The Secret Sauce of Successful Business Systems 

Meghan Phillips:

What I found was a huge light bulb moment for me, when we think about a HACH person coming on site and having a conversation with a customer and saying, "Hey, what are your challenges? What does your process look like?" Asking questions along, "What are you trying to measure? What's working, what's not? What do your associates do on a day to day basis?" You might not know it, but every single one of those conversations is based in DBS.

Stacey Flax:

Today, we're going to talk about what winning looks like with Meghan Phillips, Vice President of DBS here at HACH. Welcome to Testing the Waters. I'm your host, Stacey Flax.

So Meghan, we're so excited to have you today. You have such a unique role here, and we would like to hear more about Meghan, but also your role at Danaher and how HACH as an Opco, what that relationship looks like. So we'll start with who's Meghan?

Meghan Phillips:

Sure. So my name is Meghan Phillips. My formal title is I'm the Vice President of Danaher Business System here at HACH. That's a pretty big mouthful, but what everything that encompasses that is I'm responsible for our continuous improvement culture. I'm responsible for partnering with every functional team to help deploy the DBS or Danaher Business System. But I do that within HACH.

And you mentioned Opco, so what is that? Well, you got to start with what is DBS? So the Danaher Business System, at its core definition, it's our competitively advantaged system of continuous improvement and the culture that makes it work. But if you think about HACH as a business, it's a really large operating company, has a great history and a legacy, but it's one of many companies underneath the portfolio that is Danaher.

So Danaher Corporation of a Fortune 250, a conglomerate in a wide variety of tech sciences and other spaces. So the exciting part is, hey, each company, something like HACH, has a dedicated customer base, it has a dedicated set of products, it has an incredible history. But there are different companies in the Danaher portfolio, how do they all succeed? How do they all partner together? Well, one of the key pieces of the secret sauce is DBS. And so the exciting part for me is I'm the linchpin that helps bring some of that culture of our corporate environment into the key pieces that help make HACH successful.

Stacey Flax:

That's awesome. You said a lot. So it sounds like it's the toolbox, which is the DBS system, and the people, the culture, and you put it together, and it's this amazing, as you said, secret sauce that makes the business work.

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah. So for those that might not be familiar, there's a lot of pieces that might sound, things that you hear in the business space like Lean manufacturing or Six Sigma, but at its core, the Danaher Business System, like you mentioned, it is a set of tools or resources. But beyond that, it's essentially who we are and what we do.

So it's a huge differentiator for how Danaher is built, how HACH is built, because every single function or team has access and resources to key tools, whether that's our distribution centers and our manufacturing facilities, whether that's our R and D and innovation engine, our customer facing teams, we all have access to different ways that we can do things like problem solving and innovation, and that's all linked to the core foundation of our set of tools in DBS.

Stacey Flax:

Okay. So is that something similar to what maybe Toyota has?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because the origin of Lean manufacturing came out of Toyota or the Toyota production system. And you'll actually probably hear me talk a little bit about this as I go deeper, you're going to hear words that are actually based in Japanese. And so there's a lot of this that come from that original culture, but the exciting piece is Danaher has an incredible legacy. And that legacy means that we've seen our own evolution.

So one of the phrases you heard me describe is continuous improvement. So we didn't just take a set of tools, use those once and decide, hey, that was good enough. We've taken tools and continually evolve them and then expanded them. So like I said, not just in manufacturing, not just in how we're producing our parts, but it's also in how we're doing things like customer relationships. So we're going to continue to use and evolve our tools year in, year out, but it's also that culture piece, which means it's tied hugely to our associates and our talent.

Stacey Flax:

Awesome. So you've talked about your role here and what you do, what do you do for fun?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah, well it's really interesting because as I think about how I ended up in this career path, because it's not a traditional career trajectory, so I've been with HACH here for just over three years, but I've been part of the Danaher portfolio of companies for a little over 11 years. And my background is in supply chain and operations, which as I mention, is the origin of DBS. But if I think about who I am and how I ended up in this path, it all seems to make sense.

