Podcast: Data integrity is essential for process improvement

Add bookmark

bottle of coke in a pocket

In this week’s podcast interview, Max Just, global director - business integration and program management in associate services at The Coca-Cola Company discusses the importance of data integrity.

EPISODE OVERVIEW
:

Race car driver, six sigma black belt and near scrum master Max Just joins us from SSOW Latin America where he shares that he leftFord to work as a contractor for Lotus in the engineering department working with suppliers for Proton in Malaysia. He moved on to becoming the quality department for trucks in China. He began to realize that he was a fit in consultancy.

He got an MBA and started as a management consultant for Warner Bros. home video in DVDs. He and the company realized the industry was dying. But it was there that he learned the importance of data integrity.

He then moved to a smaller consultancy working with Coca-Cola and was evaluating what HR processes were doing right after transformation. And from there, he took the next step directly into Coca-Cola.

 Data-intergrity

 

LISTEN NOW:


Want more? Become a member of the Process Excellence Network and we'll keep you up to date with all the latest podcast episodes, delivered fresh to your inbox each week. Sign up today

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 (The following is an automated and unedited transcript. Please be aware that errors may be present.)

Interviewer: Seth Adler

Guest: Max Just

 

Seth Adler:  From Coca-Cola, Max Just joins us. Race car driver, Six Sigma Black Belt, and near scrum master Max Just joins us from SSOW Latin America, where he shares that he quit Ford to work as a contractor for Lotus in the engineering department working with suppliers for PROTON in Malaysia. He moved on to becoming the quality department for [00:01:30] trucks in China. He began to realize that he was fit for consultancy. He got an MBA and started as a management consultant for Warner Bros. Home Video and DVDs. He and the company realized that the industry was dying, but it was there that the learned the importance of data integrity, then moved to a smaller consultancy working with Coca-Cola, evaluated what HR processes were doing right after transformation. And from there, he took the next step directly into Coca-Cola proper.

Welcome to PEX Network on B2BiQ. I'm your host, Seth Adler. Download episodes on PEXNetwork. [00:02:00] com or through our app in iTunes, with any iTunes podcast app, and Google Play or wherever you currently get your podcasts.

Max Just.

Max Just:  At the Coca-Cola company.

Seth Adler:  Which is wonderful because who doesn't love the Coca-Cola company?

Max Just:  Exactly.

Seth Adler:  And especially if we've got a certified scrum master sitting right in front of us.

Max Just:  About to be. I need the exam.

Seth Adler:  Oh, you need to take it.

Max Just:  Yeah.

Seth Adler:  All right. But you're a process guy.

Max Just:  Exactly.

Seth Adler:  Right?

Max Just:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Seth Adler:  So let's start there, actually.

Max Just:  Okay.

Seth Adler:  When did you realize that [00:02:30] you were a good fit for Six Sigma? When did you realize that you should be fitted for a belt?

Max Just:  It was very early in my career. I'm originally a mechanical engineer, and my passion is in cars and race cars particularly. So I used to work for Ford Motor Company back in Argentina, where I'm from. And, essentially, I started working in business processes right off the bat, working with suppliers to try to improve their processes so that their parts were better.

Seth Adler:  Uh-huh (affirmative).

Max Just:  And then, at [00:03:00] the beginning, I realized that a lot of the things that I had learned in engineering were very useful for business processes-

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  ... specifically, all the data aspects off it. And that's how I run into Lean Six Sigma.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  Initially, I got ... I fell in love with it because of the quantitative aspect of it and how you could walk into something that didn't have a known solution and pretty much figure it out. So [00:03:30] I started using it in some major problems that we had and some parts that were a little bit dangerous, like steering wheels, brakes, tires, and rims.

Seth Adler:  Dive in there. Give us that case study. What exactly was going on?

Max Just:  Well, a lot of different things. For example, at some point during the development of Ford Focus down there, we noticed that [00:04:00] the car would always pull to one side. And it was a quality problem because the feel just wasn't right. So we started studying it, and that was right about probably '98, '99, when Six Sigma was starting to become more relevant for the industry particularly.

