E122: Applying Lean at the City of Grand Rapids with Alen Ganic

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In this episode, I share an interview I had with Alen Ganic, an experienced Lean and Six Sigma coach who spent 14 years with the City of Grand Rapids implementing Lean and has also setup numerous volunteer groups and organizations to help those in need. He shares examples of project improvements he worked on in government to standardize toll booths, consolidate warehouses and buildings, and reduce setup time for maintenance and repair requests.

We also had a good discussion about the recent policital discussions around DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and the best way to approach it from his experience.

Listen to the podcast on this page, or watch the entire interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo1oMOfRNP0

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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

So thanks everyone for joining. I’ve got a guest today, Alan Ganik. He’s a senior lean 6 Sigma coach. Alan, thanks for coming to the show. If you could give us a little introduction and background on your process improvement journey. Would be great.

Thank you.

Bye. Thank you for having. I really appreciate it. So as you have mentioned, my name is Alan Ganic. My background is in regards to lean. I’ve been practicing lean for 24 years. The way I started. My leaning journey was actually in late 90s, but I really start practicing lean in 2000. While working for one big international company. That was. A lot of money at that time in the small city in Michigan, and we were introduced to options either to move the business somewhere else to another country. Or we learned. Manufacturing in two years and we transform that organization. Within those two years into a manufacturing of. Many of us didn’t have another job, so we said we. To transform. And me being me, I like always to learn and continuously improve. Get better in whatever I do. So I volunteered to be part of that transformation team. So at that time I was a production supervisor and 2nd shift I would come in every day. Day for four hours, which was. That was good and I would spend years close to two years working those odd hours where I come in in the morning, work with the team, with senses, learning the tools and applying those tools on the floor. That’s how I learned Lynn, how to apply all the main. Back then, there was no Gamb Academy or an organization as such. So far as I remember. Those were individuals who work for Toyota production system. Senses will come to organizations and teachers lean. On the floor. After that I had a lot of success, not just in that company and left. That company went somewhere else and got really promoted up to a plant manager, OPS manager position with that organization by applying lean tools and helping that organization after that. I I somebody reached out to me to work for the city Grand Rapids, which is a local government which I first said, why would I work for government? I I like lean. Like applying Lean daily and governments. I don’t think any much in common with lean at that time, but what I what the reason? I really accepted that role is because that individual who worked at that time for the mayor told me that. They are reaching out to me because I have an experience and the mayor at that time, George Hartwell, went to a conference and heard about lean and how lean can it be applied anywhere, including government. And he has signed his. Deputy manager Eric Delong to explore this and to bring lean to city Grand Rapids. When I heard that, I said, oh, that’s good. I talked to my wife and I said this would be good for me to see if I can introduce lean. Government to make the long story.

Were you living in Grand Rapids at the same at that time or you were?

Yes, that was yes. Yes, I was. And so I left manufacturing to work for government, even took a big to be honest with you, I took a pay cut because I love the challenge. So they didn’t have a lien manager, didn’t even know what that was at that time. But they gave me a position to run, to be in charge of operations for parking services. All the parking ramps and lots and security teams. Had two departments reporting to me at that. At that time and then I start slowly implementing lean philosophy in parking. For example, one of the biggest struggles they had when I joined them. They could not find enough seasonal employees to staff the boost during the seasons and the seasons usually starts from the fall winter. Obviously for the holidays and it would end up kind of in in the summer, the season would end, people go to the beach and stuff like that. Don’t come to downtown much. And one of the struggles they had, they were very disorganized. Some people knew how to run certain. That’s something that I did during my root cause analysis to make the Long story short, with five fast all the booths we I trained the staff and we were able to. Bypass smallest booth and make it work so we could replicate that same setup of the equipment ticket dispenser ticket processing device. The computer, which is a register, it’s called just the computer and all that stuff. And then we replicated including brooms and dustbins, everything out of. Everything was in a place in a small booth and we replicated after that, every employee joining parking services was able to run any booth. Was no more excuses. I never ran that. I don’t know how to run it so. We can’t immediately 50 plus. We no longer needed to have on our payroll, so they had like between 89 to 100 some employees we cut that in half because now everybody can. To. Did the Veronica see computer and ran a?

