Fostering Excellence Through Joy and Respect for People with Stephanie Bursek

Stephanie Burse:

[00:00:00] We have been very consistent about taking a pause when there’s a mistake and then saying, okay, what’d you learn? What are we going to do different next time? Let’s fix it. And they still work here. They, no one gets fired. No one, no one gets written up. You know, we are a group with shared values who are enabled to make mistakes.

[00:00:21] I do it all the time.

Katie Anderson:

[00:00:23] Welcome the chain of learning where the links of leadership and learning unite. This is your connection for actionable strategies and practices to empower you. To build a people centered learning culture, get results and expand your impact so that you and your team can leave a lasting legacy.

[00:00:40] I’m your host and fellow learning enthusiast, Katie Anderson. Has your organization been on a continuous improvement journey and making some progress only to find that you’re getting stalled out or stuck? Are you finding that people are somewhat reluctant to bring forward their ideas or that lean is seen as merely a cost cutting or efficiency improvement initiative, perhaps you’ve been only focusing on one part of the path to excellence?

[00:01:03] on continuous improvement processes and tools and missing the other important elements. Respect for people. It’s time to make a leap forward in your approach and to help you understand how you can close the gap in your organization’s transformation. I’ve invited Stephanie Brosick to the show. Stephanie is a seasoned human resources executive with a passion on how to create thriving organizational cultures.

[00:01:26] As a director for human resources at Trip NT, a growing family owned manufacturing company based in the U S. She’s focused on building a unique company culture by uniting the pillars of continuous improvement and respect for people. I got to know Stephanie earlier in 2024 when she was a participant in my Japan study trip leadership program.

[00:01:46] I invited Stephanie to the podcast to share her insights on the human side of lean and what she’s learned about the power of focusing on people as the way to get business results. In this episode, you’ll hear examples of how Stephanie and her leaders are embedding a people centered focus into their approach, including how they’re building trust and creating a more psychologically safe environment, how they’ve adjusted their approach to goal setting to foster greater collaboration, and how they’re demonstrating humility and an attitude towards learning.

[00:02:14] I also share a provocative quote from the chairman of one of the most inspirational Japanese company I take people to on my Japan study trip programs, which always gets jaws dropping when I mention it from keynote stages or in workshops. So be sure to tune in to hear it. We started off our conversation, exploring a comment Stephanie had previously made to me about a gap she saw in her company’s approach to lean.

[00:02:36] Although her company had been successful in applying lean and continuous improvement techniques for years, even offering frequent tours to external companies to learn from them. She knew that they needed to make a leap to the next level to really develop a culture of excellence. And that leap was the people leap.

[00:02:53] I asked her what led her to see that the company needed to make this people leap and what difference it’s made to their culture by bringing in a more intentional approach towards the pillar of respect for people. Let’s dive in.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:03:06] When I learned lean originally, I was working for a company in Seattle and they sent me away to a conference, a very expensive conference.

[00:03:12] And I came back with Vocabulary and some knowledge. I knew what a gimbal walk was. I knew what a Kaizen event was, and I had been exposed to many of the processes of lean, but not necessarily the philosophy. The two columns of lean. The two is, you know, continuous improvement and respect for people. And I think the respect for people part gets left out.

[00:03:39] A lot, you know, a lot of people will get excited about an Obeah room or, you know, something with some, some kind of lean concept. But if you don’t have the respect for people, if you don’t have the psychological safety for people to make mistakes, lean will fail. And that is when I, when I joined Tripp and Tee, I realized.

[00:03:59] That is the element that I had been missing all along. I mean, I certainly love efficiency and I certainly love the joy of an improvement that comes, you know, when you fix something and make it better. But I’ve come to realize that, and this is partially my responsibility where I work is to make sure that people feel.

[00:04:17] And that they credit for the improvements that they make and all of those things. When it really struck me is when I read the book, uh, tree ring management, which my friend Crystal Maness, who was on the Japan tour with us, gave me. And I read it and thought to myself, there’s something here that we’re missing.

[00:04:35] And then I started researching the book and to find out more about the man who wrote it. And when I kept Googling it, your face came up several times. And I thought to myself, who is this person associated with Ina Foods and who, and why do I need to know her? And at the time I had been discussing a trip about a year in advance with my boss, To Japan, all, everybody that I worked with on my leadership team had been to Japan and it was kind of my turn coming up and I re and then I found you and I realized that you offered Japan trips that were people oriented.