I wasn't the Black Belt in that project. I was a participant of the project. And the analysis that was done basically determined that it was one little measurement [00:04:30] of the tire that if it wasn't within a certain range that was tighter than what was specified, the car will pull to one side. So it was a very interesting analysis, and I was ... I really want to do that. And I became first a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, as [inaudible 00:04:45] and, then over the years, I did my Black Belt at a university back in Argentina. And in the US, later on when I was working for a consulting firm, I did the Master Black Belt program with [inaudible 00:04:59] [00:05:00] University. So-

Seth Adler:  Sure, in Philadelphia.

Max Just:  Yeah. Well I did that one, it was a virtual program-

Seth Adler:  Got it.

Max Just:  ... as I was a traveling consultant. It was a little difficult to actually go anywhere.

Seth Adler:  Yeah, exactly. Be everywhere. Can't go anywhere because I got to be everywhere.

Max Just:  Exactly.

Seth Adler:  As far as management consulting was concerned, did you stay in automotive, or-

Max Just:  No, no. Actually, when I was working for Ford for about 10 years, and I wanted to have some sort of international experience. So [00:05:30] I quit Ford and I went to work as a contractor for a race car company called Lotus. They make-

Seth Adler:  Beautiful cars.

Max Just:  Well, they used to make Formula One cars. And I was working in the engineering division supporting a government car company called PROTON in Malaysia.

Seth Adler:  Wait a second.

Max Just:  Yeah.

Seth Adler:  I thought you said you were working with Lotus.

Max Just:  Yeah. I was in the consulting division. That's how I started to become a consultant.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  Because we were helping them build, design a new car.

Seth Adler:  Yeah.

Max Just:  So they needed [00:06:00] people with Lean Six Sigma experience, and process improvement working with suppliers and suppliers who are not very well developed. So I jumped into doing some of the similar things that I was doing for Ford, but working for Lotus engineering, consulting for PROTON.

Seth Adler:  I see.

Max Just:  So we built a car. The interesting part is the second day I arrived, the two-year program that I was going to work on gets canceled.

Seth Adler:  Oh. Okay. Welcome.

Max Just:  Mm-hmm (affirmative). [00:06:30] Yeah. So I quickly realized that the projects that I was going to work on were not going to last long.

Seth Adler:  Right.

Max Just:  So with a group of people that were in a similar situation, we found another project, this time in China. And after wrapping up in Malaysia, moved to China to work on a new company that was being set up to produce manufacturing dyes for trucks.

Seth Adler:  [00:07:00] Okay.

Max Just:  And I was heading the quality department, which was basically me. So that's where I learned that flexibility is everything, particularly in moments where you walk in with a plan, and nothing goes as planned.

Seth Adler:  Yeah.

Max Just:  So the China experience was pretty good.

Seth Adler:  Interesting. So you went from literally having involvement with Lotus-

Max Just:  Uh-huh (affirmative).

Seth Adler:  ... to then, switching to trucks and for those that aren't [00:07:30] familiar with Lotus, this is the opposite.

Max Just:  Oh, absolutely. And it was a startup company run by an ex-procurement director of some OEM manufacturer in Europe that realized that he could produce, at that point ... We're talking about 2005 when sourcing in China was becoming more-

Seth Adler:  Prevalent, or slowing down.

Max Just:  ... stable.

Seth Adler:  Or stable, okay.

Max Just:  You could actually get better quality products that, [00:08:00] prior to that point, it was-

Seth Adler:  Got it.

Max Just:  ... a little bit difficult to find something that meets US or European standards. So he started working with suppliers over there and, then, set up a company around big projects. In this case, it was a ... I worked on a new truck for Mack Trucks, and a couple of smaller projects for Volvo in Europe. And I was all around Korea and China prominently, different parts in China.

Seth Adler:  All right.

Max Just:  It was pretty interesting.

