right. So yeah, let's go to the next 975 00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:25,240 section whereby I will ask you this question that I have to ask 976 00:52:25,240 --> 00:52:27,760 for all my guests which is to share what I call the three 977 00:52:27,760 --> 00:52:30,840 technical leadership wisdom. So you can think of it just like 978 00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:34,600 you know advice that you want to impart to the listeners here so 979 00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:37,120 that we all can learn from you. So maybe, I don't know how do 980 00:52:37,120 --> 00:52:39,000 you want to structure this? I'll leave it up to you. 981 00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:41,520 Maybe you can share your version of three technical leadership 982 00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:45,120 wisdom. Maybe I can start with one is in 983 00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:49,040 the book we tried #1. Not to discuss lean, but to 984 00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:54,680 discuss business situations like how do you get new customers and 985 00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:58,760 how you retain them? How do you get new employees and 986 00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:03,880 you retain them, How you try and use the customer lethal 987 00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:08,960 obsession to create tension and customer visibility inside your 988 00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:11,200 teams. How do you remain on the 989 00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,760 technical edge? So all those questions that are 990 00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:18,440 key in any tech business are addressed by Lean. 991 00:53:18,440 --> 00:53:21,600 And Lean is a framework to understand what the next step 992 00:53:21,600 --> 00:53:23,880 is. And in addition to that, the 993 00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:28,920 customer focus on the value all the time will bring you more 994 00:53:28,920 --> 00:53:32,800 turnover. The focus on the end on that we 995 00:53:32,800 --> 00:53:36,320 discussed not passing bad quality, not receiving bad 996 00:53:36,320 --> 00:53:39,120 quality and so on. This is the best way to reduce 997 00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:41,720 your costs. Because most of your costs are 998 00:53:41,720 --> 00:53:47,160 coming from bad quality reworks, penalties for delivering a bad 999 00:53:47,160 --> 00:53:50,680 product, and so on. And adjusting time is the best 1000 00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:53,680 way to actually make the best of your assets. 1001 00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:57,120 So it's true in manufacturing, how do you make your machines 1002 00:53:57,120 --> 00:53:59,960 flexible? But in the tech world where your 1003 00:53:59,960 --> 00:54:05,320 assets are people, how do you make the most of your people as 1004 00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:09,480 assets to deliver 1st and to deliver right the first time? 1005 00:54:10,080 --> 00:54:14,400 So all those are ways to make more money in a sustainable way 1006 00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:18,200 and to grow efficiently. And this is really important. 1007 00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:22,080 This is not a book about tools, it's a book about building a 1008 00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:25,960 sustainable future for your company and how Lean helps you 1009 00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:28,960 doing that. We discussed undone and abnormal 1010 00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:34,560 conditions for the CEOCTO, for Fabrica and Renoir and all the 1011 00:54:34,600 --> 00:54:37,360 team leaders. It's a perfect way to understand 1012 00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:42,320 where the organization is stuck. All those and on pools will tell 1013 00:54:42,320 --> 00:54:46,240 you exactly what the company doesn't know how to do, you know 1014 00:54:46,240 --> 00:54:49,560 where where we're stuck in terms of feasibility, technicity, 1015 00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:53,280 capability and so on. So it's a very interesting 1016 00:54:53,280 --> 00:54:57,680 mapping of your problems and This is why Boris Bernal and 1017 00:54:57,680 --> 00:55:00,920 Farris are very much on to the end on thing and the problem 1018 00:55:00,920 --> 00:55:04,440 solving, because they this is where they're stuck and this is 1019 00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:08,000 what they need to address. And I think you know the tech 1020 00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:11,120 leadership wisdom, I think your objective and when you're in 1021 00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:14,960 tech leadership is to grow your teams to make better products. 1022 00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:19,880 And I think the lean tool to do that, I hope I've insisted 1023 00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:25,880 enough, is really gamba, gamba booths on your teams to like see 1024 00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:28,520 their working conditions. And you mentioned it not not to 1025 00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:31,080 micromanage them, but really to ask questions, to observe the 1026 00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:34,680 conditions and therefore you know, be there to help them when 1027 00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,320 they need it. But also came back at the users 1028 00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:39,800 and customers to really understand how the product is 1029 00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:44,800 built and then connecting both to, you know, grow your teams on 1030 00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:49,080 one side, but grow them on the challenges, encourage them to 1031 00:55:49,120 --> 00:55:51,680 think harder about the challenges that the users and 1032 00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:55,240 customers are having, right. Thank you so much for this joint 1033 00:55:55,240 --> 00:55:57,800 effort, for the wisdom. So I really love all of that. 1034 00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:00,960 So if people want to connect with you or learn more about 1035 00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:04,000 Lean and maybe Theodore Journey, is there a place where they can 1036 00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:07,240 reach out online? They can reach both of us on 1037 00:56:07,240 --> 00:56:08,880 LinkedIn. I think this is the most 1038 00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:12,440 efficient way and and of course they can read the book because 1039 00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:16,280 they'll understand much more what we've tried to explain 1040 00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:19,680 today with the book. LinkedIn and Twitter. 1041 00:56:19,720 --> 00:56:23,760 I'm Fabris B on Twitter, right? So I think I find the book 1042 00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:25,440 really, really interesting and insightful. 1043 00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:28,880 So for people who are interested to learn more about Lean, I 1044 00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:32,040 think it's it's a good resource where you can actually learn 1045 00:56:32,040 --> 00:56:33,840 from a real practical use case, right? 1046 00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:37,480 Not just theory, but also practical use case how this gets 1047 00:56:37,480 --> 00:56:40,000 implemented in a software consulting company, right. 1048 00:56:40,000 --> 00:56:42,120 So I think that's very interesting as well. 1049 00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:44,960 So thank you so much, Fabrice and Katrine for your time. 1050 00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:47,920 Really enjoy this conversation and learn a lot about LEAN 1051 00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:49,480 today. So thank you again for that. 1052 00:56:49,960 --> 00:56:52,320 Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. 1053 00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:54,200 That was fun. That was interesting. 1054 00:56:56,680 --> 00:56:59,960 Thank you for listening to this episode and for staying right 1055 00:56:59,960 --> 00:57:02,280 until the end if you highly enjoyed it. 1056 00:57:02,640 --> 00:57:04,880 I would appreciate if you share it with your friends and 1057 00:57:04,880 --> 00:57:07,880 colleagues who you think would also benefit from listening to 1058 00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:09,960 this episode. And if you're new to the 1059 00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:12,960 podcast, make sure to subscribe and leave me your valuable 1060 00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:15,960 review and feedback. It helps me a lot in order to 1061 00:57:15,960 --> 00:57:19,240 grow this podcast better. You can also find the full show 1062 00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:22,480 notes of this conversation on the episode page at Technically 1063 00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:25,560 journal dot dev website, including the full transcript, 1064 00:57:25,840 --> 00:57:29,440 interesting quotes and links to the resources mentioned from the 1065 00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:31,280 conversation. And lastly. 1066 00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:34,160 Make sure to subscribe to the shows mailing list on 1067 00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:37,440 technojunnel dot dev to get notified for any future 1068 00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:39,720 episodes. Stay tuned for the next 1069 00:57:39,720 --> 00:57:42,960 Technojunnel episode, and until then, goodbye.