Transcript: Improve Every Area of Your Life with this One Method - Improvement Kata

Hello, I'm Brittany Campbell-Turter and this is the Constructor Podcast, session number 27. Hello and welcome to this episode of Constructor, the best way to build it. This podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. We'll help property owners foster trusting relationships with their project teams, help you understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule in your projects, and exceed your end users' desires. Hey guys, I have something I'm really excited to share with you.

Before I share it with you, I want you to know it doesn't matter who you are, you can learn from this. I hope that in sharing this with you, you will see the value in it, dig into it some more and invest some time in seeing the improvements that can take place in your life. We're going to be talking about CATA today. We're going to talk about what it is, why it's important, an example of how to implement it, and lastly, my big takeaways and how you can learn more about it.

So if you've ever heard the term CATA, you probably have heard it in relation to some martial arts or something of that nature. Before this, however, this training that I actually attended, I had never heard the word CATA before in my life. So the training that I attended was a captivating eight-hour improvement CATA training session, and really and truly, I was engaged the entire time. So that's the only reason why I'd be wanting to share this with you. I felt like it really made a lot of sense when you really understood how to apply it.

So the training session, it focused on practice that can create incremental growth and improvement. So naturally, I think about how this can improve projects, improve business, improve any metric truly that you want to focus on. So let's just kind of take a step back. What is CATA? Let's get the foundation here.

CATA, K-A-T-A, that is, is a Japanese word for improvement. K-A-T-A, that is, is a Japanese word for routine you practice to make its pattern a habit. A CATA is a pattern you practice to learn a skill and mindset. Through practice, the pattern of CATA becomes second nature, done with little conscious attention and readily available. Examples are riding a bicycle, driving a car, typing, even washing dishes.

Some people would say you do these activities in a state of flow. All right, well, there's another element here. Improvement CATA. What is improvement CATA? It's the active engagement, rapidly doing this practice in order to develop a routine or habit.

So CATA is the routine, improvement is the practice to create the routine. And then lastly, the specific thing that they focused on in this particular training was coaching CATA. And coaching CATA provides you with the tools to ask the relevant questions in order to understand how to master the routine. All right, so now that we have that established, CATA is the routine, improvement CATA is how do you improve the routine and CATA coaching is how do you coach so that one can improve their routine. Okay, so now that we have that foundational setting, let's jump right into why is CATA important?

Why is Brittany telling you about this in the first place? Well, with CATA, team leaders can effectively give autonomy, responsibility to their front line team members to improve their team's delivery and outcomes while instilling values and creating a culture of continuous improvement. All right, so you know, you guys, obviously I've been talking about lean, lean construction, interviewing people who find the value of that as well and CATA falls right in line with that. As you have heard already, it's a Japanese word, yes, it's right in line with the Toyota production system.

So yes, it's more lean and more continuous improvement. But let's just take a quick look at, again, why it's important. A team, any team with CATA can look at their current conditions, establish the next target condition or goal and focus on ways to plan, do, check and act or do the PDC's work. So, CATA is a CTA cycle, which are the core concepts of lean practices for incremental improvement. Those of you who are familiar with A3 or a standardized work plan, I think there's so many names for this, but basically the A3, CATA improvement is going through that A3.

Now, coaching CATA is, actually it gives the team an opportunity to review the improvement process. Just like a sports coach, each player on the team, whatever it is, soccer, basketball, tennis, if there's a coach that is monitoring the actions being taken versus actually being there in the game or in practice, they have the opportunity to make some observations that you don't because you're doing it as a sportsman or an athlete. So looking at that, the coach, well and ideally the coach has some experience in that sport, right?

Ideally the coach is capable of seeing things outside of your capability. That coach, say it's your jump shot, can review the positioning of your elbow. To make sure that effort, that strength is going in the right direction instead of being expelled in a different direction where it's not benefiting you, right? I played basketball, I can think of the jump shot. I don't know, I still have yet to improve that.

I don't know if it's probably a waste of time at this point. But whatever the case might be, a coach can align your action closer to the idealistic result just because they have that knowledge base. So the idea here is with coaching, Kata, if you already know you're in the process of improvement and the coach, whether they're observing you or not, just by listening to you, kind of discuss what your plans are, they can provide some insight, all right? So that's the simple thing of coaching Kata.

Now during the training, I do want to say that we took a little bit of time to review manufacturing and looked at some examples, talked about different ways. A specific video that showed a few people assembling, moving some items down the line could improve their processes. But I think the most fun and engaging part of it was not when we talked about manufacturing, but it was when we actually did a domino example. So let's see if you guys can follow, and maybe I'll post a picture of what we did.

