🎙️ 𝐄𝐏 𝟏𝟕𝟖: 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐁𝐞 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫’𝐬 #𝟏 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 -- 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐑𝐢𝐳𝐳𝐨

What if one small change could transform your entire organization?

In this episode of 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭, I sits down with one of his earliest mentors, 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐑𝐢𝐳𝐳𝐨, to unpack the overlooked power of employee development as the foundation for sustainable leadership, operational excellence, and business growth.

John shares a pivotal story about how moving a machine just six inches sparked a multi-million dollar transformation—and how listening to the people on the floor, not just the C-suite, is where true value creation begins.

Whether you're a CEO, team leader, or coach, this conversation will challenge how you think about improvement—and inspire you to lead differently.

💡 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞, 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐥𝐥 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧: https://youtu.be/SOCjB56e1oA

The difference between creating and extracting value

Why Rizzo’s companies never laid off employees due to improvement

How standard work empowers innovation

What causes most continuous improvement initiatives to fail

How to lead with humility, presence, and purpose

Why employee development should be every leader’s top priority

📚 Pre-order John's upcoming book: Creating Value (Wiley Publishing)

📩 Interested in a FREE 90-minute team workshop with bulk orders? Message John Rizzo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rizzolean/

🚀 Ready to Lead with Purpose?

🎯 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄  1:1 Leadership Strategy Call with Coach John Gallagher:

→ https://coachjohngallagher.com/freecall

🌐 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐂𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧:

Website → https://coachjohngallagher.com

YouTube → https://youtu.be/SOCjB56e1oA

Resources → https://linktr.ee/coachjohngallagher

🔔 Don’t forget to follow, rate, and review The Uncommon Leader Podcast to help us reach more purpose-driven leaders like you.

#EmployeeDevelopment #LeadershipPodcast #CoachJohnGallagher #ExecutiveLeadership #ContinuousImprovement #PeopleFirstLeadership #CreatingValue #LeadershipDevelopment #LeanLeadership #TheUncommonLeaderPodcast #BusinessLeadership #OperationalExcellence #LeadershipTraining #OrganizationalGrowth #HighPerformanceLeadership

"

Thanks for listening in to the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Please take just a minute to share this podcast with that someone you know that you thought of when you heard this episode. One of the most valuable things you can do is to rate the podcast and leave a review. You can do that on Apple podcasts, or rate the podcast on Spotify or any other platform you listen.

Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team)

Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!

Connect with me

Chapters

• 0:00 Six Inches That Created Millions
• 5:41 Creating vs Extracting Value
• 11:48 Common Continuous Improvement Failures
• 14:40 The Power of Standard Work
• 23:18 Leadership Through Presence
• 29:38 People Development as Priority
• 33:41 Continuous Improvement Works Everywhere
• 35:34 Call to Action: Go to the Workplace

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I want them to come away with. Leadership in continuous improvement is about developing people and it's about being present, observing the work and listening to the people who do the work. And go to your workplace, whether you're running a museum or running a retail company. Get to the workplace, start learning, start seeing how people are struggling, how the customer is suffering, and that's where I think you need to start.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast. I'm your host, john Gallagher Today. We're bringing in a profound industry voice to talk with us today. His name is John Rizzo. He's the president of Basin Holdings and the managing partner at Moffitt XL as well. He's a strategic leader with some deep expertise across several different industries.

Speaker 2: 1:01

We're going to talk about this manufacturing, healthcare and energy and I know we're going to get a chance to talk about those 30 years of experience and know that, going back about 30 years, john was very instrumental in me getting started on my continuous improvement journey as well. We're looking forward to that. He's the author of the soon to be released book Creating Value, where he shares his experiences from over 30 years of facilitating a thousand workshops, more than 40 organizations, and, ultimately, where he shares his experiences from over 30 years of facilitating 1,000 workshops, more than 40 organizations, and, ultimately, where he asserts that real wisdom doesn't happen in the C-suite alone, but also happens right out on the factory floor. I can't wait to hear more about that. And ultimately, he has stories to share that are very simple, like moving a big factory machine just six inches. That ultimately resulted in billion dollars in value, and we'll talk about that here in a little bit and what that really means, but I think he's going to challenge some of our assumptions.

