The life changing impact of 2 second lean!....

Book Page for Paul Akers new book: Impact of 2 second lean!

Ok, so I am the lucky last contributor to this amazing book! I managed to get in at the 11th hour! Thanks Paul! What an honour to be involved!

We had just hosted an AME tour of our business (be sure to watch it on our YouTube channel, we had so much fun!) so I had been having extra contact with Paul re this and of course the tour gave him some insights into our business, and he says “hey, I love what you guys are doing, I might be able to get you into our new book!”

I of course said “heck yes! Bring it on!”

So here we are! 😊

This book is very aptly called IMPACT!

And boy oh boy what an incredible IMPACT 2 second lean has had on my life and then flowed onto my amazing team and wonderful family!

You know, a good book has the power to change the lives of millions, if not billions. And I 100% believe that this book along with the original 2 second lean book has the power and the magic to do just that. If only we can get them in front of enough people! Please do your bit and share, share, share the message!

My personal wish and desire is that every person on planet earth discovers the incredible life changing magic of 2 second lean! And then of course, apply it in their own lives!

This one simple principle, if applied daily, would totally transform the world as we know it.

It would end the mind-numbing piles of money being thrown at environmental projects and schemes, (lean is the ultimate green vehicle), it would end poverty, it would end scarcity, it would end wars, waste, famine and more!

Just humour me for a moment: close your eyes and imagine a world where every man, woman and child committed to making just one small improvement in their sphere of influence every single day, for the rest of their lives. Imagine a world of 8 billion human beings all committed to fixing what bugs them every time they experience struggle during their day.

Imagine the Governments, the local councils, the military, the police, the hospitals, the public transport departments, in fact every area of public service, all focussed on the elimination of waste through small daily improvements!

Every person on the planet would be affected in a positive way from day one! And life would just get better every day!

As Paul says, a great life is an improving life!

Every human being has an inbuilt desire to improve their circumstances. And every human being feels a buzz when something in their life improves. People love to see and feel progress!

At Premier Group NZ, we call this the lean bug. And the earlier in life you catch it, the better!

My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t discover lean earlier! I often say to my team or my family; “just imagine if we had discovered this earlier, imagine how much further ahead we would be!”

But as any lean thinker knows, regrets don’t add any value to your life so if they pop into your head you must deal with them quickly before they have a chance to drag you down!

An old Chinese proverb says: Don’t stumble over something behind you!

Another great quote I often share with my team is this: The best time to plant an Oak tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now!

So, no matter what age bracket you fall into now, my best advice to you is to start on your own lean journey right now! No, not tomorrow, not next week!! RIGHT NOW! Do not delay! Do not procrastinate! Do not waste any more of your precious time! 😊

Life rewards action! Be an action taker! As soon as you make one small improvement you will catch the bug and you won’t look back!

Remember that the coward and the hero have the same fears. The difference is that the hero does it anyway! Are you a hero or a coward?

Its is so important to have the courage to look in the mirror and take full ownership of the situation you find yourself in right now and realise that only you have the power to change it for the better.

A lean thinker never wastes time making excuses or blaming others for their problems. They take full responsibility, and they make up their mind to win. They focus on the things they can control and don’t waste time or emotional energy on the rest!

They are givers not takers! They are not complainers nor moaners! They are fun people to be around! They are always positive, grateful, and thankful! They are unselfish! They want to help others to get ahead in life too!

Don’t waste your precious time making excuses. Make changes! You can’t make both!

Remember that life is not a dress rehearsal. You don’t get to practice for this! Life is right now! Every second that goes by, you are getting older, and your time is becoming more scarce and therefore more valuable! This all may seem very obvious, but the tragic thing is that 99% of the people I meet don’t seem to understand this simple truth! Or if they do, they certainly don’t act like it!

Do you just take life as it comes? Or do you take a deliberate approach?

You can’t change the wind but you can adjust the sails! Focus on what you can control!

