May 15, 2025 • 47 mins
Welcome to The Inner Game of Change, the podcast where we explore the unseen forces that shape how we lead, adapt, and thrive in the face of change and transformation.
In today’s episode, we explore a powerful way of thinking and working that helps people navigate complexity, solve tough problems, and grow through structured learning — the Improvement Kata.
My guest is Tracy Defoe — a lifelong adult educator, Kata coach, and passionate advocate for deliberate, reflective learning at work. Based in Vancouver, Canada, Tracy shares her deep insights into how the Kata practice — inspired by Toyota’s continuous improvement approach — helps individuals and teams move forward, even when the way ahead is unclear.
We unpack what the Kata actually is, how it works, and why it's far more than a business tool — it's a mindset shift. We also touch on the role of psychological safety, the difference between goals and challenges, and how leaders can become coaches who build capability, not just compliance.
If you’re curious about how to embed continuous improvement in a way that feels human, sustainable, and empowering — this one is for you.
I am grateful to have Tracy chatting with me today.
About Tracy
Aims to make you smarter about learning.
Adult Education professional specializing in learning at work. Interested in culture change, supporting peer-leadership, informal learning, multiple literacies and communication in diverse settings.
Experienced in designing and implementing innovative learning at work programs.
Humble Lean Practitioner interested in combining my interests in Lean with Adult Learning and Culture Change. Student of the Kata, Coach and Learner.
Improvement and Coaching Kata learner and coach. Volunteer Host of the Cascadia Kata Dojo Community Call - a 30 minute weekly zoom meeting for Kata Coaches From British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California.
Specialties: Customized solutions, embedding lean or essential skills in content training, facilitation of improvements or supporting leaders in improving their facilitation, communicating with the workforce, re-framing change as learning challenge, training design and delivery, implementation and evaluation.
Facilitating meetings and retreats for clients, strategic planning, realizing a mission and vision to a Challenge, and a daily improvement plan.
Plain Language and Clear Design.
Contact
Tracy’s Profile
Website
thelearningfactor.ca (Company)
Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast
Follow me on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And the CADA particularly, is useful and, I
think, works the best when weactually don't know the way
forward.
You know where we're at the.
What I always say in learningwe're at the edge of what we
know and not where we'reimplementing a plan that worked
in nine other plants.
So please just make this yourstandard.
But when we're actually inexploratory learning mode and we
need to gather evidence, getsome data, make a process visual
(00:24):
and have a conversation with acoach who, as a friend of mine
says, holds the guardrails andkeeps you in place, Welcome to
the Inner Game of Change, thepodcast where we explore the
(00:45):
unseen forces that shape how welead, adapt and thrive in the
face of change andtransformation.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am your host, ali Jumaan.
In today's episode, we explorea powerful way of thinking and
working that helps peoplenavigate complexity, solve tough
problems and grow throughstructured learning the
Improvement Kata.
My guest is Tracy Defoe, alifelong adult educator, kata
(01:15):
coach, and a passionate advocatefor deliberate reflective
learning at work.
Based in Vancouver, canada,tracy shares her deep insights
into how the CATA practice,inspired by Toyota's continuous
improvement approach, helpsindividuals and teams move
forward.
It is far more than a businesstool.
(01:36):
It is a mindset shift.
We also touch on the role ofpsychological safety, the
difference between goals andchallenges, and how leaders can
become coaches who buildcapability, not just compliance.
(01:58):
If you're curious about how toembed continuous improvement in
a way that feels human,sustainable and empowering, this
one is for you.
I am grateful to have Tracychatting with me today.
Well, tracy, thank you so muchfor joining me in the Inner Game
of Change podcast.
I am eternally grateful foryour time today.
(02:19):
You're welcome.
I'm glad to be here.
Thank you so much.
You are in Canada, vancouver.
Yes, I am and you've got thewisdom of the past.
We are in the future, here inAustralia.
It's on a Wednesday morning.
Here Today, tracy, we willtouch and talk.
(02:39):
We're probably going to godeeper into the rabbit hole of
the kataway Japanese principle,and experts like yourself have
been promoting this principle,sort of a type of learning in a
structured way, in a scientificway of looking at learning
adopted from the Japanese way ofworking.
(03:02):
But before we dive deep intothat, it would be fantastic for
you to introduce yourself to myaudience.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Oh, my pleasure.
So my name is Tracy Defoe.
I am, as you said, in Vancouver, canada.
I think of myself as aneducator, an adult educator,
first.
I have a long career of adulteducation and'm particularly
have always been interested inwhat people learn in the context
of their work.
So workplace learning and myinterest in continuous
(03:33):
improvement stemmed from some ofmy clients asking me to get
involved in teaching continuousimprovement in their workplaces
a long time ago and throughthose people I was introduced to
a long time ago.
And through those people I wasintroduced to the CADA and the
idea of coaching.
You know, good, good adulteducation has a kind of a pull
(03:54):
to it.
You know you don't want to justpush things and talk over
people and when I was trying tobe, when I was involved in
teaching lean concepts, I alwaysworked from questions.
So somebody who knew MikeRother and his research at the
University of Michigan intostudying Toyota management
behavior said you should meetthis guy, mike Rother, because
he tells people the same thing.
(04:15):
You should ask questions andnot give them answers, pay
attention to people learning.
So for me, I am now a Catacoach.
That's almost all that I doCata coaching and second
coaching in my consultingpractice.
I retired over a year ago frommy university work and for me
it's a combination of goodlearning practice and good work
(04:37):
practice to develop people and,as you say, learn together a
more scientific and deliberateway of approaching problems, but
also developing people.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
We're going to touch on that learning together
principle because that's animportant piece for the audience
.
Tracy, what is a kata way oflearning?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, as somebody who practices the martial art, I
know that you know that theJapanese word kata and in my
Canadian accent I know I say itsounds a bit more like a D, but
it's a T K-A-T-A, it's not anacronym, it's a word which has
two meanings in Japanese.
Japanese characters are sopoetic in the way they can have
(05:22):
two meanings and a commonmeaning of the word.
One of the meanings is form.
So in martial arts it's easy toimagine that series of
choreographed steps that we useto learn a new skill, and that
would be a kata.
But also it can mean method orthe way of learning.
And so with Mike Rother's book,which he called well, he didn't
(05:46):
call it Toyota CATA, hispublisher called it Toyota CATA
Mike called his research bookBeyond what we Can See we have
he's provided there two verystructured routines that you can
deliberately practice to learna scientific way of thinking and
acting in the face of a very ofa tough challenge.
(06:06):
So the kata is a scripted orstructured practice to learn
something new.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Let's put it that way I remember from my karate days
and I used to love kata.
In fact I've later specializedin kata rather than in the fight
aspect of it.
The structure used to be weknow the basics, so we practice
the basics separately.
The kata is sort of acombination of the basics you
(06:35):
learn through you know,understanding how those basics
connect with each other, andthen with the hope that through
the kata and the practice of thekata, you will be fit for the
real world, which is when thecompetition starts.
So in my head I'm thinking ifthis is the workplace you've got
(06:56):
the principles of about a newprocess, for example then the
kata is actually putting all thepieces together and then, with
the help that, with therepetition and structured way
and thoughtful way andexperimentation, you will be
able to perform those pieceswith the customer, with the user
, with the stakeholders.
(07:18):
Am I close to?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yes, but in practice very few people come as a blank
slate to learning right.
They have experiences beforeExcellent and so the kata can
also help people unlearn habitsthat they've had right.
Yeah, and particularly we talkabout slowing down or having
steps that prevent you fromimmediately jumping to a
(07:42):
solution or applying a tool thatworked before without really
having a look at the currentsituation.
Is it the same, for example, oris it different?
And the CADA, particularly, isuseful and, I think, works the
best when we actually don't knowthe way forward.
Works the best when we actuallydon't know the way forward.
You know where we're at the.
What I always say in learningwe're at the edge of what we
(08:02):
know, and not where we'reimplementing a plan that worked
in nine other plants.
So please just make this yourstandard.
But when we're actually inexploratory learning mode and we
need to gather evidence, getsome data, make a process visual
and have a conversation with acoach who, as a friend of mine
says, holds the guardrails andkeeps you in place, and, of
(08:27):
course, as a person gains skill,then the guardrails grow and
you get way more opportunity.
Many, many people feel thatmastering or at least practicing
the kata competently frees themup for a lot more creativity
than they would have, and maybeyou experienced that also in
your martial arts.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I would agree with that.
I want to ask you about theseare process that Mike in his
book that sort of clarified.
It does focus a lot on theexperimentation part.
It does focus a lot on theexperimentation part.
It does focus a lot onunderstanding where you are and
then, but also there's a stepthat you need to understand
where you want to go.
So do you want to walk usthrough that process, tracy?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah.
So when Mike Rother did hisresearch he was trying to figure
out what were the unseenmanagement behaviors in a place
like Toyota, which has a longhistory of tackling tough
problems and developing people.
What were the unseen managementbehaviors that were happening
there that people generallyhadn't noticed because they were
so excited by the physicalartifacts of problem solving
(09:33):
right the and-on lights, thestoryboards, all that stuff?
And then the second questionMike looked at was how can other
organizations learn from this,or how could they also learn to
have this kind of mindset, ormanagement mindset?
So he laid out two routines.
The first one we call theImprovement Kata, and it has
(09:55):
four steps.
I know we're not recording this, but I talk with my hands
because I'm a teacher.
Four steps I can.
We're not recording this, but Italk with my hands because I'm
teaching four steps.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I can see you, tracy, that's okay.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, the first step is to identify the challenge.