Booth.

And then after that I have done many different projects, but then what? City recognized after they saw some savings, especially my boss Pam. She was very intelligent lady and she got promoted to lead several departments, so she was like. Leading she was a director, managing director for several departments in the city. And that’s when we kind of made agreement our 50% time running a business like a real business operation. And then the other 50% time we’ll be spending on lean projects going to these departments that she was overseeing. And then wherever she had the biggest bottleneck or. A problem to solve. I would address. I would go out there, train develop. People and work with the people on finding a solution. So this upgrade benefit in that as well. So my job basically then to create a position for me in between asset manager because one of the. Projects they had is consolidating warehouses and selling buildings to the private sector to use. For private business. And consolidating inventory into one warehouse like 2-3 departments into one warehouse and I love that idea and that’s kind of the idea that led and just that project alone. In one department was had a saving $500,000 plus an annual basis. Instead of spending 1.9 or 2 million per year on buying inventory, we had actually more business than ever before. But we reduced half a million plus. On an annual basis in spending because we improved our material management, we had a management system, we created distribution centre, we involved vendor management system like with Fastenal. For example, when we had now same product across the city and we didn’t own anything until it was purchased. So there’s no obsolescence that we were using yearly. Just an example, I wash you know that has expiration date and if you stock it yourself. Don’t use it. That ends up in a trash. Now we had a vendor management system in place where we don’t care about that. We only pay on a monthly basis for the whole. City. Just a one invoice instead of bunch. So just to give you some idea, some of the improvements we did spaghetti diagrams look at how our internal customers come into a stack room to get the parts and we saw how complicated it was. They would spend half hour to an hour together parts and then go. To do the business, fix the roads or fix the pipes in the ground. So we streamlined that working with the. They told us how to build the product families when they pick up a meter to replace, they send parts to go along with it. So we put everything in line so they can get in and out between 5 to 15 minutes, compared 30 to an hour. So that that ends another a good win for the city. Consolidating building was another important fact. So that’s kind of in the government sector a little bit just to give you because I did spend with government 14 1/2 years and worked on many projects and actually I’m writing a book right now. Because there are so many books on bling manufacturing, some people not writing in healthcare. Which is good. And now I’m writing about. There are not many books about how to. Lean in government. You know, and I now that I have so many years of experience serving our country for 14, half years, I want to spread that knowledge, that specific group of people. After that. I did move on back to manufacturing even while I was working for government. It was not challenging enough to be honest with you. A lead. I always like to be on the go, learn, improve, experiment. So I’m a deal with the. Hey, I’m gonna take some vacation or I’m paid time. If I need to to go and work on for a consulting firm. I’m on a part time basis and that’s what I did. So I went back in the manufacturing wort and part time basis on projects that I liked. And then after that, I decided after 14 half years that I really want to go back to manufacturing. And I did go for two years back to manufacturing. Loved it. Traveled the United States was a regional CI manager. Position I held in that company. And four different states that I would visit every other week and was very exciting. And then the last job, the job that I’m in right now, I’m with Gambia. Academy and I’m going to give you an. I wasn’t looking for a job, to be honest with. I was not looking for a job looking to switch career at this. I loved my previous job, didn’t like the challenge that much to be honest with the job in general. I loved it because every week I had challenges. And I had opportunity to develop people develop content which I love to do developing and developing. But again, back in we did reach out to. There was a opening one of my friends started a Don business and the only reason why he left and Academy because he’s a business owner now in the city of Grand Rapids and I wish you nothing but well. And that opening got. Was presented to. That opportunity was presented to me for gambling. Why I joined Gamb Academy when I was working for City Grand Rapids. Nancy Meyer, who’s no longer with us. She passed away. A great lady. She was part of our transformation team City Grand Rapids. When we met with city