S4 E8 - Bill Bellows - Unveiling the Spectrum of System Thinking Part 1

In the first part of a two-part series with Bill Bellows, we delve deep into the essence of system thinking and its pivotal role in shaping organizations. Bellows leads us on a journey exploring the nuanced differences between 'Red Pen' and 'Blue Pen' organizations, and beyond, into the realms of 'Me' versus 'We' and the collective impact of every straw on the camel's back.

Bellows opens the discussion with his famous 'Red Pen Blue Pen' exercise, a metaphorical exploration that distinguishes two types of organizations based on quality and system thinking. He illustrates how small details, like the ease of cap removal on pens, can symbolize the deeper operational philosophies and outcomes of organizations. This exercise not only serves as a tool for introspection but also highlights the broader implications of systemic thinking in operational excellence.

Expanding further, Bellows introduces the concepts of 'Me' versus 'We' and the allegory of the last straw, pushing us to contemplate the collective responsibility versus individual blame within organizational contexts. Through these discussions, he underscores the importance of a systemic perspective that fosters collaboration, continuous improvement, and a shared understanding of goals and challenges.

You can find Bill Bellows on LinkedIn here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-bellows-218435/

Transcript

John Willis: [00:00:00] Hey, this is John Willis. I just wanted to give you a heads up on this podcast I've done with Bill Bellows. You know, one of the things I've learned on the podcasting is if you're having a great conversation, don't stop. Don't hit the stop record button. So this one went really long, almost two hours.

So probably going to cut it up into two sessions. So what you'll probably see is the first session. You know, for those of you who've been listening, Bill Bellows is just this amazing intellectual with just so much wealth of knowledge and, and so today we talk about the what he calls the red pen, blue pen, or the me, we, And we get really deep into the weeds.

So like I said, we'll probably split this up into two sessions just because it's, it's, it looks like it's going to be close to two hours. So anyway, I hope you really enjoy it. Let me know. I want to keep doing podcasts with Bill Bellows. Just an amazing person. I feel so fortunate to [00:01:00] be able to have these conversations with and, and ultimately share with you all.

Thank you.

Hey, this is John Willis again. We got another profound podcast. I think this guest is now broken the record for most appearances on the profound podcast. So I think if you're picking up a lot of fans here, Bill, my neck of the woods, thanks to you. Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. So you want to say hi?

Bill Bellows: Yeah, John.
Great. Great to one meet you a month ago. Yeah. And great to be back. How

time

John Willis: flies. Yeah, that was incredible. You're into it and thinking. I still want to write a blog about it. So, you know, Bill has an organization he's built for years and I guess they had a hiatus for a while. I got lucky enough to get invited to a reunion and it was just, I was a kid in a candy store.

You know, as I kept walking into conversations of, you know, Like, in my world, like, we talk about the theory of Ackoff and, and Steve Holt and TOC [00:02:00] and Deming. I'm just sitting in from conversation, conversations of real stories of rocket engineers, aircraft engineers, talking about how, well, you

know, I brought Shingo in and then You know, we had to bring Steve Holt in and then, you know, ultimately it was the beer game that one, you know, like it was like unbelievable and about real problems in engineering.

And it was just I mean, I was a kid in the candy store. So and like I said, thanks to you, I've got a few of those people that are getting queued up to do podcasts with, so great. So one of the things I thought, you know, we did a great job on you know, Taguchi and then, you know, and then it's not done yet.

I think we can come back to that. So we can always come back to Taguchi and then the Ackoff podcasts are great. And I think one of the things that somebody said earlier, early on to me, like, Oh, you know, I mentioned you to sort of the, the sort of classic Deming crowd and like, Oh, you have to watch his red pen, blue pen.

Yeah. thing. And, you know, so I looked at, you know, I tried to find some of your papers about that. And then I, in prepare for [00:03:00] this, I sort of, I found one of the Deming Institute lectures that you did where you, you didn't really use the red pen, blue pen, but you talked about the me versus we. So I was wondering if you just want to sort of walk us through those two topics, because I think they're incredibly relevant to the way we're trying to solve problems in large data centers, IT and structure and operations

Bill Bellows: today.

Sure. The It's just reaching over, in the late 90s, I stumbled upon a few things and put them together. And what came out of it was the red pen, blue pen exercise trip report. And I you never know what you're going to want to read. They're totally going to need those two. But part of what inspired it was there's a number of things that struck me.

One is I had, read a book by David Kearns, former CEO of Xerox called profits in the dark, [00:04:00] not P R O F I T, but P R O P H E T profits in the dark. And in there, he tells a story. of a manufacturing manager at a Ford assembly plant, a guy by the name of Frank Pipp, P I double P. And a couple of years ago, I came across his obituary.

He died almost at the beginning of the pandemic, maybe 2018, 2019. I could have reached out to him. I didn't, I didn't, I had, anyway, I regret. But he, he was at Ford for a good portion of his career, got frustrated, with what I'm about to share with you, then quit and went to work for Xerox. And if Xerox had a Hall of Fame, he'd be in the Hall of Fame.