Seth Adler:  Yeah. [00:08:30] We've got South America, we've got Asia, Southeast Asia, and all along, you're learning the value of being flexible.

Max Just:  Absolutely, and that's when I started to realize that being a consultant, it was probably what I wanted to do next.

Seth Adler:  Uh-huh (affirmative).

Max Just:  Utilizing what I learned in Lean Six Sigma, process improvement, and product development in general.

Seth Adler:  And applying that to whoever will listen type of thing, right?

Max Just:  That was the idea. So I [00:09:00] went and took my MBA at Emory University.

Seth Adler:  Uh-huh (affirmative). Atlanta.

Max Just:  Yeah, and I walked out of there working for Capgemini Consulting.

Seth Adler:  Uh-huh (affirmative).

Max Just:  But my client was Warner Bros.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  So I went from cars to movies. And I was in the home video business right around the time where DVDs were starting to go away.

Seth Adler:  Go away? Okay.

Max Just:  Mm-hmm (affirmative). So I initially did a Lean Six Sigma project with them to analyze the DVD process [00:09:30] in one of their DVD manufacturers, and I used the same Lean Six Sigma tools to identify opportunities for improvement, but quickly I realized that that industry was dying.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  And they were working on initiating the sales off movies via iTunes, XBOX, and those types of platforms.

Seth Adler:  So they knew that it was dying.

Max Just:  Yeah.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  And their sales were minimal, so compare, I can't remember the exact numbers, but sales through [00:10:00] digital devices was just a fraction of what DVDs were selling. But they were growing at triple digits, 300%, 500% every year with, at that point, iTunes being the main provider, and Amazon at that point starting to grow. So everything was managed through Excel.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  So somebody would sell ... For example, you would buy a movie-

Seth Adler:  On iTunes.

Max Just:  ... on iTunes, and Warner Bros [00:10:30] would learn about it about a week later in an Excel spreadsheet that iTunes would deliver that they had to do a lot of stuff into it-

Seth Adler:  My goodness.

Max Just:  ... to eventually, probably weeks later, make a decision-

Seth Adler:  Right.

Max Just:  ... based on that data. So a group of very smart folks in New York came up with a solution to aggregate all that data, post the financials to SAP, and eventually, produce reports almost in real time.

Seth Adler:  Right.

Max Just:  It's essentially probably a day later because [00:11:00] there was still some processing of those files.

Seth Adler:  Sure, which is much, much better than a few weeks, right?

Max Just:  Oh, unbelievably better, and the data was much better because sometimes the way the data was being delivered was very poor and very difficult, for example, to aggregate the sales of Friends, episode one, across all those different platforms because one would call it Friends, episode one. The other one would be Friends_1. And aggregating all that was impossible.

Seth Adler:  The data integrity was not-

Max Just:  And that's when I learned how [00:11:30] important it is.

Seth Adler:  There you go.

Max Just:  So the system, I roll it out in the US, UK, Benelux, and France, I think. And then, I hand it over to ... At that point I was three years into going to LA from Atlanta, and I said, "Look, somebody needs to take this over," and they did. And I roll off that account and actually move to a smaller consulting firm that promised [00:12:00] me a local job in Atlanta. And that's how my client became Coca-Cola.

Seth Adler:  I see how this went.

Max Just:  And my job was to analyze how HR transformation processes, how HR processes were doing right after HR transformation.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  Okay? So my client happened to be in Costa Rica.

Seth Adler:  Okay. And let's slow down here.

Max Just:  Okay.

Seth Adler:  Let's take this one step-by-step as far as what you walked into, [00:12:30] what they did know, what they didn't know, what you had to do, and what came of that. Let's do that.

Max Just:  Okay. In Coca-Cola particularly?

Seth Adler:  Absolutely.

Max Just:  What they did know is that they had just moved to a shared services-

Seth Adler:  Structure.

