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On the 5th Calabosession between Felipe and Jesse there are a whole bunch more war stories, interstingly there are new stories every single Calabosession. In this conversation they touch on the "Big Room" concept, trade partners being in business to make money just like General Contractors and they finally show some love to the Men and Women that are adopting and applying The Last Planner System & Lean methodoligies.
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I didn't sleep too good. Last night after reading chapter five, it evoked , some traumatic memories. Oh. With regard to PUll plans. So this is really a therapy session for me. What do you think about that?
Felipe:I think I like that. I'm ready to have you sit back on your couch, put your head at ease, Jesse. We're going to dive deep and to see where's all the pain.
Jesse:Where's it coming from? What's going on L and M family and fellow Lean . Maniacs. Welcome back to collabo session. Number five. If this happens to be the very first collabo session that you happened upon, or the first time you've ever heard anything about the last planner system, check out the previous collabo sessions and get your hands on The Lean Builder book, amazing resource to start your learn. And if you're in the construction space, and if you're just curious and want to learn some extra stuff, You know, some of the old G L and M family members have asked, like, just, why are you, why all of a sudden you have this lean stuff in there. And how does it align with the purpose of the learnings and missteps podcast, which is to enhance the image of careers in the trades. And the answer is this. I am a plumber by trade. I've spent many years out there in the field. I still work in the construction industry. And I think by sharing the insights and the experience I have around the last planner system would help provide a different perspective and open the minds of other folks out there, particularly in the construction space, out on the job sites. There's a natural bias, I think between general contractors and trade partners. My intent is that they would hear this and get a glimpse. How the trade partners actually do care and have deeper thoughts about the situation. And this would open their mind to form deeper connections with trade partners out there. That's my hope. And I can use y'all's help making that happen. So all to the conversation, Felipe and I are talking about pull planning because that's the subject matter of chapter five. And again, if Paul planning's a new word for you or a new concept, it's really about collaborative planning and. If you catch us on YouTube right around the 67 minute mark Phillipa shares a beautiful visual on a virtual whiteboard app that depicts what a pull plan looks like. So if you're new to this and learning, you might want to go there and check it out. Just a little plug for the YouTube channel. We also talk about getting clear on targets and being transparent about what those targets are and what the finish line actually is. No fake schedules. And we reveal a cheat code for securing commitments. Oh my goodness. The scariest word in the dictionary commitments, you may want to take notes for that. It may serve you well. And of course, we got to give a shout out to our Patreon contributors. Ms. just signed up. She now has the LNM backstage pass. I'm looking forward to hear her thoughts on what she's getting from that. And if you're interested, sign up at Patreon.com/LearningsandMissteps will appreciate the support. Now on to the show.
Felipe:I'm here to hype all of you listeners out there that are just getting excited about getting out there and cracking a book open just to put it away and get some experiments going on your job sites. Ladies and gentlemen, love to welcome my guest. My friend, who's welcoming me as his guest, his friend, the host of theLearnings and Missteps podcast. JesseHernandez
Jesse:yeah, baby. What's going on Felipe and to the learning and missteps family. I'd love to welcome Mr. Felipe Engineer Manriquez Host of the EBFC show.
Felipe:Pleasure to be here, Jesse. Yeah,
Jesse:man. Likewise. I was thinking this morning. I didn't sleep too good. Last night after reading chapter five, it evoked , some traumatic memories. Oh. With regard to PUll plans. So this is really a therapy session for me. What do you think about that?
Felipe:I think I like that. I'm ready to have you sit back on your couch, put your head at ease, Jesse. We're going to dive deep and to see where's all the pain.
Jesse:Where's it coming from?
Felipe:Yeah. Today we're talking about chapter five of theTHe Lean Builder this was an interesting chapter. I rechecked it out myself last night. It was the last thing I heard before I went to bed and I was tossing and turning all night. What part of this did you first get lit up on? Should we, should we start slow? You want to start with the good stuff first? Or? Ah, dude,
Jesse:you know me, I just want to go, let's just go.
Felipe:Yeah. Tell me what page you're on. I know you're not on the first part. You're probably like in the late eighties.
Jesse:Yeah. Oh yeah I mean 85, but they just had the big safety lodge celebrating 50,000 hours. Incident free work, which is phenomenal.
Felipe:You got the CEO of the hospital doing a good thing, talking about when the hospital's going to open up and what it's going to mean for the community. And then right there, the cat comes out of the bag claws out. People, people are getting cut up from that cat.
Jesse:And so the whole time the whole team has been under the impression that end date is
Felipe:may. Yeah. Spoiler alert. Superintendent has been telling people the end date is yep.
Jesse:And the client, you know, in their awesome motivating speech says we can't wait until ribbon cutting it. June dumped on top.
Felipe:Oh man, that landed. That landed so hard. Yup.
Jesse:Yup. And like, that's, this is not fiction . Well, I mean, the book, he's a fictional story, but that situation I'm going to say has probably been 98% of my experience with the way we do the bait and switch. Here's the schedule. Oh. And I'm going to show them this other schedule. And so the one specific thing like that, it just it made me think of sandbagging, And again, I'm not judging because I am the ultimate sandbagger I used to subscribe to the theory of under promise and over deliver. And I think a lot of people out there still leverage that thinking. But it's not a good thing. Why don't I just promise what I can deliver and then deliver.
Felipe:Well here let's start the therapy session off now. So when Sam admits that, what he did is two schedules. He instantly justifies it as well. I've been doing this ever since that time that I didn't do it. And I got burned when we delivered late. So he's avoiding that bad feeling of disappointing somebody else. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, working in construction, disappointment is just part of the game. It's a complex thing. When you have hundreds and sometimes projects are thousands of people working together, somebody is going to be disappointed every time.
Chapter 5-Final:Yeah.
Jesse:You can't make everybody
Felipe:happy. You cannot. And if you're the superintendent or the trade partner, running crew, Like Jesse said, he's learned with time, the hard way, the Jesse way learning the hard way. It seems like it's the Jessie way. He's learned not to worry about that disappointment, but more, be honest with what you can do and what's going on so that when problems come up, you can raise it up to the team and the team can help you solve the problems. Absolutely. But our young, our young Sam here doesn't know that yet.
Jesse:Not at all. He's learning,
Felipe:right. ID 98% of your experiences. Jesse, it's been a hundred percent of my experiences. Really. I've seen teams like it's 2021, and I still hear people that are going to dopull planning and let's just call it pull planning. That's what they want to do. Right. They're not trying to do last planner system production controls. Nope. They want to just do some pull plan. Because things aren't going well. And I always know that it's there in your 98% with the two schedules when they say, and by the way, we don't want to have the client here yet. We want to get our house in order first. And that that's a good intention. However, on those jobs that are reaching for pool planning, your client is in that stream. Your owner's rep is in that stream, your design team and their consultants are in that stream. I don't know of a construction project out there, Jesse, where the client and the design partners wouldn't help in the pool plan in a positive way.
Jesse:Well said everybody that's involved with the project should all be involved with the project. It might sound redundant, but we treat it as. It like they're gone, but okay. We don't need you yet. We don't need you anymore. Like yeah. We, it takes everybody to get this damn thing done. Our work is exposed to so many variances, so many things that are just gonna destroy flow, but sandbagging, like this tool schedule methodology is, is like the absolute worst because when it comes out, it completely demolishes trust. And the book does a good job of, of displaying that.
Felipe:Yeah. I thought they did. They set it up. Everybody's feeling really good. They're all working hard collaboration level is the highest it's ever been. And then they let all the air out of the balloon man way they're
Jesse:clicking. Right. They're clicking and then Google whom
Felipe:flat tires.
Jesse:Dan Sam starts going backward because on the very next page, he, his statement is your schedule is whatever I tell you. And that made the hair on the back of my neck stent stand up because I've heard that so many times your schedule is I like, I just give me a schedule. Who's going to be where what's our targets, your schedules, whatever I tell you, it is, you know, in my younger days, like, man, this guy's just a jerk. So I would take his schedule and I would put him in the middle of the floor and sprinkle some water on it and say, okay, let's see what it's doing now. You know, it's not doing anything for us. Why do you keep emailing it to us?
Felipe:Oh my God. That's so that's so awesome.
Jesse:That's
Felipe:so aggressive. I love that
Jesse:trade partners out there. Don't do that. That's not cool.
Felipe:Yeah, just you already did it come up of another way to do that.
Jesse:There's a better way to communicate disappointment with the schedule. But you know, I also empathize with, with Sam on that situation, because now working on the GC side of the business, you know, we're learning this new way of approaching work through collaborative planning, tapping into the expertise of the last planner, using all of these different tools. It's all new. Like it's not, it's not our default mode yet. Nope.