He's a, he's a legendary figure in the manufacturing world. Well, the story he told David Kearns that was in the book Prophets in the Dark is that when he ran this Ford assembly plant in the late 60s, or in the 60s, [00:05:00] He said they needed rubber mallets to bang together the mating parts, and every once in a while, two parts went together without a mallet, and the Ford factory called that snap fit, as in snap your finger.

Well, they went out and bought competitors cars, all the same, but they bought them. This is what I would love to ask him is, you know, what, what led you to think that how they assembled was such a big thing? Because they were banging it together with hammers every now and then, snap fit, bought competitors cars, assembled just like theirs.

And then they bought a Toyota pickup truck, late, late 60s, took it apart, put it together. You know, Toyota is a new competitor. Let's go buy one of those. Take it apart, put it together, never used a mallet. It comes back to him. It's 100 percent snap fit. Well, he doesn't believe it. And he says, do it again. So they take it apart, put it back together.

He then calls out someone senior from Ford headquarters. Yeah, I don't know if it was somebody [00:06:00] senior. The executive comes out, meets with the team, and It says to the team, the customer will never notice the difference. Those exact words. And he said, you know, Pip told, told Kearns, he said, they nodded in assent and trotted off happy as clams.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. And Kearns Pip in frustration left to go. He just says, this, we cannot ignore this. So I had that anecdote in mind. Well, then I was teaching a class at Northwestern's Kellogg business school at half semester class. They had five week classes and quality. And I taught one of them and it's called TQM.

And we were talking about language and I'm, you know, Ackoff, this is before I met Ackoff I thought I was big on words, but Russ is really big on words. And, and so I put a pairs of words, tall, short, [00:07:00] fast, slow, and I showed them that each of those pairs was a black and white comparison, like a good versus bad black and white.

And I said, instead of good versus bad, we could have, and I said, there's black and white thinking and shades of gray thinking. If we take good and bad and make it a shades of gray thought, it'd be better, tall versus short, shorter or taller. Right. And I was trying to show them left versus right, black and white pairs versus shades of gray words.

And I went through half a dozen of them. Then I throw, I put up the word lean right in the middle. And I said is lean part of black and white or part of shades of gray. First three or four of them said it's it's continuum thinking, it's shades of grey thinking, not black and white thinking. Why? And I said, okay, you, you, you.

And one guy says, it's black and white thinking. And I said, why do you say that? He says, there's no ER on the end. That's right, it's not leaner, it's [00:08:00] lean. Lean is a, is a done. It is lean or not lean. And, and so I threw that out because even if you don't know what the word means, This guy was smart enough to realize without the ER on the end, it's an absolute tall, short, not shorter.

Well, as soon as that came up, there's a woman who said, I disagree. It's it's, it's shades of gray thinking. And I said, why do you say that? She said, well, because lean is about the continuous elimination of waste. I said, how far are you gonna go with that? She says, well, till all the waste is till all the waste is done.

Well, now it sounds like you're done, right? So I said, so I said, well, then where's the continuum with being done? And and she, you know, and she's like, you know, you know, pushing back. And I said, well, do do me a favor. I said, describe to me an organization. What does an organization look like that has no waste?

She said, I don't know. Well, I think that was part of what inspired me [00:09:00] in this, in this red pen, blue pen, because it was shortly thereafter, I don't know the exact date, but it was August of 98 when I started doing this. So I've got notes from all the classes I did. And it was in that timeframe that came up.

And I remember somebody brought something up in class and I just said, well, imagine there's a blue pen company that makes blue pens and you each recently went to visit it for two weeks. And imagine there's a red pen company. Which makes red pens and you each recently went to visit it, and all you know about them is one makes blue pens.

One makes red pens. I buy one of each. They're a dollar each. That's all you know. Blue makes blue. Red makes red. So I have to take a sheet of paper, divide it in half and label the left hand side blue pen company, the right hand side red pen company. And this is all spontaneous. And I just said, I'll give you

5 minutes to describe what you would have seen in both organizations if you were to visit for 2 weeks each.

And then said, for the top of the page, imagine the first week you visit, no one's [00:10:00] there. You're the only one, you're walking around with a clipboard, and you're walking around and all you know is they make blue pens that cost a dollar each. And the red pen company makes red pens that cost a dollar each.

So for the first two weeks you're walking around, what are you going to see? Then in the bottom two weeks, there are people there. Now I want you to shift your focus to the people characteristics in the first week, the fiscal characteristics. And there's one more piece of information, so they're all ready to go.

One more piece of information. I said when I go to take the cap off the blue pen, I take it off and put it on, on and off, goes on nice and easy. When I go to take the cap off the red pen, I need pliers to take it off. And a hammer to get it back on. And I kid you not, I used to carry with me when I did training all across the country, a little pair of pliers and a little hammer.

TSA confiscated them from me once . So I say, so I, so I always, I struggle to get it off and I push it back on. But the blue pen, John, I say is, it's just the right force. It's called snap fit. This is [00:11:00] snap fit. That doesn't fall off. It's just right. Now spend the next five minutes, tell me what's in each cell.

I just let them go. And then after five minutes, I would go around the room and go to the first person on the left hand side and say, okay, what's the first thing you have on the upper left quadrant for blue pen physical. And he'd say, neat. I'll go to the next person. What's, you know, what's next on your list that, that the first person hasn't said clean.