Max Just:  ... structure in HR, particularly, right? So they had roll it out first in Latin America, and they just didn't know ... There was noise as a result of [00:13:00] that implementation, as you can imagine. The approach is completely different. But they didn't know how to determine what needed to get fixed first, what was bigger than the other thing. So my job, initially, was to make an assessment of how things were going. So I took a list of business processes. There was a process taxonomy, how we call it, that dictates the hierarchy of processes.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  [00:13:30] And essentially, I went through them one by one, country by country in Latin America, and I mapped where the problems were, an idea of how to fix them, and somehow determine impact, an effort to fix those up. And I consolidated all that data over the course of six months to come up with this is what we got to do.

Seth Adler:  Uh-huh (affirmative).

Max Just:  Unfortunately, as I told you before, I got out of LA because I was troubling to much, just to trade it [00:14:00] for trips to Costa Rica. So I said, "Look, I'm done here."

Seth Adler:  Here's my six months of work. This is what you need to do.

Max Just:  This is what needs to get done.

Seth Adler:  Right.

Max Just:  And I'm just going to move on to an actual local client.

Seth Adler:  Yeah.

Max Just:  So I took a break from traveling and, at that point, a year later, they call me because now they wanted to scale and truly build a shared service center in Costa Rica.

Seth Adler:  Okay. So we did it with HR, we did [00:14:30] all of your ideas, it turns out that they're fantastic. Come on and do the big thing.

Max Just:  And actually execute most of them because the main tickets were we needed to in-source a call center, it seemed because of the stage of mature that we were, it made more sense than being fully outsourced.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  There were some payroll systems that needed to be changed, some big business processes that needed to be redesigned, and that's where the consultant, the background really suited better [00:15:00] for that type of scenario versus a stable organization that just needs to be run.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  So I came in, took my list from a year ago, and I basically in-sourced the HR services and started working on cleaning up the processes that I said that needed to be cleaned up. Then, that was the proof of concept for the rest of the organization in HR, [00:15:30] and it turned out that it worked out okay. We got a fair amount of savings as a result of that. The organization was pretty small, so the absolute amount wasn't that high, but percentage-wise it was.

Seth Adler:  Understood. Yeah.

Max Just:  And the customer satisfaction was much better. The noise got reduced. So we decided to scale even farther.

Seth Adler:  Sure. And before we scale even further-

Max Just:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Seth Adler:  ... you go away for a year, you come back, and you basically pick up where you left off.

Max Just:  Uh- [00:16:00] huh (affirmative).

Seth Adler:  And I think I heard you say, "It's because I have the consultative mindset, and I've got an external mindset as opposed to someone that works here and has to do the thing." Is that why? Or-

Max Just:  Well, I mean-

Seth Adler:  Or were they not ready for it? What was it? Why-

Max Just:  It's very difficult to run the business-

Seth Adler:  Yeah.

Max Just:  ... when you have some ... And at the same time-

Seth Adler:  Change the business.

Max Just:  ... do an objective assessment of it. And I personally run into that same issue [00:16:30] when then I switched to running a business. It's very hard to separate from the day-to-day, don't deal with the day-to-day escalations, and look at your baby and realize that it's not that pretty.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  And essentially, assess how to fix it. It's really hard. So I came in fresh. I did have a set of skills around business process and Lean Six Sigma that, at that point, the organization didn't have, so that really helped determine [00:17:00] what needed to get done.

Seth Adler:  Okay. All right. So now we upscale. So now we're going big time. What did you do?

Max Just:  Well, yeah. So at that point, we were continuing to operate in an outsource model in the US, so I proposed the idea of following the same model that we had just implemented in Latin America. And that's what I did for the upcoming two years. So I in-sourced benefits, overtime ... First I in-sourced call center activities, data management, [00:17:30] talent acquisition logistics, all into Costa Rica, and we pretty much duplicated the size of the center in a relatively short period of time, in about a year.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  And we're talking about, still, a small center of about 37, 40 people. But then, we started to realize that there were more opportunities even in house of work that could be scaled into the center. So we initiated another project where we studied all the work that was being done in HR operations [00:18:00] globally, and assessed against the pre-established criteria what could be scaled and what couldn't be scaled.