Felipe:So it's even, I dare say Jessie it's even fringe. Oh,
Jesse:oh, I like that. Yes. It's even fringe and scrum is like even further fringy
Felipe:oh my God. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesse threw down the scrum. That's been like a recurring theme of my recent podcast. Jesse. I asked people like, and if you, those of you waiting to see one fleet, they would mention scrum. Jesse took care of it for us this time, whatever we're at right
Jesse:The team, I was just venting about like real life, real time. They're having a problem. And I'm put I intend to do is approach the team and better understand the problem. Cause I don't know enough about it yet, but I'm better understand the problem, better understand where they're at. Based on what I know right now, I think scrum scrumming their current situation of the coordination of that owner. Furnished contractor installed stuff is probably going to provide them the most value because they need to be agile. They need to be quick and nimble and respond. And it's going to be very short cycle planning. And you know, this really smart guy really bad introduced me to Cisco. I mean, I'm like, oh my God, like, yeah, this is great. They're in the middle of it. So trying to pull it, it's going to be painful. We need to have a system that we can see the backlog what's in play. What comes up, what gets delivered. Okay. Let's plan an attack that and just run through those sprints man.
Felipe:No, it's really lightweight. I love it. Jesse froze you they're listening. He tried to jump over saying Felipe. So just to be clear, he's talking about this Felipe because Jesse and I both know, we both know another Felipe, but not him. Me.
Jesse:No. We're talking about this Felipe that right here, who introduced me to scrum the first time and it was so intriguing. And I tested it in my personal life and I said, okay, yeah, I got to do something. I think we can do something with this. So then I went and got my my certification and, and have used it mostly personally, but I see a good opportunity right now to go out there and and help some teams minimize their.
Felipe:I love that. And he's being so humble. Ladies and gentlemen, he uses it personally. He has a media podcast and network of friends, and he's also his running and gunning inside of his GC organization across his cross, beyond the boundaries. He's crossed state lines, multiple times. National
Jesse:baby watch out is national. So don't let the law no, because it becomes a federal offense at that point. Yeah.
Felipe:But Pull planning here, you know, Sam goes crashes way down and the trade partner response was very well written in the book. Like you said, it just iced over the next meeting the room. I think I would have even believed that people would have shown up. Oh
Jesse:yeah. Heck no. Hmm.
Felipe:Mm. having two schedules and if you're on a project team if you don't see. The schedule posted on the walls of the rooms where you meet your project probably has two schedules. I'm just going to call it out there right now. So if you're suspicious of, if your job has two schedules, you're probably right. It probably has two schedules and sometimes three schedules. The schedule for the client, the schedule for the GC management team and the schedule for the trades. See this book only talks about the two schedules, but I've seen projects with the three schedules and sometimes there's the schedule for the lawyers. If they're going to claim the fourth schedule,
Jesse:man, talk about extra processing
Felipe:and those schedules all get discussed. Like those, they all get discovered. So if you're on a, if you're a GC contractor listening to this, or you're a trade partner and there are multiple schedules in play, the lawyers are going to discover all of those. So you might as well just stop and have the one schedule.
Jesse:And it's difficult because the trust factor is extremely low. Right? I mean, I, I remember as the trade partner we had access to all the information we wanted about the project budgets, like everything. I of course would share it. And some of my peers back then would give me, like, why don't you share that information? Like, we should create a new code to put these hours in these monies in a different code. And I'm like, why would you do that? I didn't think you did it. It just, why would you do that? And the response was well, because if they see it, they're going to use it all. I was like, well, I mean, if our estimate is built off of industry standards they're kind of going to use it all in this. We do some significant improvements to the work. Like what are you talking about?
Felipe:They're going to be like, we've budgeted this much time, money, and resources to do the job, but we don't want people to actually use it all to do it. Right. Like that's not the way to make
Jesse:money. You're absolutely right. They need to be transparent and let's see what the hell were. You know, when people have a clear target that they trust, everybody wants to beat the target. Like it's just a natural thing so I know you've been running. You know, when I go run, if I'm running on a flat ground or on a decline, I'm just kind of running. But all of a sudden, when I hit a hill, I don't do it on purpose. It's just what happens. My pace per mile goes. And that's just a natural phenomena of me. And I think a lot of runners will we, when we hit that hill, we don't throttle back. We throttle up. And, and so how does that translate into this type of situation? When we see a challenge ahead of us, we put forth more effort, but the challenge has to be real, not pretend not fake and anyhow, creating the challenge, being clear about the challenge, being honest with everybody, people will come together and say, Hey, how the hell did we beat this? And that this chapter gets to that point, where all of us in this, okay. Let's my bad, it's repaired. I did some damage, please trust me. And they come together to overcome the situation.
Felipe:And I'm glad you mentioned my running Jessie, because there's a part of the trail that I run where the there's a, there's a little baby hill. It's not nothing crazy. And what I do is I turn around and run up that hill backward.
Jesse:Oh, Ooh. That's hard. Just
Felipe:really hard on the quads because Mike, you said, right. I want to challenge. I see that hill and I'm like, I see you ill. And I'm turning around on you putting my back to you. You don't even get my front facing steps, no respect for the Hills. Conquer that hill running up backwards and people driving by in their cars and look at me like, is he running backwards? Like they can't even tell, seeing some cars swerve a little bit. Yeah. What does he do? Don't worry. Drivers just keep driving, wondering myself. Like Jesse said, if I see something really flat, there's a, another flat, straight away where it's super flat. I'll sprint. Yeah, I'll sprint that just to close the gap, because just like you said, we want novelty. We want challenge nobody's in my head telling me sprint the flat conquer the hill, just like for you, it's just natural human. That's what we do. We just do it. We want to, we want to rise to the occasion and see like, what I, what can I do? Okay. This old band do still. Yeah. So Allen, I mean, Alan gets called in to, to acknowledge what's going on. And because Sam can't repair this on his own. Nope. He just doesn't, he's never been caught like this and he doesn't know how to get the path back I love that about the book Keyan and Joe. I love it. That you're showing superintendents. It's okay to call for help. My God, Jesse, in your training and experience, did anyone ever tell you that it's okay to, to get. Oh,
Jesse:dude that never ever, I mean, depends on what decade we're talking about. So maybe the last decade. Yes. Prior to that,
Felipe:no right. Help is a weakness. I can't even remember when I first started in the, in the late nineties all the way through the two thousands, the word help wasn't even a spoken in the trailer or in the site. Like I don't even remember the word help ever coming out.
Jesse:I'm pretty sure Felipe it's not just the construction thing, you know, because my frame of operation, the way I'm I moved through life was never asking for help. In my head I had accepted the thought that asking for help was a sign of weakness and that I had to have the answers and I just, just tough it out and that's okay. You know what I remember watching? It was a, that was a highlight on Jerry Rice. I used to play for the 49ers. Oh,
Felipe:I know Jerry Rice. Well, I was a huge fan of Jerry Rice. I made a lot of money on stuff that Jerry Rice did so love you, Jerry. Nice
Jesse:contributed to that college fund. And I remember like, it just cemented in my head, you know, I was younger and he talked about how hard he worked and nobody would catch up to him. Nobody would ever beat him because they cannot outwork him. And I think that's, you know, work ethic is, is absolutely critical. And so I subscribed to that thinking for long time. And what did that mean? That may not grinded all the time by myself and never asking for help, never tapping into resources, never starting my learning where somebody else. Had already ended, right? Like I was learning from the bottom. And you pointed it out. I love the hard lessons. That's why,
Felipe:right. That's your, that's your default still? Like, I see you struggling needlessly and I've often called you out on it and says, do you, do you have to go that way? Or can you, can we accelerate you a little bit? There's an
Jesse:easier way. I know, but it doesn't look as fun,
Felipe:but hair tell yourself this. Like when you're, cause you're not the only one Jesse that does this. Yeah. Even when you get to the next level, surprise, more problems are in store waiting for you. And the challenges just get harder as you go up, the challenges just get harder and harder. So the more you can do, the more you can handle that, go hand in hand, like you're going to have bigger problems when you get better. Like the problems that I have now. If I would've had those as a teenager, they would have killed me. Yeah. I could handle them as a kid, but now that I'm a grown man and I crossed that age where you stop caring so much about other people think about you. I have totally new problems now.
Jesse:Oh yeah. I got 99 problems in a PUll Plan aint one. Sam gets falls back, right. It goes back into his default mode you know, your schedules, whatever I say it is. And he goes on and he's talking to, to Alan and saying, Hey, so I'm planning on talking to the office and we're just going to let those trade partners know that they better fall in line, or we're not going to use them on the next. Oh,
Felipe:it's totally down. Right? Like doubling down on the badness.
