Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And I have Joe Sprangel joining us. And Joe has a book out called Humanist Manufacturing: A Humanitarian Approach to Excellence in High Impact Plant Operations. And what we want to say to all our listeners is not just for that it's really across the board, being humanist and a better humanist leader. Okay. And, Joe, Good day to you.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Thank you, good day to you as well, my appreciate.

Greg Voisen
Well, and you are joining us from where,

Dr. Joe Sprangel
in Stanton, Virginia, and part of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia,

Greg Voisen
beautiful part of the country, thanks for taking this time to impart some of your wisdom on our listeners about this. And I'm really looking forward to this. So let me let our listeners know a little bit about you, Joe, it's Dr. Joseph rango. dB A is an Associate Professor of Business at Mary Baldwin University. He's also the founder and principal consultant of Emanuel Strategic Sustainability. That's the website we're gonna have a link to. So all of you can go there to learn more about Joe and his teaching. He blends his academic and industrial background to redefine the role of manufacturing to an industry and effectively and efficiently balances environmental, financial and social success that leads to more inclusive and sustainable local economies, for all community members. He's a fascinating individual. And he's earned his Doctor of Business Administration degree from Lawrence Technical University. He also holds a Master of Business Administration degrees from Spring armor, university, spring Arbor, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Eastern Michigan University, and an associate degree in mechanical engineering technology. So you're speaking with someone that knows what he's talking about here. Joe, you know, to kind of kick this off, you wrote this book to bring more of a humanistic approach to manufacturing. And I want to say to everybody listening, don't let the word manufacturing discourage you from listening to this podcast, because this is really more about being more humanistic. In the whole organization. Can you tell our listeners a bit about your background, and why you believe shifting the focus to being more humanistic will result in greater productivity in the workplace.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
So I spent nearly 30 years in manufacturing shortly after I got to high school. And I began at the Labor level. And eventually I worked up to various maintenance, engineering and supervisory positions. And ultimately, I was in a role of a plant manager for FY different operations. It simultaneously I was also attending college in evenings and weekends, and earn dead bats, I'm sorry, business in engineering degrees from an associate to a doctorate, like you mentioned, while working full time. So the great thing is that allowed me to apply what I was learning right away. And I really enjoyed that aspect of going that way. And then I tell people, jokingly that I had a midlife crisis, I decided to become an academic. I didn't really have one. But it always makes for a better story, right? So but I transitioned to higher ed for the last 15 years, of which five and a half years I was a dean, and the balance of that I've been teaching, undergraduate and graduate courses. And as I studied, and both in the university settings, and just reading trade publications, and so forth, I really had a focus on what I call organizational excellence. I was into change management, leadership, principles, management, strategy, and so forth. Throughout my career. I was honored to be part of one of those best plants, that industry weeks does, or the Shingo prize or something like that. And while I didn't accomplish that, I feel like now I'm trying to help other organizations achieve maybe my dream, so working vicariously through them.

Greg Voisen
Well, you're still teaching. Yeah, you're still you're still teaching. And I think it's, you know, this, I think, Pete, our listeners have heard about the humanistic approach. There's the, you know, when you look at corporations, you can look at the balance sheet, what is the human capital balance sheet of a business and we look at human capital, we don't often realize business owners how important that element is, you know, because when you list your assets on the balance sheet, it's like hard plant equipment and all this stuff that you own, right. But when you realize If you have turnover, high turnover in a business, and especially in manufacturing, which it does seem to occur, more likely there may be at a place like Amazon where people are being pushed to get packages to get things in boxes and so on and go down assembly lines, you have that you gave a list of manufacturing companies that have been exempted zyk exemplars and have laid the foundation for others. Can you comment on some of these leaders and what they did differently to be focused on this human element at work? I think sometimes, always real examples are more important than anything.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Yeah. So commonality between all these leaders with they embrace the power of business to create a better world. And as a result, they gave their workforces kind of a unifying purpose, or what Simon Sinek is called the why. And it really helps to develop a deeper level of employee engagement. And his TED talk on why he has been viewed over 61 million times. So it's certainly you know, the concept resonates for people. And..

