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My guest for Episode #419 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Allison Greco, an industrial engineer, a Six Sigma Black Belt, and the founder of Continuous Improvement International, a professional society that you can join today.
In this episode, we'll hear about her Lean Six Sigma origin story (which was in the railroad industry). We'll also hear, at the end, how she applied continuous improvement thinking to her participation in pageants (winning Mrs. Oklahoma).
Topics, questions, and links related to today's episode include:
- How to navigate C.I. in this hybrid work world
- Why start Continuous Improvement International (CII)
- What's the best thing / worst thing about continuous improvement and entrepreneurship?
- Her upcoming conferences in Tulsa and Omaha
- Her articles about C.I. and pageants
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.
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Automated Transcript (Not Guaranteed to be Defect Free)
Here is the cleaned-up transcript of the podcast featuring Mark Graban and Allison Greco.
Introduction and Origin Story
Mark Graban: Hi everybody. Welcome to the podcast. We're joined today by Allison Greco. She is the founder of her organization called Continuous Improvement International. So Allison, thank you for joining us here today. How are you?
Allison Greco: I'm doing very well. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me to join you today.
Mark Graban: Oh, I'm glad we can have the conversation. Tell everyone a little bit about Continuous Improvement International. It's an interesting start–is it still fair to call it a startup?
Allison Greco: I would definitely say Continuous Improvement International is still in the startup phase. In January, we launched our “DAM Good” membership: Development, Accountability, and Mentorship. It's a fresh, modern professional society for continuous improvement professionals, process improvers, and Lean practitioners to come together and grow our skills so that we can all work on improving our businesses.
Mark Graban: And the website for that is?
Allison Greco: https://www.google.com/search?q=Continuousimprovement.com.
Mark Graban: Okay, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes. We'll have a chance to talk about your organization and what makes it different, modern, and unique later in the episode. But I do like to ask guests a standard question: What's your Lean Six Sigma origin story?
Allison Greco: My origin story is really working for the railroad–kind of an unusual path. I had an opportunity to intern with the Lean team at Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, now BNSF, and we worked on optimizing railroad maintenance. That's actually my first exposure not only to Lean but also to “Gemba walking,” as I would call it.
As part of my training, they dropped me off at the Kansas City rail yard and told me that when I made it to L.A., I could hop on a flight and come home. So, I literally hopped freight trains for a week, learning how to navigate train management systems and understanding how things worked from a conductor and an engineer's perspective. This was so that I could really understand how the business worked when I went back to do my work in maintenance.
Mark Graban: Do people still hop unauthorized rides on trains like back in the day, or in cartoons or movies? You were doing this in an authorized way?
Allison Greco: I have never witnessed it myself, but I've read stories about those who do trespass and hop freight trains. One of the bigger problems with trains is all of the graffiti that you see on them, so people must still be trespassing in rail yards doing their graffiti art.
Mark Graban: Wow. All right, so you made it to L.A. on your Gemba rides on the trains. You were safe? I was just worried in hindsight.
Allison Greco: I was actually inside the locomotive. I was not hanging on the little ladder. I was inside the freight train locomotives.
Mark Graban: Okay, that paints a better picture. So you're getting the perspectives of the conductor and engineer?
Allison Greco: Yeah, the conductor and an engineer.
Mark Graban: And as part of that, for a railroad, what were their goals and objectives when it came to continuous improvement? I bet the conductor and the engineer had a lot of ideas.
Allison Greco: They did have a lot of ideas. The railroad was very data-driven, so we had really great operational metrics that we were driving towards. Our continuous improvement goals were really the operational goals, such as on-time delivery of the freight and making sure those trains arrived in the rail yard on time.
In maintenance, we were looking at rail speed and making sure that we were maintaining the tracks so that the trains could travel over them at the designed speed. Of course, if we're not doing a good job of maintaining the tracks, then you have slowdowns and construction zones just like you do on a highway.
Mark Graban: When you were getting this introduction, what was their process in terms of training? They were framing it as Lean Six Sigma, correct?