Jesse:And again, flashback, there was a particular superintendent I worked with way back who we, I dunno why we just kept getting on the same job over and over. And he always complained. I'm going to call your office. I don't want you on the next job. Okay. I'm going to call your office. Okay. And it was like the fourth or fifth project. I'm like, Hey bro, you keep saying that, but we keep ending up together. Like your threats not working anymore. And we, maybe we should do something differently. Like we're always fighting this, this twice, something else. My point there is that threat. It's whatever, like what, yeah, I know what you're going to say. And I know the office is going to get all up in a tizzy and because of the, the standard way or the conventional way of approaching work, if you're going after bottom low bid, you're going to be stuck with me again, until you start until you start getting, you know, adjusting your practices to best value, go for best value. Maybe you won't get me again,
Felipe:which is not likely. It's 2021. I still see a ton of a little bit work out there. But to your point, it's a small world and you're going to cross paths again, with these people that you removed, you eliminated it's really, it's not you and him so much as it was the environment, that the way that they were procuring work pitted you against each other. Yes. And there's still, I hear, I just heard a story. I just heard her story yesterday, Jesse. Yes. And the S it was the superintendent has starting TAC planning on his job. He's already very proficient at last planner system, Pull planning and scrum, also a scrum master, a superintendent scrum master. Oh. He knows where he, he lives in my heart. Wow. And he said, and he says to me, he's like, I we're having some challenges with the schedule. And it seems so obvious because we have a lot of repetitive rooms that we should use attack plan. And I've done a little digging. I've done some reading. You've shared some great resources with me. I know exactly how to start. I just want to start. And so he he's like, I can't get our people to buy in. And I'll tell you something. One of the things, the other superintendent to him to the second there, this job is big enough that it's got a couple supers on it. He says, I'm working with the interior trade partners and they bought in in seconds. He's like in seconds they bought in on the takt plan. They can see where they are. They can see that they never demobilized. They can see the flow and we even have buffers inside to handle those little nuance things. Like when the suppliers don't deliver. Exactly. Perfect. So a plan with buffers that has good flow through all the interiors, the trade partners instantaneously, he said zero resistance. He goes back to the team and says, we worked on this and he didn't do this. Like in a minute it took, it took a couple, like he said, I think he said it took like two months of planning with them conversations, dialogue to build the plan out. It takes a picture of it and sends it to me. And it minced instantly hearted right. In my text message. Cause I just, I loved it and he calls me and he's like, I still can't get our people to buy in. And he said, the other superintendent told. Are you sure you want to let the subs tell you when they're going to do things G for people listening to the show, Jesse just smacked his self in the head with his hand. Just instant hand hit to the head. He's okay. He's okay. That's what that noise was. That was him smacking himself in the head. Ah, his answer back to him is like they bid the work. They know what their estimates are. They know what the durations are. He's like, can you do it? He said, can you hang dry wall? Can you install plumbing? He asked the superintendent. He's like, and he's. And the other guy's like, I'm just not sure that we want to let the subs dictate to us what the schedule is. He's like, they didn't dictate it. He's like we did it together. I mean, that's just the mental shift. So like the way that Sam's acting that. 9.5 out of 10 superintendent response. And I know we have some more enlightened superintendents out there today than we used to have. We were coming up, but there's still people. And this superintendent that's saying this stuff to my friend is not even 40 years old and crusty, he's a young 30 something year old superintendent that through his coming up from the field, he has that mindset. So the industry is still creating people with that mindset that it's us versus the trades. Yep. That's still prolifically happening in the industry.
Jesse:You know, oh man, here we go. He pull me back when, when I get too far. Go ahead. So I, two, two examples. You said a little while. Our behavior quite often. Well, I'm not gonna say often our behavior is shaped by our conditions. Yes. That's not to say that I don't have ownership or been in how I behave, but the conditions that we're in, we'll create a nice little recipe to elicit different types of behavior. Now I remember, man, I think I had just promoted from foreman to superintendent for the trade partner. And I'm like, Hey, like I need to figure out how to do this job. AGC associated general contractors was having like a superintendent training. So I signed up for it, not understanding that even though my title was a trade partner was superintendent. I was still scum to general contractor superintendents. Right? Like there was, there was. Hard line between what they were and what I was.
Felipe:Yeah. The question where you said, right. I was like, my GC side was like, yup. I smell scum. I smelled trade partners scum.
Jesse:And so I sat through the class cause I was, you know, it was exposing me to some of their real pains, some of their re the reality that they have to deal with, but every single class, maybe it was a bunch of different instructors. Every single instructor, the messaging was the main reason we have to do this is because trades don't know what the hell they're doing. Trades need to be held by the hand, it was reinforcing that thinking. Now after I, , learned to be more flexible and ask for help every now and then, even though I don't always take it, I'll ask for it now got to speak. I get to speak at local universities sometimes about last planner system, sometimes about other stuff, preferably Last Planner and Lean and even then they're young individuals that haven't even finished school yet. And that attitude of what do you mean we're going to do this? Like, they don't even know what the hell they're doing. Like how do you get trade partners? Well, they don't even use the word trade partners. Like I can't imagine a sob telling me what they're they don't know what they're going to do today as like, Hmm. I wonder.
Felipe:Yeah, whereas that starting like you're already at the college and the college kids are already saying that to you. We need to go, let's go down a level to the high school, high school teachers, high school teachers listening to this show, stop the nonsense here's a metaphor, Jesse. I had an, an old, older superintendent. Had been a superintendent for 20 years. I mean, he's, he was about to retire so long, long time in the field. And he used to say this metaphor and I didn't understand like how, what it was until now. They just jogged my memory. He'd say like, he he'd talk about the trade partners, like in a good way. He still said subcontractor. He never got to trade partner. It was always subcontractor. So he'd say like, if you're going to finish this project, he's like, you're only going to finish as fast as your slowest subcontractor. And sometimes you have to put them in the wheel barrel and push them across the finish line. And I thought, just thinking now, as you were talking, I was like, that's really not a good metaphor. Really what's happening is the trade partners are all running a race together with handoffs to each other that gets the job done. And sometimes the GC has ropes attached to the waist of the trade partners, dragging them to slow them down more so than them trying to run. Like we do things and put stuff in their way, that same superintendent that talked about that wheel barrel thing. I remember him making logistics decisions on by himself and wreaking havoc on the flow of the work and then getting mad at people. And they couldn't adapt to the changes of the whims of his mind that he would not tell people until after it had been decreed and been made. So, and he couldn't understand like why couldn't they just get it? Why couldn't it? It's like they don't read your mind. Right. And I see more often, you know how we put projects together. We do things that hinder people rather than enabled them to do their work. And, and everybody listening, subcontractors, trade partners, they are businesses. Businesses do not exist to lose money. So stop treating them like this other weird thing. Like it's not a business, they are trying to do something. And if they do it better, then they're more profitable than they can do more business. They can hire more people. They can serve more clients. It's a win win. They're not trying to make the GC look bad. The GC hired them.
Jesse:Hello? Yes. Hello.
Felipe:Even at a low bid environment.
Jesse:Yes. Let's sell it. The, the people out there, the superintendents, particularly out there that have made the shift because it is a beautiful shift. I mean, it takes a lot for them to try something else, try this new damn way and it, and practice and learn, right? Cause they're used to being experts or rather they're used to feeling like the expert. And when they go to learn this new thing, there's a, an enormous amount of vulnerability and exposure and discomfort that they're dealing with. And so those folks to all of you that have already done it, props, man, because it's not easy. And thank you because it's your momentum. That's going to get the rest of this industry closer to the fringe and it won't be the fringe anymore. Right. So we must celebrate them. And you know, I had a question you were talking about this takt plan. And the traits by an ed and they were like, yeah, yeah, dumb, dumb. Let's do that. How many of them ended up minimizing their crew size? Do you know?
Felipe:I didn't know. We didn't go into those details. Yeah. I'm going to go out there and they're planning this ahead of time. So there is for the interiors, they're still in concrete operations. So it's early. Yeah. They're way ahead. They're way ahead. It's a design build project. And so they have access to the trades and some of the estimators and PMs, and then the foreman that are going to be assigned to this job now. So they've taken advantage in their planning ahead of time, Jesse, and then, you know, the environment we're facing today in 2021 is when people listen to this, we're seeing surges in commodity prices. We're seeing shortages. We're seeing all kinds of problems. We're still facing issues with the pandemic and prices are adjusting up to deal with that uncertainty. And if your owners out there, you're going to pay, you're going to pay because if it's more expensive for us, you have to pay because we don't do it for free. Just like people that go to your buildings, don't go to your buildings for free. Either surprise. People have to get paid for what they do. Yeah.
Jesse:I will bet money that some of the trades were able to say, oh, if this is the flow, this is the tack. I don't need a six man crew to maintain that pace. Yeah.
