What a Unicorn Knows: Interview with Authors Matt May & Pablo Dominguez

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Joining us for Episode #469 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast are Matt May and Pablo Dominguez, the authors of the new book What a Unicorn Knows: How Leading Entrepreneurs Use Lean Principles to Drive Sustainable Growth. It's available now!

Matt has been before, in episodes 67 and 103… and he was my guest for episode 39 of My Favorite Mistake.

Pablo Dominguez is an Operating Partner at Insight Partners, a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that drive transformative change in their industries.

Pablo has spent his entire career as a go-to-market and sales-focused operator, working in consulting, public companies, startups, and, most recently, ScaleUps. The application of lean principles has figured centrally in driving sustainable growth in each of these ventures.

Matthew E. May leads the Lean ScaleUp program at Insight Partners, with Pablo.  His mastery of lean principles and methodologies comes from spending nearly a decade inside the Toyota organization, where he played an integral part in launching the University of Toyota, a corporate university dedicated to teaching, preserving, and expanding the Toyota Way. Previously the author of many great books, including The Elegant Solution and, most recently, Winning the Brain Game.

In this episode, we discuss their new book and how they are both influenced by Toyota and broader Lean thinking, including the Lean Startup methodology — and we discuss the questions and topics listed below:

Questions, Notes, and highlights:

• Pablo, since this is your first time here, it would be great to hear your “Lean origin story”
• Helping people cope with the discovery of waste and opportunities to improve? Feeling bad about it before moving forward?
• Congratulations on the release of the book… in startup circles, what's meant by the term “Unicorn”?
• What's a ScaleUp compared to a startup?
• What is product-market fit? An example?
• Risk of trying to scale prematurely?
• One of the core themes in your model is “Constant experimentation” 
• Investors – do they want to hear about “constant experimentation”? Do they want certainty?
• How to prevent Big Company Syndrome (a.k.a., Big Company Disease)?
• What is meant by “Lean ScaleUp”?
• How do you react when you hear this aversion to “process” in agile or startup circles, as if process means being inflexible?
• What's a “lean kaizen sprint”?
• Applying this to the sales process?
• Lessons Toyota about “building team spirit”?
• Building teamwork across silos?

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in its 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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This podcast is part of the Lean Communicators network — check it out!

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Automated Transcript (Not Guaranteed to be Defect Free)

Announcer (1s):
Welcome to the Lean Blog podcast. Visit our website www.leanblog.org. Now, here's your host, Mark Graban.

Mark Graban (13s):
Hi everybody, it's Mark Graban here. Welcome to the podcast. It's episode 469 for February 22nd, 2023. I'm joined today by Matt May and Pablo Dominguez. You'll learn more about them in a minute, but they are authors of the new book, and by new, I mean it was released yesterday, what a Unicorn Knows. So, one of the themes there, and, and I think this episode has a little bit of something for everybody. One of their themes is constant experimentation, whether you are Toyota, a startup or, or something in between. So I hope you'll listen whether you are doing continuous improvement in a larger organization, or if you are an entrepreneur or a devotee of the Lean Startup methodology.

Mark Graban (55s):
I hope you enjoy the episode. For links and more information, you can go to leanblog.org/ 469. I'm joined today by Matt May and Pablo Dominguez. They're the authors of a new book. I have a copy here. FOr those who are watching on YouTube, What a Unicorn Knows: How leading entrepreneurs use Lean principles to drive sustainable growth. Matt has been here before a couple of times, episodes 67 and 103. We've done a couple of video podcasts, which I don't think ended up in the audio podcast, and he was also my guest for episode 39 of My Favorite Mistake. And Pablo is here for the first time.

Mark Graban (1m 35s):
So before I tell you a little bit more about them, first off, welcome to the podcast Matt and Pablo. How are you? Thank you. Thank you, and good to see again, Mark. I I, I was trying to search Matt, like I feel like it hasn't been that long since we've done an episode, but that may well be the case. We've done episodes about some of your previous books,

Matt May (1m 57s):
But we, I think the last thing was my favorite mistake,

Mark Graban (2m 0s):
Right? And that was maybe about 18 months ago. But I'll, I'll put links to those past episodes in the show notes. But let me first tell you a little bit more about Pablo Dominguez. He is an operating partner at Insight Partners, a leading global venture capital and private equity firm that invests in high growth technology and software scale up companies, as they call them. And we'll talk about that term today, companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. So Pablo has spent his entire career as a go-to-market and sales focused operator. He's worked in consulting, public companies, startups, and, and most recently these companies they refer to as scale-ups. And, and that includes using the application of lean principles to help drive sustainable growth.

Mark Graban (2m 45s):
And, and we're definitely gonna talk about that a lot today. And Matt May leads lean Scale Up program at Insight Partners working with Pablo. So Matt has a long mastery of lean principles and methodology. So he's spent nearly a decade inside Toyota, where you played an integral part in launching the University of Toyota, which was their corporate university dedicated to teaching, preserving and expanding the Toyota Way. Matt is previously the author of many great books, I'm gonna say countless, but they are literally countable. But a couple of those are the elegant solution and most recently winning the Brain Game. So you've got the new book again, what a unicorn knows.

Mark Graban (3m 27s):
We're, we're, we're gonna get to know Pablo and Matt and, and how you came to work together a little bit here. So Pablo, since it's your first time here, I'd like to hit guests with this Lean Origin story. I'd love to hear yours.

Pablo Dominguez (3m 41s):
Yeah, thanks so much, mark. Well, my Lean origin story starts with Matt May. Matt and I have been working together for 11 years. I was lucky enough to work with him at a public company 11 years ago where he helped us solve a lot of our issues within the sales organization. And then given the success we had there over multiple years, we worked together at a startup I was at after that, working both in sales, post sales services and HR solving issues there. And then I joined Insight Partners about four and a half years ago and couldn't imagine not leveraging Matt's skills. So Matt's been helping us here at Insight, really tackle a lot of the, you know, growth challenges that our portfolio companies may have in applying lean to those.

Pablo Dominguez (4m 29s):
So really excited to share a lot of what we've been working on. Yeah.

Mark Graban (4m 34s):
And, you know, ask, going back to some of those early days, I mean, what was the context of the role you were in at the time, Pablo? I mean, like what, what resonated with you about Lean in general?