Allison Greco: Actually, at the time, the railroad had a Lean department and a Six Sigma department. In maintenance, we primarily looked at Lean, and in the area of the business where they worked on the rail cars, they did more of a Six Sigma approach. So, they definitely worked in both Lean and Six Sigma.
Mark Graban: Did you go through a typical training belt progression when you were there at BNSF?
Allison Greco: I didn't go through my belt progression until quite a bit later in my career. I learned the fundamentals within the railroad–learned all about Lean and how to work projects–but it wasn't until I went to utilities many years later that I earned my Black Belt.
Applying Lean in Non-Manufacturing Settings
Mark Graban: You've worked in a lot of different settings where people probably hit you with the concern: “We don't build cars. How does this apply to us?”
Allison Greco: That has been my whole career. We typically hear about Lean Six Sigma in the manufacturing world, and I even went to school for Industrial Engineering, which is very much geared toward manufacturing and assembly lines.
But in my career, I've always worked in non-manufacturing. We're providing mostly a service: railroad, government, oil and gas, and utilities. We were able to quickly demonstrate how to use those same concepts and the same mentality to make improvements in a service-based industry.
Mark Graban: You've navigated these different industries and environments after navigating the trains. One thing we've been navigating over this past year-plus is virtual environments. We've had a couple of guests on the podcast talk about doing virtual improvement work, but now we're moving into what people are calling a hybrid working world. What are your thoughts on that? How do you describe this new hybrid working model?
Allison Greco: The hybrid working model is really, I think, the future of work in an excellent way. As we say, “respect for people.” It's an excellent way to respect people–they get time in the office, but they also get the benefits of working from home. It's a great way to engage your employees and provide them with a better opportunity to manage their work and life. But it also creates a lot of challenges, especially for leaders and continuous improvers.
Mark Graban: That probably means everything from certain days of the week where specific people are physically there and some are at home, to different settings like a class or an event. We're trying to navigate this blended model where we have people on screens and people in the room. Have you navigated that yet? What are some of your first experiences or tips?
Allison Greco: It's quite a challenge because companies are trying to figure out right now how to navigate it. Are there “A days” and “B days” where certain departments are there on Mondays and Tuesdays, and others on Wednesdays and Thursdays? It's going to be a lot more complex than that for a lot of organizations.
Now that we've had this opportunity where we are home with our children, spouses, or dogs, our expectations have changed quite a bit. Especially as continuous improvers, we are accustomed to working in person. We love our rapid improvement events, our Kaizen events, and in-person training. Now that we don't have that place where we can bring everyone into the room together, it's tough and creates challenges.
The first challenge that companies really need to overcome is getting personal at work. We tend to put up this wall between what is work and what is home. Now that the wall is completely gone, employers have to get accustomed to asking those personal questions, but in a way that's work-related.
What we instruct the organizations we work with at CII to do is start having those conversations with employees. Ask them: What are the challenges you have at home? Are there things we need to be aware of that are impacting your work? What can we do to help you be more successful at work?
Building Personal Connections in a Hybrid World
Mark Graban: That makes sense. Thinking back to people I've been working with virtually over this past year, you get a glimpse sometimes literally into their home, and that creates a different opportunity to get to know each other better.
This morning I hosted a webinar, and one of the panel participants was working from home. Dogs started barking in the background, and she was embarrassed–mortified. But I think people have become a lot more gracious when things like that happen. This is just life right now, whether it's a kid, a dog, or a firetruck going by.
I can think of some colleagues where I'm not a small talker, and I should probably be better about asking about people's families within appropriate boundaries. But as we've gotten those glimpses into home life, I've gotten to know details about their lives that they might not have shared in a typical sterile workplace environment.
Allison Greco: Right. And I think there's a lot too that we maybe previously hid. For example, my kids get out of school at 2:30. I've told my team that I will meet with them until 2:30, but at 2:30, I really need to leave and pick up my children. In the past, I might have had to really struggle around how to get them picked up on time, but now that I can just pop out of my house, be gone for 15 minutes, and come back, it's just acceptable.
