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Learn or Win: Effort Over Perfection · Trash Talk

• 0:00
  Do do do do do do.
• 0:02
  Welcome to Trash Talk.
• 0:05
  Welcome to Trash Talk.
• 0:07
  You win.
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  We're talking trash today.
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  I like that.
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  So, Eric, welcome Trash Talk.
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  My co partner here.
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  Today's episode on Trash Talk.
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  You guys, we've got some cool notes.
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  For those of you who watch notes.
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  Effort not perfection.
• 0:25
  What the heck does that mean?
• 0:27
  I guess it depends on what context you.
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  You want to put it in? Okay.
• 0:31
  What does it mean to you personally?
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  So effort.
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  Not perfection.
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  That's a tough one.
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  I'm more on the perfectionist side of things.
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  So I want everything to be as perfect as possible.
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  Whether it's a little effort, a lot of effort, or how much effort it takes.
• 0:48
  You know, I also think about effort in itself is like you can try really hard to do the wrong thing.
• 0:58
  Does that make that, does that mean it's okay.
• 1:00
  I don't think it's okay if it's wrong.
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  But you might not know what's wrong at the time.
• 1:05
  Yeah.
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  Well and that goes into other layers of like support and you know like expectations and what the actual plan was.
• 1:15
  So yeah. Is failing okay.
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  Of course I mean everybody fails.
• 1:18
  Yeah.
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  But I think we're we're leaning and I'm just kind of guessing a little bit on this.
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  But I think what we're leaning is this whole sometimes when people are trying to be perfect, it stalls them out like it's effort just freezes up on them because they don't know that, you know, they just they want it to be perfect or they don't want to do it.
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  And there's, what do they call that?
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  Like effort paralysis? It's something like that.
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  It's a natural paralysis analysis.
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  Paralysis analysis.
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  No, I get where that would make effort, not perfection.
• 1:52
  One of the things that I think about is that that concept of like 80, 80% and 20%.
• 2:01
  So you're working on a project, you're coming in, you're getting close to the end of the project.
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  You get what we would call 80% of that project managed.
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  There's that concept of, well, we got 80.
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  Don't worry about the other 20.
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  Let's get this thing rolling, and then we'll get into that 20% to bring it to 100.
• 2:22
  I got a problem with that.
• 2:24
  I just don't like it.
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  Like, I don't know what 20% isn't important when I think about this.
• 2:32
  I think, yeah, like perfection isn't always going to happen, but you shouldn't assume that 20% of that or so isn't necessary or maybe not critical, right?
• 2:47
  I guess there's the argument there.
• 2:48
  Well, maybe it's not critical to getting things ruled.
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  So it probably like if I think of.
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  Something that would relate to ABS, let's call it shipping a product out the door.
• 2:59
  Yeah.
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  Something tangible, something we both relate to.
• 3:02
  And it's, you know, it's what is 80%, what is 100%.
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  And I think your 80% might be different than my 80%.
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  Sure. And vice versa.
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  But if you look at it to where I mean, that's why we establish milestones and we have goals.
• 3:18
  So we don't have any differences of what 100% is or what the goal is.
• 3:26
  But if you look at two and that just had this conversation with my team last week or the week before last that says, hey, let's get it to 80% and move and take action, because the last 20% of getting it to 100%.
• 3:42
  You're right.
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  We could we could sit here in that 20% could take so much time.
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  It may not be worth the effort to do it.
• 3:50
  Every scenario is going to be different depending on what it is.
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  Safety is going to be different than us building.
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  You know, I'll say maybe a small side project in the shop.
• 4:01
  Sure.
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  But if we have a project that we're delivering for a customer, we know what 100% is.
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  That means bill materials there.
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  It's assembled.
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  It's tested.
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  It's, you know, ship loses its touched up painted decals like it's ready to go out the door.
• 4:19
  We have that list to say exactly what 100% is.
• 4:23
  We wouldn't want to get it to 80%.
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  And let's say, oh, let's just we'll do the rest on site to meet the timeline.
• 4:29
  Or let your client. Do it or let your client do it.
• 4:32
  Yeah, but how often do we get into the point of, hey, let's meet this timeline and we'll do the rest on site?
• 4:41
  And I know what that what that means for us.
• 4:44
  It's our cost of getting that done.
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  That 20% done just goes up probably ten x at a minimum of doing it in the field versus doing it in our facility.
