”Kata Girl Geek” Gemma Jones on Lean, Improvement, and Mental Health

Episode page with video, transcript, and more 

CONTENT WARNING: Today's episode includes discussions about a death by suicide and mental health issues. Help is available. In the U.S., call 988. In the U.K., call 116 123. These calls are free from any phone.

My guest for Episode #482 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Gemma Jones.

Gemma is an Improvement Coach, Trainer, and Visual Facilitator, based in the UK and working globally. Gemma started her career in Engineering and quickly found a passion for Improvement. She spent 20 years in Manufacturing across numerous industries, then in 2018 she left employment to build her own business. Gemma's mission is to help organisations and individuals be the BEST they can be, by helping people SEE, helping people THINK, and helping people CHANGE.

In today's episode, Gemma brings up important topics related to Lean and mental health, and we discuss parallels between "mental health first aid" and physical first aid. How can we learn how to help others when they might be struggling? What signs should we look for?

We also discuss her origin story in Lean and Continuous Improvement, the POWER of coaching and asking questions, how the Kata Girl Geeks global group started and grown over the past 3 years, and how her mission now is to encourage and enable the global community of CI Practitioners and Leaders to actively tune in to HELP people.

Questions, Notes, and Highlights:

• What's your Lean / C.I. origin story??
• Tell us about that Kata Girl Geeks
• Tracy Defoe – Episode 467
• Coaching and asking questions?
• The benefits of having groups for women?
• You're very interested in the overlap in mental health and continuous improvement… you did a keynote talk recently on this… tell us about that.
• We don't know really that much about the totality of people's lives, stress, and other factors
• Got trained in “mental health first aid“
• What signs might you look for? Who needs mental health first aid if somebody's not asking for it?
• Good ways of bringing up this up with people?
• “I noticed you're not seeming yourself…”
• Value Stream / Process Mapping and asking people to add emojis 
• How are you helping people on this topic and incorporated into C.I.?
• Why avoid the question why? Defensiveness
• Incorporating this into workplace safety discussions and focus? A broader view of safety?
• Parallels to physical first aid
• Website – resources page for C.I. — “how to help”
• Free training recommended by Gemma

The podcast is sponsored by Stiles Associates, now in its 30th year of business. They are the go-to Lean recruiting firm serving the manufacturing, private equity, and healthcare industries. Learn more.

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.