EP113: Creating Killer SOP Systems With Tom Hughes From GembaDocs

Thank you, Brad. Great to be here and great job you did. You shortened my intro and it still sounded long.

Awesome. Well done.

Well, I got a t-shirt on today. Yeah, it's awesome. Because it's early. I don't want your listeners to miss out on this. So the biggest thing you need to do, I'm going to leave you with three things. Download the LeanPlay app. LeanPlay on iOS or Android. Really, really important. Now, this isn't my book. This is Paul Aker's book. Two Second Lean Play. for free on there. All of Paul's books are free on there. My book, free on audio on there. It's an audible clone. Do yourself a favor. Totally free. Anything you hear here that might strike a chord, you'll really love all this. And finally, that's the last one I wrote. It's only a few weeks old, that one. Oh, wow. Okay. That's step one. Make sure you download the Lean Play app. Step two, go to gamadox. com. That's the one when we get into the standards. And finally, back to this for a moment, step three. So we are going to talk about processes quite a bit today. And I wrote this book to help small companies implement standards. It's half an hour on LeanPlay. So the design was that you as a business leader could listen to it. And if you've got a number of people working with you or for you, you can also get them to listen to this. Not too much to ask. 30 minutes and they're done. I'll get that out of the way.

Well, Paul's book, I love it. It got me started. And it's a great explanation of what DIY lean. You could almost think. You use that term in the US, don't you? Do it yourself. Oh, yeah. You don't need consultants. You can do lean yourself, right? That was new. That was pretty new thinking when Paul did that. I did two-second lean myself in several companies. But it was frustrating to me that so many people would try it and fail. So they'd read the book, wow, get all energized, and off they go and then mess it up. And because I got a bit of a rep for doing it quite well myself in my own companies and helping other people, I got to develop a framework of how to do it that would help other businesses do it well. Arguably, I have 30 years experience of organization change. You touched on the big stuff there, the $200 million stuff. That was a huge change journey with 16 geographic units in that business. And pretty much all of them went from A to Z, arguably, in terms of their journey. So I had a lot of experience of that. So improvement starts with I. Back to, I'm going to throw it back to you. What do you think of me? What am I hinting at of the title of that book?

100%. And that is really it. The biggest mistake people make with any change, whether it's two-second lean, whether it's trying to get processes or standards into your company, is you push it. Too much pushing and not enough pulling. And how change is best done is when you start with yourself. So when you're the exemplar, of the change that you're looking to have. Let's say build Paul in the organization. So the advice I got when I read Two Second Lean, I'm talking within 48 hours of digesting the audio book before the Lean Play app came out. Luckily for me, I had an Irish friend who knows Paul and he said, reach out to Paul Akers, he'll help you. And I was like, what? This dude's wrote a book. It's like, I think it's all half a million copies. And some random person from Ireland is going to answer that. So anyway, sure enough, I wrote in this big wallet text on WhatsApp. And the main question I had was, how am I going to persuade the ownership team to do this? Right? So let that sink in a little bit. So I didn't own the company. I was brought in as a senior person to move that company, move the dial, let's say. But I didn't own it. I'd read this two-second lead thing, and it was talking about stopping every day, having a morning meeting, giving your people time to improve, all of which I advocated improvement starts with that as well. But these people go, so what? At that time, I was telling them to stop for an hour. I wouldn't say that now. Most businesses know that I got that. Luckily, I got away with it. But most people would start much shorter than that. But in any case. We're going to stop for arguably, let's say,20 minutes. 20 minutes, we're not going to cut grass, paint walls, build stuff as your people would be doing. We're going to do that every day. We're not going to be doing work that we're billing a customer for. Right? How are you going to do that? And the reaction, these four hard-nosed business people are like, are you crazy? Right? So guess what Paul's advice was?

