The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:10 - 00:00:35:00
Kevin Eikenberry
If I can give you three ideas, just three ideas that would help you rewire your organization and your culture to value the collective intelligence of your team. Would you be interested? Well, if your answer is yes, you're in the right place. Welcome to another episode of The Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow both personally and professionally so they can lead more effectively and make a bigger difference for their teams.

00:00:35:02 - 00:00:54:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Organization, fans in the world. If you're listening to this podcast, you could join us in the future Lives so that on your favorite social media channels so that you can get the information and that we have here earlier, you can't do that for this one, but you can in the future. The way to find out when those are happening so you can join us live.

00:00:54:05 - 00:01:16:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Ask your questions and get even more value would be to join our Facebook or LinkedIn groups where all of that information is shared and and are a couple of the places where they're actually streamed. So you can join our Facebook group at remarkable podcast dot com slash Facebook or Arlington group at remarkable podcast dot com slash LinkedIn. Pretty straightforward.

00:01:17:00 - 00:01:38:16
Kevin Eikenberry
So today's episode is brought to you by our remarkable masterclasses pick from 13 important life and leadership skills to help you become more effective, productive and confident while overcoming some of the leader's toughest challenges. Learn more and sign up at Remarkable Masterclass Dotcom. And now it's time for me to bring in our guest. Let me bring him in.

00:01:38:18 - 00:02:00:17
Kevin Eikenberry
And there he is. Let me introduce him and then we will dive in. You now see in front of you are about ready to hear from Gene Kim. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire Inc for 13 years, an enterprise security software company. In 2014, he launched DevOps Enterprise Summit, an annual event that attracted over 10,000 technology leaders.

00:02:00:19 - 00:02:31:04
Kevin Eikenberry
To date, he has spoken at over 100 companies and conferences, including Apple, Target, IBM, Nike, Principal, Financial, Lululemon and Microsoft. His books have sold over. Get this, everybody. 1 million copies. It puts him in rare and rare in a rare company. He has authored the widely acclaimed book The Unicorn Project, coauthored several influential works, including the Phenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and the award winning Accelerate, which Excel excuse me, which received the prestigious Shingo Publication Award.

00:02:31:04 - 00:02:44:15
Kevin Eikenberry
His latest book is that he's the coauthor of Winning the Wired excuse me Wiring the winning organization. Yeah, I'll say it again so I get it right again, wiring the winning organization. Gene, welcome to the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.

00:02:44:17 - 00:02:49:15
Gene Kim
Kevin I'm so delighted to be here and congratulations on the 418th episode. You've had such an.

00:02:49:15 - 00:03:18:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Amazing career number. 118 That is correct. Well, before we started, Gene asked me hard questions and I said, Wait a minute, the hard questions need to be for you, Joe. I'm just teasing. So. So listen up. We'll get into the book in a second. But I'm always interested to learn a little bit more about the journey. Obviously, I read a bit of your bio for everybody, but my question is a little different.

00:03:18:06 - 00:03:36:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Like how do you end up here? Like you didn't probably expect that when you were a ten year old that you were going to be a million copies book author or anything along those lines or doing the work that you're doing? Probably couldn't even describe the work that you're doing when you were ten. Like, how do you end up here?

00:03:36:21 - 00:03:40:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Tell us just a little bit about the journey outside of the bio.

00:03:40:09 - 00:04:16:05
Gene Kim
Yeah, you know, I grew up as a privileged enough to, you know, I was with computers and so that was in the late seventies, early eighties, and I ended up working at a half time at a software company. I was actually acquired by Sun Microsystems, and I was doing that half time while I was in high school. And around then around November 2nd, 1988 was the first massive computer virus worm where essentially 10% of all the servers on the Internet were taken down because of, you know, a rogue piece of code that escaped the, you know, Bell Labs and by Robert Morris Jr.

00:04:16:07 - 00:04:27:22
Gene Kim
Anyway, so the person that was doing the most work and really understanding computer security at the time was Dr. Gene Spafford at Purdue University. And so I like you. Yes.