So where do we want to go, like?
What does the top of themountain look like?
Or what's the exact GPS of thelocation to which we are
directing our boat?
You know, like, where do weneed to be, to which we are
directing our boat?
You know, like, where we needto be and how do we know when we
get there.
And the challenge statement is ait's a ways out in time and
(10:24):
it's probably a ways out in whatwe know how to do, but it's
usually in a business context,like business, important, like
this is something we need tolearn.
And so, once you know whereyou're trying to get to, then
you analyze your currentcondition.
We have a bunch of steps, atleast five steps, for grasping
the current condition, and wecall it grasping, not detailing,
(10:46):
or something like that.
So it's not like a six sigmaprocess where you might, you
know, get out the laser beamsand dig into the decimal points
of something.
We just need to generallyunderstand what's happening.
So you would have, you'd expectto see a run chart of how the
process is performing over timeon whatever outcome or
performance metric you definedin your challenge of how you
(11:08):
know you'd get there.
Then we do a visualization andso and we just define the
parameters, if you will, of theprocess that we need to
understand.
And the next step, which Ithink is really important
because it's new for most peopleyou know we're not trying to
get to the challenge in oneswing, you know, not one kick at
(11:28):
the ball, but we say where dowe need to be in a shorter time
period?
So if your challenge is threemonths or six months or a year
out, where do you want to be intwo weeks on the road to that
challenge and what do you needto learn to get there?
And so you would define what wecall a target condition, with a
great emphasis on the wordcondition, not just target.
So a lot of lean folks who cometo us, who are confused about
(11:51):
the CADA, have fallen back onwhat they already know and they
just define a couple of targets.
So we want our performancemetric or our lagging metric to
be at this number and we wantour process metric or our
leading metric, to be at thatnumber.
But the improvement kata teachesus in fact, to do a process
block diagram.
So describe the simple steps ofthe process and in a way not in
(12:14):
a way, in fact you're creatinga hypothesis.
If I can run this way, as Ilaid out here in my diagram, I
predict that I will get thisperformance metric and this
process metric by this datewhich you've laid out.
So, basically, you set yourchallenge, you study your
current condition, you set ahypothesis for a close-in change
(12:35):
and then you startexperimenting.
You define the obstacles, whichmostly directly relate to the
process metric.
The process metric is the oneyou can influence.
The outcome metric, of course,is what you get at the end.
So it's not.
The outcome metric is like thescore.
We're in the Olympics right now, it's the score or the time of
the race.
But the process metric are thethings you can change.
(12:57):
How are you passing the ball?
What's your defense like?
How quickly do you turn overyour corners in soccer or
football?
Or I was watching the swimmingtoday and fascinating number of
metrics that the commentatorsknew.
What was your position in theblocks?
How quickly did you get out ofwhen you jumped in?
What's the shape you have?
Look at your strokes.
(13:17):
Look at that turn.
Oh, she's too high on her turn.
Those are all process metrics,things happening while the
process is running that willdetermine.
In fact, it all add up to youroutcome metric.
So your time or your score?
Yeah, so that's.
Obstacles are things that aresomehow influencing your process
metric, very often things thatyou don't understand or you
don't know about, or you or youneed to learn, observe, find the
(13:41):
cause of, and then the laststep in the improvement kata.
So challenge current condition,target condition, study all of
those experimenting your wayforward.
And so we take very small,well-defined steps every day to
remove the obstacles that we seein the weight of the target
condition.
That's the improvement kataside, and the improver or
(14:03):
experimenter pattern.
And all along, besides everyone of those steps, there's a
quiet step that doesn't alwaysget talked about, which is
reflecting on what we learned.
So we are learning to stop andsay what just happened, what did
we learn?
Write it down.
Mike Roth used to say writingit down makes it scientific.
(14:23):
Write down your currentcondition, write down your
hypothesis for that targetcondition, write down what your
step is in detail.
What do you expect to happen?
That's another prediction.
Then go, take it, come back and, in conversation with your
coach, what actually happened?
What did you learn?
And even at the end of the cycleof the target condition, which
is frequently a week or two, twoweeks, let's say.
(14:45):
You stop and say, okay, we hitthe date or we've made that
target condition work and wehave our metrics.
What have we learned?
So it's a.
It's a learning method, rightas much as anything else, and a
way to make the learningexplicit.
Really often people report thatin their workday they just do,
do, do, do, do and they weren'ttaking the time to say am I
(15:09):
learning something here thatwill help me next time?
Am I learning something here Ican share with others?
Am I learning what I don't knowand how can I find out?
So I think, for let's we knowwhy the adult education lady,
why I'm interested in it.
It's very good, applied adulteducation in a method that I'm
not going to say makes it easy,but makes it possible to
(15:30):
operationalize continuouslearning and continuous
improvement.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I want to unpack quite a few things.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And that's just the improvement.
Cat aside, we didn't even getto the coaching cat aside.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
We will touch on that Probably another full podcast
on the coaching cat.
First of all, I want to ask you, tracy and thank you so much
for that, that was really acomprehensive way to describe it
who sets up the challenge?
Is it a it a self driven, or isit?
Is it the business and thesetting of the business, or is
(16:02):
it a combination of both?
Or does it really matter?
Speaker 1 (16:18):
during the COVID time on the internet, and in those
we mostly work on personalchallenges.
And so you would talk to yourcoach and define something you
want to work on, mostly to learnthe improvement cat, actually
probably with aspirations oflearning coaching.
But you know work environmentand certainly in the books that
Mike Rother has written he hasassumed that you are working in
a place that has a strategicplan that knows where it wants
(16:39):
to be.
I always laugh about thatbecause so few companies you
meet have an actual detailed,rational plan, but anyway that
they have a place they want toget to and they know why and
what it looks like.
And then, through a processoften called catch ball or
Hoshinkanri in your leancommunity, basically, you would
come to me and say hey, tracy,you know we've been talking at
(17:00):
the at the executive level.
We think your department isgoing to have to X, right, go
faster, produce more, reduce,scrap something, get to more
customers, round more frequentlyin the ward, something like
that, and together we woulddefine what does it look like if
we achieve that.
So the challenge, yes, is oftenhanded down from above, but it's
(17:23):
often handed down either in away that I can't operationalize
Right.
So you give me a KPI sorry, akey performance indicator or you
just give me a number.
I have to figure out.
What does that look like whenit's real?
What does how does it look like?
So a lot of the challengeconversation is what will we see
or we talk about, if I lift theroof off your department?
(17:48):
What are people doingdifferently than what they're
doing now?
What's the movie that's running?
What will I see?
Because we focus on processthat will produce the result,
not on just achieving the result.
Back when I was helping peoplewith their lean improvements, I
saw lots of managers who cheatedtheir way to good numbers right
.
So we don't want to.
We don't want to game thenumbers.
(18:08):
We want to achieve a new,stable process that reliably
produces that result that we'reafter, and we want to learn our
way there.
So did I answer your question?
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yes, yes, I want to share with you some thoughts
around that and I might becompletely wrong, but I've
studied a lot and read a lotabout the idea.
The difference between achallenge, which I think the
learning character sort ofpromotes, and a goal, and the
(18:39):
difference between the two in myhead anyway and this is why I
adopted the word challengerather than a goal is because we
do expect a level of learningto happen in the challenge.
Second thing, cognitively werespond differently to the word
challenge than a goal.
And the third thing is thatusually a challenge is going to
(19:02):
be good.
The outcome of the completingthe challenge will be good for
you and good for others as well.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yes, I think that's absolutely true.
I used to coach with HalFroelich, who passed away a year
and a half ago, and Hal used tosay nobody wants problems.
Like you want to assign me aproblem.
You know that's already got areal negative commentation over
it, so it's hard to get peoplemotivated with problems.
But if you set a challenge, canwe get this to run in this way
(19:33):
or can you figure out how to getum, like I said, a good
challenge is it's well-defined,but it has a great reason in it
for you for you as well as forthe process or the company.
you know, save a million dollars, a quarter is not a very good
challenge, but can you get yourprocess to operate without scrap
or overtime?
(19:54):
That might be an interesting.
How exactly would we do that?
And that can be engaging, be aninteresting.
How exactly would we do that?
And that can be engaging.
And that's what you need.
You need people to want tosolve it because it's
interesting.
I have a person I'm coachingright now and he's working on a
real persnickety problem, likeone that that is very long
standing and kind of systemic inhis workplace and it's sort of
(20:17):
depressing.
But but I ask him every daylike, okay, so how do you feel
about taking that step?
Or how do you feel about thatrun chart?
And he's like I am in, I am sowant to fix this.
I really, and he's supermotivated, right, and I think if
we just said, can you pleaseget rid of the whip in this
process, he would not be soexcited about it.
(20:38):
But by helping to define whatbetter future can we have
together, I think that, like yousaid, it's almost naturally
human to want to work towardthat shared better future.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I want to ask you about use the word obstacle,
because we look at the.
We don't have problems, we haveobstacles, we don't have
problems.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
We have obstacles.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Well, sometimes I say we don't have problems, we have
situations, and which is kindof the same thing.
I just want to go through thatstep by step.
So what is the process oflooking at where we are from the
challenge?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well, we actually have a really structured process
.
No, no surprise, right?
Like we talked about deliberatepractice, so in the Toyota CADA
practice guide on page 99,there's a very deliberate,
structured process.
You start with the question howis this process performing over
time?
And you start a run chart.
(21:35):
Right, you want to make thedata visual and we want to see
patterns, we want to seeoutliers, we want to see
something we can all look at andsay here's what actually is
happening for the last week ormonth.