The biggest roadblock I see with everyone I meet, coach, mentor or discuss lean with is CONSISTENCY! As human beings we are wired to be inconsistent. It is in our nature. So, you must take deliberate action to combat that every waking hour!

We are a direct result or product of our daily habits. So, if we cannot win the daily consistency battle then it will be hard to improve anything in your life, let alone win!

Here is a couple of top tips for you:

1.       Write 2SL as your A1 priority at the top of your task list every day. And write it out on every page ahead of time so that when you go to sleep at night, you are already mentally committed to that all important goal. And when you wake in the morning you must take action on that goal. Even better, write down what that 2SL improvement is going to be.

2.       Download the app Habitshare (this has been an absolute life changer for me) and add: Make at least 1 2SL every day. This will be your number one habit you commit to. Then you can keep building out your habits from there over time.

So, how did we come across 2 second lean?

For us it was perfect timing! It was freaky timing and only just in time!

We have a business in New Zealand (right at the bottom of the world! Please come and see us soon! We would love to welcome you here! It is a beautiful country full of friendly people and thousands of great sights to see!).

We manufacture concrete bricks, pavers and retaining blocks. We also import a lot of beautiful stone paving and walling products too. 90% of our business is manufacturing. You can check us out here: www.premier-group.co.nz

Premier Group NZ originally started out as a landscape design and construction business and over time evolved into a manufacturing and importing business.

Our company mission is this: Deliver happiness, create raving fans, and beautify our world!

In essence this means that we put culture first (growing people and treating them like owners), they then serve our customers at the highest level which creates raving fans which in turn creates a steady stream of referrals. And the 3rd pillar of our mission, (beautify our world) means that every product and service that we provide now and, in the future, must beautify the homes, neighbourhoods and cities of our customers.

So back to our story:

The landscape business began in 2002 when I was just 18 years old and absolutely clueless about business let alone what it takes to build a great business.

Over time the business grew and most of my learning came from making endless mistakes and then trying not to repeat them. Mistakes in leadership, management, finance, sales, marketing, operations and on and on.

Thankfully I was blessed with a very patient and wise father who supported me all the way along with financial guidance, support, and funding. (He is a world class accountant, the best in the game I reckon 😊).

We began manufacturing wet cast concrete pavers in 2007 in a very small way. We had a small drum mixer, a barrow, a primitive vibrating table, a few plastic and steel moulds, all under a blue tarpaulin covered lean to!

Our landscaping team would produce about 80 450x450x40mm pavers per day on the wet days when we couldn’t be out onsite landscaping. This involved shovelling builders mix and cement into the mixer, mixing the concrete and then scooping it out into the moulds on the vibrating table and then sliding them into steel racks to cure overnight. We would then de mould them the next day and stack them onto pallets and leave them 30 days to cure.

So, at first, we used the pavers on our own landscape jobs then from there I started to get out and about in my ancient white Hilux Ute with samples to show to other landscapers and resellers.

Sales started to grow, and we kept throwing money into the manufacturing side of the biz to try to solve our growing pain problems! (These days of course we use our heads not our wallets to solve problems! If only we had known back, then!)

We had endless quality issues, staffing issues, health and safety issues (one of our team was literally seconds from being crushed into a thousand pieces in a giant concrete mixer with a faulty electrical switch! I still have no idea how he managed to escape from inside the mixer where he was cleaning it when it started up! This still gives me nightmares to this day!)

We had endless customer complaints due to quality and service issues. I was working crazy hours 6 to 7 days per week. Life was very tough, very stressful and mentally draining.

But I am not one to give in, so we stuck at it and gradually we improved the process which in turn lead to quality and service improvements.

I managed to secure some supply deals with some of NZs biggest DIY big box stores and sales continued to grow.

Then came the crazy years 2010,2011,2012 and 2013 when we grew over 100% year on year on year.

This of course bought many fresh problems and more pressure and stress than ever!