What's next on your list. Neat clean and physical came up in order every single time. And then I would do is go around the room and get rid of. Make sure everyone contributed to the upper left quadrant. Okay, now let's go to the upper right quadrant, red pen, physical walls, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And then I'd go to the lower right. Tell me about the people in a red pen company. Stodgy's, you know looking over their shoulder, fear driven. And then I, you know, finish. What I've [00:12:00] done, I've done that over 500 times around the world. If time permits, what's really cool, and I've done this once with about 200 people in the room, I say, stand up, let's say it's a conference or

an auditorium, stand up, I say, okay take a few minutes, find someone you've not met yet at this conference and compare trip reports.

In the room will erupt in laughter. Erupt. Absolutely erupt. Now, if they're sitting at a table, a smaller audience, I'll ask them to around the table share, share in twos and threes. I'll walk around and I'll say, so what do you see, what do you see? And then when they sit back down, I say, so what did you notice when you shared?

And they said it's, they're identical. Then I'll ask, did you see anything on the other person's, trip report that you didn't understand? That never, never has anyone said they came up with something. I'm just clueless on now. They may be looking at entirely [00:13:00] different aspects, but the composites are the same.

And so I started the composites. The beginning were so identical. I would put them on a flip chart and then throw them away. And then at some point in time, I started saving them and I would write them on a transparency date them. Now, why red and blue? Speaking of transparencies, why pens? I chose pens because I wanted a prop with two parts.

I can use a water bottle nowadays. If I'm in a lecture, I say, Somebody's got a water bottle, can I buy you a water bottle? Yeah. But I pen, I always had pens and I would buy a Mars Statler set of transparency, pens, eight colors. One night I was walking out of Rocketdyne late near midnight on a Friday night.

And a second shift facilities guy meets me at the door where like eyeball to eyeball, and he says, you're that red pencil, blue pencil, I looked at him [00:14:00] and he had, he had a smirk on his face. It was very friendly. I said, pens, pens. I said, was it? I said, pens, pens. He says. Remind me, which was the better one?

We move out into the courtyard and look up at the Boeing sign. I said, you see the blue around around Boeing's name? I said, yep. I said blue. And that's why it's blue. Because blue is a blowing a Boeing color. And why red? I wanted a color at the opposite end of the spectrum. I don't want green, brown. So blue was a Boeing color.

Red was opposite. That's where the colors came from and that trip report is served, has served to very quickly. I mean, it takes a good half hour to really do justice to it, and I would, okay, so I pres, I can present it in about five minutes.

Five minutes for them to go, I mean, for them to do it. And then [00:15:00] depending on the situation, I could immediately go around the room.

I can have my shirt at a table. I can get up and walk around. But what I'll add to it is tell me about hallway conversation you would have overheard in a red pen company in the hallway. Or I'd say to somebody, so John, as you're, as I'm, yeah, I want you to imagine, John, as you're walking down the hallway in a red pen company with a clipboard, how do people interact with you when they see you?

Standard answer is they don't. They avoid you. They get suspicious of your presence. They turn and go the other way. They look at the ground. And I say, okay, let's say they, you're in a, in a blue pen company. What do they do? Oh, they, they approach you. They ask you if you need any help. They want to know what you're up to.

So what's powerful about this is to me, it's a, it's a, It's epitomizes what Peter Senge would call a shared mental model [00:16:00] that, I mean, I've done this with people of all ages, high school students, college students professionals, doctors, lawyers, you name it, professors. The results are so similar. I mean, I didn't save them in the beginning.

I started to save them and ended up saving several hundred of them on transparency. So there's some nuances that a little bit. Yeah, you know

John Willis: what? What was interesting the first time I think I heard you talk. I don't know where I start first. I was on one of the Deming Institute podcast or one of the videos that, that I was directed to.

And my first instinct, and I was wondering if people who sort of I don't think like me, God forbid or thinking like, isn't there a confirmation bias in that story and that you're telling people that the, but, but, so that was my first instinct. And then I started thinking more about like you know, did that confirmation bias bias it?

But that, I think what I realized sort of over time and [00:17:00] certainly now listening to it like the third or fourth time is that's not the point. I think the meta point is. How can we all know?

Bill Bellows: Well, let me say this.

John Willis: How can we know? In other words, we know, like we're, we know what a bad company

Bill Bellows: looks like. Let me say this.

Let me say this in a confirmation bias. And I'm really glad you brought that up. I would. But I would present this before talking about snap fit. So, so, so whenever I would do the trip report, they would hear the frank pip story after. Okay. And I would have people say, we don't know if snap fit is good or bad.

And I say, I didn't say it was good or bad. I'm very deliberately. I don't say it's good or bad. People will. Most would infer that it's good, but I never said that. Mm-Hmm. . And, and so, and I would also, yeah, if I, because sometimes I [00:18:00] would say to people take this information and don't ask any questions.

If, if you have a question, lemme come by because I don't want someone coming up with something that's gonna bias the rest. But so if I, if I feel that's the case, then I would do that. But I don't but then once once I explained to them the snap for those who thought I don't really know which one is good.

And I've had people not be able to fill out the people part or fill out the physical part or they or they or not even in fact, most fascinating again. I've done this 500 times all around the world. Early, early on, I did it for a session of people that work together as opposed to people that are coming from across Rocketdyne's campus.

