Stop Pushing So Hard, Try Pulling Instead!
In this episode, Ryan and Matthew explore the transformative shift from Push to Pull systems in business, revealing:
How shifting to Pull radically changed Ryan's company
Daniel Priestley's advice on "with or without you" energy
The secret to attracting customers and talent through pull
Everyday applications of push vs. pull concepts
How this podcast is a testament to the pull approach
Practical steps for businesses to adopt a pull system
Check it out!
Links:
Book a Lean Made Simple Tour: https://www.leanmadesimple.com/book-a-tour
Send a voice message/question to the show: https://www.speakpipe.com/LeanMadeSimple
Welcome to Lean Made Simple: a podcast for people who want to change their business and their lives one step at a time. I’m Ryan Tierney from Seating Matters, a manufacturing company from Limavady, Northern Ireland that employs 60+ people. Almost ten years ago, I came across this thing called “lean” and it transformed my life… now I want to share this message with as many people as possible.
This podcast unpacks our learnings, lessons and principles developed over the last decade in a fun, conversational way that will hopefully empower you on your own business journey — whether you’ve been doing lean for years or are just starting out!
Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform by searching “lean made simple.”
Thanks and all the best.
— Ryan Tierney
Full Transcription of Episode
LMS - Push Vs Pull
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Ryan: [00:00:00] Business doesn't have to be hard. There is an easier way. The freedom and the mental clarity and the flow and the reduction in defects that we had when we went to pull as opposed to push I don't have the words for it.
It totally changed our company. There's so many companies out there that are still pushing. Right. And you need to stop and start pulling.
Matthew: So Ryan, you're going to talk all about this concept called pull versus push. Now, I have no idea what that actually means and the people listening probably don't either. So can you give us a real life example from your business of this principle in action and why we should care about it?
So nine years ago, before we found out about lean manufacturing and lean thinking, our entire company was a push system. The entire factory, the whole way we operated was all push.
Ryan: So basically, we were manufacturing product and putting it on the shelf. Whether we needed it or not, we were just making all the stuff, put it on the shelf, have it for later. When the [00:01:00] customer needs it, we'll have it in stock. We'll pull it down. We'll send it out. The entire system was push and we quickly realized that
we were doing it all wrong.
The entire system was wrong. And once we find out about pull
versus push. Everything changed.
Matthew: Right, so you guys make chairs, these amazing medical chairs for people all around the world. Yeah. And so you were making like, let's just say, like 20 purple chairs, and then no one would order purple chairs. So the purple chairs would just be sitting there on the shelf, rotting away, and you'd have
all this extra stock and all this extra stress.
What is the pull system, then, from a customer perspective?
Ryan: So, as we get more into Lean and started to study other companies and find out what they were doing, we realized that pull is the ultimate system, and there should always be pull from the customer. So, if the customer orders a product, that sends a signal to the next process to replenish that, which sends a signal to the process [00:02:00] before that to replenish, and the knock on effect produces all these signals.
throughout the organization to make more stuff. But on a push system, everybody just keeps pushing on to the next person. And there's all this inventory built up. There's all this work in progress built up and huge amounts of money and cash tied up in stock because of all this push all over the place.
Matthew: Right, so pull is responding
to the needs and the demand of the customer. Yes, so when a customer places an order,
That's when we'll make the product, and we'll just cut all the nonsense out before that. Exactly. Okay, so why do you think, because I've, you know, seen documentaries on like car manufacturers, and there's just kind of like hyper vigilant cultures like, Don't let the machine stop!
Keep producing! You know what I mean? Like, people have these insane quotas. Even if the customer orders aren't coming through, it's like, Keep producing, keep producing, keep producing. Why do you think people have that mentality and really sell us on why that's not a good idea? Yeah, well, that's the
Ryan: way we thought as [00:03:00] well.
We thought if we have a machine, we need to keep that machine working at full capacity no matter what. We weren't thinking about the pull or the order from the customer. Our whole focus was around keeping the machine going and if the machine stopped, we were all over saying, what's happening? You know, keep the machine going or did it run out of material?
