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My guest for Episode #408 of the Lean Blog Interviews podcast is Katie Labedz, the author of the new book How to Improve Absolutely Anything: Continuous Improvement in Your Home, Office and Family Life.
Katie Labedz is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with over 20 years of experience implementing continuous improvement solutions within non-manufacturing and manufacturing environments. Her company is Learning to Lean. Katie also has her Master's certification in instructional design, her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification through PMI, and is a certified instructor/facilitator through Langevin.
In this episode, we talk with Katie Labedz about how Lean and continuous improvement apply far beyond manufacturing, including office work, IT, and everyday life. Katie shares her background in Lean and process improvement, how she began noticing waste and inefficiency outside of work, and why everyday problems — from household routines to personal workflows — are often great opportunities to practice Lean thinking. We discuss observing processes as they really are, making small experiments, and focusing on learning rather than perfection.
We also explore common misconceptions about Lean, especially the idea that it is only about tools or efficiency, and why continuous improvement works best when it is practical, human, and adaptable. Katie explains how simple habits like reflection, visualizing work, and questioning assumptions can help people improve how they work and live, one small step at a time. Throughout the conversation, we emphasize that Lean is not about rigid rules, but about developing problem-solving capability and curiosity in everyday situations.
The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in their 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity and healthcare industries. Learn more.
This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.
You can listen to the audio or watch the video, below. I hope you enjoy it like I did.
Video of the Episode:
Lean Blog Interviews: Episode 408 with Katie Labedz
Mark Graban: Hi, it's Mark Graban. Welcome to Episode 408 of the podcast. It is April 7th, 2021. Our guest today is Katie Labedz. You'll hear more about her in a minute. To get links and show notes and more, you can go to leanblog.org/408. And again, I want to thank our sponsor Stiles Associates.
We are joined today by Katie Labedz. She is the author of the new book, newly released, called How to Improve Absolutely Anything: Continuous Improvement in Your Home, Office, and Family Life. So Katie, thank you for being here today. Thanks for joining us. How are you?
Katie Labedz: Great, Mark, how are you? Thanks so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it. Excited to be here today to talk about my new book.
Mark Graban: Yeah, it will be good. You know, we're going to learn more about your background. We're going to talk about the book. And then, one other thing I just saw recently… Michigan is my home state, so I always follow closely what the Michigan Lean Consortium is doing. There's some news, I'll let you share it if you want to talk about that real quick.
Katie Labedz: Hey, thanks Mark. I greatly appreciate it. So I have recently been named the Chair of the Michigan Lean Consortium. I'm very excited about that. I grew up in Michigan also, so it's close to my heart, though I live in Wisconsin currently. What we do at the Michigan Lean Consortium is help to promote continuous improvement practices and lean thoughts in the state of Michigan to help the Michigan economy thrive and help people to continue to grow and spread the good news about lean and continuous improve1ment.
Mark Graban: Yeah, we can do the hand thing for the audience. You know, I grew up in Livonia, outside of Detroit. How about you?
Katie Labedz: For me, I grew up a little bit higher up here. I grew up in Flint, near Flint actually. I grew up in Clarkston. My parents live in Grand Blanc right now. So, to anybody that went to Bishop Foley High School in Madison Heights, or graduated from Oakland University in Rochester, that's where my background is.
Mark Graban: Well, good. I'm glad we have those Michigan connections. I'm sure we have a lot of listeners from Michigan considering the amount of lean activity that always has been going on there and continues to happen in the great state2 of Michigan. So congratulations or thank you for taking on that leadership role with the MLC and I'll make sure there's a 3link to their website in the show not4es.
Katie Labedz: Thanks so much. Yep. Michiganlean.org.
Katie's Lean Origin Story
Mark Graban: So Katie, before we talk about the book, I do like to ask guests about their Lean Origin Story. When did you first get introduced to Lean? How and where did it resonate with you to really stick with you through your career this way? What's your story?
Katie Labedz: Thanks for asking Mark. My story is an interesting one. My background is in IT. So I went to school for a Management Information Systems degree and started my professional career. I was tapped on the shoulder by two individuals. I used to work for Jabil, the largest electronics manufacturer in the world, and two individuals there saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. They tapped me on the shoulder and they said, “Hey, we'd love you to join this Green Belt class.”
