Damon Baker (00:13)
Bret, when you became CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates in 2020, the company was admired, profitable, and had never lost money. From the outside, it looked like there was nothing urgent to fix. Yet you saw the need for change right away. What were you seeing that most people might have missed?

Bret Snyder (00:31)
Well, it's a good question. It seemed like in a way we didn't have a burning platform.

But we have to realize that we had a lot of relatively mature products. And you could tell that because we were selling a lot of the same forms, but maybe just improved over the last 10 and 20 years.

And while we also had an incredible culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, a real commitment to doing what's right,

At the same time, I would say we had gotten more internally focused, and processes were taking a lot of energy and a lot of time. So, we had not been, we weren't being as focused on the customer. In some ways, I think our hunger for forward growth was overshadowed by our admiring our past successes.

Damon Baker (01:22)
How do you explain the need for change without sounding like you're criticizing the company's historic legacy?

Bret Snyder (01:31)
I think the most important thing is that we have a positive vision of the future. you don't want to criticize the legacy. In fact, really the art is, you don't want to criticize the past or the company because really the art of leadership is taking the strengths you have and building on them. But we did have many successful applications of our material science.

but we didn't need to broaden out. And I think people could understand that because they understood that new materials were coming out all the time, there were new applications. I think people also understood that we were too slow in certain places. So, I think you just have to paint a picture of growth and a future where we contribute even more in our impact to society. And having great relationships in so many industries that we're in gave us a great foundation.

Damon Baker (02:18)
You talked about being over-reliant on PTFE. I had to look up what that acronym was. I didn't know what that meant. Can you, for the layman people out there, explain what that is, why you felt like you're over-reliant on it, and how that factored into this critical need to change the organization at this point in time?

Bret Snyder (02:41)
Yes, sure. PTFE is a fluoropolymer. And Gore was originally started to find the commercial possibilities in manufacturing and using fluoropolymers in applications of really high societal value, whether it's medical products, it's Gore-Tex that protects you from the elements, or in satellite cables that enable modern internet and communication. So, fluoropolymers have a lot of unique properties and Gore took it upon itself to develop the capabilities of converting them into useful end products that customers could use all around. And at the same time, we got very good at that, but we had only smaller levels of expertise in technology and other materials. We did have some polyurethanes, some types of metals. Some bioabsorbable materials that are biologically compatible with the body. So, we had needed to continue to more aggressively diversify our material set if we wanted to continue to solve new problems for customers.

Damon Baker (03:47)
You said your wake-up call came when you saw a decade of top-line growth trailing US GDP, and in real terms, and in your words, gore was shrinking. That takes a lot of courage, because I think a lot of companies wouldn't correlate their top-line growth with GDP and may look for exit ramps or excuses as to if GDP were growing faster than their company, they would make excuses for why that's not relevant to their growth story. But you just characterized a situation with PTFE in particular, where it's used in so many different products. One could almost use that as a leading indicator, GDP, and it sounds like that was one of the factors in your decision making. So, when you brought that to the leadership team, what was their reaction?

Bret Snyder (04:38)
Well, I think it was a lot of concern about how we're going to do this. How would we work and develop a similar competence across different materials and technologies? I think also, though, people had, to be honest, felt somewhat imprisoned by it. had, back in the day, if it wasn't on our core technology or core material, we might turn down a customer's request for something because we couldn't figure out a way to do it with our current material set. And sometimes they'd even...could lead us into long research projects that weren't, it wasn't the optimal material for the application. So, I think there was concern, can we do this? And you always as a leader need to help give the organization the confidence it deserves to tackle hard things. But at the same time, I think there was also a sense of freedom and relief that we could do additional things and serve customers in new ways.

Damon Baker (05:29)
I oftentimes tell people I think great leadership is about pattern recognition and learning from your mistakes in the past, in your experiences from the past. You mentioned your experience in a declining chemical industry, and I'm assuming that this wasn't Gore, your job that you're talking about here, that actually helped shape, inform your reaction to the data around GDP versus top line growth at Gore. So, what was sort of that experience that allowed you to kind of piece those two things together? 

Bret Snyder (06:02)
Yes, this was pre-GORE. I did work in the chemical industry, and I was in an area that was shrinking. So, like the growth rate in the area I was in, in the chemical industry, which was crop protectants, it had grown about 10 % a year in the 60s, 7 % a year in the 70s, 3 % a year in the 80s, and about 0 % in the 90s when I was there. And what it meant practically, 0 % top line growth was, it was a, every couple of years, a new announcement of reorg and efficiency.

But it always was ended up being cutbacks, headcount reductions. I mean, there's an art to leading in that if there's no other option, but I'm a growth CEO. I'm interested in being on the growth curve side and that's just not our DNA at core. So, I didn't want to go there, but I had that experience of living through that and knowing what it's like when you're in a declining industry and declining position in that or a declining position in an industry.