• 4:56
  Well I think timelines are the Achilles here.
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  Timelines really kind of decide whether or not it's going to finish.
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  Yeah.
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  From an operations perspective we want it at surprise surprise 100%.
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  Right.
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  And I'll tell you why we wanted it 100% is because we're going to end up having to go back and fix things.
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  We're going to have to end up going back and rescheduling things.
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  Which is even more money.
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  Which even more money, more time.
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  You know, we're lucky at the Landfill Group, we can pick from different departments.
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  We can pull from those and argue with each other and get it done.
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  But if you were truly my client, like, you were like, I didn't know you from Adam, and I ordered some equipment from you.
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  I expect it to be 100%. Yeah.
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  And so do you. Yeah.
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  So where is this effort?
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  Not perfection.
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  Sit in that bowl.
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  Like, where does it sit?
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  It's hard. It's hard.
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  This is a hard one to argue about. It is.
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  Because it really depends on what the goal is.
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  You come from the engineering side of the house.
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  We're focused on perfection.
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  And it being 100% correct.
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  Right.
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  Well, what that gets you is this sometimes this analysis paralysis to where you're getting it so far.
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  And then it needs to go to the next step.
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  And it may not make it to the step in the time it needs to make it there so somebody else can carry that on, which then creates a delay.
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  Drives the project management side crazy.
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  You know, I have this conversation.
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  It was shortly after I first came on to the Landfill Group.
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  And it was a conversation of hey I want you to do something different.
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  I want you to try something different.
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  We need to get it to 80%.
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  And then I want you to move.
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  Now I know it's not going to be 100%.
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  And that's okay.
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  I want you to get it to 80.
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  And I want you to move because I was getting to a point where I'm still learning.
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  I'm still learning the product.
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  The process is the people, and I'm wanting it to be perfect, but yet I maybe don't exactly know what perfect or 100% is yet.
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  Yeah, and it was getting stuck.
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  That was an eye opener for me, and I've shared that with many of the employees at ABS in that same manner.
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  It's like, okay, we get it close, we can get it to 80%.
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  And I want you to take some sort of action.
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  Doesn't mean you have to stop working on it or truly hand it off, but I want you to take it.
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  Take action.
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  And that seems to have helped things progress through station to station within the ABS team.
• 7:24
  If I think about some of this though, is I think I was on the drive here, I was thinking about perfection.
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  What's perfection mean?
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  It's it can be defined by the person, or it can be defined by something that was set for you, such as a goal or a standard or a set of rules.
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  But I also look at perfection as how does it relate to failure and is perfection.
• 7:51
  You know, it's like I consider myself a perfectionist and I'm looking at details in maybe a different way than most because I want it to be as perfect as I can give it.
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  Now, is there a more stringent perfectionist out there?
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  Probably.
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  But is there less? Absolutely.
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  And then there's some interpretation from what's perfection to you versus what's perfection to me.
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  But I also look at it and I was thinking of this.
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  It's like fear of failing.
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  Yeah.
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  That's where that's where it hits me because I'm like, where and when did I think that perfection was was the.
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  Goal was less.
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  There isn't a failure in perfection.
• 8:35
  That's right.
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  It's like, I want this to be the best that I can possibly get it, because I don't want to fail.
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  But to spank, right?
• 8:41
  You fail, you analyze, you adjust, you perfect.
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  You fail again.
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  You analyze.
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  You adjust.
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  You perfect.
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  100%. It's okay to make mistakes.
• 8:52
  I encourage people to make mistakes because it's not.
• 8:55
  We don't keep track of the number of mistakes you make.
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  We keep track of how many times we get back up and how many times we restart.
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  Because now we have more information.
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  We have more data from making that mistake than we originally had.
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  We're in a better starting place.
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  We're going to learn from it.
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  We're either going to learn or we're going to win.
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  There's no failure, right?
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  It doesn't exist. Right.
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  And that's one thing that's really helped.
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  It's like if we want to be better and it's okay to fail.
• 9:25
  Yeah.
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  I mean, it paralyzes people, right?
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  Like, I remember when I was younger, I know I failed a lot, but it paralyzed me.
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  Like, I had a real problem with that.
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  Then I got really good at failing.
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  Which you should never say. But.
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  But managing a failure is important.
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  Like the once you've realized that wall that you hit.