Seth Adler:  How did you get that pre-established criteria?

Max Just:  Again, I had a group of people in my team that we were all ex-consultants.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  So we utilized our collective brain plus our past experiences to determine things such as does this activity [00:18:30] need to be done face-to-face to provide a good service? Is this something that is repeatable as something that can actually be done remotely? Or does it require some sort of paper that around the world there's a lot of that, particularly in Latin America and some places in Africa, for example, or the Middle East, there's [00:19:00] a lot of paper still going on. Excuse me. So we had a ... We basically listed process by process, run it by an activity-

Seth Adler:  And region by region?

Max Just:  Yeah, country by country, actually.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  And we came up with a short list of things that could be scaled into Costa Rica, Warsaw, and Manila.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  And then, with that, we drove the farther scaling after having done the in-sourcing of now internal work that was being done [00:19:30] in location. And then, the Costa Rica center grew quite a bit as well as the Warsaw center, and Manila was pretty scaled at that point already for HR. So that's pretty much what I did. And then, I realized that as we had grown in parallel, a lot of the same things ended up being done [00:20:00] differently.

Seth Adler:  How do you mean?

Max Just:  In other words, we in-sourced talent acquisition in three different places, and even though we started from the same place, over time we diverted.

Seth Adler:  Sure.

Max Just:  And what was missing there was the governance around business processes. So going back to the 5 Whys of Lean Six Sigma, the problem is not only that we don't have a governance process for all this, it's also ... [00:20:30] Well, first we realized the importance of potentially standardizing globally and not just regionally-

Seth Adler:  Sure.

Max Just:  .. which at the point that we were all set up, it was a good time to think about it, particularly when we realized that we all ended up in different places.

Seth Adler:  Right.

Max Just:  But then, the role of a process governance lead that we ended up calling business process leader was missing. And that's how I ended up at my next gig, [00:21:00] which was to try to figure that out.

Seth Adler:  Exactly.

Max Just:  The company did have a template-

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  ... on how to do that. And then, I started a journey off proving the value of it because it's hard to prove to the business, hey, I need eight people whose job is not going to be in any service delivery related activity. All they're going to do is they're going to try to work on improved processes, and by the way, [00:21:30] I haven't done that yet, so I can't truly prove the value of it. It's more of a leap of faith.

Seth Adler:  And they're probably pretty expensive, all in all.

Max Just:  They are usually in most scenarios.

Seth Adler:  Right. Yeah.

Max Just:  So as people with experience, people with consultative mindset, so-

Seth Adler:  How did you actually get this signed off? Was it based on the, hey, look at all this stuff that I've already done? Or was there an additional trick?

Max Just:  No, this was ... The rest of the stuff was very easy to sell because, essentially, I [00:22:00] would say, "Look, if I do this, I get that."

Seth Adler:  Sure. Right.

Max Just:  And here's the proof of what we've done before.

Seth Adler:  Yeah.

Max Just:  All based on an original pilot that was very small with minimal investment. But in this case, the first year, last year essentially, when I started to do this, I had no luck. Nobody wanted to put this ... I first initially said, "Well, you know what? The person that's delivering the process, the one that knows the most, is going to be the business [00:22:30] process leader."

Seth Adler:  Sure.

Max Just:  So we tried that. That didn't work because they never have time for the reasons that I outlined before.

Seth Adler:  Of course not.

Max Just:  Always the operation takes precedence. So that helped me prove that the role needed to be dedicated, otherwise progress doesn't get made.

Seth Adler:  Look, this person cannot do this.

Max Just:  Exactly.

Seth Adler:  Let me at least prove that out. Okay, perfect.

Max Just:  So I proved by discarding the alternative that we needed something dedicated and, then, we did an analysis. At [00:23:00] the same time, we were implementing Workday.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  And we're about to go live now in October. So-

Seth Adler:  I just want to make sure I heard you. Implemented?