And a lot of times these days Ifind, ali, that people have the
data but they've never chartedit.
They just have spreadsheets andthey're looking at numbers.
Yes, and it's so much easierwhen you do the run chart or the
(21:59):
line graph.
I meet people who don't knowwhat a run chart is all the time
.
When you do a line graph, thenyou can see it and you're like,
wow, look at this every Thursday.
Who knew that was happening?
We better go find out whathappens on Thursdays, like that
happens all the time.
We start with how is theprocess performing over time,
and then the other steps takeyou through questions like what
(22:23):
is the pattern of work?
You know how many people arethere?
What machines are involved?
Where does the inventoryaccumulate in between?
No surprise that Mike Rother,as the author of Value Stream
Mapping, has a way for us tosimply map the process.
We look at constraints orcapacity issues.
Oh, and I forgot, of course,step two.
(22:44):
We calculate tack time or wesay how frequently does the
process need to perform or howoften do we need this process to
perform?
So we get some hard numbers.
Usually there, and it'soccasionally actually get a
challenge where time is not athing, but mostly in business,
time is a thing and a preciouscommodity.
So we do, historically, how isit performing?
(23:05):
Make a run chart.
We calculate tack time andcycle time and then we say can
it keep up?
Right?
So we calculate out is it evenpossible?
What are the constraints?
Are there any constraints?
How many people are involved?
How many people are needed?
You know who are your customers, what do you want.
These are really basicquestions, but when you get them
lined up in front of you in ona what we call a storyboard or a
(23:26):
display so we can all see them,then you know enough to say
basically, what we say is how dowe want the graph to look next
in two weeks.
What do we want to change aboutwhat's happening and how do we
need to change the processpattern?
So grasping the currentcondition is about getting a
clearer visual view of as manyaspects of what's happening as
(23:47):
we need to move forward.
It's not particularlyexhaustive if you're used to a
Six Sigma kind of deployment ofwhat's happening, but it's
enough.
The other thing I just want tosay this because it's really I
see this all the time with mylean expert clients you don't
describe what's not happening,so we don't describe the waste.
We're not looking for waste,we're looking for factually what
(24:09):
is happening.
And I coached a podcaster who'sa very well-known lean person
and when she was learning theCATA for the first three or four
days she only described thewaste in the process and I said
no one's ever showed me theirmindset more clearly than so.
Finally, we had her videotapeit and watched it with her and
(24:30):
when she wrote, you know, likethree seconds of waiting or
something we're like, okay, butwhat happened before the waiting
?
Like what was the work, whatwas the thing?
I think that it shifts yourattention from what should
happen or could happen or wherethe wastes are, to what is
actually happening that you canobserve and measure Like it's a
grasping.
(24:50):
The current condition isgenerally an observing and
measuring time in the process,and that observing does not
happen in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
We need, for example, if you're in a factory, you
need to go and observe theprocess, and that observing does
not happen in a vacuum.
We need, for example, if you'rein a factory, you need to go
and observe the process and allof those things.
It's really interesting.
You're talking about the.
Sometimes people focus on whatis missing rather than what's
actually happening, which is acause.
You can't work on the what ismissing, but you can only work
on what is actually happening,and usually what is missing is
(25:20):
caused by something you knowupstream.
But I want to ask you about theexperimentation side of things.
Okay, sure, often and, by theway, the whole principle also
can apply to a process, canapply to personal development
you know like leadership skillsand all of those things so
(25:42):
sometimes Tracy the majority ofthe time.
We often are told in theworkplace that there's not a lot
of time to play with in theworkplace and experimentation,
by nature, expects you to haveextra time to be able.
How would you go about that,Like, how do you usually
overcome this obstacle?
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah Well, we have a really simple and, I think,
clever way of we'd set achallenge Wouldn't it be great
if I had half an hour a day forimprovement?
And then, when we do thecurrent condition of that, we
just track.
We call this the stable daychallenge.
We track what you plan for theday with what actually happened,
(26:25):
and so it's like you start withyour agenda that's, in your
calendar and or the things thatyou do every day, and then you
track did they happen and howlong did they take?
And many, many people find if alot of time in their day
they're just not applying it onthe things that they want to get
done.
So it's that old getting theright things done idea.
But once you have data, youhave a run chart, you have a
(26:48):
week or so or two of looking atwhat you thought your day was
going to be like and then whatit was like.
Then we start to stabilize theday.
So we say what do you do?
What can you delegate?
What do you need other peopleto learn?
How long does that meeting haveto be?
Is it either a reason it's anhour, can it be half an hour or
something like that?
Does it need to be a meeting.
(27:08):
People find an enormous amountof time in their day is
available for learning andimprovement, and so sometimes,
when we do that as a beginning,a beginning to learning the kata
, which is a step on the way tobecoming a coach, because most
of these people are aspiringcoaches we say we want that time
for learning and improvement,or at least we want, you know,
(27:32):
half an hour or an hour or 45minutes of that time.
I had one.
My most dramatic case was a CFOin a small company.
She found that five and a halfhours of her day were spent on
other people's jobs, and yet shewas doing months end by staying
over the weekend.
She was missing her familyholidays to get work done,
because she actually only hadtwo and a half or three hours a
(27:54):
day to do her actual job, andother times because she had
worked there a long time,because she knew all the
processes and she knew thepeople.
People would draw her in toproblem solving or to doing
things that were not her job.
And once she started to seethat and other people were
working on their calendar tooand they all agreed not to
interrupt each other, not onlydid she have time to do her own
(28:15):
job and become a Cata coach.
She was able to, for example,survive a tax audit in her
regular working hours instead ofhaving to stay late at night
and in the weekends, and, as amom of young kids like it
totally changed her life.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
The five and a half hours is the most dramatic, but
very typically people find twoor three hours that they didn't
realize they were.
Basically, you fill your daywith what you have, and so if
you're trying to time box ormake room for something new,
first you need to make room, andI think that's how that's
basically the most successfulway to handle it, because just
wanting to find the time isn'tgoing to do it.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And part of the mindset is actually learning is
part of your job, so you'regonna have to find time for that
as well.
Reflection is part of your jobas well, so that's how I look at
it.
Anyway, I want to ask you aboutthe target condition, and you
(29:16):
call it condition for a reason.
In my head, I'm thinking acondition is not only where I am
in the scheme of things interms of my progress, but also a
mental state.
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Before you go there.
I just wanted to say thatdeveloping people is also part
of your job if you're a manager.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Absolutely Well, I can talk about that a lot.
The role of the leader theycome to work every day in my
head anyway is that they come towork with one purpose helping
their people succeed.
That is it.
That's what they, yeah, and sothat's.
It's really nice to hear thatfrom you, yep, okay.
(29:59):
So just before you go to thetarget condition, I really love
the idea that the learningprocess is an incremental
learning process, meaning you'renot going to get to the
challenge or the desired outcomeoutright.
But cognitively we are moreopen.
If we say I can see the top ofthe mountain, but I can only.
(30:23):
My target condition will be ifI'm going to be up on the
mountain for two meters bylunchtime, and that's my target
condition, that's moreacceptable for me to experiment
with that and get to thererather than look at the mountain
and then you get overwhelmed bythe task.
(30:43):
Am I reading this right?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And in a way, you just kind of settled on the role
of the, of the coaching kind ofthe coach, which we haven't
talked about yet and I don'tknow if you want to look at the
time, but it's the coach's jobto make sure that we're taking
small steps that fit the time wehave available, that fit our
learning horizon, like what dowe know, and to, in a way, like,
(31:09):
slow down the tendency manypeople have to say I will jump
to the top of the challenge.
Right, I will be the one personwho, without learning, achieved
a whole new state and gotreally great numbers.
So, it's the coach's job to saycan you make that?
That's actually six steps.
I had one today.
(31:30):
That's three steps.
Which one?
Pick one thing you need tolearn about your obstacle that
you can do before the end ofyour shift today so we can talk
about it in the morning, like Ithink there's a really big
desire to perform in anoutstanding way.
And so the coach partly keepspulling in the horizon to say,
well, you know, you've only gotfive, you've got to get this
(31:51):
done by a certain time.
When should we check in?
Because the coaching cycle, in away, is a check-in on the
learning and a check-in on theconformity to a scientific way
of working.
Are you making hypotheses?
Have you defined your obstacleagainst the process metric?
Are you stopping to learn, towrite down what did you learn
from that step?
Are you reviewing your learning?
(32:12):
So I think the way to say we'regoing to do incremental
learning together is rememberingthat the coach is a support,
occasionally a teacher, butmostly a support to the learning
and they have.
They're running their ownroutine and so if they follow
deliberately the patterns setout for them, they can't get too
(32:36):
far off track with the learner.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
The whole process, tracy, I always think about it
in terms of managing the changein the workplace.
Yes, because a change is achallenge Right, is a challenge
(32:59):
and then somebody somewhererealized there's a problem or
realized there's an opportunity,and therefore somebody proposed
a change, and that changeusually is a desired state, and
then we're going to have to lookat a current state and
understand it.
But we look at that most of thetime, unfortunately, at a
business unit level or anorganization level.
You know, very rarely we lookat it at an individual level
(33:23):
when it comes to learnings andall of those things, and often
we are really pressured by atimeline within a project
framework.
What's your take on that andwhat's your?
You know, how would you coachme through this particular
scenario?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, interestingly, people ask a lot about the
project management way ofaddressing a long-term problem
or challenge versus a Cata way.
So one of the ways I would, asyou say, address that is.
Mike Rother likes to say thatif you plan out all the steps to
get you to the end, you'reactually operating at the time
(34:01):
when you have the least amountof information, like if you do
that at the beginning, say okay,here's our milestones and
here's our steps and here's howwe'll know.
