Engaging the Frontline in Improvement with Aaron Davidson | 048

Engaging the Frontline in Improvement with Aaron Davidson | 048

Welcome to Lean Leadership for Ops Managers, the podcast for leaders in Ops Management who want to spark improvement, foster engagement, and boost problem solving – AND still get their day job done. Here’s your host, Leadership Trainer, Lean Enthusiast, and Spy Thriller Junkie, Jamie V. Parker.
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Hey, Ops Leaders!
Welcome to a discussion on engaging the frontline in improvement. Now, before we jump in to the episode, if you are enjoying the podcast, please head over to your favorite podcast platform and give us a rating or maybe even drop a few words in a review. Ratings and reviews help the algorithms show the podcast when other leaders like you go searching for the topics we talk about.
In today’s episode, we’re joined by Aaron Davidson, corporate director of employee and guest experience at Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment. Aaron talks about lean as a benefit in a volatile industry and shares how he engages the frontline, including overcoming fear and resistance. You’ll also hear about his current focus, transitioning from a vet based lean to an improvement culture.

All right, let’s go. Aaron, welcome to the show today.

Aaron Davidson: [00:01:33] Thanks, Jamie. It’s so great to be here and have a discussion with you.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:01:38] I really enjoyed a couple of conversations we’ve had leading up to this. So as we get started, before we jump into all the goodness, tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself.

Aaron Davidson: [00:01:50] I work in the hospitality and gaming industry, and I started my lean journey seven years ago now, eight years ago. And I think for some reason I ended up, you know, lucking into this. And I really enjoy the work that I do. And I’m sort of passionate about it. And I think, you know, one of the few people in hospitality doing this work sort of day in and day out.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:02:17] Yeah, I feel like a lot of us probably feel like we lucked into this. And now I can’t imagine work without it. Right. Probably life without it for sure. So let’s talk about the hospitality industry, hospitality and gaming. First of all, how much fun, but also probably a pretty volatile industry, right? I mean, that’s even just thinking over the last year how much impact that’s had. But even without that, I would suspect that this is a pretty volatile industry with ups and downs.
So tell us a little bit about that and how you think lean plays into that type of thing.

Aaron Davidson: [00:02:54] Yeah, I mean, super volatile industry in the last year with the coronavirus and COVID. But if you think back even over the last two decades within hospitality, it’s been very volatile where things were going great. We have 9/11 as a big impact to the industry. I wasn’t working in the industry then but laying off half of workforces, 80% of workforces. Huge places shutting down for long periods of time. And then sort of a ramp up, build back up.
Then you have SARS, you have swine flu, avian flu affecting the industry internationally, and then you have the housing market collapse, which had a big impact on gaming.
And then we had this big run again. And, you know, things are going well. Then it’s another downturn where in some regions, some markets, you know, 80 percent, 90 percent of the workforce was laid off. It’s still one of the industries with the highest unemployment rates right now. Thankfully, I’m fortunate to be working, and working on these tools.

When you think about lean and hospitality, I think our approach is one that I was fortunate to be a part of. It was testing this and deploying this when we, as a company, as an organization, were doing well.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:04:12] You know, it’s probably something where in some cases it kind of turned to maybe an act of desperation. And so that’s an interesting take. There is like, hey, things are going really well. Man, we’ve really got to double down on this improvement thing.

Aaron Davidson: [00:04:32] Yeah, right. So I think, you know, the stories I hear, the anecdotes. I hear a lot of times folks are brought in or someone has this idea, hey, we have to start implementing lean. We have to start implementing Six Sigma because the business is failing. We’re not getting the demand or these quotas.
But if you can step back and when your business is doing well, that’s really the opportunity to look at everything you’re doing and start to create efficiencies.
And from a hospitality side, it’s you know, you can create these efficiencies. But at the end of the day, you’re still serving people that come to your hotels or resorts, your restaurants, your casinos, your entertainment. So you still have to serve the guests. So it’s not pumping out widgets faster.
It’s still about serving the guests.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:05:15] Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s talk about that. And so keeping in mind, I think in your organization, you’ve got multiple locations, right? Maybe not just domestically, but even internationally. So you’re in a role where you’re trying to help drive improvement and it can go across multiple locations, which probably even adds to the complexity.
But, to your point, it comes down to serving. How do we create value for our customers? How do we serve them better?
And the frontline is really who makes that happen, right? So here’s what I want to talk about is tell me about how you engage the frontline in improvement.