[00:05:10] I could just tell from, you know, what was on your webpage and, and then I bought your book. And so I, I proposed to my leadership team that I wanted to go to Japan with you and that we should read your book. And we do, we’re constantly reading. We, as a leadership team, we meet twice a week for half an hour to talk about A book we’re reading and leadership issues that are bubbling up.

[00:05:30] Think anything that we find we might need help with or that we would like advice. We help, we ask each other. So we read, I’m going to pick up your book here for a second. Um, we read your book together and. What we really appreciated about this book is, well, for me, I’ll say personally, it was, um, how humble it is of you to write a book completely about somebody else’s experiences.

[00:05:56] And I, um, I experienced that again and again, when we went to Japan, the rest of my team really, what they really liked about this book was the concept of psychological safety and what Mr. Yoshino expresses about the ability to make mistakes. Recover and bring success to yourself and the company along the way.

[00:06:17] So, um, so that is how I convinced my company to send me with you. And we reference your book often. We use it as a guide. For how we want to be as a company.

Katie Anderson:

[00:06:31] I love hearing all of that. And I want to dive into some of the things that you’ve, you’ve learned, not just for me and, uh, my Japan trips and books, but really how you’ve been applying this people concept, you know, as an HR leader in a manufacturing organization, but I want to.

[00:06:45] I want to go back to this realization you had, Stephanie, around, you know, your company had been doing a lot of really great things with lean and the continuous improvement in the process side. And that when you joined, you, you felt like there was a bit of a gap that there, even though like, it’s very clear, I’ve met your CEO, Sebastian.

[00:07:02] He clearly is a very people centered leader. You can just. Tell that from how he shows up, but what were some of the gaps that you were seeing in how your company was even a year ago in approaching lean and maybe there, maybe there’s some imbalance that you saw between the pillars of continuous improvement and respect for people.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:07:21] It is very, very hard to step away from the results and know that if you treat your people well, and that you make a safe environment where everyone improves, you will get results. But you have to trust you can’t, you know, if you, if you start with, this is the result we want, then all you’re kind of setting yourself up to fail, you know, you’re, you’re setting yourself up for, you know, if we don’t achieve X, Y, and Z, then we’re failing and we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing, where in reality, all we want to do is improve.

[00:07:55] a little bit every day. It’s improving our processes. It’s improving our, our products. It’s improving our people. And that, that is what was missing was just that understanding that improvements come every day. And they are not necessarily groundbreaking. I mean, every once in a while one is right, but it’s the continuous and the, and also the safety of people to make mistakes, because I’m not going to come across that really great improvement unless I’m allowed to make a couple sloppy mistakes along the way.

[00:08:28] And, and so it really has become, our environment here has become. Safer and also inspiring. Like when you see other people doing really cool things, you want to try the next thing you want to learn something new and, and, and apply it to your own processes. So,

Katie Anderson:

[00:08:44] you know, it’s really important as you just shared to have a cultural environment where people feel that psychological safety and that, you know, as Mr.

[00:08:52] Yoshino talks about where mistakes are embraced, you know, we talk about that as a core to Toyota’s culture and what he explored in the 40 years he worked at Toyota, but there’s also like. Leaders do have to put out goals or, you know, they, you need results as a business leader. Right. And so how do you manage that tension between the organization does need results, but we also want to create the space where people are getting a little bit better every day towards that result.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:09:18] Right. So that, I think that’s where Hoshin Conrey comes in. So, uh, quarterly, you know, as a leadership team, we’re going off site and we’re looking back, spending some time on Hansay. What happened last quarter and then we’re looking forward and we only do it on a 90 day basis. We don’t make annual goals.

[00:09:37] Um, and what we’ve found is that people just don’t have the attention span for annual goals. And that includes me. I’m I’m not. Nobody does. And so what we do is we plan a quarter at a time and we’re moving towards Our, you know, pie in the sky dreams, but we’re doing it on a reasonable basis, 90 days at a time.

[00:09:57] So that’s the Hoshin Kanri that happens at the leadership level where we’re setting goals and saying, this is the way, you know, and this is what we’re going to do. The difference between this and a lot of companies and corporate environments is if we fail on a specific thing that we’ve, you know, we want to have 5, 000 followers on YouTube, maybe that’s our goal.

[00:10:17] And we only get. 3000. We don’t hold anybody accountable for that. We don’t, you know, we might ask ourselves why and try to fix it, but it’s not a specific person’s accountability. And there is, there is really no performance management. We really don’t even use that. We use a collaborative Hoshin Conry daily improvement model and it’s worked for us.