Greg Voisen
But just an insight, just on my little show, he's at over 250,000 downloads about the interview I did with him on why. So you can see why he's had would you say 9 million is what you said? No, I

Dr. Joe Sprangel
said it's been viewed 61 million times

Greg Voisen
61 million times. So I added to that. So go ahead. I'm sorry that I interrupted you. But I want to let my listeners know there is a podcast with Simon Sinek on Inside Personal Growth, so..

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Good to know. And but each of them has also been a trailblazer, kind of following a path less traveled, I would say. So Ray Anderson was the founder and CEO of interphase. Unfortunately, he's passed away since but he had a spear in the chest epiphany after reading the ecology of commerce declaration of sustainability by Paul Hawken. And that led him on a path to take an interface to becoming an initially a zero impact company. And right now they're working on becoming a regenerative manufacturing operation. And then Mary Barra is one that I profiled and just been amazed with the work that she's done at General Motors in what they're doing right now to help create a safer, greener and better world. And

Greg Voisen
then what about your Elon canard at Patagonia? What would you say about him? I've seen him? Yeah, he doesn't. He doesn't speak a lot before a lot of groups. But I've read his book, let them play or whatever it's called. But he he's a fascinating man who started this a long, long time ago. Yeah.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Well, he was a mountain climber that I think he described himself as becoming an accidental business owner, that wasn't his plan when he started out. Right, one of the things that he found is that by making these decisions that were best for the planet, ultimately, they also positively impacted the bottom line. And that wasn't ultimately of the importance to him, obviously, he wanted to have a viable organization. But his first focus was what can we do as an outdoor apparel company and equipment supplier, to make sure that we're not harming the environment, which we enjoy so much. And so he created this, you know, purpose for his organization that, that gets people to buy from sorry to want to work for the organization. People feel good about buying their product, because they know hey, it's going to work well being it's, it's coming from a company that has values that that align with them as well. So, you know,

Greg Voisen
you know, and from a manufacturing standpoint, he also used to put out ads and he still does, you know, if you know, if you have a jacket and you don't need this don't buy my jacket. Right. Right. And, and I really don't think that was a ploy to get people to buy his jacket. I really believe he sincerely believe that. You know, some people say it's greenwashing. You know, just, he just did it. But the point is, is that he was saying that the energy that it takes to manufacture a jacket and get the supplies and all the rest of stuff when you look Cradle to Cradle, right? If you look at your closet, like I've looked at mine, and I'm using this as an example, I probably got 10 or 12 jackets in here, right? Do I really need another Patagonia jacket? Right? And then the question is, do I trade mine? No, because he's got a program where you can actually go and kind of recycle these. These jackets. I believe that's extremely smart. Yeah,

Dr. Joe Sprangel
well for him, it's not greenwashing because of the man just put the entire company into a trust to protect the environment moving forward, right? So he's not worried about money, right? Yvonne Shannara is not going to be having problems with that. But he's used business in a manner that is now going to be perpetually helping to create profits that will then also benefit the environment,