No, I actually didn't realize until I finished the book that the title goes back to the very first voice memo I received from Paul Akers. And luckily, I still had it. I recorded it. And in the audio version, you can actually listen to the message from Paul Akers. I put it in the audio book. So I go, round the big, long, wall of text message. First thing is, who are you? Great message, but I don't know your name. I'm not certain that. The next thing he started to say was, forget about trying to persuade anybody. Just focus on yourself and your own waste. You have enough waste for 10 lifetimes. Focus on your waste. Focus on getting rid of that, being an extraordinary example of lean every day. And watch what happens. That's the advice he got that I got. I took it to heart.

Exactly. You can't at all, but you're going to have a pretty not great experience. It's really simple, though. For me, this stuff, now that I've got a few years experience of consciously practicing this, it's so obvious when you point it out. Nobody likes. being told what to do. It's an innate human trait, our sovereignty. Nobody, it doesn't matter what you're doing, whether you're the new starter, the toilet cleaner, the CEO, nobody likes to be told what to do. So improvement starts with I on the back cover. I have it here. Problem with most organization changes, hopefully you can read that. Everyone wants everyone else to change. So change is great. Everybody wants to change. Don't change it's about them. It's about me. What? Oh no, that's hard. It's so easy for everyone else to change. But when you have to change yourself, that's where the hard stuff comes. Actually, to get spiritual for a moment. You know how much you can see here, I'm into this and I... Pictures of Christ and pictures of Ganesh. I'm really into spiritual stuff. But nobody would argue religion has caused so many problems in the world, right? Nobody would argue that. Cause holy wars left, right, and center. Yeah. The trouble with religion is when it's about changing somebody else. It's not religion. It's not spirituality. That's only about changing yourself. When as soon as it starts to be about other people, it isn't about spirit anymore. So. It's the same with how we are as leaders.

Exactly. And that phrase, that quote, I love that quote, too. I actually put it on a mug once. I actually had a mug custom-made with that on it. But when I did the research, apparently Gandhi, where that comes from, never actually said it. It's one of those quotes that sort of gets falsely attributed to him, but he never actually said. Still, it doesn't stop the quote being great. But it's so true. So that simple thing to remember. And as soon as that penny dropped with me, I was able to go back into my own experience and go all my life. That's what I've been getting wrong the whole time. That whenever you change your own, you come to that realization yourself. I healed my life, right? Anytime that I've ever said, oh, why won't they leave a job site good? Or in my experience, mostly industrial. Why is our housekeeping not great? Like, why won't they do that? And then all you got to do is go, well, are you doing it? And the answer is pretty much always the same. I never really thought of it like that. So what that means for somebody that wants to do lean, and by the way, I'd strongly emphasize to your listeners, lean is never an objective. Never an objective. Lean is a way, a vehicle to take your business where you want it to go is what I describe lean as. So lean isn't it.

Right. Well, we'll start off with the traditional definition of lean, which is the elimination of waste by continuous improvement. And I practiced that for arguably 25 years plus. But that is what I would call traditional lean. It comes from Japan, by the way, arguably. So if you're a real lean nerd, you could argue that it comes from the US, but we'll say it's Japan. But that lean, as it's traditionally practiced in corporate America or the corporate Western world, we'll throw Europe in as well. It's a pretty dry approach. In my own experience, it was done to the people. rather than engage with everyone. The way the Japanese practice when they practice, it is very much a total participation. Everybody's doing it. But that really, I had never seen it translate like that into Western businesses. So for me, when I first came across, in my book, I talk about day one at the company where I first encountered Two Second Week. I thought I was there to bring them into new markets and do new stuff with their technology. And day one, they asked me to implement Lean because they knew my background. And I was like, ah, Lean? Oh, no. Because my image of Lean was a bunch of productivity, efficiency, improvement tools that was really hard to sustain. And I looked at this company. It was a 60-people company. And I knew that they didn't have the budget or the will to put people resources in, which is normally what you do. You'll put in a continuous improvement facilitator and you'll put specific resources into your business to do lean. I knew they wouldn't do that. So I asked them, how are we going to do this? Luckily for me, I came across two-second lean within a few weeks of that. And when that penny dropped, now we're going to talk about this lean rather than the traditional definition. I understood the key difference, the epiphany, if you like, was with this lean, it's not like an elite group of people that are going to be doing lean. We're all going to do lean. And we're not having an elite group of overhead. It's like, recently I started calling it do-it-yourself lean. So with this lean, we're all going to learn how to see waste. We're all going to learn together. how to make improvements, run experiments, lift a performance, be candid with each other about problems, be able to speak without offending, listen without defending. It's a real cultural leadership challenge is what this lead is. And that's why I love it. Part of the reason I love it so much, because I love that. I love the leadership challenge and I love watching people bloom, which is what happens when you do this. The quietest person who just comes to work to quietly, you don't clock in or out in your game, I doubt. But that person that's just sort of earning a check and tolerating their work while they're there with their mind probably on Netflix or the argument they have with their missus the night before, that totally changes. So when you do this right, you get a fully engaged workforce. Everybody, every day engaged. And it's just night and day. And as a business owner, and I am one, I'm not a consultant. I do it. I do some coaching consultant, but it's more of a passion project than a core thing. The difference between having a business where everybody is like that compared to the usual thing. Oh, didn't do it. I need to go now. I'm just doing it for me. And I'm not really here to give and contribute. It's just, you just couldn't work any other way. I could not work any other way. So if this stuff resonates with you, get the Lean Play app, start reading my book, Paul's book, and get going.