Then in 2015 I discovered the magic of reading good business books! Why I hadn’t done this earlier I still have no idea! I just never thought of it, and no one ever suggested it to me! Go figure!

So, with this reading came a lot of fresh inspiration, ideas, encouragement, and help!

I stumbled across the idea of putting culture first as a way to run a business and we just went in boots and all! We shared some great videos we found of the online shoe store Zappos and Southwest airlines and a few others, brainstormed with the team, and launched!

We said to the team that from now on, you can treat this place like its yours as you are effectively owners of Premier Group NZ!

The only rule we said is this: Cheap and cheerful!

So, the next day I came in and there was colourful bunting hanging everywhere, staff wearing crazy wigs, spontaneous nerf gun fights and scooter riding!

As I watched in amazement the phones kept ringing and I could hear customers asking what’s going on!? Our happy staff replied, oh not much just the team having fun!

Our customers could hear the smiles and fun down the phone. So good!

The change overnight was incredible.

From there the culture first journey continued and I could write many pages about that but let’s keep moving along!

Also, it is important to note that in 2015 we hired some expensive lean consultants who came highly recommended from several good business friends of mine.

They were great guys and they taught us some great stuff but as anyone knows who has tried this, a lean consultant cannot change your culture.

So, we spent tens of thousands of dollars on these guys over a few months and we made some great improvements, but the culture didn’t change, so of course, lean didn’t stick!

So, after a few months we decided to let them go and keep trying ourselves but with pretty limited success.

Then, 2016 was another record year in business in every way. Sales, profits, production and also to crown it all off we won the coveted Best workplace of the year award in the IBM Kenexa Best workplaces competition! This was a mind-blowing experience especially as it was the first year we had entered!

So, to say we were riding high would be an understatement! We were pumped! We were positively fizzing!

You know the old saying pride cometh before a fall? Well, this probably summed our situation up pretty nicely.

To cut a very long story short, we threw a lot of money (over $1,000,000) at a problem we were having. The problem was that we were growing so fast that our wet cast paver production could barely keep up with demand.

At that time we were the proud owners of the only semi auto wet cast paver production line in the country but instead of using our creative genius and improving this machine or maybe building a second one, we threw over a million dollars at a grand new machine from the UK! Go figure, right?

But we were riding high with huge confidence, and it felt like everything we touched turned to gold. So, what could possibly go wrong?...

Well, as it turned out, pretty much everything….

We made endless bad decisions in the planning stage and the commissioning stage and by the time we started producing product on it we were in a real mess.

We had our top customers screaming at us for undelivered orders, our staff under huge pressure working long hours and often 7 days per week. Pallet loads of rejected Seconds grade pavers were piling up in the yard and on and on.

So just 3 months into 2017, we were in a real pickle. Like, a real big pickle. We had thrown at least another million dollars at the project and the extra costs just kept on coming…

We just kept throwing more and more money and staffing resources at the issue. We were bringing our sales and CS staff into the factory on rosters to help out and our biggest customers were threatening to go elsewhere.

It was blowing up. Big time.

Then out of the blue, a friend I hadn’t heard from in years sent me a message on Linkedin.

“Hey bro have you read 2 second lean by Paul Akers?”

At this stage I was searching for anything that might help us out of this mess. Maybe this was it?!

So, I ordered a hard copy immediately and ordered the CD to play in my Ute.

It turned up within a few days and I began listening on my daily commute.

Before I had even finished the book, I shared my new learnings with the team and said this is our only hope. Let’s do this! We gotta go all in!

Then, I got the leadership team reading the book too and we re grouped and got stuck in.

We quickly built 2 new manual production lines based on the old designs from previous years and totally ditched the idea of trying to keep producing on the new line. We were still getting up to 50% seconds every day. Just crippling!

We restarted our morning meetings using a new agenda, we started 3 s ing everywhere (sweep, sort, standardize), we started a 2SL group chat, we published new posters proclaiming quotes like: We are at war with waste! And “Fix what bugs you!” and many others.