00:04:27:23 - 00:04:31:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Happy to hear the Boilermakers wrapped in this on the show, in fact.

00:04:31:14 - 00:04:39:12
Gene Kim
And so that actually led me to apply and not get into Purdue University in the middle of the cornfields of Indiana. So had I.

00:04:39:12 - 00:04:41:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Known, I didn't know that we're both boilermakers.

00:04:41:23 - 00:05:17:19
Gene Kim
Right? Yeah. So so that actually led to an independent study project where I got to work on, you know, what would it take for, you know, computer systems operators to be able to get early detection, you know, enable them to recover, ideally, prevention. And so I spent the first ten years of my life in computer security, but I guess I was something was bothering me was that, you know, when I later founded a company to commercialize that technology, the best companies that had the best, you know, security and posture compliance, it wasn't actually doesn't seem to determine on how good the security leader was.

00:05:17:19 - 00:05:42:08
Gene Kim
In fact, it was like how good the operation leader was. You know, it's and so my the kind of dawning realization was that, you know, the best operations, the best uptime and availability and, you know, people who ran websites like the New York Stock Exchange or Akamai or the people who came, the tech giants, you know, that their success at it depended on how good was a working relationship with the information security function.

00:05:42:10 - 00:06:14:00
Gene Kim
It turns out, you know what I learned ten years after that we were marching into the 20 tens was that, the best technology organizations Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, they were what was most important was how good was the developers working relationship with operations and the information security function. And so, you know, that really kind of launched me into my 25 year journey studying high performing technology organizations where, you know, you ask a question, what makes a great organizations great, where, you know, they can ship products and features on time.

00:06:14:00 - 00:06:29:15
Gene Kim
They have they can actually run an operations scalable without crashing. And, you know, the not being mowed down by hackers or, you know, malicious code, which is, you know, we see all too often the news And so so was really, really not to spend.

00:06:29:15 - 00:06:50:10
Kevin Eikenberry
Money so was not everybody. This is not going to be an episode just if you happen to be in a technology company, even though that's where Gene grew up and where Genius has been talking about this conversation, I'm confident because I know from the book that while that's Gene's background, that's not the real focus of this book. They're absolutely.

00:06:50:16 - 00:07:08:13
Gene Kim
Right. But there is this common theme that it is around crossing boundaries and functional silos that, you know, I think when you look at, you know, the Navy SEALs, it's not just about how good the Navy SEALs are, How good and effective are they operating with the other divisions, you know, inside of special operations. So com you see is within hospitals, Right.

00:07:08:15 - 00:07:22:04
Gene Kim
It's not about how good the doctors are. It's how good are they at interacting across nursing, pharmacy, supply chain and so forth. And so I think that is a really the universal truth of great leaders. They can integrate those functions. Well, how am I doing?

00:07:22:06 - 00:07:43:13
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, that's fantastic. So I want us to talk this is I will tell everybody that of the books that I've read for the show this year, I've read probably thicker ones, but I don't know that I've read any denser ones. I don't mean that in a negative way. There's a tremendous amount of depth in this book, and there's no way, Gene, that we can talk about everything in it.

00:07:43:15 - 00:08:04:23
Kevin Eikenberry
That would be true for every episode, I realize. But that's really true here for me today. So what I want to do is pull out some things for us to talk about that I think are some of the key ideas that that any of us could start to apply. And in some cases, what you can do is help people see some things in ways they may not have seen them before.

00:08:05:02 - 00:08:22:22
Kevin Eikenberry
You were just hinting at a second ago what I think is one of the most useful things in the book. It provides a way to think about this that maybe many people have it. You talk about there being three layers to where, but there's three kinds of parts to the work. You were hinting at this a second ago.

00:08:22:23 - 00:08:30:08
Kevin Eikenberry
So as you talk about those three layers a little bit and and help us understand why they're useful for us to think about the work that way.