And I said, “You know, I don't think so. I've done enough math.” If anybody has an IT degree, you know we do a lot of math. And I said, “I'm done with statistics. I don't really want to do that.” And they persisted, and it changed the trajectory of my entire career. That changed my focus to one of lean and continuous improvement. So obviously I got my Green Belt, moved on to my Black Belt, and I have my Master Black Belt, so never turned back. But the area of specialty for me is helping those in non-manufacturing. So IT, HR, finance, legal, healthcare, et cetera. That's my specialty and I'm able to do that because I've been in manufacturing and I have the background in non-manufacturing.
Mark Graban: Was there a moment where lean really grabbed you where you realized, okay, this is not just something you're being forced to learn, but it has become a passion and something that's really important to you? Was there a moment or was it an evolution?
Katie Labedz: I think there was definitely probably a moment when I was doing my initial Green Belt and Black Belt projects where number one, it reinforced my love of data, and number two, realizing that the data that you have is telling you the story and you just have to pay attention 5to the story in order to be able to solve your proble6ms. I think a lot of times we don't do that.
In one of my earlier lean projects, it was like, “This solution is so obvious and we never looked in that particular direction before.” So it was exciting to be able to say, “Hey, look, I'm applying everything that I've learned. I'm making things better for my employers and for my customers, and of course for my employees and my team members.” So that was really exciting and it ended up saving us money in the long run. I've seen the evolution of that over time and really, it's impactful even to you. You're a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, so you have the knowledge, skills and abilities to do all these things and show people, but when the rubber hits the road and you're seeing savings of $4 million or so with other custo7mers, that's really when even for me, it takes me a step back too. It's astonishing.
Mark Graban: Me too. So what are some key lessons or observations, Katie, when you started working and focusing on areas outside of manufacturing? I think at one point in the book you referred to something about the “carpet walkers.” Is that the phrase? How is this different when dealing with carpet walkers?
Katie Labedz: So first of all, carpet walkers, right? That's anybody that's not on the manufacturing floor. The rest of us are called carpet walkers, if you've heard that term before. And it's different for us because in many regards, a lot of the technology or a lot of the books that you read and the education that you may receive in lean and continuous improvement very much focuses on manufacturing.
The reason it's done that way is because a lot of times you can make a change in manufacturing and walk by it the next day and notice, “Oh wow, that's different. That's moved, that's updated. There's a new poster, or this whole line is configured differently.” In IT, HR, Finance, you can't necessarily walk through somebody's department like that and be able to say, “Oh wow, that report's running much faster now.”
So I think it's kind of the energy and the excitement that you get to be able to say, “Hey, behind the scenes there is so much good going on.” And then you eventually end up seeing that as it applies to your customers. So your customers start to notice that, “Oh, we don't have as much downtime,” or “Three o'clock every day our systems aren't just all slowing down at the same time.” Improvements have been made.
Mark Graban: And you know, what's sometimes called “knowledge work”–I was about to hesitate over the phrase because I think people who work on concrete floors in manufacturing are also relying on knowledge. But when we think about, let's call it office settings or electronic work, the waste is a lot of times less visible. And what I hear you saying also is that some of the changes then are also less visible. I was wondering if you could share an example or just elaborate on that a little bit.
Katie Labedz: Sure. Absolutely. There have been changes that I've worked on with customers that are extraordinarily impactful in how much time it's saving. And always the caveat, just like any other lean practitioner will tell you, Mark, and I'm sure you've told other people the same thing: This is about allowing you to have more time to do more value-added work. It's not about eliminating jobs and that's not the focus whatsoever.
From an IT standpoint, there are many instances where we have been able to implement automation. And automation goes hand in hand with IT and lean continuous improvement where things have been done manually. As an example, one report for somebody that was working on it–and it was driving this person nuts, it was all manual–it took hours and hours, like 30 hours to complete. We were able to automate that for less than a minute. There was error checking, automation, no manual lookup. Everything was in compliance to a standard they were trying to meet too. So it's extraordinarily impactful.
You can also obviously apply that to HR if you start and take a minute and look at… I hear the same story often: “How long does it take you to hire somebody?” Especially now. This is… we have even had an evolution of that process. But for some organizations it can take 120-plus days to hire somebody once they have the posting listed and they've gone through the interview process. The decision afterwards is taking a very long time–weeks even after the interviews are done to make that call. So how can we improve on that process too?
