People Solve Problems

On this episode of People Solve Problems, host Jamie Flinchbaugh welcomes Bob Rogers, Founder and Chairman of BRC Imagination Arts and author of the new book Deep Story: A Complete Guide to Creating Transformational Visitor Attractions. Bob has spent five decades building visitor experiences for some of the world's best-known brands and museums, work that has earned more than five hundred international awards. It started somewhere smaller. At eighteen, he performed magic in the Magic Shop at Disneyland, where the job was to amaze people and then sell them the trick while they were still amazed. The lesson that stuck came after a customer bought a trick, read the instructions, and returned to expose him. A senior magician he admired told him the shop was not a temple built to display his skill. People came not to admire him, but hoping he would help them find some magic in themselves. Bob has treated that ever since as the foundation of selling, of hospitality, and of any attempt to communicate. This is where he believes most business communication goes wrong. Organizations decide what they want to say and build outward from the message, but wanting to say something does not create anyone's desire to hear it. Deep story runs the other direction. You look far into the audience for an emotional truth that already moves them, and far into the brand for the same thing, and the part people miss is that you are not looking for two triggers. You want the one that already exists in both. He frames it with a formula he admits sounds silly for creative work. An audience, A, enters a triangle, the delta symbol of change, and comes out as A prime. A prime minus A is the whole assignment, and that difference is almost always a change of heart, not a change in what people know. The Johnnie Walker experience in Edinburgh shows what that looks like in practice. It runs nine stories, and most guests arrive believing they do not like whiskey. Rather than teaching them the correct way to drink it, the experience asks what flavors they enjoy and builds a first cocktail to match. Bob reports net promoter scores in the low to mid eighties and a brand conversion score of ninety-one. Bartenders are trained never to push their own tastes. When the Milwaukee Brewers wanted an experience honoring founder Bud Selig, the team passed over his complicated public record for something smaller. Selig fell in love with baseball because his mother took him to games, which is how much of the crowd came to the sport too. That, Bob says, is the trigger you cannot manufacture, only find. For listeners whose reach extends to rearranging conference room chairs rather than commissioning a building, Bob suggests finding someone who will guide the process rather than decorate it, and starting with the heart rather than the technology. Fifty years have convinced him that people settle on emotion first and arrange the facts to fit afterward. To learn more about Bob's work, visit BRC Imagination Arts  Connect with him on LinkedIn You can also follow BRC Imagination Arts on LinkedIn  and Instagram, and find the book at deep-story.com.

In this episode of People Solve Problems, host Jamie Flinchbaugh welcomes Norbert Majerus, a creative problem solver at Norbert Majerus Consulting. With 45 years in industrial creativity and 60 US patents to his name, Norbert brings deep expertise from his years implementing lean product development at Goodyear's global innovation centers. Norbert draws a clear distinction between creativity and innovation that cuts through the confusion around these terms. Creativity, he explains, is about generating new ideas and creating something new. Innovation happens when those creative ideas are brought to market and generate value. Not every creative idea becomes an innovation—only a select few make that leap—but creativity remains essential across all problem-solving contexts, whether the immediate goal involves profit or not. The conversation turns to a pressing challenge: many organizations find themselves trapped in a box of their own making, unable to think beyond established patterns. Norbert identifies several significant obstacles to industrial creativity. Fear stands as the most formidable barrier. He shares a personal story of nearly being fired by a vice president who refused to allow risky new ideas, illustrating how leaders focused on protecting their careers create cultures where people avoid taking chances. When the perceived risk of failure outweighs the potential for success in someone's mind, creativity withers. Beyond fear, Norbert points to the physical environment as a surprisingly important factor. He contrasts his experience visiting Google—where the environment changed dramatically every 50 steps, with bikes and stimulating spaces—against his own workplace, which was redesigned with uniform white walls and strict prohibitions on personalization. Environment shapes culture, and culture shapes creativity. Norbert emphasizes that today's complex problems cannot be solved within narrow functional boundaries. True creativity requires collaboration across disciplines and departments, bringing together different perspectives. Yet many companies inadvertently educate their people to work against each other rather than together. Breaking down these silos requires intentional cultural work. To foster collaboration, Norbert developed a powerful exercise involving teams solving five interconnected puzzles. Participants initially approach the task individually, trying to solve their own puzzle first. They consistently fail until they realize they can only succeed by helping each other. Even resistant leaders eventually grasp the lesson. Norbert stresses that behaviors must come before beliefs—lecturing about collaboration