S2 E12 - Glenn Wilson - Our Japan Trip
Glenn Wilson, author of "DevSecOps: A leader's guide to producing secure software without compromising flow, feedback, and continuous improvement" discusses our upcoming trip to Japan. We are both becoming huge fans of Katie Anderson (see my last podcast), and we are attending her Japan trip. I asked him why he signed up for the trip. In addition, we discuss Katie's book and how it's a perfect complement to Mike Rother's Toyota Kata and Steven Spear's High Velocity Edge. You might find some bonus material if you're an Umberto Eco fan.
Links:
Glenn Wilson
Glenn's DevSecOps Book
Katie Anderson
Katie's Japan Trip
Resources:
"Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn" by Katie Anderson
"Toyota Kata" by Mike Rother
"The High-Velocity Edge" by Dr. Steven Spear
"In Search of Certainty" by Mark Burgess
"Thinking in Systems" by Donella Meadows
"Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco
Books by Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo (not specifically named)
Books by Masaaki Imai (not specifically named, but likely "Kaizen" or "Gemba Kaizen")
The documentary "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?"
The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project (books mentioned in passing)
Investments Unlimited (a book mentioned by the speakers)
Transcript:
Hey, it's John Willis here again, in profound and I've got a I think this is the first time I've had a second. A repeat guest I got I have to go back and look at him. I think you are the first repeat guests and Glenn was we were just having as we have these great conversations over LinkedIn now used to be Twitter, it's LinkedIn. But we've become pretty, you know, like there's a couple of people I've met in the last few years. So online that just I love corresponding with so we were going to talk about one thing and I figured let's record this a great guy. Just really introduce yourself to everybody. Yeah, thanks, John. I'm honored that I'm the first person to be a pool. Guest This is quite an honor. Yeah. So
I'm Glenn Wilson. I'm a consultant working in the dev SEC ops, spacewalk, DevOps and agile security space, I like to say, and you're just a big fan of anything that's related to security and DevOps. And, as you said, I really enjoyed the conversations we've had over the last few weeks months. And I've learned a lot from yourself. And, and I think it's great to just keep on chatting and talking about all this stuff. And I'm really happy that you've invited me back along today. Ya know, it's great, because we'll we'll talk about what prompted this conversation here. But so when I was in London, I guess a couple of months ago, a month and a half ago, and losing track of time. But the we had met and you had told me about Katie Anderson's book,
learning to lead leading to learn, right. And, and that, you know, again, anybody who's gotten this far into podcasts, we've already seen the last one was with Katie, that was just a gem. And then you'd also told me about a trip that she brings a group of people to, to Japan and sort of experience the story of that book, you know, and Yoshino right the in so I was asking you why, and I'm planning on going. And I was asking you, Alexa, what why were you excited about like, hard work? And, you know, like, what led you to, again, thank you so much for introducing your hearts because it's, it's great, but you were talking about, you know, the sort of we will call them a trilogy now of lean. But yeah, so walk me through, like your excitement about her work, how it piggyback some of the other work that you've? Yes, it is. So I've been a fan of DevOps. And being involved in industry, I knew that you had backgrounds in Lean. And so I wanted to learn a bit about Lean. And I think very much like yourself, John, I, I soon found Mike Rogers, Toyota kata, which explains the culture that the tweeter adopted in a very good way. It also read some of Taiichi Ohno and she goes, you go, and some others. But I think that book really was for a western audience and brought out some of the tea Carter. And then obviously, there's Dr. Steven Spears book. Cover is beyond hivelocity age. And if you take those two books together, and I think you said this before, if you take those two books together, you do generally get an understanding of how that whole principle that Twitter, the Twitter culture, how it works and how it works. Not only a Toyota has what Steve Speer did was he, he showed you how it works in other industries. But one thing, which I felt was missing from both books was a first hand account of the culture actually in that was actually happening. And I came across Katie Anderson's book, leading to learn how to lead and I just thought this is a great book because he tells a story of a guy called is he know, who worked at Toyota for over 40 years, and was instrumental in setting up Toyota Production System in the USA Fremont in NUMMI plant. Yeah. And, and I guess once I read that book, I was I was captivated really about learning more about that. So I joined Katie Edison's accelerator cohort did that for a few weeks, got to meet Mr. Yoshino through the program, which was an amazing experience for myself, I then learned that Katie offers the opportunity to actually go to Japan to meet Mr. Yoshino and also to go in the trip is a study trip. So you get to go to study the Toyota Production System and the culture that the operate there and unless you see it firsthand, so you're not seeing it in a book She's seeing, actually there, you get to see the Kanban boards, you get to see the just in time delivery and all that sort of stuff. And again, because everything that kills now I'm getting chills. Yeah, I