Totally. And that's why I did it. So even if you can get a free PDF as well, if you just have a quick look here. It's full of memes because people love memes. I love memes. I'm a big meme fan myself. Look at that one. That's your dude from the office, Steve Cantrell. And he's saying, that's his look when somebody with no idea of how to do your job tries to tell you how to do your job. Because that's what normally happens when people try to do SOPs. What I really enjoy doing is helping people see where they're going wrong. And not as a preacher, but from my own experience. Because I've done it all wrong myself.

I'm not like preaching that I'm somehow better than anybody. No. But I am there to help. Like I've had these realizations of what I used to do wrong. And this is a different way of doing it. And I get so much joy out of helping people that way. It really. And I kept getting messages from literally every day. Somebody going. This has helped. This has changed. This is great. So what better way to live than that?

Yeah, it does. Well, basically, the premise of GREAT processes, we've got GammaDocs, this software now, which we're doing SOPs for small to medium businesses. I think we're pretty targeted. There's nothing else in the market that does that. And about 10% of our customers, roughly, would have some kind of live workshop. booked with me on their way to either becoming a customer or shortly after being a customer. And I just got, this is a good feature for lean people. I'm pretty lazy. I have a low boredom threshold. So what would happen in every workshop? You'd spend five minutes talking about what the software does because the software is really well designed, very intuitive to use. Literally anybody can run a standard with Kevin Oaks. Download the thing, try it out, prove me raw. So quite clearly, the five minutes would run up about There's the software and what it does and a few of the sort of fringe features and functionality Mike had talked about. And then it invariably would go, how do I get my people to do this? That's what the conversation would turn into. So I was doing that with so many different companies. And from all the experience of the lean work and the coaching and literally all the dozens of companies I interact with, like Paul Akers does every day, I do that for free. I have a signal group with 70 different organizations from around the world in it. And it's beautiful. I love it. And I learned so much. So I have all that experience to offer to people. So I thought I'm getting bored answering the same questions all the time. So I'm going to write that to help people do it in their business. And it's written in a very, very simplistic way, which I like. And people, we've been saying in Lean, simplicity attracts, complexity repels. So we try to keep things simple. What this breaks it down into is three main parts of the book. First part is we break processes into three basic categories. So we have very simple processes that we call light bulb processes. These are things, the analogy I use is the light bulb. So I can turn the light switch with my left hand, this finger, that finger, that hand. I can use my forehead if I want it. The outcome's going to be the same. Doesn't really matter very much how you do it. And lots of people know how to do it. So we don't need an SOP for that. That's

Exactly. Yeah. And what we'd like in an ideal world is that every process was a light bulb process. So it's great to outline what a light bulb process is. We want processes that people can walk up to and just execute. That even through visual management, the Japanese are great at this. Like you might not realize that you're in an SOP. If you go to work on any kind of machine in Japan, I've been in Japan only for a week, but if you go to use the bathroom, for example, you'll see that they'll have all the stalls, whether they're engaged or not, in a service station. What do you call them in the States? You have a different word for that.