I did it in a location where they work together hand in glove. They knew one [00:19:00] another. And what was neat about that is did the trip report, did the outbrief, got all the results. Hey, let's take a break. As soon as the break starts, this guy comes up to me. Again, there's like 20, 25 people in the room. And he comes over to me and he says, very nicely, he says, I can't believe they inferred all that they inferred over the cat fits or it doesn't.

He said, they, they took that difference to get into the hallway conversations. All of that followed that difference. And he, and he said it kind of like, not that I don't believe it, but I'm just,

and it wasn't negative. It was just more of an amazement. I can't believe they inferred. I mean, and then as class ended, it came up to me and he says to me. I can't believe what I couldn't see he, he, I mean, [00:20:00] so at first it was like,

you got to be kidding me. I mean, not negative. But he came up after us and he was just, he says, I was blind.

I was so I can't believe how blind I was. Yeah.

John Willis: Again, I think that, to me, like, yeah, that's a great story. And I think the thing, I think I was over, no, I didn't overrode tenure, because I think it's a fabulous story, and I think it's a great way to sort people. But I think, to me, like, and see if I'm making sense, but it's interesting how people can see things.

Clearly outside of their domain. In other words, it's just like I sent you that West, Western, right. The, the pathological versus generative, right. That's a big thing in DevOps, right. And like everybody who reads that it does it like one quick glance. And you're like, okay, I know what that looks like. I, you know, I'm in fact, I work that place.

I work that place. And like. Very rarely do I get to work in the generative, but what I think is interesting is all the people who did that, once [00:21:00] they sort of came to a conclusion that there was a good and a bad, then, then, then they were able to describe bad and good so well, and, but they're, they're people that are part of a system that like typically can't do that within the system

Bill Bellows: they're in.

And that's what's, and I appreciate that is I've had people, I did it once for a retreat. for a big program at Rocketdyne where the top two or three people wanted me to go off site. Me and me and some peers of mine take them off site. There's a big year coming up and they wanted to use this as a means to focus them.

And so in the room were

several dozen senior, several dozen people that report to a vice president. Let's say that. Okay. Enough significance is their titles. Outside the program, their titles were managers. So these were design managers [00:22:00] on major components of this next generation rocket engine. They had, you know, organizations, components they were responsible for, nozzle, main combustion chamber.

They reported to a vice president.

And after, I know it was after the very end or partway through, it was, I think we did an afternoon and a morning. And at the end of the first day, the top two people called me over and he says, the VP says, these managers report to me. Outside of this room, they report to a director that reports to me. He said, they're reporting two levels up, two levels up.

And I said, okay, so what's the issue? He says, they're always coming to me, asking for me, for my opinion on things. He said, they're, they're at this level. They're at manager level. They're organizationally operating at a director level, and at that level, they're coming to [00:23:00] me, looking for my, asking me, what do I think about these things, which he, I interpreted as he didn't like, because it was kind of slowing things down.

And it's like, you know, they're way up there and they're coming to me, what do you think's going on? So I said, well, first thing that comes to mind is, what happens when things don't go as planned? I said, I said to me, and this gets into Shine's work, these are learned behaviors. You get beat up a few times, and what is your recourse, John?

You ask permission. But you don't tell, right? And you start saying, you know, the easiest way to avoid being beat up is to say, Boss, what do you think? Because when I didn't ask, I got burned. And so but it was I could explain it through this model. But also back to your point is let me throw out a word that we, we [00:24:00] both have heard many, many times with Dr.

Deming. prevailing system of management. And when I started thinking in association with this model is when Deming says the prevailing system of management, I don't, those words don't do justice to how awful and toxic that is. And even if you say toxic, doesn't Even the word toxic doesn't, so what I found invaluable about the TRIP report, it allows people to reveal multiple dimensions of the toxicity of the environments and make it visceral, make it palpable, they can feel it.

But to your point is, there's, it's easy to complain about management as Dilbert would do and Scott Adams. I think there's so many aspects of management we could poke at. And to me, it's like, you know, shooting animals in a zoo. It's just, it's too [00:25:00] easy. What I say by comparison, Scott Adams is okay, what should we do instead?

And so what I find invaluable about the red pen, blue pen model is people can

throw darts at the red pen. They have to then begin to about something.

Different, which pushes them, because I think I don't think people in a red pen

and a real red pen company, if there is such a thing, I don't think I don't think

they've ever thought about what it could be by comparison.

And even if they did, what would be their ability to convey that to others? It's

inside of work. People would laugh at them. People would say, Oh, you're,

you're smoking. You're, you know, it's time for your analysis. And, but go back

to the idea of a shared mental model. I think it, I use it as the beginning of a course.

I had a friend in England asked, I was doing some [00:26:00] work for him and he said When I start off with a system of profound knowledge, and I say, no, I would never start off training with a system of profound knowledge, not that I don't deeply admired what that is, but he says, why? I said, the system of profound knowledge is a solution to a problem.

You don't know you have. But I said, once we talk about the red pen and blue pen companies. Then we can begin to look at how each organization looks at systems, looks at variation, looks at people, looks at theories, and so I can then, you know, with that framework, I can then introduce the elements of the system of profound knowledge, look at each element and how it relates to those, those sides, and then begin conversations as to You know, one is we have, what are the conversations like in both environments?

