Transcript
Dave Stahoviak (0:00)
We often add more in order to make a system better. The opposite tactic is often more. Making things simpler. In this episode, how to make work better by starting small. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 726, produced by Innovate. Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders. Your host, Dave Stahoviak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. One of the challenges that so many of us face each day is the complexity of everything coming at us. The complexity of what's happening in the world, all the digital notifications and information coming our way, and also the complexity of our organizations. Today, an invitation on how to make things better both at work and at home, through a bit more simplicity. I'm so glad to welcome a guest who's an expert at how to keep things simple. I'm pleased to introduce Paul Akers. He's the founder and president of FastCap, a product development company specializing in woodworking tools and hardware for the professional builder. Through a series of twists and turns, he discovered Lean and the Toyota production system, which was instrumental in propelling FastCap as an example of lean manufacturing and culture, now followed by thousands of companies around the world. He is the author of Two Second Lean how to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture at Work and at Home. Paul, so good to have you with me. Hello.
Paul Akers (1:49)
Thanks, Dave. It's a pleasure. Looking forward to it.
Dave Stahoviak (1:52)
Oh, me too. I had so much fun getting into your work. I mean, the word fun keeps coming up again and again for me. Like life and work really should be fun. Right? And as I was thinking about your story, I was thinking back to how this all started. And you tell a story in the book about getting into business and having the bank come by and look at your business and approve you for the loan. And they, they loved what they saw. And we're all excited about you starting up. And then you hired a consultant to come in and help you out with. With a few things. And the story was really different when they showed up, wasn't it?
Paul Akers (2:28)
Oh, was it? It was very, very different. So just a little background for the listeners. So I'm a carpenter, a cabinet maker by trade. I built guitars with Bob Taylor, so I love doing nice work. And I developed a product when I was about 37 years old called the Fast Cap, a peel and stick cover cap. And that product took off, and today we have about 2,000 products on the market. But back in the very Beginning when I started the company, it was three years into the company and I was cash flow short and I needed a loan. So I went to the bank and I'd maxed out mortgages on all my properties that I owned, own some real estate, and now I needed to get some cash flow and I needed about a quarter million dollars. The bank came to approve the loan. But in this case, because I was not an MBA student and I didn't have a background and everything, the president came to the company to kind of look and say, do we want to put this kind of money into this young guy that is really not a business guy, he's a cabinet maker. So he walked around our facility and he, he was blown away because I'm a super OCD and super organized. Everything was beautiful, the floors were painted, everything was just pristine and perfect. He goes, paul, I've never seen a company so well run and so well managed. We had about 30 employees at the time. I'd give you any amount of money you wanted, and that was a nice compliment. I, I like that a lot. And we got the money. And then what happened next was even more interesting. So about a week later, I had some consultants come in from who were Japanese, and they looked around my facility and I needed some help with some inventory management problems and just different little things that I was struggling with because I wasn't an expert in running a company. And I said, can you help me? And they said, I don't know, because you're clueless and you don't know how to manufacture. So one week, the bank's telling me I'm the best they'd ever seen, give me any amount of money. And then these Japanese are telling me I have no clue what I'm doing. And that got my attention. And I said, okay, what do I need to do? And they said, you need to learn the Toyota production system. And I said, what's that?