So if you've spent any time with me, you'll learn I talk fast. I'm a passionate competitor. I am extremely process oriented. And that goes back to probably day one of when I was born. I've been in competitive sports probably at a very young age. I love softball and volleyball, but I am an eldest daughter. So if you think a little bit about my style and my energy, I have been the person that's been the logistical coordinator. I'm the person that always wanted to optimize processes. I hate things like waste and wasting time. Traffic is probably my number one enemy, because it's just an absolute waste of anyone's time and effort.

But all of those things, I think even in college and coming into the career workspace in corporate America, I never had a language, a language to describe what I wanted to do or where I was ultimately passionate to spend my time. But if you put all those pieces together, it's I wanted to be a problem solver. I wanted to win, and I wanted to really challenge the status quo and do things better. Well that's continuous improvement.

So I found a home in Danaher and in DBS. I started in the dental platform of companies. So there used to be a set of companies underneath Danaher that made a bunch of dental products. The company I worked for made orthodontics, so helping everything to straighten teeth. So you might think, hey, what on earth does braces have to do with water technology and water analytics? Well, the cool thing is all of that is about delivering value to our customers. And we use the same process, mechanism and language to be successful, and that's been the exciting part of my career is really finding that there's a language for where I get my passion from and that's teaching ultimately how everyone can tap into that same skill set.

Stacey Flax:

That's awesome. It's a skill that is such a good fit for your role. And if you take a step back, you said you knew that you wanted to do this since you were a kid. So were you the one that everybody went to and said, "Hey, can you help me plan this?"

Meghan Phillips:

Oh yeah. I think probably good, better, otherwise, everyone jokes that they were always the lead of the group projects, but I probably wasn't just the lead of the group projects, I was like, "What's our process? How do we make this better? Are we sure that we should be spending time on this thing? We need to build a structure." I probably would drive a lot of my team members or my brothers in that instance, crazy with the way of saying, hey, well if we're going to go on this trip, do we have the right itinerary and are we flying into the right airports?

But ultimately, I think if you look back, and part of the reason that I love doing what I do is you can't argue with results. And if you want to go on a vacation with me or you want to think about optimizing a process in your home, I will tell you that it is a little bit painful as you're learning how my brain works, but you get really good results at the end.

Stacey Flax:

That's awesome. Yeah, I can think back. My kids go to a school and we moved, and so I was like, okay. So I knew it took 12 minutes to get there at my old house. Let me back into this problem because I need an idea to know how early I need to leave to get there and get them on time.

So backing into something as simple as getting your kids to school and using that process, you mentioned process. Using that process to have the best results, the best timing, and ultimately get what I set out to get, which is my kids to school on time. That's really cool.

Meghan Phillips:

It's really interesting and exciting for me because I think about at its core, every human being, whether you're working at a large company like HACH or whether you're managing a home, it comes down to do you know what winning looks like? And it might be, am I getting my kids to school on time and is it not chaos? That's number one. I know what winning looks like if I can say, "Hey, everyone arrived. They're all fully dressed. And we got there roughly around the time they needed to."

Stacey Flax:

With managed chaos.

Meghan Phillips:

Exactly. But the exciting part is every time you do this, you have opportunity in learnings to get things better and you can actually start challenging the status quo and you say, "Hey, I got there in 12 minutes." Maybe it's not a big win for you to get there in 11 minutes. Cool, that's not a big difference. But it might be different to get there and say, "I had time for a catch up with my kids before they leave the car." Or, "They left with everything they were supposed to, all of their homework and their lunch." Those are the things that we as a business take and put at a huge operational level.

So I always like to challenge, I'm using them in my own home. Good, bad or otherwise, I'm sure my husband would be disagreeing that it's always great to be DBSing in the house, but there is a huge benefit that comes from thinking about what winning looks like and challenging yourselves to get closer and closer to that every single day.

