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Thursday, May 31, 2012

Defining Lean IT with Steve Bell

The Business901 podcast guest this week is Steve Bell, the founder of Lean IT Strategies LLC. Steve is a Lean Enterprise Institute faculty member, Shingo Research Prize winning author, and Lean IT pioneer. A recent blog post, When Standard Work and Customer Focus come together contains an excerpt from the podcast.

In the podcast, we started out focusing on Lean IT but it evolved into a much broader discussion. Steve has a knack of taking the complicated and making it simple. A rare quality that I typically find only in the most knowledgeable practitioners. This podcast is suited for anyone thinking about continuous improvement.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

For more than twenty five years, Steve Bell has delivered a balance of Lean, business process improvement, and management consulting services. Steve published Lean Enterprise Systems: Using IT for Continuous Improvement helping to introduce the emerging discipline of Lean IT. Steve and his partner Mike Orzen later published Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation.

Steve is on of the keynotes at the upcoming, North American Lean IT Summit, bringing together a community of lean and agile practitioners and thought leaders from around the globe.

Related Information:
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer
Lean Marketers concentrate on SOAR vs. SWOT
Will the Mvp crush the Lean Startup?
Lean Thinking: Prototype early and often

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Looking for a Game Changer, Start Underperforming!

I think most organizations have the opinion that if we improve they will make more money. They think through operational improvements or becoming better, faster, cheaper in itself is a winning formula. There are a few basic problems with that premise:

  1. You have to improve at a faster rate than your competition.
  2. You have to improve on things that matter to your customers to retain them.
  3. You have to improve on things that matter to the market place to acquire them.
  4. You have to be able to support both the new and old items of improvement.

I am sure there are more but my point is better, faster and cheaper is not a game changer anymore. So, what do we do, innovate? Even with innovation we go through the same scenario as above, just with a little more risk involved.

The fact is most companies try to do too much. They want to match the competition with every feature and do it better, faster and of course, cheaper. I see this strategy many times and always joked with salespeople that if we had the best product at the best price and in stock, what would you use as an excuse? It is not about differentiation even. It is about doing what your customer wants you to do well and permitting yourself not only to be average but maybe even terrible at things they don’t care about.

In the field of Appreciative Inquiry, I find many of the same thoughts. We are not looking for areas of deficiencies and improvement but to expand on the areas we do well in. If we are looking for a sustainable competitive advantage, should we be viewing our organization from its positive core versus the negatives?

When you look at the way many companies are succeeding today, it is in exactly this manner.

  1. Low cost airlines; Ryanair, Southwest Airlines
  2. Software Producers: 37 Signals, Zoho
  3. Apps: All of them just about
  4. Baseball: Oakland Athletics

The Oakland Athletics did this and described in the book and movie Moneyball. Billy Bean looked at the things that mattered (on base average). Other parts of the game, that had limited exposure such as fielding or speed, he disregarded. He ignored conventional baseball wisdom. 

Most organizations try to do the same old thing. Need to increase sales, hire your competitor’s superstar! What if you considered what really matters to your customer? Does he value technical expertise more? Or maybe, he wants someone more literate in finances?

In the book Uncommon Service, the authors state:

Our message begins simply enough: you can't be good at everything. In services, trying to do it all brilliantly will lead almost inevitably to mediocrity. Excellence requires sacrifice. To deliver great service on the dimensions that your customers value most, you must underperform on dimensions they value less. This means you must have the stomach to do some things badly.

The concept can seem immoral at first blush. We recently did some work with a major health-care provider. The CEO wasn't able to join us until the last couple of days. When he arrived, we reviewed what we'd covered, including the link between underperformance and excellence. The CEO immediately pushed back, saying, "I don't see anything we could afford to be bad at." He continued, revealing that he saw the idea of lowering the bar on any dimension as dishonorable, particularly in a field like health care.

Hands immediately shot up around the room. His team disagreed, and after listening to their ideas for where tradeoffs could be made — where resources could be shifted from areas low on the customers' priority list to areas customers cared more about — the CEO finally backed down. "I get it," he said. "That's how we can afford to be great."