want to circle back on that, because I definitely wanna talk about the trip a little more, but I love you, we've been talking, you've been following me, I've been following you. I always felt that there were, you know, I'd say with no disrespect to the large lean community for I guess, people, like me, or, you know, people have coming to this idea when we come into DevOps first, and then realize it all begins with lean back to that mean, but we can hold that off a little bit. And then, so I always felt that, you know, I always feel like I'm the, you know, they're the unicorns in their horses, and I'm a horse, right? And, and I always feel like the majority people out there and more horses. And so I try to explain how I learned things and how, you know, the things that sort of absorb really quick and right, Rob gene had asked me, you know, told me, Hey, you should read this book by this guy, Mike Rother, and I read it. And it was like, you know, for the soul, right, like, Chicken Soup for the Soul or whatever. And then he like, not long after he was starting to study Dr. Spears and said, Ron, the dark spirit. So I would say, and you said this earlier, that, you know, no disrespect to the Lean community. But there are only two books you need to read. You know, they really set the stage for the foundation and in the real world, which Spirit does. And then when you mentioned Katie's book, I think, you know, there really hasn't been any new books on lean, at least from my perspective. And I just thought, Oh, my goodness, I like, you know, not like I said, in my podcasts like, now, I think it's three books in this order. And the thing I wonder, you know, and again, I think it's a great book, and it will stand on its own no matter what, but I wonder if you, if you, I guess the question you could you, you know, like me, and you, we appreciate it so much, because we did this legwork with Toyota kata, because I think that to your point, you'd said earlier, it's like a circle almost, like going back to, you know, the casinos, you know, for decades and, and for different stories. And I just, I wonder like, could you appreciate, you know, would you appreciate it as much as we did? If you didn't read those two books first? I mean, the thing about Yeah, yeah, the thing about reading those two books, of course, is that that becomes that becomes embedded in us. Yeah. And so we had these ideas. And I think reading Katie's book gave me the opportunity then to to experience those books in a different way. Having already read them. It is actually in some respects, it is similar to reading the Phoenix Project, or the unicorn project, because they tell a story. Yeah. And I think that's what's important is that they're these books that tell stories, as opposed to just telling you how it is. They're telling you, you know, from firsthand accounts, okay. To fictional books, no, but this book is no, no, no, I think it's a good point. Yeah, I think I've, you know, I've always told people, you know, if you can read the goal first, then read the finished project. But, you know, a majority of the people read The Venus Project, did not read the goal. Right. And they love the book. So yeah, that's good point. All right. They just, like if you're listening, and you can, if you can take the time, if you haven't read all three books. Definitely suggestion would be do it in that order. But like, certainly a great book. Back to the trip to Japan, I took, it was about three summers ago, I took my family to Japan, I forced him to, you know, oh, God, come on, we're like, we went into the Mazda plant. When we were in here, she and then we went to Toyota City, you know, like, they knew that was coming. I squeezed in the Mazda plant, you know, but they all like, sort of, like, they were screaming an hour and, and then after, it was like that, that was really cool. You know, but, but it was your point. We were talking he was talking about like it is it is really cool. To see, like the can be the you know, like, get the real picture of what a Kanban board really does. Yeah, exactly. You know, rather than just reading about it, yeah. opportunity to experience it to actually see it firsthand and see how people react to it. And, and there's lots of other terms as well, you know, like, just in time delivery and how that works, which is part of the Kanban process. And then you have this idea of Kemba Kaizen gamba, where, you know, people observe what happens. So I'm a big fan of a guy called Jens Rasmussen and he talks about how you need to look at our work in different ways. So you got you've got work, as seen and work as done. Workers describe the work as prescribed and I think what you know, I'm hoping to get to see it go and see workers seen rather than workers described, and I think that's it. That's gonna add a little bit more value to my experience and and how I approached DevOps, I guess, and DevStack ops. As, you know, as I move forward, so good to say, I think is, you know, it's a great opportunity to go and see something which I've, you know, spicy for a long time. And, you know, Katie has been a great opportunity for me to go and do this. So yeah, I'm looking at that. That was the so one port tour guide, right? She was, you know, I was just hammering her, you know, politely but, and she really kept her ground. Right. But she wasn't like, you know, first she had to, you know, she was, you know, native Japanese, but she spoke perfect English. But I was asking all these, you know, like, you could imagine, I'm like, a kid in the candy store, you know, what is that? How come that you know? And she answered about 35 40% of my questions, you know, but I was like, wow, wouldn't it be cool to do this tour? Or