FULL TRANSCRIPT

Gordon Sheppard: If you are a leader who wants to learn how to optimize and grow your business, then you’re going to get a lot out of today’s episode on the Meeting Leadership podcast. That’s because we are interviewing Caitlin Lopez, a manufacturing engineer and productivity expert and genius who really helps small to medium size enterprises take it to the next level.

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for practical tips from the coach with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the Meeting Leadership podcast with Gordon Sheppard.

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast. My name is Gordon Sheppard and I want to say thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this show because you know it’s the kind of place where you’re going to get a leadership skill, a tip, something, a strategy, a way to change your perspective, take it back to your next meeting, make that meeting better because you know that when you do it actually has a ripple effect. It impacts you, it impacts your team, it impacts your entire organization and ultimately that small action, that incremental change will actually flow through to helping you to serve your clients and your community at the highest possible level. It is really good to have you here. And I am really proud to say that this episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy.

Now there you’re going to find some great live training options and online training options as well to help you and your team learn how to have great meetings. Because you know when you do that things get significantly better, and you can learn all about the great options there by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. And now I am really excited to introduce today’s show. It’s titled How GO Productivity Helps Businesses To Grow and it’s with expert Caitlin Lopez. Now Caitlin, well she is a manufacturing engineer and she specializes in quality and process improvements and project management. It is a deadly combo. She takes it to work every day for GO Productivity. Now what this organization does overall all the way across Canada is they actually go into organizations and they really help them, especially in the manufacturing settings, to make those incremental improvements that have massive impacts. And they base everything they do on a structured Lean Six Sigma approach. And you’re going to learn all about that on today’s show as well.

And the other thing that I have to mention that I learned about Caitlin is that she has a very pragmatic approach. She’s not sort of sticking people into boxes where they get overwhelmed or they don’t do enough. She really is able to help her clients do what needs to be done to make massive improvements. And with that in mind, I’m not going to hold you back any longer. Here’s the great interview with Caitlin. Caitlin, welcome to the show.

Caitlin Lopez: Thanks Gordon.

Gordon Sheppard: It’s really great to have it here because I’m so excited to learn about GO Productivity, the great work that you’re doing in the Lean Six Sigma area to help literally whole organizations to get better and better. But there’s going to be a lot of people that are listening that don’t know you. So if you had to introduce yourself at a party, what would you say?

Caitlin Lopez: I would say that I’m a manufacturing engineer by trade and that I can work with small companies to help them find cost savings through my work with GO Productivity. And I’m passionate about efficiency and little improvements that can air proof your work and make your day easier.

Gordon Sheppard: People must be just smiling when you come into the room because I can tell you, I know in my own consulting experience so many people maybe are kind of, they’ve got their head down, they’re doing their work. In this case they’re manufacturing their goods or whatever. But to get that outside expert perspective to come in the room, I’ll bet a lot of people are excited. The other thing I wanted to make sure that we introduce before we get going, because it’s good to hear about you and your expertise is if you could explain what GO Productivity is for people, what would you say?

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. GO Productivity is a not for profit organization and we focus on helping SMEs. So the small medium size businesses to grow and optimize, that’s the G, O in GO Productivity, is growth and optimization.

Gordon Sheppard: Growth and optimization. Yeah.

Caitlin Lopez: Yeah. So there’s a lot of services available for startup companies and also a lot of services for the larger companies. But what we can do is provide some services to the smaller guys that wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford a Deloitte or McKinsey to come in and help them. And the way we do that is by partnering with the government funders to provide some of the consultants services, but at a discounted rate.

Gordon Sheppard: Oh, that’s interesting. So you’re, in a sense, you’ve got some folks that maybe can’t reach out to those larger cost engagements. You’re in that zone where you’ve got a company that is looking for some help on the funding side, but they really need your expertise. And once you get in there, you’re able to help them move forward.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely.