Stacey Flax:

You said what winning looks like. And we do need to, because if you think about what winning looks like, then you can better define the steps that you need to take to get there. And if you just say, "Oh, I want to score a touchdown." Okay, but how do you get there? You have to have different roles on the playing field and people doing different things, feeding in. There's different plays and processes. So it's really cool.

Tell me a little bit about maybe some of your biggest learnings in this role.

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah, so the exciting part is, again, I feel like I'm a champion of culture. So beyond just a person that's supposed to be a tool expert or a person that's supposed to empower processes, I feel like I'm trying to bring people along on their own journey towards thinking a little bit more DBS. And the exciting part is the vast majority of our HACH associates, we drank the Kool-Aid a long time ago. We know the benefits and the value that come from this.

And it might be easy if I think... Describing this a bit like an analogy. So if a person or a team or a business is trying to achieve some goal, I design it a little bit like a mason jar. This is ultimately the capacity that I have to deliver on whatever my target is. That might be a perfect product to a customer. It might be growing the business in a key new region, whatever it is, the jar is what I've got. That's the capacity that I have to go and achieve my goal, whatever that might be. The business, what it's going to do, is it's going to evaluate how I deliver that, is it's going to fill the jar. It's going to fill the jar with these rocks. These rocks are the processes, the tools, the mechanisms that say, "Hey, ultimately if I can do these things and do these things well, I'm going to get the best result that I want."

The problem is, you're going to fill these rocks and there might be early ideas, they might be great options, but if you look at that mason jar full of rocks, you're going to see a lot of white space. You're going to see a lot of things in there that show you, hey, I might not be doing this in most effective way.

The biggest thing that I love about DBS, and I think about the exciting part of my job is we never want to ask people to do more than they want to or are capable of doing. That jar is the capacity of an associate. If you think about the world we're navigating right now, phrases that come up, stress, burnout. We're navigating an incredibly complex environment. We're navigating a pandemic. There's a lot of the pieces of saying, "Hey, I want my associates to feel like they are delivering success, but I don't want them burning out. I don't want to ask them to do more with less."

So what does that mean? How do I do this? How do I work smarter, not harder? Well, what that is I take different tools of my DBS toolbox. So in this case, maybe a rock hammer. And I take that rock out and I challenge it. I challenge and understand what are my areas of opportunity? What are my areas that I can no longer do or no longer want to do because they don't deliver my goal? Or what can I operationalize or automate or make easier for my team?

Well if I start breaking up that rock, all of a sudden I put it back into the jar and I've taken away waste or mooda is a Japanese word for that. And I've made it easier to deliver on that opportunity. I've worked smarter, I've used my tools.

The exciting part though, my work's not done, because I now have a different set of tools because now that I've got gravel in this jar, I can take a different tool and I can start to pulverize and pound that into sand. And I want to say, "Okay, now what else can I do to find even new ways of doing this process?"Well, okay, now that I've got the sand out there, can I take a machine and really pressure that down? And now I'm getting into super fine powder.

Well, now is a question you think, okay, I've opened up a bunch of space in this jar. I'm delivering incredible results. I am contributing quality, innovation, key items for my customer, but I've opened up white space. So now what?

Well, I get an opportunity to design what comes next. Do I put new rocks in there to start thinking through what comes next? Do I leave that white space for white space thinking and breakthrough? Do I focus on talent, development, education, customer partnership? I get a lot of flexibility about what I do as a business. It's such a unique opportunity if I think about the fact that I haven't made the jar bigger. I haven't asked my associates to do more, but I'm still delivering the same results, but I'm doing it in a different way. And then I get to add more things and I get to go do new problem solving and I get to keep doing that with a whole different set of tools every single day.

Stacey Flax:

Obviously the DBS system is Danaher's, but the same type of process, problem solving, right?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah.

Stacey Flax:

For example, can be utilized by all of our audience members in so many different ways. So give us an example of how someone could use something like a DBS tool to let's say, in their home, maybe in a municipal or industrial setting?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah. Well, it's super exciting to me because part of the reason that I love the job that I do is I get to take super complicated tools. If you think Lean, Six Sigma, these are complicated mathematical, analytical tools, but I get to make them applicable to any set of the business. So I can do it to the home, and I promise you that I do it.