Aaron Davidson: [00:06:02] I think it really starts with relationship building. I’ll share a story, but for me, it started, you know, building those relationships, getting out there and interacting with the frontline and spending a day with them. So in one case spending a day with our EVS team and they’re our janitorial staff that keep our properties looking clean and sanitary. And so spending a day with them, scrubbing toilets, cleaning carpets, cleaning bathrooms with them so that they understood that later on when I’m interacting with them, I’m not some guy sitting in an office telling someone or telling them they need to do something better or do something different.
I’ve been out there with them and asking a lot of questions I think is super important, because by asking those questions, you understand where their pain points are and oftentimes their pain points are at the very heart of what you may want to fix.
But you don’t know that yet. You may have a complaint about something and someone says, go fix that. And they have a great idea. But without talking to that frontline person, you have no real idea what the problem is.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:07:07] Ok, so relationships, relationships are key.
Definitely. Everyone, write that down.

You know, I say that all the time: Business is personal. Leadership is a relationship.
Aaron’s saying it, too. Write it down: relationships.

So relationships are key. What else about engaging the frontline?

Aaron Davidson: [00:07:24] I’m getting out there working with them and showing them some of the tools. So often times we’re running kaizen events. Instead of getting a group of managers or supervisors sitting around theoretically thinking of solutions, it’s about engaging the team. So having those frontline in this case, again, using the attendance of people that are out that are out there doing the work, having them come up with the solution. So even though I may know where we need to get to at the end of the day or the end of the week, helping guide them to that point and getting them engaged.
Because if they’re engaged in the process, they understand why we’re making changes or why we’re asking for change. They’re going to be the person out there selling the change to all of their coworkers where they can say, no, no, no, it works. I did it. Here’s a better way to do it. And at the end of the day, I feel better with the work. I go home, I feel more energetic. I feel like the day was easier as opposed to, you know, a difficult job.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:08:25] I imagine, though, that not everyone is jumping for joy at the possibility of participating in this. And there are probably some people who maybe seem like, you know, resisters. And I always teach. We don’t label people. But, you know, our initial impression is, that’s the curmudgeonly guy, right? That’s the woman who’s never going to be on board. That’s the resistor. So what role do they play when you’re engaging people in trying to get improvement?

Aaron Davidson: [00:08:58] I think I like to see my teams with one of them. So you have these sort of unofficial leaders that people interact with. Maybe there’s a secret Facebook group that folks in a department are all in and management’s not in. And there’s that one person who always complains. And oftentimes it’s I don’t want to say that they’re jaded or that curmudgeon, but they propose some ideas. Maybe years ago and it was shot down. Maybe it wasn’t the right time.
But if you can get them involved and you can convert them during the week and understand if I can fix this little thing for you. All right. Everything sort of falls into place for them and they’re out there saying, oh, look at this thing. You know, they fixed something for me and now it could be something as simple as, you know, again, using the same example, switching how you clean, you know, again, in casinos, how you clean slot machines.
So watching them and saying, you know, I’m always bending down. It’s a pain in the butt to swipe the bases of the slot machines. They’re metal, they’re shiny, they’re chrome, but giving them a new tool so that they can stand up and do it. It costs the organization basically nothing to purchase that because you’re already purchasing so much stuff. It’s just a simple switch. But if they can stand up and do that work and it’s easier and that’s all it took for them, they’re so much more engaged and they’re already down that, you know, along that path to accepting change in other areas.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:10:26] Yeah. You know, it reminds me there’s this quote that’s attributed to Shigeo Shingo where he says:

“There are four purposes of improvement: easier, better, faster, cheaper. These four appear in the order of priority.”

So the key being in the West so often we go for cheaper, cheaper, faster, faster, cheaper, faster. Right. And if we can reframe that with our teams and say: OK, how do we make work easier and better for you and how do we make it easier and better for our customers to do business, to come in and get value.
And when we reframe it that way it just seems so magical.

Aaron Davidson: [00:11:05] Yeah, I would agree. And I think, you know, hospitality versus other industries, if you focus everything around the guest. And taking care of that guest, everything else falls into line. So if you’re serving the guests and they’re having these experiences that they may not be able to get at your competitors, if they see things differently when they visit you, they’re more loyal to you. They spend more money with you. They tell their friends and family to come visit you in the background.
You want to do that as efficiently as possible, but not at the point or risk of cutting costs for the guest or the employee, because everyone it all sort of falls in place.
There’s another model called the service profit chain, and it’s a super complicated model, all these steps in it. But it boils down to if you treat the employees who work for you, well, if you show them the respect, give them the proper tools, compensation and stuff. If you do the right thing for them, they’re more likely to do the right thing for your customers or your guests. And if you’re doing the right thing for the guest, the guest is more loyal to you and they’re going to spend more money with you. There’s more money. It’s a cycle that now can invest more money into your people.
And when you’re investing money into the people that work for you, they’re more apt to then invest into the guest and then the guest is more willing to invest in you.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:12:27] Yeah, absolutely. We were talking about, you know, this what “feels like” — sometimes it feels like team members who maybe aren’t going to be on board or they’re the complainers. One of the things you said that really struck me is that sometimes that’s coming from their experience.

And sometimes what’s happened is they’ve made suggestions, they’ve made recommendations. They’ve brought up problems and raised problems.
They’ve done all these things we say we want them to do. They’ve done that in the past and it didn’t go anywhere.

If we’re going to come in and say we want to do things differently, we have to prove it.
Just saying it isn’t enough. We really have to demonstrate that and show through our actions that we’re listening and that we’re taking action, because for a lot of people, they’ve had that experience, right?

Aaron Davidson: [00:13:21] Yeah. I was talking to some folks and at the end of my time with them, day one of the guys stood up and said, you know, for all these years we’ve been saying we’re going to do this because they told us we couldn’t we can’t do this other thing because someone said . . . a regulator said we couldn’t do it.

He goes: I realized that it was us telling ourselves we couldn’t do it when we started looking into these things.
These are sort of the tribal knowledge that’s been passed down generation to generation at work or year to year where someone said we couldn’t do it. And everyone now believes that to be the case. Someone believes that a regulator or the CEO of the company says that’s something we can’t do.

But you go and ask that person, you go to the source. And the source says, “I don’t remember that conversation that was years ago, that there’s no reason now why we can’t do that. And if someone had asked me, I would have said it’s fine years ago.”

Jamie V. Parker: [00:14:16] Absolutely. So the last thing is, I just want to get your take on lean culture, because I know that your organization really started with events, right? You started with an event based approach, which makes a lot of sense for a lot of organizations to start that way. And now you’re really focused on, OK, so how do we create the culture? So what’s your take on lean culture?

Aaron Davidson: [00:14:41] It’s hard to get there. It’s easy to say we’re a culture that’s based around continuous improvement, but it’s not always the case. Right? It’s easy to say ok, we’re just going to make everything one percent better or boost revenue by one percent, cut expenses by one percent. But that’s not really, you know, a lean culture or continuous improvement culture.
But again, I think it’s both a top down approach and a bottom up approach by engaging the frontlines, providing them with the tools, with training, with examples and getting them involved in the process. But then at the same time, having those senior leaders discussing it on a regular basis, saying this is something that’s important for us, we want your ideas and then merging the two.
So when you have those frontline team members that maybe have never interacted with the executives, making sure that the executive team isn’t shutting them down immediately and saying, well, we can’t do that because of this, telling them to shut up. Not “shut up”, but just be quiet until the end.
Acknowledge that folks are coming forward because, you know, that idea may be impossible, but it may spark a conversation that we can now take one small idea from that and implement that. And it doesn’t cost us any money. And it could be a groundbreaking change for us or spark innovation or a conversation.
So, you know, you have to start at the bottom interacting with people on that one to one basis, providing them with the tools, with the techniques and making sure that their voice is heard and showing them how to use it. You made the suggestion, it was implemented and then reminding them about it, because sometimes it’s well, what have you done for me lately? And if you’re not saying, well, we did this and now what? What else do you need? Sometimes people forget about it, but making sure it’s always part of the communication, too, I think is a big part of that culture.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:16:28] Yeah, great. So I just want to check in and see if there are any key points that you wanted to share that we didn’t touch on today in this conversation.

Aaron Davidson: [00:16:39] So I’ll share a story. So, again, we’re talking about events. So running a kaizen event in the gaming space. And to this day, I don’t know who did it. I laugh about it. Someone who is not involved in the work that we were doing thought we were trying to replace their department with robots. They wrote up a fake news article about how media and management folks were working hard to replace them with robots.
I still laugh hard about it to this day, but obviously there’s some sort of fear there. But at the end of the article, they reassured their coworkers that we had jobs in mind for them. So instead of the work that they were doing, we were going to now have them fix the robots going forward. So everyone’s jobs were still safe. I mean, I laugh about it. It’s funny, just an article written about, you know, a fake news article that’s posted at work areas.

But at the same time, if you think about it, there must be some level of fear that someone has.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:17:44] Yes. I mean, somebody took the time to do that. And so it is like this fun thing. And then at the same time, we’re like, OK, that fear is very real.
And I know I remember early in my implementation process where, you know, I was out at a site, I think it was in Seattle. So I was out visiting a site and there was this team member who’s super creative, a really great problem solver, always has these great ideas.
And he was not really engaged in some of this improvement stuff. I was talking to him because I was trying to understand, because this didn’t make sense. He seemed like the person who would be perfect, who would be jumping for joy at this.
And what he said was: “Well, I don’t want to lean myself out of a job.”
So, yeah, I think that fear is very real.
And realistically, there have been some companies that have absolutely used lean as a tool to try and cut jobs.
And so the question is, are you as an organization committed to doing this the right way?
Then if so, what is that conversation?
Knowing that it’s not just words. Words probably aren’t going to cut. It will probably take more than words to help people overcome that fear.