you could ask all those questions with somebody who knew the background of you know, I mean, she knew sort of background, but you know, again, I was surprised that she did answer as many questions. So I think that's, you know, I came back and I was like, man, we should you get a group of people and somebody who is, can take you through the tour, like, like, explain everything in the context of what we're exactly. So I think that's why I'm gonna go ahead and sign up probably today. So you'll have a friend, Luis will know two people on the tour. So that's going to be great. Oh, definitely, I'll think the stories as well, they will. be fantastic. So yeah, we'll go ahead and pull the trigger on the contract today. So one of the other things that came up, we were going to talk about, I did a post about the difference between numerated and analytical statistics. And, and so one of the things let me give you my backdrop, you know, sometimes, you know, as you know, writing, you know, you have the sort of like, what you learn, then what you try to explain to yourself in your head, and then there's what you write about, well, then is what you present. And then it's what you write about right. And each one is has a higher degree of difficulty. Right? You know, what I can explain in a presentation, you know, sometimes when I try to write it in, in a blog article, you know, I just wonder, did I just actually get it is difficult. Yeah. And so, um, so one of the things that, you know, the thing about Dr. Deming, is it really is that sort of, you peel the onion, you peel you just constantly, you know, for those who might get this reference, it's like watching The Big Lebowski. Every time I watch it, there's like, oh, wow, I didn't catch that last time. And so I, I know, he's been talking about like, he talked about throughout his whole career, this this idea about, you know, the difference between enumerated and analytical analytical statistics. And he actually made that definition. And then there's a Ron Moen, who talked about the first time he saw Deming lecture, it was with a bunch of academic statisticians, and he pissed them all off. And he said, because he was trying to describe something called analytical statistics, and not enumerated and, and so I know, like I saw it was on this search. You know, with Deming, there's these, like, you have these like, thumbnails of like, okay, I want to learn more about that, I want to learn more about that, you know, and as you find time, you know, like management by means or you know, that, that, that subject or just a list of things. So, the difference between enumerated and analytical has always intrigued me. And, and, and I thought I had a pretty good grasp on explaining it. In fact, I had to go back and change the fourth draft book, after I had this, like, other layer of understanding, and it was Jay Blum, who was we were at a customer site and, and he had in Chavis just a brilliant young, really not young, but he's younger than me. And he basically started showing me how to transpose statistical process control charts with distribution charts. And all of a sudden, the light bulb went off, you know, showing like, what is this? And then he didn't go into deep into the enumerator versus analytical, but just being able to see in a transpose distribution chart over target like, Oh, my God, now I net now I get it. I get that the, you know, the one last thing I'll say is, so when I tried to explain it, I remember this quote that Deming had said something and I'm mangling the quote, but he said, It's not the statisticians job. To answer the it's find the problem. It's the citizens job to create the sort of data so the subject matter experts I could then go find the problem. So even the subject matter expert, it doesn't answer the question. So the ground expert, and I started playing around with just some regular originally, like, I brought up our and I installed an SPC package, and it had like piston rings and tolerance levels. And I started doing distribution charts and SPC charts. And I'm like, Oh, my goodness, like, you can see the difference. Being enumerator is the how many, you know, that sort of how many and the the analytical, you know, statistics like, like control chart shows, like the why, like a trend or a pattern. And so I posted that article, and I took some data from test driven development and container scans. And I, you know, I had to munge the data a little bit to be, you know, to create the sort of the, the narrative a little better, but, but I was able to show like, like, for example, a trending increase of container scan failures in a distribution chart really didn't tell me that, whereas I could see the pattern of increasing in a control chart. And so your question of like, so what was your question about that? If you don't mind me? Oh, my word. It put me on the spot there. What was my question? Go ahead. Oh, yeah, I will remember, when I read that article, I remember thinking, you know, how, how important it is to actually understand what data you have in front of you. That was the thing that really bothered me. And I think security is is a real, is an industry that really doesn't understand statistics that much, I think, I mean, how many times have we been faced with a situation where we were just presented so many 1000 vulnerabilities and go fix them at a point in time, a moment in time analysis, or numeration, of what data we have there. But if he was to record this over a period of time and understand the trends, and understand the statistical control charts that you have, you can create through the trend data, then you can actually identify problems quicker. So if you start seeing an increase in vulnerabilities