Business Problems Solved Podcast

Welcome to episode 200! To mark this event Lee has a fascinating interview with Jim Longton, former senior executive, CEO/MD of major manufacturing businesses in the United Kingdom, USA, Portugal and South Africa. Jim has had a long career starting in engineering in the 70’s, with experience of the turbulent working environment of poor industrial relations, change resistant work practices and aggressive uncooperative work environments. Jim was intrinsic in changing the culture of the places he worked by introducing a Participation Committee fostering communication between workers and management.After a long career solving industrial relation problems and setting up and managing production environments, Jim is now available for Consulting, helping you do and achieve your aims and goals. If you need any help or advice implementing changes with regard to improving industrial relations, employee participation in continuous improvement, increasing productivity or total quality improvement - every area of your business, contact Jim and he will see if he can help.   KEY TAKEAWAYS After leaving school with one ‘o’ level due to undiagnosed dyslexia Jim started as a general engineer apprentice and gathered a Higher National Diploma.  When young in the 1970s, Jim experienced and witnessed very bad relations between workers and management.  Small issues led to disputes and weeks of strikes.  When Jim rose to a position of high enough influence he fostered cooperation and prevented stoppages and inefficiency by calming and increasing communication and problem solving between management and workers.  Jim has never left a job for another seeking higher wages. It has always been for new opportunities. Purpose is more important than payment.  Dosulting is consultation based on action. Having retired Jim will now only help people willing to commit to the process fully and respect their people.   BEST MOMENTS So I went down to the pattern shop and I walked in and I  was completely amazed. This whole woodworking activity is going on in this huge engineering company.’ – Jim  ‘To me it was archaic the way the people spoke to each other, the way that Management reacted and supervisors etc.’ - Jim  ‘What gave you the confidence to try something different and to challenge the norm? – Lee ‘Once you can get rid and eliminate the suspicion, once they trust you, once they realise that they can talk to you and you’ll listen to them, there’s no problem. You’re pushing at an open door, it’s wide open. The problem is always middle management.’ – Jim ‘I knew we could do so much better in terms of meeting deliveries and quality of things and I was more or less getting there, I was right in the middle of firefighting.’ - Jim  ‘Why is everything always in Germany? The industrial revolution started and we did everything. In 1852 in the UK we made 90% of everything that was manufactured in the world.’ – Jim ‘The answer is no. Not unless you absolutely convince me that you are willing to do it. That you are willing to respect your people, talk to your people, take an interest in their needs and their problems because they don’t.’ - Jim    GUEST RESOURCES LinkedIn https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jimlongton   VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

Meetings play a fundamental part in a lot of peoples roles and are a huge opportunity if we keep them for just the two key occasions required. Lee details those two circumstances and how you can make the most of a meeting when it occurs.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Communication. To pass information back and forth ensuring the right people are present and the correct data is shared. Collaboration. When a task requiring more than one team member requires completion. There are no other reasons in a business context to hold meetings.   BEST MOMENTS ‘Ultimately it's about making things better and improving people and process capability.’ ‘I think I truly understand the communication flow. If somebody today on your team had an idea, a suggestion, a challenge, an issue, what is the flow of that information to get it resolved?’ ‘Are we asking the right questions? Where does the information stop and how long does it stop?’   VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

Lee explains one of the main reasons why Improvement Teams, Change Teams and Lean Teams fail within an organisation and the link between physical fitness and organisational fitness.   KEY TAKEAWAYS If we want to permanently improve our health then we have to make permanent changes to our lifestyle to achieve this. Often improvement is treated like a finite project but it reverts at the end so it is best to think of improvement as a permanent change, much like our health. We need to change people to fix the critical stuff that’s hurting the organisation at this point in time but we need to treat improvement as an ongoing task.   BEST MOMENTS ‘Typically we treat improvement like projects, but we need to treat it like a way of being and if we treat it like a way of being, as opposed to a start and a stop date, then it is just how we are.’ ‘If I was to hold your hand, in say four months time, and walk in and you’ve created this amazing, amazing environment, what does it look like? When you’re looking around, what do you see people doing? What are they using?’ ‘You only need to have a project if there is something that is really affecting you today.’   VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