Pablo Dominguez (4m 45s):
Yeah, and I think this is why we wrote the book. So I was running global business operations for a Fortune two 50 company supporting around 8,000 salespeople, 12 business units. And most of Lean is bred in, you know, manufacturing or in product development. And what Matt and I have been able to do is sort of flip that and apply it to the go-to-market lens, right? And so in that example, in the public company, we basically look to streamline the quote to cash process, right? So as a lead comes in to marketing, gets converted into an opportunity in sales, gets closed, and then, you know, goes to implementation and a customer starts getting value.

Pablo Dominguez (5m 26s):
That process over time as any company, as you add more people technology, there's technical debt becomes froth with waste. And so Matt helped us really identify how to remove a lot of that waste to decrease the time to value, which was really transformational. So love that we've been able to apply it more to the marketing and sales and post-sales then versus the traditional lens that most people are used to.

Mark Graban (5m 50s):
Yeah. Now, Matt, let me bounce it over to you. I mean, what, what Pablo said there sounds almost exactly like the old Tai chio, something to the effect of all we're doing is trying to reduce the time between receiving the order and receiving cash. Is that directionally correct or tell, tell me more about that idea of just compressing that time.

Matt May (6m 10s):
It, it's not only directionally correct, it's literally correct. Okay. It, it's, it's, it's one of the stories that I don't think it's told much in much of the traditional lean literature, but having worked in the sales and marketing arm of Toyota, it was a story I think we heard more often than, you know, our counterparts in the, in the, I don't know, parts distribution, the manufac, the, the production side of the business. And I always sort of called it the dirty little secret that this was all about getting cash in the door and what's the easiest way to do that? What's the shortest route to doing that? What's the cheapest, most cost effective way of doing that? Because Toyota c sort of sprang from the dust and rubble, at least in the car part of the, of their business following World War II didn't have a lot of resources, and I've kind of maintained that genetics all the way through.

Matt May (7m 2s):
But I just thought that, I think one of the first things I said to Pablo and his team, those 11 years ago when I took them through the official University of Toyota Lean Simulation, which to this day we use with tech forward companies, I said, here's the secret. It is not about quality cost speed, it's really about shortening that, you know, order to cash and we use quote to cash, you know, it's kind of a Salesforce kind of nomenclature, but it is the driving force. So directionally we're just sort of trying to take a whole company approach to that mentality here because the context that the gap in the marketplace when it comes to lean is that go to market, you know, kind of pointy end of the spear, so to speak.

Matt May (7m 51s):
And that's just, just hasn't really been tackled. Yeah.

Mark Graban (7m 53s):
So then coming back to your story, Matt, in, in recent years, how, how did you come to work formally? You know, we've heard kind of Pablo's side of, you know, past experiences and wanting to bring you in. What's your perspective on, you know, starting to work together and being part of Insight Partners?

Matt May (8m 12s):
Well, you know, it, it, I have followed Pablo and every time he is gone someplace, he's looked around as a good leader does, and basically says, you know, things are good, but I know they can be better. And one of the things I think that makes us work well together is the fact that we're both operationally minded. I'm a practitioner, he's a, he's a practitioner. We don't necessarily study the problem as like a scholar would we look at it from the business perspective, the business lens, and how can we apply things that would work that are field tested that gets everyone involved. So it's not just a, like a consulting, you know, that traditional conventional consulting assignment, arms length, let me tap your brain feedback to you all your best ideas, let's pull 'em out of the people doing the work.

Matt May (9m 2s):
And that is just that, that's, you know, that that's part and parcel to the lean approach anyway.

Mark Graban (9m 7s):
Right? No, it's a familiar mindset like you were, you were describing there and, you know, Pablo, let me, let me turn it to you. I'm, I'd be curious to hear your recollections of, of that lean simulation, because, you know, is, has Matt had a lot of experience even back at Toyota kind bringing TPSs outside of the factory walls? I mean, I'd be curious to hear your reaction say, oh, we're gonna do Toyota simulation. Like, how, how, how did you experience that and see the connections then to the work that you were doing?

Pablo Dominguez (9m 39s):
Yeah, so I've had the benefit of now sitting in those simulations maybe 40 times since I've been with Matt. And the first time though, you know, you're kinda like, what's going on here? The guys got tables set up with little cars and parts, and your first thought in a, in a tech forward company is like, you know, we don't manufacture widgets, right? So, all right, this will be a cool exercise, but the actu the, the exercise is actually pretty eye-opening, right? Because regardless of what you create as ultimate value, the intent is to show before what something was like process, right?

Pablo Dominguez (10m 22s):
Rife with complete inefficiencies to then an end state, which you go, wow, what an elegant solution. How could they not have thought of that before? Right? And so Matt has a very good way of, you know, taking you on the journey from like first step to letting people come up with their own solutions to then showing the output and getting the audience and the mindset of, okay, now how do I apply what Toyota did in an actual manufacturer of a car to streamlining my process? Regardless of what business you're in, right? You can be in tech, you can be in healthcare, it doesn't really matter.

Pablo Dominguez (11m 2s):
That leap is easy for some and for, for others. It's hard. And Matt and I have an example of one person in one of our sessions goes, I don't know why we just spent time doing this. We don't manufacture anything. We're like, we do software. This is stupid. So some people don't make that switch as quickly. But honestly, having also as being someone who's done all sorts of developmental activities, et cetera, I love this one. Every single time we do it, I'm like, I love seeing people's eyes just go, oh my God. Wow. Yeah. So it's exciting.

Mark Graban (11m 36s):
Yeah, I mean there's, there's that excitement, the Oh wow. And then sometimes people say, oh crap. Like they, they feel bad about discovering the waste or the opportunity. Oh yeah. I, I'd be curious to hear from either of you either experiencing that and or coaching others through almost like having to counsel them, like now that they're seeing the waste.

Matt May (11m 59s):
Well, I don't think we've had any nervous breakdowns, Pablo, but there have been some oh crap sort of moments. It's like, how could, you know, kinda like Pablo said, how could we not do this? And I think the, i, if I, if I do my job right with, with the simulation, people get the connection to their own work. And it's not about a car, it's about, Hey, I got code that I'm, you know, developing. I gotta ship that code to someone else who then develops that in and packages it and gets it out to the marketplace. It begin to see all those relationships and they sort of lean in right away. Pardon the pardon the sure, pardon the pun.

