The Grande Calabo Finale with Authors Keyan Zandy and Joe Donarumo

I've been wondering, like you guys going out on a limb to write a damn book about lean stuff is a pretty courageous. Because it's the first one. I mean, there's other lean construction books, but this is really about the application and the, a lot of the human side of, of applying the last planner system of what kind of nerves, what kind of anxiety or, or insecurities did y'all have as you were working through this.

Oh, man, this is going to take like 20 minutes Oh, Oh, yeah, baby. Are you ready? We got the forward thinking and super gracious. Joe and Keyan authors of The Lean Builder, man, these dudes went ahead and gave us an hour or so of their time. Of course, we had a lot of fun, but we also got deep and had some real serious talk about how they got to writing the book. The purpose of the book. And as we go through our conversation, it's going to take you behind the curtain. We're Keyan and Joe, let us know all the details. From inception. On a flight to LCI Congress. Two. The bourbon fueled chapter. That's some pretty good stuff there. You know, what's really inspiring about these guys is they simply wanted to help builders build the whole intent. Behind them taking the time and writing this book. Was to help folks. Learn some techniques and some methods and go out there and put them into practice. So that they can have a better day. And that's the amazing thing about this lean construction community. People are out to help each other share great practices. For the sake of improving our industry and that just fits perfectly with enhancing the image of careers in the trades, because we've got to correct. We've got to improve the entire system. So that people look forward to coming to work And along with that, I got to drop the teaser. These guys talk about the core element of making all of this work. Straight from the authors. Appreciate. Y'all listening to the previous seven collabo sessions and Keon and Joe hooked it up. They gave us some time on their Saturday morning. So that we could put a cherry on top just for you. Little reminder. We do have the patrion.com/learnings and missteps option out there. So you can get some. LnM backstage pass action and yes, I know you're sad. The collaborative sessions are up. But are they. We got a round of collabo streams in the books. Check us out saturday Saturday september 18th.

00 am central time The culture warrior ms Jennifer Lacey and I Are going to be talking about five s in relationships We're going to go deep on this one love for y'all to jump on in and leave us your comments ask us Your question And that's going to be a series of five episodes running every other saturday From 8:00 am

15 am central Live on you too And i'm going to go ahead and let y'all get into the goodness and mr Felipe Engineer Manriquez is host of The EBFC show is going to kick it off for us Here we go bay bay.

We've got two very special guests with usKeyan and Joe authors of one of our most favoritelean nonfiction and fiction books. It does both The Lean Builder. You got your book, Jesse,

got it. got it. You know, I had to wipe some dust off,

And you will notice that in my book, Joe and Keyan there's first page is blank waiting for your autograph. So I will start to travel with this book. Every time I come to Texas for the odd chance that I might be able to get you to put a signature on it,

we're all offered the construction industry. And there's a certain stigma that, that we have from, let's say folks that aren't in our industry and maybe expectations are a little lower of folks that are in construction and, and other professions. And so my I've been wondering, like you guys going out on a limb to write a damn book about lean stuff is a pretty courageous. Because it's the first one. I mean, there's other lean construction books, but this is really about the application and the, a lot of the human side of, of applying the last planner system of what kind of nerves, what kind of anxiety or, or insecurities did y'all have as you were working through this.

Oh, man, this is going to take like 20 minutes

before you answer that question, I would love if each of you would say a little bit about

yourself, I'll get started. So I'm Joe Donnarummo, I'm one of the co-authors of the lean builder book, which Jesse and Felipe have been doing these collabo sessions on my, my day job, I'm a senior superintendent for a construction firm called Lynn Beck. I work out of Fort worth, Texas, and I primarily focus on healthcare construction . Also head up our lean application within our company internally

Keyan Zandi COO of Skiles group Skiles groups, a general contractor based in Dallas, Texas. We primarily focus on healthcare construction, but we do work in about 13 different states and proud to known Joe for geez, Joe, how long has it been over 10 years now, I came into the industry early two thousands, started implementing last planner system and around 2004. And so I've been around it for a while and try to make it work so many ways and gain so much value over the years, but it was probably 2011 that I took the paper version of the last planner, which it used to be all, you know, two week and six week and paper that we would pass around and kind of just blew it up, made it visual. And that was really where the light bulb came off for me and a lot of the other superintendents I was working with at the time we started transitioning from that weekly subcontractor meeting to a daily huddle meeting, you know, the journey with The Lean Builder for me. It's been just years and years and years of, of getting it wrong are having, you know, on our blog, a joke, there's a blog meta Joe wrote. It was like, if your last pull plan sucked, like, you know, here's some tips and it's because of out of the 400 Pull plans I've ever done probably 250 of em sucked you know, that's so beautiful that there's just this journey. And so, for us to link up and, and put this book together and we poured everything we had into it from all those years, just in an effort to try to help people. So been

pretty humbling. I'm going to kind of dive into Jesse's question because this is going to take a little bit to answer. So I think we kind of got to set the context of really what was in our hearts and in our guts for Keyan . And I actually got to the point of, you know, why did we want to write a book and then kind of our emotions and feelings and insecurities around it as we started to get closer and closer to rolling it out and starting sampling amongst our peers, but you know, withKeyan and I's journey together, starting at Lynn back, and then Keon had a transition and made a move to Skyles group. We were still finding ourselves traveling, going to LCI Congress, going to events, local cop events in DFW and trying to find like that right resource that we could, I mean, honestly, selfishly use even internally with our folks who are hungry, who were thirsty, who wanted more, you know, how to help give them like some type of a roadmap or like some, you know, practical steps of how to either improve on their lean journey or even, you know, begin one like the right step. And we were struggling because there were still, there was so many things. Documents publications around lean in the tools and the methodologies. But the problem that we were seen in the disconnect was that they were all education-based. They were theoretical, they were white papers, which they all have their place, but the target audience, like the demographic that we needed to deliver the information to, or the men and women

putting that shit in place. And Joe, sorry to pause. You said that so eloquent, like I got tired of like finally convincing a superintendent or a peer to try implementing lean in the field. And they said, Hey, w well, how do I do it? And then I hand them to Toyota.

you're like, this is all Japanese terms. Like, how am I going to use this? And

I'm like, eh, and that's, I think we're so many people struggled not to catch up to cause I want you to keep going down this path. But I think the biggest, some of the bigger issues that we were seeing was like, I got frustrated with in the current state, you couldn't scale this. Yeah. You know, maybe if you're a Turner or you're a big firm to where you're on these bigger jobs and you have resources or you have the right type of team to do it, like, I'm trying to say, you know what me and Joe talked about is like, if you're working for a company that only does 30 million in revenue a year, like there's gotta be some type of system that they could pick up a book, understand how it works and go without any additional resources. The amount of the level of skill set at that super from being high tech to low tech old school, new school, like to just get it, it didn't exist. And it was, that was, that was hard. That was frustrating.