So one example I like to think about is the kitchen. So most people have access to a kitchen in their homes, but you might think about the different stakeholders that use the kitchen. So depending on the size of your family, you might have someone who's the cook. You might have someone who's the cLeaner. You might have somebody who just makes the mess, goes and finds the snacks. But every single person in there has a different need for the kitchen.

Okay. So you've got a bunch of different needs of what winning would look like for that kitchen. But the kitchen also forms a wide variety of functions. It needs to be your inventory. So it's housing your pantry, your fridge, your freezer. It needs to be all of your tools, appliances on how you get things done. It needs to be the place where relationships and moments happen. Are you having a social experience? Do you have a table in there? Do you have an island that people sit at and prep together? But ultimately, it's a place of nourishment. Are you able to cook effectively in there and then ultimately clean up that mess? In the space of one area of the home. That's a lot of process.

Stacey Flax:

It is.

Meghan Phillips:

It's a lot of things. One of the phrases I like to use is, it's called a spaghetti diagram. So it's a good example to be using the kitchen, but it's how all of these lines of process intersect with each other. And I'm sure anyone that's ever cooked in the kitchen during a busy season like the holiday season has bumped into people, run out of room, run out of places in the sink, they don't have enough space in the oven. All of that is a way of thinking about how process can make things better.

So for example, how are you thinking about your inventory on a regular basis? Do you go to the grocery store every week? Do you go to the grocery store every month? I know for my family, we have to think about a Costco run versus our grocery store run. What do we get and how big and do I have space for it? Okay, so that's inventory management. A tool we would use in our DBS system is Kanban, a Lean replenishment system that ensures that you're not carrying too much. So I don't have room in my freezer for 90 days worth of chicken, but I also have just enough so I can make sure I can make meals for the next week to two weeks to three weeks. I don't have to go to Costco every single day.

But the other end is, are my tools at the right place? So there's a tool that lets us think about how we are designing the layout or footprint of a manufacturing facility, a distribution center or a kitchen in this instance for where do my spoons go? Where does my microwave go? If I'm doing my prep, do all my cutting boards sit next to my knives? And when I'm done, where's my trash can so I'm putting all of my waste into the bin?

You'd be surprised if you even just think about prepping one meal, let's say baking a birthday cake. How much are you walking in your kitchen to achieve a single task? So our job as we think about DBS is how are you thinking about the process, what winning would look like, and what are all the key metrics or key performance indicators or KPIs, as we say in Danaher, what are those things that we are measuring that show us we're getting closer to success? And then how do we innovate and problem solve to make things just a little bit easier?

Stacey Flax:

So what you're telling me is when I moved into my new house and I knew in the morning, I got to make my coffee, I got to get the kids lunch ready. So as I was going through that process over the past couple of days, I moved stuff around because it took me too long to get from the pantry to the coffee maker. And then there was just so many things that I ended up changing to make it more efficient, more timely, so that I had that extra, as you said in the mason jar, that extra room that I could fill with talking to the kids in the morning or making sure their Chromebooks were in their book bags. So you really can, and like you said, it puts some structure and a name around a process of a way of thinking.

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah. So it's really fun if you think about, and I say fun, might not be fun for everybody as they're going through it, but it's fun for me if I think about how much time I get back to get to choose what I get to do with it.

So for example, I love to make cookies at the holiday time, but I'm also not a super great baker. For me, I think I'm more into the fun and the experience of it, but it takes a lot of tools, it takes a lot of ingredients, and it's a very precise science. So I'm intense when I try and set that out. But if I've set up my kitchen correctly and I have a flow of my dry ingredients, my wet ingredients, they flow into my oven and I can do a sequence of events. One, I get cookies that look the same and they taste pretty great and it's a lower stress environment for me to deliver whatever it is that I'm trying to do. I get to have some fun while I do it. So there is something a little bit about being intentional about how you think through that process.