Matt May (12m 41s):
And the reason that we do it to this day is because it does kind of wipe the slate clean. There's no real talking head PowerPoint. I don't beat anyone over the head with all kinds of lean or Japanese concepts. It's, they just kind of at a very visceral level get the difference between achieving far better results, four to five x better results by thinking through high leverage points. And they see that application to their own business. And we are never without a target rich environment, so to speak. So plenty, plenty of targets to hit and they kind of see it right away, and they're very excited to get going.

Pablo Dominguez (13m 24s):
I think it also Mark, we start with the simulation before we actually go into the workshop, right? So it also reduces the barriers for people cuz there's different, there's different people of different, you know, organizational teams, different levels, and it gets them into the mode of like, wow, now I can't wait to go do this with our company. If that's what this company did, like, let's go apply the principles. So it's a good, it's a good way to build some camaraderie, some, some team building before actually getting into the meat of this solving. Yeah.

Mark Graban (13m 56s):
So let's, let's talk about the book and, and, and how your past experiences have, have led to this. The book, again, what a unicorn knows. First off the word unicorn, you know, within startup circles or investment circles, I mean, I, I think Facebook is one that was considered a unicorn. What, what, what's meant by that term?

Matt May (14m 19s):
Public? Take it away.

Pablo Dominguez (14m 21s):
Yeah, so it was, it was coined by cowboy ventures, and we'll use the term as it was defined by them, was any company public or private valued over a billion dollars, right? And so typically now people sometimes say, well, hey, what startups are being valued at a billion versus public? But at the time, back in, you know, 13, 14, There were very few unicorns per se, right? So I think, you know, that's sort of why the term is used. It's this magical, you know, beast that is, that is difficult to attain. Obviously last year we saw the number of unicorns almost double year over year in terms of prior years, if not almost triple, just because valuations were, you know, growing at different rates than before.

Pablo Dominguez (15m 13s):
It doesn't take away from the fact that the reason why we've called it, you know, what a unicorn knows is what do some of the best unicorns that have been out there, what do we see for those companies that are successful? How have they been able to drive sustainable growth to maintain that status and continue to grow effectively versus those that have not? So we wanted to share what those principles are, what people should be aspiring to if they want to build a sustainable business that has significant growth over time.

Mark Graban (15m 46s):
We're lucky. Go ahead, Matt. Sorry.

Matt May (15m 48s):
I said we, we are, we are quite fortunate in the fact that if you think about how most books are written, not every book, but, but many books in including ones that I've written, mark, you've written, the the sample size is quite small and it's often sort of biased. We have this, this unbelievable playground, so to speak, of over 500 software companies. And to be able to say what separates the best from the rest, even among those is something that very few people can do. Scholars will, won't, don't have that. Most people have, you know, at most maybe a dozen couple of fistfuls of companies that they can point to cherry pick that when you've got a huge sample size like that and you can see patterns, you can take kind of this whole company perspective overlaid with a lean mindset.

Matt May (16m 45s):
And I think there's something to walk away with there that doesn't exist in the marketplace right now. Yeah.

Mark Graban (16m 51s):
So what, you know, you, you know, Pablo, you mentioned that Cowboy Ventures definition, you know, follow up question for you or, or Matt, I mean, what, what's your definition? Or is is there a consensus, modern definition, or do, do you have one that of your own that you prefer? It's

Pablo Dominguez (17m 6s):
It's the same. I think it's either all public and private or just private, right? So I think sometimes people, when people say, well, what are the top unicorns today? Sometimes they meet the ones that have not gone public yet. But for the purposes of when we're making discussions or the book, we've stuck to the original definition just in case people are are confused. So,

Mark Graban (17m 28s):
But as with anything, the question is how do you get from here to there? And as, as you looked at those companies, I mean, where, where, where did you, where did that access come from? Were they they companies that Insight Partners had invested in or others in your network?

Pablo Dominguez (17m 45s):
Yeah, it's a mix of both. To Matt's point, we've had the benefited insight of, you know, minting over 75 plus unicorns ourselves, Matt and I and I, Matt and I have had the benefit of working in the public markets also with other public unicorns. So I think the, the experience of working both with those public companies and also the broad portfolio at Insight, but also working with non insight startup companies that are valued at a billion plus because they're, it's an ecosystem that we also work with as well. So I think those three data points have allowed us to triangulate what good looks like and the pattern recognition that we have has helped us sort of form some of our, you know, our basis for our opinions and facts.

Mark Graban (18m 37s):
So before reaching that, that state of unicorn, you know, there's this progression that seemed to spell out and talk about in the book going from startup, which could mean just barely off the ground, no customers yet pre-revenue to the scale up. So, you know, I guess it brings us back to the question of what do you mean by a scale up? And, and when does a startup get to the point where they might say, okay, scale up is now a better label?

Matt May (19m 5s):
You know, there are, there's some sort of standard definitions. I think you could probably just go on Wikipedia and they would give you a definition, something to the effect of, you know, 20% growth past three years, that kind of thing. So it's essentially you found, you have a, a company in a startup phase is looking for product market fit. Those in the scale up phase have found a product market fit. They're looking more for a go-to-market fit, which is sort of where we come in. So they've, they're growing rapidly. They're looking to to scale, to grow even more. And what they're lacking is because it's, it's such a high velocity organization really, you know, looking for discipline sometimes because to reach certain inflection points, if you don't have the scaffolding in place, then all that you have built is at risk of potentially crumbling, which is where we come in.

Matt May (20m 1s):
And the fact that the go to market fit is probably the, you know, the priority number one is right in our, that's right in our wheelhouse. So that's how we think about it. Yeah. And you know, the final phase being grown up,

Mark Graban (20m 15s):
You know, grown up. So, you know, you know, Pablo, let, let me ask a a follow up question for you. You know, there's probably a lot of entrepreneurs listening, but we might also have listeners who are more, you know, from coming from more traditional lean enterprise lean manufacturing companies and roles. But let's say they have an idea, like, I mean, you know, a lot of people, so they have their, their dreams of the company, like they'd like to start. Can you, can you kind of talk us through first, you know, this idea of finding product market fit where, you know, an example of, you know, go what it means to find that?

Pablo Dominguez (20m 48s):
Yeah, absolutely. At its first sort of at its core, you know, a founder, whether you're a technical founder or GTM founder, you've got an idea to build something. And so when you first build that, you might have a sense for who you're selling it to, what the value proposition is, what you're gonna charge for it. But early on you don't, right? You're just trying to test the waters of where is it gonna land and is there gonna be demand for it, right? And it takes a couple of customers to try to understand like, okay, am I a successful selling to, you know, enterprise customers or mid-market customers or smb small medium businesses, right?