The authors suggest viewing your organization in this manner:

    1. Your service offering: How do customers define "excellence" in your offering?
    2. Your service funding mechanism: How will you get paid for delivering excellence?
    3. Your employee management system: How will you prepare your employees to deliver excellence every day?
    4. Your customer management system: How will you get your customers to behave in ways that improve their service experience?

Looking for a Game Changer? Start underperforming!

P.S. Most companies are reluctant to put this kind of trust in the customer.

Related information:
If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts!
What happens when the factory goes away?
Compressing your Value Stream for Unprofitable Customers
Are you focusing on your customers conversations?

Mastering Positive Change

Sara Lewis, the Managing Director of Appreciating Change, a psychological change consultancy focused on helping leaders and managers achieve positive change in their organizations was my podcast guest. She is the author of Positive Psychology at Work: How Positive Leadership and Appreciative Inquiry Create Inspiring Organizations and one of my favorites, Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management: Using AI to Facilitate Organizational Development .

This is an outstanding addition to the series of Business901 podcasts on Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Change. Sarah works closely with the client to ensure partnership and ownership, we bring expertise in psychology and in social change methodologies such as Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space and World CafĂ©. All of these approaches help reduce resistance to change and the need to create ‘buy-in’, rather people co-create the change of which they will be part. This message resonates throughout the podcast.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

This year Appreciating Change has begun offering a series of Masterclass workshops to give people the chance to learn directly from Sarah's experience in the field of Positive Psychology and particularly the use of Appreciative Inquiry in the workplace. These run every 3 months and alternate between a Masterclass aimed at fellow practitioners, which is tailored to those who have some experience and understanding of the theory behind organizational change already, and a Masterclass aimed at leaders in organizations which is more aimed at helping them use this learning in their management of the organization.

Related Information:
Getting Resistance to Appreciative Inquiry?
Appreciative Inquiry instead of Problem Solving
An Appreciative Look at the World
My Engagement Strategy – Appreciative Inquiry

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Sketching an important Leadership Tool

There are few faster, cheaper and more effective communication tools than the pen and paper. It’s easy, you can use it anywhere and anytime and it is one of the most effective collaboration tools that exist. You can start with a grand idea and instantly transform to the smallest, most minute detail. It is a skill that I encourage everyone to become comfortable doing.

Sketching in Service Design by Ben Crothers is a brief run-through of various group-based and individual techniques for using the wonders of sketching in Service Design. The second half of the presentation covers hands-on drawing techniques to tackle common objects and other things often drawn in Service Design artifacts.

A few past blogs on this subject are Your First Prototype is with Pen and Paper and Spontaneous Marks help you think – Doodling.

Related Information:
Six Sigma Storyboards
Practical Approach to Innovation used by Disney
Storyboards give Insights to Space and Time
Storyboarding for Business

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Transforming Lean thru Middle Managers

My guest on the Business901 podcast this week was Paul Yandell of Value Stream Focus and we discussed one of my favorite topics – Middle Management.  Paul Yandell, led a lean transformation that won the 2007 Pacific Northwest Silver Medallion Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing.  Business Week called the Shingo Prize the “Nobel Prize for Manufacturing”. Paul yandell

A recent blog post of mine, Can Lean be driven by Middle Management? contains an excerpt of the podcast. Paul has a proven record of leadership developing and implementing world-class lean manufacturing operations and supply chain across multiple industries that reduce cost, improve service, and enhance new product implementation.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download Here  or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

About: Paul Yandell is a manufacturing and supply chain specialist with strong skills in identifying and eliminating waste and improving operational performance.  His particular strengths are building infrastructure to support turnaround and growth situations, building and leading teams in total quality environments and he is bilingual (Spanish).

Related Information:
Does ROWE solve some Lean problems?
An Appreciative Look at the World
The Uniqueness of Hoshin Kanri
Is your Organizational Culture limiting you?