Stacey Flax:

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm thinking too, even from whether it's an industrial, municipal, maybe just a wastewater facility, and right now we do have labor shortages, so you're having to do more with less. So taking a step back and putting a process like that to the table and saying, "Okay, we know this is our main goal. We know that we have less to get there. Maybe less tools, maybe less budget." So working through that, it sounds like a tool like a DBS tool or something, just that process thinking would really help out.

Do you have any examples from, again, just thinking about municipal customers of how they could apply a similar process and come out with a more efficient process in the end?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah. Well the exciting thing for me, and I would say even as part of my own journey, when I came and I first joined HACH, one, I was so passionate about what DBS could do, the wide variety of tools, and we have over 50 tools that all have different levels of complexity. But what I found was a huge light bulb moment for me was the connection point between our HACH team and our customer.

Because when I think DBS, a lot of times you might be hearing things, whether you're reading shareholder reports or you're reading anything that talks about company performance, it's very inwardly focused. Like, "Hey, we use a lot of these great tools, they make us really great, aren't you super thrilled?" But the exciting part I think about what DBS does is it creates an engine for our connection with our customer.

And the moment that I think it was really great and could be applicable for our municipal team is when we think about a HACH person coming on site and having a conversation with a customer and saying, "Hey, what are your challenges? What does your process look like?" Asking questions along, what are you trying to measure? What's working, what's not? What do your associates do on a day to day basis? You might not know it, but every single one of those conversations is based in DBS. Because what we're trying to do is not necessarily deploy a DBS tool explicitly, but we're trying to do is be collaborative problem solvers with you.

And that was a huge light bulb moment for me because it became super exciting, not just about driving culture within HACH, but in driving culture and improvement alongside and in partnership with our customers. Because where DBS becomes extremely powerful is when there is a hunger and a need to say, "Wait, can I do this a little bit better? Can I do this a little bit differently? If I move this instrument over into this space or if I create a new process with my lab testing or I think about a different type of chemistry, can I optimize my process? Can I get time back to do other value activities? Can I go ahead and make this more compliant or more straightforward or easier on my associates?" Every single one of those questions that we ask internally then becomes an opportunity for us to deliver the same type of benefit when we're problem solving with our customers.

Stacey Flax:

There's a ton of value there, because you're walking through the process with the customer. So they're going to pick up on some of that and hopefully in turn, utilize some of those same problem solving in their own environment and then teach others. So it's like a continuous learning process improvement, right?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah.

Stacey Flax:

You touched on it, but when you have that extra space, you do have an opportunity for the innovations. Think about your parking lot ideas or you threw some spaghetti on the wall and some of it stuck and some of it didn't, let's pick up some of those pieces that didn't stick and let's try it again because we have that extra time, and we have a process in place that makes it so much more efficient.

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah. Well the part for me that I think I get most excited about when I think about that white space, and I think about we've opened up opportunity of we opened up a creative space is the fact that within DBS is a fail fast mentality. What it means is that we don't let perfect get in the way of better. We don't feel like everything needs to be perfectly calibrated and perfectly set up to have the exact right process. Because incremental improvements on a consistent basis drive so much more impact.

So something I like to talk about that shows that is something called the kaizen process. So we're firm believers in kaizen, which is a word in Japanese that means continuous improvement. We deliberately run kaizen events, which are focused, targeted, cross-functional events, targeting and solving a specific problem. We may use a different set of tools, but the goal is put ourselves in a room, put a bunch of really committed and cross-functional experts and go and tackle the problem in a blitz and really create an environment where we walk away from our day jobs to say, "This is a focused issue. What do we want to do with this?"

Whether it's building a new process or tackling an area of opportunity or doing breakthrough thinking, we're doing it in the room. We also recognize though, when you put those kinds of things and we say we're going to do this in a week, which oftentimes they are, you're going to be putting yourselves in this stressful environment. You're going to be having to think outside the box and you're going to have to put ideas, throw spaghetti and see what sticks. The fun part of this is we're also completely that a lot of them don't, and we're creating an environment where people's ideas are welcome. We bring a lot of diverse perspectives, it's a huge piece of conversation for us, but ultimately, we're going to come out better, stronger, faster, because we have all of that thought process.