That was the gap, right? Like that was the missing link that we needed to bridge. And what's interesting is like, I feel like we both kind of felt that in our gut for probably about three years, like leading up to the point where we actually began to write the book, cause we were going to, you know, LCI Congress and we were constantly like kind of searching around looking for the right presentation or the right maybe champion or coach or someone who was like putting this together, assembling some type of a package like that, that we could deliver for, you know, our, our own needs, you know, with our, with our own team or to share within our local cop and help those around us. And then after three years of like, feeling like we were continuing searching, like, I remember this all goes back. I think I'm not even talking about this story with Felipe we act by coincidence. We happen to book like the same Southwest flight, like going out to Anaheim, California to, I think it was 2017 to the Congress in Anaheim and UIC each other. And oh, grab a seat and we're sitting there talking and we're talking about this exact subject right here. Like, man, maybe this is the conference. Maybe this is the year we're going to find something. And it was on that flight where we're sitting there talking like, well, why, why are we waiting? Like we know the need, we know the demand. We know the audience, let's just do it. Right. And what, why, why not? Let's just go do it. And it was funny because at the time. This is like right off the top of the head and we're looking around and, you know, I did the pamphlet. I think I've told you about the payload. We pull up the 7 47, like safety pamphlet. We're like, okay. Hell, okay. We'll just like, step one daily huddle, step two, visual communication, step three constraints, step four. And like, we'll just put it in like this pamphlet and they'll tuck it in their safety vest and we'll give them a play by play of how to start. And that's really where the idea and the premise and where this whole thing really well then

at that Congress though, we watched Lyndsey Oni top and went back. Yeah. But five dysfunctions of a team, red IDO team player. I had read some books. Obviously the goal has been a great book that I, that I've just always had in my, collection. And then there's this book called everything I learned about Lean manufacturing. I learned from Joe's garage, but when I read Lencioni's book and I think Joe read it at the same time he called me. He's like, man, we should do a book and write it like this. And you know, at first I was like, man, I don't want to write a book. Just thinking through it, us talking about it, trying to map it out. And you know, we'd figured if we were going to do it, that was going to be the way to do it. It was just important to us. And I don't want to turn anybody off to what I'm about to say, but there's something I'd feel, I, I felt that there's some consultants, coaches, not all, there's so many great ones. So don't, don't misconstrue what I'm saying, but that have actually turned more teams off to link them for either coming from just not a place of understanding of what we. And, and never put on a pair of work boots and ever been on a job site. And it was important to us that if we did this, like the builders voice would be represented and so much so that, like, if you read the, the beginning of the book, like our, our prologue, all that kind of stuff, like, it's very clear who this book's written for. I mean, this is for boots on the ground, this isn't, this is not, you know, we're not handing out white papers like this and we call it builder's lane because we figured some of our, some of the ways we teach it true lean, you know, academic types would probably disagree on some of the concepts cause it's not true, purely true, you know, but that wasn't important to us. What was important to us was that a superintendent or trade partner foreman or anybody on the projects. Could pick up the book and like immediately like begin to get some value on their projects just by slowly putting the stuff in a place. Then after the book came out, very humbling, a lot of great feedback, but then people were like, man, it would have been awesome if there was some illustrations or some pictures or some things. And so that's kind of how the website and the blog came about. And so it was, I all right. You want to see like what it looks like more detail. And so we've spent a lot of time just, just trying to break these concepts down further. That way, you know, somebody learns about this, they do a Google search. Something comes up written by builders and it's just something that they can

relate to. It sounds like

y'all came out of the gate just with a hundred percent confidence and clear vision. No, no misgivings or second thoughts about embarking

on that? Yeah, I think Joe and I may suffer from something called overconfidence.

But tell the story I tell about when you and Terry were on vacation.

Yeah. So me and my wife, we took the kids to spring break beach and I just watched this Steve Harvey clip. And I don't know if you guys know Steve Harvey and you know, but he, he does a family feud stuff, but you know, I think he preaches too. And so sometimes he goes, he's got these clips, he's preaching in the audience and you know, he's telling everybody like, you know, You gotta know, everybody's got a gift, you got to know what your gift is. And then you got to jump because if you don't jump, you'll never fulfill your gift. And so we had kids, we had the kids to bed. We've had a couple cocktails and me and my wife and my wife's a professional too. She's an executive at her firm and we're talking about, you know, what our gifts are and have you, have we jumped or, you know, have you taken risks in your career? And she asked, she asked me point blank. She said, let me ask you something. And she was like, you and Joe are writing this book that they're going to hand out at the lien Congress and at the AGC convention in front of all your peers and people that are experts in this and all these things. Right. And she said, has it ever crossed your mind once? Like, what if it sucks? Like, are you not, not like extremely worried or have anxiety around it? No. Like I swear to God, like that was the first time it ever crossed my mind. You determined that my gift was that I was just overconfident and I share that with Joe. Like, I could just tell like that look on Joe's face. He's like, oh yeah, I guess that could be, I could be

some,

never even thought about it from like the quality, like always then it was kind of playing with my mind. I was like, oh crap. This is really going to work. We're about to give LCI twenty-five hundred bucks. It's like, what is it? Does like, it never even came across our mind and not from like a standpoint of, of, of not being humble or having humility around. It's just like, it just never, it never penetrated or permeated into our brain because this was all literally what was in our heart for like the last 10 years around the pain in the frustration in the lessons learned. And it was literally just. Verbal vomit as we're writing this, because it was all just right from here, like straight, like right down onto the paper. And we never even gave it a second thought of, well, is this even, is this even good or not? Because we were just telling our heart story and the journey that we've been on and trying to help others relative to their

own journey. Just say like, people ask, ask us a lot. Like, well, how long did it take to write the book? Well, it took me my whole career to write the book, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, oh, it's nice to get some mailbox, money or selling kites, like, yeah. But like to get to that level of expertise, see like, you know, how many years of like, sucking at this and like trying this and trying to get it to work and learning from so many different mentors and people in the industry and just constantly being a student to get trapped me and Joe to get kind of get to that level of expertise to just, we're so proud to have something that we've been able to actually contribute back. Cause I feel like what's so awesome about our community. Of us leading enthusiasts is like, we share so much. And so for so many years, like I felt like I was just taking, you know, it was like, I'm just taking and taking I'm learning from, you know, different people and different experiences taking, taking. And it finally, you get to a level to where it's like, man, now I want to give back. Like, I, I, I've learned so much, like now I, how do I give back? And so it's been fun to get into that mode and really start sharing. And I have this and like to have people tell them it's helped them and that kind of thing. I mean, that's just, it's

pretty cool. You guys have had an amazing experience. I love that you came from your heart and it started with massive frustration. I've actually read this book more than one time. That's how much I like this book. How about you Jesse? How many times you've been through it?