00:08:30:14 - 00:08:53:07
Gene Kim
Absolutely. So the first layers around, you know, well, whenever someone's working, you know, there's an object that we're trying to expose or, you know, direct our skills and knowledge on. So that could be the code that we're working on or the system in production or the material in front of us that we need to transform. There's a second layer, which is something that we're doing that through tools, right, and technologies, and so that there's a second layer.

00:08:53:09 - 00:09:15:03
Gene Kim
And so that's the that's a technical part of the socio technical system. Layer three is what we call the social circuitry. This is, you know, this is the social part of the socio technical system. It turns out that in my research and that research of Dr. Steven Speer at the MIT Sloan School of Business, who studied the Toyota production system, he wrote one of the seminal papers in 1999.

00:09:15:04 - 00:09:41:04
Gene Kim
He studied aerospace safety culture and at Alcoa and helped build it and are common. So it's a really good at that. I come from software, he comes from everything but software. Our common area of Marvel is that what makes great organizations has nothing to do with technology, is it's part of it. But the real common part of great organization and great leaders is that they focus on the layer three, the social parts of the socioeconomic systems.

00:09:41:04 - 00:10:16:11
Gene Kim
What are the things required to integrate all those separate functional specialties towards a common purpose? And if I can share one example is that absolutely. Here's a great example of like when you have a layer three system that is failing and let's I'll be blunt, right? This is the responsibility and the failure of leadership. Suppose you have a large telco, all they want to do is put a a checkbox in front of their 20 million customers and you know, so they can subscribe to, you know, email services, movies and this will take $28 million.

00:10:16:13 - 00:10:31:17
Gene Kim
It will take one year to complete. It requires CEO minus one level support of daily war room meetings just because it has to transmit across 40 different teams. And when you ask those people, you know, what's the likelihood of a succeeding, they'll say one and one in five, right? 20%.

00:10:31:19 - 00:10:32:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Best.

00:10:32:13 - 00:10:51:08
Gene Kim
Because it didn't work the first two times. And there's the point is, this is not a technically challenging problem. There's not a layer one layer to daunting problem. This is all because the coordination function of the organization is the opposite of what is needed. This is the that the responsible the leaders to help people do their work easily and well.

00:10:51:10 - 00:10:53:01
Gene Kim
And so.

00:10:53:03 - 00:11:12:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Well. So, so so I and lots of other people like me. You may have said the same thing say that one of the jobs of the leaders to remove the barriers from people to get their work done. So is you're nodding with me. So that that's true. Is that is that a lot of what you're saying here, or is that just a small part of what you're saying here?

00:11:13:00 - 00:11:41:05
Gene Kim
Yeah, I think it's I mean, I think that's by one of those fundamental principles. And it sounds like a platitude, right? The job of leadership is to allow people to do the work easily and well and it has profound implications. And so when people say that they're fighting bureaucracies or they have hardships or they're working in places of genuine danger or they don't have time to improve, I mean, those are all things that leaders are doing wrong, you know, that is preventing people from doing their work easy and well, in fact, maybe I should add another one safely, right.

00:11:41:05 - 00:11:46:11
Gene Kim
To be able to do their work and not get hurt and not damage equipment themselves and so forth.

00:11:46:13 - 00:12:07:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, I love that. So so one of the early things that you talk about in the book and and it goes throughout is this idea of these three layers. And in many ways, if we're talking about a book called Wiring, the winning organization is probably not surprising that we're going to spend the book, spends its time talking mostly about that third layer, that social socio socio lit layer, if you will.

00:12:07:16 - 00:12:36:21
Kevin Eikenberry
And one of the things that we find ourselves dealing with in organizations all of the time are problems. And you talk about problems and problem solving as taking place in one of kind of two zones. And I think this will be an idea again, putting some language on things that maybe help people see things better or differently. You talk about there being two problem solving zones, so why don't you lay those out, maybe give us an example?

00:12:36:23 - 00:12:37:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, for.

00:12:37:08 - 00:12:59:12
Gene Kim
Sure. And I would just say a lead up to this one by saying kind of imagine the conditions, the worst case conditions to solve an important problem for the organization and the customer. But how can we make it like really, really difficult for ourselves? One is like you don't have time to think. You can't undo right now any error is magnified and causes, you know, global catastrophe.

