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My guest for Episode #266 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is D. Lynn Kelley, the author of Change Questions: A Playbook for Effective and Lasting Organizational Change (with John Shook).
Lynn currently serves as a senior advisor to BBH Capital Partners. Following a career highlighted by leadership roles in engineering, supply chain, and continuous improvement in various industries, Kelley retired from Union Pacific Railroad in 2018.
At Union Pacific, she was senior vice president of supply chain and continuous improvement. She was also the executive co-owner of the company’s innovation program.
Before joining Union Pacific, Kelley was vice president of operational excellence, an officer and a member of the executive leadership team at Textron.
Kelley holds a PhD in evaluation and research and taught undergraduate and graduate statistics courses. Before becoming a professor, she held the positions of executive vice president and chief operating officer of Doctors Hospital in Detroit.
In this episode, Lynn discusses her journey of learning from mistakes, the importance of change management, and how fostering a culture of psychological safety can drive innovation and continuous improvement. Lynn also reflects on her experiences in healthcare and manufacturing, highlighting the critical role of effective leadership and communication in successful organizational change.
Questions and Topics:
- When you mentioned it was before it was referred to as lean, were people calling it the Toyota Production System or just Japanese management practices?
- As Textron integrated these companies, did they standardize or adjust the metrics for the French plants to include quality and safety?
- What were your other key takeaways from your experience in France, especially regarding metrics and relationship building with plant managers?
- Could you share your experiences as a leader in healthcare and how they compare to your roles in other industries, particularly in terms of change management?
- What prompted you to write “Change Questions,” and what was the inspiration behind it?
- How would the methodologies in your book have helped you during your time at Textron or Union Pacific?
- How do you cultivate psychological safety to encourage people to ask questions, push back, or bring new ideas during change initiatives?
- How did you change your approach to giving feedback to make it more effective, and were you ever coached on this?
- How do you compare continuous improvement and innovation? Are there different ways to manage change for larger-scale innovations?
- What are some of your thoughts or experiences on cultivating an environment where people feel safe to suggest changes or improvements?
- What lessons did you learn about balancing the need to fit into an environment versus realizing it might not be a good fit for you?
- How do you intentionally manage change when it comes to bigger innovations?
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Mark Graban:
Hi. Welcome to my favorite mistake. I'm Mark Graben. Our guest today is D. Lynn Kelly. We'll be talking about her recently released book last year, 2023, titled Change: A Playbook for Effective and Lasting Organizational Change. Lynn currently serves as a senior advisor to BBH Capital Partners, now followed a career highlighted by leadership roles in engineering, supply chain, and continuous improvement in various industries. So she retired from Union Pacific in 2018, where she was a senior VP of supply chain and continuous improvement. She was also the executive co owner of the company's innovation program. And prior to that, she was a VP of operational excellence, an officer, and a member of the executive leadership team at Textron. So Lynn holds a PhD in evaluation and research, and she's taught undergraduate and graduate statistics courses. And before that she held professor positions of executive vice president and chief operating officer of Doctors Hospital in Detroit. What a wide and varied range of settings you've worked in, Lynn, how are you?
Lynn Kelley:
It's, you know, and then if you look back, it's planes, trains and automobiles, all three industries. Yeah. I don't know if that means I have a short attention span or what, but anyway, yes, I am. Well, Mark, how are you?
Mark Graban:
I'm good. It's good to see you again. We've been able to collaborate on a couple of things. I'll try to remember to put links in the show notes. Lynn was previously a guest on my Lean blog interviews podcast. For those of you who are interested in lean management, Lynn did a webinar as part of our Kinexis webinar series. And so we're going to have a different conversation here today, and we're going to talk about the book change questions and leadership and culture. But I can't let you off the hook, Lynn. The question we always start with here, of all the different things that you've done, what would you say is your favorite mistake?
Lynn Kelley:
Yes. So, and I have to tell you, I have lots of favorite mistakes because they apply in different aspects of my life. But I think picked one that I think is really appropriate for the audience because this is where in my career, in the way that I was approaching what I was doing, how I was doing my job, this is the one that pivoted me in a whole other direction. And I'm so thankful. And I think it was a key to a lot of the success as I moved up through the ranks. So I think it's probably an appropriate one anyway. Okay.
Mark Graban:
Yeah.
Lynn Kelley:
So you mentioned I was a stats professor. I did teach statistics. And, but during my MBA, I had been exposed to lean early on when it wasn't called lean, but I was able to study it in Japan for a while. And I came back and was, you know, was thinking, why aren't we doing this? And of course, the automotive industry, which is, I was based in Detroit, was decreasing, and the Japanese were taking market share. And so I was, I was doing a little bit of consulting while I was being a professor, and I had a company come to me and say, can you teach us this stuff that Japan is doing? Because our customers now asking us to work on on time delivery, and they want us to reduce our defects, and we don't know how to do that. So I took that. And by the way, I got to tell you their theme that they decided that they were going to have in order to do that is we will never knowingly ship a defective part, because before, the whole thing they did is get it out the door. Get it out the door. And so the defects went right on the line. And so this was the new thing for them, and they didn't know how to never knowingly ship a defective part. So I worked with them, and it was great. And then they ended up getting the attention of Textron that had decided it was going to put together the largest automotive fastener company in the world. And if you don't know fasteners, it's nuts, bolts, and screws. That's basically a fancy name for what they are. So Textron came to me and they said, hey, we know you're a professor, but we would really like to hire you and have you do what you did in the US, in France and Germany. We just bought two companies over there, lots of about 15 fastener plants. Can you go there for a couple of years? And by the way, you'll live in Paris.