Max Just:  Workday, HR system, IS system that replaces our current instance of SAP.

Seth Adler:  Okay. So you're about to go live with that.

Max Just:  Correct.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  So it became evident that we needed to probably look at our organization structure.

Seth Adler:  Mm- [00:23:30] hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  And I took advantage of that exercise too, with the previous experience in hand, and proving the point of how important in the context of now having a global system with global processes to have at least one person per key area that could constantly look at those processes outside of the operation and make them better over time, leveraging the new technology. So I landed on about eight [00:24:00] roles. I have about six and a half funded, and I'm in various processes of filling those out.

Seth Adler:  Sure. How-

Max Just:  Luckily, that organization is coming to life.

Seth Adler:  I wonder where they are geographically. I imagine one's in Atlanta, one's in Costa Rica, one's in ... Where are these people?

Max Just:  Well, that's a good question and, originally, I was thinking that I would have all those folks in my organization [00:24:30] and we would drive the execution of what we call play books, which is essentially how do you run benefits? How do you run data administration? But then, I quickly shifted out of that because I realized that then, there wasn't any accountability in the business process owners and the people that are delivering the services to actually improve.

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative). On the front line type of thing.

Max Just:  Exactly. So the reorganization [00:25:00] was quite different from the original approach that we were having before, so we started to form global experience areas. My rewards, my career, my travel, all those organization that before were distributed from an org structure perspective, led regionally, they are starting to become global. So that gave me the opportunity to put a business process leader in each one of those areas [00:25:30] to support the head of that group and dotted line to me simply to provide guidance so that everybody does the same things-

Seth Adler:  Sure. Yeah. That's the whole goal anyway.

Max Just:  ... in their different areas. So time will tell. That was the decision, and we're rolling with it. Time will tell us if it was the right one. If not, we can revert to the previous alternative.

Seth Adler:  There you go.

Max Just:  But at least the positions are funded, [00:26:00] and we can now execute on the vision.

Seth Adler:  I love it.

Max Just:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Seth Adler:  I want to keep talking to you, but you've just left us off here in today. So I'll ask you three final questions. I'll tell you what they are and, then, I'll ask you them in order. What has most surprised you at work along the way? What's most surprised you in life? And on the soundtrack of Max's life, one track, one song that's got to be on there. First things first. One song. One track.

Max Just:  One song.

Seth Adler:  Yeah, but we'll get there.

Max Just:  Okay, okay, okay.

Seth Adler:  First things [00:26:30] first. What's most surprised you at work along the way?

Max Just:  In all these years?

Seth Adler:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Just:  I'm a very impatient person. And I realize that sometimes waiting for the right opportunity is not a bad strategy.

Seth Adler:  Yeah.

Max Just:  I think in some cases, I moved throughout my career too quickly.

Seth Adler:  [00:27:00] Yeah.

Max Just:  And as I became older and, specifically, in my last experience at Coke I realized that if I'm persistent, if I believe in something and I drive it with passion, eventually it happens. I always refer to a book called Alchemist from Paolo Coehlo-

Seth Adler:  Sure, yes.

Max Just:  ... that says that [00:27:30] if you want something really bad, the world conspires so that it happens.

Seth Adler:  Yeah, to make it happen.

Max Just:  Yeah.

Seth Adler:  But you got to have the waiting.

Max Just:  Yes, and the persistence.

Seth Adler:  The persistence plus the waiting type of thing.

Max Just:  Correct.

Seth Adler:  Because Tom Petty has a song, and in that is a lyric, "The waiting is the hardest part."

Max Just:  Uh-huh (affirmative). Exactly, especially when you are driven by results, and it sometimes surprises me that what I thought [00:28:00] was a lifetime earlier, waiting for a year, is sometimes a good investment.

Seth Adler:  Is just about the right about of time.

Max Just:  Correct.

Seth Adler:  What has most surprised you in life?