You know, I've been through it, I guess, with, with you and I, and the collabosessions that probably puts me at about six times when I was reading. The first time I'm like, I was like, yeah, let me tell you, you know, Joe's cool. Kian. Like they're smart, maybe it's good. And as I was freedom, like, holy hell, like this is going to be a resource for a lot of damn people that are struggling. Like, you know, I was with Turner at the time. And in the way, some of us approached last planner system made it harder than it needed to be. And yeah. So I'm reading this and I'm like, shit, man, like, yes, this is exactly right. I mean, for me, I'm like, Took me back to when I was running last planner or when we were loving, running last planner system as a trade partner, without the GC, like, yeah, we were able to do it. We didn't get all caught up on all the bullshit. Like we were just able to make us achieve some level of flow. Right after that we had teams in all over the central United States who were like, Hey Jess, we want to do a study action team around The Lean Builder. Or we want to start a study action team. What book do you recommend? And I'm like, well, shit, you got to do TheLEan Builder. And then they're like, well, would you mind being a part of the team? I'm like, shit. Yeah, let's do it. You know, because I did have to do some reconciliation between what was presented in the book and what was what the standard was per as per Turner. And so just try to help turn her away. You got it. You got to carry the flag, whatever organization I've worked with, I'm going to carry the flag, but it was just kind of like, look, start here. But this is where we want to get to, but this is the best place to start. So there was no doubt that, that it was going to be a resource I also want to know, I think this is an important thing. I know for me, it's extremely important. And for the LNM family out there listening to, you know, the young tradesmen, the young engineer, that's just getting out of university and kicking off their career. Like you guys are a phenomenal example of what can be accomplished by identifying a problem and taking action upon it. It may have taken 10 years, but that's where we're all at. Right? Everybody's got an idea and in the cemetery is full of ideas, but you guys actually took action around your ideas. And your construction workers. I get the end of the day, we are construction workers. And so y'all are an example of what's possible in the fact that y'all just stepped out and did that and to serve the community. It's inspiring, man. It's fricking amazing. Thank you, man.

Appreciate that, Jesse. Yeah, it means a lot. That was really, we were hustling really hard that year and trying to get everything put together by the summertime. Cause that was really like the milestone we were pulling back from to get everything wrapped up, because that was essentially kind of the launch of the, was the launch of the book. It matter of fact, Keon and I actually had our, our launch party, like the Tuesday night there downtown Fort worth the week of Congress and still probably one of the best highlights of my career. Being able to share that with Keon and Terry and my wife Tasha. The journey over the past two years, riding it and finally kind of coming to a culmination in launching it there at that Congress was something I'll

never forget. Yes. It took some beautiful pictures. So for those of you listening, you have to go to the lean builder.com and look at those glorious photographs that Keyan and Joe have every, every time I look online and I see the pictures that you guys took, especially the ones at the bookstore, they are incredible. Yeah. That's

actually a

bar bar.

Yeah. You wouldn't find this in a book store, but you will find this

library

bar it's downtown Fort worth. Yeah. It's like, there's a little speakeasy and you go in upstairs and it looks like a library. And then there's a little kind of like a little bourbon bar in

there as we start talking about how we wrote these chapters and this and that. There's one chapter in particular, where there was a lot of bourbon involved in the writing

before

we leave. Go ahead and start sharing it. Yeah.

We're getting close to the end of the book and Joe and I are headed to AGC national convention in Denver. Anyway, we got there early and there's that union station in Denver and there was just this nice little bar and union station. We start writing the PPC chapter, which is one of my favorite chapters of the book. We really want to. For like some type of story where people understand how Allen even got to where he was implementing this in the first place. I was talking to Joe, I was like, we got to find some type of parable or something that's people would know to tie back into this. And so, you know, obviously, you know, sharpening your ax or sharpening your saw is a thing. And there's, there's things around that. And so the whole thing with him and his dad and, and we're sitting there, we're typing and order in and type in an order in, and you know, my director of marketing who edited our book and it's really in a lot of ways, the third author of the book, she's just such an unbelievable writer and storyteller. And so. Me and Joe would just write and write and write and we'd send it to her and she craft and clean up and storytell, and, and and she called me and it's like, she's like this chapter seven, like we got to talk. She's like, you guys wrote this chapter and I'll stay in my like, oh, geez, Joe. Like, and she was like, this is like the best chapter in the book. And so we're going to get it done the whole boat like that we've been doing. So, yeah. I mean, to me, the biggest thing that I remember that not a lot of people care about because the book was to teach people lean, but just the journey of writing it with Joe and just some of the sharing, you know, people always ask like, you know, are you Sam? Are you Alan? You know, this and that. And like, this is like both of us, just our journey combined of like what it's been like in this industry. And then to put it out. Yeah. And no kidding. We've had, I was looking at it the other day that we sold 12,000 copies of it. And it put it out and like to get feedback that like, this is my exact same journey. Like I'm saying, like for people to like resonate so well with the story it's, it's, it's kind of unbelievable that in some ways, like we're still all living the same bad dream, you know what I mean? Like I remember a good friend of mine, Chris, who was with Turner and he said like, man, he's like, this thing gave me PTSD. You know, it's like going back. Cause like just all the stuff along the way we, and in our industry, that's what it is. We've just gotten so numb to the waste and the dysfunction and the long hours that like, we can't even, you know, we can't even, it's hard to even elevate.

We've just accepted it for what

it is. And so the fact that so many people resignate with the characters and then, you know, just how many. Kind of crafted the characters in the book, as far as the story we wanted that, like, and that's, and I, I just, I can't love you guys enough. Like, I couldn't believe how, how well you read into that, you know, just like this in the early chapters, like how, you know, you couldn't have Alan just telling Sam what to do. Like he had a fail through it, you know what I mean? You couldn't have Sam like, like he had to show his true colors at some point with the two schedules and the way he treated the architect, because prior to knowing anything about this, that's the way we're seasoned and conditioned coming into this industry. And so it had to play out the way it did. I stand behind every, every way we did it. And I remember early on like some of the people, again, like when I call it builders lean, like I think some folks may have had some problems with like, like, like you got to say, like, we don't talk about last planner system. So more than halfway through the end of the book and that's intentional. You know, you find for me some company that does not do daily huddles, that does a weekly hour and a half subcontractor meeting once a week, that has no culture of respecting trades. The trades have a culture of, Hey, your projects to race. It's not a team sport. They've never been empowered to talk all those kinds of things that you guys hit on. Yeah. Go, go, go, try to do a pull plan session, go try to teach last planner to that. I love to do you know what I mean? And so like for us, it's like even when me and Joe do a workshop or try to teach this, like the whole first half, like we don't daily huddle constraint boards, how to run an effective huddle, how to implement visual communication. And, and you know what, like, if you could do that for a year, you'd be better off than where you are now, you know? Yeah. When people actually start to see the value, they start to get curious. Now start implementing a little bit less planner,

even just to go a little deeper, like it's just through the implementation of those simple tools that she even build the foundational culture on that job site that you have to have in the fricking first place of trust, accountability, and mutual respect to even go do last planner system. Like if you don't trust the other guys, how are you going to make a reliable promise to someone and expect them to follow through? And that's always been the frustration of seeing people just dive right in the last planner and dive into the tool, but they have no job site culture. They have nothing to sustain or pull back to of having the right stuff to title down. Like you can't do it without the

cultural furnished culture. First,

every time I stand behind what Keyan says, like take last planner out of the equation. Like if you could get good at scaling across your entire enterprise, forget last year, Do a daily huddle be consistent, leverage visual communications, have the right discussions around the workflow and make your constraints discussed and visual at the daily huddle to bring in team accountability. Like if you do that across all your projects and scale that across your enterprise, you're light years ahead of where you work and you're going to find tremendous value, and then you're going to be poised to then start ready for that calculus level. I just,