Damon Baker (07:01)
Up until that point had Gore faced any setbacks like that, know, periods of restructuring consistently, would that been a new experience for Gore as a company?

Bret Snyder (07:13)
To have a consistent downward trend overall for Gore, it would be new. We have not had that. we have the benefit of, it's a challenge too, but a benefit of being highly diversified. So, we have had areas that we've had to exit or have left. For instance, we used to do disk drive filters, and we had a nice business there. But as you know, nobody really has a disk drive anymore. We ended up selling off that business, but it had faced a climb. But it was a small business, and Gore overall has continued to grow. And that's a key thing as we are, it's only small pieces and we can reallocate people and resources to what is growing.

Damon Baker (07:52)
Yeah, I think that speaks to the culture and the roots of the organization. You described Gore's founding culture as nimble, accountable, and customer focused, but said it had drifted over time. Can you go deeper on that?

Bret Snyder (08:07)
Yeah, I think it's just a natural tendency that as you get more successful, you tend to memorialize what got you there, but it can also drift. And what I mean by that is we were very small lines of business, small product lines. In small plants where everybody knew when a customer made an order. And you could see all the manufacturing process in one place. And the R &D labs were right next door. So, everything was apparent, and teamwork was highly prized, and everybody felt accountable to do their job and contribute to whatever was needed to solve a problem or deliver for a customer. And you had immediate feedback from the market.

And then as we got bigger, we had more and more teams and people further away from that. And so, it took a lot of time, and we weren't close to Gemba, close to the workplace. So, you know, people had different opinions, and it took a long time to make decisions. And we, we, we prize consensus, which works really well with the small team size, but got harder as we started to go across very different teams and people with different knowledge base. So, it became slower and that's how we started to drift. And I think some of the customer feedback we heard suggested that we were good at being a reliable partner, but they weren't seeing us as an innovating partner.

Damon Baker (09:34)
Oftentimes what I see as an organization grows in scales, and they shift more towards this consensus-based decision-making approach. Oftentimes you can attribute that shift to some setbacks or some failures that have happened in the organization around strategic execution. So, there's an erosion of trust. Therefore, these layers and these processes and these checkpoints get put in place as a countermeasure to try and shape or improve the level of decision making in the organization. But I think what you just described is an organization where decisions happen slower. Did the quality of the decisions diminish, or did it feel like we just weren't taking the same risk that we were that made Gore the great innovative company it was? it a mix of those things? What did you observe?

Bret Snyder (10:29)
I think the quality of the decisions suffered, I do think we start, the more people you need to get bought in, it does reduce risk taking and action. So, for example, we had very disparate computer systems and we needed to come to a standard implementation. And that meant a lot of people, it felt like it's very hard to get agreement on that because there's...a lot of options, for instance, take something seemingly simple, like how do you do part numbers? Are you gonna do random part numbers or smart part numbers? All the textbooks and advisors tell you should do random part numbers, but that is a big change statement when everybody knows the parts by their smart part number name, but it causes problems long term. So that was where we would get stuck. And so, we would plan and then...

? We struggled to get implemented. So it wasn't, it was lack of actual follow through and action. And sometimes what would happen is you could get discouraged if you don't get answers or you can't take action because consensus takes so long. And so, then either you go off and do your own thing, or you just throw up your hands. So, it just reduces the organizational effectiveness overall. And that's what we really saw. And I do think risk taking did decline, but not necessarily the quality of decisions, but we just weren't doing enough things.

Damon Baker (11:47)
In a transformation story like this one at Gore, there's oftentimes a period of doubt or like an inflection point where almost like a crossroad in the woods, you do you go left, or do you go right? You came to the conclusion, or at least you believed, that lame principles would fit Gore's culture perfectly, but you weren't quite sure you could lead this transformation alone. What was behind that self-doubt?

Bret Snyder (12:15)
Well, I mean, I think some of it was natural as a first-time leader of a big enterprise, first time CEO. I think also it was that just knew I didn't have all the answers. And the way I've succeeded to extent I have in life is by finding others who know more than I do about something and following them. And so...It was, I think, a healthy amount of self-doubt because you say if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with others. So, I wanted to go far, and I knew I needed others. I didn't have all that practical experience of lean.

Damon Baker (12:52)
We talk about in the lean community, one of the most important leadership qualities for a successful lean transformation, especially at the C-suite level, is that that C-suite leader possesses the quality of humility. And I think what you just described perfectly is humility and is an example of recognizing you don't have all the answers, and you don't know what the journey looks like, but we're going to figure it out together. It seems like such a simple thing, Brett, but it is probably the thing that I experience that stands in the way of most transformations in terms of whether or not they're successful. How did that quality become inherent into kind of who you are? I mean, it's not an act. I remember the first time I met you were in room, you're at your leadership conference and it wasn't even clear to me that you were the CEO of this company. I mean, you didn't carry yourself in that way. You were just a very collaborative spirit and person. And even the way you interacted with your team is just a very different approach. So where was that quality instilled in you over time and over your career? Even going back to childhood, if necessary.