manager with a deputy manager, My Manager, CFO and others. She was reporting at that time, I believe to the deputy manager. And one of her tasks was to because I could not produce fast enough content to train everybody in the city. There were other people that going through lean journey that we were sending them to get certification. And she get went to Mississippi Ation as. I was her coach during that time and she was while she was getting her certification. First time was to find a company in the United States that kind of can give us some training material and we had picked three companies out of those three companies. Really love gamb Academy. They had back then. This is back in a day and they start having online for the first time online. Some of the videos, which was pretty cool. Other companies only had DV DS at that time, and then Gamble was a little bit more advanced. And the quality of their content is what attracted us as well. They had very good quality. It was brief, 5 to 15 minutes and I was able to incorporate into my pop present presentations when I was presenting to the people. Developing staff at City Grand Rapids and they had. So I didn’t have to go create quizzes. Any of that. So it was really easy for me to utilize that tool. So I fell along a Grand Academy for those of you, there are Gand Academy customer. There are videos out there that. Still, my work in Silicon Rapids. How do I conduct my Hubble meetings in the morning? And yeah, managing for the improvement boards, how we use a three document. To to to solve many problems and to run many. One of the projects that would, besides this distribution center, was how to replace all lead service pipelines in the city. Grand Rapids, which is a 20 to 25 year project. I hope till today they use it, but for two years when I was teaching coaching them and remaking revisions and changes to that a three, they started that project and that was the main document. That was prevented to their leadership and city commissioners and others that a three were we, as leaders were sitting down and updating on a monthly basis, including the eternity that was representing city and Rapids. So that’s a little bit about. And then the last thing I want to. Is was for a couple years director for Missionary consortium. That is one of the well known lean consortiums in Michigan. Around these educational events, conferences and so on. So I had the opportunity and I was blessed to be the director couple times for that organization. The only reason I left them is because I moved to Texas. About close to three years ago, I moved to Texas. I had to. It was very difficult for me to be a director here and manage something ’cause I couldn’t be close to the gamble. I left them and the other thing, the last thing I want to mention about my biography is I had a dream and Steve King, who worked at that time for Gamb. Ling HR. They helped me out. Bring my dream to life and that was to start the first conference for government employees Lean Conference for Government for employees and that was in 2017. The government formed and there are some clips and stuff on YouTube, so I was able to start and bring federal state and local together. We had about 40 participants at our first ever conference. After that I found out that people love it. The problem I had with the conference, we end up having a profit of $2500, something like that. In general, government just for those who they’re not familiar, how government works, government cannot make profit. So that’s why that was a problem. Do we do with 25? So they told me I’m going to get rid of 2500 because we can’t make profit. So can you find a non profit organization that deals with lead that could benefit from it and that’s how I kind of got in touch with MLC Michelin consortium and I said hey. Would you take this as a donation? And I would like to continue with this because our doing a plus and delta we found out from our audience and participant they would love to continue with this. I mean State, county. Local and federal government and state government did like that. It’s a mean yeah, we can spread this through our organizations as well. This makes. I remember Steven Kaplan, mayor of city Kentwood. He came to that conference as well and he loved it. He and he and his people go through all my conferences and after that. Come to our educational any educational events that we had and so MLC agreed on it to say, oh, let’s partner. MLC did all the registration. And I had my own team at the city. Expanded because now these conferences stop growing. We got up to 100 and some people. I remember the last conference. Before I left the. Habits. I think it was 100 and 10115. Don’t quote me. That was well over 100 people and we had a City Hall on several floors because so many people had to use all the conferences. And then after that, we partnered with the Grand Valley University because we kept growing. We didn’t have that room anymore. Until today. Still, having these annual conferences in Michigan? So that’s my. Sorry for taking this long.