Mark Graban:
Good opportunity.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah. And my youngest was just started college, so you couldn't have asked for a better time. So I went over there, and, of course, I took Textron's cultural awareness classes, and I spoke a little bit of French, but I found very different results. And so what happened? After a year being there, looking back, I found that I was, everything was going really well in Germany. They were. In fact, they wanted more and more of my time. Their customers were happy. Everything was going really well in the french plants. It got to the point where I would say, okay, I'm gonna arrive on this day. Will that work for you? The plant manager says, yes, I confirm the day before. I take the train. I get there, and they say, oh, the plant manager's not in today. I say, well, you know, can I meet with somebody else? I need to get on the shop floor. Nope, not unless the plant manager's here. And it was, I mean, it was, all of the plant managers were never in when I. And then the US said, okay, look, you've done what you need to do in Germany. We're going to have to find another approach in France. We're bringing you back after a year. And it wasn't until, like, I was done and coming back through a chance conversation that I realized what had gone wrong in France. Because I kept thinking, you know, at first I thought, because it was hard in the beginning, I thought, well, I'm the first american over here. None of them wanted to be purchased by an american company. I'm a woman and it's an all male industry. And maybe it's that my personality and my cultural awareness may not fit with what's going on in those countries. So I thought it was, you know, a lot of situational in me. And what somebody said to me as I was leaving was, well, you know, the french plant managers are only measured on productivity. You go in there and you take somebody off the line to train them or you take a group of people to have a meeting or you start moving equipment, it's not going to work for them. And the german plant managers, they used to be measured on productivity, but now they're measured on things like on time delivery, quality, customer sat. And I went, oh my gosh. And it just so happened that one of John Cotter's books, or his early, earliest, one of his earliest books was out there on change management. And I read it and the pivotal part of my career was I realized, you know, we're all implementing change, right? And change is now even now increasing, like the amount of change. All the studies show, you know, whereas it was 1.7 major changes a year for major corporations, now it's over three, just a few years later and it's going to go up again. So I realized back then, even then, that you could have the best solution, the best ERP system, the best benefit plan, the best customer service module that you want to implement. If you don't know change management, it's probably going to fail. And that's when I decided I'm an expert or quasi expert in this field, lean, and I need to be an expert in change. And that's what changed for me.
Mark Graban:
Wow. That's considering my background with automotive industry and with lean management. That's a story right up my alley. One quick follow up question. When you say it was before it was referred to as lean, were people calling it the Toyota production system or it's just japanese management practices was a phrase that was used sometime.
Lynn Kelley:
It was a lot of, like, TQM, and then sometimes people would say, we're going to do quality circles, because they thought quality circles, those meetings, those debriefings that everybody had to talk about quality, they thought that was really what Lean was. And I think it was also really before, as we, the world understood, the really source of all of this was a cultural lean philosophy that encompassed much more than just some tools here and there. But I was doing things like, we knew about five s. I was doing five s on the shop floor where you organize your tools and equipment in ways that makes it easy to find things. So I was doing really basic stuff that I had learned that Toyota was doing.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Your story reminds me of an old phrase, or there's variations of it. What gets measured gets managed, or you get what you measure.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
As Textron was integrating these other companies and in different countries, did Textron hopefully learn from the mistake of that situation and help standardize or adjust the metrics for the french plant? So it was also about quality and I assume, safety and a broader range of measures.
Lynn Kelley:
Yes. So they started implementing KPI's much sooner. But part of what happened here, and I think almost to their credit, but then, is that they didn't, you know, this is an iconic french company. They had done the rivets in the Eiffel Tower. They were really old and they were proud of their heritage. And what Textron did not want to do is come in and say, we're doing everything differently. These are your new KPI's. These are. So they really wanted those companies to self manage for a while. But. But I think part of the lessons learned that came out of this was to start doing those setting KPI's early, at least the basic ones.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, yeah.
Lynn Kelley:
I'm sorry I said that was a good question. Yeah. What happened with texture and. Well, how did they view it? Yeah, yeah.
Mark Graban:
What would you say were your other key takeaways? I'm sure there was lessons around looking at measures and goals and incentives. Was there any. Was. Were there any opportunities around, let's say, relationship building with the plant manager, where that plant manager maybe didn't feel comfortable pushing back directly on you or on Textron. So it sounds like this passive aggressive game of avoidance, perhaps?
Lynn Kelley:
Yes. There were a lot of lessons around that. And if you looked at the relationship. So because I didn't speak any German, they gave me a person who was fluent in English and fluent in German, and he was by my side at all times. And so when I would go into a german plant, if the plant manager was in fluent or if I was talking to people on the shop floor, there was somebody there who could interpret. And he became, I would say, like a zealot. He became very passionate about, and he had no experience in this before that. But after that, he changed his career path from straight engineering into this continuous improvement type of mentality. And I didn't have that in France. And so that's another thing I learned, that you need to have somebody by your side who they trust, especially if you're not even with a language barrier. But you're absolutely right. The relationships were different. For some reason, once that door started to get open in Germany, they would invite me after work, you know, we'd go and we'd hang out, and that just didn't happen in. And I think because the door never opened enough. And to make that happen, and, you know, can I also say back then, that was, you know, that was almost 2030 years ago, it was uncomfortable for women in a home, all male environment to be one of the guys, you know, to go to the pub or go to the, you know, it was. It was also a little bit more uncomfortable. And I just was. But I think I've navigate towards as times changed and as I changed, I navigated that better towards, you know, as time went on.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, yeah. One other, I think interesting connection or similarity between our career paths is our careers taking a turn into healthcare? Different types of roles. I've never been a leader inside. I've been a consultant. I really appreciate your point. I've learned that, yes, you need to have somebody at your side who the people in the hospital trust. Cause I'm an outsider, I'm an engineer. Building trust with the team of people at the hospital really, really helps. I'm curious to shift the conversation a little bit of your experiences of being a leader in healthcare and trying to engage people in change. And I'm curious what you saw that was similar, maybe things that were a little bit different, right?