Gordon Sheppard: Well that’s got to be pretty exciting. So if I’m sitting there and I’m a manufacturing company, I managed to get into an engagement with GO productivity. There’s a moment when you walk in the door. What happens when you walk in the door for the first time?

Caitlin Lopez: Well usually if I’m there walking in the door for the first time, we’ve already kind of gotten started and we need to get everyone together to start working on some process improvement activities is usually when I’ll come for the first day and they’re usually quite excited, engaged to start actually taking a moment back to work on their processes. The things that they’ve always been thinking about but never really had time to address. Usually quite the teams are, they’re the local experts and they have all the knowledge that they really need in order to improve and we facilitate that.

Gordon Sheppard: So excited to see you on the first day, maybe not as excited to see you on the eighth day cause you’ve got a lot of heavy lifting to do along the way, I would expect.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. So yes, there is quite a lot to accomplish and we go through it in steps, but the teams are actually, I would say that they get into it a little bit more on the second day, let’s say.

Gordon Sheppard: Oh, that’s good. So they got to get to know you a little bit in this kind of thing. Well, on this podcast, a big piece is leadership. And I know that’s, we can’t sort of describe all the details of what you deal with when you’re doing things, but certainly that component of helping people to lead through. So let’s help some folks out here and really if there’s a working example that you can give us, and I’ll maybe prompt that for a second and say, if I’m manufacturing my widgets and the company, so we’ve got this widget manufacturer, they brought you in, you’re coming in and you’re doing sort of this full suite of things to help them be more productive. When you’re helping them to focus in the leadership area, which really talks to attitude and then ultimately empowering them to get implementation done. What are some of the key things that you’re focusing on again, to enhance their leadership productivity?

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. So we lean very heavily, there’s a pun there. We lean very heavily on the Lean methodology, which is very rigorous methodology of applying, in this case a leadership management system that is designed to be effective and efficient. And one part of that was in the leadership team that we try to work with is developing standard work for leaders and a hierarchy, and the management system that has kind of that Lean principle in mind of keeping things efficient in continuous improvement. So what that might mean is a leader will have kind of a set strategic plan and KPIs for their level of responsibility. And then for the next level down they have to check on them. So there’s like a checklist of the things they need to have checks and balances on throughout the year, operations or without the project if their project team. And then it’s cascade downwards and there’s standard processes and also the standard designs for meetings all along that way.

Gordon Sheppard: Well this sounds like a really structured approach that so many people often don’t have. There’s a moment there though when you’re like, hey, we’ve got this great structured approach. You’re sitting in there with the leadership team. Is everybody like, yay, let’s do this structured approach? Or what’s kind of the nuance to this to actually get them to buy into it?

Caitlin Lopez: Sure. To be honest, we do show them that there’s kind of going to be an optimum value of structures. So you could be so structured on the right hand side of the spectrum that everyone feels bogged down. And then there’s on the other side of the spectrum, there’s too much freedom and things go kind of a bit sideways without any kind of control. So you want to find the happy medium. And most organizations will look at having certain levels of detail and then the rest of it is open. So for example, in a leader standard work document, that would only cover 20% of their day or of their week. And then the rest of it is up to them obviously to manage their time and manage the tasks that they need to do.

Gordon Sheppard: Well.I can hear the discipline that you’re bringing into the room. So many people, and certainly I can tell you in this Western Canadian economy, probably down South there in the States. When you’re talking about resource industries, a lot of folks are shooting from the hip. So when you’ve got this approach that you’re bringing in where you can literally get it down to percentages and numbers, if people follow your leadership Lean process that you’re describing and they hit their KPIs, their key performance indicators, what are the benefits to companies? What are some of the observations that you’ve seen kind of before and after with say our widget company that we’re talking about?