So the Cata way instead, as weexperiment or iterate our way
forward, we still might have ahard date for the challenge at
the very end, where we need toget to.
But we don't expect to knowexactly where we'll be, like in
(34:22):
a month or even in two exactdays, because what happens with
the learning is it sometimesstarts and feels like it's slow,
but as you remove an obstacle,this very frequently happens,
that you remove an obstacle andwhat falls away with it is five
more obstacles that you thoughtyou had that were actually just
hiding with this one.
The other thing is when you getto the individual level and you
(34:46):
have an individual coach with anindividual improver, there's a
kind of psychological safetythat should happen.
You know, like your podcast iscalled the inner game of change.
Well, the inner game ofcontinuous improvement is sort
of balancing my risk and sayingI don't know what to do, or my
risk in taking a step that mightnot work, versus my need to
(35:09):
learn and keep going and growing, and the coach's job is, in
fact, to do that.
So you want to, like when wetalk about the challenge, we say
you want to be have goosebumpsat the idea that this could be
achieved and you want to be alittle sick, a little.
Maybe you're going to throw upa little bit at the idea of how
hard it will be or what will beinvolved in getting there.
(35:29):
My friend, betty Groutop,always says that the challenge
should give you goosebumps andmake you want to throw up.
So I think that's amazing ifyou can get there.
It doesn't have to be thatemotionally involved, but
there's a lot of ego.
Sometimes, for people at work,problems at work are real life
problems and your livelihood maydepend on them.
So the coach's job to keep youin that.
(35:51):
Yes, I'm in an arousedemotional state because I'm
struggling, because strugglingcan lead to learning, but I'm
safe to try and I'm safe to comeback.
I mean, I have Maggie Jackson'snew book Uncertain behind me
because I'm reading it to getinto a dialogue with her and she
goes through all of theneuroscience the latest 2023, I
(36:16):
guess last year neuroscience andpsychological understandings of
brain chemicals and stuff.
What I see with people isthere's a lot of pleasure in the
progress.
There's a lot of pleasure in theattention or dialogue from your
boss.
I mean I used to think, okay,your boss came and listened to
you for 20 minutes a day, likethat's a big change.
Of course you're going to feelgood about it, but it's way more
(36:37):
than that.
There's that focus that you getfrom attending to a difficult
problem and there's the sharedsecurity that we may not know
how to solve this thing or howto reach that challenge, but we
know the steps to take.
And a lot, of, a lot of peoplewho are coaches report that they
have less stress because theydon't have to know all the
(36:59):
answers, and a lot of the peoplewho are in that improving their
process report that theyactually feel free to actually
say what they think or to, like,risk giving a real idea,
because they know the onlyconsequence for that is either
let's try it or what do youthink I'll be concerned about
(37:20):
when I hear that step?
Are you risking something to acustomer, for example?
So that's kind of a framing ofthe situation.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, I really like that, and in the workplace we
don't have the luxury of havingcoaches.
However, in my, for example,when I work with my customers or
clients or I work in a project,I become the coach.
I take that responsibility andin fact, if somebody says I've
got absolutely no idea what todo, that's probably a good thing
(37:52):
because we can start workingwith that.
I think we have a problem withpeople that can demonstrate a
lot of apathy to a new change.
The other thing is that we'regoing to have to acknowledge
that the learning process goingthrough those obstacles can be
very messy and uncomfortable.
Going through those obstaclescan be very messy and
uncomfortable and thereforeyou're talking about the
(38:15):
psychological safety in thatplace.
I really like that.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I am aware of the time and then I want to get you
back to talk more about thecoaching.
Yeah, before we leave this oneon the psychological safety side
, I just want to say this iscompletely adult educator in me.
People used to say 10 years agowhen they were learning the
kata you know you're going to befrustrated if you're the coach
and and maybe the learner willbe mad because it's not going
well.
And I put my hand up and saidyou stop too soon because you
(38:47):
don't end when everybody'sfrustrated and mad.
You got to get to a point ofcuriosity and wonder what will
happen if we do this.
Maybe that I'll write it down,let's come back tomorrow and see
.
I think that is a such aflywheel of happy change, right,
like that's like a dopamine hitwhen you, if you can, get to
(39:11):
curiosity about something thatseems a bit threatening or
frustrating.
And that's why I think ifyou're going to try to make this
kind of mental mindset change,you really need a buddy.
You need a coach, a skilledcoach if you can get one.
But even somebody who justreads the card would be an
improvement over trying to do iton your own and regulating your
(39:31):
emotional self.
You can't learn if you're toofar off the stress scale right.
There's a sweet spot for alittle bit of stress, but not
too much.
Otherwise you'll shut down.
Yeah, I would love to come backand talk more about that.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I like that idea of the flywheel of happy change and
certainly the learning zone isnot a comfortable place to be,
but it's certainly rewarding.
There is no other way to goforward or grow without that
discomfort.
What would be your advice forpeople like me in the change
(40:09):
management community where wedeal day in, day out with the
new processes, the learningprocess and nudging people,
trying to help them to moveforward towards you know those
target conditions, knowing thatthe learning process can take
time regardless of the timelinefor the project, because the
(40:31):
learning continues post theproject closure.
What would be your advice forus when it comes to managing the
change and applying some of theprinciples of the improvement
Kata?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Well, I've never been like.
It's funny because I have afriend who says that I'm an
adaptive change manager.
Like you know that I'm tryingto get people to learn and adapt
as they experience change.
So that's not my foundationallearning.
But I think several things areimportant if you're going to go
into the workplace in this wayand ask people to change with
(41:05):
you or to imagine change.
One of them is to remember thatpeople, being individuals,
don't expect everyone to be thesame.
Remember the people beingindividuals, like, don't expect
everyone to be the same.
I think, um, I used to jokeabout it was my job to teach
people that not everyone learnedexactly like them or needed to
hear exactly what they needed tohear or would learn in the same
way.
I think so.
I think, like keeping yourhuman filter up and remembering
(41:26):
that you're a person first andwe never know what's happening
with people.
But also, um, people will kindof show you how to bring them
along by what they say, by thewords that they use associated
with the change words.
I think maybe it would be don'tpush for the outcome if you're
(41:47):
not supporting the push for theprocess, learning Like, if you
can't manage the full,deliberate practice, don't skip
any steps, don't skip sayingwhat are we learning as we go?
You know and and I think also beum, we usually say celebrate,
but even just like be okay withlearning from a step that took
(42:08):
you backwards, that's okay, wewere going to hit that at some
point.
Now we know, and what can we doto go sideways or another step
forward?
We really teach people tocelebrate the learning, because
you either win or you learnright.
So, becoming the sort of personwho can actually actively
(42:28):
cheerlead or thank people youknow, thank you for being on you
, for telling us truly whathappened.
And now let's all put our headsout and say what do we learn
from that thing that happened?
Because there can be noprogress towards change if
people hide things or concealwhat really happened or don't
even tell their feelings aboutit, because feelings are data,
(42:49):
feelings are real and feelingsreally color people's
participation in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
One of the best questions that I've learned from
reading a lot about the Katawayis if somebody's got a problem
or they stuffed up a process, anew process I can ask them about
.
Walk me through how you try tosolve it.
You try to solve it and or howare you?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
going to go about it?
Show me your thinking.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
So I'm really interested in the thinking
process rather than I can givethem the answer, cause sometimes
I actually don't know theanswer, and sometimes we can
collaborate and find a wayaround it.
So that's the other thing thatyou're implying, tracy, in in in
your advice to us is that weneed to be close to our users
(43:37):
and to their clients.
And the third thing that I'vealways sort of thought works
really well, which I also tookfrom the category is to give
them the space to play in asimulated way and play with it.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
In a safe offline environment.
Safe offline environment.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
In a safe offline environment.
This is why, in every design ofany challenge that I get
involved in, I would like to seea training environment for the
same.
This is how pilots learn.
You know they go to a simulatorand actually most of their
learning is through thesimulator.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
And you don't get to fly the plane until you're
really good at the simulation.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
You cannot do that.
Yes, because the simulation isnot only showing you the system
or showing you your way ofthinking as well around the
system, provided that the systemis designed around, is designed
in a proper way.
I am thoroughly enjoying this.
I would like to get you back atsome stage.
Talk about the coaching, kata,and, by the way, your book
(44:38):
around.
You just mentioned MaggieMaggie's book, Uncertain.
Maggie's recorded a podcastepisode with me and she will be
on my show.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Oh, awesome yeah fantastic Very soon.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
So I'm really fascinated.
I'm always with anything thatis unambiguous, uncertain and,
in your situation, I'mfascinated with the learning
process, the cutaway.
So I am grateful for your time,tracy.
How would people get hold ofyou if they want to connect with
you?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
I'm easy to find on LinkedIn for sure, because there
aren't too many people whosename is spelled the way mine is.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Tracy without an E.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
yes, Tracy without an E Defoe, exactly like Daniel
Defoe D-E-F-O-E.
My consulting company is calledthe Learning Factor, so that's
pretty easy.
Learningfactorcom is me and ofcourse I have two those two
groups that people areinterested in knowing more about
how to joining a community CataSchool, cascadia.
(45:42):
Cascadia is a regional, like ageographic area for the West
Coast of North America, so ourCascadia group started out with
people in British Columbia,canada, all the way through
Washington, oregon andCalifornia in the United States.
We're kind of an earthquakezone and a geographic climate
zone.
And then I have a women's groupcalled Cata Girl Geeks that I'm
(46:03):
co-founder of and any women whoare interested in knowing more
about the Cata might want toconnect with us there.