But the initial task was to set up 200 pieces of dominoes in a Y pattern as quickly as possible with 100% topple rate, where the domino has fallen more than 45 degrees. The initial state of the dominoes is they were all bricked. I think it was in, let's see, four rows. So all 200, 50 each row. We wanted to make sure they're kind of stacked nicely, all bricked in a row.

And then we had to put it into the Y pattern. So we established specific metrics about the existing condition. So what was the existing condition? We had four people putting in the Y, and we tried to figure out how much time that took in order to set it up in the first place. And then when we tried to topple them, we obviously measured the topple rate, how many dominoes actually fell, versus how many dominoes fell with that 45 degree angle.

If it was less than that, then no go, right? That's a bad metric. We're not at 100%. So we were challenged to work towards a target condition, which was some improvement time. And I think we did a good job of making sure to have quality and improved time in this target condition.

So working towards that target condition, we worked to reduce the impact and or eliminate any obstacle that we possibly could in this actual improvement kind of exercise. So we did an iteration of literally setting up this Y at least five times. So in setting up the first time, we established our existing condition. But each time we set it up again, before we actually set it up, we decided we were going to focus on something specific in order to get that quality, in order to get that time.

So at one point in time, we decided that, well, we started out with the tablecloths on the table. We decided, you know what, it's better if we take off the tablecloth. That is one thing that we can change that might just improve our time. Fall on the little ripples made by the cloth, right? Another thing was we decided to have fewer people working on it to see if that would actually help.

There was just kind of a systematic way of like just literally setting them up. People were kind of getting in each other's way. So after every single time, we made sure to just document our results so that we could understand the actual improvement that was taking place. The fact that we were doing this really quickly back to back, one after the other, was termed it was termed rapid plan due check act. Now, those of you who are familiar with lean, you should be familiar with the cycle plan due check act.

But with this process, we were doing rapid PDCA, which ultimately was going to give us a good understanding of what's the best thing to focus on. So, dominoes, that was fun, I must say. That was fun. Ultimately, we came up with a number of metrics and we understood how best to improve. Although, quite honestly, we probably could have done it another 15 times and found 15 more ways to establish the right thing to do to improve this process.

But what's the point of setting dominoes up in a Y, right? Although building the Y was fun, with many accidents and spills, the task of building the structure and recording the results of experimental approach really wasn't the point of the exercise. The value was found in the coaching. So, we were asked to go through five questions. And the five questions were to be asked from the coach to a learner.

So, who's the coach and who's the learner? We arbitrarily picked a coach actually the facilitator picked a coach and the learner was also picked arbitrarily, but there was one in each group. There was also kind of a second coach that coached the coach, but at this point that's kind of less important. What the coach did was they were asking these five questions and they pretty much got the learner to describe what happened. But they sometimes, what coaches tend to do is they dictate.

Like if you think about, okay, you know, you're a sports coach, they dictate, they dictate it. Typically it's dictated to you what you should be doing. The difference here is the coach simply asks these questions and doesn't do any leading, doesn't do anything other than let the person respond to the questions. And yes, you can ask the questions kind of following up with a, well, can you explain that more for me? Or let's understand that further.

Really just digging deeper into what the person has already said, but it really allows the learner to truly organically and freely learn. So, I'm going to tell you these questions in a second. These questions establish structure to the review process and continuous care for the guidance process. You can tell by these questions that through that care and consistent care of a coach, it can lead to trust and it can lead to better performance. So, what are the five questions you're asking?

Okay. So, number one, if you want to take out a pen and paper or want to write this down in your notes in your phone or whatever, here are the five questions. If you're ready, we're going to start with number one. Number one, what is the target condition? Number two, what is the actual condition now?

So, depending on the last step that was taken, your actual condition is going to be different from one rapid plan, do, check, act step to the next. So, you actually get to turn the card over and ask a few questions just to understand the existing condition, the actual condition right now. And so, these are sub steps. So, under number two, you ask the question, you can call this A, what did you plan as your last step? B, what did you expect?

C, what actually happened? And D, what did you learn? Once you establish that existing or actual condition that's right now, then you can move on to the third question, the third coaching kind of question. So, third coaching kind of question is, what obstacles do you think are preventing you from reaching the target condition? Now, there can be many obstacles or three or four or five, right?

But normally there's probably a few things that are preventing you or you think just could be improved, right? So, the coach then, as a sub question to part three is, which one are you focusing on right now? Which one are you addressing now? Number four, what is your next step? What's your next experiment?

What do you expect as a result of your next experiment? So, that's number four. Last but not least, number five, how quickly can we go and see what we have learned from taking that step? So, those are the five questions. If you need to go ahead and stop the audio, rewind it back, please do so.