[00:10:41] It actually has, has helped us to grow and get better.

Katie Anderson:

[00:10:44] I really want to explore that a little bit too. So for listeners who don’t know what Hoshin Conry is, it is the strategy deployment or the policy deployment and development system that came out of Toyota and other Japanese companies. companies about how senior leaders set the strategy of the organization and then communicate that down to different levels.

[00:11:04] But the difference there, it’s not just a one way we’re telling you the goals and telling you what to do. There’s an upward feedback loop as well. So it’s more circular. So there’s feedback on here’s the goals we need to achieve, but then how are we learning our way towards the goal? So that’s a really important distinction.

[00:11:20] Stephanie, I want to hear more about this really different approach that your company has been taking to performance management and its relationship to goals.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:11:27] Yeah. So we, we have quarterly conversations with our direct supervisors and we do talk about our values. We have five values. Three of them are around learning.

[00:11:35] And so we talk about how are we showing up with the values. We talk about any rocks. We call our goals rocks. Um, we talk about those and how, what happened, but it isn’t a, you get a three or a five or six, Six or whatever on, on whether you accomplish this goal or not, it’s okay. What happened if we didn’t do it?

[00:11:54] And sometimes we know what happens. So for instance, I’ll give you an example. Uh, we had a lead who had a goal of having a certain number of products. videos of how to build them. And he didn’t make that goal one quarter. And it was because he had a little bit of turnover in his department. So we ended up training two people.

[00:12:11] Training is more important and we know it, people are more important. And so he wasn’t, you know, he wasn’t held accountable for not getting those videos done. They eventually got done. It’s really just, um, here’s the, here’s what we believe. We believe that if you share our values. And you should come to work consistently and contribute and improve your own processes and, and your workspace and all of those things every day that together will accomplish a lot.

[00:12:41] And it’s a collaborative model and that everybody will prosper and everybody will have, you know, fun. Joy, if we, if we’re working this way and it’s unusual, but it’s, uh, we don’t have much turnover, so there’s something to it.

Katie Anderson:

[00:12:55] That’s great. And how have you seen that impacting actually the results that your company is getting?

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:13:00] So we were able to take our delivery time used to be about six weeks and that was in 2018. Um, and it’s down to two days. Wow. And that is just, Cumulative, comprehensive improvement. It’s not one particular thing. There are many contributions. Like some of it’s from order entry. Some of it is from production, but it is, um, it’s a comprehensive overtime improvement.

[00:13:27] It’s when you look at a chart, it’s almost unbelievable. That it used to take six weeks for us to ship something, you know, and we can do it in two days now.

Katie Anderson:

[00:13:34] That’s the power of, you know, that pillar of continuous improvement. So the small improvements each and every day that are moving towards those bigger goals.

[00:13:43] And how have you seen now bringing in this, I guess, a richer understanding of what respect for people is and creating this psychologically safe environment? How, how have those two played together to help continue to improve the results that Your company’s seeing, and your people’s experience, I should say.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:13:58] Yeah, I’ll tell you specifically when I came back from Japan, that one of the things I think I said out loud in our last Reflection Together was, Good isn’t good enough. And so I have a weekly pulse that I do with my employees where you can either fill out a Google spreadsheet, or you can turn in a little index card indicating whether your, your week was good, okay, or bad.

[00:14:21] And then, you know, when I get back at that, well, good’s not good enough. I mean, I was exposed to these wonderful companies in Japan that you talked about joy and talked about love and talked about work in harmony with life, you know, that just really touched me. And I thought that. You know, we, we’ve got to get better.

[00:14:37] So I implemented a, another box, if you will, or another card where people can write down one thing that they’re thinking, if, if the word isn’t good, okay, or bad, what is it? What, how are you feeling? And I’ve had a few people use the card and express things like wonderful, stupendous, and then I’ve had, you know, and I had one person say misinformation.

[00:14:59] So I had to find, figure out who, who put that in the box and figure out like what, what was missing. And it was really just a misunderstanding and a miscommunication. So I will not settle now for good. I don’t, I don’t want to work at a company where people are good. I want to work in a company where people are.

[00:15:16] joyous and, you know, inspired and, and happy to come to work every day.

Katie Anderson:

[00:15:22] I love that phrase, you know, work life harmony. It was, uh, I think it was one of the executives that, you know, foods, uh, Koshy, Mr. Suka Koshy, who said that he’s the, he’s the son of the chairman who wrote tree ring management, and they actually say the company happiness is our purpose.

