How an X manager lost it to a Y manager

In 2017, Yul (not his real name) was a 33-year old training manager in a mining corporation. I know his age because I greeted him on his 37th birthday after a reminder popped out of my Facebook page a few days ago. Three years ago, he contacted me for help in conducting a two-day workshop for their mining site in Mindanao. They want to put up a program on “Lean Mining” or the application of Kaizen and Lean principles in their operations.

I met Yul in their sprawling headquarters at Bonifacio Global City. I came 15 minutes before the appointed time and was ushered in with an extraordinary congeniality by one of his colleagues. Yul came on the dot smiling. Indeed, he was very professional. Then I presented him a copy of my book Total Quality by Maximization (2016) that we intend to use for the workshop. I asked him: “Are we meeting with your boss?”