What are survival skills in both environments? [00:27:00] What does leadership mean in both environments? What does management mean in both environments? What is an ethics issue in both environments? So what's neat is you can begin to look at Both environments without even talking about S. O. P. K. And then add S.

O. P. K. And then we could talk about through the lens of the system of profound knowledges. Is it possible that that you and I, John, would together start a blue pen company in our garage in absent an understanding of Deming's work? Could our baby this organization slide into red? I said, Absolutely.

How's that happen? We're both ignorant. We, we, we get into incentives. We think they're the greatest thing. We do performance appraisals. So I think what's neat is you can introduce the contrast, talk about how does blue become red, how does red become blue, how there really isn't either organization. To me, it's really a matter of direction.

New organizations [00:28:00] monolithically. Anything. I just throw that

John Willis: out. Yeah. No, I think it is the shared conversation. You know, I've done this for a while. I was doing what I, you know, just a fancy word phrased, but it was, it was, you know, like a qualitative analysis for digital transformation. And I'd go interview, there was one bank in, in, in UK, you know, one of the top asset holding banks in the world.

I interviewed like 400 people over a summer. In a qualitative approach, right? And to just start gathering the conversations and the conversation. So it wasn't like, you know, what I realized was, you know, as the consultants that I was, or most people are in my field are coming and tell you the 10 things you have to do and the 10 things you can't do, right?

And that's the good or bad, right? As opposed to, let's uncover all the things you're doing, right? You, you, as a group, right? Yeah. Yeah. Sort of announce the things and the things become the [00:29:00] conversation. So, you know, you know, I you know, I I appreciate This was the best explanation that I've heard now of the red pen blue pen because this idea of like creating a share mental model being able to then Use that as a branch to then Compare and have,

Bill Bellows: I think.
Yeah. Well then, and then, and then

it's funny as we talked about Russ Ackoff and through Russ Ackoff I met Shell Roba and shell was an amazing emeritus professor at Penn before going to Penn and running their, chief, they had a shell led a two week program at Penn. for chief nursing officers. There is such a position or in hospitals.

So I don't know how often he did it prior to that. He was dean of the school of dentistry, university of Kentucky, and then also dean of the university [00:30:00] of school of dentistry at UW university of Washington, the show is an amazing, an amazing man. And he and Russ coauthored a few books together, including one read it.

Redesigning society. Yeah, they wrote a book together called Redesigning Society. So shell when when rust can no longer travel, his back was getting bad as his and as he just his body was wearing out. His mind was not wearing out. So when he when he can no longer travel, then I would invite shell roving out to do an annual lecture and speak at the end to inform and the last time shell came out, he I wanted to introduce him to the president of Rocketdyne, so the two of us went over to his office and a couple of things came up in that one hour

conversation and afterwards, Shell says he said, you mentioned red pen and blue pen [00:31:00] companies to the president.

I said, yeah, he says, he says, you mentioned them twice. I said, yeah, he says, why were you using that language with him? Well, when a topic, an issue came up with the president that he was frustrated by. And, and I said, you mean that one? He said, yeah, he was frustrated, clearly frustrated. So, so why did you say that was a red pen company issue?

I said, that was my way of saying it's not the person he should be upset with. It's the system. Oh, wow. Yeah. Right. That it wasn't, it was like, there was someone being selfish or someone fudging the numbers, whatever it was that he brought up. I, I said, I said, that's a classic red pen company issue. So I brought it up twice and he said, so what are we trying to do?

I said, I was, I was trying to say to him, it's not the individual, it's the system. And then Russ [00:32:00] says, or Shell says, so do you and Tim Higgins, the others, do you, do you talk this way amongst you? I said, we don't have to, I said in the beginning, we use those words. But then once we understood each other, we didn't have to keep using those words.

And which was also pretty neat. And in the beginning, we used it as a to create the shared mental model, then we, we knew what we we knew so well, what we were talking about, we didn't have to use those words. We know that there's no such thing as a red pen company, there's no such thing as a blue pen company, it's just a, as, as Many have said different ways.

All models are good. Some, all models are wrong. Some models are useful. It's, it's a very useful model to create a frame for a contrast. Now, relative to the, to the me and we, which you saw on the Deming, on my bio page for the Deming Institute, that, that came, [00:33:00] that came later. We talk about

John Willis:

Bill Bellows: discussion. Well, what I talk about there is. Well, I mean, let me throw out a third one, because that one people watch on the video, but the one that's not, I don't think, anywhere online yet in a recording is and, and it's one that if I'm given, if I'm given a short amount of time, because the red pen, blue pen takes, you know, That could take 15, 20 minutes.

me versus we companies.

I think that's fascinating. And also, you know, it fits really well into this

The me and we to do it justice is a half hour to get into the nuances of how did you do on the exam versus how did we get to on the exam. And again, I would just encourage people to go, go watch that video. You can give them the link the fastest 1. I think is in is this belief of the of the straw that broke the Campbell's back and the, the, the real life.

