Do your improvement efforts stick, or do you find yourself solving the same problem over and over again?
In his new book The Wheel of Sustainability, Adam Lawrence shares his “Wheel of Sustainability” model to help you utilize your leadership commitment to engage and empower your teams, sustain their solutions, and continuous improve. Turn the Wheel of Sustainability and see your improvement efforts accelerate and sustain.
Interview with Adam Lawrence: The Wheel of Sustainability
Adam and I met in the early months of the global pandemic when he joined the 5th “K2C2” (Katie and Karyn’s Coaching Communities) cohort that Karyn Ross and I facilitate (Karyn and I are up to cohort #9 later this year – let us know if you want to join us!).
It was during this time that Adam decided to leverage his newfound non-client working time to dive into curating his years of experience into the “Wheel of Sustainability” framework — and countless stories (which you will enjoy reading!) — for your learning and reflection.
Adam not only shares examples of real-life successes, but also failures and challenging times and how these were opportunities for further learning. Plus, he highlights how these same principles and practices can be applied at both work and home.
I enjoyed catching up with Adam and diving into his inspiration for writing the book, his passion for helping others continuously improve, and his own learning journey along the way!
Without further ado, check out our interview!
See below for a list of the questions and time stamps if you wish to jump to specific topics.
Here are my 8 questions to Adam — watch the video for the answers!
- What inspired you to write this book? (or “What compelled you to decide to write this book?) 1:10
- How did you develop the wheel of sustainability? 1:58
- What do you think is the most important part of the wheel? 3:05
- What has been one of your biggest growth opportunities as a leader or coach? 3:48
- How do you define the difference between “kaizen” and a “kaizen event”? 5:05
- What brings you the most joy in working with teams in a kaizen event? 6:27
- What was something that you learned through the process of writing the book? 7:27
- What is a question that you haven’t been asked about the book — either here or in other interviews — that you would like to address? 10:07
Some highlighted quotes from the interview:
“For me the whole effort around continuous improvement is to engage leadership to understand what they must do to create a winning experience.” 03:28
“The growth is to understand that truly the team has to own their solution. So I had to change my process to make sure that I was giving them every opportunity to own and take myself out of the equation.” 4:30
“In my experience …. the biggest challenge for people to move from being that teller to the one who’s really coaching and encouraging others to solve problems.” 5:04
Congratulations to the winners of the book giveaway, The Wheel of Sustainability & Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn, that Adam and I ran in April 27, 2021.
Even though the giveaway has passed, you can still get your copies of the books: Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn by Katie Anderson and The Wheel of Sustainability by Adam Lawrence