00:12:59:13 - 00:13:18:18
Gene Kim
You can make the problem so that you really can't solve by yourselves, but you have to solve it with, you know, 20,000 of your best friends in parallel. And any mistake they make will impact you and vice versa. So I would say those are. and make it not obvious when something goes wrong, Right. You don't learn until 6 hours later.

00:13:18:20 - 00:13:20:05
Gene Kim
So let's say kind of.

00:13:20:09 - 00:13:22:04
Kevin Eikenberry
5 minutes before, right? for.

00:13:22:04 - 00:13:23:06
Gene Kim
Sure. Right, exactly.

00:13:23:06 - 00:13:28:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Thinking about your example of our fellow boilermaker, when he's getting ready to like, you're out.

00:13:28:16 - 00:13:48:13
Gene Kim
Yeah, right, exactly. And so those are what we're calling danger zone characteristics. And so, yeah, let's go into, you know, what can leaders do to make sure that, you know, problem solving that we're learning can actually happen because learning is experiential, experimental. So one thing leaders can do is make sure that we can do things in planning and practice.

00:13:48:17 - 00:14:13:13
Gene Kim
When you're doing the things that are highly consequential, like let's make sure the first time we tried to rescue the hostages, that is not in the performance environment. Let's be able to do drills, you know, be able to, you know, learn our mistakes in the nonperformance environment. Let's be able to successfully slowing things down. We can divide up the problem so that we can work out just our parts of the problem.

00:14:13:13 - 00:14:47:18
Gene Kim
And mistakes stay local as opposed to causing everyone else hardship and grief. And now another thing that we can do is like make it super, super obvious, you know, when things are going wrong so that we can either, you know, call a timeout that could have been useful for our boilermaker friends. Yeah. You know, so we could change plays and we want to make it super obvious, you know, that you want as many shots on goal as possible so that by the time we are, it really matters that we've made all the mistakes we have the muscle memories, you know, that we can bring that to bear and ideally win.

00:14:47:19 - 00:15:11:20
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, it's interesting you use the phrase timeout, because one of the things I mean, in the book, you use a lot of a lot of important, useful business examples. You hinted at a couple. But I think that one of the things listen, I know that some people that are listening are sports fans and stuff, and so I'm always careful with sports analogies because I don't want to alienate people for whom it doesn't matter much.

00:15:12:01 - 00:15:30:12
Kevin Eikenberry
But I will say this, that if you are a sports fan, one of the things that you will note is that you are rooting for or against people that are doing a tremendous amount of practicing, way more than we are doing in most cases. Most of us find ourselves going in and now we're going to figure it out.

00:15:30:17 - 00:15:55:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Now we're going to wing it, or we think we've got some idea, like there's a difference between having some experience and having truly practiced it. AT Yeah, in significant ways. Again, I don't I won't go any further down the sports rabbit hole even though I could. I think that's a really important point and two things we can take from sports in sports.

00:15:55:06 - 00:16:09:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Number one is that even the very best players have coaches and they all practice. So yeah, you want to say any more? Yeah. Yeah. In fact, talking about the further the sports analogy, you know, the destroying the danger zone and the winning zone. Right. Absolutely.

00:16:09:11 - 00:16:39:17
Gene Kim
So go ahead. And that's the issue here. Here's more of a sports fan than I am. But I mean, he one of the things that I actually was really interested in is that if you look at the the most remarkable sports teams, not only do they do a lot of what looks like a miracle, you know, at the, you know, the end zone, you know, with only minutes to go in general, those were rehearsed and often rehearsed and fast in smaller areas of play in faster tempo operation, so that when it really matters, you know, they had those muscle memory and routines.

00:16:39:17 - 00:16:59:13
Gene Kim
It turns out that's exactly what happened in the Apollo space program, where by the time, you know, Apollo 11 is, you know, they're executing, they're landing, you know, all the things that went wrong. And there were many all of those were actually rehearsed in simulations. Simulations serves as such a crucial mechanism to make sure that, in fact, a similar simulation supervised a group.