Mark Graban: Yeah. And when things take that long, companies end up losing candidates. If the process is dragged out and somebody is looking for a better job or needs a job to begin with… I mean, there are so many reasons to try to take waste out of that process. Eliminating delays and not doing a sloppy job of hiring–it just means doing it more effectively, which is good for the company, good for that candidate, good for everybody involved.
Katie Labedz: Right. And then also being able to provide feedback, right? Especially if it happens to be an internal candidate. So if you have an internal candidate for a position and you choose to hire or not to hire them, you owe them that explanation so that they can continuously develop and improve.
Continuous Improvement Definition
Mark Graban: So on that thought of improvement, there are many ways different people might define or try to summarize continuous improvement. You do so in your book–again, the title there for the listener is How to Improve Absolutely Anything. How do you define continuous improvement, 8Katie?
Katie Labedz: It's a never-ending quest to make things better. It really is. And just when you think, “Oh, I've gotten it perfect,” there's another opportunity for you to make it better again. So it's really just never sitting back on your laurels and saying, “Okay, it's good enough.”
Yeah, of course you might need time to take a break and move away from that, but you can circle back around sometime from a different perspective and say, “Wow, I could have done that differently. Here's another opportunity for improvement.” Or that can change as technology changes for us. I'm sure we've all seen that over the past year where we have had to make continuous improvement part of our day-to-day activity because it has been strange. Honestly, it's been strange for all of us. So how do we improve on something like a Kaizen event or a brainstorming even9t when we're not in person, when we're not together? Finding technology and uses of different things to be able to make them happen.
Mark Graban: So there's a couple of aspects of what you said there I think we can delve into. One is the idea, as you put it, “never ending.” I think there's sometimes this misunderstanding… you can tell when somebody maybe is new to continuous improvement when they ask a question like, “Well, what happens when we get rid of all the low hanging fruit?” Like, well, the tree continues growing and more low hanging fruit appear as we're evolving or innovating or doing new things. It seems like we're on the same page. I mean, it's just never ending because new opportunities arise. Is that fair to say?
Katie Labedz: Right. And then also my favorite item in the book is talking about how much waste is in an average process. When people think, “Oh, if I can just make this situation better and then walk away from it and never come back to it again,” an average process has 95% waste, which means there are endless opportunities for improvement. There are more opportunities for us to improve on everything every day. So when you take a look at that and say, “Oh my gosh, how can I make this process better?” until I do it again… And then of course, that wraps up the PDCA concept too.
Mark Graban: And it's funny to think about 95%, whatever that number might be. I mean, yeah, I agree with you. It's directionally correct and that often gets measured if we're looking at a value stream map of that proportion of value-added time to total time through a system, whether that's flowing through a factory or a patient coming through a healthcare value stream.
And I'm thinking back to lessons… this even goes back to things that Taiichi Ohno wrote, of looking at the difference between keeping everybody busy versus focusing on flow. I'd be curious if you can think of an example maybe from a “carpet dwelling” kind of situation where everybody is busy, but yet things don't flow. How is it that everybody can be seemingly almost 100% utilized, but that flow ratio is 5% or the waste component of the cycle time is 95%10 waiting? How is that, and what's an example that comes to mind?
Katie Labedz: Sure. I worked with a client and their process for managing their internal orders and their internal quotes was all manual. I'm talking paper and pen manual. And during that time, they didn't necessarily see that there was something… I won't say there's nothing wrong with the process. Let's back up a second and make sure that we cover: It's the process that's broken, not the person. So we all know that, but it's good to remind ourselves that it's not Sue's job that the process is moving slow or that it's manual. That's the process that they're following today.
Walking through this process with them where they didn't necessarily see that there were opportunities for improvement because “that's the way they've always done it”–we hear that quite often. And then when we start asking questions and saying, “Hey, what are opportunities for automation? How can we get rid of the manual process?” All of these conversations with this particular client started happening at the end o11f 2019, beginning of 2020. And people are in all stages of change, right? Some are reluctant to change and some embrace it.12131415
Well, change got accelerated for them when we all went into lockdown, and that was completely new for them because they've always relied on paper and they're not used to being remote. So those 16things had to be put into practice immediately. So some of the changes you may have been on the fence on, guess what, we'17re doing them right now because we're not there together to be able to hand paper back and forth to each18 other.19
And it's b20een extremely successful for them. So they've taken the… they've drunk the Kool-Aid, right? And they're following the process and they're continuously improving. They haven't said, “Since we made this new screen I can just step away and it'll be all better.” Now they're looking to say, “Well, wait a minute. We can even make it better than that.”