No, that’s great. That’s great. You mentioned the the government forum, so that was just a one time conference that you had in in Michigan and geared towards Michigan governments, government agencies.

That was the first one, not the last one.

Yeah. OK.

We changed it in name since I since we partnered with Michigan Reconstruction, we changed. Had a partnership MLC and City Grand Rapids. Now we had two logos and they ran the show. So till. Now it’s only MLC and Grand Valley.

OK, I see.

Because sitting in rapid stepped out after I left, they stepped out. Now Granville and MLC are continuing with that conference. And now what we did after we learned something, we wanted to create a network. You know how you you do something and you see there’s room for improvement. So having just a government, people come to conference, I didn’t see very beneficial because they can’t network and talk about projects. So what? Did what I proposed to Mlci said. Do governments have 4 branches and? Time I was leading the events team so I was in charge of the events team for MLC. Let’s have government. Let’s have health care in that conference. Let’s have manufacturing in that conference as well and non profits. We brought we advertise to all those agencies and then we started having people from non profits, you know people run charity organizations, Salvation Army, something like that or people come obviously government manufacturing we had in healthcare. So now we enabled those people who have some experience in rent projects to prevent to people. This is how we. In the healthcare, this is how we apply to manufacturing, government and nonprofit. And that’s why I think it’s still growing and still it’s still a good conference because we now have four different. And why mentioning that it’s very important to share this network one of. Things. Did we start expanding the time during the lunchtime to giving to our attendees to be able to network to meet with somebody else? Example government employee meet manufacturing or health. Clear and that Prophet meets with government and so. And they share the meet. And then we start building that network in the state of Michigan. I did. I did have a one time I was called to present at the state level conference. Rick Snyder, the governor of Michigan at that time. He reached out to the mayor and mayor reached out to me and said, hey, Alan, would you go to the state level and at state Capitol prevent how we apply lean in in the city, Grand Rapids because the governor was interested in that. So I did have that an opportunity to go and. On that level as well, where I broaden my network and tell to, hey, I have many friends now from state of Michigan. And the cool thing about state Michigan, they have a department for CI. So those of you that don’t know state of Michigan has a department, CI department and many CI practitioners who constantly develop people and constantly work on a project. And the city of Detroit as well has ACI department, which is really cool to hear and know that we have government now creating CI positions and they see. In it.

When you go into a new area, what is your? You talked about, you know, learning from other consultants where they were teaching kind of at the Gamba right there. Probably not a lot of I imagine classroom training. Was more hands on. Application. Is that how you’ve approached? And especially at Grand Rapids, just kind of jump in. Get engaged and then kind of teach as you.

Get out.

Coach, as you are progressing through your a threes and things like that, is that your approach?

Yes. So that’s a great question. I like that question especially for those folks who work for government right now. Government typically you know when they have meetings and decision making sites happening either in behind closed doors in somebody’s office or in a conference room. So this was a little bit challenging for them. So when I when they asked me to work on a project like a three or developing people on 5S seeing the and so on. They thought I could do everything in the conference room or we had a call. City University. It the Police Department. Floor. It’s called City University. Had bunch of classrooms and where you we go and teach and develop the the staff at that time. So I said we need to do this at Gamba so they know what the gamble really was. Kind of knew, but didn’t really know. So I started saying if you want to see success, you know I start challenging the leaders. Do you want this problem to be resolved? Yes, definitely. All right. So you can go to city Commission meetings and to to the residents of City Rapids and. Brag about it when we’re done with it. Oh, that would be. You know? OK, good. Then let me do it my way. It says whatever it takes. So what I did I says everything that I teach has to be done at the gamba, at the actual place of work. For example, four to six team, they were able to cut half a tree a day. Half a tree because those ash trees are huge trees and if you Google you’ll find. And it was the problem, they said. We don’t cut enough and hiring contractors cost like 3-4 times more than when we pay our staff. So we need. Find out if it’s better. Become more efficient. So we can cut more trees and with the staff that we have with equipment we have without adding any additional capital to. So I said. OK, great. Where is the force. So they’re down at 2 on market. Their trucks are parked in a garage and that’s where they have meetings and. So I start teaching them Gamba and I kid you not and you can find on YouTube there’s a YouTube I can send you if you want later. A clip of. Teaching and I had a city, Grand Rapids trash. My projector and we had a white background on one of those trucks and Ron is in that video. You can see Ron Tarir. You can see the owner of the the Managing Director for Gambaccini. He was. I was projecting. I was running and you can see how I use gambacademy to. That stuff at that. Time people love me for. This is men you connect with. You are on the ground, you know you from the office. You from City Hall. You came here to teach us in our environment. So they fell in love with. So I was teaching them only the one of the problems they wanted to solve as a team. I saw. At what time do you want to? They told me what it is and then I’m going to teach you these little tools.

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Hmm.

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I.