[00:15:41] And of course, you know, they need to get the business results. He talks about that. But if they’ve. Focus on happiness. And this is not like happiness, like, Oh, I had a great day. Just that, but like true, genuine, that respect for people, respect for humanity, happiness, all the other things will follow. And it sounds like that’s really something you’ve taken away and are trying to, to really embed and marry up with the focus on process improvement and continuous improvement.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:16:05] Yes. And. I believe that having the liberty to improve every day actually is a privilege and a joy. And so I think that we give our employees 15 minutes every day to fix something and, and they can fix what bugs them or they can find an improvement. And those cumulatively do two things. One, things get better, obviously, like our shipping lead times.

[00:16:30] But also I, as a person become a problem solver. I am a problem solver. And I. Start to view myself less. There’s no victim mentality here. We can, if we have a problem, we can address it and we can fix it. And it’s safe to say what the problem is, even if it’s. My boss is listening to me or, you know, whatever, whatever the issue is.

[00:16:51] Um, and so as a, a problem solver, I also take that home and it makes the community better, which was another thing that Ena Foods really sort of brought home to me was the way they care for their community and see themselves not just as a business, but as a, Piece of the puzzle in the community that they live in.

[00:17:10] And I want that very much for us. I think we do, we do give back. Um, but I think we can do better. Um, and I, I, I look, really look forward to, we’re starting actually a project, um, in support of one of our clients. Children’s mercy, making kits for kids that are in for treatment. And so it really, that is, that was completely inspired by my visiting, you know, foods and thinking about how do we contribute to our community?

Katie Anderson:

[00:17:34] Absolutely. No matter what size of companies are, if we can all be making our organizations better and then contributing to the betterment of our families, our communities, that’s going to make the world better. And that’s really that. Truly that respect for humanity. And I look at a lot of companies like Toyota, even say like their, their purpose isn’t just to make cars or their purpose.

[00:17:55] It’s likely to restore happiness to the world or through mobility. You know, it’s like these bigger, loftier, um, more holistic. Places of purpose. And there’s this, there’s this, uh, quote in tree ring management. So I first read the book when I was living in Japan in 2016. And I too was just really taken by, uh, the, the company.

[00:18:14] And I was so excited when a Japanese connection of mine, whose company I actually go to as well. Um, this is Ogura. introduce me to Mr. Tsukakoshi and to Ina Foods. And I now have the chance to take people like you to there. But like the true focus on happiness. And he said this, there’s this quote in the book that’s profit is excrement.

[00:18:34] It is. All right. I mean, it’s such a provocative word. I say it on stage now because it’s provocative because we, we in the West are tend to be to where we’re sort of backwards. We focus on that result first. Right. And it’s really the inputs, the people and the systems that support the people in our organization that will lead to the byproduct, which, you know, everybody needs the output.

[00:18:55] But if that’s our goal, then that’s not really a true, true worthy goal.

[00:18:59] Stephanie Bursek: I found that very amusing as well. We put our profit to good use here. We share it 50 percent with employees. So. Yeah, I mean, so it’s not, I mean, and then the rest would be used for developing and growing, right? Yeah,

[00:19:13] Katie Anderson: well, it’s not that we don’t want profit, right?

[00:19:15] Actually, even, and I work with a lot of non profit companies, you know, organizations, especially in healthcare, and it’s this real hard thing to wrap your mind around. Like, you need profit to be able to continue to serve the mission. But if your goal, is the profit or that output that are like, so that’s where you’re hearing.

[00:19:31] And, you know, and you, you took this away from a lot of the companies we visit in Japan. It’s like, focus on harmony or joy or love at work. And that, that sounds kind of woo woo, but it, it actually is, if we can really create these organizations where the culture is focused on supporting people to lead their best lives.

[00:19:47] lives and contribute their best thinking to improve the work each and every day, regardless of what level you’re at. I mean, wow, that’s, that’s really fulfilling our own human purpose too.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:19:59] Yeah. And it’s rare, but we will have somebody depart once in a while. And I, when I’m parting ways with somebody who’s leaving our company, I say, now you’re obligated.

[00:20:08] Now you’ve been in an environment where you were treated well. And you were allowed to develop yourself and you know what, you know, how it feels to be treated this way. And so wherever you go, if as a leader, you need to help make your company that way as well, your environment that way as well,

Katie Anderson:

[00:20:26] right?