Lynn Kelley:
Oh, very. That's. And that is so interesting. So there I saw similarities in a couple of areas and differences in a couple areas. So, for instance, in healthcare, what I found was, and rightly so, a lot of the decisions have to ultimate on changes, have to ultimately come back to what's, what's, what reduces the risk for the patient and, you know, and there's quality assurance and there's all of those mechanisms that are in place that really prevent change from happening without a lot of thought. And that's rightly so. And I saw that in aerospace. So when I was at Bell, textron owns Bell helicopter, and now you've got the aerospace, you've got these, you know, these, these helicopters. And of course Cesta has private jets. You can't just go in and change the way something's made because it may affect what was happening in flight. Same with patient care. If you change of process and you ultimately not realizing unintended consequences, you impact negatively the quality of care for the patient. That's a big deal. So you have to really understand and be respectful. But what I also found is people, certain types of people who aren't open to change, and we know that about 20% of the population is just genetically, the way they're raised, whatever not open to change will be able to use those, stop those barriers to really slow down or cancel the change from happening. And so you have to carefully differentiate what's really real and what's the fact that this person doesn't want to change. And they know that as soon as we say compromise patient care, compromise flight safety, everything's going to stop until everybody really reviews it. So that's, that's one of the things that I found that that was the same but different in regular manufacturing that doesn't have life and death consequences for people.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. So, so people have that card they could play.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
If they wanted to stop really anything, even if the connection to safety was maybe a bit tenuous.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that's. I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Graban:
I mean, that caution or. Yeah. Just kind of that cautious approach to change, you know, I think a lot of that is situational. I mean, there are things related to the direct clinical care where things need to go through studies and trials, whether that's medications, use of devices in different ways. But then there's. There's things that are more in the realm of, you know, process change.
Lynn Kelley:
Exactly.
Mark Graban:
Are less risky. But it seems like that, that pattern or that habit of things being, it can turn into being something kind of bureaucratic to a fault even when the stakes aren't as high.
Lynn Kelley:
Agreed? Yeah, agreed. Yeah, I agree with you. And then the other one that I thought was interesting is that. So I was a professor. I went from healthcare to being a professor. And I found those cultures very similar in that, you know, you use the term herding cats. You have different constituencies, and you have, so in health care, you have the physicians with a lot of power. You have the nurses with a lot of power. You have, you know, the Er itself, you have all of these different groups with a lot groups that are funded by outside grants with a lot of power. And the same thing in education, you have professors, and if you have a tenured professors, but they have a lot of power, the students aren't really customers, but, you know, so it's hard to same with the patients aren't, you know, you've still got the insurance, which is partially customers. With education, you have people who pay the educational tuition. You've got these different dispersed customer groups, whereas when I went into industry, it's very, very, you know, it's, it's, besides some special causes, it's really evident who is my customer, okay? Who do I talk to? It's not a bunch of different groups. And then if the order comes from above, most of the time you do it, you know, whereas in healthcare, you've, you've got, well, wait a minute. The physician group may not want this. They want to weigh in or this whatever. So it's, it's, it's also adds a layer of complexity that I don't think is there in a lot of straight up industries, manufacturing, even service industries, often much more straightforward.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. So we're joined today by Lynn Kelly. Her book is change questions. Lynn, if you would tell us some of the story behind the book, like, what prompted you to take that on? What was the inspiration?
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, thanks. So when I, as I went through my career at Textron and afterwards at Union Pacific, I was responsible then for leaning change. And it broadened. Outside of lean, it was a lot of lean, but then lots of different things, like putting in a supplier portal and redesigning some of the ways that we designed aircraft and things like that. So it's very, very different types of changes. What I found is when I followed all of the methodologies that I had studied and read about, they helped me a lot. But then I would have a new failure mode, like something new would go wrong. And I go, wait a minute. I never read that anywhere. So then I just started developing my own. I called them considerations for change. But anytime we were going to implement a change, we would look at this list of, do we think about this? Is this an issue? Do we have to think about, do we have to mitigate this? And by the end of the day, we'd end up with a customized approach for that. Particular change. And so we saw at textron, our percentage of success rates go from 30%, which is industry average, to over 90%. So I knew this thing worked, right? But then I went to Union Pacific, which was probably the most difficult implementation in my whole career. 42,000 employees, all unionized in the field, dispersed, running trains, repairing track. And we're going to implement lean in that environment. And they don't even know what lean is. Half of them, I'd say we're going to do lean. And they go, what, you want us to lose weight? What? So anyway, so it worked there, though. And by the time I left there and retired, our percentage over hundreds of change initiatives a year in all different areas was over 96% effective, sustained, and delivering results. Still, we measured very rigorously for at least six months to a year afterwards. So I knew it worked, but I was retired and I thought, oh, this whole great methodology is going to die with me. And then Covid hit and John Shook was writing a book on change, and we decided to be writing buddies. And then it turned out we were writing virtually the same book. So he and I wrote this together, and it's a blend of my change considerations and something he called the lean transformation framework. And that's the book.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And for those who don't know John, he was the first American hired by Toyota to help bring Toyota into the United States. As they were setting up plants in California, John helped with translation and navigating. I've interviewed John on my Lean podcast. I would love to get him on here and ask John a favorite mistake question. I bet he would have a fascinating story, but, yeah, just so John's very well known in lean management circles, has been with the Lean Enterprise Institute a long time. So definitely recommend anything that John writes or, or says as well. Do you feel like that book, your book, in what ways would that have helped you back at Textron or other when you said you were learning these lessons the hard way? If someone else had written that book, it would have been a big help.