Did the machine break down? What's wrong? The whole goal was keep the machine going at all costs. So we would rather turn the machine off for two or three hours in a day rather than make stuff that we don't need because the knock on effect of making stuff that you don't need.
And storing it in the shelves, then it gets dusty and dirty and we have to manage it and we have to, you know, with inventory managers running around managing all the stuff that we don't actually need, the freedom and the mental clarity and the flow and the reduction in defects that we had when we went to pull as opposed to push [00:04:00] was, I just can't I don't have the words for it.
It totally changed our company. And that's why this episode is going to go everywhere. Because there's so many companies out there that are still pushing. Right. And you need to stop and start pulling.
Matthew: Absolutely. So, I love the fact that as with all of these lean principles, They have the power to change our lives as well.
And sometimes by focusing on the personal and the outsider work stuff, it can really help, as you say, internalize the concept. So we're going to do the three levels like we often do on the podcast. Level one is personal. Level two is business. Level three is societal. And so level one, push versus pull.
Talk to us about diesel in your car.
Ryan: Really good, simple example is putting diesel or petrol in your car, okay? So if we fill our car with petrol, are we going to go to the filling station and keep trying to put more in? No, we're not. Why not? Because it's full. And this sounds so simple and so obvious. But then why do we [00:05:00] make stuff that isn't ordered?
Why do we produce materials with no pull from the customer? It seems silly when we talk about putting fuel in the car, and when we think of a manufacturing environment or really any organization, if you think about it, we're pushing information on, we're pushing material on,
we're making all this stuff that isn't needed.
It's all push, push, push, push.
And there is no need for it.
Matthew: So the goal of this episode is really to as ridiculous as it would be to go to the petrol station
and keep your finger on the nozzle and the diesel just spilling everywhere and your tank's full but there's 50 quid gone, there's 100 quid gone, I've just spent 500 pound pouring all this diesel over the place.
We want to actually see, well, that's actually what we're doing in our businesses. And we want it to be as obvious as that. So what else, like for, from our everyday lives, like going shopping, like where's, where's the push there?
Ryan: Well, you go into Tesco's, you go into the Suburban, Walmart, Walmart. Yeah. You're going to Walmart and there's all these deals.
Buy one, get two free, buy three, [00:06:00] get an. These deals are a push system. So when we go into the supermarket, not even thinking that we need this, but we see a deal and we go for it, it's a push system. So what the shopping center or the supermarket is trying to do is push all the stuff onto the customer.
Right. And really everything should be pull. So go into the shop with the list that you went in for in the first place and pull what you need and try not to get tempted by all the push because there is a lot of push.
In retail environments, we just really need to be hyper aware that in a lot of situations, it's a push system.
They're trying to push all this stuff onto us.
Matthew: Yeah. Oh, well, it's like the milkman, isn't it?
It's like if you have a milkman come and give you milk every day and you go on holiday all of a sudden, it's like then you've got all this extra milk that you don't actually need because it was based on push rather than pull. Exactly, yeah. Okay, so like discounts are a form of push.
That's interesting. We'll probably, uh Probably cover that a bit more when we [00:07:00] get into the business bit,
Another place that for some reason lean maniacs around the world love to give examples about is the airport.
Is there push versus pull going on in an airport? There actually is a really good one. You guys are the worst.
Stream (2): I was in London last weekend. We flew into Stansted and came out of the airport and there was this huge line of taxis, of black cabs, like 20, 25 taxis.
And straight away, I was like, that's a push system. All these taxis waiting there, ready to push their service on to the customers coming out of the airport. But a pull system is Uber. And that's how we, we used Uber that day. So we get out of the airport, get the Uber app. The next thing you know, the Uber is there.
So it's pull from the customer. Right. We request an Uber and the Uber comes as opposed to having a backlog and overproduction or this big, huge inventory of taxis waiting.
For customers, you know, [00:08:00] pull versus push. It's everywhere. It's absolutely everywhere.
Matthew: Yeah. Okay. I mean, pull is always responding to need.
So as we go into level two on the push versus pull in a business context,
Are there any examples Let's stay away from manufacturing just for a few more seconds that you've seen recently that you think is a really good example of a push versus pull.