Mark Graban: So there's that mindset again, that being driven to continuously make things better. But I think it's interesting you look at the concept of batching. The batches may be, again, like in manufacturing, very clear and hard to miss. In office work, maybe the paper batches are more visible than electronic batches. I'm curious if you can think of some cases where flow has been improved–like you said, not blaming individuals, it's not a lack of effort, but it's the structure of the work–where does batch reduction come to play in the types of settings you work in?
Katie Labedz: I'm glad you asked that question. I have a perfect example. I worked with a group in the finance department. Just like any organization on the planet, in the finance department, speed is on their side. They need speed. They need to be able to close out the books at the end of the month and need to be able to run their reports. So from an IT perspective also, you see that surge in usage of the equipment, the software and the hardware, et cetera, towards the end of the month.2122
And then finally somebody said, “We have this many batches or this many reports being batched at the end of the month.” And somebody finally asked and said, “Do we need all of these reports?” So at the en23d of the month, there was a batch24 and 30 different reports were being run in that batch. And so we went back to finance and said, “Hey, can you take a look at these? These are all the reports that are running in a batch at the end of the month, which is causing significant strain on the system and on the hardware. Take a look at 'em, see if you need 'em. Which ones of these do you use out of 30?” Guess how many they actually used?
Mark Graban: Oh wow. Okay. I was gonna guess like six, but…
Katie Labedz: Two.
Mark Graban: Two. That's not terribly surprising.
Katie Labedz: No, it's not because things evolve over time. “You need this report” and “we thought we needed that report,” or that person moved on to a different position. And I'm sure when you start your career, I mean, I never remembered after being in places for five, six years what I asked the first year when I came on board to automate.
So that was really interesting. That was an interesting activity to be able to say, okay, now that's just one department. And that was just one area. So what happens if we started to expand that out and say, “Hey, this department or that area, or that site, or this group, or even down to this person, why are you having this being automatically run and taking resources away?” It made a huge and significant impact also on the ability to be able to use resources more effectively.
Mark Graban: Yeah. So it's always good to step back and do that check of: who is the customer for that report? Are they still using it? Having a process over time, so it's not just the once-a-decade spring cleaning of the reports, but what's a more ongoing process for making sure that list doesn't just grow instead of ever being pruned back?
Katie Labedz: Or when you're about to get audited. No, that's not a good time to do that either.
Mark Graban: You're reminding me of a story… this was in a hospital laboratory probably going back 12, 13 years ago. There was this printer. And every time I would walk by out in that lab space, it caught my eye that it was always blinking and flashing that it was out of paper. I think I made some comment about like, “Well, you know, I notice it's always blinking. What kind of process can we put in place to make sure it gets loaded with paper?” I assumed that these printouts were helpful and necessary information, and the response surprised me. They sa25id basically, “Oh, well no, that printer just churns out unnecessary paper backup copies constantly. And so we intentionally m26ake sure that printer doesn't have paper.” Like that was their workaround.
Katie Labedz: Well, that's a start.
Mark Graban: It was a start, it was a workaround or a short-term countermeasure. Because unfortunately they didn't have the ability, or it wasn't high enough priority to make the change to stop just churning out, wasting that paper. So this kind of waste pops up everywhere it seems.
Katie Labedz: It sure does.
Mark Graban: So Katie, one other thing you said that was really interesting is this idea of sometimes needing to take a break. And I think there's really something to be said for that. When we talk about continuous improvement, what do we really mean by continuous? And is there a point where if there's so much change happening, there's risk of it being overwhelming? Can you share some thoughts on when taking a break or a pause is helpful maybe to just stabilize things before then diving back into more improvement?
Katie Labedz: Absolutely. So first of all, when I'm working with a client, when we're talking about continuous improvement, and let's say we're working on a project, maybe we have a Kaizen event and we have some outcomes from that event, one of the things that I do like to remind them is that even if we are implementing our future state, we need to have that future state stable. And at a minimum it has to be for at least a quarter unless there is something time sensitive about it.