Bret Snyder (14:04)
I think it's the family has a huge attitude of stewardship, which means that we're working, have the privilege and the honor, but also the responsibility to care for an organization and people that transcends any of us. So, I think it's been successful and will be more successful. And that's a big, responsibility. I think personally,

For me, I have 25 yearsŐ experience in R &D, and I must tell you, I've had a few wins, but a lot of things that didn't work. And that makes you humble, I think. Not every business idea or technology concept or even scientific hypothesis, don't, more often than not, they don't work out. And I think that also reinforced just that there's a lot you don't know.

Damon Baker (14:56)
I want to switch gears here now to what you guys named the Gore business system as part of the answer for the strategy of how we're going to revitalize the organization on the growth trajectory. So, you made the Gore business system the official guide for how the company operates going forward. What steps did you take to ensure it wasn't just seen as another corporate program? And I don't know the histories of programs at Gore, but oftentimes these things get released with lot of Ballyhoo and fanfare and programmatic communication and banners and posters on the walls and those kinds of things. how did you prepare the organization and communicate in a way that people didn't feel like that's what this was, and it truly felt different?

Bret Snyder (15:41)
Great question. I think the most important thing is to realize that it's lean and 80-20 and things like that are honestly, I love Larry Kulp's words, they're ? common sense rigorously applied. And...

We had those same roots in what made Gore successful and in what was still making us successful. So, a real focus on customer value. We call that in particularly fitness for use. So, understanding that the product really works in the application and what it delivers. So basically, I would say we connected it to Gore's cultural roots because it really is Gore's cultural roots. So, the best of our culture and lean, they're like two circles that overlap a lot. And that is one part. I think the second thing that helped was we had a lot of lean expertise and champions within Gore, and we had had various efforts on it before.

Damon Baker (16:42)
Were you aware of that at the time or was that a discovery?

Bret Snyder (16:45)
I knew we had some, I didn't know how many and how capable they were. So, it's an awesome thing in leading when you see, you get to help see the capabilities of the team come forward and do great things and more than you thought was there and expect. So, a lot came out of the woodwork, so to speak, as we began this. And a lot of people were excited because we had had efforts before and they had made some progress, but then tension wandered, leadership focus was on something else, sometimes people changed, so there was also some discouragement. To the last point you asked about, which is how did you not see it as a flavor of the month? I was mentally prepared having read Leading Lead, Lean Enterprise Transformation by Konigshaker. He gives like a five-year journey. So, I knew what we were signing up for. couldn't like, there was going to be doubters, and resistance and a lot of people will say, this is going to go away. Let's, let it blow over. In the first year and that continues until you really build momentum and four or five years in people say, wow, how did we ever operate before this? So, I was also prepared for it and didn't get unnerved by doubters or resistance.

Damon Baker (18:02)
What did some of the early adopters do that helped others inside the organization maybe that didn't have experience with lean and lean principles actually see the gore business system in action, not just talking about it, but demonstrate to others the power of this new way of thinking and working could have on a culture like.

Bret Snyder (18:22)
I mean, we were bringing on a new material, in fact, in one of our larger businesses, and we had a lot of yield challenges. And we started doing daily and weekly yield reports on that and making that highly visible.

And we started to identify the root causes and get to them and put out parados. And amazing, we started to drive up the yields. It was a lot of work and a lot of effort, but it really organized the team. gave, making the invisible visible. So, putting your key metric out and up there drove one of the great things about GORE, which is the natural self-accountability. Associates are passionate about doing the right thing. And making things better as long as they know what it is that we're trying to do. And when you can see a metric like that that you can measure regularly, this was tremendously helpful in us adopting a new material in our fabrics business. And so that type of progress, that's one example, but those wins really help. We had a similar benefit in our medical business in getting capacity increased. We were thinking we needed to add a whole bunch of clean rooms. We already have a lot of clean rooms, but we started to see increased throughput coming through the clean rooms by just doing that common sense rigorously applied, but tracking our quality rate, our throughput rate, and other things. And so, those were the first signs that we had where people started to say, wow, this can really be powerful.

Damon Baker (19:52)
It sounds so simple to people listening to it, but you and I know both that it's a calorie burn. It requires tenacity, leadership commitment, follow through, all of these things. And when you describe it, it really is common sense rigorously applied, but what brings it to life is the leadership discipline to work this way each and every day and not go back. On these principles and really make it part of who the company culture is. And it sounds like that that was the nucleus of what Gore success was all about was people working together to solve problems in a common sense, pragmatic way for the customer. And as we grew over time, we lost the ability to do that in a way. In sort of the structure that exists inside the organization. think structure is a really important part because I want to go there next because I described this period of the growth story as like ripping the band aid off where structure was driving the process.