So the way American hotels are run is totally wrong compared to the way the Japanese do it.
Ryan: So if you go into a hotel in America, you go to the room, there's toiletries, there's shampoo, there's conditioners, there's loads of towels. There's all this stuff that has been pushed into the hotel room, assuming that the customer wanted it. But if you go to a Japanese hotel, and I've seen this loads of times, I've been in Japan four times, I'm going again in September.
When you go into a Japanese hotel, they have all the toiletries displayed in the lobby. So the customer can go over and pull what they need. It's not pushed onto them. So if I want two bottles of [00:09:00] shampoo, that's, I'm going to get two bottles of shampoo. If I want an extra towel, I grab an extra towel.
If I don't want an extra towel, I don't touch it.
I walk on past. So it's pull versus push.
Matthew: That's, I mean, it's so simple whenever you lay it out like that. It's like when you go to a restaurant and they bring you bread and you're like, I don't want bread. Stop pushing that bread on me, man. It's like, I'm trying to, trying to take care of myself right now.
But it's push, push, push, push. If I don't touch the bread, what happens to the bread? Goes in the bin. That's right. Or, you know, someone brings me a glass of water. Now they have to wash the glasses through the waterway. It's waste everywhere. I'm starting to see the waste goggles or every episode we do.
It's like, ah, yes, the waste goggles are
getting better, getting better.
Ryan: There's actually a cafe in Limavady and I'll not say the name, but they do this exact thing.
Every time you sit down, water at the table, big water bottle, pour out the water. And I'm like, I didn't ask for water. There was no pull from the customer for the water.
So there's another cafe that we go to locally and the water is in a water area and you can go over and get water.
So that's pull, pull from the customer. [00:10:00] So instead of water being pushed onto the table.
You go and you get it if you want it. Push versus pull. It's everywhere.
Matthew: And what I love about both those examples is everybody wins.
Far easier to manage that Japanese hotel. You're not always having to replenish each individual room.
You're not carrying the stock around you. You know, Oh, this cart's run out of the free cookie that we put here. It's like, no, no, it's just all in the one place. And same with the water. You know, the waiters aren't having to run around and do this and do that. It's kind of like, boom.
And then the customer doesn't have all the stuff cluttered in their rooms or cluttered on their table.
Okay. Okay. So let's like get into Turkey,
I suppose. Like, your business. Give us an example when it comes to, let's go stock and inventory. Of push versus pull.
Ryan: A simple example of pull is, I'm in the office. Okay. If you imagine that I'm in the office at our company, the printer runs out of ink. I go to replenish the ink cartridge, I go to our inventory bin where the ink is held, pull that, and I [00:11:00] pull a Kanban card and drop it in to get ordered.
So we only order when there is pull from the printer in the office. If there is no pull or no need. We don't just go and order ink cartridges for the sake of it. So pull is always based on a request. Pull is always based on a pull from somebody. From the customer, from an internal customer, from the printer saying, I want more ink.
It's a pull from somewhere. And what do we do? We order enough to replenish that stock. And if there's a day where there's no ink cartridges needed, guess what? We don't order any. But it seems so obvious saying this live on a podcast, but the amount of companies and organizations that go around and do an order, a weekly order, a monthly order, and just stock up all this stuff.
Right. It's all just in case. Oh,
Matthew: and it's also like, it's the discount thing. It's like, [00:12:00] Oh mate, there's 50 black ink cartridges for 20 percent off. I'll just buy that. And then where is it? And they get stored and then it leaks out. And all of a sudden you've got all these problems and now it's ruined other stock because there's this black ink everywhere.
But instead of responding to the need. Yeah. Okay, cool. So like, what about from a, I really like that. If the customer demand. So if we like zoom into that, talk to me about push versus pull in sales and marketing.
Ryan: Most marketing out there is push. You know, if we really want to get good at marketing, we would create pull.
And a really good way to create pull in any organization is make your quality the best it can be. Make your service the best it can be. Make your delivery really good. Make focus on the processes and systems that give you operational excellence. And if we do that, people want to do business with you.