But through LinkedIn, certainly, or through my website are easy
, easy ways to get in touch withme.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Fantastic.
We're going to put all theinformation about you, Tracy, in
the podcast.
Thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Pleasure having you in my Inner Game of Change
podcast.
Until next time, stay well andstay safe, thank you.
Thank you, tracy.
Thank you for listening.
If you found this episodevaluable, remember to subscribe
to stay updated on upcomingepisodes.
Your support is trulyappreciated and, by sharing this
(46:42):
podcast with your colleagues,friends and fellow change
practitioners, it can help mereach even more individuals and
professionals who can benefitfrom these discussions.
Remember, and in my opinion,change is an enduring force and
you will only have a measure ofcertainty and control when you
embrace it.
Until next time.
(47:02):
Thank you for being part of theInner Game of Change community.
I am Ali Jammah and this is theInner Game of Change podcast.
And the CADA particularly, is useful and, I
think, works the best when weactually don't know the way
forward.
You know where we're at the.
What I always say in learningwe're at the edge of what we
know and not where we'reimplementing a plan that worked
in nine other plants.
So please just make this yourstandard.
But when we're actually inexploratory learning mode and we
need to gather evidence, getsome data, make a process visual
(00:24):
and have a conversation with acoach who, as a friend of mine
says, holds the guardrails andkeeps you in place, Welcome to
the Inner Game of Change, thepodcast where we explore the
(00:45):
unseen forces that shape how welead, adapt and thrive in the
face of change andtransformation.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I am your host, ali Jumaan.
In today's episode, we explorea powerful way of thinking and
working that helps peoplenavigate complexity, solve tough
problems and grow throughstructured learning the
Improvement Kata.
My guest is Tracy Defoe, alifelong adult educator, kata
(01:15):
coach, and a passionate advocatefor deliberate reflective
learning at work.
Based in Vancouver, canada,tracy shares her deep insights
into how the CATA practice,inspired by Toyota's continuous
improvement approach, helpsindividuals and teams move
forward.
It is far more than a businesstool.
(01:36):
It is a mindset shift.
We also touch on the role ofpsychological safety, the
difference between goals andchallenges, and how leaders can
become coaches who buildcapability, not just compliance.
(01:58):
If you're curious about how toembed continuous improvement in
a way that feels human,sustainable and empowering, this
one is for you.
I am grateful to have Tracychatting with me today.
Well, tracy, thank you so muchfor joining me in the Inner Game
of Change podcast.
I am eternally grateful foryour time today.
(02:19):
You're welcome.
I'm glad to be here.
Thank you so much.
You are in Canada, vancouver.
Yes, I am and you've got thewisdom of the past.
We are in the future, here inAustralia.
It's on a Wednesday morning.
Here Today, tracy, we willtouch and talk.
(02:39):
We're probably going to godeeper into the rabbit hole of
the kataway Japanese principle,and experts like yourself have
been promoting this principle,sort of a type of learning in a
structured way, in a scientificway of looking at learning
adopted from the Japanese way ofworking.
(03:02):
But before we dive deep intothat, it would be fantastic for
you to introduce yourself to myaudience.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Oh, my pleasure.
So my name is Tracy Defoe.
I am, as you said, in Vancouver, canada.
I think of myself as aneducator, an adult educator,
first.
I have a long career of adulteducation and'm particularly
have always been interested inwhat people learn in the context
of their work.
So workplace learning and myinterest in continuous
(03:33):
improvement stemmed from some ofmy clients asking me to get
involved in teaching continuousimprovement in their workplaces
a long time ago and throughthose people I was introduced to
a long time ago.
And through those people I wasintroduced to the CADA and the
idea of coaching.
You know, good, good adulteducation has a kind of a pull
(03:54):
to it.
You know you don't want to justpush things and talk over
people and when I was trying tobe, when I was involved in
teaching lean concepts, I alwaysworked from questions.
So somebody who knew MikeRother and his research at the
University of Michigan intostudying Toyota management
behavior said you should meetthis guy, mike Rother, because
he tells people the same thing.
(04:15):
You should ask questions andnot give them answers, pay
attention to people learning.
So for me, I am now a Catacoach.
That's almost all that I doCata coaching and second
coaching in my consultingpractice.
I retired over a year ago frommy university work and for me
it's a combination of goodlearning practice and good work
(04:37):
practice to develop people and,as you say, learn together a
more scientific and deliberateway of approaching problems, but
also developing people.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
We're going to touch on that learning together
principle because that's animportant piece for the audience
.
Tracy, what is a kata way oflearning?
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Well, as somebody who practices the martial art, I
know that you know that theJapanese word kata and in my
Canadian accent I know I say itsounds a bit more like a D, but
it's a T K-A-T-A, it's not anacronym, it's a word which has
two meanings in Japanese.
Japanese characters are sopoetic in the way they can have
(05:22):
two meanings and a commonmeaning of the word.
One of the meanings is form.
So in martial arts it's easy toimagine that series of
choreographed steps that we useto learn a new skill, and that
would be a kata.
But also it can mean method orthe way of learning.
And so with Mike Rother's book,which he called well, he didn't
(05:46):
call it Toyota CATA, hispublisher called it Toyota CATA
Mike called his research bookBeyond what we Can See we have
he's provided there two verystructured routines that you can
deliberately practice to learna scientific way of thinking and
acting in the face of a very ofa tough challenge.
(06:06):
So the kata is a scripted orstructured practice to learn
something new.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Let's put it that way I remember from my karate days
and I used to love kata.
In fact I've later specializedin kata rather than in the fight
aspect of it.
The structure used to be weknow the basics, so we practice
the basics separately.
The kata is sort of acombination of the basics you
(06:35):
learn through you know,understanding how those basics
connect with each other, andthen with the hope that through
the kata and the practice of thekata, you will be fit for the
real world, which is when thecompetition starts.
So in my head I'm thinking ifthis is the workplace you've got
(06:56):
the principles of about a newprocess, for example then the
kata is actually putting all thepieces together and then, with
the help that, with therepetition and structured way
and thoughtful way andexperimentation, you will be
able to perform those pieceswith the customer, with the user
, with the stakeholders.
(07:18):
Am I close to?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yes, but in practice very few people come as a blank
slate to learning right.
They have experiences beforeExcellent and so the kata can
also help people unlearn habitsthat they've had right.
Yeah, and particularly we talkabout slowing down or having
steps that prevent you fromimmediately jumping to a
(07:42):
solution or applying a tool thatworked before without really
having a look at the currentsituation.
Is it the same, for example, oris it different?
And the CADA, particularly, isuseful and, I think, works the
best when we actually don't knowthe way forward.
Works the best when we actuallydon't know the way forward.
You know where we're at the.
What I always say in learningwe're at the edge of what we
(08:02):
know, and not where we'reimplementing a plan that worked
in nine other plants.
So please just make this yourstandard.
But when we're actually inexploratory learning mode and we
need to gather evidence, getsome data, make a process visual
and have a conversation with acoach who, as a friend of mine
says, holds the guardrails andkeeps you in place, and, of
(08:27):
course, as a person gains skill,then the guardrails grow and
you get way more opportunity.
Many, many people feel thatmastering or at least practicing
the kata competently frees themup for a lot more creativity
than they would have, and maybeyou experienced that also in
your martial arts.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I would agree with that.
I want to ask you about theseare process that Mike in his
book that sort of clarified.
It does focus a lot on theexperimentation part.
It does focus a lot on theexperimentation part.
It does focus a lot onunderstanding where you are and
then, but also there's a stepthat you need to understand
where you want to go.
So do you want to walk usthrough that process, tracy?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah.
So when Mike Rother did hisresearch he was trying to figure
out what were the unseenmanagement behaviors in a place
like Toyota, which has a longhistory of tackling tough
problems and developing people.
What were the unseen managementbehaviors that were happening
there that people generallyhadn't noticed because they were
so excited by the physicalartifacts of problem solving
(09:33):
right the and-on lights, thestoryboards, all that stuff?
And then the second questionMike looked at was how can other
organizations learn from this,or how could they also learn to
have this kind of mindset, ormanagement mindset?
So he laid out two routines.
The first one we call theImprovement Kata, and it has
(09:55):
four steps.
I know we're not recording this, but I talk with my hands
because I'm a teacher.
Four steps I can.
We're not recording this, but Italk with my hands because I'm
teaching four steps.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I can see you, tracy, that's okay.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, the first step is to identify the challenge.
So where do we want to go, like?
What does the top of themountain look like?
Or what's the exact GPS of thelocation to which we are
directing our boat?
You know, like, where do weneed to be, to which we are
directing our boat?
You know, like, where we needto be and how do we know when we
get there.
And the challenge statement is ait's a ways out in time and
(10:24):
it's probably a ways out in whatwe know how to do, but it's
usually in a business context,like business, important, like
this is something we need tolearn.
And so, once you know whereyou're trying to get to, then
you analyze your currentcondition.
We have a bunch of steps, atleast five steps, for grasping
the current condition, and wecall it grasping, not detailing,
(10:46):
or something like that.
So it's not like a six sigmaprocess where you might, you
know, get out the laser beamsand dig into the decimal points
of something.
We just need to generallyunderstand what's happening.
So you would have, you'd expectto see a run chart of how the
process is performing over timeon whatever outcome or
performance metric you definedin your challenge of how you
(11:08):
know you'd get there.
Then we do a visualization andso and we just define the
parameters, if you will, of theprocess that we need to
understand.