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely, and I’ve been very blessed to have an awesome experience of working for an organization where they did this well. And I’ve worked for organizations where it’s just not there. And so you can kind of see in person the feeling. So there’s the feeling of being inside a structured system. Let’s say it’s like 80% structure, like a little bit more on the level of world-class. Everything feels like it has a pace, has a rhythm, you know what you’re expected to do and there’s good communication that doesn’t feel like there’s anything hanging. Because everything kind of gets caught by the system that’s been developed. So obviously someone spent a lot of time to set up everyone so that it’s designed to be efficient, that people are doing the things that they need to do, that have time to do things that they need to do, that have budget to do the things they need to do.

And then there’s the organizations I’ve worked with where they try to do all of that, but it’s just not formal. So maybe it’s kind of a little bit more on the left hand side of the spectrum. It’s more freedom. But you just feel like sometimes things are hanging. Things get dropped all over the place and you don’t have a way of capturing that. So I’m first describing kind of the feeling benefit of working within the two different spectrums let’s say. But the real benefits are hard to measure. You can expect, that you can definitely expect to see a positive benefit towards the bottom line towards hitting the KPIs and performance metrics of the organization, because that’s basically what the whole system gets driving towards. And then with the underlying theme of continuous improvement, you have this sense and you build a culture where you, you get to that efficiency and then you get other, and then you get even better after that. So it goes without saying that there’s going to be tons of benefits to doing that.

Gordon Sheppard: Totally. And I think for my understanding, I’m not a Lean Six Sigma sort of qualified in a sense, but I do appreciate it. And when I think about, I mean if you think about Motorola as an example, or some of those Japanese companies where this originates, the discipline that they’ve been able to bring on a global scale and the lessons that we’ve learned and themes that we take away from when this is done right, I can hear quite literally that if someone worked with you, they would have that opportunity. And I can’t say enough about raising my hand to say, please go see Caitlin because I can tell you at a smaller scale for some of the organizations that I’ve dealt with, quite literally, they don’t have basic things like a shared document folder in the cloud. Or they don’t have a CRM where they’re tracking names and phone numbers. That is common across so many places. So the fact that you would be going significantly beyond what I’ve just described in terms of basic process and leading them into something that they can take over multi year to get multi-year benefits. And I hope that by reinforcing what you’re saying, that folks can really hear the benefits of buying in early two up program with an expert that’s been proven all around the world.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. And there’s great opportunity to make something that’s not too different from the existing processes. So you can just step change towards perfection in the future and all you have to do is just set up kind of a new and disciplined and diligent approach to continuous improvement. And then you can make your way towards it.

Gordon Sheppard: Oh, that’s good. So you don’t need to sort of eat the whole system all at once. Maybe there’s some steps to get there. I think that’s super valuable. One of the key steps that we really help people with here on the podcast is helping them to improve their meeting productivity. And I think what sort of suggestions would you make in this area from your perspective?

Caitlin Lopez: Yeah. So there’s two ways that I would approach it. You can think of just the meeting itself or you can think of how the meetings can be designed within a larger intelligence system. So for example, within the Lean management system, you have daily meetings, weekly meetings, monthly and quarterly of course. But they all kind of chain together in that the daily meetings that happen, you’d want to have your boots on the ground or your value driving individuals, their leadership meeting around the specific targets that they need to meet for each day, the tasks that they’re working on. And this kind of turns into is like what they call a morning huddle. So you huddle around the work that you need to do, make decisions and then go do it.

Gordon Sheppard: And how long does that huddle take? Does it take an hour or does it take 10 minutes? What are you asking me to do,

Caitlin Lopez: Oh, super important to keep this short. The way to do that is to just give updates on critical elements and critical issues.

Gordon Sheppard: Okay, so I’m just telling you I’m a leader and I just heard you say, wait a second, you’ve got to have all these meetings. But you’re taking me down the garden path now and you say, here’s how they’re going to pay off. So the first one I’m hearing is a daily meeting. It’s a huddle, it’s quick. You’re going over your issues, and that helps you get your work done for the day. Is that fair?

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely.

Gordon Sheppard: And what’s the next one?