Felipe:The things that we do and, and TAC planning is you do level the workflow because you often will get there's an imbalance of trades and we call it leveling the balance. And I'll even say in Japanese is called Hayden. But for those of you that don't know the Japanese, like I don't speak fluent Japanese. I know like five words, that's one of them, but you have to Intacct planning, you have to level the workload. Otherwise you get, if, just imagine you have three trades, like it's me, Jessie and you, the listener. And if all three of us are doing something and Jesse, the boss that he is, if he can do twice as much as me and you, the listener what's going to happen is Jessie's going to overproduce and have inventory. That's going to get in our way. Like if the listener is the second fastest and Felipe the slowest, if Jessie's, over-producing, it's going to slow me down even more than I am with what I can do. But if we, if we do something, we get Jesse to buy in on, instead of doing two times as much to do one time, as much not work so hard. And then when he's not working so hard, he can help me. Now we've leveled the flow . And the throughput of what the three of us are doing goes up exponentially. That's what people don't realize like in a takt plan, look, throughput, just outpaces. It's incredible. It goes through the roof, like just to put, in an example of the real issue, there was a, a project here in Sacramento about 10 years ago that used takt on an exterior wall replacement. There were changing metal panels to new metal panels for, for some reason, I don't, it wasn't mentioned why they were doing that, but the owner wanted to change the metal panels on the building of an existing building. They had a regular schedule that everyone was bought into the scaffold and everything. Unlike a 15 story building and the original critical path method schedule showed it taking about 12 ish months, they tried takt planning 11 times and they couldn't get it, but on the 12th time they got it and they finished that exterior. A metal panel replacement in less than five months. Nice. And everybody made money and the owner loved it. And I drive by the building when I'm on the highway here around town every now and then, and it's still gorgeous today. 10 years later, it's a Testament to the work and the planning when you're trying it for the first time and 10 years ago, it was like, unheard of, they were just trying to figure out like how to do it, what they were having issue with. And there's a paper on it. If you want to read the paper, send me an email and then I'll send you the paper. And they talk about what they had to do. The scaffolding was the slow party of that group. Where they really let it loose. Was, they reduced the amount of scaffolding they were doing to a smaller footprint, which is counterintuitive because you would think scaffold the whole thing and scaffolding. The whole thing is what was slowing it down and preventing it from going. The scaffolding company was like, Jessie, there, they're doing two times as much. And it was getting in the way of you, the listener and me Felipe being the slowest one. I'm not Ruby. Yeah. I'm the Herbie from the goal. Yep. To Elijah gold, rad. For those of you listening to know all the super lean nerds, get that one. Yes. If you know, you know, That's the kind of thing that could happen. So like this interiors takt plan that they made the schedule, like if you look at me on the screen, the schedule is like this long and then what the takt plan, they made it like this long. They cut it down substantially and it's way more reliable. And they're going to inspect as they go as well. What's the original plan. Doesn't even show inspections and sign-offs, it's just, it's hidden and it's other planets it's even more detailed, more detailed, more reliable, faster. And even if they don't hit it perfectly, it's still going to outperform the original plan, which was like this big batch thing. When he called me, he said, I'm calling just to complain. He's like, I don't really need anything. I just need you to listen. And I did. Yeah. We laughed about it. And he's like, okay. He's like, I'm energized again to go back in there and convince that superintendent. He's like, I'm going to get them. He's like, I'm playing a game. I'm going to get him bought in. He's probably just going to have to see it until he believes it. And I was like, that's, that's the fact
Jesse:resistance is futile.
Felipe:Yep. I think that's what Alan does to Sam in this chapter. Doesn't he make them see something, Jesse?
Jesse:I to mentioned a little while ago about our behavior, the conditions that we're in shape our behavior. And if we jump over to page 92 Alan starts talking to him or showing him, showing Sam the collaborative space where they're going to be doing this Pull plan. So the whole space, right? Oh my goodness. He won't like what the, what is, what is this? And again, the conditions of our environment impact our behavior. So he walked into a space that was entirely different, look, totally foreign. And as the story goes, he starts experience. Just totally different team dynamics. What do you do? Are you a fan of that? This big room, collaborative space ideas. Yeah.
Felipe:Hello. That's like a, the big room is a concept that was stolen from Toyota when they were developing the Prius car and chief engineer and engineers in my name. And I love it. Hello. The chief engineer said I don't have all the skills to invent battery technology that doesn't exist for this new car that we're going to develop. And he's like, I need to get these people in the same room with me so that we can collaborate at a higher level every day. It's not going to cut it. If we try to do it the way we typically do product development. And so bringing everybody into the big room to this collaborative space in this way and getting people inside the same four walls, even people that are not you're within your direct supervision line. It allowed them to achieve the goal. And ever since then, it's been adopted in product development all over the world. And in construction, it's been the big room concept it's been around in construction since the early two thousands or 19. I think it might've, it might even have been in the nineties actually. No, it wasn't the nineties. Yeah, it absolutely happened in the nineties in a very big way. And my new adopted state of California is where already went popular, not spreading all over the country. Like this book is definitely written from a Texas perspective. Jesse, the two authors born and raised in Texas. And here here's some Texas boys writing about a big room. That's just beautiful. Yeah. Good ideas spread. I am a hundred percent on board with the big room and the big room feels are totally different versus a traditional trailer. Like I know when I walk into a trailer construction trailer, construction office, you'd have. You know, rent it out office somewhere else. I can tell the difference between a big room mindset and just an every day construction job night and day. How about you? Can you feel it? Oh man.
Jesse:Absolutely. I walk into the space where you got color. I mean, just by looking at it, it's like, okay, we're doing, we're, we're prepped to do some really great stuff. You know, after deeper examination, like, okay, they are doing some really great stuff. And on the same note there's posers out there that have this space and have whiteboards it, but it's really all just ugly ass wallpaper because they're not using it. Ain't nobody talking to nobody everybody's hating on each other. And you know, after the one hour, hour and a half huddle, the trades are going to huddle together and say, Hey bro, what are you going to work at? Where are you going to be at. You know, don't pretend do it. If
Felipe:you're gonna do it. I got to share one example of that, that poser big room. So I went into a, I went into a big room and they had taken their, they didn't even call it condition satisfaction. They just said it's their, their pot, their project mantra, you know, and hats off to people that want to rename stuff into some new stuff that makes no sense to anybody. Good for you. So they had this poster made of what their values were. And you can tell that the GC had a super heavy hand in it. So it was very GCC. I didn't see any evidence of the owner's voice in the values or the trade partners, voice in the value. And it wasn't, it was a joint venture to GCs together to GCs, to coming together as like extra GC. Oh man. That's like a double cheeseburger. If one Patty's good, two panties are even better. So we're in the big room meeting and they're, and they're using their, there are 90 people in the room. 20 people are from the GCs and the other 40 people are foreman and, you know, and feel people. And they're going over the plan of the day. So they're doing some, I'm still gonna say push scheduling. Yep. They've got some food, super fancy technology touchscreens. And the superintendent is at the front of the room with the super fancy touch screen, showing the logistics plan of where they're going to be. This is a multi acre site. This job was a 10 year job as a long. And they're in like year seven of 10. So there's like final three years ago. Yeah. And, they bring up the area, there's a project scheduler sitting at the front connected to the smart screen that the is touching and moving around on and they'll come to an area and they'll say like, Hey, excavating foreman. And they don't like use the person's name of course, seven years. And they're still calling them by the company name. I was like, that's just amazing. So I'm just watching the back. And then the superintendent brings up this area, Jesse, and then like magic the project, scheduler, copies, and pastes on the screen in real time. The CPM schedule durations for that area. And superintendent just reads out loud. Hey excavator, you've got two weeks to get this done in this area. Why aren't you done? And that's how they're doing the play of the day. They're just parading people pushing out the durations and the big rooms got like walls and there's like sticky notes on the walls and there's whiteboards everywhere. And most of them are blank. Yep. And they've got this technology and this picture, and they're just telling the trades what the dates are. And they're like, you only had two weeks to do it. And there's no talk about in this picture of what the site conditions are at all. And it's a cost loaded schedule, which, you know what that means, Jesse. It means we're putting a lot of work in place and finishing nothing. We're starting a lot of work because we need money and finishing it. Oh yeah. I just watched it. And afterwards I went and talked to the scheduler and he was super proud. Of what they did. He's like, look at this technology, look at our big room, and I said, just by chance, are you guys behind schedule right now? And he's like, how'd, you know, and then he tried to convince me of why cost loaded schedules are the best ever. I'm like, if your job is just to schedule and to do that function on a job, it keeps you really busy. So, yeah, it's more exciting because there's more stuff for you to do than a traditional project where the schedule might not be so high level, but it's not good for the client. The job did not finish. I had a schedule. It didn't fast-forward to year 10. It finished after year. But it finished, it finished. They always do it finished, but it was just not at year 10 as planned. I liked that you said the posers. Yeah. The big room was there. It had the technology, it didn't have the mindset.
Jesse:Thank you. It's the, and, and please all our forward-thinking folks that are listening and watching this, it's about the mindset. It's about the intended outcome. You know, technology is great. Again, you see these beautiful highlights. You can count on these highlights as indicators of me being resistant to technology, right. For every single one of these is like another weight against it. We see technology and shiny stuff and like, oh, how are we going to do this? But it's a pretty, pretty amazing company. One of their principles is technology only if it serves the people and the process, if it doesn't serve the people and serve the process, don't waste your time on it. So I'm not saying like, technology is great. There's been some stuff that I've come across as like, damn like I could like copy paste. Oh my goodness. Like for me, that's, that's, that's that's innovation and baby, that's some innovation I can use. But we get very distracted with, you know, touch screens and whatever. All of these different apps and they have, they can provide value. But if the mindset is. You just throw in money in a fire. You can't shine it up, right? You can Polish a turd. It's still a turd. Yup.