Greg Voisen
well, socially responsible. And I think when you talk about manufacturing, and people, there's, there's a guy called, it's a nonprofit called Clean the world. Now his great manufacturing story for you, we manufacture all these bars of soap that go into these hotels. And people only use them once, exactly. And then they throw them in the boxes, and this guy takes 2500 pounds a day. And he recycles them and makes them into soap that can be used by the homeless, and he sent them all around the world, right. And I kept thinking to myself, it's like, there's this whole process to grind them and put them on the manufacturing line, and then resend them and, and you know, and they come in these every day, they get 1000s and 1000s of pounds of these soaps from Marriott and all these places, and you look at it, you go, that is socially responsible at its very core, right. And I loved it. In your book, you outline six phases of humanistic manufacturing. I'd like for you to briefly mention the six phases, because we don't have time in a 40 minute podcast to cover everything, but we're gonna get, let my listeners will, we'll get to them and then give the 10 humanistic commitments of living humanistic values. And I think if we did that, and then I've got more questions that lead in and follow into that.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Alrighty, well starts out with phase one, where we look at the humanist commitments that are listed in the book that you mentioned. And looking at them from a perspective of better understanding them, adopting them, and then integrating those into the organization. And, you know, are these something that that can align with what a business owner or leader is trying to accomplish? And then move into the second phase where I recommend an owner, a leader actually, kind of does a self-assessment of their leadership approach? And what is their current vision, mission and values? And how do they align with the commitments and, you know, is there an as we go through different phases of our life or career, you know, something that might have been important when someone who started a company might be different now, and, and just kind of having this moment of reflection to say, okay, you know, here's where I am today, here's what's going to be important for me moving ahead. And then to repeat that process with the executive team so that ultimately, you end up with this really highly cohesive and effective leadership group, I'm going to put a lot of focus on robust internal operations in phase three. And really, what that is, is that we want our employees to be successful on the essential work that they carry out organizational wide, and make sure our customers are cared for that we care for each other, that both internal and external stakeholders as well. And then phase four is to develop what you know, is an employee centric workforce, where each member of the team, the organization as a whole can move towards reaching their full human potential. I have been at so many organizations where we just use a fraction of what people can bring to the table. And I've seen so many examples where when, when organization leadership starts to utilize employees in this manner, they find out that they have so much more capability than ever dream that they would have. And then five is, is going in and in determining what's going to be our place and in our community, what what's the impact that we can have to create a positive opportunity to help create a thriving community ecosystem for us. And so examples of that could be maybe we hire people on the autism spectrum that 80 85% are unemployed, but yet they have tremendous talent that could be utilized in different things like that, that, you know, instead of using up resources and leaving an abandoned factory behind, we're actually somebody that's committed to creating thriving with those that are part of the community in which we live. And then six is taking all this knowledge and then working through developing a strategy and then working through the tactical plans and then all of the change management plans that are required to that. And it's been kind of my experience, a lot of people can't, or I shouldn't say can they just, they don't walk through that in a really Strong logical process that, you know, you have books on leadership, you have books on change management and so forth. But part of why I wrote this book was to say, Okay, here's where you are today, status quo, here's where you might want to be five years from now. And this is what I see is the steps or the phases to help accomplish that role.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's a great, it gives people a great opportunity to kind of think of this as a model, and all those phases. And you can see how they all interplay with one another the way you explained them. So thank you for doing that. You know, in phase two, because we're gonna get into a little bit deeper here. You focus on leadership development, and how do leaders embrace I'm going to hopefully I don't mispronounces the Ubuntu philosophy, which is, and the why is it so important to shifting the entire culture to this? First explain the word and the origin of the word if I mispronounced it, read pronounce it. And then how do you get this entire cultural shift?

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Yeah, well, and I may pronounce it wrong, as well. But I'm going to philosophy. It's an African belief that we are selfhood to others didn't, you know, no one man or woman is an island and kind of, you know, right now we have kind of this new generation. And, you know, it just kind of goes counter to what I think is a good organizational culture. And wammy flippin Jr, was an advocate for justice, that communism and grassroots organization, where he saw it as a deeply personal philosophy that calls on us to mirror humanity to each other. And ultimately means that we're treating each other with openness, personal dignity, unquestioning cooperation, warmth, and with a participation and win, we all want to work in that sort of environment, right. And so bob chapman is one of the people that I profiled in the book and he moved his organization, Barry Wehmiller, from what they called a we centric organization into a I'm sorry, me centric organization into a we centric one where they treat everybody like family, they, they realize that the better they treat their employees and more productive they are, the employees are also going to have a better life, when they leave that place, because they're not going to go home angry, frustrated, and tired, you know, feeling like they've been abused all day. And so it really is just shifting to, you know, we're all in this together, we should be doing this in a manner that helps one another that lifts everybody up. And, you know, it's kind of organization I'd like to work in. And I know, I've worked at my best when I have that sort of situation going?