Road stop places.

Yeah, Bucky's in Texas.

Buc-ee's is awesome. But yeah, so you want to be able to go to the move everything as far as possible to an intuitive light bulb process. The next one, I call it banana. I don't have a banana here, but how I explain this one is for years, I painted a banana conventionally where the stalk is. And you peel it, and sometimes it would peel quite nicely, and other times it wouldn't. Other times you'd have to bite it to get the banana open, banana everywhere. I really recently learned if you pick it up from the other end and peel it from the sharp end, if you like, it's so much easier to peel a banana that way. There was a Mexican friend of mine who showed me that. I was like, wow, that's so cool. So these are processes where lots of people kind of know how to do them. So medium complexity, medium redundancy is where we've got quite a few people know how to do it. But the method varies a lot. And if we all were able to pull our methods together and come up with an optimum way, we'd all benefit. And this is where an SOP guide really helps people be more efficient and effective with what they're doing. And we encourage people, we'll come on to the grade in a minute. And then finally, there's the third thing, and we term them traffic light processes. So these are things that are complex, that not just anybody can do. And we don't want everybody deciding how they're going to do it by themselves, working their own way out. Because the outcome, if they don't get it right, could really be a problem in terms of safety, quality, costs, customer experience, and so on. And in this way, an SOP is a mandatory thing. So we have an SOP and it's followed. And there's no questions about it because if you don't, it's like a traffic light, bad things probably going to happen if you're up through red. So that's the basic premise is to help everybody understand that. And I should have actually said this earlier. The point of the book is to help everybody understand that SOPs, when we approach it in a good way, can be really useful tools to help everybody have an easier life and a better outcome. It's not the usual thing where a small business owner wakes up and goes, you know, I want to be able to fire everybody if I want because I've got SOPs on how to do everything and nobody's critical. I've actually encountered that. But that's not what I'm trying to support. So what we're looking for is to help everyone understand and create that pull. So I want SOPs because if I'm on vacation, I know my job's still going to get done okay. By the sick day, it's still going to be all right. If I go to train to do that other task that I don't normally do, it'll be a lot easier because we've got an SOP, et cetera.

Yeah.

really does. Like that's one of the memes from the book. Where is that SOP again? Yeah. And it's like. That's my normal experience. It's in some ring binder somewhere in some dusty cupboard on a good day. Or on that shared drive on SharePoint that nobody's looked at it ever. So we cover that. We'll come out of that in the great part. We'll come out of the acronym now, shall we? Yeah, yeah. So great stands for Gemba. We'll get there in a second. It's the only jargon you're going to hear today. Recognized. Easy to use and follow. available at point of use, and tested and trained. So if we start at Gemba, Gemba means scene of the crime or workplace in Japanese.