Any thoughts on that?

Bret Snyder (20:58)
I think you're right about the leadership discipline and consistency needed to see it through because there was resistance. And one of the things people were very concerned about is if we start tracking metrics regularly that it becomes micromanagement. And that's not what the GORE culture is about.

And it means also people sometimes were concerned that it means you don't trust me. But honestly, what we got to the point is like we're just all together on the same side of the table trying to solve a problem together. Like it's just, it's not blaming. It's just, where are we? And we got comfortable with living in the red. It's great that these six things are green. Congratulations, thumbs up. But now these two things that are red, they've been red three months in a row. What can we do? And what would it take to address those issues? Have we done a root cause analysis? It does take ? some fortitude and consistency of purpose to get through those things. So, I totally agree, it's simple but not easy.

Damon Baker (21:58)
On that point, I'm gonna call this next section the point of no return. And this is the reorganization that Gore went through. So, a couple of years ago, Gore reorganized to be a more customer focused organization. And once you communicated it, it was no going back. So can you just lay out the framework and the landscape for what that reorganization was all about kind what parts of the company it touched, how big it was. I mean, this was a really big shift in a philosophy in a way the company was running sort of from a centralized, dare I say, command and control structure to a decentralized, autonomous business unit structure, which in an organization who culturally has waited for corporate to tell them what to do or to approve decisions is now asking the organization to exercise new muscles or build up muscles that existed a long time ago. So, I was sort of on the sidelines during this and I remember like how painful a lot of this was. I can only imagine what you and the leadership team are going through. Can you take us back to that time?

Bret Snyder (23:14)
Yes, I mean, I would say if we were centralized, the only thing I want to distinguish between, we weren't command and control, so it was still very consensus oriented, but what the opportunity was created by was we had a lot of central support functions, central technology and manufacturing that was have a hard time prioritizing all the requests that would come in. So, a business unit has a customer need or something they want to do, and it becomes difficult when lots of these come together in a centralized function to know what are the highest priorities, because they're further from it. Then, but we had taken away the ability for those businesses to have everything they need to deliver for customers, to develop and sell products, both material development in some cases and also functional support. I mean functional support, I mean everything from legal to HR and finance. So, the shift we made was to put those centralized capabilities closer to the customer in the businesses and that did increase autonomy and increase the speed at which those businesses could identify problems and solve them. And what we see from that, for example, is we have increased the diversity of our core technology and our material set, and we have had faster ? speed in making decisions because there's not as much a need, like you said, to check with corporate or get on the priority list of a centralized function.

We still have a small lean center, and it has a very important function in setting policy and guidance and direction, but it's really empowered the businesses to move faster to serve customers. But this was an irreversible, this was only, this was distinct from the GORE business system. We could do the GORE business system without this. We could reorganize without the GORE business system. But we did, this was a key, as you said, a point of no return once we did this. And I would say over 20 % of associates ended up changing from a centralized role into a business. So that was a massive impact on the, for associates to process. And we hadn't done anything like this for decades. You know, we weren't heavily exercised in lots of reorganizations like some organizations.

Damon Baker (25:30)
You mentioned functions staying at the center to ensure governance and consistency of deployment and those kinds of things. One of those functions that was retained at the center was GBS. Can you describe why you made that decision? Kind of how you feel that plays a key role in supporting the structure and sustaining it going forward?

Bret Snyder (25:51)
Yes, that's super important because Gore Business System is our operating system. We have diversified businesses, geography, across the world.

It's so important that associates can learn how to do things in one place and then apply that somewhere else. That creates career opportunities, fungibility or mobility for associates and our talent. And it also reduces waste and having to do a forecast a different way, an operating review a different way, problem solving. So, keeping Gore Business System at the center ensures consistency. Just like we're doing SAP implementation the same way across with a very high fit to standard that we have interoperability or the ability of folks to have that talent and growth mobility and not have to relearn. So that is one of the key things we kept at the center for just that reason.

Damon Baker (26:41)
As you look back on that restructuring effort, I can only imagine there was a ton of difficult decisions that had to be made during that time. As you reflect back on that time, now that you kind of crossed the valley of despair and back up the mountain and onto the other side, what was one of the most difficult decisions you had to make as CEO of Gore at that time?

Bret Snyder (27:05)
I mean, the hardest decision in that was how to handle the associate change and change communication. And I'll be honest; we didn't get it. We didn't hit it perfectly. We didn't get it right. I think it's always hard when you do these to have folks feel that they're not getting enough information. you know, we struggled to provide, we didn't know the impacts on associates until fairly late in there. Like we weren't sure how many roles. We did have some fewer roles. We did offer a retirement plan that most folks took. We had very few truly involuntary separations. But, that impact on associates and getting that right, that was the hardest decision was to figure out how to do that best. Because we care and we have important culture that our success is, and the strength of our organization is the collective capability of our associates. So we were, so to speak, moving people's cheese and there was that was the hardest part of it, is making that decision. But we had no easy way to move through it. And we considered taking two years to do it in a more gradual process. I am, a year and a half past when we finished it, essentially. And I'm so glad we didn't do the two-year plan, because it just would have prolonged the confusion. You said rip the band-aid off at one point earlier. This was a rip the band-aid off moment as we ultimately committed to it.