Greg Voisen
Well, it's refreshing to see that organizations, whether manufacturing or not, are embracing these shifts in consciousness associated to have a better work environment, because they realize that the people that are working in him, as we've evolved as a species in society, aren't willing to accept the old ways we used to work, which was command and control. And, you know, I've I know, Daniel Goldman has not been on our show, but everybody knows emotional intelligence from Daniel Goleman. And, you know, you talk about it in the book, and you say that, that leaders with greater ei emotional intelligence, and are that they're, they're better at leading, right? They're better at leading, what are some of the other benefits that we get from people that are more emotionally intelligent leaders? Other than just the fact that, Hey, there, I know, I just did one on experiential intelligence. Right. And it was a podcast that was done. And it was fascinating, because you just said two minutes ago, you don't even know the people you're working with and what they bring to the workplace. And they bring all these series of experiences in life that can really help the organization evolve. And certain elements of it evolve. And I want to talk about emotional intelligence. But I think that whole experiential intelligence thing, it's another whole factor that's important. Yeah.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
So you know, a lot of the benefits that come out of being more emotionally intelligent is that we can be more empathetic during difficult conversations that are inevitable when you're when you're going through a change process that helps us to manage our emotions and those of our coworkers in particular during stressful and overwhelming situation. People always wondered how I could stay so calm while I probably wasn't completely calm and you inside, but I realized that you know that it's a leader of the organization runs around like a chicken with his head cut off, everybody's going to start doing that that's not going to get anybody anywhere. It's also helpful in resolving conflict resolution, because if people understand that we are empathetic, they might be more willing to open up to us and helps us to motivate and coach our workforce increases employee collaboration, potential, and psychological safety. And it's so important if you want to make the kind of change we're talking about becomes more likely, in this type of environment. And ultimately, if we understand the emotions that precede thought, it's critical to help ourselves and others to improve themselves. And we're more likely to do achieve more tremendous success in our personal and professional lives, if we are led and can develop stronger emotional intelligence crossed organization.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I really love that. That terminology and the work that Goleman did around emotional intelligence, and I always look at it. I know if we're going to heal this world and heal our businesses and heal society. In general, that's gonna happen as a result of people becoming more compassionate with one another. If we all could learn and people are gonna say, well, you're talking about the Dalai Lama. Yeah, the Dalai Lama talks about being more compassionate overall. Right. But the reality is, that's the truth. I mean, you and I, on a previous call, talked about Herb Kelleher and Southwest Airlines, and his whole love thing, right. And well, most businesses don't want to mention the word love in it. So if you're not going to work, mention the word love and it because you think it's too woo woo, then you better be thinking about how emotionally intelligent your leaders are, and how compassionate those leaders can be to listen and understand the needs of the people are working for you. So you don't have turnover, as a result of, you know, having somebody who doesn't understand those things. And you we've all heard of this, you and I were just speaking about Simon Sinek before we got on the call. And it's the whole why thing the mission, vision values purpose, the why of our business, why do we exist? Why does this business do what it does? Can you give some examples of manufacturing and manufacturing businesses that have successfully shifted their culture by focusing on the why the why they have existed? Now, we did talk a little bit about your Vancian are just a minute ago, but there are others besides Yvon Chouinard. I remember Zappos shoes. He's no longer with us. He died in a fire in a home. But Tony was really big on the why of why Zappos existed, which is why, who the hell whatever thought we would have bought a pair of shoes off the internet, right? Yeah. But that's a good example. Tell us some others though, Joe.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Okay. Yeah, one of one of the wonderful gifts that I had while I was writing this book was a man named Fred Keller, who's the founder and chairman of Cascade engineering in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You know, he said he was a child of the 60s looking to live up to the principles of having a business that work for everyone. And so, is, as I went through this process, I would, you know, I ran the phases by him, I ran the initial draft of the book and so forth. And what really resonated well for me is that he said, hey, you know, yeah, I mean, you, you got this is what I was doing as I was developing my organization. And so, some of the things that they have done is that, you know, anti-racism was important to them. They, they implemented Diversity, Equity and Inclusion long before it became a recent emphasis to be Colette, you know, a politically correct standard practice. You know, they, they're one of the largest speakers in the world. They had a program called Be nice. I think they still do, I should say, and they're committed to mental health assistance to their employees and families through four step action plan. They hire people that are what they call returning citizens, somebody that's done previous time for being incarcerated for you know, some sort of mistake that they made. I don't know about you, but you know, I've made mistakes in my life where probably I could have ended up in prison. Thankfully, it didn't. But imagine only you know, being judged on the miss the one maybe the one significant mistake you made that you can't find work after that. They found that hey, we get great employees by allowing this opportunity. They're definitely veteran friendly. They've committed to helping People transition out of their military career into manufacturing industry. And then they have a program called welfare to career where they look at what can they do to help move people out of, you know, a poverty situation into a meaningful career. We often in our society, we give people enough to get by. And then if boy, if they want to make a difference in their lives, then we cut them off and they can't bridge that gap between, okay, I want to get off assistance, but I can't afford to get to work because I don't have a car and so forth. Well, they put programs in place to help people to be able to get to that job and to eventually get to a point where, okay, now, I'm, I'm okay, I'm over the other side of that bridge, and I can move forward.