Now we can understand how to accommodate our employees better to keep them more engaged. Instead of me trying to join a conference call at 2:30 while picking up my kids and trying to hide that fact, now it's okay. We can talk about it and work through those things.
Mark Graban: Do you think that deeper level of personal connection translates into working together more effectively when it comes to the job at hand?
Allison Greco: It absolutely does. And then I think we're also discovering that we have a lot more in common with each other than maybe we previously thought. We all have a lot of the same challenges or interests. Like the dogs barking–now we all know who likes dogs and we can connect over that.
Mark Graban: Was that a cat?
Allison Greco: That was my children. Oh, did you hear that?
Mark Graban: I heard something.
Allison Greco: They are three rooms over. It's okay. I was actually doing a webinar on how to do continuous improvement in the virtual work environment, and here walks my four-year-old waving to everybody. I thought, “Well, there you go.”
Mark Graban: Did people think you planned that?
Allison Greco: No, I don't think so. I think I probably had a shocked look on my face.
Adapting CI Events and Training
Mark Graban: What are some other factors when it comes to the hybrid work world? You mentioned things we would ideally want to do in person: rapid improvement events, Gemba walks, huddles. What are your thoughts on those practices in a hybrid world?
Allison Greco: Things like rapid improvement events and Kaizen events can, in some ways, be done more effectively now. In the past, we had struggles with scheduling. If you have a company with four locations, it's a nightmare trying to schedule everyone to be in the same location for the same days. Now that we're doing hybrid events, we can do them a lot more easily because people don't have to travel.
The things I encourage people to think about are, first, shortening the events. An eight-hour rapid improvement event looking at a computer screen is not effective. But you can effectively chunk that into three or four-hour pieces where you can get some solid work done and keep people's attention.
Second, people don't really think about leveling the playing field in the hybrid world. If you have people in an office and people at home, you have to ensure balance. If I'm the only person at home and there are six or seven people sitting around a conference table, that playing field is not level. I will be left out as the one single person every single time. I will be an afterthought.
You have to be really creative in trying to balance that and respecting the person who's remote alongside those in the room. Maybe you get half on the computer and half in the room, take turns, or swap it up.
Mark Graban: I agree regarding the screen fatigue and how long people can really be engaged. I think virtual conferences are most effective when people figure out quickly to do shorter days spread across more days. We're not paying for additional hotel nights, so you can do three hours a day for four days instead of two full days.
I think that's a continuous improvement that should apply to in-person conferences too. A larger number of 20-minute talks can be more engaging than trying to carry a whole hour. Maybe smaller batches is the way to go regardless of the format.
Allison Greco: Absolutely. And that goes for training as well. In pre-COVID Lean training, the thought was you would go to a class for multiple days in a row–maybe Monday through Friday for 40 hours. In a hybrid world, that is not effective. It's actually more effective for the human brain to learn in short chunks.
You can get creative in training in two or three-hour sections, giving students an opportunity to digest. Or, some things we've been exploring with the CII membership is one hour once a week, providing homework so you can go apply that concept and build on it each week.
Mark Graban: That model of learn, do, reflect, and come back to learn some more. I wonder what the applications are when it comes to belt training and certification. Instead of long chunks of classroom time and then going off to do a project, we might be coming back to the idea of smaller batches.
Allison Greco: Right. At CII, we're working on a new certification and training course as well, and that's exactly the approach we're going to take. Smaller batches where you can learn some concepts, work on your project, then come back, work on the next piece, and have time to apply what you're learning in between. I think we'll start to see that shift, or at least more options, especially with belt training.
Continuous Improvement International (CII) and Certifications
Mark Graban: Let's dig into that a little deeper. What levels of belt certification do you offer at CII?
Allison Greco: We are currently developing two levels: Continuous Improvement Practitioner and Continuous Improvement Professional. The Practitioner is for someone who is going to do projects in addition to their day-to-day work. The Professional would be for the person who does continuous improvement as their full-time profession.