Pablo Dominguez (21m 31s):
Because you can be selling to different types of customers. Is it better sold to a certain vertical? Who's my actual buyer that's gonna buy this at scale, right? So until you have a repeatable sales process where there is clear demand for the product and people understand exactly what you're selling, you've sort of just got an idea and you're testing it, right? And so with the sort of like lean concepts of constant experimentation, which is in our, you know, our second chapter, when you don't have product market fit, that's basically what you're doing. You're testing the waters to see what sticks. Companies sometimes get product market fit early on you could get to a million dollars in revenue and have very strong mark product market fit and take off.

Pablo Dominguez (22m 17s):
You could get to 10 million and not necessarily have good product market fit, but there's demand for your product elsewhere. But you may not be able to scale past that, right? So it just depends. But really narrowing down your customer, your buyer and building a repeatable motion is what gets you out of product market fit. Yeah. Or into product market fit. Sorry.

Mark Graban (22m 40s):
Yeah. And then Emma, and is there still risk of companies making the mistake of trying to scale too quickly before they found product market fit or investors just not making that possible of, of not really funding someone to try to go big before they have that nailed the product market fit?

Pablo Dominguez (22m 59s):
Absolutely. Us as investors, so insight typically invests when there is product market fit, right? And so our job, Matt and I and everybody who's on the operating side, cuz inside partners has the investors and then a team called Onsite, which is basically designed to help you scale once we make the investment, right? And absolutely, if you try to scale too quickly and you don't have product market fit, you will probably burn through a lot of your cash that you have on hand or debt that you have just because you're not gonna find that repeatable motion you're gonna stall, right? Which is why it's very important to get product market fit, right? So you can start to build out your organization products, et cetera.

Mark Graban (23m 43s):
Yeah. And then, then can you give an example or kind of walk through then that progression of, of finding go-to-market fit? Like what, what's the, the failure mode or the problem, if you will, of, of somebody not yet having the go-to-market fit?

Pablo Dominguez (23m 58s):
Yeah, so, so let's, let's pretend you've got a good product and let's pretend you can sell it. You know, broadly there's, I'll, I'll simplify it. There's three main routes to market, right? You can have a product led motion and there's tons of different product led motions. Sometimes people think product led just means I buy online and I don't need to talk to a human being, right? But there's a product led motion motion which has a lot of elements. There's a sales led motion, which is primarily direct, and then there's a channel led motion, right? Indirect. So you're leveraging, you know, for all intents and purposes a value added reseller and Accenture, something like that.

Pablo Dominguez (24m 40s):
And so those are your routes to market in terms of how you would distribute your, your solution. There's nuances, obvi obviously to that, but that is also hard because people try to sometimes think, well, hey, I'm gonna try and do all three of these. Well, your product may not be channel friendly and the channel may not actually value it to resell it for you or to help you, right? That's okay. Your product also may not have a PLG motion, that's okay. Or it may do great PLG product led growth and now you want to take it direct or through the enterprise, but it's not enterprise ready, right? So you're selling to Pfizer, fortune 500 company versus a, you know, 20 person company, very different sales motion and they have different requirements, security, et cetera.

Pablo Dominguez (25m 26s):
So you've gotta make sure your product also meets those needs. So getting that G T M go-to-market fit takes time, but it also, it also is an evolution. You may introduce PLG very late or you might introduce enterprise very late or channel as you start to mature, as you start to go into different countries and markets that necessitate a different motion. So it's definitely a journey that never stops.

Mark Graban (25m 55s):
So I'd love to hear

Matt May (25m 56s):
Kinda land us on the doorstep of strategy if you think about it. Yep. You know, and, and there are, and not to be critical, but there are tools out there, like for example, and this is right to Pablo's point, tools out there that are widely in use like, like say the business model canvas, where there's room on that canvas to talk about channels, to talk about customers relationships with customers. And the problem with them is that they don't allow you to prioritize the best use of your resources because you can't do everything that you want to do. You strategy is, and you know, our very first principle is strategic speed, which is, is really the drivability of the, of the vehicle.

Matt May (26m 38s):
We're calling a a a scale up if you think about it. But you have to absolutely make choices on where you are going to focus your resources and most importantly, where you are not. And tools like that are great as frameworks to begin the thinking process, especially perhaps at the startup phase. But when you are in your scale up when you've got investors and you're trying to, you know, have a sustainable competitive advantage against, you know, daunting players in your space, disrupt them. If you, if you possibly can, you do need to think about strategy. And that's, that's kind of our starting point.

Mark Graban (27m 13s):
Yeah. So I wanna come back and, and talk more about that theme of constant experimentation. You know, one, one kind of follow up question, what you, you were just saying Matt, or maybe, you know, Pablo can chime in on it too. I mean, you know, you, so you, you talk about being ready to scale and investors know you have the product market fit and you're scaling. Do investors want to hear about constant experimentation? Like do they realize that's just how it is with companies at this stage? Or do they sometimes want more, if you will, certainty than a tolerance for that constant experimentation?

Pablo Dominguez (27m 50s):
I think it depends, and I think that's why we exist, right? I mean, the investors are there to invest money and help you determine what the optimal, you know, exit is gonna be from a growth perspective. The operating teams that we have are there to help translate, Hey, in order to get there, we might need to take these steps. We might need to test the waters, et cetera. Obviously it's tough sometimes, right? Like if you keep failing on your experiments, you're gonna get pressure on like, well why are we wasting time doing this? Right? If you have a track record though of failing and then turning those failures into successes, I think obviously you'll have more leeway with your investors and teams.

Pablo Dominguez (28m 30s):
So just be thoughtful depending on who you are and who you're working with. The tolerance for experimentation and failure may, may drastically vary. Kinda like being a parent, right? Like kid takes a lot of risk, but ultimately nothing happens and they're okay, you're fine with it, right? If they're constantly always getting hurt, you're probably gonna keep a tighter leash on 'em. So

Matt May (28m 53s):
Yeah, and I would add to that, that there is a fine balance I think between being in constant beta mode and having a reliable motion for bringing a concept into commercialization. Yeah. And that's really the focus of constant experimentation. It's not because it's fun to experiment in a lab that we call a business. It's because if you do not and you begin to grow and scale and you ride on your past success, it won't be long before you are struggling in the marketplace. Competitors are eating your lunch, if not you, for lunch. And it's just a competitive imperative to do that. But it does need to be business related.