[00:20:27] That’s that real chain of learning. How do we use our knowledge and our influence to keep growing it throughout the world? Well,

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:20:33] and that’s what I like about the community that, uh, you know, we, we tour other lean companies. They tour us. There’s such a generosity, um, and that was true in Japan of the company that we saw there.

[00:20:45] There’s such a high level of generosity and truly wanting to do things well, but then also to, to share that with other people.

Katie Anderson:

[00:20:53] Well, that’s the, that’s my purpose with this podcast too. And you know, it’s, I really come from a mission of wanting to grow and share and help each other do the same. So thank you for coming on the podcast and share your learning.

[00:21:06] I would love to go back to this concept of how you’ve been building more psychological safety, um, you know, inspired by first this realization that you needed to bring in more of the people aspect to the work you were doing and, and, and some ahas that you had through reading, learning to lead, leading to learn.

[00:21:23] What are some changes or some differences that have happened over the last year that have, you know, In your mind, is an HR leader really demonstrating that the organization’s culture is shifting to one that’s more psychologically safe?

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:21:34] You know, you can talk about psychological safety till you’re blue in the face.

[00:21:38] Yeah. But an expensive mistake happens. That’s when you know. With even with our vendors, you know, we, we have white plastic and all of our products and there were bugs in them for weeks. And we were kind of like, Oh, there’s a, we can’t use this. This has bugs in it. And rather than just finding another vendor, it was a, okay, there’s a mistake happening.

[00:22:01] Let’s work with them and figure out. You know what’s going to happen. And so there it’s really accepting the mistakes are going to happen and not responding with anything but, oh, well, we learned something, you know, I think, um, in your on the back of your book. I’m pretty sure it says. Yes, the only secret to Toyota is its attitude towards learning, and that is what we’re, that is what’s happening here, and, and there can be no exceptions, or people will not feel psychologically safe, right?

[00:22:33] Oh, let’s see, um, Sebastian cooked for us one day, and he kind of, kind of got distracted, and the pizza was burned. It’s okay to make mistakes here, nobody complained. Some people eat the pizza a little dark and some people just decided just to have salad, right? So, it can be as simple as that or it can be as complex as, you know, not paying attention to building instructions and having something come back from a customer.

[00:22:58] Um, and, and that has to be okay. It has to be okay and we have to learn from it. We can’t point towards anyone. We know, like what happened to Mr. Yoshino with the paint, that if somebody set something out of this building and it is not up to our level of quality, then we’ve failed somewhere in the processes with the, you know, whether it’s QC or whether it’s whoever’s building it, not having the proper instructions, it is not a failure of the person.

[00:23:26] It’s a failure of the process.

Katie Anderson:

[00:23:28] That is such an important highlight that you’re making here. It’s a failure of the process and the systems. And you, as you’re demonstrating as the, as the leadership team have the responsibility for that. It’s very rare that people are actually like intentionally trying to do something, you know, wrong for, for people who haven’t read a learning to lead, leading to learn, you know, the, the.

[00:23:48] The paint story is actually the one that I share the most. And it’s this experience that Mr Yoshino had in his very first months of joining Toyota, where he had a simple assignment in his orientation to pour a can of paint and a can of solvent into a big vat. And then as the cars came down the line, you know, the paint would get sprayed onto the cars.

[00:24:04] And one day, like it was literally, the paint was literally dripping off the cars. And I always ask people. Uh, what would happen if your boss ran into your office and said the line had to be stopped and 100 cars had to be repainted and every and everyone’s faces always goes, Oh, because Most of us probably have that experience.

[00:24:24] Probably someone would have yelled at us, blamed us, gotten mad at us, maybe even fired us because we were in like the probationary period. And, and the power of what they, they did, and sounds like what you’re bringing into your organization too, is that not only they didn’t blame Mr. Yoshino, they asked about like, what was the process that you went through?

[00:24:44] And then they said something that was so powerful. And this is the shift that we all can bring into our practices. They thanked him for making that mistake. Yes. Thank you for making that mistake because it highlighted that we hadn’t set up the processes for you to be successful and mind blowing. Like that’s such a different approach.

[00:25:02] How did your leaders respond to To like reading that story and and sort of has that shifted some of their mentality around responding to these either smaller, larger daily mistakes that are bound to happen because we work with humans.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:25:14] In theory, we all believed we were behaving that way. And I think that story really like we paused and we talked about it.

[00:25:23] And we’re like, how would we respond? If 100 carts went out and they were below par or they were the wrong color or, you know, any, any, any scenario, it helped us to realize we’re not, we weren’t always responding with. Thank you for highlighting this mistake. It’s our process that’s messed up. We’ll fix it.