We're working on the certification process right now. It takes you through how to identify a project, initiate change management, stakeholder analysis, all the way through facilitation skills. Our approach to facilitation skills is changing because of COVID; it needs to cover not just in-person but virtually as well.
Mark Graban: Do you have people asking for the “belt” label? I ask because I have some Lean certification from 20 years ago at Honeywell where they had a formal program, but they didn't call it a belt. I'm not necessarily the biggest advocate for the belt terminology. But are people saying, “Yeah, but what color is my belt?”
Allison Greco: It is very widespread, so it's going to take some time to change that mentality and the “old guard” idea that it has to be Green Belt and Black Belt. Right now, I describe the Practitioner as roughly Green Belt equivalent, and the Professional as roughly Black Belt equivalent, but they're different and unique.
One of the things I struggled with in hiring new employees is asking, “What is a Black Belt?” You discover very quickly that a Black Belt to one person and a Black Belt to another can be entirely different things. We're working at CII to develop a new standard so that when you have a Practitioner certification, you know exactly what level of rigor was required to earn it.
Mark Graban: You really do have to dig into the details of where they got their belt. There is a surprising amount of variation–did they just pass a test, or did they go through a project mentored by the appropriate level?
It sounds like you're trying to rethink what it means to be part of a professional organization. I'm a member of the Society for Health Systems, part of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers. There's a traditional model there. What was the spark for trying a different model? Like with any entrepreneur, I'm sure you saw a need or something missing from your own experiences.
Allison Greco: That's exactly what it was. I was sitting in my office at one of the companies I worked for, and through my window, I could see another company. I thought, “I wonder what they're doing over there. What is their improvement team like? What are their struggles?”
I looked for an organization that would bring us together and really didn't find one. Or, I found groups sprung up by volunteers that fell apart when the volunteer moved to a new position. I knew we needed an organization with core support that is always there but is much more member-driven.
We focus on listening to what practitioners need and what their struggles are. We hear a lot of challenges with soft skills–how to influence, how to work through change management. We can totally kill it on the hard skills like process mapping and data analytics, but we struggle with things like getting your boss on board or handling a naysayer. Through CII, we provide avenues to bring people together and focus on those soft skills that go far beyond what you just learn in books.
Mark Graban: I can see that being very helpful. It's not just knowing what to do, but how to go about it–how to engage the people doing the work. And under the banner of “Continuous Improvement,” you're welcoming people doing Lean, Six Sigma, etc. You're less framed around a particular methodology?
Allison Greco: Right, because we want to meet people where they are. If an organization has been working on their Six Sigma journey for 10 years, the same tools and skills we're teaching can be applied. Whether you call it operational excellence, process improvement, or Lean, we're all driving towards continuous improvement.
Mark Graban: And membership is completely individual-based?
Allison Greco: We offer corporate and individual memberships. A company can apply for a membership for their whole team, or you can join as an individual. It's for those just getting started and those who are more seasoned but want to continue to grow.
Mark Graban: What are some of the other features or benefits of CII for the members?
Allison Greco: We have a member portal with a library of courses–introduction to change management, stakeholder analysis, and unique courses developed exclusively for CII, like how to do virtual improvement events. We have a concept called “improvement agility” to improve at a faster pace.
We have a library of templates, so you don't have to recreate RACI templates or eight-step models. We have a moderated community for members to connect and share lessons. And we offer live events via Zoom regularly. “CI Cafe” is where members get together for a facilitated discussion. “Meeting of the Minds” is that one hour a week where we work on soft skills together.
The Entrepreneurial Journey
Mark Graban: This is your first time as an entrepreneur after being in different corporate settings.
Allison Greco: It is my first time as an entrepreneur, but when I earned my MBA, I had an emphasis in entrepreneurship. I developed a business plan for a new technology being developed at the University of Oklahoma and won the business plan competition. So I always knew there would be an entrepreneurial gig in my future; I just didn't know at the time what it was going to be.
Mark Graban: How has your experience thinking about process as an industrial engineer helped you in a startup venture?