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  Like, you can pout about it for a week if you want, but if you really quickly look at it and say, man, I found it just done this, or I really could use some help.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, because most of us want to fix everything ourselves.
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  Well, some of us aren't that qualified and we may need some help.
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  So did you ever have anybody in your life?
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  Say that it's okay to fail? I think so.
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  Yeah. I'm pretty sure my mom did.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  Because she didn't want me paralyzed, man.
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  She wanted me to do it.
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  You know, I mean, that's why when I was young, I lived on a farm, so I was kind of blessed that way.
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  You fail all the time on a farm.
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  You managed some cows or some horses.
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  You're going to fail.
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  Yeah. Like, they may not want to do what you want to do.
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  And that may not just be it, but, you know, there's lots of ways to fail.
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  To me.
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  You almost got to do it a lot, or you almost got to get through it a lot.
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  Yeah, hopefully there's small fails like, you know, not critical.
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  Nobody gets hurt.
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  Kind of stuff.
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  When somebody gets hurt, it changes completely.
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  You learn.
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  Faster, you learn active a lot faster.
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  And and it.
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  And it hurts.
• 10:51
  When we look and prepare for risk mitigation.
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  I'll give you the scenario.
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  We have a crew at a site this week.
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  Okay.
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  That's performing hot work at one of our at one of our sites.
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  And they walked through their job scope and we've got welders there.
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  We have assemblers there, we have electrical technicians there.
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  And they walk through their job scope at the site.
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  The site's going to be shut down for a majority of the work, and then there's some that's not going to be shut down.
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  Or does it require a shutdown?
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  So we walk through JSAs.
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  That's where I wanted to go.
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  And I know we're totally getting away from the perfection.
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  Hey. That's right. Versus effort.
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  But when we talk.
• 11:37
  About perfection and and effort, I think this both apply in this scenario for JSAs.
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  So the effort is the JSA part, right.
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  That that is, is basically delivering perfection.
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  Pretty close.
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  It's it's it's as close as I can think of.
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  In this step is often missed or mitigated because they're like, oh, we don't need to do this.
• 12:03
  And it could be a small task or it could be an extravagant task, but we've got a hot site or a shutdown beside this just been shut down and we spent the greater part of a week or better, probably closer to two of just doing the JSAs within each person of the ABS team, who has a particular scope of work to mitigate risk and to prepare for the job on site.
• 12:32
  Because it's important, because we've just had process gas running through the entire plant, all to ensure we have perfection, which means everybody's walking home at the end of the day, as good or as better shape than when they started the day.
• 12:48
  So if you could walk us through what a JSA is.
• 12:52
  Sure this would be awesome.
• 12:54
  Okay, so this is pretty cool because JSA is a job safety analysis.
• 12:58
  They're wonderful, and they are essentially writing down what you're going to do and assessing the risk of everything that you do in that process.
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  So I'm going to do this task.
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  I'm going to need these tools.
• 13:17
  I'm going to need this monitor.
• 13:19
  I'm going to do these steps.
• 13:21
  And when you line them out step by step, what you're going to do, your couple of things happen.
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  One, you get organized.
• 13:29
  Yeah it's pretty pretty intense.
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  But two you find things that you didn't think of that are essentially a risk for you.
• 13:38
  So you find these things and oh, okay.
• 13:40
  Well we didn't see that.
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  So we go in and we readjust that JSA because you can change it.
• 13:45
  And, you know, they say you can do a JSA on it on a napkin if you do it accurately enough.
• 13:51
  So it doesn't really matter how you put it on the paper.
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  What matters is that what they're doing is true.
• 13:57
  Those are the true steps that they're taking.
• 13:59
  They're not cutting any corners on that because they've assessed each step for the risk associated with it.
• 14:05
  So just one person is not going to walk through the JSA, right?
• 14:09
  It's the worst thing in the world for you to do a JSA and to give it to one of your people.
• 14:15
  Yeah.
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  Like they need to be engaged in the JSA, and they need to be writing down what it is they're going to do.
• 14:22
  If you do it and just say, well, I did step three and four. Yep.
• 14:25
  He wants me to do what?
• 14:27
  Like I'm not doing that.
• 14:27
  Like that's not going to work.
• 14:30
  And we've seen it not work.
• 14:30
  We've done it ourselves.
• 14:32
  And we we like to fail occasionally and so we could learn.