Speaker 2: 1:53

This conversation today about creating value versus extracting value in organizations and how continuous improvement can be very impactful. John, that was a lot of wind, but I want to welcome you to the Uncommon Leader podcast. How are you doing today?

Speaker 1: 2:07

I am doing well. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 2:09

I'm excited about our conversation today and look, I want to dive right in because I was intrigued by the story in your book right off the bat and I know we are connected a little bit in the same company. You opened up with a powerful story about moving a machine million-dollar machine just six inches and how, by doing that, something that small made a huge impact in the business from a value standpoint and created millions of dollars in savings.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Tell me a little bit about that story and how the six inches can turn into millions of dollars of value and this is really a defining moment in my career in terms of my leadership development, and it goes back to Krause-Eins, a manufacturer of electrical construction materials. We had a million square feet and functional departments, which means we had specialized equipment organized by the type of equipment and assembly in a different area. Everything all spread out and I had learned about continuous improvement from one of our customers and I wanted to bring this to Krauss-Heinz. And so it was our very first workshop and what we were going to do was try to create flow, move some of this equipment, put it all into one area we call that a cell to be able to keep the work moving, to get it to the customer faster, to be able to discover quality issues sooner a number of other reasons. So we spent the first couple of days figuring out what we were going to move. The second day we were going to move this equipment into this cell and we didn't have the equipment to do it. So we had to bring in a company called a rigger to move this equipment and it was very expensive and they moved all this equipment overnight.

Speaker 1: 3:57

And the next morning we came in and the operator said if we had just moved that piece of equipment six inches. He wouldn't have to reach and turn as far. And I'm thinking, wow, we just spent all this money last night. Oh well, you know, I can't afford to move this equipment again.

Speaker 1: 4:20

And our coach at the time, bill Moffitt. And our coach at the time, bill Moffitt, said move the piece of equipment six inches. And I said, well, all right, I'll listen to my coach. And we moved it six inches. The next day the operator said wow, I can't believe it. You actually listened to me and did something. And it turned out that that operator was a union steward and was very influential. And he said to the other people in the union hey, let's give these guys a chance with this continuous improvement process, because you know, they listened and they actually made my job better and they made this production process better. And that really started the continuous improvement journey at Krause Heinz and at their parent company and was one of two defining experiences for me in developing my own leadership style and skills.

Speaker 2: 5:28

John, I love that story and especially the story again having a connection there as I worked for Krause Heinz as well.

Speaker 2: 5:34

First of all, the fact that that was 30 years ago was just unbelievable in terms of that story I had hair you guys started on that and when you had hair right, exactly as we go through this but ultimately, how the respect for people component of what we did was so important and listening to others and the profound impact that that had and put you all on a journey to make significant change and improvement inside that organization. We'll talk about some of those results here in just a little bit. But the name of your book is Creating Value and that was really the essence of what you were doing in that conversation. Who did you write this book for and why did you write it now?

Speaker 1: 6:14

So I wrote the book to share what I had learned over 30 years with people who maybe are not involved with continuous improvement. So for people that this is something new, where they maybe heard about it, wanted to learn about it, and my hope was that, rather than talking about what it is, I'd be able to share examples that would help people really understand what this process is about. So it was for the non-continuous improvement practitioners to really learn from the stories in the book.

Speaker 2: 6:54

Now you talk about that in terms of creating value. The title of the book also is very important, because early on in the book you talk about the difference between creating value and maybe a more traditional approach inside of continuous improvement, extracting value. Tell me the difference in those two and how that philosophy is different in your mind.