Damon Baker (28:34)
Yeah. Yeah, six months in after announcing the reorganization, you described it as like almost hitting a low point and you're taking flack from all sides and support maybe feeling thin at that moment. So, is that kind of what you're describing as the change management aspect of all of this inside the organization and underestimating how important that was?

Bret Snyder (29:01)
Yeah, I think you can, I've heard incentives, like Charlie Munger says, you can never underestimate or overestimate.

The power of incentives I would say similarly on change communication and change management. You can never Overdo it. It's probably always you're under doing it. I think yeah, I did hit a low point personally and it was hard for the organization I think a lot of people questioned what was our future. Are we really just reorganizing to go public? Comments that came back in our annual culture survey. There were a lot of critical comments there Everybody kind of doubts sometimes the leadership team associates your board everybody, you know. Boy, is this really gonna work? So that was there was a low point there for sure and yet I knew it was coming I knew everybody when things don't you know, there's a lot of turmoil everybody becomes a doubter but still Even knowing it intellectually you still have to go through it and that was that was hard It was a hard period there. That was the low point

Damon Baker (30:44)
I'm curious, I ask other CEOs this question from time to time. So, when I was leading a P &L inside of Daner and you get feedback like you're describing from associates on the direction of the company that you're leading.

It can hurt emotionally as a leader. almost feels like an indictment of your leadership abilities. Then later on in my career, I would go on to found my own company and then ask for the similar feedback from the team that I lead now. And when I reflect back on the two roles, it hits so much differently to me personally as a founder of a company when I get the feedback than remembering the emotions I felt when I was leading a company for a corporate organization, a publicly traded company. So, I'm just curious, you are part of the family, so does it hit differently for you when you read these comments in the survey and you're going through this intense period of change inside the organizational culture and you're just, or am I overplaying this?

Bret Snyder (31:47)
Not at all, absolutely. I think the level of commitment and identity with the company that I have as a family member, the family has, and that sense of stewardship, it is very personal. is a lot. I take it hard. I've learned and gotten more but it is very personal and hard because it's not just...somebody else's company or a company to me, it is special, it's Gore. it's, you know, family heritage, its important legacy, and it feels, it's tied up with my identity. Yeah.

Damon Baker (32:26)
Do you ever feel like when you're walking the hallways, and you see the pictures on the wall that these people are judging you and checking out your decision-making quality?

Bret Snyder (32:33)
Yes, I do. I think they'd be immensely proud of where we are and so impressed. But that's the longer view. And yeah, absolutely, I feel that.

Damon Baker (32:47)
So, I'm gonna talk inflection point now. So, the first CEO Kaizen event really demonstrated to the organization what I would describe as like the proof of seriousness of this is for real. GBS is a real thing. So, you said that the first CEO led Kaizen was the turning point. So, can you describe, first of all, what is a CEO Kaizen and why did you feel like this was such a critical inflection point in the journey of GBS culture?

Bret Snyder (33:13)
Yeah, that was an important one. CEO Kaizen, the way we did it was a week-long event with five teams of about 10 people each, each tackling a real problem we had in a particular business. And we all did it all in the same week, co-located kickoff training, appreciate the support from Lean Focus in this.

What was important about it was we had all of our key leadership team from the enterprise there, as well as the business leadership team at the business we were in. Of course, the operators, the shop floor personnel, the engineers making things happen day to day. It was all together. And it wasn't, we all participated, including me personally, 100 % in that. We were like anybody else on the teams rolling up our sleeves, putting on our, you know, gowning up and going into the clean rooms, observing, making prototypes, testing things, calculating numbers, seeing what we could do to help. I was involved, for instance, in reducing a number of quality problems we had in a particular manufacturing step. So, during this time, you know, we had people were wanting, they wanted to know what is this? Why are we calling this a CEO Kaizen event? But they saw the direct and participation of leaders across, you could say at all levels. And that participation, and full engagement for the week, whether it was cleaning up an area where we had excess inventory, figuring out how to get shop tools into the clean room more efficiently, it meant a lot that we were serious because it was personal investment of time. wasn't just talk or something that you're asking somebody else to do. And that's what I think made it a turning point.

Damon Baker (34:58)
Do think that was a new behavior for leadership inside of Gore? Like this, this willingness to go to GEMBA, in this case, shop floor, to participate in a Kaizen as a team member of equal decision-making power, so to speak. Was that a new thing for Gore culturally as leadership was leadership seen as being visible and active on the floor? In situations like that or maybe at one period of time or is this a new behavior?