00:16:59:18 - 00:17:24:11
Gene Kim
Their job was to make sure the astronauts were ready. They challenge the astronauts at Mission Control to handle scenarios that they never thought of, to make sure that their mistakes were made long before there were, say, 6000 feet above the lunar surface. And just to jump ahead a little bit, yeah, we call that slow vacation. Now, we had to make up a word because it was no one word in English that said that captured that notion of you have to slow down to speed up.

00:17:24:13 - 00:17:39:13
Gene Kim
And there were many adages like, you know, stop saying the sharp in the South, the slowest moves to move the fast. But there was not one word. And we felt it was so important because if you can't say it, then you might not be able to think it. And so we thought that let's give it a name and it will be very familiar.

00:17:39:19 - 00:17:55:13
Gene Kim
But we're hoping that this new verb might be able to help people trigger kind of slow, efficacious actions where we say, All right, let's pause. Let's this is something that we don't want to learn in production. We need to hone our skills in planning and practice.

00:17:55:14 - 00:18:19:06
Kevin Eikenberry
So, yeah, I love that. And I think you're exactly right that having a word changes everything, right? Like if so often the light bulb goes off for us when we hear a word in another language that we don't quite have a word for. And that's what you've done is you've labeled something that we can sort of see, but it becomes far more concrete once you've given it so.

00:18:19:08 - 00:18:45:04
Kevin Eikenberry
So at the top of the show, Jean, I suggested that I would give people three specific things that they could do. And this is the first of those three things, which is slow ification. So we've talked about this as it relates to planning and practice. But what what specific ideas can a leader leave this conversation with while they're clicking on Amazon to order their copy of the requiring the winning organization?

00:18:45:08 - 00:18:55:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Like what can they do now for themselves or with their team? And maybe you want to answer those separately. no, I do a better job of certifying.

00:18:55:04 - 00:19:19:03
Gene Kim
Yeah. In fact, I would say for the team, in fact, what leaders can do for the team is say, Hey, look, whenever you run into difficulties, hardships, when the other you are working around a problem in production and performance, we should call a flag on the play. Right. And if we we have to develop the to proceed we have to know what the right thing to do is and there was a study that I found very heartbreaking.

00:19:19:03 - 00:19:43:00
Gene Kim
There's a case study of this Morris versus Mawson in the hospital where the wrong patient got a surgical procedure done despite 14 piece of evidence that included the patient saying, you've got the wrong person. I was laughing, but this is not funny. Is this is tragic. Where in a better world, each one of those should have been a signal that said, all right, we have lost track of what's going around us.

00:19:43:00 - 00:20:06:02
Gene Kim
We don't know what to do. And the worst thing to do is plow forward. So what you know, what what leaders should do is say, all right, you know, ideally, while it's happening, what should happen so that we can clarify what's happening? You know, let's make sure there's another procedure, a sentinel, so that we can detect ideally correct, better yet prevent.

00:20:06:04 - 00:20:26:14
Gene Kim
And if we can't do it in the performance environment, well then at the end of shift and the week. Right. Let's figure out how we can create a deflection so these horrendous things don't happen again. And so obviously part of that is the leader has to make it safe expected so that, you know, when problems come up, we don't suppress those signals.

00:20:26:18 - 00:20:37:23
Gene Kim
We have to amplify those signals. And, you know, we can be able to do that all the time out. Something's wrong. Something's not what I expect. You know, and this is a team sport. How do we change our play?

00:20:38:01 - 00:21:04:14
Kevin Eikenberry
I love so so first of all, detect, correct and prevent really useful language. But the thing that I want to make sure people are highlighting in their mind, if they're you know, while you're listening to this podcast, whatever you might be doing is the idea of that in order for us to create this slowing down step, we have to, as leaders, make it safe for people to slow it down.