Speaker 1: 7:14

So you know, first I'd like to define value, because it's a notion that means a lot of different things to different people, and I actually have a you know kind of a page of the book here and you know I define value as what's important to the recipient, and it starts with what's you know, in the title of the book. It's what's important to employees, then customers and stakeholders. I list the employees first because maybe we'll get into it, but I think it's an important part of you know the premise. But what's important to customers, what I've learned over the years is and you know it's different to different customers or different employees but for employees, clear expectations and responsibilities or standard work, training and resources necessary to be successful, safe and decent work environment and fair compensation. So you know that's typically what's important to employees. And so when we talk about creating value in the book, it's how can we do those things for the employees?

Speaker 1: 8:28

And again, I list the employees first because my personal philosophy that's where this starts, with the employees. Next, it's creating value for the customer what I've learned over my career, defined in terms of quality, on-time delivery of a product or service and reasonable cost. And then, finally, it's what's important to the stakeholder. Those are the owners of the business, and that's to provide exceptional products or services and financially effective effective. So, kind of going back to your question about the ways to of improvement. And you know, traditionally you may have private equity companies that are focused on, you know, financial engineering. They're leveraging debt, they're selling assets, they're doing multiple arbitrage. This is different, this is not. You know, I've done those things so I'm guilty, but you know, the book is about not creating value that way but creating value through, you know, making improvements in those areas that I just mentioned.

Speaker 2: 9:44

I used to love that. We talked about that at the end of every one of those improvement workshops where we'd look at all three corners, if you will, of that three-legged stool the employee, the customer and the shareholder. I love how you put the employee first in terms of that conversation. I know one of the other unique commitments you had was that you wouldn't have layoffs as a result of any continuous improvement workshops or continuous improvement activities. Tell me a little bit more about that as well. Obviously, a focus on the employee and creating value for them.

Speaker 1: 10:15

So I mean, why would somebody participate in improving their job or improving the workplace if they're going to lose their job or their co-workers are going to lose their job? So we've had a longstanding you know policy and you know all the companies I've worked with. We've never laid anybody off as a result of improvement. It just stops the whole process. Now we can capture that productivity that's, you know, that's identified through, you know, deploying those people. When you know somebody retires, maybe they can fill a retirement. Or if the company's growing, then you know, rather than going outside, we can fill it from within. So it's a really important part of the process.

Speaker 2: 11:04

Love that continuous improvement as a growth strategy as well. Again, benefit for the employees in terms of long-term employment and not having layoffs. Benefit for the shareholder in terms of being able to grow the company with the resources that you have in place there. So, john, you've experienced this over 30 years. You've either been on the operations side of continuous improvement or you've been on the teaching side or consulting side of helping other organizations make improvements. In the stories that you've seen with over the 40 organizations that you've worked with, what are some of the ways that organizations fail in trying to implement a continuous improvement philosophy, in trying to implement a continuous improvement philosophy.

Speaker 1: 11:48

So the first thing that comes to mind is they treat this as a toolbox and apply tools as opposed to a system. So really, you know, and in my years when I was consulting, you know, we'd have companies come to us and go you know we're doing these workshops or lean events, but we're really not getting the results. And I'd say, well, you know, let's see your, you know value stream analysis and your improvement plan. Let's see your strategy deployment. Let's see, you know the area profiles or the scope documents for your last workshops. Let's see the report out. You know, let's see the KPIs that are measuring those results. And I'll get well, we're just doing lean or we're just doing Kaizen events. So it's treating it as a toolbox, not as a system.

Speaker 1: 12:40

And the second failure point is not leading from the top. Sometimes organizations will have somebody who had some experience with this at another company. They'll go to a new company and they'll think I'm going to start doing it. If their boss, their ownership, their board doesn't believe in it, it's very difficult to kind of push a string. So those are the kind of the two failure areas.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Yeah, no doubt that one. If you don't have commitment from the leadership of the organization early on, it certainly will dilute the effectiveness of the results. You might be able to try a couple of things with tools, but you're not going to change the culture inside the organization. Now and again. One of the core principles in your book from a leadership on how they Now and again one of the core principles in your book from a leadership on how they in essence overcome those failures is to go see Tell me a little bit about that philosophy of go and see.