Felipe:You can see the difference. Like we're S we're only in chapter five. Allen and Sam mentally are still way far apart. Yes. They're not Sam. Isn't thinking like the way Alan does yet,
Jesse:but he's inching there. Right? He's,
Felipe:he's, he's getting there at the pace that he can go. And that's one of the, you know, shout out to Alan in the book because he's taking Sam slowly, but surely there piece by piece, he's building him up. He doesn't set them up for failure. It gives them coaching guidance. And and he's a voice of reality. So when Sam does something like here where he got busted with the two schedules, he doesn't call them a piece of shit. He talks to him. As a good
Jesse:coach.
Felipe:He's got to keep him in the game. Yeah. He's got respect when he talks to him. Now he's showing him the another way in this big room Alan's mindset of this real high collaboration, seeing people as partners and you, you heard it in the other chapters where even the, the foreman on Sam's job that have worked with Alan before have just nothing but respect for Allen and basically do anything he says, because he is a good proven, tested leader that they'll follow anywhere.
Jesse:Oh, you know, the flashbacks, why you're just like poking all the right buttons today for the admins. We've worked with the Allens before, from the GC side, from the trade partner side. And so as a trade partner, as I elevated in my career, I got so 0.4, my input was valued when we were pursuing work and they come to me and say, Hey, Jess, you know, we're going after X project. If there's this timeline, what is our manpower load look like in the next nine to 16 months and okay. And they say, okay, we really want to get this job. So we're thinking of, of being very aggressive or if with our estimate thought, okay, well, who's, who's the GC. They give me a name. Then I'd say who's the superintendent or project manager on that job. And if they've said, Alan, like, yes, we can do it. Like without a doubt, cut, you know, get aggressive. But if they said the other people that said, oh, negative, you need to put this person. He's got the 20% multiply. This other person that's 38% multiplier. These all right. Give it a 10% like multiplying up because I knew the way they were going to function. But the Allianz, it was like, yeah, like I'll put my neck out there and, and challenge our teams because I knew I was going to have support. Rather I knew the project was going to have flow because of the way the Allens did their job. No, it makes
Felipe:perfect sense.
Jesse:Yeah, it happened. I bet. On the other end of the table, it's, there's some similarity like, oh, we want, we'll give you the job. If you give me Jesse, because Jesse's the best.
Felipe:She was two times better thanFelipe take them.
Jesse:You're talking about Alan and the way he's coaching Sam, this one, this message right here is for all of our coaches. Alan has this. What's it say toolbox of beautiful, magical tools. But he doesn't come to Sam and say, here, use all my magical tools. Your problems will be solved when you learn these in practice. These, at money. Alan knows the pain that Sam's going to be going through because he lived it. Right. So there's empathy there. Now what Alan did was he waited for the right problem to surface and then presented a tool that would address that specific problem directly.
Felipe:That's really responsible. I had somebody tell me that recently, like most human beings can only handle about 4% of change per day. And so when Sam and this, this guy is way smarter than I am coaching me, shout out to my coach. When I first read the book, I thought, why isn't Alan, just take him to his big room. Like right now, like I just knew in the beginning of the book that Allen had some amazing big room and it was just totally different. Like I just got that vibe like instantly, and now I'm thinking, reading this chapter, if he would have brought Sam from chapter one to his big room, Sam would have just gotten overwhelmed and said, well, this is impossible. I can't make this jump. You're totally right. Like he's, he's only bringing him stuff when he's ready.
Jesse:When the problem calls for it. Yeah. And to the point of you being able to experience a 4% change, like I'm not going to change because there's pain associated with it. Now when the pain of staying the same is to here, I am indeed receptive to a different way of doing things, but I got to get to you've touched on it. Right? I have to learn the hard way about two dozen times before I'm open to receiving a new idea. It's so for coaches, it's an important situation to be looking for when the learner is on their path and there's no pain it's reasonable to expect them to do the same things. But when the pain presents itself never waste a crisis. That's when you bounce baby
Felipe:coaches. Yes. Jump on them
Jesse:one bit at a time, one bit.
Felipe:Yeah, don't stop them. Just jump on him one time. Just jump on him, tackle him to the ground and then get up. I want to jump over to like around page 97, they go into trying to show Sam how you can develop flow into this pull plan. What Alan does beautifully as he takes a scenario that Sam knows going to the airport to take a flight and they break that down into the big pieces, the tasks, the action steps, and then he has another person in the room with him. So they're testing this out with Jean. Jean is another person who just happens to be an Alan's job. And the three of them are just going through this conversation where Alan is acting as the facilitator. He's making the work visual by having Sam write down his steps on sticky notes. And then talking through it with Jean, they come up collaboratively to a better way to go through that airport experience. And that's what we would call a phase pull . And it's like, Sam by himself had this one way and it gets the job done, no doubt. But then with Jean's collaboration and Allen's collaboration, he gets the job done with less stress and it's faster. And I think that was just gorgeous. There's even a picture of it on page 96 that I'm just jumping over, they put the time up on the sequence to based on what they guess. At the end of it, they're laughing and then Alan tells him like, this is what you could do with your team. You can actually do this with your team, for the work that you have. You take some goals. Like getting on the flight on time was the example here. It could be like covering up the walls or passing an inspection on the first try or, you know, it could be something small. It doesn't have to be like substantial completion. Right? That's big. That's gotta get broken down smaller in a more logical way. And then they focus on the handoffs, which I think is a lot of people that doPull planning, just air quotes, air quotes, pool planning. They don't even focus on the handoffs. This is an even more advanced pull planning. So if you're reading this for the first time, like Jesse said, and you feel really uncomfortable reread the part about the handoffs so you can understand what it is and go see this. See if you can't see this with some people or try this, you know, just in your own family on something that you do where you actually ask people questions to see like, is the sequence right? So you can get deeper into the par from where, what fleet bay does gets given to Jesse. And Jesse does it. And it's given to you the listener. If we focus on the handoff between us we'll know way better, what Jessie's expecting for me and what you, the listener needs from Jessie. So you have just an amazing experience and you can be productive and successful. And if you just do those things, like they seem obvious that like, it just happens on site. It doesn't just happen. You have to set the condition for the handoff to happen. Handoffs in the field happened more like someone throwing a rock over a wall. Maybe it lands where you want that rock to land. Maybe it conch somebody on the head. That's what happens in real life. You're blindly throwing work over a wall and it, and the same thing happens in design. I see this in teams that are struggling and design design partners are just throwing work over the wall, blindly to the next person receiving it or worse. They're throwing all that work into a file cabinet. And they're saying it's uploaded to the cloud, go get it. And like where in the file cabinet is it? They don't even tell them where they're blindly just throwing the work over. I'm not picking on the design or the people in the field. It's those leaders on those sites or in those projects, you're responsible. Just like Jesse said to set the environment is going to dictate how you do that. If you're going to think about how is this person going to receive this, you're going to talk differently to them when you're planning your work, you're going to ask them like, what do they actually need naturally. Versus I got to just put my head down and do this back. That whole concept of put your head down sorry, it's a team sport. Construction's a team sport through all phases, even the owner with their stakeholders, it's a team sport, an owner's rep can't even answer for all the stakeholders they represent anymore. It's gotten too big and too complicated. I'd probably be never good. Let's just be real, becoming more apparent
Jesse:with the speed at which information can travel now, as opposed to before my highlights. Yeah, the, the, that gap is more apparent. It's like, oh, you don't have the information before we thought you did. And you just took your time to get us the answer because you were faxing it or a pony express in it to the project. But now it's a matter of email and going to the cloud, like, oh, you don't know you're human like me.
Felipe:Wow. And people and just to highlight an abuse of technology, there's a technology platform out there. Just several, not just one, but there's a very popular one. That's used on teams and construction teams in particular, where anybody can assign anybody else a task. And those are completely irresponsible because you can't just load people up with work without talking to them, just because the technology allows me to assign you something that you're going to get a notification and an email doesn't mean that I should. And in the real world, that's not how we assign people work. You have to ask. And it's like, and just because I can assign it and set a date, is it the right time? Is it really necessary? Do I even know what that person's working on? Am I taking them away from something that's critical that we need as a project? Just because I don't want to forget. And I've got this burden of anxiety that I'm not dealing with because I'm a control freak. I'm thinking of somebody in particular, Jesse, when I'm thinking about that,
Jesse:I got three names in my head right now. I know exactly who you're
Felipe:talking to. No, no I'm talking about right.
