2025 Relaunch of the Five Minute Gemba

Welcome back!

After a hiatus, I am excited to reintroduce the Five Minute Gemba newsletter. As we step in to 2025, I want to share some reflections, news, and set the tone for the new year for the newsletter and beyond.

Reflections on 2024, LLM Influence

Last year I discovered a powerful ally, what I dubbed my “best $20 a month employee” aka ChatGPT. I then started working with his cousins Claude and Grok, as well. AI, LLM (Large Language Models) in particular, for me, went from being an exercise in experimentation to an indispensable tool since their initial release. I do more in one day today with (mostly) ChatGPT, than I probably did in an entire month previously. I have also found that the professional version of ChatGPT, is worth the $200 a month, for me, so ChatGPT is now my “Best $200 a month employee”. This is due to using o1 Professional model to solve a very difficult formula in one shot.

As my friend Jeff Briggs said on a recent Gemba Chat:

If you figure an hour costs you say $100, then all you have to do is save two hours to break even.

He’s right, and in my case it’s getting ridiculous how much time I save immediately and in the long term. I am fighting way above my pre-LLM boxing weight. There has been a cascading effect too, with my team and others I am in contact with being gently (okay, not gently at all, I am annoyingly persistent, sorry) encouraged to use LLMs. I am excited to see what my team, colleagues, friends and customers can do with it.

Every discussion I have about AI with others seems to lead to more break throughs. This might be the most exciting aspect of AI, the learning curve stays really steep!

Offloading Leads to Creativity, a Killer App

The biggest highlight for me with AI, was re-capturing my creativity. It seems somewhat counter to what you’d expect, but working with ChatGPT to solve problems and accelerate the heavy lifting, freed my mind up to do creative work. Ideas started popping in to my head frequently, you can read more about using ChatGPT to emulate Chase Jarvis “Creativity Muscle” exercise. That endeavor allowed me to access some part of my brain that had been dormant for a while, I am sad to say, but happy to have back!

Looking back I can see many important decisions, often spawned out of creativity, that led to major changes. The formula looks something like:

Where the original problem leads to a solution, then during the delivery and post analysis of that solution we discover new ways to improve. Which when combined with a creative mindset, makes the innovation possible for an even better way to solve the original problem and things we hadn’t considered originally.

How do I know this works? Much of what we do today is the result of that process. Without the creativity, the innovation opportunity dies.

So how can we innovate together with the Five Minute Gemba platform?

Gemba Chats

A small group of my industry contacts participated in a new Five Minute Gemba feature, Gemba Chats. I eluded to it earlier with the comment from Jeff Briggs. These were in response to noticing that there are lots of amazing people in this industry who do not get much of a chance to discuss ideas with their peers. Community is a powerful force for humans, even engineers and business owners. In these chats we discuss anything from specific challenges to new technologies or general industry insights. This creates an opportunity to brainstorm, problem solve, and connect with others pursuing a path of excellence.

Gemba Live

To further build on community, I’d like to offer live virtual events. These could be topic specific with subject matter experts, open discussions, or even specific to solutions that we provide where there is interest.

Gemba Con

Another idea being considered is in person events. These could be tied to major conferences or become their own event. Call this one a “stretch goal”.

You Have Time

The past five years have been robust with great challenges and great opportunities. Recently I was feeling very stressed as I was starting my day. It seemed as though new things that demanded my time that had to be immediately addressed. I remembered a lesson from far in my past, “you have time” I thought. I repeated it several times, relaxed and focused on taking care of everything that required my immediate attention. We always have time, it seems, in hindsight it’s hard to imagine not coming to that conclusion. We do choose where we spend time, sometimes those choices are great, sometimes they are not. That’s okay, but always remember you have time if you choose to.

So for 2025 let’s use the Five Minute Gemba platform to build on that to create great opportunities that make for the best use of our time. If the Gemba Chat sounds like something of interest to you, please reach out to me directly through the contact form or my contact information you likely have in my Email signature. If you have an idea for a topic, panel, discussion, etc, for a Gemba Live, please get it on my radar. If you have ideas what an in person event might look like, let me know also, I’d be happy to consider it. Most importantly, don’t forget to sign up for the Five Minute Gemba for exclusive content that is not shared on the website.