And the next step, which Ithink is really important
because it's new for most peopleyou know we're not trying to
get to the challenge in oneswing, you know, not one kick at
(11:28):
the ball, but we say where dowe need to be in a shorter time
period?
So if your challenge is threemonths or six months or a year
out, where do you want to be intwo weeks on the road to that
challenge and what do you needto learn to get there?
And so you would define what wecall a target condition, with a
great emphasis on the wordcondition, not just target.
So a lot of lean folks who cometo us, who are confused about
(11:51):
the CADA, have fallen back onwhat they already know and they
just define a couple of targets.
So we want our performancemetric or our lagging metric to
be at this number and we wantour process metric or our
leading metric, to be at thatnumber.
But the improvement kata teachesus in fact, to do a process
block diagram.
So describe the simple steps ofthe process and in a way not in
(12:14):
a way, in fact you're creatinga hypothesis.
If I can run this way, as Ilaid out here in my diagram, I
predict that I will get thisperformance metric and this
process metric by this datewhich you've laid out.
So, basically, you set yourchallenge, you study your
current condition, you set ahypothesis for a close-in change
(12:35):
and then you startexperimenting.
You define the obstacles, whichmostly directly relate to the
process metric.
The process metric is the oneyou can influence.
The outcome metric, of course,is what you get at the end.
So it's not.
The outcome metric is like thescore.
We're in the Olympics right now, it's the score or the time of
the race.
But the process metric are thethings you can change.
(12:57):
How are you passing the ball?
What's your defense like?
How quickly do you turn overyour corners in soccer or
football?
Or I was watching the swimmingtoday and fascinating number of
metrics that the commentatorsknew.
What was your position in theblocks?
How quickly did you get out ofwhen you jumped in?
What's the shape you have?
Look at your strokes.
(13:17):
Look at that turn.
Oh, she's too high on her turn.
Those are all process metrics,things happening while the
process is running that willdetermine.
In fact, it all add up to youroutcome metric.
So your time or your score?
Yeah, so that's.
Obstacles are things that aresomehow influencing your process
metric, very often things thatyou don't understand or you
don't know about, or you or youneed to learn, observe, find the
(13:41):
cause of, and then the laststep in the improvement kata.
So challenge current condition,target condition, study all of
those experimenting your wayforward.
And so we take very small,well-defined steps every day to
remove the obstacles that we seein the weight of the target
condition.
That's the improvement kataside, and the improver or
(14:03):
experimenter pattern.
And all along, besides everyone of those steps, there's a
quiet step that doesn't alwaysget talked about, which is
reflecting on what we learned.
So we are learning to stop andsay what just happened, what did
we learn?
Write it down.
Mike Roth used to say writingit down makes it scientific.
(14:23):
Write down your currentcondition, write down your
hypothesis for that targetcondition, write down what your
step is in detail.
What do you expect to happen?
That's another prediction.
Then go, take it, come back and, in conversation with your
coach, what actually happened?
What did you learn?
And even at the end of the cycleof the target condition, which
is frequently a week or two, twoweeks, let's say.
(14:45):
You stop and say, okay, we hitthe date or we've made that
target condition work and wehave our metrics.
What have we learned?
So it's a.
It's a learning method, rightas much as anything else, and a
way to make the learningexplicit.
Really often people report thatin their workday they just do,
do, do, do, do and they weren'ttaking the time to say am I
(15:09):
learning something here thatwill help me next time?
Am I learning something here Ican share with others?
Am I learning what I don't knowand how can I find out?
So I think, for let's we knowwhy the adult education lady,
why I'm interested in it.
It's very good, applied adulteducation in a method that I'm
not going to say makes it easy,but makes it possible to
(15:30):
operationalize continuouslearning and continuous
improvement.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I want to unpack quite a few things.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
And that's just the improvement.
Cat aside, we didn't even getto the coaching cat aside.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
We will touch on that Probably another full podcast
on the coaching cat.
First of all, I want to ask you, tracy and thank you so much
for that, that was really acomprehensive way to describe it
who sets up the challenge?
Is it a it a self driven, or isit?
Is it the business and thesetting of the business, or is
(16:02):
it a combination of both?
Or does it really matter?
Speaker 1 (16:18):
during the COVID time on the internet, and in those
we mostly work on personalchallenges.
And so you would talk to yourcoach and define something you
want to work on, mostly to learnthe improvement cat, actually
probably with aspirations oflearning coaching.
But you know work environmentand certainly in the books that
Mike Rother has written he hasassumed that you are working in
a place that has a strategicplan that knows where it wants
(16:39):
to be.
I always laugh about thatbecause so few companies you
meet have an actual detailed,rational plan, but anyway that
they have a place they want toget to and they know why and
what it looks like.
And then, through a processoften called catch ball or
Hoshinkanri in your leancommunity, basically, you would
come to me and say hey, tracy,you know we've been talking at
(17:00):
the at the executive level.
We think your department isgoing to have to X, right, go
faster, produce more, reduce,scrap something, get to more
customers, round more frequentlyin the ward, something like
that, and together we woulddefine what does it look like if
we achieve that.
So the challenge, yes, is oftenhanded down from above, but it's
(17:23):
often handed down either in away that I can't operationalize
Right.
So you give me a KPI sorry, akey performance indicator or you
just give me a number.
I have to figure out.
What does that look like whenit's real?
What does how does it look like?
So a lot of the challengeconversation is what will we see
or we talk about, if I lift theroof off your department?
(17:48):
What are people doingdifferently than what they're
doing now?
What's the movie that's running?
What will I see?
Because we focus on processthat will produce the result,
not on just achieving the result.
Back when I was helping peoplewith their lean improvements, I
saw lots of managers who cheatedtheir way to good numbers right
.
So we don't want to.
We don't want to game thenumbers.
(18:08):
We want to achieve a new,stable process that reliably
produces that result that we'reafter, and we want to learn our
way there.
So did I answer your question?
I'm not.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yes, yes, I want to share with you some thoughts
around that and I might becompletely wrong, but I've
studied a lot and read a lotabout the idea.
The difference between achallenge, which I think the
learning character sort ofpromotes, and a goal, and the
(18:39):
difference between the two in myhead anyway and this is why I
adopted the word challengerather than a goal is because we
do expect a level of learningto happen in the challenge.
Second thing, cognitively werespond differently to the word
challenge than a goal.
And the third thing is thatusually a challenge is going to
(19:02):
be good.
The outcome of the completingthe challenge will be good for
you and good for others as well.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yes, I think that's absolutely true.
I used to coach with HalFroelich, who passed away a year
and a half ago, and Hal used tosay nobody wants problems.
Like you want to assign me aproblem.
You know that's already got areal negative commentation over
it, so it's hard to get peoplemotivated with problems.
But if you set a challenge, canwe get this to run in this way
(19:33):
or can you figure out how to getum, like I said, a good
challenge is it's well-defined,but it has a great reason in it
for you for you as well as forthe process or the company.
you know, save a million dollars, a quarter is not a very good
challenge, but can you get yourprocess to operate without scrap
or overtime?
(19:54):
That might be an interesting.
How exactly would we do that?
And that can be engaging, be aninteresting.
How exactly would we do that?
And that can be engaging.
And that's what you need.
You need people to want tosolve it because it's
interesting.
I have a person I'm coachingright now and he's working on a
real persnickety problem, likeone that that is very long
standing and kind of systemic inhis workplace and it's sort of
(20:17):
depressing.
But but I ask him every daylike, okay, so how do you feel
about taking that step?
Or how do you feel about thatrun chart?
And he's like I am in, I am sowant to fix this.
I really, and he's supermotivated, right, and I think if
we just said, can you pleaseget rid of the whip in this
process, he would not be soexcited about it.
(20:38):
But by helping to define whatbetter future can we have
together, I think that, like yousaid, it's almost naturally
human to want to work towardthat shared better future.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I want to ask you about use the word obstacle,
because we look at the.
We don't have problems, we haveobstacles, we don't have
problems.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
We have obstacles.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Well, sometimes I say we don't have problems, we have
situations, and which is kindof the same thing.
I just want to go through thatstep by step.
So what is the process oflooking at where we are from the
challenge?
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well, we actually have a really structured process
.
No, no surprise, right?
Like we talked about deliberatepractice, so in the Toyota CADA
practice guide on page 99,there's a very deliberate,
structured process.
You start with the question howis this process performing over
time?
And you start a run chart.
(21:35):
Right, you want to make thedata visual and we want to see
patterns, we want to seeoutliers, we want to see
something we can all look at andsay here's what actually is
happening for the last week ormonth.
And a lot of times these days Ifind, ali, that people have the
data but they've never chartedit.
They just have spreadsheets andthey're looking at numbers.
Yes, and it's so much easierwhen you do the run chart or the
(21:59):
line graph.
I meet people who don't knowwhat a run chart is all the time
.
When you do a line graph, thenyou can see it and you're like,
wow, look at this every Thursday.
Who knew that was happening?
We better go find out whathappens on Thursdays, like that
happens all the time.
We start with how is theprocess performing over time,
and then the other steps takeyou through questions like what
(22:23):
is the pattern of work?
You know how many people arethere?
What machines are involved?
Where does the inventoryaccumulate in between?
No surprise that Mike Rother,as the author of Value Stream
Mapping, has a way for us tosimply map the process.
We look at constraints orcapacity issues.
Oh, and I forgot, of course,step two.
(22:44):
We calculate tack time or wesay how frequently does the
process need to perform or howoften do we need this process to
perform?
So we get some hard numbers.
Usually there, and it'soccasionally actually get a
challenge where time is not athing, but mostly in business,
time is a thing and a preciouscommodity.