Speaker 1: 13:34

So you know, going back to the crowd, science example that was the first time that I understood the impact of being present, observing the work being done and listening to the, to the people who do the work, and that's really become the kind of the center of my leadership leadership style and has really been the key driver that I've seen to really transforming a business.

Speaker 2: 14:08

John, you've had some great mentors in this space as well, and you talked about how you did things traditionally. I mean, you didn't start out coming out of college as a continuous improvement guru, but you certainly had to learn. But we've had some great. You and I have had some great similar mentors along the way Bill Moffitt, bob Penland. You've also worked with some phenomenal CEOs Art Byrne and you've been even in Japan and trained by the Japanese who really will say were the pioneers of the Toyota production system and working with NACAO as well. What was it about those mentors and how you went into that and were able to change your leadership from maybe a more traditional approach to this continuous improvement? How did? Was there a moment for you that helped transform your leadership style?

Speaker 1: 14:57

Well, you know, the moment was that was that Krauss-Mainz example but the over time, what I learned from those mentors was, you know, the second concept, which is key that I feel to my success as a leader, and that's the importance of people development. So, you know, when I started, I thought these workshops were all about let's, you know, get the work moving faster, let's discover quality sooner. But what I came to realize from those mentors is that, you know, the purpose of this workshop was not just to make some change but was to develop the people into being problem solvers, and that kind of, like I said, is a second element of kind of my leadership style. And, you know, this whole continuous improvement is really it's about people development and I can't underestimate the importance of that. Or, you know, having learned that from my various mentors, I love that on that people development side.

Speaker 2: 16:10

And you're right, the workshop, the improvement activity, that's the engine of change, where you have folks together in a group and make change happen pretty rapidly. But ultimately it's the teaching of a methodology in terms of problem solving that they can take back to their workplace. That's powerful as well. That people development is very important. John, how did you develop yourself inside of this space as well? So one of the ways is on these workshops, but what else did you do as your personal development, as a leader inside of an organization, to continuously get better?

Speaker 1: 16:44

Yeah, so you know. So early on I had the opportunity to participate in workshops at other companies such as Wiremold. You know I learned about continuous improvement from that company. They were a customer of Krauseheim's and when I did a stint in sales, that's how I met Art Byrne and met Nakao and learned about this process. And Art was a very good mentor to me and allowed me to participate in what they call President's Kaizans and do workshops at Wiremold. And I also had the opportunity to participate in workshops through my mentors at various other companies and that was a really powerful way for me to learn about this process. So it was really learned by doing and I have done, you know, study trips to companies around the world, which also helped, but it was really the kind of the participation in the workshops across broad industries that really helped me develop, who have been helping me refine my own personal brand, are offering a free consultation call with one of their expert brand strategists.

Speaker 2: 18:11

They'll help you identify your uniqueness, craft a compelling story and develop a step-by-step plan to elevate your impact. So head on over to coachjohngallaghercom slash BBG, as in Brand Builders Group, to schedule your free call and take the first step toward building a personal brand that gets you noticed for all the right reasons. That's coachjohngallaghercom slash BBG. Now let's get back to the episode. You know, think about that, the term that comes to my mind as we continue to move forward. It might be leader standard work.

