Your Marketing Machine

Lean Sales & Marketing Summit Announced

2012-02-11T23:48:00.000-05:00

I am honored to be included on the same agenda with noted author, speaker, and lean pioneer Bill Waddell. On April 17th, Bill will be presenting
Aligning the Entire Organization to Achieve the Sales Strategy. He will show you how to devise a sales and marketing strategy built around creating the most value for your customers; how to set prices strategically, rather than on the basis of standard costs, assuring that prices will not cause you to lose a sale. We will align the entire company around assuring the success of the sales strategy, with a focus on maximizing value for your customers and using lean tools to eliminate everything that is not contributing to the prices you charge. When we are finished you will see a clear and practical path to devising a practical plan to creating and accomplishing a sales and marketing strategy, and succeeding not by becoming the lowest cost and price competitor, but by becoming the highest value source in your markets.

The next day, I will be presenting Using Lean to Create Repeatable and Scalable Sales and Marketing Systems: A Customer Centric Approach Through Lean. The workshop will be two-thirds presentation and one-third interactive exercises. A partial listing of the subject matter:

Why value can no longer be defined by what the customer will pay for.
The New Rules of Marketing in a Demand – Driven World
The Marketing Gateway of EDCA > PDCA > SDCA
Lean Engagement Team
Leader Standard Work for Sales and Marketing
Achieving Mastery

All Participants will receive a Marketing with Lean workbook to include a CD that will contain the four published books in the series; Lean Marketing House, Marketing with PDCA, Marketing with A3s and The Lean Engagement Team.

Learn how Lean Sales and Marketing is essentially a knowledge transfer system; it's a training system on how to define knowledge gaps and close them. Not from the perspective of educating the customer but from the perspective of learning from the customer and understanding how your customer uses and benefits from your product or service.
Learn how to let your customer be the professor, the Sensei, who will take you through their decision making steps and how to improve your reactions to these steps in a systematic way.
Learn how to apply the Marketing Gateway of EDCA to PDCA to SDCA.
Learn how Leader Standard Work is the foundation of Lean Sales and Marketing and the fundamental process that replaces the "Silver Bullet" found in most typical marketing jargon.
Learn how to take responsibility for finding and creating demand.
Learn what makes Lean Sales and Marketing so incredibly powerful.

Lean Sales and Marketing is built upon the philosophy that there has been a subtle shift to knowledge as the way to engage, develop and retain your customer base. Your Lean Engagement Teams must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets. Successful Sales and Marketing departments are no longer just responsible for getting the message out but also for developing strategies to get the customer’s message in. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer has become the strongest marketing tool possible. Lean Thinking is the fundamental process needed to achieve this but it must be viewed from the demand side of the supply chain. We no longer live in a world of excess demand and supply side thinking is no longer valid. Learn how to change your mindset and bring continuous improvement to your sales and marketing through Lean. Join me in Indianapolis on April 17th to listen to Bill and stay the following day to participate with me on April 18th.

The host of this event is Lean Frontiers. They provide high-quality, laser-focused events aimed at integrating organizational silos in support of the lean enterprise. These focused events provide an ideal venue for like-minded professionals to explore the common issues they face in supporting lean. Upcoming Workshops will held in Fishers, IN (Indianapolis Suburb).

P.S. If you buy the book series before the event and attend, I will refund the purchase. Marketing with Lean Series – 4 Pack.

This event will sell out!

How do you handle inputs into your life? Do you process them effectively and efficiently?

2012-02-09T23:40:00.000-05:00

The book A Factory of One: Applying Lean Principles to Banish Waste and Improve Your Personal Performance demonstrates how to apply lean principles to the individual. It delivers key concepts such as visual management, flow, pull, and 5S. Dan provides these concepts to the individual results in the same kind of benefits: greater efficiency, less waste, and improved focus on customer value. The author, Dan Markovitz is the founder and owner of TimeBack Management, a consultancy specializing in improving individual and organizational performance through the application of lean concepts.

These concepts will be very familiar to people knowledgeable with continuous improvement and more specifically Lean and Six Sigma. However, you do not have to be a practitioner to understand or read the book. When trade terms are used the authors explains them in simple everyday language without losing a beat. Few people other than Dan could have provided a book of this sort. His experience with Lean coupled with many years of providing guidance on individual performance has given him profound insight. There may be others with his depth of knowledge but few that can transfer it into simple, practical and useable information. I found myself reading a “how to” book like a novel. I had to remind myself more than once to bend a corner or mark a page for future reference.

