Podcast: BART Leans into ideas from employees to save money and improve the rider experience

FILIPPI: Yeah, and you're a Manager of Performance and Innovation here at BART, and I'm pretty sure a lot of our riders don't even know that that position exists here. I would imagine that's still kind of a new concept, a new idea for transit agencies all across the country.

RUBIN: We are finding groups at other transit agencies, slowly but surely, that seem to have a lot in common with ours. There's a team at SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) called the Transformation Office that seems to have a very similar mindset and mandate and scope of work to ours. So, we're learning from them. There are also groups that just have like a little bit in common with us in various transit agencies. We're also swapping notes with MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority). There's a team there and kind of data-governance sphere. And then I keep hearing about other teams too, that we just haven't met yet, I think VTA (Valley Transportation Authority) has a team as well. So, it's there, but it's nascent.

FILIPPI: So yeah, I think it's really empowering what you said about looking at the process versus looking at the people and recognizing that your employees are this incredibly valuable assets, and they have some great ideas that can improve that process. And that really is where it comes from, because nobody knows their job better than the people who are doing it.

RUBIN: Yeah, exactly. We are trying to spread that gospel. I think people are really used to being told what to do. And what we say is there's some trauma and people feeling like that they're being process improved where it's being pushed upon them. And that's not what we're about. We say in all of our classes and then all our engagements with employees that we as process improvement experts. That doesn't mean that we're experts in your work. We're never going to know your work as well as you do. So, we're never going to be the ones that come up with the solution.

What we're here for is to facilitate conversations between you and other stakeholders, to make sure that you come up with the most effective solution that works for all of you, and so that you don't just end up bogged down and groan zone and those types of conversations that seem like they can be endless. So, we're just really skilled in facilitating productive conversations and training you on how to solve your own problems.

FILIPPI: Yeah, and if people at BART are more empowered to do their job and they feel like they have a greater stake in it, and they feel like it's a little bit easier because their recommendations have been listened to and implemented, that's got to improve the rider experience. We mentioned the mops. I love the mops. Can you give us some other examples of how these kinds of ideas are coming home to roost and benefiting our riders?

RUBIN: Yeah, absolutely. You know, some of them are more direct, like the mop example is very direct. There's also we know of past employees that have gone through Lean 101 who have used a methodology that is called in Lean 5S. And basically what it is Marie Kondoing some work area so that you make it really easy to find what you need at a glance when you need it.

We have examples of, for instance, I believe Eric Stockton, who is, Manager of Elevator Escalator Maintenance. He also used 5S to clean up his team's supply cabinet so that it would be easier for everybody to find parts when they needed it and he told me that before, it was taking foreworkers up to two hours to find the part that they needed, when they needed it. And now, because of the cleanup, it takes them five minutes. So that results in elevators and escalators getting fixed a lot faster for our riders and so that's another direct connection improvement to the rider experience. But I would also argue that any of the improvements that we're making, even if they are more indirectly connected. So if it's about, making purchases go faster, or if it's about reducing the time that it takes to issue a construction contract change order or something that is going to be over most riders' heads, nonetheless, that's going to end up paying dividends for them, because it's going to allow people to spend less of their time focused on the process and painful process and, getting bogged down in that and allow them to have more of their time to provide value for riders.

FILIPPI: A great idea is the start, but it still has to be implemented. What are some of the challenges with turning that initial thought into something that could be widely applied?

RUBIN: Totally. So, one of the things that can be really hard is everybody has great ideas, right? Everybody has ideas. But if the idea is not your own and you're the expert in your work, then it's probably not going to actually take off.

So, what we do is when there's a tricky problem to solve, we make sure that the people who are at the table to solve that problem are the ones that are going to have to implement the solution because they're the ones that as long as they're in agreement and they're part of the process of developing the solution, it's much more likely that it's going to take off.