over a period of time, then that tells you something, if you find that your variation of not finding new vulnerabilities is within statistical control, then that's part of your system. That's that's that is something you have to accept. What we tend to do though, as an industry is as soon as we see the slightest increase, jump on it. And I think Deming refers to those as common cause variation. And then when it drops down, we celebrate we're here we've we've done really well. But actually, we're not doing well. And we're not there because all we're doing there is we're we're working within the statistical statistical control. But then you might get the special case, or special cause scenarios where you perhaps do see more vulnerabilities. And then then you should, or you might start seeing a trend that's going the wrong way. And you can start picking that up very quickly and start to understand why that might be, as you say, it's not statisticians job to do that. The statistician is there to present the data is down to the people working on those tools and the products and doing the development actually work out why that happened, and start to think about how that might, you know, how it might might how that came about and try to resolve the problem. So that was my thinking, as I was reading through and what I didn't understand. I thought I knew you well enough that you surprised to think like, Oh, does he think this wouldn't work? But I think your point, if I'm summarizing it, right, which was there's gonna be hard, John, there's gonna be a memory muscle. That yeah, and I get that, you know, yeah, that you just talked about what I said. Yeah, I said, I said it will be is this is very difficult to do. Because yeah, I had this history problem. Historical data, but you know, and particularly security to, right, it's even hard, like, let's face it, you know, I think, you know, if we look even at like, sort of observability and I mean, it gives give observability a little bit of a checkbox. But, but, but in general, the way we do monitoring, right is very enumerated, right, it doesn't like this idea that's been around for 100 years, you know, and, you know, interestingly enough, like I say, in my presentation, like, from, you know, toasters to car manufacturing, to nuclear power plants, it works. And, you know, and then there are the patterns, you know, it's like, you know, I think that, like, I've watched some really, really smart people, you know, try to explain Deming and just say, Well, you know, it's either anomalies or whatnot. It's normal. Like really the data say that, you know, because the truth is the anomalies which Deming would call special cause, like, these are things that are statistically normal, three standard deviations above the mean, in general. There are different ways to do this, of course, but But um, Um, you know, like, those are actually less interesting is the stuff that happens within, you know, in the upper and lower control limits were like, eight different parallel, depending on the school of thought, but eight different patterns, you know, and the easiest ones to one is the one inside of a blog article like increasing or decreasing. You know, like, like, for example, like the, why, you know, the example that came up with it, which is the increased in security container scans. And, you know, doing some analysis, like the subject matter expert, allowed to go find out that could be was they increased, a new development team came on board, they didn't know, they were supposed to use the proper container registries, they were pulling from, you know, and all of a sudden, they were getting a lot more, you know, sort of unscanned images increase, like, oh, wait a minute, did you guys know that we have, you know, we only use Artifactory or, you know, like, or, you know, are registered with us. But that that can even appear within statistical controller as well, they can actually be within the boundaries of limits, you know, because you bring in new teams, it may not be that special calls, it may be, you may increase the variation slight to a higher degree, but doesn't actually cross the line. In general, you want to catch it before, like, you want to catch it before? Absolutely. But then there's the next one start going down, then there's no need to jump on it straight away. But if it carries on going up, then you've got a problem. And you probably want to start sorting it sooner rather than later. You also mentioned mean, as well. Mean is another horrible. Yeah. I had, I had a conversation with Lakshmi recovery, certainly rock fan. Oh, he's awesome. He's amazing. On LinkedIn the other day, and, you know, as I said, you know, there was a there's a story I heard about how the, the Royal in the US Air Force had built these cockpits based on the average size of of a pilot. Unfortunately, no pilot was the average size. The pilot, the pilot is just Squeezy. And yeah, that is why SPC works. And there are other there are different variants of how you can get credibly more complicated. In fact, I'm at a place now where I'm thinking I have to go back to school and in take effect. I was on a side story, I got to hang out with Mark Burgess, Oslo. And so I was he was he was talking about that blog article. And he basically very much like Deming, which is interesting, like he's a physicist, and he's like, ya know, statisticians? You know, I guess, although stat classes I didn't even understand until I actually got my PhD in physics. And then I realized, oh, that's what statistics really. And he was trying to explain me. So I'm like, Mark, should I go back and take some statistics? He's like, No, he says that, you know, that they're going to teach you