Now, I'll be the first to admit when you're going through the kaizen piece, we talk about Wednesday and Wednesday is the piece where we say we hit sometimes the valley of despair because that's where the real rubber meets the road of this is a big problem. We admit what we want to do and where we are today, our current state to where we want our future state to be. And we also recognize that we got a lot of work to do. But there's something so incredibly powerful about the people in the room uniting together and deciding what that future state could look like, building the bridge to deliver on something brand new. And you get to see that in the fact that we continually get to innovate. We don't just run one kaizen, we run tons of kaizen events across the organization in a wide variety of functions because we believe that you can do continuous improvement every single day.

Stacey Flax:

So if you were to think about the future, what does that future landscape look like?

Meghan Phillips:

Well, look, everyone can acknowledge right now we are not dealing in normal times. So not only we're navigating a global pandemic, inflation, we talk about the socioeconomic environments that we are in, there is a lot going on. It is impacting our associates, it's impacting our customers, it's impacting corporate America. It's impacting the corporate landscape globally. What's coming to fruition here is who's going to thrive coming out of this, and who's trying to survive? And look, there's going to be a lot of learnings for a lot of companies as they're navigating this space. But the future for me is extremely optimistic because Danaher, HACH, all of our associates are in the prime position to be leveraging an incredible learning cycle. So every single day as we were navigating all of this change and the change that will continue, let's be honest, there is a lot of this where we set ourselves up to be a stronger company coming out of this.

So we get to actually decide what does the future look like for our customers and share that value and share that opportunity. We get to ask ourselves, what does the future state of HACH look like and how do we do that by doing the right talent development, the right investment, and more tools and education? We get to do all of these things and we get to say, "Okay, so the future of this is even more of the strong HACH legacy that we're used to, but a further entrenchment of, hey, leveraging this culture of continuous improvement to deliver even more every single day."

Stacey Flax:

And listening to the customers, you mentioned that. Going to Gemba and being on the floor with them and hearing their feedback and putting that into that continuous improvement process. It's like the other day, and this is just something very simple, but I made my kids lunch. Let's go back to the lunch box, because that's what I do a lot. Made my kids lunch, sent it to school, I didn't ask them what they wanted. And then when they came home, I looked to see what was still in the lunch box, trying to again, continuously improve and not waste food, make sure they have enough to eat, make sure I have a good balance of veggies, fruit, snacks. And again, it's a process that I didn't realize I was using at home already, and it just puts some structure and a name around it, which is I think so cool.

Meghan Phillips:

And if you think about expanding this into the world we're in, you can't go more than five seconds without hearing things around the supply chain crisis. A ton of businesses right now navigating access to components, navigating complexities of just how do you get the stuff that you need to deliver to your customers? And look, we are not immune to navigating that same space, but we are also not going to be in a position where we are trying to limp along.

So similar to getting a little bit smarter, a little bit more processed towards your lunchbox, we are going to come out of this not just with how did we navigate this space of these last two, three years? We're going to come out of this stronger with process, with an incredible set of tools, resources, and associates that are now going to be in a situation where I'll knock on wood and say, hey, I hope we don't have to navigate something like the crisis we're in now, but we are going to be set up for success to be that much more prepared if anything like this happens again.

And that's the best part I think about working for a place like HACH and working for a place like Danaher is we don't just solve a problem for right now, we solve a problem for the long term.

Stacey Flax:

Yeah, it gives you the tools to really look ahead and say as a risk management, planning, all of those really important pieces of looking to the future and making sure that you get there, right?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah, absolutely.

Stacey Flax:

So if you had a key takeaway for our audience today, something that you could tell them or give them, some advice you could give them in their own place of business or home, what would that be?