There's pull from the customer because the products are good. The service is so brilliant. I want [00:13:00] to do business with this company as opposed to most companies. They're going to trying to push their product. Please sign up to our webinar. Please, can we come and talk to you about our product? Please, can we, please, Mr.
Customer, can we, can you buy our product? It's, it's, it's all, a lot of it's based on push when really the trick is to turn it around and it's actually quite easy to turn it around to a pull system as opposed to push,
Even with like, we do the lean tears. People come from all over the world to come and see our factory. I can safely say I have never phoned up somebody and said, please come on a lean tour. We do this thing called lean manufacturing. You have to see it. It's amazing. I have never, and we'll never do that because that's push.
What have we done instead? We have created an environment where people are like, we have to go and see that. This is just unbelievable. We've never seen anything like it. So we've created pull, not push. Once you start pushing, all these wasteful [00:14:00] streams just fall with the push.
And it's just push, push, push.
And every time I see push, I just think waste. So much waste. What we really want to do is create pull from the customer.
Matthew: Yeah, that's really interesting because If you look at some of the most in demand products on the planet, you know, maybe like a new Tesla, like Cybertrucks is kind of like really popular right now.
Yeah. Or, you know, if Apple releases a new iPhone, it's like there's people actually lining up to throw their money at these products. And there is a diehard community of people who would say, I don't care how much it is, you're going to increase the price of the iPhone by double. I'm in. Actually, I want that even more now.
And so you compare that with You know, other phone manufacturers that are just constantly having to do 30 percent deals and if you get this, you'll get headphones with it and all this sort of stuff. Apple has never done a bundle deal discount like that because the pool is so strong. That's right, yeah.
Interesting. So what about recruitment? I know recruitment is like, everyone's pulling their [00:15:00] hair out, we can't get people. And you see mad things, like even Belfast. You know, over in the States, I know we were both over there recently, and it's like, the perks for going to work for some of these companies is just insane.
And that is like, it feels like a lot of push. It's like, as you were saying, please, Mr. Customer, it's like, Please, please, college graduate, come and work with us. You'll get everything you want. Do you know what I mean?
Ryan: Yeah, all based around push and I speak to business leaders all the time.
And currently one of the biggest challenges at the minute is we can't get people, we can't get staff.
It's really hard to get peoplecompare that with our company. We actually have a waiting list for people who want to work for our company.
Why is that? It's because we've used pull instead of push.
We're not saying, please come and work for us.
These are all the things we'll do. We're saying we've created this really remarkable culture. We're well known for what we do. We're well known for being really good to our people, for looking after our people, for giving them freedom to improve and be [00:16:00] creative. And the result is that we have a waiting list for people that want to work for our company.
And we often get emails and phone calls saying, any jobs going, the next time there's a job going, let me know. I really want to work there. And that's because of pull versus push. Most recruitment is push. It's going out to the marketplace saying, we would really like you to come and work for us.
Headhunting people, paying sign on bonuses, all this type of stuff to try and get, to try and push people into working for you. But if you really create an environment or create a culture, and this, this can be done because we have done it. It's not, uh, it's not an out of the way thing. Create a culture where people want to get on board with what you're doing because there's something there that they just want to be part of it.
Matthew: Yeah. And the world of push is like a world of desperation. Yeah. It's a world of scarcity. Yeah. Whereas pull, it's abundance. Yeah. It's attraction. That's right. It's we [00:17:00] want to be part of this. Yeah. And, you know, so many businesses around the world and here at home. They're trying so, so hard. They're pushing, they're pushing, pushing, and they're exhausted.
And then you see these other people who are just sitting back, and it looks easy. Yeah. And it just, it's all being pulled towards them.
Ryan: And that's the thing, business doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be hard. There is an easier way.
Matthew: So I met Daniel Priestley recently, a few weeks ago, and he said something to me really powerfully.
Ryan: He talked about with or without you energy.
So he was like, this is where the company's going. If you would like to be part of it, you're more than welcome to come on ahead. If not, that's fine. So with or without you energy, this is where the company's going.