Allison Greco: My background with Lean has been tremendously helpful. I did a problem statement, dug in to document what problem I was trying to solve, and identified all my stakeholders. It gave me structure.
But probably the biggest benefit has been the mentality of continuous improvement and “fail forward.” We've tried a lot of things in CII that have not worked. We did surveys where customers said they wanted something, and when we did exactly that, it didn't work. We keep trying new things, listening to customers, and we're willing to fail.
Mark Graban: Failures happen. With continuous improvement, sometimes a solid hypothesis doesn't play out as expected. You learn something and keep moving forward. I have another podcast series called “My Favorite Mistake.” A future guest, Melissa Perry–also an industrial engineer working in software product management–brought up the same dynamic. There's what the customer says they want versus what they actually do.
Lean Startup methodology says: How quickly can you go test the hypothesis? People say they will pay money for this–how quickly can we test if they actually enter their credit card number?
Allison Greco: Absolutely. One of the biggest positive failures was that because of COVID, we had to delay the launch of the membership. That delay gave us an extended beta test, which was tremendously helpful. That's where we really learned that what the customer said they wanted and what they actually wanted were different.
Mark Graban: [Referencing a background noise] I think that might be what I heard. It sounded like what I heard before.
Allison Greco: That's the cat.
Mark Graban: Okay. I've got no pets here to interrupt, no kids. My wife is at an office. Hopefully, the condo building won't do a fire alarm test. But I appreciate your openness. This is the entrepreneur's journey–trying things, and not everything works.
Here is a challenge I'd like your thoughts on regarding the “gray area” when trying something new: Is it not working, or is it not working yet? How do you figure that out?
Allison Greco: That is probably one of the most difficult parts of being an entrepreneur. We try our best to have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help identify trends and signs of future success. In entrepreneurship–and probably to a certain extent with continuous improvement–it's a little bit of an art rather than science.
There's a little bit of faith you have to have, and a willingness to hold out just a little bit longer if you don't have great metrics. Startups often don't have a lot of great things to measure to indicate whether success is coming.
Mark Graban: It is tough. When we talk about change management in workplace improvements, there is often a performance dip just because we're trying a new way of working that isn't comfortable yet. You have to listen to feedback: Is there a learning curve, or is this terrible?
You might need to stick with it a little longer. My co-author for my Healthcare Kaizen books, Joe Swartz, mentioned an organizational rule of thumb–maybe “seven days grace”–where they test a change and don't declare victory or give up too quickly. It depends on the cycles you go through.
Allison Greco: Measuring the cycles is a big part of it. I worked on a project regarding the monthly close–closing the books, essentially balancing a checkbook. When you're doing a process that only occurs once a month, you have to wait through multiple cycles (months) to see how it's going. That can be trying.
But right now, I'm working with a company implementing software, and they are measuring user adoption on a daily basis. So, your timeline for patience has to be different based on what you are improving. Seven days grace for a software system is reasonable, but for an accounting process, it's more like seven months.
Best Thing, Worst Thing
Mark Graban: I'm going to try out a new question here called “Best Thing, Worst Thing.” First, regarding continuous improvement–coaching, teaching, etc.–what is the best thing about it, and what is the worst thing?
Allison Greco: The best thing about continuous improvement, by far, is “light bulb moments.” Those moments in the classroom or coaching when you see the spark in their eyes, and they finally understand what you're trying to accomplish. They see how continuous improvement can change their life. Once you taste it, you're hooked.
Mark Graban: The addictive nature of continuous improvement.
Allison Greco: Yes, the addictive nature. Then you go home and want to continuously improve your entire life–make your kids do checklists and 5S their playroom. Guilty.
Mark Graban: One of my recent guests, Katie Leeds from the Michigan Lean Consortium, has a book called How to Improve Absolutely Anything that incorporates examples from home. When people are empowered and initiating change that matters to them, great things happen.
Now the flip side: What is the worst thing about continuous improvement?