So, we always point to research that shows that if you take the time to do the planning with all the people that need to be in the room to do that planning, and you do it in an effective way, then the implementation time is going to be so much shorter. And then also the return on investment for the change that you're trying to make is you're going to realize that return on investment so much faster if you take the time upfront to make sure that everybody is on the same page about what you're doing and why, and also wants to do it. We also know though, that there's always going to be resistance to any idea or any change. That's absolutely the case. But there's also a tipping point where you have a bunch of early adopters for a change, and then at some point you have enough early adopters that basically everybody else has to get on board. And what we're really good at is making sure that you get to that tipping point.

FILIPPI: This whole process just strikes me as something that's so different from what people normally perceive of government. They perceive government so often of being out of touch, of being old-fashioned and not innovating. But this is really all about innovation and giving employees a voice. It sounds like such a different way for government to perform its services for the community.

RUBIN: That's what we hope. Every time that we go through the process of training a new class and Lean 101, or facilitating a meeting between different stakeholders, that there's these moments that go off for everybody and like, there's very few things on earth that make me happier than those moments because that's when things actually change, right?

John Kotter, who is the guru of change management nowadays, says everybody always thinks that the way change happens is you think, analyze, and change. But he says what really happens is you see, you feel, and then you change and that's what's really important to point out to people is that it can't just be the best data or the best analysis. You have to figure out how to bring groups of people together to have an emotional reaction to why it is that a change needs to be introduced, and that's where real change comes from.

I think that we just, we get bogged down with all of the different problems that there are and all of the different priorities and all and all the things we have to do in our daily jobs and we sometimes miss, we don't we don't take that step back, to make sure that we're really making sure that people are having that see, feel reaction.

FILIPPI: I'm wondering too, does this sort of a process aid staff retention? In other words, as employees feel they have a voice and they're being heard and changes are happening, how helpful is that in terms of keeping and even recruiting new staff?

RUBIN: The methodology that we're teaching and the mindset that we're trying to make more ubiquitous around BART, there is a strong connection between that and employee engagement, employee well-being, reducing turnover rates. It's really good for just like the morale and the psychology of an organization.

You see, Lean teachings and Lean mindset in almost every high performing organization out there. So, yeah, and people tend to stay at high performing organizations where they feel valued and they feel like that their work is contributing to something greater. So yes, there is a strong connection between high morale and this type of work.

FILIPPI: It kind of gets back to that emotional aspect that you mentioned. To have that change, people have to buy in emotionally. It's the same thing. If you want to stay at a job, you have to feel that connection and it really does go beyond the data, doesn't it?

RUBIN: Yes, it does, and you can see it in the reactions that we get in all of our engagements as well. Yeah, we really invite anybody who wants to be a fly on the wall and in some capacity to come and see it because, yeah, it is pretty powerful. There's a lot of magic there.

FILIPPI: How many employees have had a chance to participate in this? The classes that you've mentioned I assume they're ongoing.

RUBIN: They are ongoing and we offer them once a quarter. They sell out every time at this point. There's a waitlist every time. We encourage anyone who's interested to sign up on the waitlist because there's a very high chance that you'll get in, even if you're on the waitlist. And even if you don't, we'll get you into one of them.

93% of those that we've surveyed say that they're likely or highly likely to recommend it to someone else. So, it's definitely making waves and, and yeah, come join us.

FILIPPI: Tell me about your team. Now. It's not just you. I know you have some help as well.

RUBIN: Oh, yeah. I've got a great team. So, Albert Lin is one of the analysts on our team and Denisa Vlasache is also another analyst on our team. Denisa has an expertise in user experience design. So, what she's particularly good at and can bring expertise to bear with anyone we work with is on how to create different processes so that it's as easy as possible for your users so that they're more likely to do the process the right way the first time, and also so that they have a good experience. So, Denisa's work is extremely valuable.

Albert and I started, working together, I believe, ten years ago now at the City and County of San Francisco for a different group that also had a Lean team. So, Albert and I have been doing this work together for a pretty long time. Yeah, I'm really lucky to continue to have him as a partner.

FILIPPI: How long has BART been at this, actually having this formal process to improve and really emphasize innovation?

RUBIN: Well, if I understand correctly, performance and innovation was started under Grace Crunican, in 2019. I believe that in the pandemic, it kind of fizzled out and I was hired in 2022 to reboot the team.