Lynn Kelley:
It seems it would have, because most of the change methodologies that are out there, they have between five and eight steps. If you have a few more steps and it's a set methodology, you know, you do this, do this, do this. Most of them, not all of them, and I think they're all wonderful. What makes this so different is it's not sequential. It gives you an order to learn to do it by, but you can you really just basically ask yourself these questions and you only answer the ones that are appropriate so you don't overproduce or under produce. And if I could have had that back then, then I could have tailored an approach for every change that was implemented according to that particular change. And it would have really, you know, I think sometimes I did more than I needed to do and other times I did not enough. And then, but then you can't. And I understand one more point about that. I understand when you're creating a framework, you can't have a framework that has 15 steps that's easily digestible. So I can understand why there's nothing out there that's just, that's like this, but instead of set steps, it's just questions that you ask yourself. And so I could, I had the freedom because now it wasn't a step methodology and it wasn't cumbersome to say, oh, I've got all these questions, and oops, I failed on that. Never even thought about it. It's not anywhere in the research. Let's consider that next time. Maybe it only happens one in ten times, but if it's a big, expensive implementation, you want to know about it. So that's how it would have helped me, I think, tremendously. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
And what I hear you saying is that having a framework that is structured but not overly rigid can be more applicable in more settings.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, yeah. That's what I found, at least for me and for the teams I've worked with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Graban:
So you've learned, you, you learned. Here's the lesson here. You learned from different mistakes you made along the way and turns into a book.
Lynn Kelley:
Yes. Well, your mistakes have turned into a book.
Mark Graban:
Right.
Lynn Kelley:
And by the way, I love that book. It resonated with me so much because I kept reading. And I think what I love, can I just say? What I loved about that book is, I think, one of my personal mistakes, and that's really not covered in any of my methodologies nor anybody else's that I've seen, was this whole idea that when that you have to be aware that your approach, your personal approach. I used to think that I need to show confidence that it's going to be successful. We're going to the whole rah, rah, we're going to do this. I'm going to motivate people. And I didn't show my vulnerability because what I really needed to be doing more of is if it fails, how could it fail? And, and then once it did start to show failure, I didn't do the bravado thing. Oh, we're going to power through this, say, well, why, why is it not delivering? Let's look at it, let's pivot, let's do other changes. And I think that that's very, very powerful. And it's a lack of self, for me, it was a lack of self confidence. I felt like I had to prove myself, you know, I'm here. I gotta prove to you that I know what I'm doing.
Mark Graban:
So that, that's an example where it can be a mistake to overcompensate, I guess, right?
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Graban:
I mean, I've seen that with, you know, sometimes people I've worked with where you, you learn the outward bravado kind of covers for some insecurities or. Yes, doubt.
Lynn Kelley:
Agreed. Agreed. And it can be situational. Right. I mean, you can be like, I think for me, I think I'm probably fairly secure, although more secure now than I was when I was younger. But if I'm thrown in a situation where I'm the youngest person or the, the only woman and, or the only non engineer, you know, to show that, I, I want to show them, oh, I'm, I have a, I have an area of expertise that I can be here, but that's sometimes not what you need to be doing at that point in time.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, that's another great lesson. I mean, what you say about a leader showing some vulnerability or being candid and open to feedback, I think that helps encourage others, then speak up and push back or challenge some things. And if the leader is open to that instead of being defensive, well, now we can adjust, we can iterate, can get closer to a better solution. And that's a favorite theme of mine. Think about how do we cultivate psychological safety? What are some of your thoughts or experience on trying to cultivate an environment where as we're going through change, people feel safer either just asking questions or pushing back and, or bringing ideas to make the proposal even better.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah. And I think one of it, one of the things is, and this is now I'm going to be vulnerable and share with you. I think I was raised in an environment where you had to be positive all the time. You weren't allowed. It was viewed as being negative or complaining if you were pointed out problems. So I think for me, what I had to work on and continue to work on, even with family and friends, is if I hear someone voicing a real concern that my brain doesn't immediately go to that place where I was raised that says, oh, they're so negative. No, it's okay, tell me more about this. Tell me why. And maybe it will turn out that the person was taking a negative view of a situation that wasn't necessarily going in the wrong direction, but at least you've explored that and you've given them permission to speak up again, because if we shut them down, they're not going to do it again.
Mark Graban:
Right?