And Anecdote leading to why me [00:34:00] why all straw last straw is I was for many years traveling every Every week all over the united states going to boeing sites doing seminars. On a regular basis I was going to alabama once a month for two years of going to st Louis once a month for two years seattle all the time and one time coming back I was sitting in the coach

really nice, I'm guessing they were blue shirts, right? Yeah. Well, they had a really nice selection of shirts, you know, button down shirts and dress shirts and all this stuff. And so I had one on and he says, Oh, you work for buying. I said, yeah, I says I work for this airline. We buy airplanes, blah, blah, blah.

We exchange business cards. And my business card said something about either in thinking network or enterprise think something thinking. I said, what do you do? Yeah. So I [00:35:00] do seminars within Boeing, travel the country. So what are your seminars? Like I said, I asked people questions. He's well, what kind of question?

So I said what would it be like to be worked in an organization where everyone thought the last straw broke the camel's back? He immediately says, I wouldn't want to work there. And I said, why? He said, you'd have a culture of blame. I said, what else? He says, and so this is verbatim. What he said, I said, what else?

He says, if I was the last straw, all the other straws. But stand around watching thinking they had nothing to do with it. And I thought he nailed it. He's the last straw. The other straws are watching thinking I had nothing to do with it. So I said, what else? He said, if anyone made a mistake, you know, they would hide it.

What else? So all I did for literally for five minutes, I don't think the plans even off the ground yet. All I said, every time he answered was. He said, I said, what else? What else? What else? And after [00:36:00] five minutes, he names the

executive of a of a major european airline And I had a boeing shirt on because

next to an

the place I was visiting they had You People work, you know, Boeing shirts, you

know, Hawaiian shirts.

And they had a

airline. He says, I worked and it's a big Europe. Everybody would know the name.

And he says, that's how we operate. I said, that's how most companies operate. So what is neat about that is the belief that when you sign on the chair at your grandmother's house and it broke, we would each believe that we broke the chair. We would not think about the You know, the fact that the chair is sitting there on the corner for 10 years and all of our aunts and uncles and cousins are sat in it, and it breaks while we sit on it, we would think, Oh my God, I broke the chair.

And so it's, it's something I've discussed with, with Kevin Cahill is that that mindset that I, that I broke it. And it's like 15 people trying to, trying to take the, you know, the, the jar lid off, and then they give it to you and you're like, Oh, this is easy. It's like, Oh, John opened it. No, all the others contributed.

But anyway, what's neat is there is cultures [00:37:00] have different metaphors for this last straw, you know, if not for the nail, if not for, if not this, this, you know, you look in sports, it's the, you know, John Willis is up. He's gonna, you know, you know, bottom of the ninth bases loaded and his winning hit, he won the game.

Well, what about everything else that happened right? We forget everything else. So that's, so I use that. opening for this last straw. Then I say, you've recently visited two organizations. One believes in the last straw. One believes in all the straws. And what's cool is you get the same four quadrants.

What's in those quadrants is the same. And what's neat about that is, I no longer have to You no longer have to wonder is snap fit a good thing or a bad thing. You're just thinking. Imagine an environment which narrows focusedly focuses on one thing versus all. So I think that's a what I like about that [00:38:00] is.

I think most people can relate to all versus last. The trouble with the red pen, blue pen, part of the trouble is some people will say that sounds like manufacturing and we're in health care. So depending on the audience, though, I mean, depending on the audience, if it's a manufacturing audience, they will love it.

If it's not manufacturing. Then I may think in terms of all straw last straw. And if more time exists, I would explain it in terms of me and we. But what's neat is no matter which starting point I take, if I cover the headaches, you wouldn't know which starting point I used. You wouldn't know. And then there are others.

I've come up with a couple others. Those are the three primary ones. Yeah, you know, I think I've come up with a couple others. In a pinch, I just need something. I just assess the audience and I say, I don't think red and blue is going to work. I don't that's not relative. I don't think these people want to hear about all straw last straw.

So I will [00:39:00] size up what's going on and come up with a contrast. Yeah, I think and they will jump on it. And what's in the quadrants is identical. Yeah, it'd be interesting is to come up with a, you know, what's the contrast that relates to this audience? Right? Right.

John Willis: No, I think that was just thinking the same.

I think me and we, we, me works because we, we talk a lot about, you know, us versus them. You know, there's all of that. And then, you know, we, we have, you know, I, I've sort of sent some, you know you know, in a perfect world, I'd love to get you on a call with Sydney Decker, you know, because he's, you know, he, he, you know, he sends me it's, it's not exactly the same, but like in aviation, it's pilot era, right?

Like that always pilot air, like, you know, if we can even go, maybe we'll have some time to talk a little bit about Boeing, but like, all of them have 737 really came down to sort of a, you know, Pilot.

Bill Bellows: No, I would love, exactly. No, but anyway, when I find invaluable [00:40:00] about, I call it a trip report, is to, what I find is, it scales really well.

Again, I've done it with several hundred people and

rarely does some, now there might be situations where someone's confused. Okay, so to get around to lessen the confusion, what I would do, again, with our audience, and you've One is you found on the into and thinking network and an explanation of the trip report. I've, I'll send you after this, a lean management journal article, which goes into more depth.