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah, so I think I go back to I love having a true north star. So I think about whatever process, whatever department I'm working with, whatever team, even if it's with an associate or I'm thinking about my own home, I want my north star of what winning looks like. And when you've got a good sense of defining that true north star, then you can start to say, "Okay, where am I starting today?" A phrase we like to use is learning to see. How do you learn to see your current state of how you are delivering against that north star?

Now sometimes that means being brutally honest with yourself and saying, "Wow, I got a gap to this. I really wish that when I did laundry, I immediately folded it and put it away. That's not my north star. I'm not delivering to that today. "That's just the reality. But acknowledging and saying, "My current state and here is the difference between that north star," now all of a sudden you can take a key look and say, "What are the critical few items that I want to go and do that are going to deliver me one step closer?"

I think where people get hung up as they think about running an enterprise or they think about tacking something as complex as continuous improvement or Lean manufacturing is, but I'm not an expert, but I haven't spent 30 years deploying Lean, Six Sigma or a lot of these really, really intense analytical tools. But you know what you do have? Knowledge and expertise of step one. And that's step one is a marginal improvement against my current state closer to my north star. And if you start with step one, step two becomes that much easier and that much easier/

Stacey Flax:

It's not overwhelming. And then you mentioned stress is a term we hear today, and I think we're all a little overwhelmed, especially with the changes that we're just not expecting or used to. And so having those steps that we can follow and taking one bite of the cookie at a time, it's not as overwhelming and we don't lose that initiative to continue moving forward, because we know that if we finish one step and we get there, we take it bite by bite, we'll eventually make it.

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah, and I think the piece to me, I would say a big takeaway for anyone that's interested in going down a journey of continuous improvement is to think about... I go back to my high school physics when I talk about inertia and inertia is real. Whether you're talking about a municipal plants, whether you're talking about in your home or you're talking about a manufacturing company, it doesn't matter. Inertia is real. So as you think about how you've always done things or you think about the processes that currently exist, that first move will always be hardest. It's that first step of creating that momentum and that energy.

But when you get to things like continuous improvement, I mentioned that it's a system and it's a set of tools and resources, but it's also the culture. And when you begin to do something like the culture that we have here at HACH and at Danaher, you start to notice that it generates its own momentum, it becomes an engine. And that's the part to me that becomes really powerful is that the people learn and drive and become really empowered to use those tools and resources to continue the momentum. And then you'll find problem solvents happen all over the place. And that's the part I think to me, that you can see in the results.

So I think I talked a little bit about myself, like why and how I ended up in this space, and it's I like to win. So if I know what winning looks like, and I like to win, but I like to win as a team. And so if there's any big takeaway that I want someone to really feel about this is where are you bringing your team together to go ahead and find a way to win?

Stacey Flax:

I like that. I like that, because I think winning as a team, it's critical. You win as a team, whether it's in the family structure, whether it's in a business structure, whether it's in sports, you do, you win as a team.

Meghan Phillips:

Yeah, absolutely.

Stacey Flax:

I think that's great. Well thank you so much, Meghan. Is there anything else you want to add or?

Meghan Phillips:

No, I think if anything, there's a big piece of, if you haven't heard of DBS or you haven't felt the DBS touch, I promise you that it's so ingrained as to part of who we are. I would encourage anyone to reach out and ask. We're happy to share a little bit about our own journeys and our own way we use these tools as HACH associates. But the biggest takeaway for me is how powerful it can be with these tools. Not just driving our internal optimized processes and making us a better company, but making us a better service for our customers. Because every single thing that we're doing is about delivering a product, a service, or a solution that makes our customers' job easier. So might as well find a way to bring DBS just a little bit closer to wherever it is that you work.

Stacey Flax:

I love that. Partner, collaborate on winning, right?

Meghan Phillips:

Yes, absolutely.

Stacey Flax:

I love it. Well, thank you so much, Meghan. It was great to have you, and we look forward to talking shortly again.

Meghan Phillips:

Awesome. Thanks for the time, Stacey. I appreciate it.

Stacey Flax:

Thank you.