[00:25:46] You know, how about you help us fix it? Right? And that’s getting to be part of the solution as well. So, yeah, I think we have been more very consistent Since reading your book about taking a pause. When there’s a mistake and then saying, okay, what’d you learn? What are we going to do different next time?

[00:26:04] Let’s fix it. And they still work here. They, no one gets fired. No, no one gets written up. You know, it’s, it’s, it, they’re, they, we are a group with shared values who are enabled to make mistakes. I do it all the time

Katie Anderson:

[00:26:18] to the, you know, to quote the, you know, the standard saying to air as human. But that’s so true.

[00:26:24] And we all work with humans. And again, it’s coming from that place of generosity of spirit to know that it’s very rare that people are intentionally doing something malicious. So let’s take a step back and create the environments for that.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:26:37] You remind me of something I want to share. I had wonderful, a lot of wonderful learning moments on my trip to Japan.

[00:26:44] Um, but there was one in particular that really helped me and I’ll tell you how, how I’ve used it since I got back. I got to the bus first, just by coincidence, uh, after we were leaving the tea ceremony where we learned about Ichi, Ichigo, Ichie, right? And, and Kata. So I got back first and then Mr. Yoshino got on right after and he said, you come and sit next to me.

[00:27:06] I want to talk to you. So I got to have some one on one time with him. And I had a question for him because something that had been on my mind before I left for Japan was, how do we maintain. This culture of trust, because I know from experience, have been in HR for a while, that when you add one person to the mix who doesn’t share your values, who got in by lying in an interview or by not being genuine, they can take, they can take down the whole organization.

[00:27:33] They can make everybody unhappy, you know, and, and, and. And so I asked him, did you have people at Toyota that didn’t work, you know, that didn’t, didn’t share the values when they got there and, and what did you do? And he said, I trusted my HR person to give me good people. And he said, I didn’t even interview them.

[00:27:55] He said, I, um, I trusted the HR person. And if he came to me and said, I’ve got this person and they share our values, I was going to make it work. And so. I don’t think I necessarily have that luxury of being able to just tell my people, you know, my leaders who were hiring, but my last round of interviews, I decided it’s a, it’s going to be, we’re going to have an experience of, um, of a longer period with somebody to really, really get to know them.

[00:28:24] And we already asked the weirdest questions about adding people to our, like, one of the questions we ask is what’s a failure that you’ve learned from? And that’s a hard question in an interview. Cause you’re trying to put on your best game face and all of that. But, um, we have now extended our interview to four hours so that it is truly, they get seeped in our experience.

[00:28:43] And, you know, they’re coming to our morning meeting where there’s a lot of clapping. It’s not, it’s not exactly as exciting as Tokyo foods, but it’s pretty good. They, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re seeing everybody clean toilets. They’re seeing everybody doing improvements. And if. After four hours of all of this, they still want to join us and they seem to get excited by all of that.

[00:29:02] Then we’re probably going to find a match. Right? So Mr. Yoshino has inspired me to go deeper candidates. Um, and it’s so that we don’t add somebody to the mix who really doesn’t share our values.

Katie Anderson:

[00:29:15] That’s such great advice, not just from Mr. Yoshino, but from you too, about how do we Make sure that we’re bringing people in who are the right cultural fit and also willing learners, right?

[00:29:24] I mean, you can teach people a lot of skills, but if they don’t have the, that sort of willingness and that mindset, that’s much harder to teach.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:29:32] Yeah. Humble, open, and resilient is what we’re looking for. It isn’t as common as it seems. How do you define resilience

Katie Anderson:

[00:29:40] when you’re looking at for people?

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:29:42] Um, so resilience is when you’ve made that mistake.

[00:29:45] Okay. You don’t beat yourself up and you go back and you’re going to do it again. And in fact, you know, resilience is. The Daruma doll, right? Oh yes. Oh, I love seeing your Daruma. I’m going to color the cyan for you by the, but before we end this interview, but, um, the fall down seven times, get up eight thing is that’s resilience to me.

[00:30:05] I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s never getting jaded or, or cynical, um, but coming to work with an open heart and open mind and ready to do the next thing. And, you know, the humble is part of that as well.

Katie Anderson:

[00:30:20] Yes. And we’ll, and I heard you say that. You and your leadership team, or maybe it’s everyone cleans the toilets.