And that's where the Gemba docs comes from. So Gemba is basically workplace docs. We're not scene of the crime docs, but docs to help you at the workplace. So Gemba, with Gemba docs, we have a mobile app. And we have a PC version you can do for computer-based tasks. It's super important that the process is documented at the Gemba, where the value is being added, not in your office. The last presentation I did, I had a guy sitting at a desk with those forbidden or bolden signs on him. Because again, if you think about your own experience of SOPs, that's where they're normally written. normally written at the desk. The work is done out there somewhere. So with GamedOx, especially for your kind of clients, and we've lots of them now, we've lots of contractor customers. You actually mentioned one before we gave them a call. Your work's done in the field. You've got back office processes that really benefit from being documented too, like how to raise an invoice, how to update another piece of software. raise a purchase order, et cetera, et cetera. That's all great. But a quarter of Gembidox are that kind of process. So just for clarity, it's not all how to build this or do that in the field. But for your kind of customers or the guys you're talking to, they're out in the field. And again, this is so important. It's great when you are able to put a tool like Gembidox in people's hands. It's so simple to use. Like how to mix the paint is an easy one. We got two stroke equipment out there and we're using seasonal labor. In the summer, we got kids coming in to help. How do I mix the fuel for this? Well, just put a QR code on there. But the point I'm trying to make is they can be done at the GEMBA and done really easily in minutes. That's important. And the GREAT becomes like an acronym to check your SOP and your processes again. So did you do it at the GEMBA? Or where was that done? When you created the SOP, was it in the right place? Next is recognized, which is connected to the Gamba. Because if the SOPs aren't recognized, nobody's going to use them. It's like, so if you as the boss of the business write this whole bunch of SOPs and don't involve the appropriate people in the appropriate way, nobody's going to follow them. You are absolutely wasting your time. You're only going to get yourself frustrated. There's an old expression, you can't teach a pig to sing because you'll get frustrated and so will the pig. It's just the same. So don't do it. So you get them to be recognized when you involve the people who are going to do the work and preferably the people who are doing the work, write the SOP. For everything but the traffic light process where you might need heavy technical input, the people who do the job write the SOP. You as the leader or the owner, you can obsess it and improve it and so on in a positive way. But when you do that, they own the SOP and that just makes everything so much easier. Next is easy to follow and easy to use. Well, the Gambit OX one, I don't have actually one here, but they're step-by-step, photos and videos. There's no big walls of text, which... Even in my own electronics, hopefully pre-Gambodox, that's what an SOP looked like. Only the person who wrote it could understand it. So with us, photos, videos, short process step descriptions, very easy to understand, very easy to follow. You can follow them in the mobile app. You just swipe through them step by step. You can print them out. You can scan a QR code, which takes me on to the A of great, which is available at point of use. Back to our ring binder and the cover again. With Gambit Ocks, we have contractors who print bunches of QR codes and put them in the truck, for example. And the big advantage with that is they're visible. They're out there. You don't have to have the app for some of the QR codes in Gambit Ocks. Anybody can scan them. So you can update them and you don't need to print them out again and update the ring folder. The QR code is always the latest thing. So available upon use is critical. And finally, tested and trained. So you've tested them that they're accurate and they're going to give you the outcome you want. And that for traffic light processes, people are trained to do them because just reading the SOP isn't enough. So that's it. And then we go on to the phases, weeks one, two, three, and four of doing Gambit OX. That's the final part of the book.

Well, let's talk about why I say that. It's mainly in an organization change, lean context. We can use SOPs for that. We can pull that into that conversation. What I've experienced with lean culture change is that people are doing lean for two or three weeks to go, where's the improvements? Where's the results? The numbers of depth. And it's like, oh, no, no, no. And what you need to do, I'm going to do a second edition of the book, but I now know what you need to focus on. Same for any change, including SOPs. Engagement, that people are interested and engaged in the process, that you educate them, that they know what they're expected to do. In lean, it's about learning to see waste. In your processes, it's about they know what's in here. So this is where we're going. And then you recognize for the behavior that 95% good, I say 95% cheerleader. 5% Genghis can, because when it's not, that also needs to be recognized. So that's what I'm encouraging leaders to look at. Your engagement, education, recognition in your system that you work with is super important. And when you do that, the improvements and the results happen. That's the order to focus on, though. So if your improvements, your results are happening, go back to your engagement, education, recognition part. That's if your business problem is related to how your people are performing. That's not always the case. If sales have fallen through the floor because the market's gone to pop, that's obviously not it. But when you're looking at your people-sided performance, that's where you should put your focus.