So it's all time dependent on what's happening in your particular circumstance. And like you said, it's good to take a break from it. So you've made things better. You've tried it out for at least a quarter, and it's doing really well. That's fantastic. And then what I would suggest is reviewing that after the first quarter, then come back to review it in either six months to a year. It depends on your circumstance, depends on the problem that you're trying to solve. And then come back and use the adage of “fresh eyes.” So when you come back, you're gonna have a look at it from a different perspective, even bringing in different people back to review it again where it may not be super obvious to you right now, but somebody else will look at it down the line and say, “Why did they do it like 27that?”
The Book: How to Improve Absolutely Anything
Mark Graban: So, maybe we can talk more about the book now, Katie. Again, the title is How to Improve Absolutely Anything: Continuous Improvement in Your Home, Office, and Family Life. You've talked about IT settings, manufacturing settings, office and administrative settings. So then the book is focused on, as the subtitle says, home, office and family life. So I love asking authors, you know, we've already talked about some of your lean origin story. What was the origin story for the book?
Katie Labedz: The origin story for the book was… I'm very blessed in my life and I'm very grateful for all the blessings that I have. And one of the blessings that I have is I speak at conferences–global conferences, local conferences–and I also do a lot of teaching. And that's probably the number one question is: “What book would you recommend?” And if somebody is just starting out on their journey, I wanted to be able to recommend a book to them that would be easily understood.
And I teach based on the concept that if you can apply this at home, then you can apply this at work. And if you are able to nail 5S at home, and you've got it down pat, it's much easier then for you to be able to go to work and apply the same concepts. So that's why I wrote the book.
And I also wanted it–and Mark, you and I have read books and written books–you know some books that I'm talking about where you start to read it and you're like, “Oh my gosh, this is a textbook and I should be in a college class right now reading it.” No knock on college or college classes, but some of them are pretty dry. I've read many of them just as you have. And I just couldn't relate to it in a way where I'm able to say, “How would I actually use this concept in real life?” Because if I can't explain it to anybody, then they're not going to be able to understand it either. So I needed to get it down to that level of: Here'28s how we do PDCA at home with laundry detergent. Okay. Let's be real. Everybody washes their clothes. Even if you go to a laundromat, let's talk about how we can apply those concepts there and then transition to how we can apply them at work.
Mark Graban: Yeah, and you're right, the book is written in a really nice conversational story-based tone, which I think is really engaging. I guess I should have asked first, what led to the collection of stories of what you were applying in your own home with your own family? Do you remember some of the first things where you started applying what you were learning at work in ways that were beneficial at home?
Katie Labedz: Well, sure. But you know, I don't always tell my husband that. So we apply these concepts and I don't just stop my husband and say, “Andrew, now we're gonna practice PDCA,” or “Let's now do 5S in that particular area.” So obviously I have all these concepts in my head all the time. That's why I tell people the voice, the tone you hear in the book, that's the tone in my head. That's me talking to myself all the time when it comes to these concepts.
But really it's about… especially when you first come together, when you first get married or start dating somebody and you compliment each other in many ways and then you kind of notice opportunities. My husband has definitely taught me a lot. He retired from General Motors and GM's been doing lean and continuous improvement for a very long time. He worked on the manufacturing line, so a lot of those concepts and continuous improvement we can both relate to.
I think the first one that pops out of my head though is what I talk about in the book–doing laundry. My husband's retired and obviously I work full-time. Back when I had to wear dress pants–black dress pants to work are a staple–and he was doing the laundry for us. I would hold up my dress pants and ask him like, “How do we get white stains all over my black dress pants?” And it's this delicate balance, right? So you're not gonna say, “Why are you doing that? You're ruining my clothes.” It leads to an investigation of why that was happening to begin with.
So it leads to the first question I always tell everybody: What changed? Before we were doing laundry, we didn't have this problem. And then what are the possible root causes to this? And my husband, by the way, was very much determined that it was our fabric softener sheets because that was a change. Different fabric softener sheets. But then it led us back to looking at the laundry detergent. We were using Arm & Hammer baking soda laundry detergent, which inherently is white if you cook, you know that. And it was leaving the white stains on the pants. So as soon as we ran out and tried a different laundry detergent, problem was solved. So that's probably one of the things that sticks in my mind the most is, you know, there it is. That's PDCA, that's root cause analysis right there in real life.