It's also a red pen, blue pen, but it provides a little bit more depth. And the article is entitled vision therapy. Okay. But another thing, a couple of things for people to do, if they, you know, for those wanting to try this as one is when people come, When you ask them what they see in each quadrant, one I would say, and this is what a great [00:41:00] facilitator does, is you write down exactly what they said.

You don't, you don't, you don't change it. You write exactly what they said. That's one thing. What's the other part I was going to make?

John Willis: Well, I find that so, you know, I've done a fair amount of value stream mapping and software delivery. And, and one of the things you learn really quick is don't stop anybody from talking either. Don't like, let it just flow. Like, write down everything they say. Don't say, well, did you mean this? But don't even like interrupt.

Right? That sort of destroys the cadence of the flow. You know, you get somebody talking about the truth. It's just magical.

Bill Bellows: Right. The other thing is before giving them five minutes to fill out each quadrant, what I would do is ask for an example. What's one thing I would see walking around a blue pen company in the physical environment?

What's one thing that comes to mind? And have someone say neat or clean or [00:42:00] Open, you know, or well lit. Boom. Okay, go to Red Pen. What's one thing? Closed doors. Okay, people in a Red Pen company, heads down. People in a Blue Pen company, smiling. So I would go, what I would encourage facilitators to do is go to each quadrant and have someone offer an example and just see if that doesn't help.

And then, and then let them go. And then walk around. What I do is I walk around the room. I, you know, people are individually writing things down. I might say to them, what's a conversation like in that environment? What's the conversation like over here? What, what are survival skills of both organizations is is really cool.

They have great examples in both.

John Willis: I think one of the things I was watching your video, even the simplistic you talked about Creative Inc. or the book, right? [00:43:00] And the tables, do they have round tables? Do they have rectangles? Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Bill Bellows: And that's, I'm glad you brought that up. But yeah, even if you say, this is also so cool.

That was, You walk into a conference room at a red pen company. Yes. Tell me, what does it look like? Is there a table? Yes. What's the shape of the table? Rectangular. Every single time. Rectangular. Go to a blue pen company. What is

the shape of the table? Either square or round. And then I explained to them the, the anecdote from, I think it was Ed, Ed mall, right?

Ed Catmull was the CEO of, of No, the the Pixar, Pixar, Pixar. Okay. Yeah. And, and, and the etiquette in his book innovation or something. Anyways, it's a book, Ed Catmull, C A T M U L L wrote about the early days of, of Pixar. And he [00:44:00] says there was a rectangular table in a conference room there, which he. Eventually realized was in the way of their ability to collaborate, and he realized it after 14 years when one day that room was not available.

They went to another room, whether they're a round table or a square table in the dynamics changed dramatically, and there were two things. He attributed it to 1 was the shape of the table and 2 is the use of name tents and by getting rid of both of them, he said. Productivity, communication, conversations improved dramatically.

And the other point he puts in there is that the long rectangular table was gifted to Pixar by Steve Jobs and a designer, furniture designer, that he really admired. But it's just so fascinating. The reason I use it is to show It's just an example of the types of things that get in the way.

John Willis: You can, you can easily see this.
So the, the, the [00:45:00] executive or the person who's controlling the

meeting, sitting at the head of the table, the rectangle table,

Bill Bellows: right? And to that end, let's go back to Ed Schein you mentioned and about a, I met Ed Schein. He used to do 1 week long seminars at a place called the Cape Cod Institute, which still exists.

I believe it was started by. I think some people at Albert Einstein Medical School in New York City, some, some medical school in New York City created a summer program for like certificates and things like that, week long things that are, you know, psychiatry, psychology, a lot of social science stuff. And for whatever reason, they held these at a regional high school in the middle of Cape Cod.

So Cape Cod from tip to tip might be a two hour drive. So about one hour out is this high school. Somebody turned me on to, and I went the first time to take a one week session with Meg [00:46:00] Wheatley and it's Monday through Friday, nine until noon. And, you know, every week there might be four or five sessions.

It could be you know, difficult adolescence or, I mean, you know, psychology, psychiatry kinds of things. And then somehow they got in. Management theory kinds of things. And Ed Schein did one every year. Meg Wheatley did one every year. I was hoping to get Russ Acoff up there. It didn't quite work. And so Schein was fascinating to me.

It's probably that he and Meg Wheatley both had several hundred people in the room. Anyway what Schein talks about, and I didn't tie this together until a couple of years ago, he talks about the physical manifestations you see in organizations. And he has a I forget what, there's a word for it, but it is, it is the top.

It is the, what are the physical aspects of the organization? And coincidentally, that's what I was looking at. It wasn't inspired by shine. It was just, what does it [00:47:00] look like? What are the people like, but then what shine talks about is we have the physical manifestations. And again, he has the word that I'm missing right now, but then he says those come from.

A set of beliefs and those come from a set of values and I said, yes. So, so, so the idea is for our listeners is, does it mean a blue pen company can't have a rectangular table? No, because the table's not because you don't have the, if you've got blue pen company values, then you don't have to worry about a red pen company.