Speaker 2: 18:39

What are those things that leaders need to do to continuously grow? It's participating in those events, it's learning from others, going on that journey as well, and it's going on those gimbal walks, if you will, and learning from others. The other piece of standard work is, once we do these activities, we're really developing what we believe is the best known way to do a process or to work on a process. Many times the employee, while we put that first employees they might be a little bit like cowboys and they kind of like to do things their own way, if you will, and to put it back in the way that they have it. My guess is you've experienced this at some point along your journey, where you need to balance the need for standardization with the fostering of a continuous improvement environment where you have the employees engaged. How did you deal with that when that popped up? Hey, I want to do it my way instead of the standard work way.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Yes, so you know. First, standard work. Maybe people may be unfamiliar with that. It's a little different. It's a work instruction. It's a little different than a policy or procedure. It's got some key elements to it. It's time-based, it's actionable by the people who do the work. It reflects quality and safety. It's at point of use and it's almost impossible to improve if you don't have a standard to improve off of. So we create standard work. It's the best way. We know how to do it and then everybody has to do it that way because we want consistent quality experience, our customer experience, safety. But wait a minute, I got a better way. Well, great. We need to be able to listen to people and incorporate their ideas into the process.

Speaker 1: 20:27

And you know, empowerment is in the title of the book. Empowerment is people having the authority to make the change to that standard work right. It's not trying to create their job every day. That's chaos. It's being able to make suggestions, to make improvements.

Speaker 1: 20:44

You know, one company just popped into my mind where we created standard work for handling an insurance claim and there were hundreds of people that now had to do that insurance claim that way every time. Again, consistent quality, customer experience and within a very short period of time we made 50 improvements to that standard work because people felt empowered not to try to figure out their job, to do it their way, but they knew the standard to work off of and they were able to make suggestions to make improvements. Another company makes makes airbags. Every employee makes a suggestion every week to change standard work. Multiply that by over a thousand employees, everybody making a change to standard work every week, and you get double-digit productivity improvement every year, forever. And nobody knows how they did it. There's no secret or magic. It's all these small changes adding up and again, people being empowered to not figure out their job but to make changes and to have the skill, to have the authority and to have the skills to make changes to these standards.

Speaker 2: 22:15

Love that. And again talking to the next question of sharing some stories, some success stories from organizations who have had success, I love to hear those stories as well. What about a leadership story of success where you helped to transform a leader, and what I mean by that is early on in the journey. I think I make up and I've seen this in some of my teaching that the leaders want to delegate the improvement and let somebody else do it, but we know that they have to be involved. Do you have a favorite leadership story where you've seen a leader transform, become a better leader as a result of this work as well?

Speaker 1: 22:48

and become a better leader as a result of this work as well. So, my favorite area I have a lot of stories on this. First one that came to mind was a company that manufactures medical implants, and we started off by doing what we call a vacuum analysis looking at the whole business. You know, from the beginning to the end, everything they do, trying to come up with where the biggest opportunities for the improvement. So, to start, we're going to go walk the flow of manufacturing this part and the executives were, you know, on this team, were, you know, on this team, and we we started walking and you know we, we got through the first building and manufacturing was in several buildings and it started raining really hard and one of the executives said, well, uh, we, we can go back to the conference room.

Speaker 1: 23:44

We don't have to go to the other building. We know what goes on there. We'll tell you. You know, we can tell you what's going on. I said, no, the parts are getting wet, we're going to get wet. And we followed that part and it was, um, it traveled over a mile. That one simple part. And when we got back to the conference room, you know the, the, the head executive, you know he had, I mean, literally something just went, went, click, and for him about being present, being out there, being present in the workplace, and the importance of that, and you know the realization that you know, wow this is, if I hadn't been present, I wouldn't have known how bad this really was and we wouldn't be as aggressive as we're going to be with making some improvements and doing a better job for those poor employees who had to carry those products through the rain and all that distance and, of course, for the for the customers.

Speaker 2: 24:56

So, uh, one of my, one of my, one of my favorite stories I those stories, especially those executives that realize and oftentimes it's the employees Again, back to the employees on the shop floor who have that impact. One of my favorite stories working with a client where the CEO wore his blue jeans in and his tennis shoes to help clean equipment on the last day as it was getting ready because we were talking about pristine equipment. But them taking a videotape of him down on the floor scrubbing the floors and scrubbing and painting the equipment was a huge impact on the people in terms of modeling the behavior that he was wanting inside of his organization. That was on the very first improvement workshop that we had done there.