Jesse:Anything that I've learned, it's that just totally changed and you can use technology. It makes it faster or not. Securing a commitment. That's a skill that is, I think a lot of people don't even know that that's a thing to, to secure a commitment. Now that's that same signing and dictating task and emailing. And I send them a notification and I send them a reminder and I send them a followup reminder and a pre reminder like, oh, if you did it secure the commitment, it don't matter what you use. You're going to be disappointed. The person is not going to deliver. And then. In the work of securing a commitment there's dialogue. This is what I want. This is what I want it to look like. This is the intended outcome. This is the date that I needed by, or would like it by what do you think? Can you deliver then the other person gets to say, no, I cannot give that to you by that date. I can give you this much of it three days before your date. And I can give you the last 30%, five days after that, can, will that work? Is it reasonable? Sure. That's reasonable. Boom commitment made. What was the deliverable? When is the due date and what does it look like? What does good look like? We don't have those communications. I mean, I know that it's, our nature is to communicate and say things and, and walk away thinking I've given clear direction and secured commitments. I know that. And you know, again, my sneaky behavior sometimes I'll let it right, because they didn't secure a commitment from me. And I know I'm overloaded, so I let it slide and it, Hey man, you know, we had that talk last week and where are you on this? I'm like, oh, what, like, I remember we talked, but you never told me you needed anything. You didn't tell me when you need it. So that's a little, that's a little shady behavior, not a little, that's a lot shady, passive,
Felipe:aggressive,
Jesse:super passive, aggressive, appropriate thing for me to do is to say, okay, this is what I'm understanding. You're telling, you're making a request and you're asked, is X, is that correct? Yep. How do you want it? Right? What flavor do you want? Two patties and one slice of cheese between them or one slice of cheese on the top. Cause I can give you a cheeseburger, but how do you want it? And yes, I can give you the cheeseburger and you'll get it in three weeks. Does that work for you? Right. So that's the inverse of securing a commitment. That's making the commitment for people that have an underdeveloped commitment, language, muscle. What do you think?
Felipe:No, I think you're totally right. And people listening, thinking like how obvious this is. I want you to go find this conversation on your project. You won't find it. Yep. You likely won't find it. If you're on a job, it's not, your schedule is not accelerating without overtime and additional resources. You're not gonna. If you're on a job that you're hitting, you're, you're consistently hitting your milestones and even finishing earlier, you're having those conversations are happening. They exist and they're out there in every state of the beautiful United States and worldwide, there are projects achieving this level of conversation. Now I remember one of the first times that Glenn Ballard, who was co-creator of last planner system with Greg Howell, they showed a slide of like how commitments are made. I was like, God, that's so complicated. And when I saw it, I was like, that's so complicated. Like there's so many, there's like arrows and boxes and all these things. And my pupils dilated. And I was like, I've never seen seeing this in real life. I first, the first time I saw the slide, I never had S had never seen it. And then when I learned about last planner system and then becoming a facilitator for last planners, Then I saw it and it all just clicked in and it, it looks complicated in a diagram, but it happens like Jesse said and just a couple of sentences, but to describe it is complicated, but then the alternative, it just doesn't happen. It's non-existent, it's not happening. And Jesse, I see this too more often than not where leaders think they told people something. Oh yeah. , they'll tell somebody something in the field and then we'll, we'll move away. And I'll say, do you think that that person understood what you want? Cause we we've been talking about something for like an hour. We bumped into somebody in the field, they do a quick exchange, like in 20, 30 seconds we move on. And my observation term is like, do they understand what you need? And they're like, of course I was like, I don't think so this is what you actually. Yep. Now, if I told you that, what would you do? And he's like, okay, then they will back up, go back and we'll ask what they understood. They did not understand it the way that they've thought a lot of assumptions are made, because we're just trying to be quick. And just trying to be quick, always results in extra work, defects, overproduction, access, processing, all those things that steal our time. Be a little more intentional and ask those questions. Like Jesse said, like, how do you want it? Two pieces of cheese or one between the panties? Obviously I want three pieces of cheese on top of the bread on top of the Patty in the middle, on top of the next Patty. And then just put another piece on the side that I'm going to eat while I'm waiting for you to deliver.
Jesse:So you can snack on that, that whole situation you described when you were walking. The project reminded me of the princess. You ever seen the
Felipe:princess? Oh my God. Yeah. He used to watch it on repeat, like it was on Showtime all the time. Remember show time back in the day. Oh
Jesse:yeah. He says, I can't remember the guy's name. I think it's Emilio. I, I did not think you said what you think you said that's not what he says in the movies. I don't think that word means what you think it means, but in this situation when you're talking to homeboy out there is that, I don't think you said what you think you said, let's go back and look at that.
Felipe:Yeah. It's people just jump ahead. Like I'm guilty of it too. I'll say something to somebody and the next thing I know, man, they totally spun out in the wrong direction. So now I'm more intentional of like, what do you think? I mean, by that what's that look like and have them describe it back to me and if they can't, then I know that I failed to communicate effectively to get, to get to them. And then, then we can plug in there. Yes, it takes a second. It does so worth it.
Jesse:Super, super worth it. I got to I'm at page 1 0 2. Okay. Oh my
Felipe:God. That's where I am. Synchronicity man. Take it Jesse. Yeah.
Jesse:The one piece that triggered me was it's like the third bullet point where he talks about a big sheet of paper or separate whiteboard space and all this good stuff. And immediately this, this, this is a volatile point here. So be ready. I think of people that need the lines and the dates before they start identifying handoffs or anything, dates, lines. And I understand. That that's their comfort level. It's not beside really, it's a question for you what I've seen over and over and over again in different parts of the country as a trade partner. And now is as a, as a sell up. I mean, for the GC, what I see when people use those lines and the dates is the durations that the trade partners are putting up for their tasks are one or five and it ends up that they're their plan or the, the time that they're indicating it's going to take to execute the work is either morbidly, obese or anorexic. It's never in the middle. And, and my observation so far is that it's a result of the dam lines and having the weeks, you know, dates of the week up at the top, it somehow affects the way people start thinking about things and they start trying to fill the space with ones or fives. Have you seen anything like that out there? Oh my God. Yeah. Oh, okay.
Felipe:It's not just you. And I saw that. Actually got, I have two pictures up. I'm going to share my screen and just cause you're just hitting me right now. Here we've got this is for training purposes that I use. Yeah, that's a, that's a waterfall schedule that I took, right. From a website of a company that makes its living by selling waterfall, schedule salt. What a surprise, but I've taken the names, the logos off. So it's not a real project. And so Jesse's talking about lines. I'm not showing the lines here in this photo. So I've got a milestone plan below and I had people create from the waterfall, schedule the milestones in time on the year. So you could see no lines. You see the year 20, 20, 20, 21, 20 22. And they've, they've pulled out a couple of milestones with some guidance. All the color tags on the left are just different roles of people. And then on the bottom, there's a phase phase pool. So you see two milestones, two diamonds from afar. You can see the diamonds from afar. It's clear as day in the phase completion of the structure. There's a key of who are the players color coded key. And there are no lines. And some people are like, where are the dates? And I said, this is a phase pool. You're trying to get the best sequence possible based on the work you're going to do. And just, if you have to look at dates, refer back to your plan, schedule durations here, and you can assume it was collaboratively done, where you gave it to the general contractor. You could just make that assumption if you want, but you know, damn well that the general contractor made this on their own based on whatever's based. Yeah. Historical data. We'll, we'll call it historical data. I got another picture due to do with some dates and this doesn't have the vertical dates and columns, but in here I've got days of the week and people are like, I need swim lanes by trade. This was answering a question about, should we have swim lanes? I've taken that same phase pool from the previous page. And I pulled down just one week's worth of work. And on the left side with the lines, you can't see the flow at all. You've got a swim lanes here. Like I can't tell what's the trade that's driving the work on the left side with swim lanes, swim lanes are good to separate areas, not to separate crews and people. It's not good. Now on the right side, I just call it flow by trade. I it's intuitive that the excavation is driving the sequence at work, super intuitive. I got survey happening, underground plumbing, underground electrical, and then rebar happening at the end of the week. And it's so obvious if you had the choice between the left side and the right side. If you're trying to focus on flow, it's obvious that on the right side, you're going to make decisions and have handoff discussions. So that excavation is completely successful because otherwise, sorry, Jesse. The plumber has nothing to do if we don't dig the hole first as exciting as plumbing is, and it is exciting. Oh yeah. We still have to get that prerequisite work done. And the handoff is more obvious here with the lines. And some people like to put lines like on days of the week, you could see this excavation tag is kind of slid past Thursday. Like, does that mean it's happening over Thursday night? No, I just, I was rushing when I made the picture people back off
Jesse:and it's okay. Like, let it go, man. If it slid over, I like the sliding feels, it feels like artistic.