So we do, historically, how isit performing?
(23:05):
Make a run chart.
We calculate tack time andcycle time and then we say can
it keep up?
Right?
So we calculate out is it evenpossible?
What are the constraints?
Are there any constraints?
How many people are involved?
How many people are needed?
You know who are your customers, what do you want.
These are really basicquestions, but when you get them
lined up in front of you in ona what we call a storyboard or a
(23:26):
display so we can all see them,then you know enough to say
basically, what we say is how dowe want the graph to look next
in two weeks.
What do we want to change aboutwhat's happening and how do we
need to change the processpattern?
So grasping the currentcondition is about getting a
clearer visual view of as manyaspects of what's happening as
(23:47):
we need to move forward.
It's not particularlyexhaustive if you're used to a
Six Sigma kind of deployment ofwhat's happening, but it's
enough.
The other thing I just want tosay this because it's really I
see this all the time with mylean expert clients you don't
describe what's not happening,so we don't describe the waste.
We're not looking for waste,we're looking for factually what
(24:09):
is happening.
And I coached a podcaster who'sa very well-known lean person
and when she was learning theCATA for the first three or four
days she only described thewaste in the process and I said
no one's ever showed me theirmindset more clearly than so.
Finally, we had her videotapeit and watched it with her and
(24:30):
when she wrote, you know, likethree seconds of waiting or
something we're like, okay, butwhat happened before the waiting
?
Like what was the work, whatwas the thing?
I think that it shifts yourattention from what should
happen or could happen or wherethe wastes are, to what is
actually happening that you canobserve and measure Like it's a
grasping.
(24:50):
The current condition isgenerally an observing and
measuring time in the process,and that observing does not
happen in a vacuum.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
We need, for example, if you're in a factory, you
need to go and observe theprocess, and that observing does
not happen in a vacuum.
We need, for example, if you'rein a factory, you need to go
and observe the process and allof those things.
It's really interesting.
You're talking about the.
Sometimes people focus on whatis missing rather than what's
actually happening, which is acause.
You can't work on the what ismissing, but you can only work
on what is actually happening,and usually what is missing is
(25:20):
caused by something you knowupstream.
But I want to ask you about theexperimentation side of things.
Okay, sure, often and, by theway, the whole principle also
can apply to a process, canapply to personal development
you know like leadership skillsand all of those things so
(25:42):
sometimes Tracy the majority ofthe time.
We often are told in theworkplace that there's not a lot
of time to play with in theworkplace and experimentation,
by nature, expects you to haveextra time to be able.
How would you go about that,Like, how do you usually
overcome this obstacle?
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah Well, we have a really simple and, I think,
clever way of we'd set achallenge Wouldn't it be great
if I had half an hour a day forimprovement?
And then, when we do thecurrent condition of that, we
just track.
We call this the stable daychallenge.
We track what you plan for theday with what actually happened,
(26:25):
and so it's like you start withyour agenda that's, in your
calendar and or the things thatyou do every day, and then you
track did they happen and howlong did they take?
And many, many people find if alot of time in their day
they're just not applying it onthe things that they want to get
done.
So it's that old getting theright things done idea.
But once you have data, youhave a run chart, you have a
(26:48):
week or so or two of looking atwhat you thought your day was
going to be like and then whatit was like.
Then we start to stabilize theday.
So we say what do you do?
What can you delegate?
What do you need other peopleto learn?
How long does that meeting haveto be?
Is it either a reason it's anhour, can it be half an hour or
something like that?
Does it need to be a meeting.
(27:08):
People find an enormous amountof time in their day is
available for learning andimprovement, and so sometimes,
when we do that as a beginning,a beginning to learning the kata
, which is a step on the way tobecoming a coach, because most
of these people are aspiringcoaches we say we want that time
for learning and improvement,or at least we want, you know,
(27:32):
half an hour or an hour or 45minutes of that time.
I had one.
My most dramatic case was a CFOin a small company.
She found that five and a halfhours of her day were spent on
other people's jobs, and yet shewas doing months end by staying
over the weekend.
She was missing her familyholidays to get work done,
because she actually only hadtwo and a half or three hours a
(27:54):
day to do her actual job, andother times because she had
worked there a long time,because she knew all the
processes and she knew thepeople.
People would draw her in toproblem solving or to doing
things that were not her job.
And once she started to seethat and other people were
working on their calendar tooand they all agreed not to
interrupt each other, not onlydid she have time to do her own
(28:15):
job and become a Cata coach.
She was able to, for example,survive a tax audit in her
regular working hours instead ofhaving to stay late at night
and in the weekends, and, as amom of young kids like it
totally changed her life.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
The five and a half hours is the most dramatic, but
very typically people find twoor three hours that they didn't
realize they were.
Basically, you fill your daywith what you have, and so if
you're trying to time box ormake room for something new,
first you need to make room, andI think that's how that's
basically the most successfulway to handle it, because just
wanting to find the time isn'tgoing to do it.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And part of the mindset is actually learning is
part of your job, so you'regonna have to find time for that
as well.
Reflection is part of your jobas well, so that's how I look at
it.
Anyway, I want to ask you aboutthe target condition, and you
(29:16):
call it condition for a reason.
In my head, I'm thinking acondition is not only where I am
in the scheme of things interms of my progress, but also a
mental state.
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Before you go there.
I just wanted to say thatdeveloping people is also part
of your job if you're a manager.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Absolutely Well, I can talk about that a lot.
The role of the leader theycome to work every day in my
head anyway is that they come towork with one purpose helping
their people succeed.
That is it.
That's what they, yeah, and sothat's.
It's really nice to hear thatfrom you, yep, okay.
(29:59):
So just before you go to thetarget condition, I really love
the idea that the learningprocess is an incremental
learning process, meaning you'renot going to get to the
challenge or the desired outcomeoutright.
But cognitively we are moreopen.
If we say I can see the top ofthe mountain, but I can only.
(30:23):
My target condition will be ifI'm going to be up on the
mountain for two meters bylunchtime, and that's my target
condition, that's moreacceptable for me to experiment
with that and get to thererather than look at the mountain
and then you get overwhelmed bythe task.
(30:43):
Am I reading this right?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And in a way, you just kind of settled on the role
of the, of the coaching kind ofthe coach, which we haven't
talked about yet and I don'tknow if you want to look at the
time, but it's the coach's jobto make sure that we're taking
small steps that fit the time wehave available, that fit our
learning horizon, like what dowe know, and to, in a way, like,
(31:09):
slow down the tendency manypeople have to say I will jump
to the top of the challenge.
Right, I will be the one personwho, without learning, achieved
a whole new state and gotreally great numbers.
So, it's the coach's job to saycan you make that?
That's actually six steps.
I had one today.
(31:30):
That's three steps.
Which one?
Pick one thing you need tolearn about your obstacle that
you can do before the end ofyour shift today so we can talk
about it in the morning, like Ithink there's a really big
desire to perform in anoutstanding way.
And so the coach partly keepspulling in the horizon to say,
well, you know, you've only gotfive, you've got to get this
(31:51):
done by a certain time.
When should we check in?
Because the coaching cycle, in away, is a check-in on the
learning and a check-in on theconformity to a scientific way
of working.
Are you making hypotheses?
Have you defined your obstacleagainst the process metric?
Are you stopping to learn, towrite down what did you learn
from that step?
Are you reviewing your learning?
(32:12):
So I think the way to say we'regoing to do incremental
learning together is rememberingthat the coach is a support,
occasionally a teacher, butmostly a support to the learning
and they have.
They're running their ownroutine and so if they follow
deliberately the patterns setout for them, they can't get too
(32:36):
far off track with the learner.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
The whole process, tracy, I always think about it
in terms of managing the changein the workplace.
Yes, because a change is achallenge Right, is a challenge
(32:59):
and then somebody somewhererealized there's a problem or
realized there's an opportunity,and therefore somebody proposed
a change, and that changeusually is a desired state, and
then we're going to have to lookat a current state and
understand it.
But we look at that most of thetime, unfortunately, at a
business unit level or anorganization level.
You know, very rarely we lookat it at an individual level
(33:23):
when it comes to learnings andall of those things, and often
we are really pressured by atimeline within a project
framework.
What's your take on that andwhat's your?
You know, how would you coachme through this particular
scenario?
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, interestingly, people ask a lot about the
project management way ofaddressing a long-term problem
or challenge versus a Cata way.
So one of the ways I would, asyou say, address that is.
Mike Rother likes to say thatif you plan out all the steps to
get you to the end, you'reactually operating at the time
(34:01):
when you have the least amountof information, like if you do
that at the beginning, say okay,here's our milestones and
here's our steps and here's howwe'll know.
So the Cata way instead, as weexperiment or iterate our way
forward, we still might have ahard date for the challenge at
the very end, where we need toget to.
But we don't expect to knowexactly where we'll be, like in
(34:22):
a month or even in two exactdays, because what happens with
the learning is it sometimesstarts and feels like it's slow,
but as you remove an obstacle,this very frequently happens,
that you remove an obstacle andwhat falls away with it is five
more obstacles that you thoughtyou had that were actually just
hiding with this one.
The other thing is when you getto the individual level and you
(34:46):
have an individual coach with anindividual improver, there's a
kind of psychological safetythat should happen.
You know, like your podcast iscalled the inner game of change.
Well, the inner game ofcontinuous improvement is sort
of balancing my risk and sayingI don't know what to do, or my
risk in taking a step that mightnot work, versus my need to
(35:09):
learn and keep going and growing, and the coach's job is, in
fact, to do that.