And when applying towards this problem that you’re trying to solve is their trucks. They had 6 trucks at that time. None of them are organized. Every truck had somebody’s. That’s John’s. That’s James and so on. And they they all were. And then you go out on the field and you find. That you don’t have any chance. You have to go. Drive half hour and a half hour back. I mean not there was so much. So to make the only story short, I taught him how to five fast a truck as a team and one of the things first they said, we don’t have tools. Does not want to put budget. They want to buy anything to make the Long story short, after they went with me through this whole exercise training and exerc. Ise oh by fasting they only bought 1-2 and that tool was something like a pipe long pipe to hold the lie up in the air while you’re trimming the tree. None of the tools were purchased. We had abandoned when we red tagged, engaged to other departments, or sent it to auction. Believe it or not. So they had a pile of tools that they got rid of because they were never used. This so just and they I said remember when you told me management was a problem, you’re blaming management? Said we can’t increase the budget, we don’t have the funds. And you guys were fighting in the end. Was your disorganization? All you needed is a fivefold. So that’s kind of the. So teaching at a Gambon then when I went with them out in the field. You know, I had to go to Gambia and it was freezing cold. Was not. They were laughing at. I don’t handle and that’s why one of the reason I moved to Texas. Love heat? I don’t handle cold very well and I was out there trimming trees. Lots of snow blowing wind. You can imagine if you’re from the north part of the country, you know how that is. And I was watching. Them what they do and and and doing like a standard circle like you want to stand in a circle, stood in one spot and Joe was just observing. And then we met back in the garage and I showed them I had a recording saying we had to stand. A circle form and so this is the waste when you have to go get your bobcat. Parked like that, too, blotted out. The guy had to walk slowly through the snow. Get in the. Bring the trailer in the bobcat. You know. Go go get the hook. It up something else which is down the street, I said Disorganize. We need to bring clothes. Sir, it’s. It’s full point of use, so when you need a bobcat or attention. Attachment. All your attachments are lined up and you can just go and get off the trailer. Now go to this trailer to down the. Trailer. So there was a lot of waste that they had just to make the Long story short, those folks in the short period of time that’s. 5% seeing waste those two. Things that they learn, they improve the lot. 5. Every truck they 5 fast the garage and that video that you’re gonna see if. Wanna watch it? You’ll see what they’re talking. And we did a celebration at the end. I brought the departments director abroad from the City Hall. Upper leader FIP at that time to celebrate and give him certificates, and then to show off what they have done with the with the with the warehouse with the crib. And with their trucks and how from half a tree they gone up to 1 to up to 1.5. I think at that time they were able to cut the same amount of people, same amount equipment.

Yeah, very. There’s been a lot of discussions right now with government efficiency and I believe, and I’m sure you believe too like there’s short, quick things people can do, but the best way is improving by doing exactly what you’re saying is going in understanding the work. Helping people be more efficient with their time to remove frustration and waste. And not just come in and say we’re going to cut heads and we’ll just do things slower. Figures out what you’ve been thinking and hearing lately. The politics recently about a government efficiency, at least at the national level. And if you’ve had any thoughts or ideas. Yeah, on.

Yeah, that’s that’s one of the reasons I’m writing a book, because I can’t look at the inefficiency. One thing I would say for sure. People are not the issue. You know people always bring people. Government people are lazy. They don’t do. You know, we we waste our tax. People are good. They’re not developed, you know, like City Grand Rapids. Had a great step. Nobody. These events got. That’s another deal I made with the leadership. I told them first time. You eliminate the position because of a lien improvement. Hi, Helen gannik. I’m done. I’m putting my two weeks notice. Out of here. Because you will kill lean culture. Because if I go to tell people, we’re gonna make improvement, we’re gonna eliminate your position, and we’re gonna eliminate you. They ain’t gonna work what we did. Instead, we did eliminate position. When I say eliminate, we cut those positions. No longer needed. Now we can do the job with smaller group, but the government that time and that’s what I appreciate about the vision sign. Grand Rapids. They found a different job for that person. In most cases, to be honest, they got promoted like there’s a gentleman in in fire department. Now the chief of fire department. He went to Lane jail and he land lean, super smart guy. And he cut his own job. He got. He kept getting promoted. In developing his own. So that’s one thing about. So I want to clarify government and government people are not an issue, but the process is to be blamed. Government has been outdated and I worked in health for 14 half years. Know very well and to MLC and organise these events. Work with federal and state people. And. Those those those inefficient processes need to be eliminated and improved, and I’m very excited if our federal government right now creates this Department of efficiency, which I’m super excited about that. And they applied properly, not just to go in and cut heads. You know that anybody can do that. Don’t need efficiency department for. You can just get aceo and say. You. You gone and you can cross it. No. We have to go smart and get in and see what are the problems we have, what inefficient process do we have? Let’s do some service with people that do our services like we did in Sydney. When Becky Joe created the awesome website for 311 in Pacific and Rapids with her team, she did a survey. She had people after she did the improve her website, she had AI. She paid residents. Grand Rapids it was a paid position to test the website to see what’s wrong with it. What they didn’t like it, that’s. You know, how can we speed up?