doesn't work, but creating experiences that demonstrate its value does. For managers who want to move in this direction without the authority to change company culture, Norbert offers practical advice. First, find a sponsor or supporter who can help break down walls and provide air cover. Second, and critically, start with something significant. Rather than working on countless tiny projects that never make a visible impact, tackle a problem big enough that solving it will bring others to your door, asking how you did it. Success with meaningful challenges builds momentum far more effectively than incremental wins on trivial matters. Throughout his career, Norbert learned that subtle approaches work better than direct mandates. Taking teams to visit other companies nearby, exposing them to different ways of working, proved transformative. Within six months, teams that initially fought and blamed each other were asking, "How can I help you?" when problems arose. For more insights on lean-driven innovation and creative problem-solving, visit Norbert's website at leandriveninnovation.com or connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/norbert-majerus-5a746235/.   You can find Norbert’s books here: Winning Innovation and Lean-Driven Innovation

J. Chris White, Co-Founder and CEO of scmBLOX, joined host Jamie Flinchbaugh to explore the critical differences between systems thinking and systems dynamics, and how these approaches can transform supply chain management. As a systems dynamics modeler with 30 years of experience covering operations and supply chains, Chris brought deep expertise to this conversation about solving complex business problems. Chris explained that while many people embrace systems thinking after reading Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline," they often miss that Senge was actually a systems dynamicist trained by Jay Forrester, who created systems dynamics. According to Chris, systems thinking provides valuable guidance, but when it comes to actually solving problems, you need the rigor of systems dynamics modeling and simulation. He described systems thinking as appreciating the use of data in decision making, while systems dynamics is doing all the math to generate that data. The conversation revealed how he views systems dynamics as another tool in the problem-solving toolbox. He emphasized that it works best for larger, interconnected problems where you need to see the whole system view. He explained that systems are collections of parts that are interrelated and interconnected, all working together to achieve a goal. As systems become more complex, the relationships between parts begin to dominate, which is where systems dynamics shines. When discussing supply chain management specifically, Chris highlighted how traditional "end-to-end" approaches are actually quite limited. Most companies only track orders from their immediate suppliers to customer delivery, but he pointed out that COVID-19 revealed how interconnected supply chains really are. The disruptions, bullwhip effects, and shortages that dominated news cycles showed that problems happening several tiers upstream can significantly impact your business. Chris used a tree analogy to illustrate this point: there's little value in optimizing the leaves when you should have been on a different branch strategically to begin with. He emphasized that resilience is more of a system phenomenon than an individual company trait, and that understanding supply chains as systems gives you more power to change the future. One of the biggest surprises he encounters when working with clients is how little data they actually need to get started. Unlike statistical models that rely heavily on data, systems dynamics focuses on causal connections and structure. He explained that if you know what you're making and have a bill of materials, your supply chain usually mirrors that structure. This allows companies to begin modeling without perfect visibility into every supplier's capacity or inventory levels. Chris emphasized that when companies optimize only their individual parts of the supply chain, they often create unintended effects that come back to hurt them later. What seems beneficial in the short term can actually cause problems in the long term. The goal is to help companies understand how their decisions impact the entire supply chain system, not just their immediate operations. Throughout the discussion, Chris demonstrated how systems dynamics provides a scientific approach to understanding supply chain vulnerabilities before disruptions occur, whether they're global events like the Suez Canal blockage or local issues like supplier bankruptcies. To learn more about Chris White's work in systems dynamics and supply chain management, visit scmblox.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Dr. Shannon Flumerfelt, Founder of Charactership Lean Consulting and Endowed Professor of Lean at Oakland University, joined host Jamie Flinchbaugh to discuss her systematic approach to coaching leaders through difficult situations and complex problem-solving challenges. Dr. Flumerfelt shared her framework for handling difficult coaching situations, which begins with understanding whether the challenge stems from external factors or internal issues. She explains that external problems—such as skill gaps or training needs—are often easier to address through coaching and mentoring. However, internal challenges require a deeper analysis using what she calls the "head, heart, and hands" approach: examining a person's knowledge, disposition, and actual capabilities. When faced with complex situations, Dr. Flumerfelt advocates for creating an Ishikawa diagram to break down all contributing factors. She emphasizes the power of co-creating these