I just, the last thing I want to add to that is like, if you're working for a large, progressive general contractor, like yeah. You know, in that type of environment, there is a lot, you know, those firms are more adept and if people are more seasoned to go that route, there's 10,000 general contractors in our country, like forget about the bit of us that are involved in LCI and forget about the majority that only do 50 million, you know, like 50 million or more. Yeah. Like if we're really trying to make this, the standard in our industry, like, there's like, that's where I like to focus. There's so many other people focusing on, Hey, let's do a simulation game with the team and let's do all, Hey, that's great. I'm looking for that superintendent that is working 80 hours a week in some market where there's no community of practice where, I mean, this is just trying to figure out a better way to do it. And like that, that's what we're about. Like, like that's where we want to focus. And that's why we spend so much time talking about just even building the right culture. And that's why I was really laughing so hard at the podcast where like, Jesse you're like, you don't even know you don't even know my name fool. Like, yeah. I mean, for so many years, I mean, how do we get so frustrated when I was in the field and like fire sprinkler foreman duct work foreman it would come to me and be complaining about each other, but looking at me and I'm like, are you talking about Dan? Who's standing right here, who you've known on this job for the last six months, but then over time, it's like, well, no, you know what? He hasn't actually got to know Dan, because Dan doesn't talk in the meeting because we only have one meeting a week. And in that meeting, we don't ask Dan to talk. And so it's like that we could have done the whole book on that. The second book it would have just been about last planner. And so I think that's kind of the mindset of like, I think for the folks that. Or in the bigger firms that have internal processes, this and that, which I know the books helped. And and we're, we're humbled for that, but like, we're hoping to like change the industry with the kind of conversations you guys had in the earlier podcasts around those early chapters, because that's just the stigma in our industry. That's the conditioning in our industry and that's got to fix otherwise, none of this other stuff is going to work. These tools won't

work just like Joseph you're, right. Keyan and Joe you're right too. It's 2021. And I still go to construction projects every month. And in 2021, I've been to subcontractor because that's what they call them meetings. I call them trade partner meetings. Yep. And it's coming from those values and culture that we have. That's a little bit different. And I think all of us on the call have a little bit different approach to it. And I've watched how often are questions asked of the trade leaders and how often are they encouraged to speak. And in a two hour meeting that I was at in the last six months, not two sentences, it was a lecture, it was a two hour lecture. So I think that for all the people listening that have this stigma with academia, the very same people that complain about they don't like school and they don't like it to be in school. You're creating a lecture environment on your job site. When you don't ask for people's input, you have brilliant people working on your project. You've hired amazing qualified companies and individuals. And when you don't ask and you think that you have to mastermind the whole thing, you're turning all those people off and you will not be able to keep up with the complexity is. Construction in this century, I am super happy. And it's real, like, as I read this, that Jessie and I were getting triggered, like your friend, Chris Keon with PTSD. I mean, we were, we were getting angry about things that had just happened like days ago when we were recording these sessions over there. And I think it took us like half a year to record book. So, and I totally agree with you, Joe. Like, it's gotta be starting with the simple stuff if you're out there and you're just like last planner is too complicated. You're right. It's too complicated. And if you're out there and you think last point are so simple and everybody should do it you're right. But those two different people have different perspectives. And I love that. And how this book, you can pick up and thumb into any chapter and just start with that thing right now,

when I go to a presentation or like when I'm at LCI, I can listen to somebody talk for 30, 45 minutes and have at least one to three things that I can immediately take back and improve. Man, I'm happy. Like I judge all the presentations I go to by that alone. And it's so important for us to like, when we wrote the book and when we're sharing this information, like, we want to give you something that you can take and immediately apply on the job site right away. Like no theoretical, no you know, you've got to go invest in this technology or you got to buy all this stuff. Like, no, you can just like, here's something that you can go do tomorrow.

You should be able to start this with zero cost. And that was even the build off of what Keyan was saying there, like our hope was that the guys and gals would read the story, but even knowing like our demographic in the industry, like, let's just give them the cliff notes at the back of the book. Like let's just put all of the content that we were trying to deliver around the implementation of the tools and methodologies, just putting the playbook. And let's just fast forward. If they want to know. What are the seven things I need to know to go have an effective daily huddle. Boom. Here they are. Chapter play one in the playbook. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay, got that down. Okay. What do I need to talk about in the daily huddle? Okay. Visual communication. Here's what you need to talk about. What are you working on? Where are they working? How many guys do you guys what are your deliveries? What are your constraints? Like feed the information through there. And that was the whole premise because we wanted everything to be tangible. We wanted everything that they could read one chapter before, even moving on to the next chapter. Okay, great. Now I got five things that I could go try out on my job site on Monday morning to try to get a little bit better. And that's kind of the filter that we put everything through in regards to the content and how we try to roll it

and exactly what you're talking about after they read a chapter, they're now equipped to go do something. What advice would you give folks that feel like they need to take the book with them and make sure they do it? Perfect. Otherwise they're failing.

The biggest thing I could even start like to start, even in that conversation realm is probably put the book down, like read the first chapter on what you want to do and then start small. Like that's the biggest thing that I always see everybody do is like, they try to do the whole day of thing at one time. And it's like, it's no. And that's one of the reasons why I think I was listening. I actually listened to y'all's collab with session number six on the, on the drive over this morning and y'all hit on it. You nailed it in that discussion about last planner system. Like they try to eat the whole thing at one time and it's no wonder why last planner system leaves such a bad taste in, in, in the mouths of those who tried it and it failed and I'm like, oh, that doesn't work. Let's, let's go back to the way we were doing it. You got to start small, you got to get a little bit of momentum and you got to show the value, add to yourself and your team before you're ready to move on to the next thing. Like if you're. Proving that that system or tool is creating value, then there's, there's no justification for you taking it any further. So start small. And then to answer your question more directly, Jesse, think about your audience. Think about your team, bring in, ask them, ask questions and find out what's going to make the most value for them. We like to think of this as kind of like the Betty crocker recipe. Like try, try this recipe first, like give this the first shot, but then as you, as you master that, I thinkKeyan does a really good analogy that he's like, if you want your cookies, a little sweeter, a little bit more sugar, if you want, if you want more chocolate chips, put a little bit more, if you want to get crazy and put some walnuts in there, throw some walnuts in, but start with the base recipe first. Yes. Start bringing in bits and pieces, that's going to deliver more value to that team. You don't have to be focused on trying to get it all just right and perfect and make it look just like it is in the book, man. Find out what works for you, but