Bret Snyder (35:29)
I think it was an opportunity for us. It certainly had happened in the past, but it never had such a visible, never so much and so visible. And people always say, I never see our leaders. Where are the leaders? They're not on the floor or I don't see them. But that go and see is so, so important because you lead by example. And it's the same with customers. I do a lot of customer visits and that's...So yes, I would say they're or newly practiced in a much more consistent and stronger way than in the past. So, it's not that it wasn't there, but it's got new impetus.

Damon Baker (36:04)
Can you talk a little bit about the choice of what to work on? I think people think these were basic challenges in the organization and one of the...critical design features of a CEO kaizen or a president's kaizen goes by lot of different terms, different companies is that what we work on during the week are some of the meatiest, hairiest, ugliest challenges that the organization has to confront that are linked to your strategy.

They're linked to your operational challenges that you're having, and they are the most imperative things to work on. And it demonstrates to the organization that when we can come together and work in this collaborative way, we can solve any challenge if we put our minds to it. So how did you orchestrate and sort of get involved in the selection of the problems? I know you just didn't show up on Monday and say to the team, okay, what are we working on? So, what did that process look

Bret Snyder (37:01)
Yeah, well we wanted to take a particular location and area, and we looked for real problems, absolutely. And they were some of biggest problems. And we're diversified and we have a lot of opportunities across places. So, we've done every six months or eight months. So, I've done three big ones. And they...they're real problems. mean, I think we did a lot of preparation for it. So that was important. The problems were selected ahead of time. critical data was put together. The teams were put together thoughtfully so that we could set it up and make progress. And I think that's a key success factor for these type of events is the prep work that was there. I do wanna share just a little bit more about this as a turning point for a second.

We had one of our shop floor leaders in this first kaizen, we were getting ready for the report out and he broke down in tears about how much everybody cared about the shop that he felt had been ignored and it was truly living the Gora culture. And that, you know, this is a 30-year associate who's pretty senior and just to see that, it just showed that we...

Damon Baker (38:02)
Yeah!

Bret Snyder (38:12)
We're really bringing back what was made Gore special. The teamwork, the individual, everybody being valued and respected and listened to, and then the accountability to take some metrics and see if we can drive improvements. So, I just want to say that was also another factor of success was I think the resonance with the key strengths of our culture.

Damon Baker (38:17)
Thank you. Yeah, to me it's one of the ultimate proof points that the improvements being made to the process are real. And I would add to that the behavior around listening to the associates and the challenges that they're having so that we can put those changes in place to make their work better. To me, as oftentimes what drives that emotional reaction is an individual who felt maybe for a period of time that he or she hasn't been listened to has a voice. And to me thatŐs the essence of what being a lean company is all about. It's empowering employees with that voice to solve problems, giving them the tools and the knowledge and the ability and the leadership commitment and support to do that. And it's such a simple thing. It doesn't cost any money to do that.

So, this was the catalyst. after that, momentum starts to build. First is a feeling inside of the company, like you can tell by the reactions of people, like people are looking around and going, yeah, this is different. This is a different way of thinking. This is a different way of working. And then the hard results start to show through. So, what were some of the first measurable signs that the changes were working across the organization? Where did it start to show up in terms of the numbers?

Bret Snyder (39:51)
In terms of the numbers, probably our yields on our new material in our fabrics business. Another one was we had increased demand for products in our medical business that we were able to meet with our current production lines, and so we increased capacity there. Those were two that came right to mind, but also, we had...some wins in some of our cable manufacturing processes as well where we were able to significantly condense footprint and reduce the cost.

So those were the hard numbers, but I would say a key factor for success here too was associates feeling like their jobs were easier. So, anything we can do to make it easier for associates,

In the example of the story with the shop, was about making it, the shop we found spent a lot of time looking for the right tools. And so, getting that organized and making the tools easier to find saves time, made jobs easier. But those are harder to quantify, but we definitely saw it in, so we saw it in yield, we saw it in ? productivity or capacity, and then ultimately, we saw it in cost as well.

Damon Baker (40:59)
Were there any outcomes that surprised you in those first phases, whether it be qualitatively or quantitatively that were nice surprises?

Bret Snyder (41:09)
Yeah, there were. Like I said, there was some skepticism about micromanagement and not trusting people at first, but once people realize that this is all just to make us better and to be able to better serve customers, better develop products, I think that went down tremendously faster than I expected. And I don't hear those type of comments anymore.

I would say one other thing too is I didn't realize how powerful this would be in our R &D area, but we have seen a lot of improvement in how fast we get projects and how much they're on time and on schedule. And we realized there was a lot of padding of projects and a lot of opportunity in general. The padding in a good way as people were giving an estimate of when they felt confident, they could deliver something by. But when you say what would it take to deliver that 20 % faster,

you often find there are options if resources are added or we don't change the requirements, like those kind of things. So, I think another positive surprise was it's not just production. This is for any business process and R &D is a really key one. We're an organic growth company for the most part. So, seeing the impact on R &D was another positive surprise.