If that makes any sense is so the so the issue is, in fact I was doing a, a several day program over it outside of Heathrow. I met a, I was invited to spend 3 days with a pediatrician from Kazakhstan who was inspired by dumbing is doing graduate work in management at Moscow State University. His [00:48:00] professor Moscow State was mentored by Paul Hollingworth.

who is the 2024 recipient of the Deming medal. And I've known Paul since 2000 or so. And Paul was the mentor of the Moscow state professor of this graduate class in quality management. And so the pediatrician wanted to go to London and meet the professor's mentor. And so I was going over in that same timeframe and Paul called him up and says, Hey I hear you're coming over.

Yes. And so I came over a few days early. And we met at this place near in the vicinity of Heathrow. And so one on one over three days for 20 some hours, I had a conversation with a pediatrician and through a, through a translator who was the professor at Moscow state. So I had asked, I would provide explanations and go [00:49:00] back and forth, back and forth.

And so at the end of these three days, I turned to the translator and said Ask. Ask him, what is the fastest way for a red pen company to become a blue pen company? Have you heard, have you heard this? No, no, no, no. So I said, so I said to them, so what's the fastest way for a red pen company to become a blue pen company?

So he translates it to Russian and he translates back to English. And he says, what? So that's spray paint.

And he laughed, but what was neat is I did the trip report that day. Through the translator to a pediatrician from Kazakhstan one on one, and I've got a photo of what's what's in those four cells is what shows up everywhere. Because I've had people say, well, our company, Oh, our logo is red. I wish it was blue.

Yeah. Well, I think not the color of the logo. That's what I was

John Willis: thinking of going back to like, what's wrong with most consultants. I'm sure in every [00:50:00] industry, but certainly my industry is, you know, they would walk in and say, you know, get rid of that rectangle table, you know, say what they would say, you know, you've got a rectangular table, get

Bill Bellows: rid of it. Exactly.

John Willis: Exactly. Instead of like, you know, because you could have that sort of generative culture or, or blue pen culture or, you know, many straw culture with, like you said earlier, a rectangular table. It's like, it's all of the things. It's the system, right? It's, it's the,

Bill Bellows: the Well, the, what I would also say is and I've talked about this on the Deming Institute podcast with Andrew Stotts, is Deming, we both know, talked a lot about transformation.

Now, many people use that word, but they don't use it the same way Dr. Deming meant. And so the question is, do we need a new word? And at first I thought maybe we need a new word, but I thought there's so many words that red and blue pen companies use differently. You know, what is quality? What is teamwork?[00:51:00]

You know, ethics issues are night and day different. Transcribed And so there's so many words that they use differently, you just have to be in tune that the words have different meanings in the two environments. I mean, and then, okay, so what I wanted to get to based on what you just said is, so Dr.

Demme talked about transformation, transformation, the individual transformed, And I mentioned a recent podcast. I don't believe there's an individual transformed. I think there's transformed implies done the individual once it's like transform. I would say the individual as their transformation, once their transformation begins, but doesn't end, it just goes on and on and on.

But I, I rocket on what we're trying to do is differentiate what we thought Deming was implying by transformation, seeing the world differently, asking different sets of questions. You know, no longer looking at two data points being different and imply all things are getting better. You're starting to think about common [00:52:00] causes and special causes and theories and all those aspects.

And then what we want to do is how do we differentiate that from the physical stuff? And we said, well, moving the chairs around, changing the size of the department, renaming, removing the number, changing the number of steps, painting red, blue, things like that. Yeah. Change the shape of the table. The language we said we started using is that is reforming.

That's a that's a physical change and nothing's anything wrong with a physical change. A physical change could John be you and I sitting closer together or your department and quality my department engineering moving closer together. Well, in a red pen company, What you can still hear is the handoff.

When someone hands off, this part is good, thank you. And associated with that handoff is, is a handwashing. So what you have is a physical handoff associated with a mental [00:53:00] handoff. Then I would say in a blue pen company, there has to be a physical handoff. But when you come back and say that I can't quite get this to fit, you know, you may be dependent on where it is within spec.

Maybe it's on the high side. Can we make some changes? In a blue pen company, John, I welcome that conversation and a blue pen company. You come back to me and say, you know, last week this, and now I, you know, is this worth a snap fit kind of thing? We start to play. So in a blue pen company, I hand off physically to you, but neither one of us hand off mentally.

Whereas in a red pen company. The physical stuff we physically hand off and we mentally hand off. So there is no

John Willis: It's funny you know, there's a character one of my best friends created in in the devops movement And we call it the wall of confusion. So it was one of the earliest Of the idea. Like for years, we all lived in this world where software developers would code their [00:54:00] development and whatever, and literally sort of throw it over this brick wall to operations and operations would, you know, try to catch it and they'd be like, Hey, you know, yelling back over the wall.

You didn't do it right. No, I did. You know, and, and like, you know, one of the things we tried to do is, is you talk about how do we sort of. Destroy that wall of confusion that that wall was like a barrier between development and operations. That was just there institutionally,

Bill Bellows: right? Well, as soon as you, as soon as you create requirements and and give each component, each team a set of requirements, they have to meet and these are multidimensional.

You know, the weight has to be between here and here. This, you know, the cost between here and here. And as soon as all those requirements are met, They are done and they then step back without an appreciation of how you meet requirements influences how well these things come [00:55:00] together, but they don't, they're not focused on integration.

They're focusing on their part in isolation.