Caitlin Lopez: So within the daily group of meetings, the first one is the boots on the ground, which I mentioned. But then the leaders from the next level up, let’s say your middle management, are supposed to also meet daily and say, okay, from my teams that just reported to me on what they’re working on today, this is the critical elements. Again, 10, 15 minute meeting, just saying what’s going on? And then you have the next level up if you need to. So you have those quick check-ins. There are focused around three key elements, which is what are the performance metrics for that team? What is their responsibilities? This could even be any kind of process, right? So sales quote, cycle time, for example, on the sales team. So the sales teams can say, well, we’re hitting our mark, go tell my leadership. Yeah, we’re good. And the leader is saying, okay, of all the teams I’m looking at, they’re all good. And then one says, no, one’s in the red, we need help here. What’s the decision?

Gordon Sheppard: See you’re really, again, you’re measuring on a daily basis, the metrics. And in sales for example, if I said I was going to generate two leads with phone calls today and I came into tomorrow’s huddle and I only got one, then we’d be able to know I was in the red. Or if I got four I would be going ahead. And again, this feedback loop that you’re creating, which is getting escalated on a daily basis to the next level, they can start to make adjustments to the use of their team’s time.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. And the third most important element is continuous improvement. So you have opportunities within those daily and weekly meetings to bring up new ideas that will suggest a way to improve a process or a group of processes because you need some of that time to address that. And this is one of the great places to do it.

Gordon Sheppard: Super. And then you mentioned some other time periods here as well.

Caitlin Lopez: Yeah. So you can imagine that you don’t miss totally want to meet daily on reporting your financials. So report it monthly on certain elements and then quarterly on the really high strategic level KPIs. So it’s around metrics, yes. But it’s actually more about groups of responsibility. For example, the senior management will set some strategic priorities quarterly and then we’ll communicate them quarterly. And so that quarterly meeting is where that would happen, right.

Gordon Sheppard: Super. So I’ve got my daily. There’s a weekly element to this, maybe a monthly, and now I’ve got my quarterly. And I know that all of those meetings are going to address the full suite of key issues that I need addressed.

Caitlin Lopez: For sure. And so I’ll give a quick example so that it’s illustrated. Let’s say your top levels senior leaders are in charge of, they’ve set three strategic areas for the business. Strategic area three is to grow the business by X number amount this year. And then within that they said, okay well be nice if we can improve customer satisfaction and a bunch of other things. And then so the middle management, one of the middle management teams are assigned to that improved customer satisfaction. So your middle management has got that next level responsibility. And then the bottom level, let’s say the sales team, they know they need to improve customer satisfaction, but they’ve set a goal for themselves. And in order to do that is to reduce the wait time that the customers are having in order to get a quote to them. So their metric is sales quote, cycle time, or how long it takes to develop a quote. So you have those three levels of reporting on basically a cascading set of goals. And that’s one element of this and that’s how everyone kind of stays aligned and focused on the things that they need to do for the business.

Gordon Sheppard: This is really good news for me. I know one of the premises for the work that I do cause I start with effective meetings. That’s my sort of way in to help people and then it leads to a whole kettle of fish in terms of these other things. And what I’m hearing that reinforces a key element that I’ll say and the way that I stated is I’ll say, I believe you should able to stop any meeting at any moment and connect that moment directly to your strategy. And what’s so neat about what you just did is you told me how to do it. I think that’s fantastic.

Caitlin Lopez: Yeah, absolutely.

Gordon Sheppard: So when people, actually, you’re giving me the example. You’ve seen this in action. What happens for that person who’s reluctant? Because someone is initially is going to say, wait a second, are you asking me to do all this meeting stuff? Seriously? What do I get for it? What are you telling them at that front end? Again, this is getting back to getting that leadership buy in. What are you telling them? Do you give them an example? Do you hit them over the head with a baseball bat? How do you get them to implement?