Damon Baker (42:27)
Yeah, you said you delivered results that have been out of reach for more than a decade. Major digital projects completed on time and on budget, faster product development timelines. How did those wins change the conversation inside of Gore? Cause now you're starting to apply GBS to an area of the business, which most companies generally don't get to that application in year one or year two of a lean transformation like this, because they think of lean as this manufacturing initiative, but you're using it to apply to R &D. And if you think about the history of Gore being innovative company, that is one of your core competencies. It is what makes Gore such a unique enterprise is your ability to innovate and solve customer problems faster than the competition. Now you bring the power of those tools and that thinking to an area that is your sweet spot of why Gore is Gore. And now you start to pour gasoline on something in a good way to make it better. kind of what was the culture reaction like there when we started to ask some of these questions and to start to put in some of these processes like daily management, problem solving, and some of these non-traditional areas, which I refer to effectively as carpet land.

Bret Snyder (43:42)
I think at first you just got to meet people where they are, and you realize they were pretty foreign concepts. In manufacturing you do have a lot of people like we hire folks, they learn it right even as undergrads, industrial engineers, mean the lean tools and daily management it's there

So, the first thing, guess the reaction was, okay, really? This applies to me, or I can use this. And once you help people see what waste is and that waste has a lot of different forms, including things that are very applicable in carpet land, like overdoing a project when you only needed to give a quick answer, right? You just overworked, right? You overprocessed essentially. So, I think, that, the carpet land, if you want to use the term you said, I mean, I would just say in a lot of those non-manufacturing applications, you have a very eager to learn folks. These associates are ready to take up new approaches and try them. And as they started to try them, they started to see, see wins.

Damon Baker (44:38)
You've said gore has a renewed sense of confidence and the success is now feeding on itself. What do you think the most important behavior shift you've seen in associates has been?

Bret Snyder (44:50)
You know, we were built on optimism that we could do it. And we got into so many markets because we just were too dumb to think we couldn't do it, right? I mean, we didn't know enough, but we got into whether it is providing Gore-Tex apparel to the most demanding applications on tenders to inside the body.

So, another example is our digital projects. We were working to get to a single digital ERP, updated ERP, not so customized for many, many years. And we had a lot of false starts. And so, people started to believe it's never gonna happen. I hear you, but I don't believe.

This new confidence came from; we've gotten now a number of plants live at their original scheduled dates. We've been able to hold the dates, and we have to always make some compromises, but we're on track for the next big, big slug, we just had two systems go live in the last few weeks on their timelines that were set out ahead of time on their budgets with the scope that we intended. So that's the new confidence, I think, is that we can do things. that, what I see and what gets me so excited is the optimism and confidence now that we can tackle additional challenges. It could be in the forum upcoming of an acquisition or...a new technology that we want to grow from the ground up, but just the ability to deliver what we want to deliver is, that's the confidence that people feel. And that's why I sense there's a renewal of optimism and confidence. And we've seen it in our results too. So that's a proof point too.

Damon Baker (46:26)
You were mentioning earlier Charlie Munger and the importance of incentives. How has employee ownership through Gore stock affected employee engagement overall? And how has that been part of the story of this transformation? And before you answer the question, I think oftentimes what I see companies do is they embark on this lean journey, and they make a lot of business process improvements and the company benefits.

But then there's a large contingency of the organization, mainly frontline leaders, frontline associates and frontline leaders oftentimes, who don't share in the fruits of that effort, right? Both formally and informally in the shape of either profit sharing or stock and these kinds of things. So, people feel like it's a little bit of a bait and switch, like, okay, now we're working smarter, not harder, but I don't feel like I'm any better off from it.

And those reactions don't happen in the first year, but over time, as you do more and more of these kinds of things and ask people to do more with less and work smarter, they start to go like, well, when is some of this going to read through to me? you guys thought about that upfront, like deliberately. So, can you kind of talk me through that and kind of how important is that in the overall story?

Bret Snyder (47:46)
The ownership piece is hugely important in our story, and I want to say it comes from our roots of our founders of associate means not just employee, it means also a part owner and invested in the success of the enterprise. So truly a partner and if we say W.L. Gore and associates. Because it's all together. And so, we do have a generous, above market, stock granting system. We've had that forever, essentially, since the 70s. we, this formal program, in the US and similar programs across the globe. So, everyone at Gore is a shareholder and sees that benefit. And that is key to...

Why I say associates, it's key to our success, but also that means people see tangible results. When they look at their balance and they see an increase in our share price from good actions, working smarter, then they get some of the reward. We also do profit shares, and we've had more frequent profit shares as our results have improved. I don't wanna say we're there, we have a long ways to go, but it's...

Definitely a shared success mindset create through a long-term program of stock ownership.