Yeah, the key thing, like I write an improvement starts with I, if you're doing it just to manipulate another advantage over your people, forget it. Yeah, that makes sense. Absolutely will work. You're wasting your time. Find another way to manage your business. It doesn't make you a terrible person. I'm not saying that at all, but this method of managing your business will not work. You have to have higher motivation. Like, you know, a very common motivation. I have so many friends in this lean community, like arguably dozens. I have half a dozen real friends in life. And since I got into this phase of lean, about three of them have changed. So now I have lean friends. Their motivation was almost always the same. It wasn't, I want to make a pile more money. It was genuinely just being fed up, firefighting, and having businesses where the guy didn't say hello to you and you walked up to him in the morning, hi, how are you doing? And he just ignored it. That's one of my best lead friends. That was the straw that broke his back because business is going well, he's making good coin, but he didn't want to be in it because He wanted more out of life. He wanted to come to work like with a tap on the steering wheel type of thing. And it's your business. So you, and this is how I strongly feel about this. You've a right to that if that's what you want. And an improvement starts with I. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. Like after I had my epiphany about what lean really was, the first chapter is called candor. And that's about. being candid with yourself about what your motivations are and looking at your team and going, who's going to help me or not help me when I decide to go this way? Most people know before they start. That's my experience. So I've usually been the guy, the new guy coming in, shifting an organization. And again, I'm candid about that in the book. And when you want to change your culture, but even if you're speaking your business your entire life and you want to move in this direction, you know, person X, Y, and Z, they're going to love this. person C and D, they're going to hate this. And I'm not for, oh, let's just fire C and D then. No. But you work to help and pull them with you. But there is a limit. And if you try to move, this is another really common failure point. If you try to move the entire organization this direction, but you tolerate people who are pulling you in the other direction, you're going to fail. The term I use is change the people, change the people. So you have to pull them and help them to change, be patient and compassionate and all the rest. But you'll reach a point where it's, well, no, we're going, the bus is going that way. And if you're, we'd love you to be on it, but you're not on it. You need to move somewhere else and find something else to do in your life. Otherwise, everybody will lose.

Well, the first part of that equation, I would focus, I don't think it's particularly a lean expression. You don't water your weeds. That'll be my first response. So where is it happening? Well, I'd focus there as the first thing. So I would go, right, well, that didn't. Because, you know, you're in a change. You've survived with how he behaves the way he is right now. Focus on the good part and lift that standard and get with this is where we, this is the standard we have. It's up here. And bring him to that place and go, this is where we're going now. Do you get me? And help him work beside him. I think it's turned into one of my things. Leave is done shoulder to shoulder. So it isn't done across a desk. It's done beside, on the gambit, together. So all efforts. First of all, don't water your weeds. Focus on where you're winning and get that better and better and better. And pull, create pull is a thing that I'm always advocating. Create pull, not push. Pull, pull, pull, pull. Look what we're doing over here. It's awesome. Bring him out to those sites, get him to see that's what we're expecting. Start to now talk about, well, this is the standard that we've got for the businesses. That's it. And we're going to start documenting it now. And now we go into creating standards and how that can help because everything's subjective up until that happens, isn't it? So he doesn't know. Does he actually understand what your standards are? Do you have any? That's always a first question to ask, actually. So I would imagine that there are no standards, none that are clear anyway. So hopefully I've made that clear. Focus on where you think, where you're winning. Make that your standard and then start to pull these people over there and go, this is the way we're working. This is our company standard. That's where we're going now. And if he decides that that's not what he wants to do, well, give him every opportunity to. to get with the program. But if he doesn't, it's sorry, buddy. It ain't going to work out. And the other thing that the next part I can guess what your client will say. Let me think. If we advise your client about what do you think his worst reaction is going to be?

Lizzo? Because I know myself what the normal reaction is. We can't fire him because he's one of our best people. Oh, yeah, yeah. We couldn't live without him.

Well, this is where that candor, I call it candor of that chapter for a reason. It's like, and I'm going to use a word that isn't used in business often. But I've used it so many times. I love you. You are awesome. I am so glad you're in our company. You do so many things beautifully. And list them all out with authenticity. But this drives me effing crazy. And we need to get it right. You know, we need to get it right. And I really, really need you to work on this. Do you want to tell me, help me understand, is this an issue for you? I love that phrase, by the way, help me understand. And that's the way to play it. So if you love the dude and you love all the stuff he does and there's only a few things that bug you, tell him that you love all the stuff he does and there's a few things that bug you and have a conversation about it. And not like a come to Jesus conversation, if you understand what I'm getting at. Right, right, right. Initially, it's like, look, candor is the way of expressions speak without offending. listen without defending I have in the book. And that's what it is. It's just like, we've got a problem. We need to talk about it. And it's done in a non-threatening way and an authentic way. So when you give him the list of stuff that you love, yeah, it's got to be real. You're not making stuff up to blow smoke up his mind. That's all the stuff. We need you to work on this, that, and help me understand how you feel about that and have a dialogue going. Most people want to do it. Everybody wants to do a great job. You just got to help them.