• 14:37
  Well, that's how you learn. That's how we learn.
• 14:38
  I mean. Yeah, but our guys have found.
• 14:42
  And like, I've been trying really hard to to like, not say safety but maybe say efficiency because like some people would, would prefer efficiency.
• 14:51
  And I'm, I'm talking about the people doing the job over safety.
• 14:55
  Oh look I got to get this done.
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  This is an efficient way to do it. 123.
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  This is the steps.
• 15:00
  That's fantastic.
• 15:01
  And the teams learn a lot from that.
• 15:03
  But there's a real good chance that they're going to miss something.
• 15:06
  And if you put it together, they're for sure.
• 15:09
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 15:09
  So it has to be practical.
• 15:11
  It has to be in place.
• 15:12
  It has to be that day structured all out.
• 15:15
  But when you get to the site, you sit down with the team, the the ops team, the site controllers, and you talk your way through that document because someone while sitting at that table is going to see something that you didn't see.
• 15:29
  The good thing about that is you can put a very nice, perfect JSA together.
• 15:36
  And it's not because our guys are going to say, well, you can't do that.
• 15:39
  You got to do this like, but you work all that out before you touch the tool.
• 15:44
  Yeah.
• 15:44
  So when, when a group creates a JSA or a team member goes through it, how long is that JSA good for?
• 15:54
  Well, it's usually only good for the for that task that day.
• 15:57
  Right.
• 15:57
  So because the environment may change.
• 16:00
  Yeah. The environment change.
• 16:01
  Kind of like our site inductions.
• 16:01
  How they're they're new every day.
• 16:04
  Our guys like, man, I just did a site induction yesterday.
• 16:06
  Well, the risks are different today, right?
• 16:08
  There's a different thing going on.
• 16:10
  There's a different activity and landfill going on.
• 16:12
  So yeah, it it, you know, it changes, right.
• 16:16
  Part of the reason that I have an issue with the perfection part is because I don't think there's that kind of flexibility and safety.
• 16:24
  There is an operations.
• 16:25
  There is and there is an, you know, dealing with your customers, your clients, your finances, all the people that you've got to deal with.
• 16:32
  Like it's easy sometimes to want to just comply.
• 16:37
  Right. And to get it, get it across the line.
• 16:39
  But there's gotta be somebody there that says, wait, wait, wait.
• 16:43
  One more thing. Yeah.
• 16:46
  And I'm just I'm thinking through this like the gears are turning here because there's always one more thing.
• 16:53
  Sure. Always sure.
• 16:56
  It's just what and when and is it right now, whether it's engineering, whether it's safety, whether it's production, whether it's welding, instrumentation.
• 17:05
  Like there's always one more thing.
• 17:10
  How do you how do we tie that in to not making it one more thing after the fact the next time.
• 17:18
  Well again you know, like that's a, that's a really good time to tag in like a lessons learned after a project.
• 17:25
  Yeah.
• 17:25
  Because man, if you can, if you can really look at yourself and your project and the whole project itself without emotion and just say, hey, what?
• 17:37
  What worked, what didn't.
• 17:38
  Yeah.
• 17:38
  Like that.
• 17:39
  That allows for that adjustment that you need.
• 17:42
  Right.
• 17:43
  So like a post review can be painful.
• 17:47
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:48
  But if you do it right, 90%, more than 80% of that stuff will be managed the next time, right?
• 17:55
  Because because you address it, you identify it, you documented it.
• 17:59
  And I'll say in my prior life pre Landfill Group, we did lessons learned as step one.
• 18:06
  Meaning how did we do and what could we have changed.
• 18:10
  Where did we not meet our goals.
• 18:11
  Where did we come up short.
• 18:13
  Maybe it was cost.
• 18:15
  Maybe it was engineering design timeline.
• 18:18
  Could be all the above.
• 18:20
  But we also took it one step further and we came back after the lessons learned and said, what can we do different to become better for our customers, for ourself, whether it's efficiency, whether it's design changes, how can we meet our customers expectations quicker, faster, better?
• 18:46
  And maybe how do we exceed their expectations without them even asking.
• 18:52
  You know the cleanliness brought into that.
• 18:54
  The serviceability brings in an aspect of that.
• 18:57
  You know this is this spec that they provide us, this is what they want.
• 19:01
  And we should be able to give that to the, our customers and then some.