Greg Voisen
Great company, for women

Dr. Joe Sprangel
and so forth.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it looks like they looked at everything, right. They, he really did a good job of it. It reminds me of an interview that occurred quite some time ago. But if you've not heard of this company, and in Michigan, called Zingerman's Deli, Ari, Ari Weinzweig, right, Weinzweig, and I'm gonna let all of my listeners know, because I think it's a perfect example in one of our podcasts because I did too with him, that I learned so much about how he shifted the culture of what would normally be just a normal deli, right. But it turned it into a multimillion dollar operation, and then books about his management style and philosophy. That's another great example of how you have good emotional intelligence, how you use your why and your purpose, to get your people behind you so that things coalesce into something wonderful, right? So you know, you say in phase three of your six phases, you talked about building overall operations? And I don't want to miss out on this because operations are operations on an assembly line and their operations inside. Anywhere in a company. What does it mean? And how do companies build an effective business operating system? You call it a bo s? I remember the guy that's, he's got the EOS entrepreneur operating system. But what is the bo S?

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Well, I don't think I've coined a new term there. But for me, it kind of brings to mind Dr. W. Edwards, Deming and his 14 points of management, in a particular quote that resonated with me is that a bad system will beat a good person every time. And I've experienced that I, you know, I've been in places where, you know, it seemed like the proverbial three ring circus where you'll be the next person, the owner fires because you couldn't turn water into wine or turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. And, you know, what, what happens is that they don't put a really strong robust system in place, like in the Toyota Production System, some known as lean manufacturing, where they don't attribute failures to breakdowns and individuals or the fault of an individual, they attributed to a breakdown in the process. And if you don't have strong robust processes, then you can't do the things that ultimately delight your customers and allow you to carry out what is important for you as an organization. And so for me, it's kind of a combination of the B impact assessment by B Lab, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Demings principles and the Toyota Production System. And it's gonna be a little different for every organization. But to me, it's kind of bringing those different elements together in a way that allows us as an organization to carry out our business in the most efficient and effective manner.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, the Toyota, I was sent a couple of books by a gentleman who their company was chosen by Toyota to actually win an award for the processing. And I had the pleasure of meeting him he was in Denver, and as a huge window manufacturing company. And Toyota chose to work with them, which I thought was kind of interesting, because I didn't even know they did that. But, you know, my listeners, probably of all listeners are, if they are there, they're familiar with the betterment Corporation, the B Corp. And in manufacturing, what impact would you say this B impact assessment would have on overall labor operations? And what shifts are you seeing in organizations focused on social and environmental impact that they have on the world because, you know, to get a betterment corporation, you just can't go out and get the designation you first have to start off it. I think you have to be in this in this a year, at least two years to actually get that certification or to actually apply as a betterment company, but there are a lot of Betterment companies out there, what do you see happening on the manufacturing side and the non-manufacturing side?