Me.

Or for example, I work with a. It was. I was teaching a team how to do very stream mapping and a three, I believe a very stream mapping a three and we improve the permanent process they used to take weeks. Four to six weeks till you get a permit to connect to the city water system. Because we had inefficient process, what did we do? Eliminated. We found out when we had our. I looked like kid you not had a camcorder and I would camcorder follow these ladies. Were doing these type perimeter and then I showed them in the conference room. How much waste? Why are you entering? Customer information you entering and you entering into different database. We consolidate the at, guys says. Give me till Monday. I’ll have it. And then they say, well, we do this because we need to report and I have to explain itself. I said, Sir, can you make a report? What time would you like? I like 8:00 AM automated report, she said. This is. Miracle simple things. If you look at it, it’s very. It’s not a rock and science, and that’s why I’m very excited about our federal government thinking being more efficient and fight efficiency in our government. And I hope truly that they will apply. Lean philosophy, not the old school old management, you know, just and then the next governor’s gonna come. It’s gonna make worse, and the next. Whatever, whoever the next coming is gonna say. Oh, my God, we’re struggling. And that’s what happened. If you look at the previous administration. Do some research on this right now. Matter, Democrats or Republicans, they all. Tried this already? Democrats and Republicans. But they fail. Why? Because they didn’t apply in lean. They apply the old management slash and then I look good. Look at my. I. I look good while I’m in the in the sea. After I go to seat. Guy a girl comes in. You look bad. It’s. Oh, my God, we can’t get the. Done fire. What’s the? Higher and we need to stop, at least here in United States, we’re smart. Fair enough. Very good. We need to stop wasting our own money. My. Your money, you know, that’s let’s stop our wasting our money and help our people. And I truly always when I spoke at conferences or when I spoke at the MLC events, I always said I have a dream one day. Government is going to wake up and if you follow me, LinkedIn. My post. Sometimes I mention I wish somebody in government will hire some of us. I swear to God, I’ll keep my job. Academy, I’ll volunteer some time just to help them because if I help my government, I’m helping my own people. You know, so I’m glad that this is happening and I hope they’re heading the right direction.

Yeah, I. I think it’s a good opportunity and I just hope that they’re looking at it the same way and people 1st and respect for people approach and and there is I’m sure a lot of opportunity it’s and it’s gonna take a little longer than just going in and cut.

It’s for dinner.

But that’s gonna lead to maybe long term success, which is always the goal is not. For short term gain and actually worse conditions later and the taxpayers suffer with bad services are inadequate resources in the right areas. Yeah, I’m hoping too that this is approached in the in a lean way and not. A whole traditional way.

OK.

I think we have a lot of examples of other states, cities that have done this beyond grand.

Yeah, I agree.

So I think there’s enough examples from across the country that can support this kind of effort and say no, this is the right way to do it. I. Tried this in our area our state. And it didn’t work until we did this. You know, I guess newer approach, but more lean, more respectful approach.

I’m upset. With.

You yeah.

So yeah.

Hopefully that’s taken into consideration going forward.

Yes. And we have to talk about the Leo Podcast, for example. As I mentioned to you earlier, I really not big. I love podcasts listening. I don’t want to be in podcasts. I personally don’t like being podcast, but I love listening. Listen podcasts almost daily. That’s on my. I love to listen to these podcasts. But we need to talk about it like you and I right now. Somebody, hopefully from government, will hear this conversation and said let me explore a little bit more of what these guys are talking about.