scars committee cracker. That's a shout out to my president. Dwaine Hodges. That's his analogy, but that's the way we do it. And actually that is lean way to do it. Like at scholarship, we use lean boards, those lean boards have a version number on them. Everybody operates off version one. Then we start meeting as groups start to see, is there a better way to do things? And then if we all agree, we all update the standard and go to version two. I mean, that's the way to do it. But going back to your, your, your initial, like here's my compass to our people. If it, if it adds value, that's lean. If somebody tells you to do something, that's lean. And it's not adding any value, then that's not lean and you should stop doing that. Trying to check boxes here. It's all about the compass of value waste. If it's not adding value, then you either you're doing it wrong or you don't need to be doing it. And it's that simple. And for us, like, I like to empower our people, like they'll know, like the field will know, the field will know they come to a daily huddle and the superintendent is, you know 80% presenting and 20% facilitating, like, and they don't get to talk as much yeah. They'll get a little bit of value and maybe they come and they participate. But if the superintendent is 80% facilitating and you know, 20% telling, and now they're engaged like they're going to see the value and then they'll want to come. And so just that's the compass, but I totally agree with Joe start small. And people are like, well, how long should I, should I wait? It's like, who knows? Wait a year. You know, you know, like, like it's so funny, like in the more progressive firms too, it's like, we'll sit there and talk an hour on daily huddles and then maybe an hour on visual communication. If we're teaching something and you can just tell they're bored. And then I'll just ask you a question like, oh, do you guys do this on every one of your projects across your entire company? If the answer is no, then like stop, you know, it's great that your job, you feel a little more progressive. What are you trying to accomplish? If you're trying to build your firm up to be a firm that is a true leader in implementation of lean and changing the industry and pushing the needle. Like every project in your entire firm should have a huddle. Every project should be used in visual communication. Every project should be managing constraints. You get there. Okay. Now let's start with last planner system. Now let's start trying to implement full planning, but you know, You know, you know how it is. A lot of people like to pick and choose, you know, I

do, everyone wants to shop off of the Alcart menu and they don't want to trust the chef. That's spent decades creating their craft and making that food just for especially burritos, just so delicious.

You're making me hungry.

I'll get some breakfast burritos soon. I think one of the things that you said KEyan earlier, and, and Joe was reacting to it as well, is that there has been a lot of groundwork done in this area. And people forget in lean that it didn't start in academia. It started in real companies, people solving real business problems. And from my perspective, we're on the same page of what lean is like you just said. Now, if it adds value for you, that's lean. And for me, if you're learning and it changes what you do tomorrow to make you better, because I'm better by your standard, not by mine, better by your standard. To me, that's lean learning and adaptive mindset is all I'm looking for. And anybody that's hungry and wants to start with something. And I'd completely agree. We have a lot of firms that are just anti last planner system. And if they are, it's probably for a good reason because somebody came in or they saw something that was like overly complicated. And if it's, if somebody makes anybody, anybody can actually take something simple and make a complicated and complex, that's not a mark of genius. And so you want to make it so that if you can't talk to people in conversation and improve how you deliver your job, you probably don't know enough yet. And that's okay. Start, like Joe said, start exactly where you are. If you haven't, if you haven't ever asked, are there things holding you up as a superintendent or as a foreman running crews, if you've never asked your. Why can't we do this thing as planned. That's the first place to start asking them a question and then you'll build capacity from there. And then I completely agree with Jesse, if you're a trade partner and you have someone that knows how to do this, you know, use them to help you do it, whether the GC does it or not, I've started to know more. I'm no more trade partners now than GC companies that do pull planning when the GC doesn't, that's becoming a thing.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

And GCs, if you're listening out there, trade partners make real money. Whereas we make pennies on the dollar. But I want to ask Joe and Keon, what's something that you get asked a lot or what's something that you wish people would ask you when it comes to The Lean Builder or.

Hmm. I might go for herself. I want to share a couple of funny things. So what I did not expect would happen when we wrote the book was that superintendents across the country would send me pictures via LinkedIn of their Elmo dolls on their job site. That's been a little creepy. I appreciate it. But I get a lot of, yeah, I get a lot of that. And so that's been fun. I think, you know, for the most part you know, the see back that, that I've gotten around the book has been all positive, even from people that I've learned a lot from and respect that are in key positions, kind of like you fully. And you're from to where I think when they first read it, they were like, ah, you know, we don't actually do it the way you describe it. But then once their superintendents read it and it was like the first resource that they were like, oh, this is good. Then it was like, yeah, let's open it up. And so it's been so fun for me and Joe, we get a lot of the orders we get are for like 30, 40, 50 books that are going to entire project teams all the field teams for their certain firms. And then and then when we get feedback from some of those folks, it's super humbling. And I just, I don't know that we expected a lot of that, Joe, I don't know about you, but it was like, we knew we wanted to write this book. We knew we wanted to share this journey. We knew we wanted to give back, but I don't know that we put much thought in it'd be like what it would be like afterward. It was just something that we thought we needed to do, you know?

Yeah. I knew, I think we knew there was, there was a demand for it. , I mean, I'll be straight up. I'll be honest, like. You know, when we rolled it out, we were going to be presenting it at Congress and we were going to be, you know distributing it at AGC convention in March of 2020. But I mean, if I'm being completely transparent, I thought it was pretty much going to peak at that maybe like, you know, another thousand or two copies after that, but I never would have thought we would have sold 12,000 copies in the time that we did. I didn't think the demand or the, the hunger for that was, was that significant. And I piggyback onto the feedback you know, KEyan ] was talking about and seeing the light bulb come on for so many teams and so many superintendents and just the validation of like guys what you're telling, like what you're describing in the book. I mean, that's like my day to day, like you just described my current state, you just described the headaches that I have. And I think because of that, It just cracks that door open and it gets those guys and gals so interested to, to, to thirst for more and to want to try to solve their issues and to feel empowered, to solve their issues. And to me, that's been probably like the biggest aha, but also at the same time, it's been the most rewarding thing because it's just that validation and hearing the feedback that we are making people's lives better. We are allowing them to elevate up. They still may be working a lot and, you know, lean isn't a silver bullet. That's, you know, you're magically only going to work 40 hours now because you're running lean in last planner system, but you're going to stop being reactive. You're going to stop putting out, like just chasing around the job site all day long, putting out fires and the work that you are going to be doing is going to be more meaningful. You're going to be elevating up. You're going to be looking for constraints before they come in and they torpedo you. You're going to be able to play. Into sequence into phase and actually provide a reliable workflow to your project and provide flow. And that work is so much more meaningful and enjoyable. And in turn your mental health is going to be better. You're going to be getting home earlier. It's just going to be a more enjoyable situation. And to me, that's been, that's been the biggest. Aha.

Thank you so much, guys. I love both of those. Oh, let's talk about CPM. Hey, here we go.

Buckle up. Hope you got another hour.

I'm going to flex it right now. Critical path method scheduling. It's a world war one technology developed by Henry Gantt back in the late, early 19 hundreds, late 18 hundreds from all what I can see. And you guys tell me if I'm wrong. It's never worked in construction.

This is an interesting conversation.

What I mean, it's never worked. I mean, for something to work, it should deliver what it promises. Yeah. And that's one when it doesn't deliver. And, and if, if you have to go through heroics and acrobatics and superhuman things to make that thing work, it doesn't work. That's what I'm saying.