Max Just:  In life. When I came to the US, I came with the idea of working in consulting, living in New York, and being a bachelor for the rest of my life.

Seth Adler:  Sure.

Max Just:  So I did nothing [00:28:30] of that, except for working for consulting. But the one thing that surprised me is being a father and how much I enjoy. I have a boy, a four and a half year old boy, and it gave me a completely ... How much I love being a dad over everything else is probably the thing that surprised me the most, and I think I'm a good dad, which I think that surprised a lot of people. But [00:29:00] it surprised me how much I love this, and how everything else all of a sudden took a distant second place.

Seth Adler:  Understood.

Max Just:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Seth Adler:  Now, understanding that you have a family, right?

Max Just:  Yeah.

Seth Adler:  You're a car guy. So we got to know. What kind of car are you driving? What do we got?

Max Just:  Well, right now, that's a good question. And the answer may not impress you. I drive a Ford F150, and the rationale for it is because I've been racing cars since I [00:29:30] was 19 years old, started with karting back in Argentina, and I own my own race car, and I need something to pull the trailer with. 

Seth Adler:  Sure. What is the race car? Let's get down to business here.

Max Just:  Yeah. So it's a purpose-built race car, it's not a street car.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  So it's a frame with a fiberglass body called Spec Racer Ford, Sports Car Club of America series that runs nationally, and it has a Ford engine-

Seth Adler:  [00:30:00] Of course it does, right?

Max Just:  ... loyal to my heritage.

Seth Adler:  What kind of engine? Just a-

Max Just:  It's a small Ford 1.6 engine prepared for racing.

Seth Adler:  So the car's tiny.

Max Just:  The car is 1,500 pounds, yeah.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  And you're down to the ground. It's a sports car. Your head is outside, wheels covered. So it's a lot of fun.

Seth Adler:  How often are you racing?

Max Just:  Not as often as I would like. That's the reason why I got the car, so that I could take care of it myself. [00:30:30] I've been averaging about two to three races a year.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  But this year, with all the implementations, I haven't done it yet. I'm charting November.

Seth Adler:  November. I feel like we got to make our way down to Atlanta and check that out.

Max Just:  Yeah, roll Atlanta. I won the last one, so-

Seth Adler:  You did?

Max Just:  Yeah, yeah.

Seth Adler:  All right. You've been racing for 20 years.

Max Just:  On and off, yes, continually.

Seth Adler:  Unbelievable.

Max Just:  Always go back to karting. That's my passion. Go karts.

Seth Adler:  That's the one. Well that's easier, right?

Max Just:  It's actually the hardest way of-

Seth Adler:  Why is that harder?

Max Just:  [00:31:00] It's just you and the rest of the drivers. The cars are very close to each other.

Seth Adler:  Right.

Max Just:  So going fast is very difficult.

Seth Adler:  So it's the purest form of driving, is what I'm hearing.

Max Just:  Mm-hmm (affirmative). Correct.

Seth Adler:  Okay.

Max Just:  Yeah, yeah.

Seth Adler:  On the soundtrack of your life, one track, one song that's got to be on there.

Max Just:  One track. One song. Well, the one that I usually run into is one from Whitesnake called Here I Go Again On My Own. It happened to me a couple of times, [00:31:30] and I think what it represents to me is that I'm not afraid to start over. And I've done it a couple times.

Seth Adler:  Yeah. No. That's a pretty good one. David Coverdale, of course, formerly of Deep Purple-

Max Just:  Yes.

Seth Adler:  ... and did some time with Jimmy Page there, right-

Max Just:  Yes, that's right.

Seth Adler:  ... in the late '80s. So Max, this has been a pleasure.

Max Just:  Same. Thank you so much.

Seth Adler:  And there you have Max Just. We studied all of the work that was being done in HR operations globally and assessed against pre-established criteria what could be scaled. [00:32:00] I realized that we've grown in parallel. A lot of things wound up being done differently.

Very much appreciate Max Just and his time. Very much appreciate you and yours. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 


RECOMMENDED