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Yeah. So cascade engineering is the largest B Corp in the world are one of them, I shouldn't say not the largest but and a lot of what I see in that movement is led me to one really critical conclusion. And when you combine this, for profit and nonprofit, the best of each together, you end up with it with a, some are calling the for benefit sector, that it's really an attractive employment option for Gen Z, and our younger millennial groups, and even old guys like me, you know, which company still wants to make a profit, but they're doing it with an environmental or social purpose. And so Shannara, they were one of the first people to lined up to be a certified B Corp. And, you know, they, they, in essence, what we're trying to do is do well while doing good, and so you know, somebody who works for a company, you making industry wages, as opposed to what sometimes are lesser in the nonprofit world. But it really excites people, because they're doing something that for whatever purpose that they have, they're, they're helping someone, you know, every day and the work that they do, each day that they're employed. And an example of this is I had a great opportunity to spend some time in a company called Impact makers. And Michael Braun states that, you know, they're kind of the IT and management consulting business, that's b2b version of Newman's Own, where they put all their profits towards charitable organizations. And while they're not manufacturing, what it found in the recurring theme of the interviews with these people that were the various stakeholders, so employees management team, their, their customers, their board members, and so forth, was just this great pride in the work that they were doing, because they knew they were helping the community. And so they had this really defined why, and it allowed them to, to be able to say, okay, you know, we're not just saying we're doing this, we actually have verification that we are the type of company that's making a difference in the community where we operate.

Greg Voisen
And I see more and more people, even smaller businesses headed that way, Joe, they're, they're really realizing I don't, you know, you can't blame this on COVID. But a lot of people said COVID was kind of a, this jolt that many people and many organizations needed to really understand this. And I would agree, it was one of the jolts, but I think it had been leading up to it, there had been so many changes in our world that created it, and it just an optimal opportunity to embrace it. And, you know, you talk about Cradle to Cradle design, and the specific impacts that this innovation has on manufacturing. Also, could you give the listeners, some examples of organizations that are really doing a good job in Cradle to Cradle design, that's having a reduced impact on the environment. I know for a fact that, you know, I look at Apple and I say, okay, apples got a great return policy, where does all that go. So you know, I turn in a computer does an end over in Taiwan, and somebody rips out all the chips and the component parts to re manufacture another iPad or iPhone or something. But, you know, this whole Cradle to Cradle design thing is so important. When you look at packaging, when you look at everything, and everybody's focused on packaging. And I'm like, well, yeah, you're focused on packaging. But what about the frickin product that comes in the package? Where's that go afterwards?

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Yeah. Yeah, this cradle to cradle design is the shift from linear consumption where we just use something and then we trash it. You know, I think in six months, we would suppose of most everything we purchase very, there's very few things that lasts, you know, beyond that six months cycle, and Cradle to Cradle design. They're looking at things like a biological cycle or a technological cycle. The biological designs are things that are naturally biodegradable like the I don't know if you remember the Sun Chips bag for many years ago, it was compostable. They thought it was gonna be a great idea. It wasn't well received because it made a lot of noise, but technical designs reutilize chemical was metals and oil based materials that are reused and recycled in a closed system until an example of this is interface, who's again, one of the companies that I profiled, they actually receive all of their US carpet back that people are willing to send.

Greg Voisen
Anderson was a leader in that he Oh, yeah, he's,

Dr. Joe Sprangel
he's kind of became my, I don't know how many heroes but Ray Anderson is one of them.