Speaker 1: 25:55

So very, very important in that journey. It requires humility to recognize that you don't know everything and you know it's difficult for some leaders to a manufacturing company and just to be transparent, that you know they don't know everything and can be humble, but it's very difficult for some leaders to do that.

Speaker 2: 26:31

Love, that Humility being one of those important characteristics of a leader who's going to be successful. What are a couple other characteristics that are critical to the success of the executives, of the uncommon leaders who succeed in this space?

Speaker 1: 26:46

So you know, my list is pretty focused. It's being present, observing the work being done, listening to the people do the work and people development. I mean that's really how I define leadership. Of course, if you've got some CEO, you know of a multi-billion dollar company, their job is to create the vision and share the vision. But you know most leaders we're talking about this frontline supervisor who just got promoted to their first leadership job. We're talking about this frontline supervisor who just got promoted to their first leadership job or we're talking about, you know, their boss or their boss, these managers. It's, you know, sharing the vision maybe is not as important, but being present, observing the work being done, listening to people doing the work and focusing on people development to me are really the. It really defines the leadership, the leadership position.

Speaker 1: 27:49

I mean it's how I define my leadership and I think it's it's so important to those jobs and so many of those, you know, lower level leaders are, you know, promoted into their job because they're the best firefighters and they stay in that firefighting mode and they don't realize that we've got to use continuous improvement to take waste out of their job so they can spend, you know, the majority of their time developing the people around them. So those are the two and you may remember in the book. Whenever I hire a new leader or promote a new leader, I give them a sign and in huge letters on the sign in the upper left-hand corner, it says people development. And then in medium letters in the middle it's make improvements. And then in really small letters in the bottom of the sign is everything else. It's PowerPoints and meetings and people think they're important if they're in back-to-back meetings all the time. No, I mean it's people development, make improvements, and then everything else.

Speaker 2: 29:09

And that's my view of leadership, good or bad.

Speaker 1: 29:12

That's how I look at the world.

Speaker 2: 29:14

When you can, break it down to something that simple as well. It really can be that simple. We as leaders have a tendency maybe it is sometimes a lack of humility of over-complicating it. I love that in terms of you know, go and see, listen to the people, right, people development. I mean those are very simple criteria that we often make it very difficult. John, when you also talk about, we have kind of we it's natural tendency. We have manufacturing stories that are really powerful here. But in the book you say the system works everywhere. What do you mean by that? It works everywhere.

Speaker 1: 29:54

How does it work everywhere? Business whether it's a, you know, government or retail or a non-for-profit organization or government right, everybody does work right, and anytime you do work, it might not be optimized, right, we call that. You know there might be waste in the process. So you know there's waste everywhere and you know we need to get that waste out of it and put standards in place that you know can get us to scalable, repeatable processes, and so I mean it's also pretty simple. I mean it doesn't matter what your job is, there's probably some waste in it. We can probably get some of the waste out and standardize it. So there's a basis to improve on in the future.

Speaker 2: 30:53

Love that and I can tell you, in anything you go into there is waste in that process. We know they beat that into our heads that 90% of a process is generally waste and the first time through you usually only get about half of that waste out of the process. So you've got to go back through it multiple times again, against wash, rinse, repeat of that cycle of improvement. That's another way we have to overcome with employees, like we just did this area. Why are we going back and doing it again? I love one of the stories they had at an organization. We did an event workshop in one flow cell, as you defined it, nine different times and in the last flow cell we were looking for three seconds just to improve that output and understand what was happening, so to be able to have that continuous improvement.

Speaker 2: 31:38

What's that?

Speaker 1: 31:40

My story at Wiremold that I tell in the book, where they had a changeover for a rolling mill which basically takes steel, rolls it into a channel to go on a wall, for raceway to go through. It was two shifts to change that over from one product to another. When I finally got to do a President's Kaizen, I mean it was down to 15 minutes and we got it down to under 10 minutes, which is the goal is to be able to do any changeover under under 10 minutes. I mean that was many, many workshops to get it from two shifts down to under 10 minutes. And, by the way, a side story, my teacher at the time, mr Nakao, said you know, we wanted to show off, right, we got it down. We finally with a team that got under 10 minutes and he said not good enough Five minutes and walked away. I mean it's about continuous improvement, right, that's what he was telling us you can always get better, always get better.