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah. And can I say one other thing is that I tend to talk to, not ask for people's feedback. And I think if they have something to say, they'll say it. And with introverts, what I've learned when I've had introverts on the team is that, yeah, the extroverts will have something to say if they want to say it. But you've got a team that's probably 50% introverts, and you have to call in a safe environment. You have to seek out that feedback and ask questions and care about the answer, not just, oh, I have to ask the intervention, you know, just really care. I really want to know how you feel. Tell me. Tell me what you're thinking and what you're seeing. And I think that's another area that I. That I've learned over the years that I'm still not quite as good at, but I think it's important.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, yeah, that sounds familiar. Like you said, of thinking through how. I think back to early in my career, I feel like it was part of my job to point out problems or opportunities for improvement. You could frame that as the negative or the positive. I'm trying to make things better and well intended attempt in the wrong. I'll say wrong to my value judgment there. Wrong environment or environment that wasn't a fit for me, that that gets punished. Like you said, stop being so negative. And like, I thought it was trying to help. Now I could reflect and say, was it the way I was saying it? Possibly. But I think it goes to show, though, it's incumbent upon leaders to not shut it down, but to try to coach. It would have been better for me to be coached through it of like, well, if a leader. I'm role playing a made up scenario, but, you know, if a leader said, well, Mark, you seem really concerned or even upset about that. Thank you for bringing it up. Now let's kind of talk through, you know, the way you raised it, or, you know, there's ways of bringing things up that might be more readily received. But, you know, in my experience, it's so dependent upon what leaders are doing because I think in a psychologically unsafe environment, even the extroverts will learn to keep quiet.
Lynn Kelley:
That's, oh, 100%. Yeah. And did you find, Mark, that you changed the way that you approach giving feedback to make it more effective? Were you ever coached to do that or was that not something you had to to work on? It kind of sounded like you did think you needed to work on. I just wondered if you.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I can think back to a little bit of feedback, but it was easier to kind of just, okay, shut down and then I would, you know, I mean, I was changing jobs more often early in my career.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, no, I get it, I get it, I get it. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
You know, of like, how do. I mean, is that. There's always that. That big question of do I need to learn how to navigate this environment, right? Or if it doesn't feel like a good fit, go try to find a place that's a better fit. Now, I have had better fits, thankfully, in my career, so that's either come with maturity or me changing a little bit or finding the right environment. Like, if I could never find an environment that was a fit, maybe that's solely a me problem, but yeah, I.
Lynn Kelley:
Don'T think it always was. I agree. I've had really bad fits that I. That I felt was a me problem for a while and really worked at it, but then eventually realized I'll probably never be successful in this environment. This is the culture and I think that is such a. Such an important lesson and especially when you're young and you're trying to figure it out, when do you stay and when do you go? And I think it's. I think it's somewhere in between. I do. Because I think those rough edges, I think being in comfortable fits helps you be more adaptable and helps, at least for me, I'm just saying, for me, I had a lot of rough edges and I feel like as much as I hated it, I think I came out a better person, but often eventually have had to say, this is not the right fit for me.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Yeah. We've had guests here on my favorite mistake who've told the whole range of stories of realizing on day one that the new job was a mistake, but sticking with it led to a lot of growth.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
And opportunity. Eric Twigs comes to mind as a guest who had a story like that. Some people said they made the mistake of sticking with a bad fit too long.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
It's hard to find the balance there, but I'm going to tell one quick story real quick. Of one of the big manufacturers I worked for. So it narrows it down to one in three for people who know my resume. But I was really struggling with a lot of that. And through employee assistance program, I would encourage people, if they're struggling at work, and your company offers that as a benefit, take advantage of it. Nothing wrong with that. And I had a couple sessions talking to a counselor who was really good on kind of workplace issues, and she really summed it up, and, I mean, was pretty blunt. Like, you wouldn't know how many people and leaders from your company come through this couch. And the problem is not you. She was basically saying, like, yeah, the problem is not you. If it's not a fit, like, yeah, you should probably just leave. You know, the company wasn't paying her to say that.
Lynn Kelley:
That's amazing.
Mark Graban:
The company in the EAP program were paying her to try to be helpful. But I remember she was pretty blunt. And it's not that I thought I was perfect and didn't have room for growth. I made mistakes. But she was pretty blunt. Like, don't beat yourself up over it being a you problem.
Lynn Kelley:
Right. And. Because eventually it will. It will erode your self esteem. If you're every day going in an environment where you're the square peg in a round hole, I don't care how much self esteem you have. That's gonna. That's gonna erode it.
Mark Graban:
And I wasn't the only square peg. I think that was reassuring.
Lynn Kelley:
That and the fact that she said that tells you how systemic it was.
Mark Graban:
Yeah.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah. That's. That's good that you. That you. She was able to do that and you were able to make a change.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. One other thing I wanted to ask you, Lynn, about, you know, your background roles in continuous improvement and innovation. How would you compare the disciplines there? How different or continuous improvement in innovation, or is there sort of a spectrum? Are there different ways you would try to help manage change when it comes to, let's say, bigger scale innovation?
