we're here today at Ontario Medical Group Management Association conference it's a great conference of all the family health teams across Ontario coming together at Niagara Falls and here we're hearing a lot of topics that are near dear to our heart when we talk about lean and continues process improvements and today I have a guest special guest Sarah greatness magnified okay and today Sarah was talking this morning about recognition work and what it means and I would love to ask Sarah a couple of questions what is recognition mean and what does it mean for somebody mean organization building lean culture yeah well of course so much of what the work that you do I'm sure is around helping leaders to be really visible very much involved at where the value is created and and that's the also the perfect place where people are recognized right if you're a leader and you're seeing an excellence in your team you're seeing the little extraordinary moments that we might miss in our ordinary work lives because we're busy we're frazzled we feel we keep we have so much to do well the leaders here in this conference they've just done an incredible job of really finding ways in which they can get out of their office and they can be really visible they can be noticing these things what I mean you know I don't have to tell you the other key component is that we have to be really motivated to in fact honor and acknowledge what's happening well at the frontline because they're the ones who are where the value is created and so if we notice then we acknowledge their voice and it matters as opposed to we as the leaders are the primary source that's pretty fundamental in any lean journey and it's also fundamental in an effective team that's that's a great point Sarah because we when we come into organizations a lot of times we see a lot of meetings leadership meetings management meetings we are they made they made lots of lots of you know talk and decisions on different organizational initiatives but we never see at the tables the frontline staff or you know their input in terms of you know we're dizzy because you know they see things from theirs from where they are right which might be a little different from what the leaders are seeing or what the middle management is seeing so I think what you're saying is crucial right to recognition that those frontline people are at the front doing the work and they can help to create those you know changes that leaders are trying to create now I wanted to ask you one question around how do you think what do you think for a leader that is trying to drive a culture of innovation what would they you know he tried to create a momentum or engaging your staff what do you think some of the things they can do to motivate their stuff to you know really bring out the the ideas because they know best right yeah we'll start with that you know asking that question you know I know that you have some great ideas what would you recommend it's a form of recognition of course valuing incredible expertise and and the fact that folks do know what is happening around here but of course that's where you get idea generation and when people don't show up just to do the job that presenteeism concept that we and HR know is kind of the death of innovation and continuous improvement when people feel engaged and committed it's almost like I was describing with a client the other day they were confused like what is it that we've done managed to do and shift in our culture I said I think what you've done is you've helped the employees to be owners so when you have an ownership mentality that this is my organization whether you own it whether you're the leader whether you're names on the door but you actually feel like you have a vested interest in the success of the people receiving care here in the case of health care or in the product that you serve your create if you're a manufacturing and so forth that's a different mentality and you actually are going to come up with more creative and meant of ideas as well as of course be looking around and paying attention to what can be improved as well it's actually it's a great point because the accountability part is so so crucial a lot of times we see like performance evaluation systems or you have said the goals at the beginning of the year and then you evaluate them in that year and year but we still don't see the performance improvement the productivity the engagement of staff is still not there right and this whole mentality about I'm owning it you know I'm accountable and it's mine and I want to make do the best job I can it's something that could drive the any lean initiative to where it wants to because a lot of times we do see a lot of lean initiatives and you know they don't necessarily if they fail or they're not as successful and people lose the faith in the system in a process even though we do know that all the successful organizations that have implemented lean you know properly it's something that works for them an ongoing basis so we try to always explain when we come to the organizations that the leaders in the management are part of it here you are the sort of the foundation to build this culture of innovation of continuous improvement because you know lean is about as a management we're here to support you when we say times of its servant-leadership right yeah and so this is where I want to make kind of get the point across to those organizations that may have tried lean and think that it's not something that's working for them it's not just about the set of tools you know it's a whole culture and a whole mentality about how you see thinks is the organization and we're all part of it to make it successful yeah well thank you for your time my pleasure I look forward to some more you know times where we can learn from each other and sounds good