Lee has placed a pole on LinkedIn asking when you start your lean journey what is the ultimate measure of success? Is it the tools that you introduce? Is it how people feel? Is it about the output or performance of the process? Currently there are two leaders, feelings and output. An interesting result bearing in mind not many people start a change process to improve the engagement of their people. When we acknowledge the importance and engagement of people, do we really honestly respect them and ourselves?   KEY TAKEAWAYS Do we properly engage with our people or respect the time of our people, always turning up on time for group meetings? The reason we invest in tools and methods is to create an environment for people to flourish, but we don’t often regard the process from that perspective. Lean practitioners and improvement practitioners are trained in tools, they’re not trained in influencing people, building relationships, empathy, building trust, better communication which are skills required to develop great teams.   BEST MOMENTS ‘When I wrote the question this is what I was expecting but maybe not as much on the people's side because, typically, when people start a lean initiative or an improvement initiative it is to fix a particular metric.’ ‘We become so fixated on the tool that we are trying to shoehorn in or introduce into the process that really the people element goes a little bit wayward.’ ‘A lot of the guests that I’ve had on this podcast have in the later stages of their career recognised the importance of this.’   VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

Lee chats to the multitalented Ray Newland. With a very successful goalkeeping career under his belt, Ray setup Just 4 Keepers training schools to prepare young talented goalkeepers for work in the football industry. He also brought to market his own goalkeeper sports brand J4K. Alongside all of this, Ray has become a business coach and published six books on mental resilience and self help.   Lee and Ray talk about how he started out, his entrepreneurial career, his international sports training and clothing brands, his writing, and his plans for the future.   KEY TAKEAWAYS  Ray became a professional goalkeeper at 18 years of age and was coached by Neville Southall, Peter Shilton, Gordon Banks and Joe Corrigan. After his goalkeeping career ended Ray became financially independent by property development and ownership. Ray is not so much concerned with financial success but with more worldly and down to earth goals. Writing self help books was something Ray accomplished while travelling all around the world and being unable to sleep in transit..  Ray plans to become a personal coach and business mentor when he is less busy running Just 4 keepers.    BEST MOMENTS ‘I’ll try and keep my intro down to about two hours.’ – Ray ‘I basically had no choice. I had a young family to support and I basically knew that I had to have my own business.’ – Ray ‘There is no other goalkeeper coach in history that has done what I’ve done and has ended up taking the concept around the world.’ – Ray ‘I got frustrated with other authors who would just go on too long and again I always planned to do personal coaching and I’ve done it over the years, helping people personally and in business.’ – Ray ‘I never wanna sell Just 4 Keepers, Lee. I always said I’d do it till I’m 55 and I know it looks like I’ve got 15 years left, I’ve got four years left. I’m 51 next week.’ - Ray    VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

In this episode Lee talks to David Holmes who has worked in Contact Centres and Customer Operations across Sales, Customer Service and Digital for some of the biggest companies in the UK, currently Operations Director at Cigna Healthcare. Lee and David chat about success and its definition, “harmonious friction”, the team leader role and how open mindedness can make the difference.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Find the job that generates enthusiasm in you. Learn to enjoy challenges to your methods and thinking. Having an open mind and being willing to listen is important.  There is only negative feedback or constructive negative feedback. Generally it is about something that needs improvement. Positive feedback is affirmation.  Being a team leader is about being able to look forward to a destination and then planning on how to get there.  It's ok to bring people outside of the business to be critical and challenging in a way that those inside are too invested to achieve.   BEST MOMENTS ‘Just when you think you’ve seen it all, someone comes along and shows you something new.’ – David ‘What is it that excites you about what you do and why? I love working with people, Lee.’ – David ‘That “harmonious friction” generates my passion and I hope I never lose it’ – David ‘Let’s talk about your past actually. What is it that people saw in you to allow you to create this history?’ – Lee    VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

Lee's guest in this episode is Phillip Holt, author, operational excellence guru and senior Vice President at GKN Aerospace and a Board Member of the Operational Excellence Society. He studied Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University and Management at the Wharton School of Pennsylvania and the University of Warwick, was an engineer at Gillette and led the Lean Deployment worldwide at Philips for over twelve years. He achieved Lean Master status and has now authored three books, Leading With Lean, The Simplicity of Lean and his latest Leading Lean By Living Lean.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Lean Leader means someone who is focused on making their organisation have the biggest positive impact on its workers and customers. A lean business model focuses on improving processes across the value stream in order to eliminate waste and deliver optimised value to the customer. To change an organisation to a lean model you have to concentrate on change in the culture and behaviour within the value stream. The pandemic has helped destroy the myth that if someone sits at a desk for 50 hours a week they are productive. A lean model allows all employees involved to feel positive about the impact they are having.   BEST MOMENTS   ‘We talk about work life balance a lot but for me I don’t like that term. For me it’s about having a life in balance.’ – Phillip ‘I started to realise that as I was there for those two weeks that we were changing some parameters, we were changing a process, characteristics. We weren’t changing the value stream behaviour.’ – Phillip ‘I think that people don’t look in the mirror first, they look out the window at other people’ – Lee ‘We want to make GKN aerospace and this industry far better from an operational excellence perspective.’ - Phillip VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast          ABOUT THE HOST   For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD   You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