00:21:04:19 - 00:21:28:04
Kevin Eikenberry
We have to say that this is the expectation, not go, go, go, go, go, not accelerator to the floor, but rather to say that we'll be more productive sometimes if we will slow down. Less is more, slow as fast. All those all those other Ajit adages. But I love you connecting this to the idea of we as leaders must make it safe for people to do that.

00:21:28:04 - 00:21:48:21
Kevin Eikenberry
And and many of us, I will say our leaders in part because we have a sense of urgency and have become successful because of our sense of urgency. And we must recognize the value of what you're saying and over start to overcome it for ourselves, but help our teams do it as well.

00:21:49:03 - 00:22:07:19
Gene Kim
Absolutely right. And they may seem mutually contradictory, but yet, I mean, we all know as leaders who have to live with our decisions, that sometimes you have to make a short term investment to make a longer term gain. And if our job is to enable our people to do their work easily, well, well, then we also have to be listening for these signals that say, Hey, look, something is wrong.

00:22:07:21 - 00:22:21:06
Gene Kim
I want to help make this better in the long term and I think we just need to. I'm hoping that this word slow, we need to slow, if I will, so trigger sometimes a better response from from from our leaders.

00:22:21:08 - 00:22:45:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Now, I love that. And, you know, I always having done, as you said, now 418 of these. Yeah. I always try to take one thing that I can really lock into my brain from an episode. And sometimes I have that figured out before we start from having read the book and do my preparation. Sometimes not. I think that will be the one, this idea of solidifying.

00:22:45:08 - 00:22:55:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Because while it was clear to me, while I read, it's become more clear to me as we've talked about. So I appreciate that. But there are two more besides glorification. The next one is simplification. What do you mean there?

00:22:56:01 - 00:23:19:13
Gene Kim
Yeah. So, you know, suffocation all about moving or problem solving from places are more amenable to solving difficult problems. So not in performance, but in planning and practice. Simplification is all about making the problems easier to solve. So some problems are super difficult to solve when they're highly intertwined so that, you know, if you have a hundred people working on a problem, every person's actions can impact everyone else.

00:23:19:18 - 00:23:41:17
Gene Kim
It's probably a super hard hard when we try to do everything all at once. And things are super hard when, you know, we don't understand kind of how our work fits into the greater whole. And so simplification really, there's really three ways we can sort of do things in a more incremental way now. So solve it in small little batches and a lot of software development, you know, is now hinged on that.

00:23:41:19 - 00:24:02:22
Gene Kim
There's then there's two kind of really special ways that you can do things. You can modularized them. In other words, you know, the checkbox project that I described before, where wouldn't it be great if teams work more independently? The problem with that $28 million put a checkbox in front of 40 different teams is that everyone's work is entangled together and no one can work independently.

00:24:03:04 - 00:24:31:11
Gene Kim
So we've lost our ability to have independence of action. And so in software and hardware systems, there's ways to divide up the work where we say, All right, here are the interfaces between teams. And once we agree on the interfaces now, we can now work independently. And so a famous example is the Amazon art architecture in the early 2000s where they could not ship features fast enough and they went from hundreds of features and feature shipments per year to maybe tens.

00:24:31:13 - 00:24:42:17
Gene Kim
And I create a more modular system. They were able to eventually do 136,000 per day, which is this astonishing in ability. Yeah.

00:24:42:22 - 00:24:48:03
Kevin Eikenberry
When I read that, I had to read it again like a day, right? Yeah.

00:24:48:05 - 00:25:14:04
Gene Kim
So it just shows how good the difference being good and great is vast. And then so this all about liberating and creating independence of action between teams so they can work in parallel. And I'll just there's a separate technique where you do that for sequential processes like the Toyota production system, where astonishingly, what makes the total production system so remarkable is that, you know, they can do scores of line side changes per day.

00:25:14:04 - 00:25:43:17
Gene Kim
They can, you know, ship multiple model years, you know, within the same shift is because that by creating these boundaries between people who are working in sequence, in sequence, you create independent of action for them. And so one of the most famous examples is this kind of astonishing fact that in a typical Toyota plant for decades, they have this and on board, and when something goes wrong, they pull the end cord that halts that line, the line segment.