This is where I'll start. And I don't know that I'll get too, too deep, but this is where I'll start to, it's two things, two things. Right? So number one is like, for me, I feel like me and Joe are in the business of like, we're converting people to lean and in our journey with it, that's not necessarily a topic that I want to engage with in that. It's kind of, it's the standard in a lot of ways, it's contractual. There there'd be so much undoing in the way that. Getting people to think in a totally different mindset that that's not a fight that I ever want to get into. I, I perfectly like to teach in the way that like in chapter six where you're pull plan session, it's implemented back into your master schedule. If you built in some time that time is team flowed. If you're going over, you look for a different way to Repole. Otherwise you're looking for an opportunity to pull back and a different, a different milestone. But in my experience, trying to have that conversation as part of the way that I, I would teach the system, like I'm turning way too many people off. And I don't want to have it now on the flip side of that. Yeah. No trade partner foreman is walking around the job with the Gant schedule, making sure like that's not how they put work into place. Okay. And so like, I've been in many debate, Joe knows like even just yesterday, many debates. Of like when the people want to go really hard on me on the, again, I'm like, listen, Hey, record, keeping tracking, making sure that the project's on, on path at a high level of macro level. Absolutely. But if you think you issuing, you know, a 20 page schedule to the field is how they're actually building the job. Like you're out of your mind. Number two, like I challenge anybody even in the best, like Jesse, when you were a foreman in the field and I'm the superintendent. If I come to you and say, Hey, do you know the date that your plumbing in wall is due? I'm not going to lie nine, nine times out of 10. They don't you as a foreman. They don't, they don't, they, they got the men that they need. They got the materials and they're pushing, pushing as hard as they can to get done. Like there's no necessarily, I mean, and yeah, the superintendents talking days. But I could go walk. Any job site, ask the conquer. Hey, do you know when you're do you know the date, your foundation is supposed to be D they don't try it. They don't 90% of them don't. And so going back to that, to me, they should, that should be something that's talked about. When we talk about weekly work planning, those, those mini milestones, those dates, everybody needs to feel that scoreboard, that pressure. We're a team we got to get through the next phase. And so you're never going to hear me argue Felipe around implementing last planner versus Gantt and this and that. And actually how things get built in the field where I won't go is that, Hey, if you want to use your Gantt schedule to make sure that your critical path shows, if you're on track or not, and you're, you're looking at a high macro level throughout your job, and that's what you have to update as part of your agreement. Hey, you're not going to hear me, like try to convince you differently in an effort to that's what turns you off to implementing lean? So I hope that's not a, a BS answer.

That's not a BS answer. You started with the BS answer, but then you saved yourself. So thank God. Thank God. I was getting worried that I was gonna have to cut all of that answer out and now it actually gets to stay in the final. The final cut.

I'll tell you, you talked to a lot of people in our industry. That's a very touchy subject and I've seen a lot of people that if they feel like that's what lean or last planner is about, you just turn them right off. And I just, I don't know, that's a conversation that we need to have right now. I think the conversation we need to have is around building culture, getting more value back in our day, implementing some of these things. Are easy to do that. Give more value that get people thinking in a different way. And then as that, as that needle starts to push and things start to shift, Hey, how about it?

I agree. And somewhat disagree. So I, I, myself Keyan , I talked a lot of people in the industry and I've been on academic research committee efforts to, to come to just telling the industry what are the different type of collaborative scheduling methodologies we use. And in that research funded by CGI and included people that make a living just doing production, product, project controls, or scheduling. And we even had people that have written books on CPM scheduling, and we have people that advise large companies, large software companies that make a full-time living, delivering CPM scheduling software to the industry that's used everywhere on planet earth. And we did have some of those tough conversations and, and Keyan I think those conversations are worth having, but I agree with you that that's not going to get people convinced. And I think, I think we all agree, but from the builder's perspective and the same is true for people in support functions. And also in executives, like at the end of the day, we need to build something. And so we can have, we can have some healthy debate and dialogue on what works and what doesn't. And I want the people that make their living, doing those things in support to, I'm not trying to eliminate your job. I'm not that definitely there are, it has its place. And like you said, some of these things are contractual and standard, but what I don't want to do is to get over-reliant on things that, that don't really function in a way that benefits the people, trying to put the work in place. I want to always support the people building it. And the reason I do that is because the clients that we build for need these things, that's the whole reason that we're even coming together is because there is a need and the need is not so that Joe can just build like his 55th hospital. The need is because that hospitals are going to treat people that need care and to need to come back to health, you know, in the case of Joe, because he does a lot of hospitals. And so that's, that's where I'm coming at it. Keyan yeah.

Well, well, I'll say this Felipe , that's why we need people, like, even in our industry, I mean, continuing to push the needle and they're already be thinking that far ahead to have these kinds of conversations and to be doing this kind of research. And so again, you know, any, you know, I, you're not going to hear me disagree with that. You know, I think we do need people like you that are trying to push the next phase of what this could mean. So either you're not gonna hear me argue with

that. Yeah. And I've had Jesse has witnessed it on LinkedIn. People have come after me on the CPM debate and on the, on scrum as well. Cause that gets a lot of scrum gets a lot of whiplash too, because it's an also a pool framework, very similar to LPs and I'll go back and forth with people respectfully and I'll even have to call people on the phone. I've had conversations with people that some of my friends have blocked from posting on LinkedIn and I've given them my cell phone and we've had like a 10 minute or a half hour conversation. And at the end of the Keyan we both understand each other better. And I've made so many more friends that way. Then I don't tell people like what they're doing is wrong. And in, in our company, when we developed our LPs, we brought on some chief schedulers from around the organization and some other scheduling managers to make sure that this was something that worked. With how they're working now. So we're not jumping like to go back to what you said about Steve Harvey. Like we're going to jump or we're not going to jump so far that we fall down and die. We're going to jump and still make some progress. So what do you say to CPM Joe? Cause you probably F nine, at least a couple of times a day. I mean, high

level.

I agree. And, and take the stance of where Keyan was headed. There was something that y'all said on your last podcast. I think it was Jesse. That was like a CPM and last planner system where like the parents who got a divorce and they've been separated for five years and now everyone's trying to get them back together. I juggled, I chuckled at that one to me. They both have their place and they both served their purpose. If anything, if I see them, like if I visit, when I visually try to see them, I see them working in parallel. They're not, they're not something that works like this in unison. They are two independent tools that are serving two different functions. To me, when that information, you got to capture that information from the pool and to Keyans point, the easiest way to do that is tying that back and putting it in into your CPO, or at least that's one way to do it. And that's one way that we talk about it, but Felipe , to your point, that's not the one to me. That's not the one for one going through the schedule, making sure that it all ties back to me. That's flipping in a hammock or throwing in there under that milestone. Hey, here's the milestone? Here's what was in the CPM, but here's like the validated plan that we just did from the pull plan. And we're just bringing it back in here. So we don't lose that great information, coordination, collaboration, handoff, make ready constraints that we just all figured out over the last two and a half hours. So it has a place to live. That's the biggest waste around pool planning, right? Like you do this awesome PUll plan and then it's like, crap, what do we do? Like, what do we do with all this great information? Cause then it's like waste. Cause then you got to go back and try to find a place for that to live. Unless you're using some type of like touch plan or refine my side or like a software that's captured for that, for that in real time. So high level, they don't integrate fully. There, there are two different tools that work in unison that support each other that run in parallel, but you can't really compare. They can't be fully

integrated.

So it's like Jesse said, it's like a divorced parents, but it was a mutual separation and

yeah, I kinda kinda like, yeah, that, that was pretty good way of saying that I remembered it. Like as soon as I was like, man, that's okay.