So you want to, like when wetalk about the challenge, we say
you want to be have goosebumpsat the idea that this could be
achieved and you want to be alittle sick, a little.
Maybe you're going to throw upa little bit at the idea of how
hard it will be or what will beinvolved in getting there.
(35:29):
My friend, betty Groutop,always says that the challenge
should give you goosebumps andmake you want to throw up.
So I think that's amazing ifyou can get there.
It doesn't have to be thatemotionally involved, but
there's a lot of ego.
Sometimes, for people at work,problems at work are real life
problems and your livelihood maydepend on them.
So the coach's job to keep youin that.
(35:51):
Yes, I'm in an arousedemotional state because I'm
struggling, because strugglingcan lead to learning, but I'm
safe to try and I'm safe to comeback.
I mean, I have Maggie Jackson'snew book Uncertain behind me
because I'm reading it to getinto a dialogue with her and she
goes through all of theneuroscience the latest 2023, I
(36:16):
guess last year neuroscience andpsychological understandings of
brain chemicals and stuff.
What I see with people isthere's a lot of pleasure in the
progress.
There's a lot of pleasure in theattention or dialogue from your
boss.
I mean I used to think, okay,your boss came and listened to
you for 20 minutes a day, likethat's a big change.
Of course you're going to feelgood about it, but it's way more
(36:37):
than that.
There's that focus that you getfrom attending to a difficult
problem and there's the sharedsecurity that we may not know
how to solve this thing or howto reach that challenge, but we
know the steps to take.
And a lot, of, a lot of peoplewho are coaches report that they
have less stress because theydon't have to know all the
(36:59):
answers, and a lot of the peoplewho are in that improving their
process report that theyactually feel free to actually
say what they think or to, like,risk giving a real idea,
because they know the onlyconsequence for that is either
let's try it or what do youthink I'll be concerned about
(37:20):
when I hear that step?
Are you risking something to acustomer, for example?
So that's kind of a framing ofthe situation.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, I really like that, and in the workplace we
don't have the luxury of havingcoaches.
However, in my, for example,when I work with my customers or
clients or I work in a project,I become the coach.
I take that responsibility andin fact, if somebody says I've
got absolutely no idea what todo, that's probably a good thing
(37:52):
because we can start workingwith that.
I think we have a problem withpeople that can demonstrate a
lot of apathy to a new change.
The other thing is that we'regoing to have to acknowledge
that the learning process goingthrough those obstacles can be
very messy and uncomfortable.
Going through those obstaclescan be very messy and
uncomfortable and thereforeyou're talking about the
(38:15):
psychological safety in thatplace.
I really like that.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I am aware of the time and then I want to get you
back to talk more about thecoaching.
Yeah, before we leave this oneon the psychological safety side
, I just want to say this iscompletely adult educator in me.
People used to say 10 years agowhen they were learning the
kata you know you're going to befrustrated if you're the coach
and and maybe the learner willbe mad because it's not going
well.
And I put my hand up and saidyou stop too soon because you
(38:47):
don't end when everybody'sfrustrated and mad.
You got to get to a point ofcuriosity and wonder what will
happen if we do this.
Maybe that I'll write it down,let's come back tomorrow and see
.
I think that is a such aflywheel of happy change, right,
like that's like a dopamine hitwhen you, if you can, get to
(39:11):
curiosity about something thatseems a bit threatening or
frustrating.
And that's why I think ifyou're going to try to make this
kind of mental mindset change,you really need a buddy.
You need a coach, a skilledcoach if you can get one.
But even somebody who justreads the card would be an
improvement over trying to do iton your own and regulating your
(39:31):
emotional self.
You can't learn if you're toofar off the stress scale right.
There's a sweet spot for alittle bit of stress, but not
too much.
Otherwise you'll shut down.
Yeah, I would love to come backand talk more about that.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I like that idea of the flywheel of happy change and
certainly the learning zone isnot a comfortable place to be,
but it's certainly rewarding.
There is no other way to goforward or grow without that
discomfort.
What would be your advice forpeople like me in the change
(40:09):
management community where wedeal day in, day out with the
new processes, the learningprocess and nudging people,
trying to help them to moveforward towards you know those
target conditions, knowing thatthe learning process can take
time regardless of the timelinefor the project, because the
(40:31):
learning continues post theproject closure.
What would be your advice forus when it comes to managing the
change and applying some of theprinciples of the improvement
Kata?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Well, I've never been like.
It's funny because I have afriend who says that I'm an
adaptive change manager.
Like you know that I'm tryingto get people to learn and adapt
as they experience change.
So that's not my foundationallearning.
But I think several things areimportant if you're going to go
into the workplace in this wayand ask people to change with
(41:05):
you or to imagine change.
One of them is to remember thatpeople, being individuals,
don't expect everyone to be thesame.
Remember the people beingindividuals, like, don't expect
everyone to be the same.
I think, um, I used to jokeabout it was my job to teach
people that not everyone learnedexactly like them or needed to
hear exactly what they needed tohear or would learn in the same
way.
I think so.
I think, like keeping yourhuman filter up and remembering
(41:26):
that you're a person first andwe never know what's happening
with people.
But also, um, people will kindof show you how to bring them
along by what they say, by thewords that they use associated
with the change words.
I think maybe it would be don'tpush for the outcome if you're
(41:47):
not supporting the push for theprocess, learning Like, if you
can't manage the full,deliberate practice, don't skip
any steps, don't skip sayingwhat are we learning as we go?
You know and and I think also beum, we usually say celebrate,
but even just like be okay withlearning from a step that took
(42:08):
you backwards, that's okay, wewere going to hit that at some
point.
Now we know, and what can we doto go sideways or another step
forward?
We really teach people tocelebrate the learning, because
you either win or you learnright.
So, becoming the sort of personwho can actually actively
(42:28):
cheerlead or thank people youknow, thank you for being on you
, for telling us truly whathappened.
And now let's all put our headsout and say what do we learn
from that thing that happened?
Because there can be noprogress towards change if
people hide things or concealwhat really happened or don't
even tell their feelings aboutit, because feelings are data,
(42:49):
feelings are real and feelingsreally color people's
participation in the workplace.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
One of the best questions that I've learned from
reading a lot about the Katawayis if somebody's got a problem
or they stuffed up a process, anew process I can ask them about
.
Walk me through how you try tosolve it.
You try to solve it and or howare you?
Speaker 1 (43:14):
going to go about it?
Show me your thinking.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
So I'm really interested in the thinking
process rather than I can givethem the answer, cause sometimes
I actually don't know theanswer, and sometimes we can
collaborate and find a wayaround it.
So that's the other thing thatyou're implying, tracy, in in in
your advice to us is that weneed to be close to our users
(43:37):
and to their clients.
And the third thing that I'vealways sort of thought works
really well, which I also tookfrom the category is to give
them the space to play in asimulated way and play with it.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
In a safe offline environment.
Safe offline environment.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
In a safe offline environment.
This is why, in every design ofany challenge that I get
involved in, I would like to seea training environment for the
same.
This is how pilots learn.
You know they go to a simulatorand actually most of their
learning is through thesimulator.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
And you don't get to fly the plane until you're
really good at the simulation.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
You cannot do that.
Yes, because the simulation isnot only showing you the system
or showing you your way ofthinking as well around the
system, provided that the systemis designed around, is designed
in a proper way.
I am thoroughly enjoying this.
I would like to get you back atsome stage.
Talk about the coaching, kata,and, by the way, your book
(44:38):
around.
You just mentioned MaggieMaggie's book, Uncertain.
Maggie's recorded a podcastepisode with me and she will be
on my show.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Oh, awesome yeah fantastic Very soon.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
So I'm really fascinated.
I'm always with anything thatis unambiguous, uncertain and,
in your situation, I'mfascinated with the learning
process, the cutaway.
So I am grateful for your time,tracy.
How would people get hold ofyou if they want to connect with
you?
Speaker 1 (45:11):
I'm easy to find on LinkedIn for sure, because there
aren't too many people whosename is spelled the way mine is.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Tracy without an E.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
yes, Tracy without an E Defoe, exactly like Daniel
Defoe D-E-F-O-E.
My consulting company is calledthe Learning Factor, so that's
pretty easy.
Learningfactorcom is me and ofcourse I have two those two
groups that people areinterested in knowing more about
how to joining a community CataSchool, cascadia.
(45:42):
Cascadia is a regional, like ageographic area for the West
Coast of North America, so ourCascadia group started out with
people in British Columbia,canada, all the way through
Washington, oregon andCalifornia in the United States.
We're kind of an earthquakezone and a geographic climate
zone.
And then I have a women's groupcalled Cata Girl Geeks that I'm
(46:03):
co-founder of and any women whoare interested in knowing more
about the Cata might want toconnect with us there.
But through LinkedIn, certainly, or through my website are easy
, easy ways to get in touch withme.
Speaker 2 (46:13):
Fantastic.
We're going to put all theinformation about you, Tracy, in
the podcast.
Thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Pleasure having you in my Inner Game of Change
podcast.
Until next time, stay well andstay safe, thank you.
Thank you, tracy.
Thank you for listening.
If you found this episodevaluable, remember to subscribe
to stay updated on upcomingepisodes.
Your support is trulyappreciated and, by sharing this
(46:42):
podcast with your colleagues,friends and fellow change
practitioners, it can help mereach even more individuals and
professionals who can benefitfrom these discussions.
Remember, and in my opinion,change is an enduring force and
you will only have a measure ofcertainty and control when you
embrace it.
Until next time.
(47:02):
Thank you for being part of theInner Game of Change community.
I am Ali Jammah and this is theInner Game of Change podcast.
Host
Ali Juma
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