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, I think they're in some ways very much the same. In some ways very different. And sometimes, if you have a strong continuous improvement culture, it can work against innovation. And that's what I mean by very different. But if you have a strong convenience improvement culture and you can take the next leap, it can very much support innovation. So let me just share with why I'm saying that. I think continuous improvement, by its very nature, is incremental. Right. So you're constantly looking for the next small change. Next small change. It reduces the risk, a failure it reduces the risk of catastrophic things that could happen. If you're in a place where you could have those types of things happen. It really is a safe way to change and grow. And some people don't even feel comfortable with continuous improvement, so much less are they going to feel comfortable with innovation. So it's a way to bring everybody along. But I do think innovation is needed sometimes. And people get so wedded to a continuous improvement methodology or approach that it's like the framework, you know, we see that box and we can't see outside of it, and a new approach that, that calls for. We're not going to do a little incremental. We're going to just, we're going to do something big that that is, will often work, have certain types of people in a lot of us, because we tend to think in frameworks. We know that through research, and it's hard for us to see all the research shows. If you're in a field, you're probably not going to be seeing the innovation because you're modeling, your brain doesn't allow you to see beyond those walls. And so I think introducing innovation can be very difficult. But the way that I believe you have to try is you find places that are natural fit, like design, or where people that are tend to be more innovators. And you start experimenting and trying ideas in a place where you can maybe keep the old process running, their old system running, but then look, have the ability in a black box sometimes, but it can be in the same organization, in the same building trying different things. But it's a different, it is a very different approach. And failure on continuous improvement is reduced, the risk is reduced. But failure and innovation, if it's rolled out and it's a big failure, the way that organizations handle that, it's often by punishment, and then we've just killed, we've killed the innovation. Everybody's looking at that example. So it's an interesting space.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Yeah. I think what you're saying is a fixation on incremental improvement might keep people from thinking about opportunities for step change improvement, or the trap of incrementally improving something that's on its way out. Like, you know, continued incremental improvements to a rotary telephone.
Lynn Kelley:
Exactly.
Mark Graban:
Puts you out of business if you're not able to innovate into mobile phones. Or we think of, you know, companies that were incrementally. I don't know, it's more complicated than this. But like incrementally improving that we've got the best flip phone. Like, well, nobody wants flip phones anymore. Companies missed that next leap. Again, maybe not. Just. I'm not going to blame a continuous improvement focus on all of that. But even if the analogy is not completely correct, hopefully it's helpful for people to think of their own, their own situation.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, I agree. And I love your example. You can continuously improve yourself out of business.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And then as we wrap up, you mentioned going to Japan, and I've had chances to go to Japan. And I remember a japanese hospital CEO who was very well versed, and they were doing a lot of work around TQM, total quality management. They had gotten six sigma training from GE. They were learning kind of Toyota style lean. And the hospital CEO said something like, the best way to find large improvements is to look for many small improvements. And I think he was saying, like, if you're giving a really good, like, you take the pressure off people.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
It's less risky or less scary, or it's easier to find small improvements. And I think his point was, occasionally, then you stumble into something that is an opportunity for more of a stair step innovation in a process, even. Okay, that's interesting because I've seen organizations where I think attempts at continuous improvement get really stagnant because everyone's looking for the proverbial million dollar idea and they get just kind of stuck and they can't think of one, so they don't do anything.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah. Huh. That's interesting. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
But I think there's interesting connections. But there are change questions and processes that we can use to be sort of intentionally innovative. Right?
Lynn Kelley:
Yes, absolutely. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Graban:
So I think we'll have to wrap up, Lynn. This has been really fun conversation. Lynn Kelly, author of the book Change Questions, a playbook for effective and lasting organizational change. You can find it wherever you buy books. The website is changequestions.net, and you've got some downloads and some other things that are kind of related to the book if you want to tell everyone about that one.
Lynn Kelley:
Yeah, there is. What we wanted to do is make this available to as many people as possible, even without buying the book. So we took the meat of the book and made it free with no copyright on it. And it's on changequestions.net, and it's a digital workbook, and it's a fillable PDF that you can use to answer your own change questions on remote calls on. And you can plan your change methodology with everybody with this digital workbook. And it's, it just, it's, it's a suite. It's, it's very cool. It's very cool. And it's free. So, you know, at the minimum, go do that. And then if you want a book, great. The book has, you know, a case study at Union Pacific. It has stories, it has examples. But, but what you really, the meat of it is free.
Mark Graban:
All right. Well, that's very cool. Thank you for doing that, Lynn. I hope people will check it out so there'll be links in the show notes if people want to learn more from that. So, Lynn, thank you for doing the podcast here today.
Lynn Kelley:
Thanks. It was great. Mark, love talking to you.
Mark Graban:
Thanks. Likewise.
Episode Summary and More
Accelerating Organizational Change: Insights from D. Lynn Kelly
In a rapidly evolving business world, the ability to implement effective and lasting organizational change is invaluable. D. Lynn Kelly, with her extensive background in leadership roles across various industries, offers profound insights into mastering this art. Through her recently released book in 2023, titled “Change: A Playbook for Effective and Lasting Organizational Change,” Kelly explores the dynamics of organizational transformation, underpinned by her real-world experiences and academic prowess.
The Genesis of Change: Learning from Mistakes
D. Lynn Kelly's journey through the realms of engineering, supply chain, continuous improvement, and academia underscores the pivotal role of mistakes in fostering growth and ushering in change. Kelly shares that a significant mistake early in her career, while working with a company struggling with on-time delivery and defect reduction, led her to a pivotal realization. The company's commitment to never “knowingly ship a defective part,” a departure from its previous get-it-out-the-door mentality, marked the beginning of a transformative journey not only for the company but for Kelly herself.
Her engagement with Textron, which sought to replicate her success in Europe, presented a unique set of challenges, especially in France. Kelly's reflections on this period reveal the critical importance of alignment between organizational metrics and change initiatives. The contrasting outcomes in Germany versus France underscored the fundamental lesson that the right measurements are key to managing and guiding effective change.
The Intersection of Lean Management and Organizational Change
Kelly’s exposure to lean management principles, particularly during her stint in Japan, provided her with a robust toolkit for driving efficiency and reducing waste. However, it was her application of these principles within the context of organizational change where her insights truly shine. By recognizing the cultural and operational nuances between different workplaces, Kelly adeptly navigated the complexities of applying lean management practices across diverse organizational landscapes.