I think that’d be great, yeah. You also mentioned nonprofit volunteering and you having some nonprofits come to the MLC conference. And I know there’s been some good organizations. I’ve seen and heard examples in the state of Michigan with nonprofits applying lean and. Event like Oakland University has some initiatives with students to connect them with nonprofits through. James Womack Foundation Foundation or scholarship fund. Plus other organizations as volunteering with their non profit partners. There’s a lot of companies in Michigan, so.

Mm. OK.

Can you share some of examples or experiences you’ve had with working with non profits? A little different than government, but some similarities, I’m sure.

Very. Yes, I agree. So I’ll give you some examples quickly. One example is I helped establish West Michigan Community Relief Organization. We registered as a 501C at that time and our goal was to help the refugees coming to sit again. Refugees would come from different parts of the country, from South America, from Middle East and other countries. And government gives them a payment for for apartment to buy some food and stuff like that, groceries. But the government really didn’t provide, like, furniture. And clothing to them. And we found a. So there was a need and then a group of us in Grand Rapids said, hey, let’s my wife and I have done this through Facebook and all that. So there was not officially anything just among our network. And then there was another lady who reached out to us and said, hey, do you want to join? And then we joined with. Same thing through Facebook and then we estab. Community that we lived in this nonprofitization called W Mission Community Relief. Today I’m in. Here we don’t have a building officially there, but we still. Help people text me. Say, Ellen, I have furniture to donate. Can you find out who needs and I I tell my wife she gets with that Lady. that Lady lives in Florida and she finds the address within 24 hours. I send back. Said can you deliver? They say yes or. If they can’t, then I find a friend. In Grand Rapids, that can’t go and pick it up and we make those arrangements smaller scale back then it was a big scale. We made it like a bootleg, but you don’t pay anything. All these refugees would come into the rented facility that we had a huge facility. We sorted all baby clothing, adults, diapers, toiletries, all that was like a store. And these individual come with unlock. They will pick what they want and some people, most people were not able to travel. Then they tell us what age, what they need, and we will package these boxes and deliver to their homes. So that’s one. The other example is a product solidarity. My wife and her friend Christian. In City Grand Rapids started that I was just coaching, mentoring my. They started that and basically what that is making little bags for homeless population instead of giving them money.

Yeah, try it.

We didn’t give money, we encouraged. Give us the money. Or not even give us the money. There’s a Amazon, another name, but he’s an Amazon. Wish list what we need right now is winters from Michigan. Get some. Let’s get some foot. Warm hand warmers. Let’s come to brushes and all that, and then we would package that in my house or Christian’s house and her family would package. Would package it and load our cars. Grand Rapids downtown and give to the homeless population and keep it in our cars. Whenever we see someone hit the bag or ask for money. Give them that. So that’s one organization. The other one was and I’m very passionate about that one because we made a great improvement. But yes, we wanted to a certain time of the. We wanted to package a goods, so we collected money from the Community in Grand Rapids and we did get the cash from them or they gave us like cans. Said we need bean cans. We need green. Whatever we needed. We told them we need wheat. We need this neck and they would bring it to my house. And in the garage. So I turned my two store garage about two. Garage was like a warehouse. People would bring that to me. I would buy Home Depot a lot of boxes. Medium size or large size and then we would set it down. And we would package that and deliver to the people that were needed. And we had a list. I mean, I’ve been doing this for many years in Grand Rapids. Didn’t know me from Grand Rapids my community back. They know I’ve been building that network, so we had many addresses that we know they’re needy people, people that really have a hard time. Those are single mothers with a bunch of kids or dad and mom. From the war zone and dad got injured or something like that can’t work. And Mom has like 7 kids. No way. She can’t work. So those are the people that we tried to. One of the things I want to mention about that particular case we did very. But delivering took us two days a weekend, so I had to always find a lot of volunteers to to deliver these boxes. So I. Hey, I’m a lean guy. I need to find a better way. Me and my wife sitting in a lane and said I am inefficient and Allen Ganic is inefficient. Yes, my heart is there. ‘S heart is there. We don’t run a well, good operation. So to give you a short story, I start researching how can I deliver faster? Because I would send a person to deliver here and then other part of the city and then go back here and here and here. So they only I can only deliver like. Orders I. I’ve been driving for 8 hours today, just four or five boxes. So to make the only show what I. Out. I don’t know if it still exists, but back then there was a MapQuest and you enter all 2530 Anderson that you’re going to deliver and say find me the best routes and then MapQuest just fits out from Allen from your home. First stop should be here. Here, here. What I did, I start spending out those maps and highlighting for individuals. Said Tom. You’re gonna take the five. Here’s your my son’s gonna come help you to deliver those boxes. Gotta have it. So two people I teamed them up. I said bring my son back when you’re done. And then this. So I had a bunch of like 20-30 volunteers. Four hours. Everything’s doing it. Couldn’t believe. It was like I think it was summer, spring be mobile setting because I had to be there like a like a koalcenter. I’m in my front yard and I have a table, my picnic table. My wife is there with a tea and all that we’re talking about and which can’t stand a full what’s up? Can’t find it. The. Can you call? And so we were on the phone and four hours were delivered. Two days we delivered. So this is kind of to help the nonprofit organization and couple examples.