So, I was lucky enough to hire my own team. I had a really great support from my management to take it and run with it in a direction that hadn't gone in before and it feels like that we're on the right track.

FILIPPI: You had mentioned you came to BART. Tell us that story. You were with the City of San Francisco. Is that right?

RUBIN: So, I cut my teeth on Lean at the City and County of San Francisco and I also have works in now in local government in the Bay Area for about 15 years, if not more. So, City and County of San Francisco, City of Hayward, Alameda Health System that runs the safety net hospital system for the county. Then all of those capacities I worked on organizational improvement.

FILIPPI: We hear so much about the need for efficiency with transit agencies. Obviously, BART and many other transit agencies are facing a fiscal cliff. Could potentially lead to a ballot measure going to voters for more funding. The public really wants transit to not just be safe and reliable, but also to make the most of its limited resources. How does your work tie into that and the importance of that?

RUBIN: All our employees are engaged in continuously and thinking through how to make their work operate more efficiently, to benefit you and to benefit us.

Filippi: The savings really are adding up and I think that's important for the public because they really are demanding the transit be more efficient.

RUBIN: I think that the way that performance and innovation, the work that we're doing and the employees that we're working with can contribute to that message overall is showing riders, hey, we know that there are concerns about the use of your taxpayer dollars. Here's how we are continuously working to make sure that we are making the best use of taxpayer funds and just showing those small improvements over time. I know that individually they don't seem like much, but when you take them all together, they're really quite impactful.

At this point we have trained, I believe, over 200 people in Lean 101 across the District. Over 70 of those people have sent us examples of the improvements that they've made since Lean 101. Sixty of those 70 have shown us that their improvements have quantifiable impact and when we take all the 60 improvements together, we see that the time savings, that all of those improvements add up to are approximately the same as eight full-time employees. So that means that these improvements are infusing the District with eight full-time employees worth of capacity, without it costing the District an extra dime.

So, people are able to now use that much time for other for other work that could add more value to the riders. We know that that's only 60 people worth of improvement work. So that shows you, you know what, what's possible if we expand Lean 101? What's possible if everyone in the District is encouraged to think like this on a daily basis. It's really a tidal wave.

It doesn't matter how smart you are. As any given leader at BART, there's lots of really smart, capable people here. But if you're only one person compared to the tidal wave that is the entire employee workforce, you know, forget about it. There's no comparison. So, I think we just we need to figure out a way to unleash that tidal wave.

FILIPPI: I'm just sitting here wondering. I think some employees are just not comfortable talking to their bosses and I'm not saying that's just a BART thing at all. I think that's pretty common wherever you work. Do you find that your classes are generating ideas that maybe employees weren't willing or comfortable sharing with their boss?

RUBIN: Yeah, I think that is definitely true and it's one of the reasons why, when we work on trickier problems, that we're bringing more people to the table to figure out what is the right solution, it's because you want to make sure that everyone who has a stake in a given solution, as long as they're brought to the table early and they feel like that it's incorporating their ideas, it's much more likely that it's going to get implemented.

So, that's one of the reasons why, when people just come up with ideas on their own, it's less likely that it's going to go anywhere if it has to involve other people. So, that's one of the things that we actually coach people on in Lean 101 is we're only expecting the people who take this class to come out of the class with an improvement that they can make happen on their own without involving anybody else, because you really, if you need to involve other players and making sure that an idea happens, then it's going to be a trickier problem to solve.

But it's not impossible. That's the thing and then another thing that we really try to make sure is clear is not every problem needs to be solved. There's plenty of problems out there. What we need is we need to concentrate on where we're going to get the best return on investment for our time and effort, and we show people in the class how to do that prioritization as well.

FILIPPI: What's the future of all this look like? You're going to keep having your classes, of course. Is there like a specific target in terms of numbers or percentages of BART staff that you're hoping to make contact with?