Damon Baker (49:03)
To me, one of the remarkable parts of the story or the aspects of the story which I think are interesting and are not common in lean transformations is that Gore was not in a period of crisis. wasn't, know, Gore wasn't failing as a company. Gore was highly profitable.

So, one could argue that, when you read in the books about you need to create a crisis inside the organization, you didn't really have the raw material necessary to create the crisis. So, what advice would you give to CEOs that need to create urgency, which I think is what you did very well in this example, when there is no specific nascent crisis that the organization is facing. What advice would you give to CEOs that face similar challenges?

Bret Snyder (49:53)
I think you've got to give the organization the gift of foresight. So, talk about the companies like Kodak and Blockbuster that didn't make it. And then there's other companies that have gone through big transformations. Look at Microsoft, right? It was all about Windows and now it's all about cloud and AI. so, we want to be like the Microsoft side of things, not the Polaroid and Blockbuster side.

I think you got to help people realize that there are cycles to things and the comfort zone is right at the peak where you're Have steady single low single-digit growth maybe and profitability is pretty good and you know your customers So I think you have to help the organization understand that the overall are contradictory and think about where they want to be in history. And you really want to be at the foundation of a new phase of growth, a new phase of contribution and impact in society, not continuing to live on the past. So, I think that's the biggest piece of advice I could offer to others.

Damon Baker (50:56)
Would you describe that as constructive discontent?

Bret Snyder (51:01)
Yes, I would. I think that's a great phrase for it. And what's good about it is it's easier to make the change when you have everything going for you. You have more funds, you have less scrutiny, you have more flexibility than it is to wait until things are really obviously falling apart because by then your assets are somewhat dissipated and lower in value. So, it is absolutely, I think what you said is constructive discontent.

Damon Baker (51:27)
And I think this is the challenge a lot of organizations face is to reinvent themselves may require destroying who they are as a company. Clayton Christensen wrote about this in the innovator's dilemma where I'm sure if you were to go back in time, and I think there's stories written about this with Blockbuster and I think even Netflix approached Blockbuster or something like this and laughed at them.

And Kodak kind of the same thing. They had the technology for digital. They shelved it. So oftentimes the shift technologically isn't unknown. It's known to the players, but they choose not to react to it. And I almost equate that to human behavior. Like we know all of the things that hurt us. Like we know smoking causes cancer. We know I'm not eating properly and not exercising daily. It leads to diabetes and these kinds of things. Yet we choose to make that trade-off decision over those long-term benefits or risk. And I see this play out in organizations all the time. And it takes a lot of courage. And I think the differentiator is the leadership courage it takes to stand up there in front of your associates, potentially your board, and advocate for a strategic change, which may require additional funding and resources, eroded margin for a period of time, will we make that shift? So, a lot of organizations never do it because of all those challenges. So, you're in a unique position, you know, being the CEO and part of the family where, did you think it's better to be in that situation? Because there's the external pressures of being publicly traded and these kinds of things or do you think it's just different pressure?

Bret Snyder (53:11)
I think being private and with a family stewardship piece, I think we have a lot of advantages. And you don't want to squander those because what they allow is thinking longer term and not having to do the 13-week sprint, not having the constant concern about our activists in the stock and what are they going to ask for. So, I think it gives us the space to think long term. The art of leading well though is thinking and acting long term without getting undisciplined.

And I think you need good tools and practices as well to maintain the discipline so you can realize your longer-term dreams. So, I do think we're highly advantaged in our staying private. We plan on staying private forever and gonna be a help, but we need to use that. And I do think also as a family stewardship piece, I'm thinking in the next generation. So, I wanna leave Gore better for the next generation of stewardship. So that's a pretty long term, we're talking 20 plus years there, in there. So that gives you a little bit more of that courage, guess, leadership courage to make changes and prevent problems before they become real big problems.

Damon Baker (54:22)
Brett, I want to thank you for sharing this journey. Leading change in a thriving company is one of the toughest leadership challenges there is, with no burning platform, no obvious crisis, just the courage to say, good isn't good enough. And you've shown that urgency can come from vision and ambition and not just fear, which I think is the moral of the story. What's one thing? I know we talked about a lot of things that you hope people take away from this conversation, something that they can put into practice tomorrow.

Bret Snyder (54:55)
I think your biggest opportunities are in your organization. Your people know them, or your customers know them. Preferably you talk to both. Go and see by talking to folks and asking them what are we doing that's dumb? What could we be doing better? you'll get that is the most, getting that firsthand information to you and is...One thing to hear people summarize it, it's 10 times more powerful to get that information directly. So that would be the one thing I would say is the solutions that in the opportunities you need to seize, you're gonna get from your own team, from your customers.

Damon Baker (55:32)
Thank you, Brett. It's been a pleasure. For everyone listening, this has been a blueprint for leading renewal without waiting for disaster to strike.

And as always, Stay Focused, Stay Lean.