Caitlin Lopez: This is the real magic, right. And the magic is all about those individuals and how we can get them on board. Quite often it just takes the majority to start rolling. So if you can get a few influential individuals to take this up, then usually others will follow a bit. For example, one of our clients, it last year around this time of year. They had for the first time set up the daily huddle for basically a small enough organization. They had representatives from every part of the organization, so engineering, sales and production. And so just to get them doing that, there was like two, like the sales person and the production people are really into it. The engineering team, not so much. But they would show up because the other two are there. And then once they got into the rhythm of it, there’s definitely a visual benefit. So you just really need to kind of get them started and then they’ll see how it works. And that they will definitely feel better with having those meetings.

Gordon Sheppard: So I think what you’re saying is if I go to the gym and actually walk on the treadmill instead of just talking about it, something good will happen?

Caitlin Lopez: Only if you do it consistently. And so I mentioned diligence and determination. Basically you can’t let this thing drop, right. And it happens. It happens to a lot of us, especially as you’re just starting something new like this. A lot of our customers will be good for like a couple of months and then they kind of falls off the rails for a while and then they come back to it, right? So the trick is come back to it, start to build a culture. I don’t know what you think Gord, but I’ve seen that usually big culture changes like that take multiple years, right?

Gordon Sheppard: Yeah, absolutely. So when they’re coming to you, they know they need help and you said, I’ve got the wisdom. And there’s a trust element at that front end to say we’ve got the experience, we know if you do these things it’s going to work forward and by the way, give it that 18 months to 36 months or whatever it’s going to be. I can’t tell you how often I’ve said that in terms of when I get into that slice of marketing and communications, folks want instant results in those areas and they’re just not going to happen. They really are an investment over time. I think that’s so valuable. The other piece I’ll add in about the daily huddle pieces is guy named Dan Cockerell was on the show, 26 years at Disney. And he has a story about his wife who also worked at Disney in a really busy like store on site and they were cleaning out the hotels at the end of these week long stays and they get super busy.

And her boss decided to call one of these, he called it 15 minutes a day. And it was what it was supposed to be was this daily huddle concept. And then he started waxing poetic. So these meetings would go on for like an hour and a half because he was like not being disciplined in that moment. And at one point she raised her hand and said, I got to get back to work. And he said, oh, you’re being trouble. And she said, well no, because the first thing that you asked me to do is make sure that customer service is my number one priority. You’re taking me away from that right now. So she was able to go back quite literally to the Disney values, the core of what they do and challenged that in that moment. How do you get that open communication going to make sure that again, things on paper daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, don’t get off the rails?

Caitlin Lopez: For sure. And what I think I would suggest usually that there’s a couple of champions that do coaching, right? So they would attend some of these meetings, see how it’s going, provide some of that coaching support for individuals who are struggling to stay focused within the meeting and are kind of maybe going off the rails a little bit there. And then over time you build that capacity within each individual and some of them will be better at it than others. For sure. Everyone has different skillsets. And this one’s actually a particular skillset, wouldn’t you say Gord, to actually be concise and to the point with something you want to do well.

Gordon Sheppard: So people have to have the self awareness to know about themselves again at the moment that they’re implementing as well. And again, this gets into a deeper longer discussion, which I’m sure you’re helping them with as well. The piece that I’ll add in from my end is I call that champion. I call that a meeting mentor. I think that individuals have mentors and people have an experience of that. If your meeting can have a mentor, and I’m not talking about a big process, I mean like two meetings long. Like the mentor comes in, they’re really good at running meetings. That person who’s talking too much, they’re like, hey, they take them for a coffee after one meeting when they talk too much. They give them immediate feedback. The next time they’re going back, the mentor actually runs that next meeting. So then this person gets to see someone who’s really good at it, facilitating in action. And in that two step process you suddenly leap forward in terms of what that is. And my hope for organizations is these champions, as you call them, I’ll call the meeting mentors, are developed and empowered to then go across the organization and empower more facilitation ability because I think that’s a real deficit in so many places.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. And your idea of a meeting mentor makes a lot of sense. And I’ve actually seen something like that work, which is instead of a meeting mentor only specifically I’ve worked at an organization where they have a Lean champion. And actually in this case it was like a Lean sensei from Japan. Kind of just like stay there for a few years, maybe part time. And then they kind of, they have the ability to set up this system the way they had designed it. But then to build facilitation skills, build the skills within the teams, do all this. And it takes time. So you do need that part time or full time position that’s dedicated to do some of that work, at a larger organization scale, let’s say, what do you think, I think two or 300 employees might have someone, an individual actually doing that.

Gordon Sheppard: Actually doing that. And you said sensei. And so for the folks that don’t understand it, then let’s dig down the rabbit hole for Lean for just a second. What is this a belt application? Explain the different belt levels for Lean for folks who don’t know.

Caitlin Lopez: For sure. And so of those of us in the Western world here, we send our kids to karate and they’ve got the different colored belts. That’s our exposure to this methodology. So the Lean of the village came from Japan and they have this culture and the understanding that the first level entry level is white belts. So they’ve used this terminology even within a business process. So as a business individual you can get trained up to be a white belt or, and they can get more training and you can be a yellow belt. And then you can get training and do some projects that prove your worth for green belt. And then in order to be a black belt, I believe you have to save the company a certain number of dollars. I think it’s like 500,000 and you have to have a certain level of training. So you have to prove your credentials to get your belt and then you become, let’s say a master in that area and you can be employed specifically to do that.

Gordon Sheppard: And this is a sensei. And I think, again, when I think about the investments that these companies that we’re talking about really need, you’ve said, you know what, we have the path. We have this Lean process. I’m an expert in Lean. We can take it even further and bring in a sensei at some point who’s done this thing where they’ve already proven themselves to save dollars and that’s why people are coming to you in the first place. It sounds like a terrific package. I’m so glad that people are getting a chance to learn about you, about the work that you’re doing to make an impact about GO Productivity and some of those alternatives because I know that GO is spreading across the country at this point. Is that correct?

Caitlin Lopez: Yeah, so we have work in Ontario, BC and Alberta mostly. We do the odd work in Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, this is just a great thing for people to know in terms of getting in touch with you and I’m going to mention that peer at the end, but before we let people go on this show, there’s always one last question we’d like to ask because it’s really important to when it comes to leadership and it’s this one. What inspires you?

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. The things that inspire me are the simple changes that we can make to really change our processes so that they’re foolproof and much easier to work within. I’ve always been chasing that. I didn’t know that’s what I was chasing when I was younger, but definitely once I was in the working world for a few years, productivity efficiency really became my passion. And I found through some of this Lean methodology that there’s some really interesting tools that bring it to a level, making it super easy to understand, super easy to implement. And I believe there’s so much opportunity for all of our organizations to just take a little bit of our time, let’s say 1% out of the whole company’s time to look at how to improve our processes and just start anywhere where we started and then keep going.

Gordon Sheppard: This makes a lot of sense. And I have to dig in here for a second and ask you to take me to a moment when you were there and you made a suggestion and they made a small change. Can you dig one of those examples up for me?

Caitlin Lopez: Sure. Within my work at GO Proactivity, my team is remote. So we have individuals all over Canada. And so as you can imagine, kind of working with some more remote team, we struggled to make sure that everyone’s on the same page or that we’re all aligned or focused on the same things. So I had suggested that we use a quick free online tool as something to talk to and a weekly meeting. So maybe not a daily meeting, but at least a weekly meeting with this team. And to have just a quick visual. And I think I’m okay to say that we use the Asana tool, so it’s a free online tool for task management. It’s super, super simple. It’s free. Any of us can use it. We can all go see, at any time, where the progress is on all of our projects, all of our leads. And it’s been very, very helpful for the team. And we find that it helps with communication with having a single source of accurate information on any one client or any one project. And it’s really simple.

Gordon Sheppard: And what impacts, so Asana, I’m a big fan by the way. It’s a great tool and again, it allows people, if they can’t visualize it right now when they’re listening, it allows people to move your projects. I’m going to say through stages and really understand where every stage is happening in a simplified way and I’m sure there’s more complexities to it than that. You made that suggestion for it. It got implemented by your team. What sort of smile did it put on your face after that happened?

Caitlin Lopez: Definitely put a smile on my face, especially when a couple of people actually started using it. So that’s the truth, right? Is getting everyone to use it. And then when people start using it on their own, they start going with it. They make it their own, they own it. It just makes me really excited and it’s kind of hard to describe, but when things are visual, there’s no more question anymore. There’s no more question as to who’s communicating this or is this right? It’s just there, you can just see it. I can see my client is in second touch or this client’s in proposal and that’s it. That’s all there is to it. You don’t need to ask those questions anymore. You just eliminated tons of time.

Gordon Sheppard: Wow. I can hear the enthusiasm in it. It’s so fun to hear your joy for productivity overall, so it’s a good thing that you’re working with. GO Productivity. We’ve learned so much from you today. The last thing we’d like to ask from the experts like you is if someone needs to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. I totally recommend my email and also the GO Productivity website is a good way to see the rest of our team. And my email is Caitlin@GOProductivity.ca, trying to keep it simple.

Gordon Sheppard: And spell out Caitlin so people know.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. It’s Caitlin. So no Y’s. It’s the Scottish translation and Celtic.

Gordon Sheppard: There you go. That Scottish thing is probably a big part of your productivity needs and efficiency. That’s so good. We could talk all day. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Caitlin Lopez: Absolutely. Thank you, Gordon.

Gordon Sheppard: Now, I know you’re going to have to agree that there were just so many great takeaways in that interview. I think one of my favorite parts is to know that something like Lean Six Sigma in the hands of somebody like Caitlin within an organization like GO Productivity can really be put to good use in your organization. And it’s something that really is worth taking advantage of. And the other part that I really appreciated was this idea that if you dedicated just 1% of your activities to continuous improvement, there’s a good chance you’re going to take your productivity right through the roof. And when you do it with someone experienced like Caitlin under their guidance and with an organization like GO Productivity, they’ve proven it over and over again. It is really worth investing in.

And just in case you’re interested in the episode with Dan Cockerell talking about the story about his wife when she left one of those daily huddles that got way too long. It’s episode 132 on the Meeting Leadership podcast. The title of it is How Disney Develops Outstanding Leaders, with Dan Cockerell. And you can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/132.

And another episode I think you’ll find really valuable, especially when you got this idea of bringing in like a sensei, an expert to be consistently with an organization over time. Well, it’s episode 145 on the show. It’s called, How Leaders Can Build Strong Relationships. And there we interviewed Mike Mack. Now Mike Mack takes things like disc profile to the next level into every organization and then he stays with those organizations over time. He’s had massive results and I think you’re going to get a lot out of that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/145.

And if you are the type of leader who really wants to get more productivity into your meetings, then here’s some fuel for your fire. It’s episode 92 on the Meeting Leadership podcast. It’s called Unproductive Meetings, Five Reasons Why You Must Stop Them Immediately. And you can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/92.

And for anyone who wants to prevent people in their meetings from droning on and on, check out episode three on the Meeting Leadership podcast. It’s called, How to Make a Great Point During a Meeting. And there you’re going to get the point acronym as in P O I N T, as a handy way to use to make sure that everyone in your meeting is being succinct and to the point. And you can listen to that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/3.

And of course this episode of the Meeting Leadership podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. If you are looking to adjust your attitude when it comes to building leadership in your meetings, then you’ve got to go check out the resources at the Academy. There’s one-on-one coaching, there’s half-day options, there’s online options. It’s all there for the taking for you and your team and you can learn all about it by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/Academy.

And for everyone who is already a subscriber. Thank you so much. And if you haven’t done it yet, make sure you hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app to not miss another episode. And as always, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time on the Meeting Leadership podcast.

Thanks for listening to the meeting leadership podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies that help you become an outstanding leader. And don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you even more great content. We’ll see you next time, right here on the Meeting Leadership podcast.