There's skillful nature in this stuff. And this is why it's an art form. Yeah. Honestly, and this will sound arrogant, I'd advise somebody to have the conversation that we just talked about. And it'll be a car crash because they haven't got the art of communication skills to do it authentically. That's the honest story. Well, luckily, Tom, you're fine.

Oh, no. Well done. I love it. No, it's seriously, it's probably the most important skill. Seriously, it's the difference between great and car crash, in my opinion. So artfully have that discussion. You're not going to tell him he's in danger of being fired the first time you bring it up. Yeah.

Yeah, do this or you're fired, man. No. So you artfully bring it up. And I'm sure they have, by the way. But all I'm saying is that there's that process that you go through, the candor and the full, like, and again, in small businesses, I call small businesses anything under 500 people, by the way. Small businesses, you've got the room to go to show authenticity. I love you, man. It's great. You're such an asset. You're fantastic. As long as you mean it, that's all great. And yeah, we need to work here and there. And like, If that keeps going on, you do go, look, dude, we've had this conversation. Like for me personally, I think I mentioned earlier, I have a low boredom threshold. So that conversation maybe happens three times and then you start to get Genghis talk. That's the truth. And I really strongly believe every awesome leader that I know is that way. 95% cheerleader. My life is such a joy to work with. Like Paul Akers, I would say that about Paul Akers, other people like Ryan Tierney I write about in the book, Cedric Myers, amazing company. Every single person who's exceptional at Lee is that guy. But there's 5% in there that you really don't want to see. And that 5% actually has to be publicly displayed from time to time. And I write about that in the book. I learned that one in France. I ran a factory in France for a couple of years. Can you imagine an Irish guy? I didn't even speak good French when I started. So Irish guy in France, thank God it wasn't English because that would have been a lot worse. But because the French love the Irish. And one of the things that my mentor when I was doing that, he was saying like, because we had a couple of real non-helpers in there. And he advised me that I had to, get rid of them, pour encourager les autres. So I don't know if you have any French speakers out there, but the term was developed during the French Revolution and it was describing what the guillotine was for. So the public executions were to encourage the rest. So as a leader, this is an unfortunate part of what we do. When that situation arrives, when somebody does the really bad thing, for example, steal from the company, publicly sacked because they did X. That's, you've got to be, otherwise, if you don't, and that's an extreme example, but if we're just talking about the repeated bad little behaviors that get tolerated for months and years, if you do that, if you don't differentiate between all the people that are doing it the way you'd like and the people that don't. All that's going to come is you're going to sink down to the bottom. The lowest common denominator is what you're going to end up with. You'll get what you tolerate is the expression from the road less stupid, a book I quite like. So you've got to differentiate. And when you do, that's the public hanging. We fired that guy because he didn't exhibit our culture and values. And everybody will know. And then the people that were sort of on the fence a bit. and like coming to work, are going to say, well, I'd better get on board. Otherwise, that could happen to me. So that's just a fact of leadership. And I think that's just a human nature thing.

And nobody enjoys it. There's something wrong with you if you enjoy it, but you've got to do it. Yeah.

Yes, it is.

Yeah, that's for deploying them.