• 19:07
  This is we know this is what you asked for.
• 19:10
  But hey here's here's what. We think.
• 19:12
  Yeah.
• 19:13
  Here's what we think could improve this even more.
• 19:15
  And here's why.
• 19:17
  So when you get into the lessons learned how hard is it not to take it personal?
• 19:23
  Like say maybe you had half a dozen bad welds.
• 19:27
  Like, how do you how do you manage the the people?
• 19:32
  Part of lesson learned experience because I know some people don't dance around it and they'll say, well, you know, we could have done a little better here.
• 19:40
  A lot of those lesson learned will really isolate those issues.
• 19:45
  Yeah. And then you got to talk about them.
• 19:46
  How do you guys do it?
• 19:48
  As long as everybody is working to the same goal.
• 19:52
  Then it eliminates the individual conversations and the taking it personal because you're just trying to make it better.
• 20:04
  Yeah.
• 20:04
  You're not attacking their whether their input, their design or anything.
• 20:10
  There could be their fabrication or welding abilities.
• 20:13
  Usually those folks are the ones who come in and say, hey, if we did it this way, we could we could save time or could be more efficient, or we could kill two birds with one stone and have a part of the design be dual purpose.
• 20:31
  Those are the team members who are doing it to come up with those.
• 20:34
  More so than than anybody. Right.
• 20:36
  As long as everybody's in the same boat, rowing in the same directions with the same mindset and the same goals, it'll eliminate a lot of that.
• 20:45
  And I won't say it's never an issue because you can get into two personality conflicts in a way.
• 20:50
  But as we're all working on this, we get very attached to what we do.
• 20:55
  And that's passion.
• 20:57
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:58
  But if somebody says, hey, I think we might be able to have we might be able to do this in a better way.
• 21:06
  The person should be like, okay, I'm in.
• 21:09
  Let's let's talk about it and let's understand why.
• 21:12
  As soon as they throw up resistance, then you have to question what's what's the goal?
• 21:17
  What's the problem?
• 21:18
  Yeah.
• 21:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 21:19
  And how you accept it is also really important.
• 21:21
  To attract.
• 21:22
  If you're like this man it's real hard to take that in.
• 21:25
  It's hard to receive anything with a closed fist.
• 21:28
  You know, you're willing to listen and to receive that feedback.
• 21:34
  It's tough.
• 21:35
  Don't put baby in the corner.
• 21:36
  But that's a good segue because there's there's some I thought of this on the way here and I'm thinking, you know, perfection and I'm thinking effort.
• 21:43
  And I saw this a while back and it says zero.
• 21:47
  There's a list of ten items here that basically take zero talent, but are all important things that lead to success.
• 21:56
  And being on time is one of those.
• 22:00
  Work ethic talks about willingness to learn, maybe willingness to get feedback.
• 22:05
  Passion is also on here. Humility. Yep.
• 22:08
  Whether you have a positive or negative energy level.
• 22:12
  That's huge. Huge.
• 22:13
  Are you easy to work with or are you difficult to work with?
• 22:15
  Like we should come back to that one.
• 22:15
  The positive attitude.
• 22:18
  Let's, let's let's keep going off on my numbers.
• 22:21
  Yeah, but you're on attitude.
• 22:24
  Being coachable, doing extra, being prepared and being a team player.
• 22:31
  All of these things.
• 22:32
  Anybody at any time can come into a workplace and do all it is, is just doing them and being willing, willing for that feedback.
• 22:42
  It's all of these things that it doesn't require a degree.
• 22:46
  It doesn't require anything.
• 22:48
  No. But this will make or break how you progress within an organization or a company.
• 22:54
  So in that positive attitude, there's nothing like a positive attitude to defeat things.
• 23:01
  Yeah.
• 23:02
  I just love it.
• 23:03
  Well, thanks for joining us on talk today.
• 23:05
  We've covered a plethora of different effort and what perfection and what's not perfection.
• 23:15
  And all in all, really appreciate time today, Mr.
• 23:19
  Sternberg.
• 23:20
  I hope you all are going to check us out on our next episode.
• 23:24
  It should be soon.
• 23:25
  Yeah. Appreciate it. Dan.
• 23:26
  Like, subscribe and share.
• 23:29
  And we appreciate you.
• 23:30
  Tune in for Trash Talk right next time.