all the wrong stuff. But the thing that I, you know, that floor of averages, right, that's the sort of mean is that is the, I think that is why like standard deviation becomes more interesting. And why, in general, statistical process control charts. So mean, maybe a dirty word. But when you're doing it in something like, you know, the way you're sort of saying is the data is, well, there's at least two major points, which are analytical statistics. Point, the the example of some price controls, or one is it really isn't based on the average, it's based on the deviation, the standard deviation. And then, and then to you made this point is, this was the hardest thing for me to get, you know, these these things that you just peel the onion, which was to really understand the difference between like, how variant variation works, how it works in a control chart, and why randomness over the mean, is the you know, we might probably lose everybody right now. But, but randomness over the mean, like one below, like one below, one above, another above, one below, one above the mean, is actually normal, it is in his Common Cause we're in process. So because, you know, you know, physics demands that there is variation in all processes, no exact measurements. And so normal process is basically some randomness that's within the upper and lower control limits. Exactly, yeah. So the ones where they you start seeing patterns, whereas non randomness, and then obviously, the one pattern is above or below the control line. Deming was also very keen to point out that if you did start to adjust your processes based on you know, the slightest variation, you're doing something called tempering, which actually makes it worse. You know, so So it's best not to do that. Time bring and and work with, you know, accept the fact that you're going to have this variation. But understand what their variation means and the changes to the, as you say, the patterns, the patterns and the variation and see and see what happens over time and, and responding that way. By, as I said, to shutting up this conversation started on LinkedIn was that I just find it's a hard sell within an organization. I've, I've just find it really difficult to go into an organization and say, This is what you should do. Well, I mean, he was an impossible sell in America. Yeah. Back in America, because he went over to Japan. And like, you know, what it take it took his whole career. till he's 80. Yeah. And it was, it was sort of an accidental, you know, like, all this is in my book, by the way, but, but yeah, I mean, it's that documentary, you know, Japan can, why can't we that Americans like, well, how can you know, they realize this guy who has been preaching this for 50 years in America was just ignored, you know, so yeah, I mean, you know, like, he couldn't do it, even though he proved it, you know, during World War Two. But the other thing I think, you know, I guess the reason, you know, I'm so in the echo chamber, or, you know, sort of, you know, like, it's hard for me to realize, you know, like, Am I just so enthralled into Deming that, like, I have no, no checkpoints of reality. But I think the thing the other thing I learned recently, and I think I was gonna do this in a part two, which was, like, you talked about, like, that randomness and tampering, but the thing that like, in a system, profound knowledge, right, I decided that you really need to explain the system provide knowledge in an order, and I don't think anybody else does it, I think you have to start with a theory of knowledge, which is epistemology, then you do a variation. Because if you think about it, the example the next example, I was gonna do on my part two, which was like, what if the, it's TDD right? So what if, like, were like 60% test coverage, in average, you know, which is 30. But let's just say, in general, to some set of teams or some service delivery. And it's normal, because then we would talk about this, like, you know, what, if normal is just not good enough, right? Let's say that we look at it over time. And, and we're averaging, you know, this variance. So it's like, it is random, so which is what we want, but it's hovering around 60%, test coverage, right? And we think, Okay, well, like we want to make that better. Right. But then this is where the epistemology comes in, or the theory of knowledge is where you do the Plan, Do Check Act, or study acts, right. And, and so what we say is, like, I, I'm gonna predict that if I do this, like, for example, what I use in this part two that I have written yet is, like, we use a new form of TDD training. So a new vendor came in said, oh, you know, if I can die, I can improve your test coverage without new training. And so, so you basically for two weeks, you do two, you know, two weeks sprint of training. So it's an improvement, right? And then you watch, does it actually increase and then over, like, another 15 weeks, it actually now averages about 70% or 75%. Right. But you've you've done it, you've, you've combined, you know, the theory of knowledge with theory of variation. And then, you know, just since we're on the subject of system prior knowledge, then, you know, way, one of the examples is, you've got to get one of the teams that that created the original training, theory, psychology, right, which is, it sort of changed their motivation to accept this new training when they you know, exactly, read it. So like, I think that is an is the system's thinking which we're just we don't stop, we just continually, you know, approve as a circle, sort of a cybernetic feedback loop, really, but the buzzword bingo here, but anyway, again, I think that's the like, the why I'm so fascinated about system analogies, the more I learned about it, the more like, you could take the variation, and you could see the effect of like this theory of knowledge and watch that and then you could walk through scenarios of theory, psychology. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I'm doing a master's at the moment on systems thinking and, and all, all four of those elements seem to be there, you know, in understanding the system, or appreciation of the system. Obviously, that's a major part of systems thinking to have a systemic approach to what you're doing as opposed to a systematic approach to what you're doing. But then you've got the idea that you're going through a learning process. So that's where the epistemology comes in, you're constantly learning about the situations that you're encountering, or you're in or situated and, and you have to, you have to continuously learn about that particular place. Because nothing is static, it's constantly dynamic is constantly changing, and you need to keep on learning what you're doing. And of course, then you've got variation that comes along, which, which I guess applies to that knowledge, you know, so understanding the system and understanding that you can have variation within the system is also very important. And then psychology for me, is all about understanding the different worldviews the different personas, the different types of people that we have in the systems and actually understanding what motivates people what drives them in and Deming was very hot on on psychology, you know, he, he, he, he always felt that, you know, you can't give extrinsic motivators, you can't give rewards and punishment, it's, you've got to be got to find the intrinsic motivators that make people want to do well, when, rather than just dangling a carrot or hitting them with a stick. It's there are other motivators. And psychology plays an important part in that to actually understand people's motivators. And so yeah, I totally get the system of phonology. And it totally syncs with what I'm trying to do at home and in my own life, you know, Dennis masters and trying to understand systems to try and understand, you know, why is it cybersecurity doesn't seem to be working? Yeah, no, I love I love. You know, we still now to podcasts, and we haven't, you know, I think we have to just sit down, right? When we go to Japan, you know, really try to dissect some of these, you know, because in a podcast, like, this is fun, and I think people enjoy listening to us, but, but like, the, like, you almost need a whiteboard, you know? And, yeah, I think you're right there. We talked about this in the last podcast is like just so many opportunities and security in everything in it, but certainly insecurity to, to really flesh out these because these concepts are like they're there. They're fundamental, like, in my book, I try to, I try to explain that, like, there's just this this meta concept of profound knowledge. And Deming just sort of grabbed pieces of it in his career, and was able to formulate it is nice book, you know, it wasn't like, you know, it's like anything in this world. We don't like really invent anything, we sort of learned things, right. And so there's, like, I, I wanted to be clear, in a book like this, this notion of this profound knowledge. And Deming just absorb these pieces, and codified it. And, and I think, you know, like, I was just thinking, you know, I was talking about I just hung out with Mark Burgess, who just, you know, when you were just talking, I'm thinking I probably should go back and read his in such a certainty book. Because it has, like, so many those things about he doesn't call it variation, but the physics principles of scale. Yeah. Right. Which, you know, did you ever read in such a certainty? I have read it Yeah, of course. Yeah, definitely read the bits of it at least it's a hard read. Yeah, it's a hard read but but yeah, they you know, if you think about Rother is you know, the gray zone. No more all over the place now but what the hell is anybody else understands or listened to? But in Rother is the gray zone? Yeah, you know, that it's the same. They're the same principles. Like there's no sort of deterministic exactness. Like, in Ross's world is like checklists are useless. Because, I mean, theoretically after to get past the first one, everything's changed. But certainly after the second Gatsby get to third or fourth, right. Yeah. He talks about improvement, kata, you know, and then and then. And then Mark Mark talks, Mark Burgess talks about scale, you know, and then, you know, and then did you read an hour? Meadows? The systems? Yes. I've got it over there. So yeah, I think any systems? Yeah, I think that's a metal book to all this stuff. Like, you know, like, again, I think, like, searching for so one taxonomy. Like, I think it's already done it systems are found knowledge. And I just, I don't know that there's a better way to describe all these things. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I was gonna say something we're gonna go about. It was gonna say something about does it say one of the criticisms of Deming was that he never prescribed to you how to solve the problems. Yeah. And I think that's absolutely right. Because there is no prescription for an answer. You have to work it out for yourself. And what the system of profound knowledge does, it gives you the tools to try and work it out for yourself. You know, don't can't go into it. Through organization and say, This is how you do it, because he doesn't have the knowledge of the organization. He realized he'd be a fraud, I do the same thing. You know, when I go in, you know, it's actually a selling technique, you know, but But you know, it's true, too, is I've seen so many young kids come in and try to talk to people who have been working, you know, help build, you know, multi multi billion dollar businesses in the young kids come in and say, You're doing it wrong, you know? And like, like, I realized, like, I'm never going to do that one, because I'm going to do too, right. But, but but, like, I come in, and I say, you know, like, I've been here, like, two hours. You guys have been here 30 years, you know, up your staff, your people been here 30 years, like, less than one of us tell you like, why I think you're doing it this way or that way. Right. Like, and I think that was another sort of strong trait of Deming is like, it would be sort of foolish for him to walk into a site and say, Okay, you need to do this, you do that. And then the other thing, too, is, you know, for that whole argument that he didn't prescribe? Well, you know, all right, you know, there's no such thing as a shameless plug. It's a plug, but investments Unlimited is has, you know, a very similar, you know, Jonah, Alex, Bill, Eric, you know, we've got our, our sort of our team of, you know, the, whereas that's exactly what those guys do. They like, Socrates, you know, they give, you know, the original Jonah, and Alex, you know, like, Jonah never tells Alex how to solve the problem. Exactly, and how to search for Eric never tells bill how to solve the problem in the Phoenix Project. And now I'm blanking on our guy, but Bill and Jason Jason Cole, they're, you know, this the same thing, we tried to do the same thing, you know, so that's, that's what I didn't realize. Do you say that? That's a very damning approach? Yeah, definitely. I think you cannot prescribe how to do something, you can only give the framework or the is it? Yeah, I guess it's a framework of ideas that you can work with, and perhaps some of the tools that you need to do to, you know, apply to the system. And, well, yeah, and that's why epistemology is that it has to be the starting point, you know, like, I always have to be, like, to me, like, like, it has to be in order, I almost wanted to call appreciation systems, the fourth discipline, you know, like, because it is a loop, right, like, you know, like, you have to start off with this sort of pistol. Knology, you have to then and it's a circle, really, that's what it was intended to be used is, yeah, cycle. Yeah. It's about creating a learning opportunity, hence, you go back to the PDSA, I mean, that's the tool that he liked to use, you know, the PDSA is a tool of that helps you create that learning through through applying the PDSA, you, you come up with your theories, you then from your theories, you you get, you get solutions, you get answers, they may not be the answers you were looking for, but you get answers. And you can apply your learning from those answers to the next cycle. And so it's a continuous process of of learning and adapting, which is, you know, so important in these complex systems that we're now running it eventually, organizations are so complex, the software we're building is so complex that you, you there is no solution. It's just a case of understanding, learning and adapting as you go through it and trying to make things better, right, try to improve things rather than actually solve problems. And even to eight hours a day, I'm guessing, we'll find out in May, but I'm guessing they still have 100,000 Suggestions every year. Because they're always looking to improve. So it's not a case that they made all the improvements 30 years ago. There reminds me Yeah, so you know, I don't know if you had a chance. But the mascio nomoto. Yes, yeah. read his book. And it's just incredible. Yeah, like, and one of the biggest parts of his books is a big part of it is making sure you set up the whole cycle of suggestions, not just have a suggestion box, like the suggestions are heard by the people that there, it's just like, he goes into, you know, again, every lots of companies have just suggestion boxes, right? In his, you know, his book, he has a whole, like, sort of almost, I think, at least a chapter but a whole deep section about the cycle of suggestions. You know, it's like, it's like when we talk about retrospectives, right. Like, you know, and it's a weird context switch, but like, you know, it's one thing to just do incident. It's, I think the full lifecycle remediation. Well, same thing with suggestions. It's like a lifecycle suggestion is, is far more effective than just a suggestion box. But yeah, and yeah, exactly. And I think Western Western companies actually have a suggestion Vox, I think the only suggestion you get out of it is that you probably need to trash can for chewing gum. Or people just like I think the his point is, if they, you know, I've done this when I go in and do any sort of qualitative analysis and interview, like lots of people in organization, there's this fear that they're wasting their time because because, you know, okay, you know, you're the 30th person I've told this to, you know, makes me think that you're going to actually get through the leadership, right? And, and I always go back to the leadership, when I'm done is like, even if you want to throw my report, I always joke, like, you're gonna pay me the way. Like, even if you throw my report in the trash, can, you still owe me the money. But the, but just please, even if you want to throw this thing in the trash, which doesn't happen, but do one thing out of it, just to show these people that there is hope, because you just ignore everything. I just, you just paid for me to spend a month with your company, I interviewed 300 people, and they took their time, and I've earned their trust. So like, even if you disagree with everything I'm about to tell you take one of the things that you think is harmless, at least show them that it wasn't a waste of time. Right. And, and that's the problem is, I think people just face it. These are people that do this work are really smart people isn't Deming understood? Yeah, these people have incredible value. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, not to make it simplistic, but a terroristic view of their work is what drove me nuts. Right? It's like, why don't we just assume that these people are talented and smart? And could if we give them the right conditions? And if even if we try to give the right conditions, and we have this sort of notional suggestion box in like, you like, you know, somebody pours their heart and soul into describing an improvement. And they know that it least deserved the debate. Yeah. I would even go one step further and say, take one and suggestions and experiment. Yeah, well, there you go. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Because when you say, you know, like, you know, the leadership team disagree with it. How are they justifying? It? Yeah, no, you're right. Like, it's Yeah, Mr. Me, Mr. Demming. Like, how did I miss that one? No, you're exactly right. That's the whole point is that the dubbing was very critical. The leadership teams of the companies he spoke out, he mocks them. Yeah, go back and read the new motto if he's, if he if he adds that layer into it very comprehensive. I think I wrote something about it. I don't know if I I think I wrote. I tried to do a sort of quick book review because I was so excited. Not to, not to forget it. You know what I mean? I was like, this was the reason I got the book, which was and I mentioned this, Katie in her book, Yoshino says, and I'm gonna mangle this quote, too, but he says that mascio Animoto is as important or even more important than to chono. Yeah, that's right. That's all oh, here's a guy I never even heard of. That I like I better go figure out who he is. And I saw he had a book and I'm like, Alright, I'm gonna go out and get this book. It's funny cuz Katie Issa got a bookcase behind me. Katie actually spotted it on my shelf. Oh, really? Oh, that's awesome. You got the book? Yes. Yeah, I can't really see I'm sure you have pretty good catalog. They're like no, I wouldn't say that book. I love whenever I go into somebody's office. You see, if I go into like somebody's office in their workplace, I immediately look at their bookshelf. Whenever I go into somebody's office, yep. Like, the first thing I look at is their bookshelf. It tells me so much about them. Based on what's in the bookshelf, you know, again, they may not keep all their books at work, but, but like, I can tell, like, you know, like, there's just so much about like a person by just looking at the books and saying, Oh, yep, like, he's got that book or she's got that book. Yeah, there's the Umberto Eco, too. Like, they asked the Berto eco I'd like this is saying library, right. And somebody asks, Have you read all those books? He goes, No, but I can. Yes, yeah. Yeah, I've got I've got an Umberto Eco book out there somewhere. I love him very well. I've got the Italian version of Foucault's Pendulum. Oh, no, we you you can read Italian. Yeah, I read it when I was living in Italy back about 30 years ago. It's one of my all time favorite books. I've only read it can read. It's probably amazing in Italian because I I've heard the Translate. He was apparently upset about the translation or something. Yes, that's what I'd heard and I think that's why I bought in Italian. Try to read. I do speak Italian. I studied, it's that easy to go to university. That's one of my favorite. I mean, I love that book. You know? Yeah, just since we'll wrap up here, assume that I was reading the Davinci Code and a really good friend of mine. In fact, one of the guys who was instrumental in the first review of my damning book, and a good friend of mine, unbelievable. He's like, I always say like, he's the only guy who knows, right. pyncheons gravity's rainbow and Ulysses to the end. So, when I was telling about the Vinci Code, he's like, Dude, you gotta read the grown up version. Yeah. What do you mean? He's like a burger that goes. Pendulum like, okay. Oh, my God. grownup version. Yeah, he's very clever. Harry whines the stories together through history. Oh, he's incredible. He's incredible. And as good stuff. All right, well, um, I'll hopefully I don't get I know those. Katie said that. I only had a limited amount of time to pull the trigger. But hopefully I'll get that done this morning. And we'll be hanging out and yeah, be great. I can't wait to go out there and just I think it's gonna be an awesome trip to be honest. All around. So Well, glad we had to catch up. And I hope you have a great holiday. My friend. You too. And let's let's swing back sometime next year. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We'll definitely have to catch up and compare some other books. Yeah, no, I think that there's probably a great we should probably start just sharing books with each other at this point. So but, but ya know that you know, that like, I know we wrap up here, but I asked Katie, I'm sure you heard in the podcast. I can't imagine how many is your Yoshino stories. There are other people who have these fascinating stories work in a toilet? Yeah, he's kind of um, they're all in Japanese, though. Yeah. Yeah, he was. You said there's been lots of books published in Japanese. To American like, Yeah, but that's probably a wealth of like, no, it's so yeah. It's cool. All right, my friend. Yeah. Okay. It's been a great thank you Joe next time of year.