Mark Graban: And it goes to show, I mean, maybe it's less detectable sometimes at work… I'd say this partly in jest, like he had an agenda. It's hard to do root cause analysis when he had this anti-dryer sheet agenda. So he gravitated to that as a cause even if that maybe wasn't it.
Katie Labedz: That's right. And it happens at work, like you said, this happens at work all the time, and I refer to as “problem solving paintball.” So you have a problem and you have people going, “It's this, it's this. No, it's that, no, it's gotta be this.” When you haven't taken time to do a root cause analysis to really determine what's the root cause of your problem and what is noise.
Mark Graban: And you know, I think of a lesson I'll give credit to Pascal Dennis… let's say using this laundry example. You could be talking about it in the laundry room or in the kitchen nearby. And let's say your husband says, “Ah, okay, well why? And we talk through this. I know the root cause. It's the dryer sheets.” Like, well, one really invaluable lesson I learned from Pascal is like, if we're in a conference room, or even if we're talking about it in the shop floor, at best we have a suspected root cause. And then we would go and implement a countermeasure, which might include eliminating the dryer sheets. We haven't yet… we wouldn't say we know root cause, but then you could go do a load of laundry without the dryer sheets and then, oh, guess what? There's still white residue. Okay. We learned something. The root cause is clearly not the dryer sheets.
Katie Labedz: Right. Even if that evidence is pretty strong. It kind of goes back to the definition like we talked at the beginning about continuous improvement. It's a never-ending quest to make things better. But it's also making sure that we approach that in a logical manner to be able to solve those problems.
It's also learning. That is so important. You hear people all the time say, “I've failed, or I've done this, or I've done that.” And often I coach folks through that and say, “It's okay because you will learn something from this.” All of my challenges and all of the things that I've been through in my life, I've learned something from it. So I've either learned like, “Yes, this is a great way to approach it,” or “No, I'm not gonna do that again.” And it's okay. And I think many times we don't give ourselves as humans enough grace to be able to say, it's okay. I've learned that I really don't like this food. Or I don't wanna live here, or I don't want a job like that, or the next company I'm gonna go to I would like a different culture. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you learn something from it.
Practical Tips and Tricks
Mark Graban: Yeah. That's a great point. So the book isn't completely about laundry, but there's a section in the back of the book of practical tips and tricks. I think there is some time and a place for sharing examples of improvement because you can, as the late Norm Bodek would say, “steal shamelessly.” There's nothing wrong if somebody else has a countermeasure to a problem that you also have.
One that stood out to me as one I hadn't ever thought of is related to laundry: This idea of using a dry erase marker to write instructions on the dryer. I thought that was really clever because that enam29el finish wipes off really easily.
Katie Labedz: Right. And you have your erasers, right? Even if you didn't have an eraser, you can use your fingers or a Kleenex or an old dryer sheet. Wipe it off.
Mark Graban: Oh, there you go. Another use for the dryer sheet earning its keep.
Katie Labedz: Yeah. And a lot of my friends have kids. Our kids are four-legged, but my friends that have two-legged children talk about that all the time. So it's a kid's jersey or something that needs to be washed from physical activity outside, but can't go in the dryer because it's going to shrink. Right? And it's simple. And that's really the key to the whole content of the book is all of this stuff is simple. I'm not telling you anything that you need a PhD to be able to do. This is all just simple common sense type of activities or things that you can do that are low to no cost.
And that's the other aspect of it too, is that I think sometimes when they think of getting organized or doing improvements, they think it costs money. They think that, “Oh, we have to go to the Container Store,” or places like that. I'm an advocate of reuse if you have it, or let's do something cheap. Go to the dollar store. It doesn't have to be super expensive to do those. And that's at home and at work.
Mark Graban: Yes. That is a classic continuous improvement lesson: Creativity before capital. Mind over money.
Thinking to that section in the back on practical tips and tricks, is there one, Katie, that stands out to you as a favorite? If you were to share one trick with any household in America, what would you share?