We started morning improvement walks. We started mini kaizen events. We went all in.

I personally spent the next 3 months on the yard and in the factory, spending long 12 to 14 hour days on the forklift and on my feet helping to get things back in order. Sweeping, barrowing, shovelling and whatever else it took to get the place tidy and clean. Each day I would return home covered in dust and grime and absolutely exhausted.

I self-appointed myself as the acting operations team leader and started restructuring and rebuilding the team and growing new leaders and people.

So, during my cleaning work I was also coordinating the team, suppliers, contractors and also still fielding calls from angry customers.

It was tough. Very tough.

So, in the midst of all this chaos is where our 2 second lean journey began!

Now 5 years on we are able to look back on this time as a massive learning curve. Albeit a very expensive one.

It forced us to re group, re structure and put back in place many of the disciplines we had let go and implement many new ones.

I can honestly say that 2 second lean helped to save our business and I am forever grateful to Paul for his amazing book. It gave me fresh hope and courage and determination to dig deeper than ever before!

2 second lean is not just business changing. It is life changing! Have I said that already?

In March 2023 we hit a new team record of 252 improvements in one week from our team of 75. Incredible stuff from the team!

At the time of writing of this chapter we average between 120 to 200 improvements every single week. It is astonishing if you compare it to any average business or organisation.

A few years back we also set up a new division of our business called Premier Business Academy to help all our wonderful customers and friends to improve and transform their businesses and lives through our training and resources. You can find us here: www.premierbusinessacademy.co.nz

All the resources are completely free as our way of paying forward what we have learned from so many generous people in the lean community.

We are also about to publish our new book called: The Premier Way – How to build a fun, happy culture, and purpose driven business! Email me if you would like a copy: bernard@premier-group.co.nz

Or if you have any questions I can help you with please voice note me on Whatsapp: 0064 21 228 5336

Also be sure to check out our AME tour which gives a lot of valuable insights into our business and the Premier way from which you are welcome to take the ideas for your own business!

We are 100% committed to our lean journey now and into the future. Life without lean is unthinkable.

I don’t really know how to finish off my contribution to this amazing book but I guess I should share some of the things we do at Premier Group NZ.

Let’s call it the Premier Top 10 tips!

These will help you to get started!

Here they are:

1.       Start by calling an all staff stand up meeting so you can share your new learnings and let the team know how you would like to start building a fun, lean culture! Be sure to share your goals and not just how but also why. And use this meeting to answer any questions they may have. Tell them that from now on you are going to treat and train them like owners and that in return you expect them to act like owners. This is a big commitment but the best one you will ever make. Over time you will build a team of owners. This will take huge pressure and onus off you.

2.       Now, get started! Do NOT delay! Production then perfection! Just get started! Imperfect action is a million times better than perfect inaction!

3.       Start a full team 2SL group chat on Whatsapp for sharing the before and after pics and vids!

4.       Start the morning meeting and never miss! Start very simple and improve it by the day.

5.       Share 1 video chapter from the 2 second lean book each day in the morning meeting. Get your team to take notes then discuss their learnings after the video.

6.       Start rotating the leadership of the morning meeting around all staff. This is amazing and helps you to build leaders and improve engagement.

7.       Keep reminding the team to download the lean play app and to listen to the 2SL book during their commute. You cant force them to do this but keep explaining to them that the more they learn the more they can earn. A lot of leadership is follow up.

8.       Start the weekly lean champion awards! This makes lean even more fun and gets healthy competition going on. We do it like this: We give away weekly prezzie card prizes for the lean champions and runners up for our 3 overall departments. We announce these at the weekly all staff meeting we hold on Zoom. This is a highlight of the week and this competition has really taken our improvements to the next level in a big way. Both in the volume and the quality aspects.