I keep it cool for the kids.

Yeah. Bring it back. This to me, this is really good. Lean nerd guru talk. Right. I don't know. I don't, I like the conversations I want to have right now with the folks that we're trying to convince to change the way in their behaviors are, are more, it's dialed back a little bit about, like, let's just think about how trait let's just think about how, how a schedule actually works. Right? I'm just going to type in my role, if I'm going after a project, either the client's telling me how many months the job is and the RFP that comes out in the first place, or, you know, if it's something, if we ever have to go after a bid, which we don't do a lot of, but if we do, you know, the drawings come out. We get them out. Probably some guy in my role builds the schedule in a couple hours based on the drawings we get. We probably kick that to the trade partners with a week left before their bids do. And you know, then the superintendent takes it and says, oh, the ops guy made it. I guess this must be the schedule for the job. And he's pushing my beautiful schedule, where everything starts on Monday and ends on Friday and they're building with, and, and I'm being facetious here, but how did the trades actually plan their work? Well, number one, they build in the amount of man hours. They think it's going to take to do the job. So if they think it's going to take 10,000 man hours and it takes eight, well, guess what? They make more money. If it takes 12, they lose money. So I rather debate in conversations around. Do you really think your trade partners are trying to hold you up? Or did you really think that they're, you know, intentionally not wanting to make money? Oh, they want to beat the man hours they have. And I like to have the conversations around like, okay. In a pool plan, if somebody's sandbagging on time, like ask them to see if their estimator will print out how many man hours they have in the job, they may actually look at the durations that they give you in the pool plan. And so there's so much other conversation in regards to how to get last planner system to actually work right. And how to have these conversations and the dysfunction of how we even schedule in our industry in the first place that you know, I think there's a lot of room for boots on the ground to have these kinds of conversations to teach in that way and then have a certain portion. Of the leaders, lean leaders in our industry, trying to push the needle of what it should be. And so I feel like this conversation is a good compliment of two different scenarios.

Yeah.Keyan y'all said it earlier, the culture first, like people y'all have a little regretful about some of the shit I said, I mean, it is how I feel, right. Like, cause it's, it's straight up what I feel, but when it comes to the conversation about CPM and last planner system, when people start that conversation around me, I'm like, I'm out. Like we are so far away from having to worry about that shit. Like we got a culture respect problem in our period. Like let's focus there and then we can joke around with the damn board. Like

we got bigger. Yeah. Well, and Jesse, like, you know, I, I don't want you to have to Polish like yo and I tried it. In this fine line of like, we went back and forth, like, should we use the word trade partner? I haven't used the word subcontractor in here. We're using the word trade partner. But at the end of the book, it's like, all right. If we start calling them trade partners in chapter one, like half the supers are going to be like, now, you know what the hell we're talking about? That's our audience. Yep. Okay. Yep. We intentionally try to trigger without turning you off completely. We had to play certain things safe and then certain things, you know, I mean, it was intentional when Sam's like my schedule, like that's that period. There was so much of that. I've been a part of, a lot of book clubs, me, Joe, and different companies that have read the book have asked us to come spend some time and even in our own firms. But it's interesting. Like I've never seen anybody go like pick up on the nuance that deep. And I'm glad, like, I think that conversation needed to be had because There was just a lot of that. That was intentional. Like, you know, when SA and one of the chapters, when like Sam, he stayed up too late watching the game, he procrastinated on building the crib for their new baby. His PM happened to be on vacation that we, you forgot his phone. Like that's a real person day sometimes in our business. And for him to have the compiling issues of the firefighting that was going on with all the, like, that's what happened. Like that's just the way it is and people are human and the way they react is going to be human and especially on a job site. And so it's good that you felt that way. Like that was the intent.

Yeah. My favorite part when Jesse, Jesse got triggered is one, they were going to write a letter to their office or call their office and he's like, well, you better CC my mom on the email.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I, it's funny, like, I think I remember like me and Joe, like, we sat so long, so many, I just typing and laughing and writing and like, I just remember yeah, I, I like, I remember being like, oh yeah. And tell him he's going to like cop, you know, they're going to put them in default or something. Like we had that conversation. Cause that's the conversations we had, you know, that's how a general contractor things

I want to add in regards to kind of building off what Kian said with intentionality too. This one's not so much relative to the trade partner aspect, that kind of where that comment was coming from a minute ago. But to us, it was so important for Alan to be the character dropping the knowledge onto Sam, who was the younger demographic. Because I think that's another significant challenge that we're facing in our industry today because we're at. Kind of weird pivotal time where we've had all these amazing leaders. I don't even like saying the term old school. Cause it's, it's, it's those leaders in the wisdom and the understanding in, in what they have made them. Unbelievable, amazing builders, but the game's changed. Like it's not them, that's changed. It's the current state of this fricking industry. Like it's, it's the design, it's the skilled trades in the, the lack of it's just the trades in general, it's the communication styles. It's the trade partners and just the, you guys having to manage the skill labor, and just not having the time to plan and get into the weeds. And most of the time you're ripped off of one job and thrown onto another and you don't know what's going on. And you know, because of that, it's made, it's just tough for what I, I feel like a, a young man. Less than experienced either a project engineer, APM superintendent to like bring these ideas and topics up to some of these more senior leaders who are like, why, why do we need to change what we're doing here? Because what I've been doing has been working. I've been with my company 30 years, may my owner a bunch of money. The client asks for me by name, like what I'm doing is not broken. And we just felt it was important to show Alan being the one dropping that knowledge to not alienate that specific demographic and breathing them into the story and have them engaged into the discussion and just get them there in the, in the first place, because it is something as an industry. We got some work cut out for us and it's going to be a hurdle that we're going to be trying to

manage. Yeah. It couldn't just be some hot shot, young superintendent trying to school, everybody on how to do this. Like no one would have, I mean, I'm not saying that's not what happens in a lot of companies, you know, it's usually a younger, somebody trying some that hadn't been burned so many times. And so they did, that's trying to do something new, but like that's not fully our audience, our audience is to try to help those folks. And that's what, yeah, like Joe said, man, Sam had to be the junior guys, Alan, the sensei had it. He, the older guy and he had to drop the knowledge in a way that like, you don't even, he's just not spoonfeeding it. Like Sam had had to learn it.

