Rob Bull has spent nearly a decade walking into New Zealand businesses and finding the same problems: too much waste, too many unnecessary costs, and teams running busy instead of running well. He is the Head of Consulting at the New Zealand Lean Academy in Hamilton and has worked alongside hundreds of Kiwi SMEs since 2016, from signwriters and sparkies through to bridge builders and barristers.

His whole thing is Lean thinking: the idea that most businesses already have what they need to perform better, they just need to stop the bleeding first. Cut the waste, keep the overheads low, get the team aligned, and build simple systems that actually stick. He is not selling a complex methodology or a big transformation programme. He is selling the basics, applied properly, which turns out to be harder to find than you would think.

Rob takes Jason through the backstory: how he came out of the public sector where he was leading change initiatives in primary healthcare, and how that experience of improving systems with limited resources translated directly into what he does now for private businesses. He gets into specific things any business owner can take away and use, whether they have five staff or fifty.

The New Zealand Lean Academy also runs free workshops for SMEs around the country and offers ongoing consulting for businesses that want someone in their corner month to month.

Listen to the full episode on all major platforms

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0r3ivBeIrI

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72KnBcFkM1r3xm2YyVujJR

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shedlifenz-podcast/id1857464528

iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-shedlife-nz-308999038/