visual tools with clients, noting that self-reflection becomes most powerful when people can see their challenges mapped out concretely. This approach helps remove emotional drama from the situation and enables more logical, analytical thinking while still respecting people's feelings and perspectives. Regarding prioritization when multiple problems exist, she stresses that the approach must be organic and context-dependent, true to lean principles. She suggests several methods for determining where to start: ensuring strategic alignment with organizational goals through Hoshin Kanri planning, conducting quality function deployment analysis to understand customer requirements, or using Pareto analysis to tackle the most significant causes first. However, she cautions that sometimes the biggest problems are beyond an individual's scope of influence, requiring a more realistic assessment of what can be accomplished. Dr. Flumerfelt also recommends using interrelationship diagrams to identify which issues have the most connections to other problems, as addressing these can create the greatest ripple effect of positive change. The key is understanding your level of power, influence, and authority within the organization and working within those realistic boundaries. When discussing how to tap into people's intuition alongside analytical tools, she acknowledges that lean thinking often appears heavily engineering-focused and black-and-white. However, she emphasizes that successful lean implementation requires understanding the complete framework of lean thinking, not just selecting individual tools. She advocates for using personality assessments like Myers-Briggs to understand team members' strengths and whether they tend toward intuitive or logical approaches. She highlights the concept of social capital as a competitive advantage, referencing Michael Porter's work. She believes organizations drastically underutilize their human potential, comparing it to how individuals only use a small percentage of their brain capacity. When you multiply underutilized brains across an entire organization, the untapped potential becomes enormous. This perspective drives her approach to individualizing and customizing development for each person, recognizing that people aren't robots and have unique strengths and weaknesses that deserve respect. Throughout the conversation, the importance of visual management tools and moving beyond just thinking or journaling to drawing out and visualizing problems and solutions was emphasized. This structured approach helps transform messy, complex situations into manageable challenges that can be systematically addressed. For those interested in experiencing her approach firsthand, Dr. Flumerfelt offers consulting services through Charactership Lean Consulting and teaches in Oakland University's graduate Lean Leadership program—a rare opportunity in higher education. To learn more about Dr. Flumerfelt's work, visit charactershiplean.org or connect with her on LinkedIn 

Melinda Manente, Process Improvement Coach & Facilitator at GBMP Consulting Group, joins Jamie Flinchbaugh on the People Solve Problems podcast to share her extensive experience in creating transformational change within organizations. With over 30 years of experience at global Fortune 100 companies including Cisco, Parker Hannifin, Intel, and General Electric, Melinda brings valuable insights into developing problem-solving cultures that engage employees at all levels. Melinda emphasizes that meaningful transformation requires both a clear vision and what she calls a "burning platform" - a compelling reason for change that motivates people to step out of their comfort zones. She explains how organizations can benefit from redefining what constitutes a problem, shifting from focusing solely on large, dramatic issues to addressing smaller, daily challenges. This perspective change allows companies to tap into their most valuable resource - their people - by making problem solving part of everyone's daily job content. Throughout the conversation, Melinda shares practical strategies for implementing simple yet effective problem-solving methods that showcase learning, build transparency, and foster team collaboration. She advocates for creating systems that encourage experimentation and rapid learning through a "fail fast" approach, allowing teams to iterate quickly and apply their learnings immediately. Her methodology balances the need for action with thoughtful reflection, creating a culture where problems become opportunities for growth rather than sources of stress. A central theme in Melinda's approach is how the principle of “Respect for People” serves as the foundation for effective problem-solving. She demonstrates how common lean tools like direct observation and 5S become significantly more impactful when implemented within a framework of genuine respect. She shares real-world examples of how this respect-centered approach has transformed organizations she's worked with, creating sustainable change that continues long after formal improvement initiatives end. The conversation concludes with Melinda's insights on the "inside-out" approach to leading organizational change, emphasizing that transformational leaders must first transform themselves before they can effectively guide others. Jamie and Melinda discuss how this self-awareness and personal growth create the authenticity needed to inspire lasting change across an organization. For listeners interested in learning more about Melinda Manente's work on problem-solving and the Respect for People approach, they can visit the GBMP website at https://www.gbmp.org and explore the Respect for People Roadmap, or connect with her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/melindamanente.