BOB vs World

Sometimes the easiest way to explain a concept to your staff is with a simple story.  The story of Broken Glass is how I brought the hidden factory to life for my staff.  This story helped them to focus in on fixing problems once and for all.

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Episode Transcript

Hi and welcome to Episode Five. Bob versus broken glass. In the last episode we talked about the hidden factory, and it’s such an important concept that I wanted to take the time to give you a real world example of what the hidden factory looks like.

Many times these concepts are difficult to explain or convey to your staff so, I find that having a metaphor or a good story to go around it really helps to make it come to life for your employees and for your managers. That’s what we’re doing.

I want to share with you a story about how I brought the hidden factory to life for the folks that were working for me. And just to go back and give a quick reminder, the hidden factory is what happens when we have a process, and along the way, we create internal defects, on a partially completed item of work. Our staff has to rework that, but it’s not part of the standard process and it’s not something that we that we talk about.

This this work that gets generated because of the defects to make sure that we can pass the item down the line to the next person is really where the waste comes in. That’s why they call it a hidden factory because it’s hidden, no one sees it, no one talks about it, no one acknowledges it.

So, because it’s such an important concept. I brought this to life, to my managers. The way that I would explain this is, I would have them envision a factory, an assembly line in which we were creating glass vases. You know these fancy bases that you get when you order up a bunch of flowers. I would have them imagine these, these glass vases going down the factory down the assembly line. Somewhere in the belt that was driving the assembly line, there was a hole. So every so often, we would have a glass vase that would fall through the hole and smash on the floor, resulting in broken glass.

The natural inclination for most people would be is that when something falls on the floor and smashes, we would get out a broom, and we would sweep up that broken glass. Then we would move on and we would do what we were doing. Then five minutes later 10 minutes later, smash. Another vase on the floor, more broken glass. Get out the room we sweep it up. And this goes on perpetually. This goes on forever. We are constantly sweeping up, broken glass.

That is the metaphor that I would use to explain the hidden factory. Now I didn’t use the term hidden factory with with my guys. They didn’t need to know that concept, but what they needed to, to realize was that the way we deal with these problems, the way we deal with the hole in the belt is not with a broom.

What we need to be doing is we need to be looking for the root causes. Why are we getting these defects in the first place. Why is it that the vases, are falling off of the assembly line in the first place. Every time someone would be trying to fix a symptom, rather than addressing the root cause, I would say, are we sweeping up broken glass here, and they would get it.

What would happen is it changes the mentality, people start to understand that the important thing here is not to sweep up the broken glass. The important thing here is to fix the root cause of the problem. So that we can fix it once, and we can fix it for all. I’ll say that again because it’s important. We want to fix it once and for all.

In this episode we will be discussing The Hidden Factory.  It sounds like a title of a James Bond thriller.  In a way, The Hidden Factory is a bit of a double life.  There is a whole world of activity going on in your business that you and the rest of the management team don’t know about.  In fact The Hidden Factory is probably costing you a lot of money in lost productivity.

In this episode we will be discussing Average.  Average is one of those concepts that is so familiar to us that we have forgotten what it really means.  Believing in Average can be killing your productivity and costing you a ton of money.  That’s why BOB attacks average at every opportunity.

Vampires survive by feeding on the life force of their victims.  The life force in your business is profit.  Without it you can’t survive for very long.  There are eight specific types of what I am calling profit vampires that can attack your business.  While seven of these vampires are caused by your staff, number eight is specifically down to management.

It is an enduring mystery that has stumped many in the business world for a long time.  In this episode I finally reveal the secret identify of our everyday super-hero BOB.  You will learn a bit about BOB’s work, where BOB hangs out, and what truly makes BOB tick! BOB’s true identity just may surprise you, so make sure you stick around for the entire episode.

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Episode Transcript

This is BOB versus world. Every week we take a deep dive into the business world through the eyes of BOB, the best of the best. Together, we’ll explore the ways that you can make every employee your best employee. And in doing so, you’ll save a ton of money. You’ll be able to grow your business and you’ll make your customers happy. So sit back and enjoy. This is BOB vs. World. 

Hi, and welcome to BOB vs World, episode number one. I’m your host, Josh Burdett. In this episode, I’m going to introduce you to BOB. You’ll learn a bit about what BOB does. BOB’s work where BOB hangs out, and a little bit about what truly makes BOB tick. 

BOB’s true identity might be a little bit of a surprise to you, so make sure you stick around for the entire episode, and learn more about BOB. 

Let me share with you a list of names. Some of these names you’ll heard of, and some you probably haven’t. Eric Clapton, Michael Jordan, Martina Navratilova, Sue from accounting. Mark Zuckerberg, Ilan Musk, Warren Buffett, The Beatles, Anthony from support. Billie Jean King, Michael Schumacher Himanshu from product development, Dale Earnhardt, and Tiger Woods. 

Now for those names that you haven’t heard of, let me tell you a little bit about them, Sue from accounting, she’s never made an error in closing the quarterly books for the company. Anthony from support. He solves 65 customer issues a day when everybody else is lucky to close 50. Himanshu from product development, he completes at least two feature requests a week with the lowest bug rate of the entire team. 

So what have all of these names from diverse places, diverse backgrounds, to a wide range of financial success? What do they all have in common? Well, they’re all BOB, BOB means the best of the best, they are absolutely the top of what they do. Now that can be in an industry, it can be in a sport. But more importantly for you, it can be in a department. 

So BOB is everywhere in your company, every department has a BOB, every department has someone who is the best of the best. And the important thing to realize about BOB, is it’s not subjective. 

Now we can talk about who’s the best guitar player ever, we can talk about Eric Clapton, we can get into the Jimmy Page, you know, we can get into Eddie Van Halen, those are all very subjective. People will argue left and right, my guys the best your guys the best. But at the end of the day, the best of the best is defined by the metrics that are important in your company. 

So typically, we find that those are focused around productivity, we find that they’re focused around quality. And that means that the people who do the best work are those that do the most work with the least mistakes. And BOB has something special going, BOB knows how to get things done. And BOB knows how to do things that other people don’t know how to do. 

It’s not necessarily a matter of training. It’s not a matter of expertise. It’s a matter of having found a specific way to do things. And unfortunately, in many of your companies, BOB doesn’t get celebrated the way they should.

In this episode I’ll introduce you to BOB.  You will learn a bit about Bob’s work, where BOB hangs out, and what truly makes BOB tick! Bob’s true identity just may surprise you, so make sure you stick around for the entire episode.