But the idea is to ask this at every iteration so that you can make sure you documented what your expectations were, what you've learned, and then apply them to making your next target condition realistic, yet actually improving. Something that you can focus on and have a goal to achieve. So, those are the coaching questions. And last couple things I'm going to leave you with that I promise are what my big takeaways from this training are, as well as how you can learn more about it. So, the first thing that I learned from this CADA training session that focused on improvement CADA and coaching CADA is that you can't learn about your current status if you've never measured where you are today.

Well, let's go back to sports. I think sports is a great analogy here and then I'm going to go back to your jump shot. If you don't understand how you're shooting and how you're positioning your body in order to shoot that jump shot, if you've never seen a video of yourself, you don't know what you're doing today because you've never analyzed it. So, you can't learn your current status if you've never measured where you are. If you've never measured how high you jump, if you've never measured how far back you swing your arms forward, the angle of your arms, those small pieces, then you just don't know.

So, number two. Committing to address one obstacle with one dedicated action is enough to measure improvement. There's always a critical metric to improve. Conduct your experiment there. Alright, back to your jump shot, right?

So, I know for me particularly, I don't know if it's because I broke both my wrists when I was a kid, but I had such a hard time holding my elbow in so that I could thrust the ball with true force from the center, right? I don't know any of you who play basketball, but I, that was the one thing I had a really hard time with adjusting my arm positioning. Everything else, I was athletic, I could run fast, whatever it was, but this small one thing I knew was going to be a critical metric to improve.

And even with breaking my wrists prior and having just issues with the rotation, I did my best to just test, right? And you have to conduct your experiment there. You have to figure out, is there a way that you can kind of just rotate your hand with your finger on one side of the ball, you know, something like that in order to make that improvement. Just be able to measure your improvement now. So, how do you measure that?

It could be how many shots get shot in the line of sight with the rim, if even they don't fall, right? Fall through the basket. How many are right in line with the side of the rim? You know, how many curve towards it? You know, those are things that you can count.

And I think in the same instance with whatever you're focusing on, whether it's construction or project, whatever it is that you're trying to improve, you can do that. All right, so that was number two. Number three, operators, laborers, provide invaluable feedback that should always be taken into account during the learner's assessment for improvement and subsequently the coach's learning. So, we had eight hours in this training, right? I want to, I want you guys to get this key takeaway that I got from this training though, because I think it's hugely valuable.

Operators and laborers. All right, we talked about the learner, we talked about the coach, and we also kind of halfway mentioned the second coach. But what I didn't talk about here was the operators and laborers. In building our dominoes, why? There were multiple people building this, why?

And when we were in this training session and we held the rules of learner and coach, there were owners and operators that weren't speaking while the learner and the coach were going through their process of talking back and forth, you know, going through those kind of questions. But the learner, a good learner, really needed to have spoken to the rest of their team even before responding to the questions. Sometimes we don't take into account all of the perspectives, and I think it's hugely valuable to do so before you put yourself into a position to assess the whole.

You really do have to ask and collaborate. Now fortunately, the learner was working right alongside with them, but that doesn't give the learner the others, the other people's perspective, the other operators' perspective. So that was one thing that was a big takeaway. You know, if they provided their feedback, it was so much easier to decide on which metric was the next one they should focus on. Now, what I thought was also interesting was that when the coach was asking questions, whether they were involved in actually doing the process or just observing or stepped away, they always learned something.

They always learned something from the learner. They always learned something from the learner who learned from the operator and was able to articulate clearly what took place. The coach was consistently learning something. I think sometimes as coaches in our jobs, or leaders or managers in our jobs, sometimes we don't learn intentionally while asking questions to get other people to learn. Teachers probably encounter this all the time when they hear students respond, but it's the intentional openness to gain from those who you're teaching and kind of guiding.

I think that's something, again, that's hugely invaluable. And I think that if we can create a culture within our project teams, within our businesses, that's going to create that type of learning environment for our coaches, for our learners, for our operators. So that's number three. And lastly, number four. A collaborative method to reviewing improvement through rapid PDCA is excellent.

I just love this approach. I think that taking the time to review with many perspectives through collaboration is a great way to improve a process. If you don't have that collaboration, if you don't understand the existing condition, if you're not focusing on the metric that's critical, and doing this with all the minds thinking together, then it can still improve. But let me tell you, there's something genius that comes out of it. So that's number four.

Lastly, I do want to give kudos to who did the training, because she did a great job. And I think you should follow her. Her name is Beth Carrington, and she is with Cata Matters. I'm going to give you the website as well. It's just katamatters.com.

You can learn more about Cata at lean.org, which is the Lean Enterprise Institute. And there's a book called Toyota Cata by Mike Rother. I think that Beth Carrington has done some trainings with him as well. But Mike Rother, the author of Toyota Cata, has some really good trainings around this particular subject. So check those out and collaboratively improve through Cata today.

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