00:25:43:19 - 00:26:11:09
Gene Kim
And, you know, most people would be shocked to learn that in a typical plant, the and on court is pulled 5000 times a day, which is so counterintuitive because, like, why are you doing something so disruptive so frequently? And it's because, one, they're able to do it because you can actually halt one segment without affecting everybody else. But if you need to halt a whole line, you do because, you know, simplification is better to fix a problem early and often than wait till the end of the model year.

00:26:11:15 - 00:26:14:14
Gene Kim
And now you have potentially millions of cars that are all defective.

00:26:14:16 - 00:26:16:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Now you got a recall right now you have recalls.

00:26:16:15 - 00:26:17:01
Gene Kim
Exactly.

00:26:17:07 - 00:26:23:01
Kevin Eikenberry
So slow ification, simplification. And then lastly, amplification.

00:26:23:06 - 00:26:58:01
Gene Kim
Yeah, amplification. So definition amplification is we have to create the management system. By the way, let's be clear, Layer three is all about the management system that leaders create within their part of the system. And some of you might be you're the manager system is entire organization. The manager system in on you. Amplify is that small? Even the weakest signals of failure are amplified so that we can act upon them decisively to better prevent, detect, correct early and often, as opposed to creating a management system where we signals a failure are suppressed or even extinguished entirely.

00:26:58:03 - 00:27:11:02
Gene Kim
And sources are, you know, maybe I'll say I've been part of my career, I've been systems like that, and they're horrible. And as leaders, we are responsible for the norms within the systems that we create.

00:27:11:04 - 00:27:25:01
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. So we've covered a lot of ground in a short time. Jean, is there is there anything that we didn't touch on, anything that you think we should talk about that we haven't yet?

00:27:25:02 - 00:27:46:09
Gene Kim
You know, my favorite case study for amplification was one of the biggest moments, and that was the Southwest Airlines holiday crisis where, you know, winter storm comes in and, you know, every airlines canceling thousands of flights. But something odd happens around day three, which is every other airline, every airline starts with coming to normal operations except for Southwest Airlines.

00:27:46:11 - 00:28:08:05
Gene Kim
And the reason is that the crew scheduling system where at the end of each year, at the end of the day, every pilot that's in the wrong place has to call the crew scheduling office and tell them where they are. The problem is they can't get through whole times of hours, even scores of hours. And in my mind, this was such an it took them a week to basically travel.

00:28:08:05 - 00:28:08:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:28:09:02 - 00:28:34:21
Gene Kim
And to me, this was such an incredible metaphor of what happens when the managers system cannot keep up with the environment they're operating in. In other words, they had to stop, you know, basically stopped operations, right, to get planes and replace. And I think there are many situations where we as leaders and we as teams find ourselves where the the the management system cannot keep up with the world around us and the Southwest Airlines.

00:28:34:22 - 00:28:54:10
Gene Kim
One is not a great example. Signals couldn't get to where they need to go and they couldn't get, you know, the pieces to go where they should go. And I think I think as for everyone, I'm hoping that serves as the kind of vivid example that is like a typical leadership story, but is should trigger some memories of like, here's what's happening.

00:28:54:10 - 00:29:04:15
Gene Kim
It's like the communication coordination function is not adequate to what it was tasked to do, and that's a layer three function. And as leaders, we're responsible.

00:29:04:16 - 00:29:20:15
Kevin Eikenberry
That is true. So we've been talking about the layers and solving problems and simplification and simplification amplification. But I want to talk about you before we finish. So my question is, Jean, what do you do for fun?

00:29:20:17 - 00:29:39:19
Gene Kim
What I do for fun, you know, I'm coming off writing a book. I find myself doing a lot of reading. I love coding Just because you can solve so many problems now that you struggle with without help from anyone else. And so that is my guilty pleasure. I'm trying to get my kids to write a game over the holidays.

00:29:39:21 - 00:29:52:06
Gene Kim
We've been talking about it for years and I really want to take the time to spend the three days. Let's see if we can write a game together. And so that's something I'm just super excited to do now.

