Alright, we are talking about the process. And if you're following along in the slides, you may see the slide that has a picture of the gap, the store and it says close the gap. Now, I'm not hating on the gap. It has nothing to do with the store, but it is always a fun opportunity in the workshops to make a little bit of a joke. So, I want you to think about closing the gap and that is the process. So, the first step in the process is number one, identify the gap.

I am here, I want to be here. How do I get from here to here right this is what we talked about with coaching coaches meet you where you are, and they bring you to where you want to be we close the gap we become a better hitter, we throw further we jump higher we get better at business, whatever the thing is right? Close the Gap. So number one, identify the gap number two, close the gap. Number three, repeat, understand that it is a never ending process and I was really fortunate when I was in college to be exposed to this through what is known as the Toyota lean manufacturing system. Or Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement.

And I had a job over summer breaks and Christmas breaks at a factory near my parents house. And in this factory, they practice this manufacturing system and they utilize cars and every single week they had an event called RCI, which stands for rapid continuous improvement. And the way the factory was set up. There were two sides there was playing at 94 point 97. This side made giant cranes and the 97 side made cherry pickers with bucket trucks, the ones you see out working on the power lines. And so the 97 side was set up in a straight line.

So they were giant garage doors in the back, and the bare chassis would come in for this truck. And there were nine stages. And the trucks would just go almost like, like a subway station, like a station like a subway restaurant where you bring the bread out and you set it down, you slice it, you do this at this station, then you slide it forward, you slide it forward. So at station one, they would bring it in and I don't remember what they did. Put the tires on it. Second station, they did the electrical, the third station, they did the hydraulics, the fourth station, they did whatever, all the way up to the ninth station where it got its final coat of powder coat, the paint, pulled out that door, and it was off to the customer.

Right. And so there were nine stations, and every single week, there was an RCI event at each station. So week one, it was at station one, we twos at station three, and so on. So every nine weeks This RCI event would go through every single station. And in the 10th week, it would start back over. So within a given year, each station would have four or five RCI events.

And so the way that it worked each, like within the week, on Monday, you would just observe the procedures and the processes. On Tuesday, everybody would get together. So you'd have people from the office, you'd have the supervisor for that station. And they would say, Okay, this is what we do. Here are our inefficiencies. Here's where we're wasting time.

Here's where we're, you know, the parts aren't in the right place, we waste time looking for parts, or, you know, this wasn't done, we needed this follow up. And so the point is, they would spend that week looking for inefficiencies, where can you make the workers safer, where can you save time? Where can you save money? And what happens is every single time that the event happens at this station, that station becomes more efficient, more cost effective, safer, saves the overall company more money, right? So if you zoom out and you look at this from a company or an organizational standpoint, every single week, this identify the gap and close the gap is occurring at some point throughout the factory. And every single week, it's another place and another place in another place.

And then 10 weeks later, we're back to where we started. And we're continuing to look for ways to get better in that area. So that's the process of Kaizen that is rapid, continuous improvement. And I had no idea at the time what I was being exposed to, but now that I'm in the world of growth and development, I'm very fortunate to have been exposed to that thought process. And, you know, I guess one example that I'll share with you from this is, it's a great example because it's something that I was Unconsciously incompetent. This was pointed out to me by Josh, our audio guy who helps with the podcast and he did my audio book, I have a use to have a bad habit of doing that.

This little lipsmack between words between sentences as kind of a space filler, and he brought it to my attention. He was just editing it out and not saying anything. But then he told me about it. And once he told me about it, I went from being unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent, I would didn't catch myself I'd be aware I would catch myself and then I could train myself not to do it. And now I've moved into maybe consciously competent, maybe even unconsciously incompetent, because and now that I'm thinking about it, I know I haven't done it yet in any of these videos. And maybe six months ago, I would have done it several times.

So that's an example of rapid continuous improvement and And how things look as we go through that spectrum of the quadrants of competency. Another thing to think about as we look at growth and development is to focus on growing in 360 degrees, right? And if I had a whiteboard, I would draw you a spear. I don't. So we're going to use these as visuals. This is a lacrosse ball.

This is a ball of aluminum foil. Okay? So if we think about ourselves as a hole, right, and anything that is hole, by definition has a center, right? And we want to be rooted in our center. But at the same time, we want to push our boundaries. We want to explore our edges and we want to grow.

I'm sure no doubt, you've seen the, if you're following along in the slides, I even have it in the slides. But you have the circle that says here's my comfort zone. And then you have this bigger circle over here that says where the magic happens. And you know, it's implying that everything we want is outside of our comfort zone that we have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. By definition, if there's a skill or an asset or an attribute or quality that we want to add, it is outside of our comfort zone. It is not something that we have competency and now at least unconscious competency, right?

Whether that's learning a new language, whether it's building a business, whether it's having this or being that are doing this, if we already had it, it'd be in our comfort zone. So we've got to be able to think about expanding and growing in order to acquire or to achieve these things. But it's not enough to just grow in one area, right? Because the visual that I want you to think about is the spear and this aluminum foil ball. There's a reason that we consider somebody who is developed in all areas to be a well rounded into Visual, if we were to roll this lacrosse ball down the road, or down bowling lane, it would roll true. It's only deviation or wobble would be because of the way it leaves our hand the spin that we put on it, right, but it has the ability to hold true.

Right and that's the important thing is it has the ability to write minus our spin. This, on the other hand, will not roll true. Now let's just imagine for the sake of argument that there's a golf ball in here, so it has weight, it has mass enough to roll. The limitation is that it is not well rounded, that it has rough edges, that it has not expanded in 360 degrees the way this spear has. So we don't want to grow in one area of our life, but have massive weaknesses or lagging areas in other aspects. So I want you to think about growth as 360 degrees.

Let's grow in health and wellness let's grow in fitness and relationships in business in communication and leadership, all of the areas Okay, so that is growth as a 360 degree sphere. Be this guy, not this guy. see in the next video and I think the next video is going to wrap up module one