As someone deeply involved in the lean management conversation, Kelly's experiences highlight the common ground between lean management and effective change leadership. Both disciplines require a deep understanding of the human element within organizations, emphasizing the need for clear communication, engagement, and an environment that fosters continuous improvement.
Navigating Change in Diverse Settings
D. Lynn Kelly's narrative moves beyond the manufacturing sector, touching on her leadership roles in healthcare—in particular, the unique challenges of driving change in such an emotionally charged, complex, and regulation-heavy environment. Her transition from industries focused on physical products to one centered on care delivery exemplifies the universal applicability of her insights on change management.
In healthcare and beyond, Kelly's approach underscores the significance of building trust and establishing solid relationships as the foundation for successful change initiatives. Whether it’s collaborating with plant managers in France and Germany or engaging hospital teams, the lessons drawn from Kelly's experiences highlight the critical roles of empathy, cultural sensitivity, and adaptive leadership.
Conclusion
D. Lynn Kelly's multifaceted career journey, underscored by her academic achievements and leadership roles, offers a blueprint for navigating the complex landscape of organizational change. From the factory floor in Detroit to the boardrooms of global corporations and the corridors of healthcare institutions, her story is a testament to the power of embracing mistakes, understanding cultural dynamics, and tirelessly pursuing improvement. Her book, “Change: A Playbook for Effective and Lasting Organizational Change,” is not just a reflection of her journey but a guide for leaders seeking to make a lasting impact in their organizations.
Embracing Psychological Safety in Organizational Change
In the complex process of driving organizational reforms, cultivating an environment of psychological safety is paramount. This concept, deeply rooted in Kelly's reflections and the methodologies discussed in her co-authored book with John Shook, underscores the importance of creating spaces where team members feel secure to express doubts, offer feedback, and even resist without fearing repercussions. The dialogue between Lynn Kelly and Mark Graban highlights the critical role of psychological safety in successful change initiatives, emphasizing the need for leaders to be open, vulnerable, and receptive to the team's input.
Critical Questions for Consideration
Adopting an approach that values questions over rigid frameworks, Kelly's strategy involves a thoughtful examination of potential failure modes and the conditions conducive to fostering successful transformations. This method does not only relate to the specific actions necessary to implement change but also engages deeply with the human aspect of change management.
- How can we ensure that our actions do not inadvertently compromise safety or quality?
- What barriers to change might exist due to resistance, and how can we respectfully address them?
- In what ways can we tailor our change strategies to accommodate the unique contexts of our projects?
The Role of Vulnerability in Leadership
Kelly's personal insights into the necessity of vulnerability in leadership reveal a profound understanding of its value in the change process. By sharing uncertainties and being open to the possibility of failure, leaders can significantly contribute to a culture that embraces change rather than fears it. This approach is particularly effective in settings where the outcome directly impacts human lives, such as in healthcare and aerospace, demanding a meticulous and considerate path to reform.
Strategic Adaptability and Cultural Insight
Through her career spanning disparate sectors, Kelly has discerned the importance of adaptability and cultural sensitivity in implementing effective change. Recognizing the diverse dynamics at play within various organizational structures—from healthcare's complex hierarchy to academia's decentralized power—Kelly advocates for a nuanced understanding of each setting's specific challenges and opportunities.
- What strategies can foster collaboration and consensus among diverse groups within an organization?
- How can leaders navigate the complexities of change in environments with critical safety or quality implications?
Building a Foundation for Continuous Improvement
Kelly and Shook's collaborative effort in the realm of change management literature introduces a transformative perspective on effecting organizational change. The synthesis of Kelly's practical considerations and Shook's Lean Transformation Framework offers a compelling guide for leaders striving for excellence in change initiatives. By prioritizing continuous improvement and learning from each undertaken project, organizations can elevate their success rate in implementing meaningful and sustained changes.
Navigating Organizational Change Across Industries
The insights shared by D. Lynn Kelly highlight the multifaceted nature of organizational change, spanning across various industries with unique challenges and requirements. From the exigent demands of healthcare and aerospace where safety and quality are paramount, to the nuanced environments of academia and manufacturing, Kelly's experiences offer invaluable lessons on the critical elements of successful change management. Her emphasis on psychological safety, leadership vulnerability, and the necessity of customizing approaches to fit the specific context of each initiative underscores the importance of flexibility, empathy, and strategic insight in navigating the intricate landscape of organizational transformation.
Understanding the Nuance of Feedback and Improvement
The dialogue between Lynn Kelley and Mark Graban delves into the nuanced dynamics of feedback within the workplace, particularly highlighting how upbringing and innate personality traits can deeply influence how feedback is perceived and delivered. This understanding is critical in fostering a culture where feedback is not just accepted but encouraged, recognizing it as a cornerstone of continuous improvement and innovation. Emphasizing the distinction between voicing concerns and being labeled as negative, Kelley's experiences shed light on the imperative to reframe our approach to feedback—a shift from viewing it as criticism to seeing it as an opportunity for growth and betterment.
Creating Spaces for Introverts to Flourish
A significant revelation from their conversation underscores the necessity of cultivating environments that not only respect but actively invite input from all personality types. The acknowledgment that teams are often a blend of introverts and extroverts, with each bringing valuable insights, challenges leaders to proactively engage quieter team members in dialogue. Such inclusivity ensures a comprehensive understanding of team perspectives, enriching the decision-making process and enhancing the quality of change initiatives.
The Challenge of Navigating and Shaping Organizational Culture
Another critical area of focus emerges around the challenge of navigating and ultimately shaping organizational culture to support continuous improvement and innovation. Kelly and Graban explore the delicate balance between adapting to a given environment and recognizing when a misalignment might indicate the need for change, either within oneself or by seeking new opportunities. This aspect is particularly resonant in discussions about the psychological safety of expressing dissent or proposing changes, where fear of retribution can stifle innovation and impede genuine progress.
Continuous Improvement versus Innovation: A Balanced Approach
The conversation further delves into the relationship between continuous improvement and innovation, proposing that while they share common goals, their methodologies and impacts differ significantly. Continuous improvement, with its incremental nature, offers a safer path to development but risks becoming myopic or stagnant if not balanced with occasional innovative leaps. In contrast, innovation demands a willingness to embrace significant, sometimes radical, changes that can lead to transformative outcomes. Kelley's insights suggest that a harmonious balance between these approaches—leveraging continuous improvement to maintain steady progress while remaining open to innovation for breakthroughs—can propel organizations forward in a competitive landscape.
Leveraging Small Improvements for Major Gains
The discussion concludes on a reflective note, considering the sage advice of a Japanese hospital CEO encountered by Graban. This perspective champions the pursuit of many small improvements as a strategy to unearth significant advancements, thereby challenging the common fixation on “big ideas” that often leads to inertia. This approach aligns with theories of incremental innovation, where the cumulative impact of small changes can, over time, result in substantial improvements that might well pave the way for more disruptive innovations.
Strategies for Cultivating a Feedback-Rich Environment
- Encourage an Open Dialogue: Actively seek out feedback from all team members, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their disposition, feels heard and valued.
- Reframe Feedback: Help team members see feedback not as criticism but as an opportunity for personal and organizational growth.
- Balance Improvement Approaches: Strive for a balance between continuous improvement and innovation, recognizing the value each brings and the potential hazards of leaning too far in one direction.
- Foster Psychological Safety: Create an environment where the fear of retribution does not stifle conversation or innovation.
- Leverage Diversity: Embrace the diverse perspectives within your team, recognizing that a blend of personalities and approaches enriches problem-solving and decision-making processes.
As organizations continue to navigate the complexities of change, the wisdom shared by Kelley and Graban offers valuable guideposts. By fostering an environment that cherishes feedback, embraces diversity, and balances the incremental with the innovative, leaders can steer their teams through the murky waters of organizational change with confidence and success.
Expanding the Toolkit for Organizational Change
In light of the conversation between Lynn Kelley and Mark Graban, it becomes clear that the tools and methodologies organizations use to implement and navigate change are vital. Kelley's development of a digital workbook accessible through changequestions.net exemplifies an innovative approach to change management. This resource allows individuals and teams to collaboratively explore and answer pivotal questions about their change initiatives in a structured, user-friendly manner. Such tools democratize the process of organizational change, making it more accessible and engaging for everyone involved.
The Power of Digital Resources in Change Management
The digital era has ushered in a wealth of resources and tools designed to facilitate organizational change. Kelley's initiative to offer a substantial portion of her insights in a free, downloadable format underscores a broader trend towards open access to knowledge and methods in change management. This trend not only helps organizations cut costs but also accelerates the adoption of new practices by removing barriers to entry. Digital tools like the workbook mentioned offer the flexibility needed to adapt to various scenarios, including remote collaboration, which has become increasingly prevalent.
Leveraging Case Studies and Real-World Examples
An important aspect of Kelley's approach, as reflected in her work and the discussion, is the use of real-world examples and case studies, such as the one from Union Pacific. These narratives provide tangible evidence of the concepts in action, offering readers insights into how abstract principles of change management are applied in concrete situations. Case studies serve as powerful learning tools, illustrating both successes and challenges, and fostering a deeper understanding of the change process.
Encouraging a Culture of Continuous Learning
One underlying theme from the conversation is the importance of fostering a culture that values continuous learning and adaptation. The change questions workbook and the broader conversation around the dynamic interaction of feedback, improvement, and innovation highlight the need for ongoing education and skill development in the face of organizational change. By encouraging teams to engage with resources like Kelley’s workbook, leaders can cultivate an atmosphere where learning is embedded in the process of change, thereby enhancing the organization's capacity to evolve effectively.
Strategies for Effective Change Implementation
Beyond the creation of supportive tools and resources, implementing change successfully requires strategic thinking and careful planning. Here are additional strategies that can complement the insights from Kelley and Graban's discussion:
- Develop Clear Communication Channels: Effective change management hinges on clear, consistent communication. Ensure that every team member, regardless of their role or location, understands the change objectives, processes, and expectations.
- Monitor and Adjust Strategies: Utilize feedback mechanisms to gauge the effectiveness of change initiatives and be prepared to adjust strategies in response to new insights and challenges.
- Celebrate Small Wins: Recognizing and celebrating progress, no matter how small, can boost morale and maintain momentum throughout the change process.
- Incorporate Flexibility: The digital workbook and other tools underscore the importance of flexibility in planning and execution. Adaptability should be baked into change initiatives to accommodate unexpected obstacles and opportunities.
By integrating these approaches with the rich insights provided by Kelley and Graban, organizations can navigate the complexities of change with greater agility and effectiveness. The conversation not only illuminates the challenges and strategies of change management but also celebrates the potential for growth and innovation inherent in the process.