I think Keyan will attest to this. And this is really important. If you can get one of those trade or field leaders from your farm, if you're a GC. One of those superintendents with some gray in their beard, with some knowledge, with some wisdom who traditional, you might consider that old school guy, and you can have one of those leaders be your lean champion, watch out because this guy's going to be the limit because you're going to see the momentum and the dynamic change within your firm. If you can get those type of leaders bought in, and they're the ones carrying the torch that had that seniority and have that just that charisma and dynamic that everyone else is going to follow and get behind. It's going to be a game changer for your firms. So don't just think of pushing those guys out. Like you need to bring those guys in. Like those are going to be the guys that are gonna take you to the next

level, our firm, if you follow our blog a lot one of our senior year seniors pretended buddy bumped Brumley has got some posts in there and he's a guy in a, it's a more seasoned guy in our industry. And man, when the light bulb came off for him and he became our champion, I mean, it helped us scale so much. And so, yeah, like Joe said, you really got to find your champions within your. Okay. So

Those are some super duper delicious, good nuggets that's for anyone listening and that works. And even if you're in a small firm of just six superintendents, or if you're in a big company with over 200 superintendents, that is true, your influencers are the, sometimes the older, more seasoned people. And sometimes they could be in the middle as well. And there are, there are a couple examples of some young hot shot superstars, but the industry has so much momentum and habits baked in. I was talking to a PE this week and he said, like, I actually learned last planner system in college. And then I came to work in the industry and I couldn't talk about it. And he said it wasn't an he's like three years went by and. The next thing I know is like, you're sharing something and we're going through something and we're, and he's like, I already had done this before and I was like, well, you didn't even speak up at that, in that moment to say that you'd even had some experience. And I was like, that's what I'm fighting against. I'm fighting to where we can't even let those people speak

up. I got to share, I got to share a story. So a lot of universities have picked up our books because a lot of universities in their grad program or their capstone programs, they teach lean now, which is awesome. And so they've been requiring the book is reading. And so sometimes Joe and I will go, we'll speak. But I remember giving a presentation at Texas a and M just about lean. And this was probably before the book, but I was talking about a material delivery board, because again, like I'm focusing on things that are very tangible. And so like on our projects, we have a material delivery or. It attracts, you know, what's being delivered. When, what type of truck is it coming in? How's it going to come off the truck, all those kinds of things. And I'm explaining this like as part of visual communication to this group of students. And when I, when I give this presentation in industry, like people are like, yeah, that's a good idea. We used to do that in the past or tracking hook time. And I see people like, hi, that's great. We got to do that. And I see the light bulbs go on in the classroom setting, like blank faces. Finally, this kid raises his hand. He's like, Hey, I got, I started to ask. He's like, don't take this the wrong way, but it really doesn't sound that like groundbreaking. He's like, why wouldn't you guys just have a material delivery board anyway. And like, how was I, you know, trigger? And I was like, dude, you haven't been jaded by the dysfunction in our industry. Like, we don't have time to think about common sense. Like we're too busy, Jason RS, like so it's like I share that story all the time. Cause it's so funny because it's. When you're firefighting all day long, dealing with issues, people, issues, project issues, all that kind of stuff. We become. So conditioned to the dysfunction. We don't even know what's supposed to be there or not. And you know, just, it's so funny, you know, you bring it up a kid coming out of school and say, man, I learned this. And then this wasn't what I experienced when I got here. And almost you almost forgot about it or they wasn't. And I get it, I get it. I see it.

It is a very intense industry and you could be dropped in on a magical project, headed to litigation, and you're going to have a completely different experience than someone going on a job where you've negotiated with the client and the client just loves you and their name. And, you know, they're, they're dropping Joe's name and they're negotiating the job directly based on relationship. Those are completely different things. Yeah, I think I love it. I want to close it down with the resources that you guys are putting out in the book are phenomenal based on truth, truth, Jesse and I attest hand to God truths being dropped in there and we love the book. Guys love what you've done. I wouldn't change anything in the book. The fact that it triggers so many people at so many different levels, it means you did it right. And I think the, the lean blog where you're sharing stories from different voices in the industry is critically important. I even I'll share something, had a young project engineer. It doesn't even work in our organization, contacted me through LinkedIn and they said, I read this thing on the lean builder, and I've heard you talking about this and we want to start doing this. What do I need to do? And so we just went to the same article that someone had posted on your site. And we just closed a couple of gaps and said, Go do it and be patient with yourself. It's not going to be perfect the first time a lot of people in our industry talk themselves out of trying something because it's not going to be exactly perfect. I said the best thing you can do. And when you stand up, if your superintendent is going to make you stand up and facilitate this, tell the tradespeople, it's your first time and that you would appreciate them to help you, they will help you. Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Love it. So with that, I want to give Jesse the last words and then I want to thank you guys for coming on the show and then thank, thank us. If you want to, if this has been good for you, then we'll close it down, Jesse.

Yeah. Thank you. Keyan and Joe, for, for being gracious with your time for, for giving us the space to actually do the damn Collabosessions and, and. For the feedback that y'all have given, I mean, Keon, Joe, both of you guys have sent us feedback about one of the episodes you listen and the dumb shit that comes out of my mouth and I'm like, oh, okay, good. I didn't piss them off. Like this is it. It's, it's actually like pretty damn awesome to get feedback from you guys. And having the, the impact and the fingerprint that y'all are gonna leave in the industry. So it's all I can say is thank you. And I'm looking forward to, to the ripples of change that y'all are going to continue to have. And I also want to lend I guess just lend myself to you. If there's a way that you can find in the future where I could serve you and contribute to your mission, I'm like totally dead. But warning, you already know the way I am. There's some things you might want to take into consideration.

Yeah. I got a mad respect for the both of you, Joe and Keyan . I have nothing but respect for the work you're doing and what you've done and why you did it. Yeah.

Thank you guys. It's a two way street on our end as well. Fleet bay, Jesse, thank you guys for the opportunity+. Thank you for going through these Colabosessions . And we enjoyed the the space this morning. We enjoyed the opportunity to shed a little light into some of the contexts around how we got to this point and how we got this workout and the platform you guys. So we're, we're here for y'all as well. And thank

you for time. Likewise, very humbling to hear that from both of you. I think the two things that I would have in closing is, you know, one when, when Joe and I wrote this book, like I remember telling Joe that I hope in like three to four years time, there's like a handful of books. Written by true practitioners or something that if anybody comes to us, it's like here, read this or listen to this. And so what you guys are doing with your podcast, I can't even imagine the amount of time and effort that takes all in the effort to give back to the industry. Man, keep up the good fight. This is what's needed. I've never been more excited about the potential of what could be changing in our industry as I am right now, the second thing, and I just, I hate to keep the rumors going, but I can't confirm or deny that Alan Phillips was named afterFelipe oh,

forgot. What did that tell you? These guys do not disappoint. I If you haven't gone out and tried some of these things or bought the book or listen to the previous collabo sessions. You need to go do it. And then anything that catches your interest that you haven't tried yet. Test it out, put it into action. Promise you. It's going to make things a lot better. And while you're trying out those new things, how about you give it, you. I'm going to be a little greedy here. And make another ask. So far, we're batting a thousand on our iTunes ratings and we were 10 for 10 with five star ratings. And I know there's more than 10 of y'all out there listening. So I'd love it. If you would go. Give us your honest, true rating. And, and leave us a comment, leave us a thought, something that tickled your mind, something, they bugged you, something that we can improve. Uh, it'll help us, you know, get some more run out there and spread the good word. And the moment we've all been waiting for recognition for another L and M family. The member. This feedback comes directly from. From Daniella to readily. Daniella tells us I had listened to the Dee Durant Episode. I absolutely loved it And we'll definitely check out some more of your other episodes Keep up the great work. See that's what I'm talking about People are getting some good stuff out of this Daniella thank you for taking the time Not only to listen but to go above and beyond and give us the feedback It's very meaningful and for the rest of the l and m family I'm really looking forward to to interacting with you on the collabos stream on youtube It's going to be some good stuff and and i'm kind of like an open target so bring it and bring it hard 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.