Felipe:And the people that are putting this together, we're project engineers for a GC company and there wasn't a lot of directions given. They actually jumped ahead of they're supposed to work on one. And cause they're smart, talented people. They jumped ahead and they created this on their own. Like they just got there. It was this obvious as like, this is what happens with trades as well. Even with trades with zero pool planning experience. Well, you just set what the ground rules are when we're trying to expose the work so we can have the best flow possible. It just happens. Like there's not a ton of handholding. They know what their work is. And the, if you put a bunch of lines on here, because some people want to be very like meticulous. And I always tell people like, yeah, you can get there, but it's completely unnecessary. You're doing way more than what's needed. So does that answer your question, Jesse?
Jesse:Yeah, it does. The lines can be a distraction I recognize that we're used to the waterfall schedule. We're used to dates like that makes us feel better and seeing a blank spaces is maybe threatening and overwhelming. So I recognize that. And I'd say to all you beautiful people out there, patient people, try it, try it without lines. Like I promise when you're finished coordinating the work and, and surfacing the handoffs and getting everybody's ideas out of their head and in a space where we can all see it and refer back to I pinky promise you can go and draw lines afterwards. It'll be okay.
Felipe:But if you start with the lines, you're just creating a barrier for people. I had a panicked phone call on Monday and somebody said, we're going to start pool planning because they're not getting it. And I said, are you pull planning too early? And they're like, can they started explaining like what they need and why they need these lines? And I reminded the cm that the owner hasn't executed the contract. There's no job yet. Like I said, they're not behind schedule. There's no job yet. I said, Howard, how's the GC and the, and the design team going to get paid for this pool planning. You're going to force them to do. I was like, what job is it? They're like, oh, they know what the job is. We've told them. I was like, so why doesn't the owner execute the job and make it a go. I was like the lines on the paper. Aren't your problem? You don't have a contract. That's right. I was like, you're, you're acting like your anxiety is misplaced. Your anxiety is that you're not going to have something to see. Because the owner won't execute the contract for the, the GC and the design team. That's your first problem. It's not lines on the paper.
Jesse:That's a thing like a, I dunno, phenomenon that happens all the way up in design. Like you're talking about the cm and this whole like client signed the paper, please issue the contract all the way to where the value actually happens. When people are building things, putting things in place, transforming the material and the information. Well, what we do is wherever the problems surfaces we indict the people that are around it. And it's not those people that problem started somewhere else. And it's almost always upstream. You know, we did a little study. About reasons for variance on, on installation. This was back when I was a trade partner and we found that 85% of the tasks that did not get complete as promised, we were able to track that back to information. 85% of the constraints are the deviations in the plan were a result of information. 15%. Yeah, of course there was weather. Actually. I think we kind of like, let's just kick weather out because it's weather. the rest of it was, re sequencing or poor planning. We were pretty rigid about that. Rigid, disciplined about being real with ourselves. So it was, we'd say planning was like the big bucket and then we get granular, like was the order submitted by the insulting. Did the foreman submit the order, did the project, man, like, you know, we're looking at the different stakeholders in that value stream of where the breakdown actually wasn't and we'd find more often than not the foreman and the, and the project manager shared the responsibility or the load for not ordering in a timely manner. And fewer times it was the install teams. It would, you know, throw up the Kanban card and say, Hey man, we're going to be running out of all three. And it was rarely them. It was usually they got signaled. The foreman got signaled to the project manager, got signaled to order and they sat on it for whatever reason, but that's planning information, submittals. RFIDs these types of things, updated drama. My God, you know how many times I've installed stuff, that there was a, there was a change issue two weeks ago. And what I installed. Was the old plan and I had to take it down and redo it. And guess what, Jesse, you did it wrong because I installed it per all the information I had in front of me. It was my fault. And again, that's, that's intended to highlight the dynamic of we pounce on the people that are closest to where that problem surfaces and rarely do we turn around and let's evaluate what the contributing factors were and understand that let's do something about it further upstream when we could have before it impacted flow.
Felipe:Absolutely. I remember getting yelled at, by a client. Jesse, you just triggered my memory. We're doing a podium duct por of a, of a school building, and we're a day away from letting the concrete. So it's, we're full on rebar. The rebar is all there. We've got dropped panels for the floor below. We've got concrete columns, all formed up already poured or making those connections. And tie-ins, and the owner comes running out of their trailer and says, you're doing it wrong. And we're like, what are you talking about? She has, and the owner says, I have, I have a change order coming. Not, not a change order. They call it a change order. It wasn't a change order. I have a supplemental instructions coming from the structural engineer. You need to add more rebar as like, how's that? How are we doing it wrong? Like the rebar, the rebar submittal was approved six months ago. We're installing per the approved rebar submittal. And they're like, there's not enough rebar in this deck. I was like, based on what. No explanation. And they're like, but don't stop. Just add it in and still keep the concrete coming. I'm like you can't just like, you know, go to the, go to the drive-through window and say, I need seven more tons of rebar. Put it in the back of my car and I'm just going to come get it. We had to stop because you just don't add rebar, like, and it was seven tons, more rebar and the 35,000 square foot area, the instruction engineer. Of course. Wasn't like just put it in for my detail. Cause their details don't show how to actually tie it connected in, get it so that it could actually be fabricated. They had to go through another shop drawing iteration based on the change and review that delayed that deck park. And that was like with like constant pressure every day. And the owner trying to make the rebar company feel bad because they couldn't anticipate with all of their, you know, foresight and forecasting capabilities that seven more tons of rebar were needed. Like, duh, it should've had seven more tons of rebar. Like, duh, they don't realize I constantly was the voice of, it's not the rebar company's problem and you have to pay them for this. And then they wanted to like fight them on what it was worth to pay them for them. Like, I hate this.
Jesse:I'm just gonna leave that alone. That sucks. Don't do that there. That's all. I
Felipe:believe that will take me back to the book.
Jesse:Okay. Back to the book on page one owner. The one word I wrote was unicorn.
Felipe:So he wrote this into the book. It's not actually there.
Jesse:So I wrote unicorns. I wanted some magic some mystical illness in this book. And the reason I wrote unicorns is because, you know, they're sitting at the bar, they're having some cold beer and getting vulnerable and admitting that Sam's admitting that he's wrong. And the Forman are like, yeah, dude, like it's gonna take more than, than a couple of beers. And I'm sorry, like there's some damage that's been done here. And I suspect that several of our audience members are gonna say, yeah, right. That would never happen. And it does happen. It has happened. I've experienced it. I've been a part of it. It's really. There are more like before it was, it was, you know, once in a great while now, more and more I've seen it, you know, it depends on the organization and the people, but I'm seeing it. And, and I see it as proof that there are unicorns in the world. Unicorns are real. They live in our house.
Felipe:Yeah. I mean, Sam being vulnerable and a, a GC buying trade partners, beer. This is the first book I've even seen that written down anywhere. Yeah, it was. I remember one time buying lunch for a trade partner and my project manager, not wanting to approve my expense report because he's telling me you're breaking the rules. Only they buy you food. You can't buy them food. And I was like, no, it doesn't, it's not going to work. Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, I'll pay it. I'll pay for this out of my own pocket. Yeah.
Jesse:It's so cheap, man. It's so worth it.
Felipe:You're totally right. That is a unicorn move and it's a, they don't forgive them right away. No, they go back and forth and they really got to get it out there. What he did so that he knows that it's wrong and it's only wrong because they're acting in a different way. Like before he started doing all this collaboration there, they were just be hatred and animosity and they'd still finish the job all the way to the end. But now it's, the relationship has changed. It's evolved.
Jesse:There's communication. There's dialogue. There's trust, even though they were pissed at each other and felt violent. There was still a small degree of trust to the point that these folks were able to say, we got some more talking to do. You got some splaining to do, right? So they could get, they could get even negative to get even not, I don't mean like, even as in retaliatory, they needed to get on the same page again, because they went, when they found out that there was two schedules, they weren't, they were not only not on the same page, they weren't even the same damn book anymore. Right. So there was some reparations to be had in order to move forward as a team. And they all contributed to, to mending that fence,
Felipe:To bring the title of the chapter and pool. They had a pull from the partners. What is it going to take to remake this repair? And they, and they said a couple of cold beers and the salary's not enough. Yep. Like they, they told him in explicit direct language. You have to be honest with us about what the deliverables are. They're telling him to be transparent telling Sam, you have to be transparent with us. If you want us to help you achieve your goals, you've got to tell us what the goals are. Yep. It's not too much to ask. It's
Jesse:not. And Sam did the unthinkable. He pulled out the real schedule and laid it on the table and said, this is what we got. And you've made this point a few times already, but everybody is obligated to that skill. Like legally obligated. There's a contract. No. We may not like none of us may. I mean, really, if you think of the V you know, all of the, the number of decisions and people that are involved in getting to the point where the job's going to be built, I bet money Sam was excited about the job. He loved it, right? It was, it's a feather in his hat. He's excited. I'm pretty damn sure. He wasn't excited about the schedule right out of the gate. He didn't make that commitment. Somebody further upstream make the commitment without considering, you know, the realities of, of life. So trade partners that GC isn't in love with the con the schedule either we're all in the same damn pile of poop, let's help each other get to the end.