This is the vivid vision we have. This is the direction we're going. If you would like to be part of it, then come on ahead and we'd love you to be on the team. We're not saying we need you, we want you, you you know, what can we do to get you on board? Because that's all push.
Matthew: Yeah. And this, this kind of very nicely moves us into level three, which is usually where it's like [00:18:00] philosophical, societal impacts of this lean principle.
But there's a danger to push. And the danger is that, and I have to admit, like we've experienced this, if you try to push someone over the line too hard, Whether it's a customer and you give them that extra discount or you work really hard and you try to get push, push, push or someone that you're you work with.
Very, very often you're pushing the wrong types of people. And then what are you left with? You're left with customers that actually end up causing you more harm than they do good. Or you end up with someone on your team who you probably knew wasn't a good fit but you pushed them over the line anyway.
And you tried to push them into the mold that is a good fit. And it just leads to a lot of
Ryan: It does. And it reminds me of something that we done because we made loads of mistakes with us at the start
So we tried to push people to do improvements when we started on our lean journey, trying to build our lean [00:19:00] culture. And we quickly realized that. People were making improvements for the sake of improving, doing improvements to keep Ryan happy. You know, they weren't doing it for the right reason.
It was all push, push, push.
Matthew: I heard Philippe say one time that he saw in his factory, you know, the pen move to about 20 different locations because it was a better, a more improvement, do you know
Ryan: what I mean? Just all based around push, but really what we've done and what we've got good at is created pull and how do you create pull you inspire people, you teach and train them on how to do an improvement, what waste is, what's the benefits for them, why would they even bother doing an improvement and once you educate people on the benefits to them and once they realize that lean And Continuous Improvement and all these incremental changes that we encourage people to do.
Once they realized it's as good for them as it is for the company and the customer, then it's all pull. And [00:20:00] that's why we get like hundreds of lean improvements every single week, because people want to do it. It's intrinsic. We're not, they're not being forced to
do
it.
Matthew: Right. And that's the role. Off a Great Leader is to cast a vision that's so compelling and attractive to people that actually will give them the means to achieve their goals and their dreams as well.
Ryan: Yeah, and I think that's another pull system. Actually, when
You can't help but be surrounded by somebody like yourself. He's really passionate and into a certain topic.
Without wanting to be excited and go back and forth with ideas and get on board, it's pull. So by being, I wouldn't say eccentric, but definitely passionate about being fanatical about something, you actually create pull and you attract people. Like minded people to you, who get on board with you, so it's a recruitment tool, it's a tool for engaging people to make improvements, it's, it just works
Matthew: everywhere.
Sure, I mean this is basically a cheesy Instagram post, but [00:21:00] I do, I do quite like that thing where it says like, your vibe attracts your tribe. Do you know what I mean? It's like the energy you put out there, it's like, it is magnetic. It is. You know, high energy, super creative people want to be around high energy, super creative people.
And so, yeah, there's definitely a lot to that. I mean, this podcast.
would you say the way that this podcast was launched was there's an element of pull rather than push?
Ryan: Absolutely, Paul, because when me and you sat down to talk about the potential Lean Made Simple podcast, I was kind of like, to be honest, I was like, Is anybody going to listen to it?
And we both decided, well, let's try a couple and see how it goes and look at the result.
Matthew: Yeah. So we launched with. We launched with three or four episodes and we were basically like, let's see, let's see what happens. And the pull from the audience and the people who listen and watch this, you who listen and watch this, was so strong that we've now been pulled to just keep going.
And the demand is so high where, you know, if we switch [00:22:00] to two episodes a month rather than every single week. It's like, where are they? It's like you've ruined my Monday morning drive, do you know what I mean? And it's, it's crazy because what we see a lot of people do with podcasts is, you know, they'll record like 20 episodes and then they'll, they'll push them all out.
And it's like crickets instead of here's one or two, whet the appetite. Are you interested in more? And if the demand is so high, then you go for it. And, you know, we just want to even just take the chance just to say thank you to everyone who's listened to and supported this podcast. We checked, I think just like yesterday, and the show's reached over hundreds of thousands of people, 30 plus different countries.