[00:30:26] How have you incorporated that? I mean, I know that a lot of Japanese companies do this, but tell me about, yeah, how that, how that’s gone.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:30:32] Yeah. So you previously mentioned my CEO, Sebastian, he had read a book and he decided that he was going to demonstrate it before he asked anyone else to do it. So he went and cleaned the toilets in our old building.

[00:30:45] Um, and everybody saw that he was doing that. And then he started to introduce the concept of. What if we all cleaned together? What we do is we divide into teams and, uh, right now I have, I happen to be on the bathrooms team. As a team, we, we look at our processes every day and try to improve the way we’re cleaning.

[00:31:03] Um, not just speed, but, you know, is everything getting clean? We audit ourselves and try to make, make it better. Everybody cycles through and works on the different teams so that at some point everyone’s holding a toilet brush. And whether you’re comfortable doing that at work or not really determines the Your success.

[00:31:20] I mean, that is a, it’s a, it’s a kind of a metaphor for, are you willing to be humble, right? It has worked for us. And then there’s these benefits about it that I didn’t see coming. And those were, um, people are invested in their environment because they clean it. And it’s funny, you know, at work, we have make your own sandwich day because we offer a lunch and a snack here at Chubinti and what we’ve found is people love make your own sandwich day because it’s your sandwich, right?

[00:31:47] You’re making it right. And if you’re cleaning an environment, it’s your environment. And so you see people walk along and if they see something on the floor, they’ll pick it up and put it in the garbage. Or sometimes I see people who just need to take a clarity break and they’ll pick up a vacuum and go vacuum something that they see on the floor.

[00:32:03] I mean, it is inspiring. And I didn’t, I didn’t see, I knew that that, that there would be a lean element to cleaning the bathrooms together and clean the whole, The entire facility together. But what I didn’t think about is how, how it makes people feel about their environment.

Katie Anderson:

[00:32:18] And we see this in Japan. We go visit elementary schools or other schools.

[00:32:22] There are no janitors in Japanese schools. And I’m talking about public schools to the children, clean the bathrooms, the hallways everywhere. And you know what? Those bathrooms aren’t so dirty when every day you’re expected to clean for 15 20 minutes and you are holding a mop. And, you know, I just think about some of the challenges we have, not just the United States, but other countries as well, with our environment being dirty or people not, you know, taking care of things.

[00:32:49] And it’s because we see it as other people’s problem. And I mean, I guess a nice metaphor for all of continuous improvement, right? If we can see all of the processes as our not our problem, but our responsibility to contribute to and improve. That’s how we’re going to truly make inroads into a real culture of improvement and get those, those results, not just for the, the, the customers, but that environment where people want to stay and work and have a joyous experience.

[00:33:17] So Stephanie, as we’re winding down this conversation, we could talk for hours and I, you know, it It’s such a pleasure for me to get to spend the whole week with you in Japan just earlier this year. And I know our relationship is going to go into the future. You’re such an important part of my chain of learning.

[00:33:32] What advice do you have for other leaders, whether or not they’re HR executives, you know, senior leaders, or even like, uh, you know, a team leader who are really trying to. enhance their continuous improvement efforts in their companies to not just be that focus only on process, but how can they to make the people leap?

[00:33:49] What’s one piece of advice you have?

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:33:50] Wow. Okay. I think the change has been that I am doing everything with love and I want to create an environment that where people feel safe, Where they experience abundance and all of those things. And it starts at the top. It starts with the leadership team. And I am blessed with a leadership team that understands.

[00:34:16] That we’re going to model good behavior, but we also have to create an environment that allows everyone to be their best. And that is challenging sometimes, but it’s also worth it. Once you do that, the results start to come.

Katie Anderson:

[00:34:30] I love that lead with love. And that it’s the same message that I talked about, even in like, I think it was the, second episode of chain of learning where, you know, potty poppy of PG and E she talks about leading with love and rich Sheridan, you know, of Menlo Innovations talks about leading with joy and like, we can do it.

[00:34:49] It’s not just a Japan thing. This is if we all come back to how do we lead with love? How do we lead with that heart centered that human centered that true respect for humanity? or holding precious what it means to be human. That’s where we’re going to really see the increase in the operational side of continuous improvement.

[00:35:09] And they have to both be married there. So lead with love and bring forward your best ideas to make processes improved each and every day. Absolutely. Stephanie, thank you so much for coming on chain of learning to Share your wisdom, your knowledge and your heart with this community. And I look forward to continuing our conversations and sharing how we are all leading with love to make the world a better place.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:35:33] Thank you. I have just meeting you has been a wonderful experience. The Japan trip was a wonderful experience and, um, and reading your book was a wonderful experience, so thank you, Katie.