Speaker 1: 32:46

I, you know, and I've I've been fortunate to be in in a lot of workshops, probably around a thousand, whether I'm as a, as a manager, or as an investor, or as a consultant, and I've yet to have a workshop, but we haven't made a process better. Some get further than others, but we can always find a better way.

Speaker 2: 33:12

So hard, so hard and so good. John, I want to ask you about the book specifically. So folks are going to read your book once it comes out we're going to get a chance to tell them where to go here in just a minute but I think about the response that you want after they read the book. What do you want them to think, what do you want them to feel after they've read your book, and what do you want them to do? Think, feel and do.

Speaker 1: 33:50

You know, I want them to two takeaways that I want them to come away with, and you know, one is leadership, and continuous improvement is about developing people, is about developing people and it's about being present, observing the work and listening to the people who do the work. And that's really the, the takeaway that, um, you know, I hope people get when they, when they read the book. And you know the, the the call action is, you know, go to your workplace. You know. Whether you're running a museum or running, you know, a retail company. You know. Get to the workplace, start learning, start seeing how you know the people are struggling, how the customer is suffering, and that's the call to action. That's where I think you need to start.

Speaker 2: 34:53

Love that. I love that call to action. Go to the workplace, go see what's happening. Things are never as we think they are. They're always as we see them happening. And looking at the organizations, john, I appreciate that. I know at the time of the recording and then when we're going to publish this, it's going to be before the book is published, published really published later in the fall, and we'll get that out. But where do you want folks to go to learn more about you and about the book?

Speaker 1: 35:18

Maybe get an advanced copy of the book as well, and about the book, maybe get an advanced copy of the book as well. So if you go to, you know, if you search on creating value, john Rizzo, you know it's available for presale on all of the you know book selling sites. The book's being published by Wiley and they've done a nice job of making it available for pre-sale. So whether it's Amazon or Barnes and Noble or you know any of the commercial book sites, it's, it's available for pre-order. And, um, you know, I will say if, if somebody does want to do a bulk pre-order and would like to do a 90 minute workshop about the principles in the book, all they have to do is just send me a note through Instant Messenger, through LinkedIn or email, and we'll be glad to do a 90-minute workshop with the team about some of the key principles of the book. And, no secret, we're going to talk about people development, because it's really, you know, going and seeing people, development.

Speaker 2: 36:24

I think it's going to be a big part of it, right, it's all about people being present.

Speaker 1: 36:28

So, uh, but we got, we got. You know, happy to share a lot of you know examples. Uh, you know behind that.

Speaker 2: 36:35

John, I love that. I appreciate you investing time with the listeners of the uncommon leader podcast today. You've been very gracious with your time. I want to finish with a question that I always ask my first-time guests, especially at the end. But I'm going to give you and it's probably already been said, but you're going to have to say it again anyway I'm going to give you a billboard and you can put any message that you want to on that billboard. What?

Speaker 1: 37:00

is the message you're going to put on there and why People development.

Speaker 2: 37:04

Hashtag people development. I think it's there. I mean, I think, John, I think that solves again so many issues inside of organizations, frankly, inside of our homes, inside of our communities as well. If we were focused on developing people into the next spots, I think it's so powerful. I appreciate your time, John. I wish you the best on the book launch. I can't wait to put it up here with my other lean books that are sitting up here, with Art Byrne and George Koenigsaker on there and a few others. It's going to be right there beside it as we go through it. So best of luck.

Speaker 2: 37:36

Thank you, John, and that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we've shared. Also, if you have a moment, I'd greatly appreciate if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of uncommon leaders. Until next time, go and grow, champions.