9.       STOP holding onto secrets. A business should be like an aquarium! You can see what is going on. It is all transparent! This is especially important with your financials. Share everything and train your team how to read and interpret financial information. Your financials are effectively the scorecard for your biz and if you don’t share them then you are not treating your team like owners and you will certainly not be able to get them to act like owners!

10.   Keep the rope tight and don’t give up! If you give up when it all seems too hard then you are giving away a lifetime of joy for the sake of short term pain! Lean is the hard thing that makes everything easy!

Here are some very important lean principles you need to learn off by heart and practice daily. I suggest you turn these into posters for your walls too:

1.       Leave it better than you found it.

2.       The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

3.       The standard you tolerate is the standard you will get.

4.       Improvement starts with I.

5.       Lean thinkers don’t own ideas. It is always a team effort.

6.       Improvements are endless because waste is like gravity.

7.       One piece flow is always better than batch work.

8.       Never look at the waste of others, you have plenty of your own.

9.       Lean thinkers cheer on their team mates.

10.   90% of everything you do is waste.

11.   Growing people is the first priority.

12.   Eliminate the struggle. Work should flow.

13.   Within struggle lies opportunity.

14.   Mistake proof every process.

15.   Standardization is the basis for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.

16.   If you don’t have a standard you cant improve. Any perceived improvement becomes just another variation of the process.

17.   Lean thinkers say they are wrong at least twice a day!

18.   Lean leaders are humble, servant leaders.

19.   We are in business to improve the life of the customer.

20.   If you want to improve your products and services, start by growing people. Then they in turn will improve every process. Therefore quality and service improves.

21.   Eliminate class distinctions.

22.   1 % better every day.

23.   The 2 underlying pillars are: A deep respect for people and a deep respect for resources.

24.   Lean is the hard thing that makes everything easy!

It is also important to train your team about what we call the Improvement filter:

We always filter our improvements through these 4 principles:

1.       Safety

2.       Quality

3.       Simplicity

4.       Speed

It is important to understand that every change we make must improve at least 1 of these aspects!

We also understand that we cannot sacrifice one aspect for the sake of another. Eg. If we simplify a process at the expense of safety, that is not an improvement.

In conclusion, it is not easy to build a fun lean culture but it gets easier over time as you gather momentum. On the flip side, if you never try then you will always have an average or even toxic culture which is sure not easy either! Ask yourself: Which option would you prefer? Short term pain for long term gain? Or endless pain and misery? Its that simple.

And as Paul often says, lean is really all about just one word: Leadership.

So, if you are not committed to becoming a better leader every single day, even just by 1%, then you are always going to struggle to build a great business, let alone build a fun, lean culture.

Here are my favourite books of all time (and I have read hundreds) that I recommend you read over and over again until all the timeless principles become part of your DNA:

1.       2 second Lean

2.       Banish Sloppiness and fall in love with precision.

3.       Lean health

4.       Lean life (all these by Paul Akers)

5.       Today and tomorrow by Henry Ford.

6.       Improvement starts with I by Tom Hughes

7.       The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker

8.       Scaling up by Verne Harnish

9.       The great game of business by Jack Stack

10.   Extreme ownership by Jocko Willink (this one is very helpful for improving your leadership skills)

If you have any questions about how to get started or how to sustain your journey, please voice note me on whatsapp 0064 21 228 5336. I am always happy to help if I can! 😊

Please connect with me on Linkedin too: Bernard Powell

I also host an amazing group chat called: 2 Second lean dream team!

This is a group of like minded lean thinkers who share their improvements, ideas and questions! There is a few simple rules to qualify for the chat so please let me know if you would like to be included.

And be sure to message me with your feedback about this chapter too as I would love to know what parts resonated with you!

If you need coaching and support to get this off the ground, I also offer a very popular month by month paid service for my services. DM me for more info.

 Good luck with your life changing lean journey!

Cheers!

From Bernard and the team at Premier Group NZ 😊