Matt May (29m 36s):
So I think a lot of people make a mistake in thinking about experimentation as what we learned in seventh grade science where you're trying to, you know, prove or disprove some universal truth. Here we're, we're talking about business experimentation where the factors of success and what determines, you know, failure and success is around business dynamics. The business indicators, it's revenue, right? It's cost, it's all the drivers of, of a business. And that I think sometimes gets lost in all of the, you know, make nice, you know, continuous improvement stuff and never forget that we're the genetics of continuous improvement, right?

Matt May (30m 17s):
It, it came about in, in war time. So, and we're in a war right now, right? Every company that we work with is feeling under the gun, so to speak.

Mark Graban (30m 29s):
So, you know, you you, you talk about this constant experimentation and you know, you can see that being the culture in a startup, you know, Toyota at different stages there. I think including some of that history you're alluding to was a startup. I mean, when they first entered the car business, that was a startup on top of the old weaving loom business. And then, like you said, after the war, maybe they were, you know, restarting in in, in different ways, you know, as, as, as a company grows. You know, one, one thing you write about is, you know, it's a phrase I've heard from Toyota people, big company syndrome. I've heard it called big company disease of avoiding that or not wanting that to set in.

Mark Graban (31m 10s):
I mean, what, what have you learned, Matt, either from the Toyota experience or you know, experience working with other organizations, how do you help guide the leaders of an organization to not lose that startupy scale? A constant experimentation as, as they become a grown up company.

Matt May (31m 29s):
It's not losing sight of the fact that innovation needs to be a strategic priority, a company priority at, at the very top, if a leader loses that focus and says, man, our product just don't break, so don't break it. It's working so well. Let's ride this wave as long as we can. It is a death nail because what happens is experimentation and the engine, the engine being experimentation of innovation now gets, you know, put to the side and then as the company grows, costs balloon and you know, there's more people now and gosh, the product is the same. So, well how am I going to justify my existence?

Matt May (32m 9s):
Well, I gotta come up with a program and I gotta sell it to the leaders, right? And that costs money and those programs proliferate and then all of a sudden, gosh, the product is now a little bit obsolete. It's a little bit old looking long in the tooth. We've lost the chops on how to experiment, how to innovate, and all of a sudden the costs have to be cut back and there's a freeze on all the programs and all of a sudden you're at a standstill. So it begins at the, you know, at the leader level and one of the, the portfolio companies that we work with has actually made their business about constant experimentation at scale, right? So we have an interview there with the c e o of a company that their, that is their business is is helping other tech companies experiment.

Matt May (32m 54s):
So

Mark Graban (32m 56s):
I mean, what, what are your thoughts here, Pablo guidance that you would give the companies that are further on their way or have already become a unicorn? How do they not lose that experimental mindset? Yeah,

Pablo Dominguez (33m 7s):
I would say, and I apologize cuz I, I do think I'll say something that might, I don't know, might upset some people. I think it all comes down to leadership at some point, right? I don't think any principles or Matt coming in to do a workshop or a book will make certain human beings want to innovate or do things differently, right? So it's one about making sure people aware of the principles, but if you don't have the right leader in place or leaders to lead initiatives or that think that way and truly believe in wanting to be innovative and challenge the status quo, I think you will fall into big company syndrome.

Pablo Dominguez (33m 54s):
Which is why that term sort of exists, right? And I've been part of two public companies and again, as, as companies get larger and larger, the organizations are larger and you've got, you know, if you think about a startup to scale up, it's, it's a small group. They move fast, decisions are made quickly, everything, everything is about innovation cause you don't have time otherwise you get eaten up. But as you get larger, we're all human beings. We fall into habits of, you know, processes and stuff. But there are sparks of innovation in every single company regardless of the size. The key is finding those people, enabling them, moving leaders around that can help drive that energy. But I do think lit leadership above all else, will enable the success of innovation.

Mark Graban (34m 39s):
Well, I mean it seems like, I mean, not to be too flippant about it, but to your spark analogy, a lot of organizations are designed in a way as if like they're intentionally trying to put out those sparks when they Oh yeah, yeah,

Pablo Dominguez (34m 51s):
Yeah. It's true. And that's why you've also gotta have leaders that are politically savvy enough that won't try to, you know, they can't be bulls in a China shop coming in trying to be like, yeah, I'm gonna innovate. Cause that's not how organizations also work, right? So there, there needs to be some finesse there to get the organization, and again, back to Matt's point around constant experimentation. If you try to drive innovation in the entire company, that's never gonna happen, right? So experiment first with a small team or you know, a smaller product and demonstrate that you can drive innovation to sort of have it proliferate.

Mark Graban (35m 34s):
There's, there's a great excerpt in in the book here, I'm gonna kind of paraphrase part of it, but, you know, talking about even pointing back to Toyota, current day Toyota, not startup e Toyota, but they run over a million experiments annually. Vast majority don't need more than their immediate supervisors permission or involvement to, to run a test. I mean, it seems like, back to characteristics of certain leaders, I mean it seems like if a leader, a founder, a leader on some level is just sort of a control freak, they're not going to be comfortable with this idea of, if you will, unauthorized experiments taking place.

Mark Graban (36m 17s):
I mean, and I, I don't know, you know, to your point Pablo, I don't know if you can convince someone to change with their mind if they're so locked in on that idea that I need to approve everything. I'm

Pablo Dominguez (36m 27s):
Curious. I don't think you can, like in my in, and again I'll be, I'll be extreme in my views here. Even though the world is not black and white, it's always gray. That kind of leader, what this won't work, right? So do you have to replace that leader? Maybe, maybe not. It just depends who you're trying to accomplish, but maybe you don't try your innovative ideas there and you try them somewhere else. But over time I think people will see, well why are people on Sally's team driving innovation? And they seem to be able to do experiments and challenge the status quo. And I'm over here on Johnny's team and he's controlling everything. Well maybe I want to go to Sally's team, right? So over time innovation wins, but you can't force it head on all the time.

Matt May (37m 10s):
That's actually a very good point. When if you come directly at innovation and you, you do something to the tune of, and pardon the pun, you know, the the old song, come on, people get together, everybody love one another. Come on everybody get creative innovate. It doesn't work. It just doesn't work. And that's why there's, there is a reason we put constant experimentation as subordinate to strategy. Because if your strategy is set correctly and you are setting priorities and goals against that strategy that are of a stretch nature, that demand resourcefulness different thinking, you can't not innovate, right?