Aaron Davidson: [00:19:01] Yeah, for sure. And, you know, just jumping back really quick, I know we’re wrapping up, but I think that’s part of the culture, too. So from the beginning for us, starting when we were as an organization doing well, we never cut anyone’s jobs from any of this lean work that we were doing. So we were able to demonstrate that it’s not about just getting rid of people, getting rid of jobs.

It was really about how we can serve the guests better.

We know that you’re telling us you’re short staffed or struggling with this. So how can we do it better to serve the guests, to make life easier for you while you’re working? And by creating those wins along the way, we’re able to build support so that, you know, it’s not something you have to be afraid of. I’m still working. I make more money, but my job is easier today. So you create all those wins. And, you know, that was one of the biggest benefits for us to help embrace it as a culture or as an organization by not eliminating jobs first.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:19:58] Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. As I listen to you, there’s so much in you demonstrating that. Your organization demonstrates that. It’s going back to the ups and downs, all of that and really that positioning, you know, so that positioning is easier and better first.
And, you know, so often I hear people talk about lean in this phrase of doing more with less. And lean itself. That word has a connotation of less.
And I don’t know where I picked this up. I would love to give credit to wherever I heard this from, I don’t know. But over the years, they picked up this idea.

Lean isn’t about less, it’s about more. About creating more value.

And so, again, if we can position that, is that when we solve more problems, we create more value.
When we make more improvements, we create more value both for our clients, our guests, as well as for ourselves or our members. For the organization. For our communities. All of those things.

And just really that, how do we position that and how do we do it as a way to create more instead of cutting as a way to use less?

Aaron Davidson: [00:21:08] I have no idea where you pick that up there, Jamie, but I love that. I love how you sort of phrase that around, like creating more. Right. Creating more value, doing more as opposed to just cutting.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:21:19] Well, just for our listeners out there who want to connect with you and stay connected, kind of keep up with the good work that you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Aaron Davidson: [00:21:28] That’s probably LinkedIn. It’s just my full name if you do a search there. Aaron Davidson. I think that’s the best place. My email is aarondavidson@gmail.com if anyone has any questions for me, Jamie.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:21:44] All right, fantastic. And for our listeners, we’ll put that link to Aaron’s LinkedIn profile in our show notes. Remember, you can go to https://processplusresults.com/podcast/ to find those show notes.
All right. As we wrap up, Aaron, any closing words of encouragement or advice for our listeners?

Aaron Davidson: [00:22:03] Yes, so first, thank you, Jamie, for the opportunity to be here. It’s been a pleasure talking with you. Totally awesome time. Definitely check out https://processplusresults.com/ . If anyone has any questions about anything, I think that’s the best place for them to go.

But if you’re new, if you’ve been here a long time, don’t forget to get out there and go and see. Go and see, interact with folks.
And if you can, spend a day in their life before you have to work with them. It’s probably the biggest piece of advice that I would have.

Jamie V. Parker: [00:22:34] Fantastic. All right, well, thank you for that and appreciate you sharing your story.

Aaron Davidson: [00:22:39] All right. Thank you, Jamie.

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I really enjoyed today’s conversation with Aaron and hope you took away a few notes as well.

So here’s your next step.

I want you to better understand and learn the frontline team members’ perspective. And to do that, you need to go and have conversations.
Pick an area of work and have conversations with frontline folks in that area.
You’re going to ask open ended questions. The questions you ask are going to depend on what you want to learn.

So what do you want to learn? Well, reflect on the conversation you just heard. What does that spark for you and base your questions based off of that.

As an example, for me, when I think about this conversation that Aaron and I just had, I think about questions like,
What makes it difficult for you to serve?
So if it’s in a service environment, serving customers or if you’re manufacturing, it might be making the product. But what makes it difficult for you to serve?
What have you tried to improve, but it didn’t go anywhere? It got stuck or hung up in the process or no one listened?
What have we, as senior leaders said we’re going to do, but we didn’t follow through on.

The reason I’m picking those types of questions is because when I reflect on this conversation, it really stands out to me when Aaron is talking about fear and resistance.

Some of the experience for frontline folks is that their perspective today is based off of their experience from the past. In a lot of cases they’ve had these experiences, and those experiences are now leading to their perspective today.
And so I want to go in and better understand that and dig deeper than just what do you think?
Not just what do you think, but what has happened? What’s happened in the past? And now what do you think today?

So that’s where I go with it. You might go somewhere else and that’s OK.

Reflect back. Think about this episode. What stood out to you? And then use that as a catalyst to go and learn and truly listen. I mean, really listen to understand.

Because if we want a culture of improvement that engages the frontline, we can’t do that if we don’t understand their perspectives.

Until next time.