You know, Oh, mate, talk about,
Ryan: uh, India. I didn't even talk to you about this. That's so funny. That's right. A couple of days ago, um, I got a video from a guy from India. And he said, I hope it's okay, we translated one of your podcasts to Hindi. And it's really funny seeing myself and yourself speaking,
Matthew: speaking Hindi.
Me and the family and the kids and they [00:23:00] were rolling. It's like, daddy, I've never, I didn't know you could speak Hindi. Like I can't.
Ryan: So their plan is to translate more podcasts to Hindi.
And that, that's pull, that's people saying. Yeah. The content's unbelievable. Is it okay if we share it
Is it okay if we translate it into different languages?
And obviously it is, but it shows that it's
Matthew: a pull. But can you imagine if we started this podcast and we started putting it out in like 10 different languages? It would be ridiculous. You know what I mean? The idea of you and I translating it into Hindi and being like, yeah, we're going to push this on the, on the Indian market is just ridiculous.
Yeah, sure. But the pull system is way forward. So for the business owner Listening or watching. And they're like, right, I think I get it. You guys have bombarded us with like a million different examples. Finally I understand what Push vs. Pull is. But where do I actually go from here? How do I apply this to my business and where do I start?
The first
Ryan: thing I recommend to do is to be aware. Just look at your business
with a different lens, [00:24:00] with different glasses on now. You're looking at it from a push pull
perspective and trying to recognize where there's push.
Gather your team around and have a discussion about it and write a list of all the things that you think are a push system.
Don't even worry about how to solve it or how to change it. Just write a list. And just become aware. of how much you're pushing. Pushing product onto your customer. Pushing material through your factory. Pushing information onto your customer that they haven't requested. You're bombarding them with information.
With emails, maybe you're marketing to them too much. Just be aware of where the push is and think about how you can translate that into
Matthew: pull. Super powerful. And, I mean, people come all around the world to see you guys. But I love that you guys are always learning, you're always hungry.
Where are you currently working on in your business when it comes to Push vs Pull?
Ryan: Yep. It's a good question.
Something we realized quite recently is that for product development, new product development, [00:25:00] we designed what we thought was the next big thing. And we invest, we would invest loads of money, loads of time, loads of effort on a new product. And then push it out to the market and say, here's our new product, what do you think?
So what we're in the process of doing is turning that around completely and going to the market first and saying, this is what we're thinking, what do you think? What, if we were to develop a new product, what features do you think it needs? What color scheme do you think would work, would work well?
what technical features does it have to have?
What price do you think it needs to be?
And then with that feedback from the market.
We've got data to base our decision making on, so it's pull from the customer. And I just want to say that it has to be true pull. Somebody saying, Oh yeah, I think that will be lovely, isn't enough. It has to be true pull.
the best way to get true pull from the customer is to ask the right questions and make sure you're pinpointing exactly what they're [00:26:00] trying to say and extract that information.
So getting pull from the customer as opposed to pushing this new product and saying, here's the new product, let us know what you think. We're getting that feedback first. So pull versus push. It works everywhere. It really does. I love it,
Matthew: man. Yeah. Very, very cool. So, as always. Uh, we would love to invite you, who are listening or watching to this, to Limavady in Northern Ireland, to Ryan's Factory, to come and see Lean in Action for yourself.
You can book a Lean Made Simple tour, but only if you want to. I was
Ryan: just about to say that, only if you want to.
Matthew: There's no push at all. There's absolutely, you know what? Unless you're super passionate and you want to learn more, it's okay. You, you, you, you can hold off. But if it is something that you're, that you're interested in, there'll be a link in the description and that's it.
That's all there is to it. Whenever the demand is there, you just make people aware of it and you see what happens. Cause you guys are. Constantly sold out. Your waiting list is [00:27:00] crazy. And, uh, I mean it's a good example of that. Yeah, it is, yeah. It's a very meta way to end the podcast, but yeah. Ryan, thank you so much for your time today.
And thank you so much for listening and watching. Really appreciate it. Thank you.