Matt May (37m 52s):
So that's how, that's, that's kind of the, the ideal is to make sure that, you know, like when we do our, our our process optimization work and even strategy work, we're not shooting for a 10% improvement, a 5% improvement, even a 15% improvement. We start, you know, north of 20, 25% as as as the boge because we know from experience that anything lower than that you're gonna fall back into the gravitational pull of the way that we've always done it and we'll just stay longer. We're gonna work a little bit harder, but we're not really gonna change much. And that's just big companies and that's, I think we call in the book innovation anemia.

Matt May (38m 35s):
It's just weak sauce. So

Mark Graban (38m 37s):
Yeah. So, so Pablo, I was gonna ask you to talk a little bit about what you mean by not just a scale up, but a lean scale up. How that's influenced by what you talk about in the book as being, you know, lean process if you will.

Pablo Dominguez (38m 52s):
Yeah, so I mean we're obviously working with all kinds of scale-ups and again, depending on where you join in the podcast, startups are very early stage, you know, companies scale-ups is that next sort of teenager phase and then grownups are your graduating sort of public company status. When we talk about lean scale up, it's companies that are leveraging lean principles to grow in a sustainable way, right? So are they, do they have a sound strategy and they know where to play, where not to play, right? Are they constantly evaluating their processes to streamline them, remove waste, et cetera? So we're looking for, to touch on the point before, around having the right leaders, we won't engage with our portfolio companies unless it's the right leadership team that is bought in.

Pablo Dominguez (39m 42s):
Cuz to Matt's point, we've had experiences prior to insight where sounds like a great idea, let's try this out. But there really isn't buy-in and then the project just sort of like falters, right? And so we wanna be very focused on is the C E O bought in, right? Do they think that this is gonna have clear outcomes? Have they set goals that they wanna achieve that we think are, you know, achievable but unrealistic also to sort of push people and are we gonna have support right after we do the engagement? Are they gonna see it through and continue to drive it? The most successful companies take the work that we've done. So when Matt does his workshop and make it part of the culture, so it's not a one and done, it's, hey I wanna build a P M O office now project management office now to help me do this internally.

Pablo Dominguez (40m 33s):
And Matt's done a good job of training the trainer at some of the portfolio companies. So that's what we mean by a lean scale is those companies that are sort of embodying the basics of lean and just leveraging it to grow more effectively.

Matt May (40m 48s):
One of the nice, I I would call it a luxury mark in the lean work. Cause oftentimes pro process improvement isn't at, as I referred to before, the the pointy end of the, the spear, which is revenue impact, right? A lot of it is cost-focused. Then the, what I love about the work that Pablo and I get to do is we're working with the sales and and marketing motion where every time we do this we calculate a what's at risk revenue-wise, yet productivity-wise, but more importantly, what's at risk if we continue doing things the way that we are doing. Nothing gets management or the board's attention more than you're, you start talking about revenue and that is a luxury and that helps propel any kind of capability transfer.

Matt May (41m 37s):
You're not trying to push water uphill, so to speak. It's like, wow, there's 17 million that's getting pushed in revenue. What the heck? And if you, you're telling me if you just tweak this one little step just a bit, you don't have to throw the baby out with a bath water that I can capture that back and even do a little bit better. I'm all in. Oh, and I'm not gonna have to spend anymore in terms of headcount. I don't need any fancy systems investment. This is just doing things a little bit differently. But yeah, okay, I'm in. So, but that's, that is the, that is the part that I think a lot of lean literature and lean initiatives lack is the fact that they're not revenue facing and we come directly at that sales process and a lot of companies, Toyota included, don't let you talk.

Matt May (42m 28s):
Don't, don't talk about or touch the sales process. Yeah.

Mark Graban (42m 34s):
So I wanted to ask another question about lean process or even just this word process. Like the little bit I've been around agile circles or some startup conferences. I've heard people really poo process. They like this, this aversion to the word and when I've had, you know, I've had a chance to talk to people, there's, there's almost this assumption that process means like inflexible that process is bad. So I I I'd be curious, Pablo, and, you know, in different settings, I mean, do you run a process where people think sales process sounds bad or is it just a matter of the detail? Like how making sure process isn't too rigid?

Pablo Dominguez (43m 15s):
I think, I think it's in the detail and it's definitely in making sure it's not rigid. Cause if you think about it, if I'm a sales rep, I want the process to be simple. I, I'm trying to sell something. I don't wanna have 20 forms to sign and get this person's approval and go to use this tool and then to get paid, I gotta do X, Y, Z, right? So for us it's all about having processes important, but making that process as simple as possible, not only for the rep, right, for the person making the sale, but also for the customer. A lot of the work we've done is also the customer doesn't want to be sending contracts back and forth 10 times. Like why am I sending it? Well, it's gotta, it's gotta go to this department and this department.

Pablo Dominguez (43m 57s):
They don't care, right? They want it simple. And so the beauty is just the simplification of the process, however cumbersome it may be cuz they're all cumbersome, right? Which ultimately to Matt's point, results in reduction in time to value, which is better for the customer cuz they get to use your solution and it's better for the business cuz they're, you know, recognizing revenue that much quicker.

Mark Graban (44m 21s):
Yeah, I mean, tho those are familiar themes of reducing waste, making it easier for people to do their job, whether they're on an assembly line or in an operating room or selling software and, and make it easy for the customer to do business with you. I mean those, those also pretty core lean principles.

Pablo Dominguez (44m 40s):
Yeah. Yeah. And especially in today's environment where, I mean, everybody's read the news, right? Where there's reductions in force. And so if I have two less people working on a process, well then I hope to God that process has gotten simplified because I don't have enough people to do the cumbersome process before, right? So not that you should be doing this when there's a time in crisis, and Matt's Matt's been great to talk about lean, and the companies that have done really well are those that are constantly thinking about how to do this. Whether it's a boom or a, you know, harsh economic condition, right? Because those that when we're in a bull market are always experimenting and thinking how to get better are the ones that can scale more effectively.