Katie Labedz: I think the one that helps me the most, that I probably use the most, quite frankly, is the grocery list. And I have the grocery list segregated out. I have to say, I come from a line of organized people. My parents actually have an Excel spreadsheet for the grocery store that lists all the items and what aisle it's in.
So that little quick grocery list really helps to keep me organized when I go to the grocery store because it drives me nuts just to have a list of things that I need. If I can put them in categories and segregate them, it's more likely I won't forget something.
Mark Graban: Yeah. And even beyond the not forgetting, I'm thinking when I do grocery shopping… let's say if I've got four recipes that I'm planning out and I'm gonna go do that shopping as a batch. I know the grocery store well enough. I know the first department I'm gonna walk through is vegetables and produce. So I will put everything from those different recipes into the produce category. And then there's like the dairy category, the meat category, the center of the store category. And so then what that leads to is not having to double back and say, “Ugh, I gotta walk all the way across the store because I need a cucumber.”
Katie Labedz: Right. That list is laid out the same way as the grocery store is, for the most part.
Mark Graban: And my other favorite one is the red folder. So I'm sure you've read in the book it talks about using this plastic red folder that you could probably get for a dollar or cheaper or buy it in bulk on Amazon. This red folder has… I have used that technique for years. In my life, I have had the privilege of traveling all over the world and I don't like where things are just in random places in my bags. I wanna quickly get to them.
So it's a plastic, it happens to be red folder. And inside the folder are all my travel documents. So my boarding passes, things like that. And then I also put my receipts in there. So when I come back from travel, I have all my receipts in one place instead of “Did I put in my purse, my pocket, my coat, my backpack?”
It's red and plastic because of the color and the texture. Because I'd like to be able to go into my backpack without looking. I can just feel “where's that red envelope” and pull it out because of the texture of it.
Mark Graban: So we are birds of a feather because I use a similar kind of plastic folder method. But I think where I could improve upon my improvement is leveraging your idea of the red folder, because then if it's coming down to a matter of visibility, there it is. So that's a great tip.
One other example there that jumped out to me that I think can apply to the office setting or a work from home setting is the idea of color coding meetings. Can you share a little bit about that idea?
Katie Labedz: Absolutely. So it doesn't matter what email platform that you have. I use Gmail and Outlook and every system allows you to do this. But I color code my meetings and my calendars. So any meeting that is a one-on-one, like this, will be a green color. And maybe I have a personal meeting on Friday, maybe I have a doctor's appointment. I put that in my calendar and I color it purple. Anytime I have a Kaizen event, I have that in red.
So when I open my calendar–I always open my calendar on Sunday–I can be able to quickly distinguish and see what's happening during the week. You can expand this to beyond your calendar. You can do this for your emails. So I have folders in Gmail that are a specific color based on what topic I'm talking a30bout. You can do this also in Outlook. So if you use Outlook, let's say every incoming mail from Mark I want it to be green. You can put in a rule in place so that it highlights the email coming into your inbox in green so you can automatically see it. Or color it in red if it happens to be a system warning or something like that. Very quick and easy to be able to do. It makes you so much more efficient.
Mark Graban: Yeah. And whether that's Mac and the Apple ecosystem, or Gmail or Outlook, there are different ways of addressing that similar issue.
Katie Labedz: Yep. Use the colors. Hopefully you are able to be able to see color and be able to utilize that too.
Mark Graban: Just one of the many issues with red/green color coding of metrics. Not me, but other men who tend to be more likely to be red/green colorblind than women.
Katie Labedz: Absolutely. So you have to take that into account. And not everybody raises their hand when they say, “Hi, welcome to my team, I'm colorblind.” You have to be able to work from there to make sure the metrics are understandable even if they happen to be published in black and white.
The Virtual Workplace and Resistance to Change
Mark Graban: One other thing I wanted to ask you. You've mentioned this virtual world that we've been working in for this last year. Are there any particular lessons that come to mind about facilitating or leading improvement or working with people in a virtual meeting mode? Ideas that you've found helpful in terms of improving how you do that?
Katie Labedz: Sure. First of first of all, at the beginning of a meeting, have everybody turn their cameras on. It's really hard to have a meeting when you're just staring at a black screen with names under boxes. So one of the things that I do suggest is, you know, even though people may feel reluctant, by now we've seen everybody's cat, kid, dog, everything that is happening in the background.