Greg Voisen
Ray Anderson really was to so many people. I mean, he was phenomenal. And when I worked with Larry, Larry Wilson at Wilson learning, we always use the Randerson story around how he recycled the backs of carpeting and the fibers in the carpeting, right. And, you know, for that time, because I'm going back 1520 years, that was really monumental, kind of thing to do. You just end up in the dump, right and bury it in the ground.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
A lot of this started in the mid-90s, when most people didn't even know what sustainability was. Right. Definitely a pioneer. Yeah. But they're now a third party carbon neutral enterprise. So you know, that they're neutralized their carbon impact across their operations across all avenues of their business, and even throughout their value chain. And now they're working on being regenerative organization where they, you know, their factory will positively contribute to a forest, for example, using biomimicry design, and h2 green steel is another example. And Bowden, which is in northern Sweden. They're a company that's working to produce screen steel that reduce the co2 emissions by up to 95%. But when compared to traditional steelmaking, so water and heat become their primary missions by replacing coal with green hydrogen, for example, instead of fossil fuel, electricity, so they're just a couple of many examples of companies,

Greg Voisen
how many? How many? Would you say, Joe, because you're you got your finger on the pulse here. You know, usually, when you get in government involved in this to create legislation that forces somebody to do something, it's taken them a long time to actually change their ways. Do you see many of these people now willing to shift their ways without compliance to some rule from the EPA or some other governmental body organization that saying, hey, you've got to go here, or they finally realize that they're losing consumers, because they're manufacturing a certain way? And we have more people that are environmentally sensitive and want to buy products like that? I mean, what would you say overall is going on? Because it just seems so challenging to get your head around?

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Yeah, sadly, it's still not the norm. You know, there are these leading exemplars that have started to implement this into their manufacturing operations. Part of it, you know, in the book, I talk about a lot of different challenges that companies face. And, you know, I've been in so many companies where, I mean, they just were doing everything they could to survive from one day that an X, maybe they don't have good cash flow, and so on and so forth. But smart companies start to figure out, well, what can I do to save a little money here and then put some of that aside, and then you know, it's talked about in the book about eating that elephant, right? You got to eat it one bite at a time. You can't go from where I'm at today to being holy, sustainable overnight. It's gonna take time takes money takes effort, and, but it's certainly possible. These are all companies that that are examples that show that yeah, you can you can accomplish this if you want to. And is there I

Greg Voisen
mean, without investing billions into retooling the whole manufacturing plant. I mean, an example you just said was reutilizing. Let's just say the cutting oil from a machines an actual machine that's uh, uh, see, what do they call them CDC machines he CNC. So out here in California, I worked with a lot of people that were at CNC machines, and you'd see all that cutting oil going back through there, and they're making bolts and they're making things for aircraft and they're making, you know, whatever it is that they're making, right. But is that an example just let's take that one little example of things that people can actually use and recycle pretty effectively before they dump it down the drain or they have some environmental agencies come and pick it up and a 55 gallon drum and haul it off somewhere because none of us really knows where hospital waste goes. None of us really knows where CDC machine ink stuff goes. The average person listening out there doesn't have a clue. And I would probably be one of them because I know that there are huge companies, Joe, that make huge sums of money, just picking up hospital waste, right? Well, where the hell does all that go? You got all these parts you've cut out of people and stuff and skin and blood and all this stuff? And it's like, are you guys just incinerating that? I don't know.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Yeah, so you touched on definitely an example of something that could be a small initiative, right, you can figure out ways to filter that, that coolant, so that you can reuse it cutting oil. Or you just figure out ways to reduce the amount of water that you consume, or you figure out a way to recycle the water so that you're buying less from the system. It can be as simple as changing out light bulbs, I mean, many companies that I go into these days, they still have old light bulbs in them that are very energy consuming. And generally, in a very short period of time, a few lights here and there, it starts to add up to some pretty good savings.