Matt May (45m 24s):
You know, fun, fun fact, and this is, this is something I think, you know, I don't know if pab of you all agree, but I think one of the more innovative things that we've ever done together is to bring some sales teams together in cross-functional teams and include, for example, chief legal counsel in the Kaizen sessions. And interestingly enough, the, because oftentimes and nothing against attorneys, but in the sales process can be gatekeepers and those constant revisions to a sales contract can slow things down. Salespeople hate paperwork. I got to work a few months in a, in an automotive retail dealership when I was at Toyota and gosh, the paperwork is just, is drowning.

Matt May (46m 9s):
But that lawyer turned to, turned out to be sort of the champion internally to, to this is such a great new process, this is like, wow, this actually saves me time and, and work. Wow. So I I don't know how, if you think that's one of the more creator innovative

Pablo Dominguez (46m 26s):
Strengths No, I agree. That's, that's why we include as broad of a cross-functional team because sometimes you're surprised as to who actually understands why we did something a certain way and goes, well gee, maybe you're right. We shouldn't be doing it that way. Right? Like, so we love having a very broad participation rate when we do these sessions.

Mark Graban (46m 48s):
So when it comes to lean process, one phrase you used in the book, it was a new phrase to me. I've heard the three words and I, I feel like I know two of the three words pretty well, but a lean kaizen sprint. So I, I I know Sprint,

Matt May (47m 3s):
These two are the ones that you know, well

Mark Graban (47m 6s):
The word well I like this feels like I, I I'm studying a trap for myself, but I mean though the words lean and kaizen, I think I have a decent understanding of the words sprint. I have heard, I've never participated in a quote unquote sprint when it comes to say software development. So let's just turn it back to the question of what is a lean Kaizen sprint?

Matt May (47m 29s):
It's, it's sort of maybe, maybe you're more familiar Mark with a word like you can, or something like, so it's, it just really is, it's a little bit of marketing on our part to be honest with you. But one of the things that we've done is to make sure that these sessions don't run beyond like a six hour window. Okay? So we're not, we're not in weeks long sessions. There are a lot of kaizen events that even though they're called sprints could be more like a design sprint or a product sprint, which are typically two weeks. Some, you know, if you, if you read the Google material, they got it down to five days. But our sprint is almost like a hundred meter dash to be honest with you.

Matt May (48m 14s):
So inside of a six period, six hour period of of time, we will have multiple teams working simultaneously on sometimes the same targets, sometimes different targets. But we will emerge from that six hours with a fully blown experimental test of a solution after having mapped out the process, decided on a problem, calculated the impact five wide, it come up with a countermeasure or solution, new process tweaks step, what have you thought through what would have to be in place for it to be successful? And here's our hypothesis, here's our experiment and here's how quickly it's going to be done and who's gonna own it and they're off and running.

Matt May (49m 1s):
That is not, I don't think a traditional way of thinking about kaizen in general, so lack of a better word, that feels like a sprint. The actual working time is, is is literally under five hours and the rest is sort of readout. And we've translated that into the remote version as well. So during covid I ran kaizen sessions and sprints in three hour blocks to, nobody wants to sit for six hours, but still you cover a lot of ground in a big hurry, but in a disciplined and standardized way. So yeah, I

Mark Graban (49m 40s):
Dunno. But with, with the sprint, I mean, and like, you know, personally, I don't use kaizen to mean kaizen events. When I mean kaizen events, I say Kaizen events because there are small kaizen improvements. But then what you're talking about with the sprint, this is definitely not the, the classic five day kaizen event.

Matt May (49m 59s):
Correct. And you know, think about it's your, most of our, almost all of our work, 89.99% of our work in the last couple years is with software development companies. So when, and they're b2b, right? So when you are trying to, you know, whether you're talking about the sales process or the post sales process, there is a sales cycle and we're trying to come up with a, a fix for that. Trying to shrink time to, to revenue shrink time to value shrink onboarding time. Implementation time. I think in one case we took 66% out of the implementation time, but you, but that takes a while to actually work through the system in terms of the experiment itself, but the thinking part, boom, get it done inside of a day.

Matt May (50m 45s):
Cuz you're dealing with salespeople, they don't, taking people outta the sales role is always a struggle and is always not the easiest thing to do. So you gotta make it tight, you gotta make it exciting, gotta make it different and involve them in the fix and then, you know, so that's why we call it that.

Mark Graban (51m 1s):
Okay. And I am going to admit, and instead of going to Wikipedia, I went to the Lean Enterprise Institute, Lean Lexicon, jishuken is a word that I've heard, but I don't normally use. So that means basically like a hands-on learning workshop. Would you agree with the lean Lexicon definition of that? At least in a couple of words?

Matt May (51m 21s):
The, the practical? Yeah, so it, it's, it's sort of like an OODA loop, like a a, you know, what a fighter pilot would do mixed with a continuous improvement process. But the way it played out, at least in my experience at Toyota, is there is something of a critical nature that needs to be addressed. And so you pull together a special group of, of masters, so to speak, and you work around the clock until it gets fixed. Sometimes that's 24, 36 hours without sleep, believe it or not. So that's what I'm, that's the effect that I'm trying to bring to, to our work without having to ask anyone to work over six hours.

Mark Graban (52m 1s):
Pablo, I'm not asking you to defend sales, but to chime in on the perspective of like what, you know, what are your thoughts on applying, you know, the sort of rapid experimentation to sales process?

Pablo Dominguez (52m 13s):
Yeah, it's been, it's been tough originally, right? Cuz Matt's right. You take, you know, you tell, you tell a sales leader and a ceo, I need X number of salespeople out of the field for a day and a half. And they're like, it's a day and a half of not selling, right? But when you say, hey, we plan to take out 20%, 25%, 30%, and that results in 10 million more in revenue, et cetera, it's worth it. And to Matt's point, you're breaking it up into easy chunks. I think when people have come out of it, they go, wow, this was great. Thanks. That was, again, remember I'm part of the process, right? I'm, I am the solution. I'm not just sitting in a workshop being told, Hey, we're gonna fix this for you.

Pablo Dominguez (52m 54s):
Like, I'm asking you to come and solve a problem in your job. So having now done this, so many times people love it. They're part, they, they love being part of it. And when the MVP then turns into a success, of course they love it cuz it impacts their job.

Mark Graban (53m 11s):
Right. So before I wrap up, we've been joined again by Matt May and Pablo Dominguez, the book is over Matt's shoulder. I'll hold up a copy here. What a unicorn knows how leading entrepreneurs use lean principles to drive sustainable growth. And I, I think it's just fascinating to see, you know, these dots get connected between Toyota and, and startups and, and companies at different stages in between. The final question I wanted to ask and, and hear a little bit from each of you about esprit core or, you know, building team spirit and like lessons that come from Toyota or, or even, you know, other good examples of, of having that team spirit.