But you know, it's first of all making sure that everybody can be seen and then understanding your audience. Going back to the concept that we all know, Voice of the Customer. And making sure that you understand how they prefer to interact. So if you do ask questions, instead of sitting here going, “Bueller, Bueller, is anybody gonna respond to me?”, understand that maybe they really like the chat feature and how can we use that? Or putting people in breakout rooms.
And then of course using technology that makes it feel like we're together. And it's not just using Zoom or GoToMeeting. I'm talking about technology like Miro and mural.com, whiteboard on Teams. It makes it feel like we're actually there together. You can see people's names hovering around when they're moving their cursor and they're picking up a sticky note. I have done these sessions now numerous times, and out of everything that I've been teaching and the interactions I've been having, people like that the most.
Mark Graban: Yeah. One other thing, Katie, before we wrap up. This comes back to workplace issues. What are some of your thoughts about the phrase “resistance to change”? Lessons that you've learned about motivations and when we're sensing this resistance, what does that tell us? What should we or what could we do in those circumstances?
Katie Labedz: Sure. So obviously there's a lot of fear that goes along with change and resistance to change. There's a couple things that I suggest. First of all, knowing what that person values. What do they value? I talk about in the book, you know, some people value time, other people value money, other people value sleep. Right? So what does that person value when they're resisting change?
And then making sure that you understand what's driving that resistance. Many times it's because they feel like they're not part of the solution. So they kind of feel like they're standing on the sidelines and they're not part of that actual solution. So you want to make sure that you can engage them and make sure that they can become a part of it.31
And then of course, understanding how they learn too. So if you are telling a group of peop32le over Zoom that we're gonna make all these changes, maybe that person learns better by actually seeing something on the screen. Sometimes people just need bullet points. Sometimes they're kinesthetic learners, so they need to be able to understand by doing. So getting their engagement, getting their buy-in and getting them curious. Getting people curious about what's around the next corner is really what you're trying to do. “How can we make this better?” And kind of making a game of it where we're saying, “How much better could we be? What great things can we accomplish together?”
And then celebrating those accomplishments, which is hard right now in our virtual world because Mark, you and I can't go out for coffee to celebrate this. So figuring out other ways that people like to be celebrated. I know a lot of people have tried after-hours Zoom coffee chats or Zoom cocktails. For other people, it may be just sending them an email and saying, “Thanks, you did a great job. This is fantastic.” Or virtual gift cards still work today.
Mark Graban: Katie, I really want to thank you verbally here in front of the audience. Thank you for taking time and being a guest today and having the discussion. Our guest again has been Katie Labedz. Her book is How to Improve Absolutely Anything: Continuous Improvement in Your Home, Office, and Family Life. For those of you watching on YouTube, you can see the “Learning to Lean” logo on her shirt. The website Katie has for that is learningtolean.training. The Michigan Lean Consortium is michiganlean.org.
I guess that best way for people to contact you if they wanna learn more… The book is certainly available on Amazon and there's a website for the book?
Katie Labedz: https://www.google.com/search?q=howtoimproveabsolutelyanything.com. Same tag for social media. You can reach out to me on Facebook or any social media or on my webpage. My email is info@learningtolean.training. Love to be able to talk to you.
Mark Graban: All right. Well good. I hope people reach out. I hope people will check out the book and give it a read. When people get excited about lean and they start applying it to things in their own home, that melts away some of this idea that they are resistant to change. They go home and do things because it's self-initiated of their own self-interest and self-benefit. These people aren't resistant to change, maybe they're just not engaged the right way in the workplace.
I love these examples and I'm really thankful that you did your book. So congratulations for that. And thank you again for being here as my guest.
Katie Labedz: Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate being here.
Mark Graban: Well, thanks again to Katie for being a great guest. You can learn more about her work and her book by going to leanblog.org/408. Thank you for subscribing and please rate and review the podcast. And if you like the podcast, the best thing you can do is to share it with others. Please share the episode on social media. Please tag me and Katie, especially if you share it on LinkedIn. That's gonna help more people learn about Katie's book. And thank you again for spreading and sharing what we're doing here on the podcast.
Announcer: Thanks for listening. This has been The Lean Blog podcast. For lean news and commentary updated daily, visit www.leanblog.org. If you have any questions or comments about this podcast, email mark at leanpodcast@gmail.com.
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