Greg Voisen
Well, I love to see Walmart, when they came in, started putting solar panels on the roofs, and then opening up their stores with more lighting. And, you know, I've seen plenty of these examples. That just doesn't seem fast enough, soon enough, you know, but I get it, that it's very expensive to do. But it seems like most of them made a creed or a motto, or I should say, agree that they are going to start down this path. And you're starting to see some shifts in the way in which they operate. And I think, you know, I commend people like Amazon, for instance, saying, Hey, we're gonna replace our whole fleet with electric vehicles. Well, I mean, there's, there's some doomsayers out there that will say, Well, hey, you still gotta generate that power somehow? Is it being generated from coal burning plants? I mean, you can, it's, it's whoever is looking at the Cradle to Cradle design that says, hey, really, how much more energy efficient? Is this going to be? Is it going to save? How much in gasoline and resources versus what it's going to consume in electricity? And I'm all for all of that. But I don't think sometimes I think the decisions are made a little bit hastily, because it does get a little greenwashed. It's like, electric vehicles, right? You know, well, is that really better or not? And I'm not saying I'm disagreeing with electric vehicles, I'm just saying, it's a great thing. But I don't think they really look at everything.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
It kind of reminds me everybody was up in arms in New York City, because the horse manure was piling up. So you know, the solution was the automobile. The automobile brought some other problems. Were there, right. And I feel like we're gonna have some of the same impact with electric vehicles, because all of a sudden, now we need all this battery production. What are we going to do all these use batteries? Where are

Greg Voisen
we getting all this lithium? You know, there's, there's kind of a theory about Putin's war that Ukraine has a ton of lithium, and that's what he was. Hands on. So, you know, I just, I don't know what to think anymore. I just kind of let my listeners know, this is kind of some of the stuff you should be talking about. Right? So to wrap this show up, you got a great website, I want to let the listeners know it's a manual, strategic sustainability.com. That's Emmanuel, STR, A T E, G, I see sustainability, as US ti n a big ol it why.com. There's some free resources there. Can you mention the resources? And what would you like to leave the listeners with relative developing a more humanistic way to lead, develop and foster associates and teams within organizations that are being led? More humanistically? Okay.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
So yeah, on the website, there's various podcasts, and others that have done and a couple of TED talks that I did on kind of reinventing industrial, manufacturing, industrial complex and, and one on humanist manufacturing. There's, you can also find a graphic of the six phases, more detail. We actually didn't touch on the humanist commitments. But you can find more detail about what the 10 humanist commitments are that I based the book on. And then, if compelled, I encourage people to look at the webpage that talks about my book and I've looked at people buy a copy, see what they can do to implement any or all of it that is not an all or nothing sort of fingers. There's lots of different good suggestions in the book. And ultimately, I'd be happy to help organizations if they want to make this transition.

Greg Voisen
Well, I think importantly, they can just reach out to you there's an email and their contact form at your website to they can reach out and contact You, here's the book, it's not expensive. go to Amazon pick up a copy of this book. Joe is available to you to speak about some of the things we've talked about or even more, I think the challenge that we face today is a lot of people like, where do you start. And what I would say is Joe would be a great place to start to have a discussion, he, he's not going to charge you for the first discussion, to just talk with him, and say, These are my concerns, these are my current values, this is what I'm trying to do, this is what I want to do. And he's going to be able to guide you and give you some more resources. And who knows, maybe you're going to hire him to consult you to do what you need to do. But Joe, it's been a pleasure having you and I inside personal growth. I think this journey for managers and leaders is about the personal growth of being more humanistic. That whole personal growth thing means you have to embrace emotional intelligence, you have to embrace more compassion with your employees, you have to look at ways to have the values and mission and purpose of the business align with the values and missions of the individuals, they have to feel proud of what they're producing at the end what comes off the assembly line, and know that what they're doing is good, and they're contributing something good to society. All of these things lead up and culminate into an organization which is humanistic. And Joe, thanks for being on inside personal growth and sharing some of that, thanks to my listeners for hanging in and hearing the podcast any last words?

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Just, I don't care how technological we get, we're always going to need the human element. And the better we treat humans, the more we tap into that enormous pool of wasted potential, the better off we're all going to be. And that's the key thing I hope people take from this.

Greg Voisen
Inspiring Joe, thanks for your time. Thanks for talking about humanistic manufacturing and associated topics.

Dr. Joe Sprangel
Thank you, Greg. It was a pleasure.