Felipe:Yeah. That's and a lot of GC contracts with the trade partners have a clause in the, in the contract that says. You're bound to the owner's schedule. But then when you look at I've actually requested the full subcontract agreement on many projects and I'll look through there and you know what? I don't see in there, the owner contract, it's not there. Like why aren't we sharing the owner contract with them? And so we're sharing an exhibit. That's just a piece of paper with some dates on it that says these are the owners dates. No, that doesn't work. You got to do like what the people are asking Sam to do. You've got to share the real plan and you're right. We're all in it together. And we're not in love with it because that, like you said, it was made upstream . I'm going to jump all the way to page one 16. Ooh. So on page one 16, they've got all the people back in and it's taken pages like you just heard me and Jesse, we just jumped over 10 pages of dialogue back and forth on the Ansaris and this is what it is now. And they're open and being honest and transparent. And now you've got a picture and people are putting the real June 18th date up, which matches what the hospital CEO said. We now have it on the plan and people are working towards that delivery because you think about it from the owner's perspective. If they give it to them before then the owner's not. Right, right. Yeah. Yes. And if something happens like weather and they can't make that date, the owner is going to be reasonable and say, that's outside of your control. Or if like the owner furnished contractor installed equipment, doesn't come because the owner didn't cut the PO on time, the purchase order and the schedule slipped past the June 18th date. It's it makes sense to the client why it's not going to be June 18th because they could see all the connections in the schedule as well. And what you see in that picture is everybody's standing around the pool plan board and they're collaboratively talking and they're pointing at it. And they're discussing the commitments that Jesse talked about before. That people are making for themselves, which is creating that buy-in, that's the only real buy-in you can have as when people self commit
Jesse:it's people are accountable to their own commitments.
Felipe:And at the end of this Joe and keyan sneak in theLast Planner system, it makes its debut on page one, 17 chapter is called pool planning because by the time he gets to this level, now he's using the full-on
Jesse:LPS I bet you, that was a strategic move because if it would have been up in the early pages a lot, I suspect a lot of people would have put the damn book down. Yep. Because there's so many coaches and consultants, not all of them, but a bunch of them that. Have provided a very negative experience. And so people are anti, some people are anti LPs because of a horrible experience. And so I think, I think that was the Jed. I juice that, that Joe and kEYAN were used. Like, let's not say that word yet. Let's wait until we get further into the book when people start relating and connecting like, oh yeah, I've lived that. Oh yeah. I bet. Oh, I could try that. And then ninja lien, boom. Last planner system. Yeah. Another thing. Get the coaching thing. Always. I want to hammer it home because again, coaches out there we got some work to do in, in providing better service to our customer, which is the, the teams and the superintendents. Sam was like, yes. I'll I saw a plan. I'll go do it. And through some come calm conversations. Allen offered, like I can come co-facilitate cause he could tell that Sam was like, I'll do this, but I'm not sure. And so they co-facilitated the conversation. And so that's a recommendation. If you haven't done it before, find somebody that has some experience or if they don't have experience with pole planning or the last planner system find somebody that has the skill of facilitating a conversation and bringing people into the conversation and asking those probing questions that causes people to examine their thinking. That skill of facilitating is not a skill that every superintendent comes to the table with. And it's not because they don't have the capability it's because like we talked about earlier, the conditions have been such. In order to be an effective superintendent, you've got to be authoritative, you've gotta be confident. And you got to tell people what to do. Don't listen to their excuses, keep pushing. And as a result, their facilitation muscles have atrophied. And, and if you don't have comfort, rather, here's a good test for you. If you're in a session with a group of people and you have more airtime than the rest of the group, that's a good indicator that your facilitation skills are lacking. You should do the least amount of talking. And when you do, you should be asking questions and let the rest of the group have those conversations. So if you're not there yet, that's okay. You can get. But, but get some backup, man. Get somebody to come and help you facilitate that bad boy.
Felipe:You're totally right. Jesse facilitation skills are not taught. They're not taught by the time you're, you're working and people just go to work and just get to work. They don't step back and say, how do I, how can I be a better facilitator? No. Like nobody's even asking for that. I've never seen that on a performance plan and you know, 20 plus years in the business, no one has mentioned that that's a skill that I didn't see really come up until I started studying last planner system and scrum those facilitation skills come up and are more obvious. And you're totally right. It's simple gauge. Are you doing it? Is how much are you talking versus them? Yep. A great facilitator. Barely talks. Yes,
Jesse:he can learn. Yeah. So just for the audience, I believe me, I promise I pinky. Phillip and I are phenomenal facilitators, even though we're doing all the damn talking right now.
Felipe:Yeah. People are always amazed when, because they see how much I talk and, you know, venues like this. And then I come to their job. And some, sometimes when people pull me to the side afterwards, they're like, man, you barely talked. And I was like, yeah, but look at what they made. And then you can see like this, these amazing plans with high collaboration and this brand new trajectories. And it's it's not about me as a facilitator. It's not about you. And if you're a leader and you're a good leader worth your salt, it's not about you. It's about helping everybody achieve what needs to be done for the greater good
Jesse:Yeah, that was a good one. Obviously, you know, I expected us to take three hours on full planning. We were getting better.
Felipe:Yeah. On this one, just, I mean, just to close it down, how the chapter ends is, of course they go up.
Jesse:Oh, enchilada as well. Was it in, Sheila's on this, this trip, man. They eat a lot. They do eat a lot and they need like delicious stuff. They need to go like hiking.
Felipe:I don't think they say what they want to eat this time, but I'm sure it was going to be Mexican for sure.
Jesse:Yeah. They got to do it. And so being, and she stopped goals, not being with cheese. Just a reminder.
Felipe:Yeah. And you know, I, since I'm California now transplant, you got to add some potatoes to that. Yeah.
Jesse:Yeah. That sounds good. I'm going to go get me a taco here. Yeah.
Felipe:Yeah. Everybody. Thank you for listening. And we encourage you to get out there and try this. Come at it slowly. Don't don't try to jump all the way to, I'm going to facilitate this amazing collaboration. Just start with getting your milestones up. You know, look at the things in this chapter, pick something that you're like, oh, I can, I can do this right now. Any little easy thing that you're like, Ooh, I can do this right now. Do that, do that first, let it ride for a little bit and then go to the next thing when you get comfortable and then go to the next thing and that incremental you'll get there. And you'll be ready for chapter six, which we're going to talk about next time is the last quarter of system of production.
Jesse:yeah. Thank you all for, for your time. You know, it's, it's a special treat that I get to hang out with Phillipa and, and vent and preach and pontificate about all this stuff. And give us a like, right. Give us some comments, let us know what you're thinking. Let us know if you think we're nuts or more, maybe me more than, than Phillipa. And we also have our independent podcasts, so check us out. Help us understand how to better serve you, please. And thank you for your time.
Felipe:Yep. Thank you for your time. Links are in the show notes below for Jessie's podcasts. If you want to get in touch with Jesse, we'll have a link so you can get, get ahold of him and ask him more about what he means by pontificate. And then there's links for me down there. If you want to get ahold of me and see where to, where I'm going to be at on social media. Thank you everybody. Have a good one.
Jesse:Well, there, you have it. Another collabo session in the books as usual Felipe and I, you know, we, we get to storytelling. My hope is that these stories bring some value to you and it helps you consider things from multiple perspectives. Cause that's really, um, that's a key to the success of any project is understanding everyone's perspective. And so top for the shout out, baby, we're going to give a shout out to Mr. Garrett S skins, another fine lean maniac. What's going on, Garrett. Now I'm going to have to read this one off my phone because I got it in a text and being lazy. I didn't want to type it up. So Garrett says, I'm excited to see who you bring on and listen to those discussions. Lots of people start a podcast because they think they're funny and they think people like listening to them. But in your case, I love the gap you identified and that you're talking about. There's an ever-widening canyon forming around the perception of construction workers and the industry as well. As the limited exposure, anyone gets to the industry, I'm anxious to hear where your discussions, well, Garrett, you gave us this feedback way back at the beginning. When we just come out of the gate, I've saved it. And I was waiting for the right time to, to share it and bring it up. And what makes this time particularly special if y'all didn't know, L and M family, Mr. Garrett Eskens and Ms. Page will be getting married here in the very near future. I'm excited for them. They're both amazing people. Their relationship made it through the Rona locked down. So applause to them. Love. Thank you all for taking time out of your days to continue to listen to us for all the love. You've been given us the feedback for the lessons that you go out and apply in your daily work. And we'll talk again soon. Poos. Man you are one dedicated listener, sticking with us all the way through to the very, very end. Please know that this podcast dies without you, and we invite you to share how the episodes is impacting you along with your thoughts, questions, and suggestions. You've been gracious with your time. So we added social media links in the show notes to make it super easy for you to connect with us because to yourself, stay cool. And we'll talk at you next time.
Here are some great episodes to start with.