00:29:52:08 - 00:30:14:17
Kevin Eikenberry
That is the first time I've ever had someone on the show tell me that for fun and my kids and I are going to write a game now. There you have it. Everybody. So we've got slow ification, simplification, amplification, and now gamification. How about that? Absolutely. So you did mention reading and you and I talked about this before we went before we started the show.

00:30:14:19 - 00:30:17:18
Kevin Eikenberry
So what's something that you're reading or have read recently?

00:30:17:19 - 00:30:49:00
Gene Kim
You know, I'm actually reading this academic paper from Dr. Verne Vernon Richardson. He's the head of the accounting department at the Wharton School of Accounting at the University of Arkansas. And he wrote this paper 20 years ago that basically studied CEOs who had, you know, clean finance reports, material weaknesses and mature weaknesses within i.t component. And what's so remarkable is that he compared those firms with clean financial reports versus those that had material weaknesses within i.t.

00:30:49:00 - 00:31:09:10
Gene Kim
Component. And the punchline is that the ceos in that third category were fired at a rate eight times higher than the clean firms. The CFOs are fired at a rate four times higher. And you know, so what's remarkable is that you don't read the Wall street journal hear about ceos being fired for, you know, these i.t. Issues. And yet that's what is evident in his research.

00:31:09:10 - 00:31:43:22
Gene Kim
And i guess the reason why I bring it up is that he actually studied what for the CEOs who were fired what was the next job and he found that the CEOs their next job was often in smaller firms or at a more less senior role. Just for me, it just really caught my attention. I just always do that paper because it says leadership matters not just to the organization that we're currently serving, but if you screw it up, you know, this actually affects your own career because, you know, you'll find that your job is not that tackling bigger problems with less foresight.

00:31:43:22 - 00:32:00:18
Gene Kim
Your next job is going to be tackling smaller problems with more oversight and I think there's a just that shows that there is, I guess, a just the world. It works in just ways, but leaders matter. Leadership matters, right? As a company concludes that we both come due in our careers.

00:32:00:20 - 00:32:16:03
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. So I'm going to ask you, when we get done here, to give me the link to that so we can put that in the show notes and we'll have that for all of you there. So one last question for you, Gene. The one you probably most wanted me to ask from the very beginning, where can people learn more?

00:32:16:06 - 00:32:23:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Where do you want to point them to for the book? Anything at all about connecting with you, getting linked up with your your work?

00:32:23:22 - 00:32:41:19
Gene Kim
Absolutely. Just go to you know, books are available wearing the winning organization at your favorite book retailer. And if you want to learn about more about the work I'm doing, just go to it revolution I. Com so that's it revolution dot com it can certainly hit me up on LinkedIn and your favorite social media of choice.

00:32:41:21 - 00:33:08:03
Kevin Eikenberry
There you go I t revolution dot com so now everybody before we go I have a question for all of you that I ask you every single episode and it is this now what what action are you going to take as a result of listening to Jane and I's conversation? What idea will you go implement? Maybe your idea is to think about what do I what's the system that we need to work to slow?

00:33:08:03 - 00:33:32:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Ify Maybe you've gotten some insights about thinking about the role of planning and practice for your team or for yourself. Maybe you're taking from this idea is for you personally or for you as a leader? Maybe for both. I don't know what your actions are, but I do know that if you take action, you'll get far more from this last 30 minutes than you would have otherwise.

00:33:32:08 - 00:33:43:01
Kevin Eikenberry
So with that, I will say thank you, Jane, for joining me. It was it was a pleasure to have you. And thanks again for your good work and for joining us today.

00:33:43:07 - 00:33:46:03
Gene Kim
Kevin, thank you so much. Right back at you. Keep up the amazing work.

00:33:46:05 - 00:34:04:01
Kevin Eikenberry
All right, everybody. That's the last of this episode. But, you know, we'll be back next week with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. Join us then and make sure you like, subscribe, share. You know what to do wherever you happen to be watching or listening to this podcast. Do that and we'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.