In this transcript Caleb Taylor interviews Clay Clark (Outstanding business coach and Founder of Thrive15.com) about the importance of candid feedback on Thrive15.com, one of the top business coach schools in PA.
Clay, I just value every moment that I get to sit next to you and just pick your brain. It’s a glorious honor to be with such a knowledgeable business coach.
Clay Clark: Well to quote Miguel, one of my favorite R&B artists as a business coach –
Caleb Taylor: Yes.
Clay Clark: I adorn you.
Caleb Taylor: Wow, that’s wonderful, thanks for that business coach. Thank you. I also just want to say that a lot of how you conduct yourself and things you do puzzle me. I think you’re a strange man at times. You’re wearing a basketball jersey right now, are you not?
Clay Clark: David Robinson, number seven.
Caleb Taylor: Yes, so he’s always wearing jerseys under his business coach suits. I want to talk to you today about another topic that confuses me a little bit.
Clay Clark: Okay, sure.
Caleb Taylor: This is the Lean Six Sigma for Dummies. We’re going to pretend that I’m the dummy. Pretend that I’m the dummy here, and I want to be able to understand the ins and outs here of this Lean Six Sigma. You want to explain something to the business coach listeners
Clay Clark: Well I want to say something real quickly. Usually when I talk to someone who I perceive to be dumb, we all tend to do this. We tend to talk loud, so if it’s okay, I’m just going to talk a lot louder –
Caleb Taylor: That’s wonderful.
Clay Clark: At you and slower.
Caleb Taylor: Great.
Clay Clark: So hopefully you’ll understand it.
Caleb Taylor: Beautiful. I’ve compiled a couple of definitions here.
Clay Clark: Yeah.
Caleb Taylor: This is for defining the business coach Lean Six Sigma. I’ve got this definition from combining two definitions. The first definition is the Six Sigma. This process is defined as one in which 99.99966% of products created are expected to be statistically from defects. This definition’s actually coming from the businessdictionary.com.
Clay Clark: Yeah.
Caleb Taylor: When you combine that definition with Lean Management – Stay with me. Definition of Lean Management, also from businessdictionary.com, says doing more with less by employing Lean thinking. Lean manufacturing involves never-ending efforts to eliminate or reduce “muda”, Japanese for waste or any activity that consumes resources without adding value in design, manufacturing, distribution, and customer service. The whole process. It’s cutting down on the errors of this process, correct. Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA, can help you as well.
Clay Clark: Yeah, and I’m going to tell you this. Science people joke with me in the office about, they say like Claytron. Claytron? Well it’s based on that I’m sort of robotic, and that I like to do the same thing everyday.
Caleb Taylor: Yes.
Clay Clark: The idea of Six Sigma that refers to the pursuit of perfection.
Caleb Taylor: Okay.
Clay Clark: Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, at the time that Jack Welch took over as the CEO of GE, he was fanatical about quality. He moved them from making refrigerators and toasters into making jet engines. This company shifted from making toasters to jet engines.
We’re just throwing out there for you. If you’re on a plane, wouldn’t you want 99.99966% accuracy on the overall quality of the engine?
Caleb Taylor: Absolutely.
Clay Clark: Wouldn’t you want to know that, that it was going to work?
Caleb Taylor: Yeah.
Clay Clark: In small businesses, it’s typically – This is a business coach exaggeration – At a local sandwich shop, you might have a 75.2% satisfaction quality rating. It means only three out of four sandwiches they make are good, but yet they can make a jet engine with 99.99 – No. Unbelievable.
Caleb Taylor: That’s crazy.
Clay Clark: So why is it that you go into the local DMV, not in your city I’m sure but in my city, you go in there and one out four customers leaves upset?
Caleb Taylor: Right.
Clay Clark: Why is it that they can’t ever get the paperwork right one out of four times? Why is it that there’s a hair – Because I own a hair business, I spy on other hair businesses all the time –
Caleb Taylor: Right.
Clay Clark: Why is it I go into hair businesses and I’m only getting one out of four that actually do a good job? Yet we can make jet engines with 99.99 – I’ll tell you why. This is a document. This is a written business coach document. A document can be improved upon over time, a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit, but an oral tradition cannot be improved upon over time. Does that make sense?
Caleb Taylor: Yes.
Clay Clark: So what I’m saying is like I can make it a little bit better, a little bit better, so if I took this picture and I was trying to draw this picture with 100% accuracy, I can draw it and then if I could make a photocopy of it, and make it a little bit better, and then a little bit better, and a little bit better, eventually I can probably draw it exactly this way. Take it from a business coach that knows.