Mark Graban (53m 52s):
How, how would you describe it maybe Matt, let me ask you first and then Pablo like what, what do you draw on from Toyota that's transferable in terms of esprit de corps?

Matt May (54m 2s):
Toyota struggled with this, I'll be quite candid, you know, their, their management style is, it's the best way to put it. They were casting about looking for other models and one of them happened to come from an unlikely source, but it came from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here in — I'm in California, Pasadena, California part of NASA. And there was a gentleman Brian Muirhead who was a project team leader for Mars Pathfinder, who had written a book called High Velocity Leadership. Hmm, regular guest coming to talk to University of Toyota sessions.

Matt May (54m 43s):
And I learned a lot. And he had this grease and glue model of leadership and it just always, pardon the pun, stuck with me. And most of the principles, we, principles we talk about in the book before esprit decor are really about the grease part of it. How do you remove the stuff that is getting in the way of value to a customer? So whether it's friction, whether it's waste, whether it's inertia, whether it's drag, all of the things that any physical body organization or otherwise meets in trying to move ahead the, but there needs to be something that holds them all together.

Matt May (55m 23s):
And we're also fortunate enough to Pablo and I to be associated with the gentleman who actually introduced me to Pablo, who has a military background and saying in, in Milit, because if you think about esprit decor, almost all the work done research-wise focuses on military or paramilitary organizations. That team spirit that, you know, my brother is in the trench next to me, kind of of spirit, and he comes from a military background and they have a saying mission first. People always, and the interesting thing to me in, in spending time with him, and he has a, a nice interview in our book to toward the end of the book was that the way that you develop people is actually the opposite of mission first.

Matt May (56m 9s):
People always, you develop the people first so that they can accomplish the mission. So it's a nice duality that I actually didn't realize. And if you look at all of the leadership research that has been done recently, they will, it will show you that those that are results focused, which is kind of, we think about the military, that's what we think about, right? Gimme the results, it's a mission, mission, mission, get it accomplished. But when they juxtapose that with leaders that also have sort of the softer side, the empathic side, the grease part of keeping people together, the relationship side, they're viewed as a leader, 70% more effective than those that are just results oriented.

Matt May (56m 48s):
And I got to learn a lot from this gentleman. And so all I'll say here is that when it comes to esprit decor, we think about the individual first, their, their values. Are they connected to the values of, of the company? Is there a people culture fit? So we've talked about product market fit, we've talked about go to market fit and the bookend, all of this is people culture fit. Because without that, at, at the end of the day, what are you, right? Because we, you know, a company isn't, isn't anything more than, you know, a collection of human beings. So we had to have that element in there.

Matt May (57m 28s):
It's what keeps things together. And that's about all I can really say. I am not a leadership guru, you know, by any means. I don't think Pablo would say that he is a guru, but he is a leader. And I think he sort of understands that mission first. People always, and you develop it in the opposite direction. And, and Pablo, you know who I'm talking about.

Pablo Dominguez (57m 49s):
Yeah.

Mark Graban (57m 51s):
So Pablo, let me turn it to you maybe for the last word on this, of, of building team spirit, either within sales or even like more broadly. I know like sometimes things get dysfunctional within a company, there's finger pointing across different functions, especially let's say the tech side of a company and the customer facing side of a company. That doesn't happen at Conexus, by the way. So that's not who I'm thinking of. I'm wearing their shirt. I just wanna be clear that is not at all that previous organizations have been around. But let bring it back to the question, Pablo, like your thoughts on Esri decor, either within sales or more broadly.

Pablo Dominguez (58m 25s):
Yeah, I, I will echo everything Matt said. I'll give you an analogy i, I don't row. But if you look at, you know, university rowing teams, you could argue that if you applied lean principles, you've got the fastest boat, the lightest boat you've done, the mechanics, your oars are perfect, but think about what happens. Like all that is useless if you don't have the people that are rowing on the boat with the person telling 'em how to row rowing in unison and working together. Right? All it takes is one person, one person's or not to be rowing, and it doesn't matter the efficiency of the boat, et cetera, or the quality of the water, et cetera.

Pablo Dominguez (59m 8s):
So it's tough. Organizations are living, breathing things, right? Because they're made up of humans with egos. And so to Matt's point, there will always be friction, there will be drag, there will be inertia. And I think the job of a leader is to minimize that and bring people together. And so it is the glue, the esprit corps. Without that, honestly, nothing I think would work. And back to our point around having the right leaders in place, that honestly makes the entire difference. Without the, without the right leader or the leader, you are not gonna be able to drive change, whether it's this change or something else. So, absolutely extremely critical.

Matt May (59m 47s):
And I'm gonna embarrass, I'm gonna embarrass Pablo right now and just tell him and, and you that if you had to ask me what Pablo's superpower is, it's, it's building a team. There's a healthy percentage of people on our team that have followed him at his request, obviously through the same number of iterations of his career that I have. So probably a third of the company are folks that I've worked with and folks in our portfolio companies. So if, if, you know, he knows where he speaks when it comes to this, far better than I ever will.

Pablo Dominguez (1h 0m 23s):
Thank you, Matt.

Mark Graban (1h 0m 26s):
Well, thank you Matt and Pablo for, for being here today. Matt May, Pablo Dominguez. The book again is What a Unicorn Knows: How leading Entrepreneurs use Lean Principles to drive sustainable Growth. I'll put all sorts of links in the show notes to Matt's past episodes, the book Insight Partners, and we, we were talking about it just briefly before we started recording Matt and I, 2009, little conversation about Twitter that's still on YouTube. Boy, early days of Twitter, let, let's not do another podcast about Twitter these days.

Matt May (1h 1m 2s):
At least don't send it to Elon.

Mark Graban (1h 1m 6s):
Well again, thank you. Thank you for being here and thank you everyone for listening. Really, really enjoyed it, Pablo. Thanks Matt.

Pablo Dominguez (1h 1m 13s):
Thank you

Mark Graban (1h 1m 14s):
For links and more information about Matt Pablo, their company, their new book, and more. You can look in the show notes or go to leanblog.org/ 469.

Announcer (1h 1m 24s):
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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