Well, the problems we had set out to solve. was making creating and editing SOPs super easy that anybody can do it. We've ticked that box. Sagan, making them easy to access. So they're all central. So you can access everything via your PC or your mobile phone. So you can access all of them. So it gets rid of the yellow ring binder effect under the seat of the truck effect. And then finally, that you can deploy them in any way you want, whether it's QR codes, print them out if you really want to. We'd say not, but still lots of our clients print them out. Print them out, QR code via the app or via URL, put them on your PC. People put them in shortcut folders on their PC so they're easy. I do that myself. So that's what we set out to do and we did it. And it's like design, like we don't have anybody competing in our SME space. So the lowest price plan is $19 a month. And it goes up to $149 a month for lots and lots of users and the highest functionality like translating, which may actually be useful for your people because you could have people who don't speak English very well working for you. So you can translate an SOP with a click from English to Spanish, for example.

I had a company I was working in with six different active languages at one point. So that's where it came from. Yeah, so that's what we've done. We've really said we've now we're 250 paying customers and now we're over 25 countries. So it's growing every day. We've got every conceivable segment is again with our customer from manufacturing to dentistry to landscaping to painting companies to building companies to making sunrooms and conservatories and installing them. You name it. pretty much there's a GamutOx customer because everything in life is a process or the outcome of a process, another one of my phrases. So GamutOx is pretty universally applicable.

Exactly. And we break ours into step by step. So the maximum video length at a Gemidox step is very deliberately 30 seconds.

So it stops you having these 10-minute long videos that people did prior to Gemidox. Because if you want to update that, it's a nightmare. And also, picture yourself at the back of the truck trying to watch a video while you're trying to do the thing. So with Gemidox, you just scan that QR code, swipe through the steps. So it's easy to follow as per the book. You're not trying to stop, start, pause the video all the time. It's very, very easy to use.

Yeah, for anything but safety-critical stuff, absolutely right. Yeah, that's the whole point of the thing. So your lead guys. Don't have to spend all their time babysitting people. You can send them, oh, look, just follow the SOP, go and do that. If you've got a question, give me a shout. But, you know, you should be able to know. And even when you take out a second step, I go into training, by the way, in great processes. Tested and trained with the T. So if you, back to the kid coming for the summer. So first time, you could show him with the SOP how to hook up the trailer, right? Next time, yeah, just check the SOP. I'll come over and check what you've done to make sure it's okay before you drive off in the truck. The trainer falls off right down the freeway. But I'll come over and check what you've done, make sure it's okay. And then you can start to tailor back from that. So you can far more quickly get that kid up to speed than if you didn't have a documented process.

It will take you five minutes to document a process like that. Photo, text, photo, text, photo, photo, text. There you are, done. And if you get like a little label printer, we encourage our customers to do that. So you get a label printer, like they're a hundred bucks at least. And you can just print them direct from your PC onto the label printer. And then you can put them on so you don't have to mess around laminating and all that stuff. I've got a YouTube playlist with a load of Gambinox examples and plant examples and how to do this, that, and the other, which people can check out. Maybe I'll send you links to them, brah.

Yeah, that's also, we didn't even touch on that, but we have a thing in Lean Kanban cards for managing material and tasks. You can also do them in Gammonox. We made that easy too. It's a very similar process. So with that one you're talking about, we used to basically have this awful system with Kaizen foam and nobody knew how it worked. So we had a much more visually That's like moving towards the light bulb. So you just have to look in the drawer and you know what's happening. You don't have to go and ask and look for it. And then the little Kanban cards were to reorder material when we needed them. So that's cool. As you could tell, you're bothered getting me to shut up. I love this stuff.

First port of call for me personally is ImprovementStartsWithI. com. So you'll find my actual phone number and email address, things like that on there. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. Follow me on YouTube. All of the details are there. And then second place to look would be gambadox. com or just simply download the app for a free 30-day trial. So if you search Gambadox in your app store, you'll have it straight away. Awesome. Yeah, reach out. Anything at all. I'm very, very open. I try to emulate what Paul Akers does in that way. So I get people I don't know reaching out to me all the time looking for help about X, Y, and Z. Free of charge. I don't charge for any of it unless I get off my office chair here to go and visit you. No, it's all free. I love doing it. I get a real kick out of it.

Oh, wow. My favorite book in the last few years was The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale.

Life-changing for me. Personally, life-changing for me. Unbelievable book. I'm a huge fan.