Once again, inspiration has struck, this time while cooking the kids tea. Lee, in tasting a single piece of pasta, assumed all the other pasta were cooked. Let's face it, he was probably right. But not when it comes to people….people are most definitely not like pasta.   KEY TAKEAWAYS  There are some people and places that try to treat everybody the same. When we try to effect change we give the business reason for that change but that does not enthuse everyone. We need to create personal motivation. People's way of thinking is created by the experiences that they have had, creating different approaches and motivations. We should be increasing the connection between us and other people so we can understand their thoughts and motives.    BEST MOMENTS ‘They try to put everybody into a single bucket and expect everybody to have the same outcome, the same thoughts, the same feelings.’ ‘If like me you believe that everything stems from thought or belief, that everybody thinks differently then what we’ve really got to do is we’ve got to challenge the thinking of people.’ ‘Pasta doesn’t think but people do.’  ‘We need to feel belonging. The more we understand people the more we belong and together achieve amazing things.’   VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

When we celebrate success are we considering what we are celebrating enough? Do we congratulate our successes enough? In this episode Lee tackles how we should be celebrating success not just more often but changing its focus to good skills and habits.   KEY TAKEAWAYS  We typically celebrate end results, above and beyond, things that exceed expectations. However, we see it as instant failure when they fail to meet our expectations or standards when things are not going as planned.  There is as much learning to be done about success as there is about failure.  Celebrate success more often. Become familiar with success and the circumstances that cause it, just as you do with failure. Do we celebrate the skills and positive habits of our people, or just targets, benchmarks and deadlines?    BEST MOMENTS ‘I think we find it harder to celebrate stuff than we do to find fault in things. I think we need to redress the balance a little bit.’  ‘By asking “what are we celebrating” then we become more familiar with celebrating stuff.’ ‘If we can truly celebrate the habits and behaviours that we want in our people as opposed to the results that we’re getting, or trust in the behaviours of the right ones to get the results then the results will just come.’   VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast            ABOUT THE HOST For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/

Lee has recently suffered a bereavement with the loss of his best friend. Upon his passing Lee asked about life lessons and Lee has shared these lessons with many people including via this podcast. After using these lessons to bring extra value to those he helps and supports he has added real value to his coaching. However, one 4th, hidden lesson has been revealed to help you stay true to these three principles.   KEY TAKEAWAYS The three lessons were be yourself, make good friends and time is limited.   Truly understand your motivations and reasoning. In the space between an occurrence and our reaction there is an opportunity to understand our thoughts and change what we do. We have an opportunity everyday with everyone to make good friends. All your interactions are an opportunity to make new friends and connections at different levels. Make solid use of your time. Recognise you need to act. ‘Always make time’ is how we apply these three lessons. Take time to consider our thinking. Take time make good friends and build connection. Take time for the priorities. BEST MOMENTS ‘I think, fundamentally, to be a better leader, to be a better change person and to be a better person, understanding what these three lessons mean to you could be the difference.’ ‘Always being yourself, for me now, is about understanding whether the voice in my head is helping or hindering. Its about I’m in control of that voice in my head and I can share and try to create more positive outcomes as opposed to negative and challenging outcomes.’ ‘When you start a video call, when you start a meeting do you just dive into the process or do you create a space for asking different questions.’ ‘If time was not limited there would be no real need to do anything, we’d just get round to it. We’d always just do it tomorrow, day after tomorrow.’ VALUABLE RESOURCES Business Problems Solved Podcast          ABOUT THE HOST   For the last 15 years, I have been a multi-sector internal or external business improvement consultant, building the improved capability of individuals, teams and businesses. In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my two young children Jack & India. I also enjoy listening to and reading business & personal development material. Lee Houghton is “THE Business Problem Solver”, a Management Consultant, CX Specialist and Keynote Speaker.   CONTACT METHOD   You can contact Lee Houghton on 07813342194 Lee@leehoughton.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhoughton/