E112: Applying Lean Six Sigma to Healthcare and Career Development with Sarah Tilkens

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Making a real difference in your organization can be a struggle, but there is a way to leverage powerful tools and strategies to drive positive change, while also boosting your own career development.

In this episode, I introduce you to Sarah Tilkens, a former biologist turned operational excellence leader, who cracked the code on impactful problem-solving. She shares her journey from the science lab to the world of Lean Six Sigma, revealing how she achieved her Black Belt certification independently and used it to spearhead significant improvements at GE Healthcare (ramping up production capacity by over 40% and conducted around 50 kaizans). She also has experience working at a nonprofit, The Blood Center, where she was first introduced to process improvement.

From capacity enhancement to process optimization, she dives into practical applications of Lean Six Sigma methodologies like Kaizen events and receiving coaching from the famous Japanese consulting firm, Shingijutsu. Her experience spans nonprofits, healthcare, construction and now executive coaching. Inspired by her success, she founded The KPI Lab to empower leaders beyond the corporate walls. Now, she’s offering a chance to unlock your own problem-solving potential and become a catalyst for positive change.

Tune in to this episode and discover:

• How Lean Six Sigma can equip you with the skills to advance your career
• Practical strategies for implementing Lean concepts in your daily work
• The power of continuous learning and personal development for sustainable leadership success
• How to connect with Sarah and explore coaching opportunities through The KPI Lab

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-tilkens-acc-cpcc-ssbb-91987322
• The KPI Lab: https://www.thekpilab.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah_tilkens/

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Have you ordered the book, “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 2)?” The book is made up of 8 chapters written about experiences from Lean and Six Sigma practitioners, to give you tips and tricks to help you work with nonprofits in your area. All proceeds donated to charity. Now available in audiobook as of Feb 2024. You can also order Volume 1 released in 2019.

Transcript

Sarah (S): My name is Sarah Tilkens. I am currently a senior manager of operational excellence for GE Healthcare. I work in our imaging subsystems, part of our organization. So building CT systems. Prior to that, my experience is fairly strange. So I actually am a biologist by training. That’s what my degree was in. I started my career working for the blood center of Wisconsin. I did biomedical research on platelets and clotting disorders. At that time, they were thinking about bringing in lean and six sigma to the labs, so I got a really early exposure to some of the terminology and some of the tools before really understanding what I was talking about. From there, I went into, actually, customer service. I spent some time in the construction industry, and then I ended up at GE Healthcare after getting my six sigma black belt. So I wanted to work for GE. I set my sights on it, so I made myself look the way I needed to look to get my foot in the door. And then once I was in, I’ve had a really wonderful career there for the past five years.

Brion (B): So did you get your black belt through GE or you got that prior?

S: I actually got it prior, so I got it through UW-M (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), in Milwaukee, their school of continuing education. The professor there was the one who did a lot of the accreditation for the black belts at the blood center when I remember hearing about it coming up. So it’s a really great program in the Wisconsin area. So I paid for it independently. I found a project that qualified me. I did all of the work, and then I had that on my resume, so that I could say, I’m not just saying that I like this stuff. I’ve actually invested the skills into, you know, being able to do this professionally. So it helped a lot.

B: Yeah, that’s great. That you’re motivated to do it because, that’s difficult to try and get a project going and invest in that training. But, yeah, I think that’s probably was pretty well valued by GE, given their background and history.

S: Yeah, I think it just shows dedication. Right. A lot of people can speak a lot of things, but when you’re willing to put your independent time and efforts into actions versus just talk, I think that it just makes it mean that you’re a little bit more serious.

B: Is that the main interest was seeing that GE valued that and you wanted to work there, or was there some other exposure you had to process improvement or lean or six sigma prior to that? Was it something at the blood center that was happening?

S: Yeah, at the blood center. So they were, starting to certify their diagnostic lab quality team as six sigma black belts. So just to really standardize a lot of the diagnostic processes, they started trying to bring it out to the research institute, and there was so much pushback because everyone thought that their projects were so special, and there was no way that, you know, standardization efforts or variation elimination efforts could make sense in that application. And I remember kind of being, you know, the young oddball out where I was like, “No, there’s a ton of ways that we should be using this. Like, everything is weird, and we could totally be making this way more efficient and just better for all of us.” So, again, I just got used to some of the language, I think. I don’t know if they called it Kaizen, even this was, you know, 15 years ago. But I remember being a part of these little tiger teams that would come in to do research or do exploratory projects. And I just, I loved the way of thinking. So I just remember, even at that time, you know, in research, you’re doing scientific experimentation, and I have a hypothesis, and I’m going to test it as such. And I remember thinking that this thing that seemed totally independent of the work that I was doing was following a really similar logical process, which is what I liked so much about it, because I have a tendency to love equations and things that make logical sense. So there was just, again, a parallel at that really early part of my career. And then I feel like I lost access to it for a while. Again, I never learned lean or any official language, but every career step that I took, I was the one who was digging, looking for efficiencies. You know, if it took me an hour, I would want it to take a half an hour, not because I needed it to, but just because I’m innately curious and I like to prod, and I like to see what’s possible. So that’s definitely what motivates me in this space. And then when I did the black belt, I started listening to a lot of podcasts. So Gemba Academy with Ron is one of the ones that really early on, I got interested in just because I was trying to learn in the space, and it just started to give language to this way that I existed my whole life. That. That improvement mindset, it just started to fall into place. So, again, you know, the black belt was cool. Got me in the door at GE. I haven’t used it a ton, to be honest. I think more of the work that I do is just rooted in basic problem solving and hypothesis testing. So it’s a way of solving problems. But I found there are some more generic tools that just serve me in solving problems myself or in teaching it in my organization.

B: I think that’s a, common issue people run across is, you know, there’s a lot of detailed tools and analysis through six sigma training that can be very helpful when you run into that situation. But how many times do you run into that situation? Well, it depends. It may be never. And some, you know, some of the things, depending on the maturity of the organization and the complexity of the work that is being done, those might not be that common. And then others have a different experience where they say, I do this every day. I’m in my minitab or statistics software all the time, doing analyses and checking data. And that is a critical part of their role. And so sometimes it’s hard to know how much use of some of those more advanced tools will actually be needed. But I think, I agree. I think a lot of the challenges aren’t as complicated as I was thinking they would be getting into my first job. I thought it would be a lot of, way more challenging things and more analysis was required. But when it’s clear that no one understands the process and there is no data to look at, you have to start at the beginning. And that happens more often than I was expecting.

S: Yeah, I totally agree. And it’s interesting, I feel like so many people have asked me about should I or shouldn’t I get a black belt, for instance, and I always just say, you know, what do you want out of it? Because I will say, like, I can teach you to be a problem solver and you don’t need a black belt. Like, it’s just a mindset and it’s a way of thinking. Again, for me, if you’re– the problem you’re trying to solve is I want to work for GE Healthcare and my background isn’t aligned, yeah, maybe you should get a black belt. But if you’re just saying I want to become a better problem solver, oh, there’s a hundred ways that we can do that that don’t involve, you know, time and money towards a certification. So even to what you just said, it all comes back to what problem are you trying to solve and remembering there’s always, you know, multiple different paths that you can take to get where you’re trying to go.

B: Yeah, and different approaches and tools to take the same problem and go in different routes and still come up with similar or slightly different answers and see improvement in there. So, yeah, I think it’s something that definitely should be something you ease into a bit and not start with right to black belt maybe. But let’s learn some of those basic tools, practice them, get some experience with them, and then if you find that you’re needing some of those tools, I think that’s definitely a good way to pursue it. But, yeah, I wouldn’t recommend people jump head first right into the deep end there.

S: Yeah, I’m a huge fan of doing things that people find to be fun, right, so this whole idea that we are uniquely capable and special. So if you love data and that’s your fun, great, go get a black belt and analyze everything through that lens because that’s your zone of genius. For someone like me, all of the detail, again, I can, but it definitely doesn’t create a lot of joy for me. I would much rather be working with people, doing collaborative problem-solving. So I think it’s, you know, again, depending on where you want to go, pick something that actually works in alignment with you because I promise that if you’re not into data, and even if you have a black belt, like, you’re probably not going to solve great problems because you’re just not going to love the journey of problem-solving because it’s going to be really challenging for you.

B: No, and I think that’s another great point. People have different skill sets and expertise and they’re all needed. I like the data part, but I also know that that’s not a large percentage of the total improvement work that I’m doing. But I also know that there’s other people that are better at me in a lot of these different tools and methods. And so trying to figure out, like, who are the best people to put on this project to be most effective and who are the best at that type of tool or method. And we can’t be expert at all as much as you try. You know, it’s we’re going to have things that we’re really good at and gravitate towards, and they’re all everyone is needed because we all have that different experience we can bring in. And I think that’s the team approach that you want working on a problem is not to do it alone. You’ve got to have a diverse, cross-functional group of people to have different perspectives and bring those different skills that they have.

S: There’s an amazing book called Who Not How. I’m not sure if you’ve read it?

B: No.

S: It essentially talks about that, like, you know, we all have the things that we’re naturally good at, and you don’t really need to do things that aren’t in your, again I’m going to use the word zone of genius, but it’s just recognizing that maybe you could ask someone to help you and it would take you an hour, but it would take that other person ten minutes. So it’s just really deep, like, awareness of where we are all uniquely capable. And again, if you want to spend an hour building a website because you think it’s fun, cool. But if it’s torture, outsource it or, you know, ask someone else for support because, like what you said, it’s just we all have our special, and we need to learn how to not hold all of it but rely on other people to contribute value in the way that they’re uniquely capable as well.

B: I think about this a lot, too. It’s like how do you give people awareness of some of these methods and tools at a very shallow level just so they’re aware that these things exist and they’re out there without having to go a deep dive into it until that gets to that point. And then do you want to learn this, or do you want someone to help you do it for that rare situation? I think about, like Gage R&R studies. Like, a lot of people don’t know that those are a thing and how they’re helpful. Do you want to learn and be able to run those and analyze those? If you do, then, yeah, you should go in and take a class and learn this. But if you just– You should be aware of it, though, that it exists so you can say I think there’s something out there that we should be doing to validate that the measurements are good. But then I need to bring in somebody who actually knows what they’re doing, but I should be aware that that exists and when to identify that. I haven’t figured out the best way to do that without crash course on here’s a hundred improvement tools that you could use in an hour and learn some of the just the basics there, but there’s a lot to learn.

S: I also think that’s some of the value of having a coach or a mentor, right? Like, you can’t prepare your kid for every obstacle that they might encounter in their life, but you can be there and you can train them that I’m available to support you in this way. So if you feel like things are hard, or if you feel like you are stuck, give me a call because perhaps there’s something that I might see that you just don’t know to look for yet. So I think, you know, yes, you could try to teach people everything. I’ve led a lot of, like, problem-solving boot camps or we have internal rotational programs for our leadership development type of stuff. And you go in and it’s week one and you teach them about six sigma and you teach them about lean in this really intensive week-long boot camp. And, you know, you could probably ask them three days later any of what you taught them, and it’s just like, it’s so hard to learn in that way.

So, you know, I am a coach and I find so much value in being available to people in that way because then it’s more of, you know, again, what problem are you trying to solve, and really meeting people where they’re at and trusting that I can teach you how to understand resources and tools. And leaders and coaches are just a tool, right? When you’re stuck, you need to know when to call me. I’m not going to micromanage, I’m not going to assume, but I can show you how I support you and then I can trust that you’re going to use me appropriately when the time comes.

B: It’s really not that much time. I mean, it’s a short conversation to get them from step six to step seven of whatever problem they’re working on. Could be a five-minute conversation with someone and they’re saying, I’m stuck here. Have you tried this or have you looked at this? Oh, no, let me go dig into that next. And that’s a much more efficient use of everyone’s time. They’re not learning a bunch of extras, extra stuff that they don’t need to know, and you’ve got your own expertise that you’re bringing to help them navigate and understand those tools. And then if they need to dig deeper into certain methods, then that makes sense and maybe they’ll be motivated at that time to do it. But, yeah, I think that coaching is a better way of doing it. It’s hard to know that I need to coach until you go through and get some coaching. Then you’re like, okay, this is helpful. I want to continue this. But people may not decide to reach out right away.

S: I often think, you know, I tell people, like, if you feel like you’re stuck, like, talk to a coach and not because it means that you need coaching, but just like everything else, like, you just have to understand what’s possible in a coaching relationship. So if you’ve never been coached, go try it because then you’ll at least understand what’s possible and it’ll just be another thing that, if and when the time is right, you know, you know who to call and you have that resource at your disposal. But even like what you said about awareness, if you don’t allow yourself to become aware of the difference that that type of relationship can offer, then how will you know? If it is the perfect, exact thing that you’ve been looking for, you might not know because you don’t have that basic level of awareness of what’s possible.

B: You get the job at GE. Tell me a little bit about some of the work you were doing there.

S: All sorts of stuff. That’s the beauty of GE is I feel like I have had 20 years of problem-solving opportunities in 5 years because we are fast, we are dynamic, and there’s a ton to do, everything from ramping capacity. So in one of the product lines that I’ve supported in the past couple years, we’ve increased our capacity by over 40%. And this is a process with a three-and-a-half-week lead time, so it is not, you know, a small feat. It takes a year, two years sometimes, to get a piece of equipment landed. Obviously, we are a highly regulated industry, so, you know, as desperate as we are and as much desire as we have for agile change, there is just stuff that takes time. So, you know, meticulously understanding where we’re going to and what we’re trying to create and, you know, Kaizen approach or a methodical approach to getting there. A ton of just lean foundational work, so everything from lifting up daily management tier systems to, you know, really we created dashboards for our production lines that allow us to see, you know, are we winning or are we losing right now?

So, you know, a couple years ago, we won or we lost by the shift. If we had to get 300 parts through the door at the end of the day, we did or we didn’t and it was really hard to appropriately react and fix problems. We were kind of always behind in doing so. So, you know, tac time monitoring on the production lines just gave us a different way of problem-solving and predicting and, you know, being more reliable for our customers, which was amazing. I’ve done probably 50 kaizens. We use Shingijutsu as well, if you’re familiar with that. So lots of, we call them shing events, but again, crazy problem solving that we shove into a week-long period. And the thing that I love the most about that is it’s, you know, so much about like solving the problem, but the growth and the development that you see in people when you are really in these cycles of massive convergent and divergent thinking and innovation, it’s just amazing to get to be a part of that. So, you know, all of the things. I really think that I’ve dabbled in almost every lean concept that exists and solved problems in most of the realms because that’s what me and my team do for the organization.

B: So how does that work with the Shingijutsu group? So are they coming in and running the events and helping? Are they coaching you or are you facilitating? I’m just kind of curious because– and I don’t know how long GE has been working with them, if it’s been a newer thing with GE Healthcare, or if that’s been going on for many years, but can you talk about that relationship a little bit? I’m just curious as well, and maybe for those who don’t know what Shingijutsu is, their group and their history, if you have some insights on that.

S: Yeah, so I don’t know how long we’ve been using them, but we’ve been using them at least since I’ve been with GE, which is five years, and we have plans to continue to use them now that we’re GE Healthcare and split from GE as an entity. They serve as coaches. So we still have our internal team members running the events, we have our team members serving as primary, you know, lean facilitators of the events, and I would say the senseis really just provide us with that different level of thought coaching to challenge some of what we believe to be true about our process or about the outcomes that we’re looking to generate. So, you know, we might go into an event thinking that the problem that we’re solving is increasing delivery, and we’re going to do that through standard work, and we might end up changing the orientation of the entire line and the way that we’re staffing it.

So, you know, it just– We tend, as humans, to believe that there is a solution and we get really bought into the solution, and I think that these coaches are really amazing at bringing us back to the problem and ensuring that we are, you know, really thinking holistically about the right way to approach it. And it’s, again, just taking our focus and blowing it back out so that we, as you know, the leaders of the event and the people participating in it can learn about problem-solving through these events and solving problems.

B: That’s so difficult to break people of the solution early. Most of the discussion happens around like, okay, I’ve got this problem, and this is what my project’s going to be about. It’s doing this solution, and it’s like, okay, that’s– it’s okay to have some ideas like that, but we can’t lock into that yet. You haven’t really studied the process. At least we haven’t made sure that you really have a good grasp on that current condition of the process and this is exactly what needs to be done to solve that problem. And there’s like this big gap in the middle that you miss all the data and observations, discussions with the people doing the work, and there’s just a lot of assumptions made that we need to do XYZ for a solution. It’s usually that this is going to cost some money. It’s going to be we have to upgrade something, we need new equipment, we need new people, we need more people. You know, it’s– unfortunately, it’s a common thing of people wanting to have an answer and maybe they’re getting pressured to have an answer all the time. And so, but it takes a while to study the process, and that’s where we’re trying to slow people down a little bit and say let’s just walk through this really detailed, make sure we’re aligning everything back to that problem. And let’s not jump to a solution that’s going to fail and waste potentially a lot of money if it’s not right. So, not that everything’s going to be perfect or it’s always going to work out, but we do it in the right way, we should get to a better outcome and higher chance that this is the right solution.

S: Yeah. A phrase that you’ll hear often during our Shingijutsu events is no time, no money, no talent. So, because, you know, again, like, I’ve been a part of it, is you go into an event and you’ve decided that the solution is, oh, we have to buy this other piece of equipment, or we have to hire two more people, and then we’ll say, no. No time, no money, no talent. What else are you going to do? And that’s where it really is about, like, that investment in the problem-solving mindset. Like, if you develop problem solvers, you will solve problems, but it’s just challenging over and over again. What if that’s not true? What if there’s a solution that doesn’t require time, money, talent that’s not what you’ve already predetermined to be appropriate? Go sniff that out. Go find me that. And even if you don’t find it, all of the musculature that’s being built by imagining that that’s there, I mean, that is learning. So it’s really fun to be a part of it.

B: Yeah, and I think it’s, you know, until you go through it a few times, I think you don’t believe that’s possible or you think that there’s no way we can make this process go faster or better. It’s just outside of the possibilities in people’s heads until you start to, like, learn the methods and learn the techniques and see that there are better ways of doing processes and really challenge how the process is done. And then I think it opens eyes to, yeah, we have to really dig deep into this. But I can see where coming in, it’s like, here’s a problem, and I have this limited view of solutions, and so the only thing I can think of is people or money or equipment, right. And so I like that approach, almost taking that off the table. It really challenges the team not to do it.

S: Yeah. One problem that we solved is coming to mind that just because this is one that, like, blue people’s minds because we had, you know, our architects, like, our top engineers on the project. And we have a part of our process where, essentially, there was a capacity problem. So we had decided, based on the capacity of this machine, we can only make 100 things a day. Like, that’s all that we can do, and that was it. Like, we just decided that there was no more capacity to be had in the machine until we were challenged to look at the actual way that the machine was processing the material.

So, you know, it was processing– it’s like an oven. Like, it was cooking, it was cooking, and the cookies were done, and we kept cooking, and we kept cooking. And so what we were able to do is actually like change the way that the program is running and decrease the cycle time, right. Like, if you’ve got a capacity problem, you can shove in more, you can find more time, but that’s all you can do, and we just thought neither of those were available to us until we dug deeper. And lo and behold, holy crap, we’re overprocessing this material. And we were able to pull out, like, 25% of the cycle time by changing the programming, and it took, like– to execute the change, it just didn’t take any time.

So this problem that we had faced forever– and I will tell you I have never worked with more genies people than the people at GE Healthcare, and everyone looked at this problem. We were talking about it at all levels of leadership and we just thought there was no path forward until there was, right. So it’s just– it’s so fun. And again, what it offers our brains, when you get to have those breakthroughs, is it really rewires you to believe, like, oh, I wonder what else is out there that I haven’t considered has a different solution, and then, you know, your whole world explodes.

B: Perfect example there. Yeah, just have this limited perspective or view or of this mindset that’s gotten ingrained in people that, yeah, there’s nothing that can be done until you get kind of forced to really dig deep into it. Anything else at GE Healthcare that you’ve been working on? So you’ve been, like, in a process improvement role, or you’re managing and overseeing a specific product line?

S: I’ve done both. So I started as a lean leader supporting part of our process. I became a lean manager. I oversaw a team of lean leaders across a couple of our sites in the Milwaukee area. I ran the operation myself as, we call it a business team leader, so directly responsible for overseeing part of our value stream. And then in June, I switched back to more of that lean OpEx space. And really, my team is just hunting productivity, hunting cost, training problem solvers. So we kind of are adopting a new way of working where we’re switching from a project-based structure for our team to switch into more of a kaizen-based structure. So instead of all of my resources working on problems in different parts of the organizations, we hunt as a team and we solve problems, using kaizen methodology, together as a team.

So it just is a different way of allocating our resources. I think it’s going to be really fun to see how much faster we can move from that space, and again, instead of, you know, Steve over there, who’s working on project A and has, you know, whatever skill set he has, as a team, as a unit, I think that we have all of the skill sets together and I’m really curious about what type of momentum we can create from just a different organizational structure. So that’s kind of what we’re currently playing with just to see what’s possible.

B: That reminds me of a certification program that was I working on when I worked in aerospace. We were trying to revise our training and certification program, and what we came up with, which I think was pretty cool, was it wasn’t specific to tools. Like, we had like a list of tools, but you could get certified in multiple different ways. Like, not everyone had to follow this tool. You didn’t have to know this tool, this tool, this tool.

You had to, like, pick out of these 20, you know, 10 of these that you understand and have practiced and applied. It doesn’t have to be the same 10 as someone else, so two different people could be certified with different skill sets, but it’s all around process improvement and lean. But they could go then down different pathways because, again, it doesn’t fit their skill set, or it’s really challenging for them to learn some skills, but they’re really good at others, or if they just have got the opportunity to apply these methods and not the other ones. And I think that’s really needed to build out a really well-rounded team that could come in and it’s a group of people being consulted with. It’s like a group consulting model of some sort. I think that’s pretty cool because you do have people from different experience. Even if they’re black belt, they haven’t done all the tools. They haven’t practiced them all. They don’t have that experience on everything so. But a team would probably have 99% of the stuff that could come up. It’s interesting.

S: It’s fun. As I have spent a lot of time, in the past couple of years, in, like, more of the coaching space as well, there really is this theme of, you know, you’re already enough, you’re already special. So even, you know, if your title isn’t lean leader but you have a ton of experience, you know, fixing cars, it’s still like forget titles. Like, we’re all uniquely capable of solving problems, so my belief is, you know, if I give you permission to be exactly who you are and teach you, you know, how to ask for support and point you at a problem, if you get to solve that problem in alignment with, like, your skills and your passions and your knowledge, you’re just going to solve the damn problem. Like, it doesn’t have to be hard. So I think it gets hard when we try and put people in a box. But that’s my, you know, story. That’s how I grew up is I thought that I had to live in this box, and I had to be a good leader by checking off all of these things. And what I learned is, no, a good leader– like, for me, I’m going to be a good leader by doing A, B, and C, and maybe that’s different. But leading from a place of authenticity in who you are is, I think, inherently what makes you a good leader.

And there’s skills development, don’t get me wrong, but I think it all starts with what impact do you want to have, and who are you. And from that place, the journey is just– it’s different. So, that’s what I hope from this problem-solving collective is, again, it’s, you know, do whatever you need to do. However your brain is offering to you to solve that problem, great. Explore it and just use each other and learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can just crush it as a team.

So I think, you know, some people have never heard that before, that you’re already enough and you don’t have to get a certification. You don’t have to do anything different. You can help us solve this problem. And so, again, we’re going to solve great problems, but I am so much more excited about the investment in the human capital to lead differently and to invest differently in them, and I think, again, how could we not solve everything that comes in front of us from that place?

B: Part of my goal with this podcast was, you know, there’s a ton of problems and opportunities out there if we look outside of companies and in the broader society, and there’s a lot of people doing work and they have skills already that are valuable and helpful. And how do we motivate or encourage them to pick up some of these methods, but they have a lot already that they’re doing? And there is improvement happening all over the place in organizations that have never been trained or gone through any kind of program, and so how do we build off of that already, like you’re saying, and say you already have unique skills and they’re different from other people in your organization, but can we tackle these in a team effort, bring all those different skills together, and maybe give a little structure about how you’re doing and some principles to follow so we do it as best as we can? But how do we get everyone in the world, basically, with problem-solving skills, because there’s so much stuff to be addressed and solved? So I think that’s great.

S: Yeah, and I think I would argue everyone in the world has problem-solving skills, they just not– they might not name it as such, right. So, that’s where I think, again, that, like, voice of a coach is, no, no, no, you’ve got it. Look at all these things you’re doing. Work aside, like, look at all of the ways that you know how to navigate the world. And so even just building that belief that you have what it takes, I think, is a tremendous thing that we can offer other people because a lot of people live a lot of their life thinking that they’re not enough, and I think it’s just what if you believe that you are? Like, what if you believe you already have everything you need, like, what’s possible then? And if you don’t, again, call me because I will help you get there. I will help you believe that because I just think, like, in my soul, I know that to be true.

B: Yeah. When I’ve had people say this, I’m sure you have too, like, oh, I didn’t know that there was a name for this. I just– I’ve been doing this and I didn’t know that was called XYZ tool or whatever, you know, like. And I think there’s like a lightbulb that goes off in their heads like, oh, yeah, I do this already, or I understand these concepts, or this is natural for me. Like, I do this all the time. I mean, I’ve heard people say that. I just didn’t know there was this whole methodology or skill set that people get trained on. It just comes natural to me, or I’ve just kind of learned this over the years so.

Tell me a little bit about your new role and new work that you’re trying to do, the KPI Lab. How did that come about? What are you hoping to accomplish with that? And tell me a little bit more.

S: Yeah. So, the KPI Lab kind of started in my brain about a year ago. It’s my own venture. I have been coaching for a while now, so I am an accredited coach with Co-Active and through the International Coaching Federation. As part of being certified as an executive leadership coach, I had to coach people, so I had to get a lot of experience doing that. And I just found it created so much joy for me to get to be with people in that space. My primary clients are operations executives, so people who are like me and resonate with the story. And, you know, I think it’s really fun to speak the language of process improvement because it ties into the experience of working with me as a coach, is I can be as much of a thought partner as I am a coach with you.

So the KPI Lab was just me wanting to explore my own possibilities in life outside of the walls of GE Healthcare. So I do problem-solving, but I solve people problems and process problems. So there’s some lean consulting that I do, but primarily, again, I’m working with leaders to just help them understand who they are and how they can lead in alignment with the impact that they want to make. So one of the fun things that I am starting, actually my first cohort kicks off in a couple of weeks, but it’s an executive coaching master class. So I have a group of, again, operations executives who are coming to this space, who have all of these tools and all of these skill sets that they already offer their teams, and they want to learn some life coaching stuff.

So I’ve talked about zone of genius a ton of times, like, you know, finding out how do we define what we’re uniquely capable of doing? And what we do with that information? And how do we create more balance in our lives and lead in ways that feel really fulfilling? So all of that is available, but my experience, as I climbed up the corporate ladder, was that I was– you know, the more capable I demonstrated myself to be, the less I received coaching and mentorship. And oftentimes, that is the most important thing because if you invest in yourself, again, everything else comes, like, you are more capable of investing in others. So really, what I’m trying to create is a space for people just to, you know, do the work on themselves. And inherently, in doing that, you learn this different toolkit that you can turn around and offer to people in your organization or your family or your friends, and it’s just all about helping people solve problems.

B: It’s hard not to delve into people’s personal lives when you’re coaching because it all interrelates, you know. It’s if you’re struggling and overwhelmed at work, it’s going to carry over into your personal life, and then personal life struggles are going to carry over into your work life. It’s almost like to get to the root cause of some of these issues, it sometimes delves into individuals’ lives and how are they dealing with some of those things. You can’t separate them and say this is only a work-related topic because it doesn’t happen that way. And especially as our work and our personal lives get blended when we can work at home a bit, I think that creates some unique challenges. And I think these principles are very applicable, too, in our personal lives. It’s we have disorganization and it’s nonstate. We don’t have processes at home, and that creates a lot of extra time, and then that gives us less free time to do the things we want to do. We get away from the fun stuff because we’re busy with the day-to-day minutia. We lose sight of the bigger goals and bigger plans. So I think that you have to kind of incorporate their whole life into the coaching because it’s not separate, more so today than ever before probably.

S: Yeah, I see the whole world as just problems that we can solve. And again, it’s a people problem or process problem, but most of the time, like, it’s a people problem because, half of the time, you can just change your mind, which I think is really fun. Like, the number of times that I’ve been deep in problem-solving and then I get to the point where I recognize, shit, is it problem even a problem, and the answer is no. So, like, I think that that happens a lot too, is, like, as humans, we like to dig and we like to solve problems, but even creating this space, like an organization, you know, don’t spend the money, no time, no talent. You know, it’s come back to is this even a problem? Do you want to be investing your brain energy into solving this? So it’s all the exact same stuff, it’s just how you apply it in the different contexts of your life.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the definitions in problem-solving. When I teach problem-solving, I always say there are caused problems and there are created problems. And caused problems is you need to go back to a place where you’ve been. So maybe you historically delivered a 10, now you’re delivering 6. Something changed and you need to close the gap to get back to, again, where you were. A created problem is when there’s a new standard. So I have always delivered 10 as the maximum, and I need to deliver 14. And so in order to do that, it’s a different type of, you know, mindset. It’s not detective problem-solving looking back, it’s more of that innovation problem-solving moving forward.

So I think people oftentimes think of coaching as, like, you know, there’s something wrong or I have a problem that I need to fix. I need to get back to a place that I used to be. And what I offer is it’s also about getting to a place you’ve never been before. So arguably, no, I don’t have any problems, but I have a coach because I love continuing to set new standards of what’s possible for me. So I think that there’s this, you know, sometimes interesting association, again, of, like, well, I don’t need to be fixed. Of course you don’t need to be fixed, but what if you got unleashed? Like, what if you just continued to invest in what’s possible? And so different definitions of, you know, again, even problem-solving serve different people in a coaching relationship because it’s just your problem that you’re trying to solve. I can help you with either of those things, but, you know, it’s open to everyone.

B: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to look at it because there is a– you know, it’s more motivating and inspiring versus, you know, fixing some of the past issues. You say what if we just move away from this completely and not just try to keep dealing with this recurring issue, but how do we go in the new direction? And I think that that kind of ideal future state activity is really helpful to say we’re not focused on the right areas, and so how do we get out of that?

And I think your other point about, you know, that there’s a lot of issues, and are this really an issue? And I think the other mindset is how do I just be okay with the fact that I can’t fix everything and that there is some priority to what we can work on, and it’s okay that you’ll never fix everything. It’s not a to-do list of I’ve got to check all this off and then I’ll be done and ready to take on more challenges because they’ll will just keep coming. It’s constant, and that’s okay. I have to do that myself. I have things I want to do in my business, and I know I’ll never get to some of those no matter how many– how long I live, like, and just be okay with that. And I think that’s been hard to know, like, I have to just sometimes let those happen and know that that’s not a priority, I can’t get to it. I’m focused on the right things, then it will be okay.

S: Yeah. There’s another book that I really like. It’s called Think Like a Monk. I think it’s like by Jay Shetty. But there’s kind of, I’m going to butcher the quote, but essentially, he’s walking with what is his sensei, and they come across a person who can recite all of the Scriptures. And Jay says, “Wow, I wish that I could do that,” and the sensei says, “Do you want the destination or do you want the journey?” And it’s like an a-ha of, again, if you’re waiting– if you just want to achieve the thing, if you want to get to the point where you know all of the stuff but you don’t like to read and learn and cultivate yourself, that’s not a way to live, so it’s just ensuring that. You know, and that’s what I mean is you should love your work because that’s the journey. It’s not just about the title or where you end up or the amount of money you make. But if you love the journey, you will love the destination. So I think it’s just switching that mindset around a little bit.

B: And I think you don’t know where the destination’s going to take you either. I think that’s the cool part is you don’t. You have no idea what’s out there and all of the possibilities and connections and opportunities that exist for you. So if you just say I’m focusing on this journey I’m going through and let’s see where it takes me, I think that’s going to take you in some really interesting and cool places. But how do you know where that end result is? It’s just a guess. It’s just a hypothesis, right? So enjoy the journey of it, and probably end up in the place you never imagined, doing work that you couldn’t have– didn’t know existed perhaps. So yeah, I think that’s great advice. So how can people get a hold of you or contact you or learn more about working with you or just connect with you?

S: Yeah. LinkedIn is a great place, so you can find me by my name, Sarah Tilkens. My website is thekpilab.com, so you can get a lot more information about the type of work that I’m doing there, coaching,, etc., from that place, but please reach out. I love, love, love connecting with people, so I’d be super grateful to make some new friends.

Can I ask you a question before log off? This is one of my favorite, like, you know, weird dinner questions. But if you’re willing to answer, what do you love the most about yourself?

B: Good question. I think I like the work I’m willing to put in. Like, I know things take a lot of work. Once I decide I want to do something, I know it’s going to take a lot of work and I’m willing to put in that work and be disciplined and follow through with that. Looking back, I realize that that’s something not everybody is good at or they struggle with. And so I think that’s helped me a lot in my life so far, is being able to stay focused on something and know that it’s going to be a lot of hard work and not be afraid of that. Just say, okay, I’m ready to do that work and stick to it. So whether I’m doing the right thing or not, but when I have decided on something, I’m pretty persistent and driven to go through with it. So I think that’s something I’m pretty proud about when I look back at some of the things I’ve done.

S: Amazing. That’s a superpower. Yeah, thanks for sharing.

B: Sure. Thanks. It was great talking to you. Hope to stay connected with you, and yeah, good luck with your new venture. Hopefully, some people here listening will reach out and connect with you and get some coaching.

S: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the conversation.