How did you see the difference in working with government and the non profits? It very similar? Or is there different challenges there?

There there are different challenges, and here’s the difference between government and nonprofit. Most nonprofit are communities religious institutes. How do they operate with volunteers? Do I tell everybody when I teach now people in and they say we really want to learn. Lena. So you want to learn lean. OK, volunteer. I need you to volunteer somewhere. At your church or somewhere else? Volunteer. And I want you to become a leader. In that organization, the way you volunteer, but not by asking to be a leader, them promoting you, and then you’re going to learn lean. Why learning. Governments, people still get paid they. Said like I used to teach people and say, hey, I’m going to teach you. Lean as I have no idea what you’re talking about. I said, well, we’re going to talk about. Is that I still used to be Jewish with me, but I had 7 hours and 30 minutes left on the payroll. You got me till 3:00, so I’ll listen. You. I’m paid. I’m going to be. Then in the booth, I said, OK, cool. So that’s government, right? Umm. Nonprofit most cases volunteers. So you have to have a different tactic. You have to have different strategy plans. You have to plan AD and C what if 30 people don’t show up? Yeah. My plan was to have 30 volunteers to show up to do these deliveries. If I end up with. You know, people just call. I’m sick. Have a sick kid, whatever. They have excuses. That’s fine. They’re not very dedicated to. Sometimes people like to volunteer. Raise your hand. Who’s going? Say I have 50. I only end up with three people showing up when the event really happens and everybody else later has an excuse. That’s the difference between government volunteering. You have to have a different thought process. And more strategy than just one.

Yeah, I think back to when experience and that was the the solution was what is the configuration for this processing area based on how many people showed up.

Pitching.

And so you had to. These. All right, here’s the three people show up, and if 5 people and eight people. And here’s how you can configure.

Is this?

But you can hope for a certain show up rate or you can start to collect data to know that you’re going to get 30% of the sign up or 50%.

If we.

The process have to be more robust and more flexible to account for what actually happens exactly.

Thank you. This is a really good examples really. I think there’s a lot of application in these sectors that and and a lot of good examples already that happened. So I’m excited that the momentum continues and. Hopefully people can hear your. We’ll connect up all the the YouTube videos you mentioned. You know, I heard about you through the Gumba Academy podcast, so we’ll link to that episode so people can learn more as well. How can people reach out to you or connect with you? Know we connected through LinkedIn. Is that the best way.

Mm. It is. And that where I do a lot of networks. I am a big in networking. LinkedIn is. Best. So Alan Gannik, my name is spelled ALEN, last name Ganic GANIC. You will find me there and the best way to get all the maze through LinkedIn.

And where we have that in common is we have strange spellings to kind of standard names in the US. Yeah, there’s probably not many other ALEN. That’s maybe easy to find. Well, thank you so much for for being a guest and sharing your your knowledge and experience. Luck in your continued ventures and thanks for all the work you’ve done.

Thank you, Brion, and thank you for having me. Was a pleasure talking to you.

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