Katie Anderson:

[00:35:42] Oh, you’re welcome, Stephanie. And you said you were gonna fill in your DMAs eye with a goal. Alright, so a darma doll is this Japanese figure that I have become a obsessed with.

[00:35:52] And you see my bookshelf if you’re watching behind me, and I give them out all the time. And Stephanie, I gave Stephanie a larger one when she came to me with Japan. And you fill in the dolls left eye when you have a goal. So, Stephanie, you’re, you’re inscribing a goal.

Stephanie Bursek:

[00:36:04] I am. I just, I just wanna point out my dermal is.

[00:36:07] Autographed by Katie Anderson and Esau and Crystal. No, yes. My name is, um, so I, my goal is to create an environment in our business that allows our people to experience success, abundance, and joy in the long term. And that’s my goal. I love it. And there we go. I’m going to fill it in.

Katie Anderson:

[00:36:31] All right. For all of you listening to this or watching the YouTube video, I want you to think about what is your goal to and how are you going to bring forward greater respect for people, a connection to humanity and leading with love into how you show up in every day and the environment you’re creating at your work as well.

[00:36:51] Thank you again, Stephanie. Thank you. Starting with people, respect for people, holding precious what it means to be human. is often the missing element to companies approach to lean transformations or operational excellence. As Stephanie highlights in this episode, focusing on people’s happiness and creating the conditions where they feel safe to bring forward ideas and make mistakes, where they feel ownership of solving problems and maintaining a pleasant work environment, and where leaders demonstrate that they genuinely care and that feeling good isn’t good enough is what will embed continuous improvement practices into the culture.

[00:37:27] As I mentioned to Stephanie in this episode, I’ve previously explored the power of leading with the heart and with love, such as in episode two of chain of learning. And you can hear other insights about how leading with a people focused approach and how leaders must lead the way to create the culture they want from other executives who are part of Stephanie’s cohort on my Japan study trip program earlier in 2024, such as Keisha Kelly and Amy Chomatin in episode 25 of this podcast and Brad Toussaint in episode 20.

[00:37:56] I’ll put the link to these episodes as well as a summary from the May 2024 Japan study trip program that Stephanie, Brad, Amy, and Keisha joined me on so that you can learn more about some of the Japanese leaders and companies and the book, Tree Ring Management, that Stephanie and I referenced in this episode, as well as a link to my book, Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn, and how to connect with Stephanie Brusek and learn more about her company, Trip NT, in the full episode show notes.

[00:38:21] In our conversation, Stephanie references a phrase that she learned while in Japan on my program. Ichigo ichie, meaning roughly, in this moment, is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It’s about treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a moment, seeing each experience as special and as a learning opportunity.

[00:38:40] So, as you reflect on this episode, I invite you to think about what was special for you in this moment. Listening to this podcast, reflect, practice Hansei, the Japanese word for reflection, on your own leadership and on your organization. What is one action that you can take to demonstrate real respect for people and show up with an attitude towards learning?

[00:39:00] How will you respond when someone makes a mistake? What will you do to show that you genuinely care about your team members and their ideas and your environment? How will you create a culture that is focused on joy, happiness, and love, rather than focusing first on profits or results? Write down a few simple steps that you were inspired by in this episode that you can take, then do it, take action, reflect, and continue to improve.

[00:39:24] Each and every day. One of my personal passions is helping leaders like you and Stephanie more deeply understand the people side of operational excellence and lean. It’s one of the reasons I started this podcast to help you marry the pillar of continuous improvement with respect for people and how you can pair your technical knowledge with the social skills needed to create a thriving people focused learning culture where you get results.

[00:39:47] Through a focus on people and learning as the Toyota motto says, we make people so we can make cars. If you’re ready to take your leadership to the next level, either as an individual or as a leadership cohort from the same organization, join me for one of my upcoming immersive Japan study trip leadership programs as Stephanie highlighted in this episode, you too will walk away inspired about how you can create a more people centered culture in your organization and further accelerate your continuous improvement efforts.

[00:40:16] This is a learning investment that will have an exponential impact on you, your teams, and your organization. To learn more and apply, go to kbjanderson. com slash Japan trip. If you’re enjoying this podcast, be sure to subscribe now on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode and share this episode with your friends and colleagues so we can all strengthen our chain of learning together.

[00:40:39] Thanks for being a link in my chain of learning today. I’ll see you next time. Have a great day.