RUBIN: I mean, honestly, I would love to have contact with everybody. We had a goal as a team for a long while when we were brand new to try to meet a new employee at BART, every single one of us, one new employee a week. For a while that was really taking off and paying dividends. We've slowed down a little bit because now we have more requests for our support than we can handle. So, we backed off a little bit on making sure that we're connecting with everybody. But we still do really want to make contact with as many people as we can. There's a lot of cynicism and jadedness out there, and we understand why. People have been doing this for a really long time. In a lot of cases, I've seen people try to come in and do something new and they're just and it falls short. Maybe people have felt like that's a waste of time. Maybe people have felt like that they've been disrespected. There's plenty of different reasons why people resist and we're not necessarily saying that, we're not Pollyanna. We don't think that everybody is going to necessarily buy in. But we do think that there are a lot of talented people at BART, and there are a lot of people who care immensely about the District and about transit and about serving riders the best that we can and figuring out how to unleash that energy more where we know that it naturally wise, is what we're all about. We've developed quite a gathering of kindred spirits already that we've tapped into.

FILIPPI: What's the best part of your job?

RUBIN: There's a lot of things that I really like about my job. I love my team. I love getting out there and getting to know what people's work looks like on the ground. Learning from everybody at BART about what they're experiencing and what they think can make it better and also really the best part, like I said I think earlier, is the "ah ha" moments that come across in some of the facilitation that we do where people really, like light bulbs do go off for more people, for more than one person at once, and then something actually happens because of it.

FILIPPI: I'm sure people listening to this are going to have this question. So, I definitely want to bring it up. If someone who doesn't work at BART has an idea that they think could make us more efficient, do we have a suggestion box or something like that?

RUBIN: We get a lot of suggestions as you might imagine. One of the things that we say every time we take in what we call a project intake, where somebody says, 'I have an idea, I'd really love to work with you, or there's this problem that I think that you guys could be helpful with.' We always ask, who else is it that would have to be involved in solving this problem and do you have their support?

You don't have to have everybody's support, but there are some key people that you're probably going to need support from and before you can enlist us. That's really usually where the rub lies. We're really happy to talk to you about whose support might be necessary and if we can be helpful in galvanizing that support. We were always open ears, would love to talk to you. There are plenty of ideas that have taken off just from those conversations, but I do want to caution people that we're not we're not magicians. We're going to be able to help you if the conditions are ripe for it.

I'll give you another example. Byron May, who used to be one of our superintendents, at the Daly City shop, came to us with an idea. He said, 'I just don't understand. Why is it that when you need to make somebody whole on their paycheck, a mistake is made on their paycheck, when I have to make somebody whole, I make a correction as quickly as possible and then I find out, oh, they have to go in to BHQ (BART headquarters) and coordinate with somebody to get their check from the ninth floor in order to be made whole. Why is that? Because they're signed up for direct deposit, why can't they just get that off cycle check is what it's called delivered directly to them a direct deposit?' So, that question led to us asking that same question of Treasury of IT, of all the different folks that would be have to be involved in figuring out how to make sure that people who are signed up for direct deposit can get their check just directly deposited, no matter whether it's on cycle or off cycle.

So just that question and we made it happen. Now everybody who has signed up for direct deposit gets their check in direct deposit, whether or not it's on payday or it's on another day of the week. That was because staff saw this is ridiculous. We should not be expecting people to come in who are offsite to BHQ to be made whole when the mistake is made on their paycheck. And that's because people felt the need, right? They felt that it was worth it to do this work and otherwise it wouldn't have happened and there were a lot of different people that needed to be involved to make that happen. So that's another reason why that whole part that I said before, about how change only happens when there's a little bit of emotional reaction to why the change needs to happen and that people really feel that need. That's when it really happens. So yeah, we tend to skip over that and when we're when we're trying to implement that change, we try, and we tend to skip over the need to convince people that it's that it's important

FILIPPI: Jesse Rubin, BART's Senior Manager of Performance and Innovation, thanks so much for joining us on Hidden Tracks.

RUBIN: Thanks for having me.

FILIPPI: And thank you for listening to 'Hidden Tracks stories from BART.' You can listen to our podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play, and of course on our website at BART.gov/podcasts.