Allison Greco: The biggest challenge is when you have someone who has the light bulb moment, but their supervisor or leader doesn't support it. It's the most difficult thing any continuous improver goes through–trying to sell it up the channel.
Sometimes you can take the leader to the Gemba and show them the pain, but sometimes you just have a leader who doesn't seem to get it and continues to resist despite your best efforts.
Mark Graban: Whether they are dismissive of an employee's idea or the whole concept, that is frustrating. How we influence people–or if we influence our situation by leaving–those are tough questions.
Now, regarding your journey as an entrepreneur: Best thing, worst thing?
Allison Greco: Best thing: Full and complete ownership. Having full control in all decisions, even the bad ones. It is absolutely the most fulfilling thing I have done, creating something that can help others improve.
Mark Graban: The fact that you say responsibility and ownership is the best thing might be what really makes someone an entrepreneur. Some people would run from that.
Allison Greco: So many people would run. Having seen both corporate and entrepreneurship, I sometimes miss the comforts of corporate–knowing I'll have a paycheck and that HR and IT departments exist. But I gain so much in self-fulfillment.
Mark Graban: Is that part of the “worst thing”?
Allison Greco: Other than COVID being the worst thing? I would say one of the worst things honestly is the self-doubt. You are never certain if it's the right decision, and there is no safety net. There is a lot of fear and anxiety. You have to remind yourself about the self-fulfillment to get rid of the self-doubt.
In-Person Events and Pageantry
Mark Graban: You're organizing some in-person events. Tell the audience about that.
Allison Greco: I am most excited about our in-person events. We have “Continuous Improvement in Nebraska” on September 2nd in Omaha, and “Continuous Improvement in Oklahoma” on September 16th in Tulsa. We are developing smaller regional conferences to bring people back together while keeping travel reduced and expenses low.
Mark Graban: What is the voice of the customer saying right now about the willingness to come back to in-person events?
Allison Greco: Continuous improvers are eager to get back together but are still a little hesitant, mostly driven by corporate requirements. Companies are a bit more hesitant and will dip their toe in the water before opening the floodgates.
Mark Graban: Do you want to drop any names of who those speakers are?
Allison Greco: In Tulsa, we have Jason Ketchum from ONE Gas and Sarah Gallagher from Persimmon. We just announced Matthew Singh is coming to Omaha; he works for the State of Nebraska. We also have Rachel Prudhomme and Jesse DePue.
Mark Graban: One other thing I wanted to ask you. It says on your LinkedIn profile that you were Mrs. Oklahoma America 2008-2009. Did your background in continuous improvement affect the pageant process, or has the pageant process helped you in your career?
Allison Greco: The process of pageants has helped me in my career more than I would have ever imagined. I was drawn to pageants because I've always worked in male-dominated fields like engineering and utilities.
Pageants taught me about understanding how others perceive you–what is your personal brand? When we think about influencing others in CI, understanding how you communicate is incredibly important. Pageants helped me balance my hard skills with soft skills, like listening and relating to people.
Mark Graban: There is a hierarchy, right? You had to win different pageants to win Mrs. Oklahoma?
Allison Greco: Mrs. Oklahoma is application-based. If chosen, you are given a local title. I was Mrs. Enid when my husband was in Air Force pilot training. From there, I won Mrs. Oklahoma, went to the Mrs. America pageant, and placed in the top 12.
Mark Graban: Do you get specific feedback through that process?
Allison Greco: You do. There is an intensive preparation process. I did mock interviews where people asked every tough question they could think of to “stump the chump.” I had subject matter experts help with fitness, nutrition, posing, walking, and poise.
Mark Graban: Well, thank you for sharing that. Allison Greco, founder of Continuous Improvement International (https://www.google.com/search?q=continuousimprovement.com). As it says on the sign behind you for those watching the video: “Educate, Execute, Engage.”
Allison Greco: I appreciate the opportunity. I'm looking forward to the future of CII because I know there is so much potential when we join together to grow, share, and learn.
Mark Graban: Thanks again for being a guest here with us today.
Allison Greco: You're welcome.
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