Dan is also not shy about crediting or highlighting others when it fits the application. He spends time discussing Personal Kanban and how he looks at applying it. My favorite part of the book was the part on living in your calendar versus your inbox. That comment in itself added a few more minutes of productivity to my day. His A3, Value Map and Information 5S were absolutely flawless.

Are you going to get 2 hours a day of time saving tips from the book? I doubt it. What you will get is more productivity and feeling better about what and how you accomplished it. It was my New Year’s Day read and I have picked it up every day since then. Not saying you won’t be able to put it down but at this point it looks that way for me.

Inspiring Innovation thru Standard Work

2012-02-03T22:35:00.000-05:00

Standard work should be an enabler of innovation, not a hindrance. In an upcoming Business901 podcast with Terri Griffith, we will take a look at a few of these principles and find out why it is so important to access where you are at before venturing into the unknown. In the premier show of Innovators Exchange, Tad Milbourn, senior product manager of Intuit Brainstorm, speaks with Terri Griffith, author and professor of Management at Santa Clara University. Tad and Terri discuss her new book, The Plugged-In Manager and the role that a plugged-in manager can play in inspiring innovation. It serves as an excellent preview to the podcast.

Six Sources of Influence in Change

2012-02-03T22:31:00.000-05:00

From my blog post, The Difficulty of Mastery = The Difficulty of Lean, I started discussing the book, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success . I found the work paralleling Lean in many of its approaches and put Lean practices in parenthesis. Their strategy is based on four simple steps:

Identify Crucial Moments (Identify Value)
Create Vital Behaviors (Map Value Stream)
Engage All Six Sources of Influence (Create Flow – Enable Pull)
Turn Bad Days into Good Data (Seek Perfection - PDCA)

I stopped short of discussing the six sources of influence and have included them here:

Personal Motivation
Personal Ability
Social Motivation
Social Ability
Structural Motivation
Structural Ability

I am going to use a different perspective on these influences looking at it from a perspective of an organization trying to change and using Lean and my own thoughts to orchestrate the change.

Organizational Motivation will never persist without the change being tied to the marketplace. Dan Jones recently wrote in the blogpost, How can Lean Survive that “The best chance for lean to survive a change in top management is if it is seen to be delivering significant results, not just point improvements in key processes but bottom-line results for the organization as a whole, which would be reversed if support for lean disappeared. I disagree with the statements that you just have to accept that it is going to work and not expect results. Results are the motivating factors.

Organizational Ability requires learning new skills if you are going to change. If change is difficult we will take the path of least resistance. Mastering a new set of tools is never easy and that is why Lean is so powerful. Lean is based on standards, knowing how the process should work because if it’s clear, then when we see a variation from the process we can react immediately. This allows us to choose one problem from the other and just solve them one by one. This is incredibly powerful because with lean systems we rely on increasing our competency, increasing our training without having to take people off line, without having to get to classrooms, but by building it into the way we work.

Social Motivation and Social Ability go hand in hand. Employees, Suppliers, and even Customers would rather you not change. They want to deal with the known. Even voters will vote for someone that they know and disagree with over the unknown. You have to re-define the norm for example through Value Stream Mapping or an A3. You have to get those around you on board with the new ideal or without you will fall victim to those old tired out ways that have become ineffective. Surround yourself with willing partners that will push you to this new ideal. This is sometimes where a consultant can play a role.

Structural Motivation can be difficult in organizations since external goals are difficult to recognize. We can see internal improvements sometimes immediately. But these internal improvements may not result in the needle being moved in the marketplace. An effective motivator may be the fear of loss. Can you tie lost market opportunities to your change efforts? Can you demonstrate even the smallest of wins? If you can, it will significantly increase the odds of success.

Structural Ability small changes in your environment have a surprising effect on your choices. This is where Lean plays such a huge role in change. Lean is not rigorous. It uses visualization and it’s a readymade tool set that reduces the resistance to change. What Lean does require though is rigorous use to be successful.

Lean is a change tool but it is not a cure all. Dr. Balle said in an interview with me, “Lean is not a revolution; it is find one problem and solve one problem.” I wish you the best on your journey of change!

Mapping the Digital Frontier with the Multiverse

2012-01-30T07:01:00.000-05:00

Where is the Digital Frontier taking us? Joe Pine has 2 new books out this summer, Infinite Possibility and The Experience Economy, Updated Edition. The Experience Economy identified a shift in the business world back in 1999 and many of the items discussed are just being realized today. In fact, the idea of staging experiences to leave a memorable and lasting impression is now more relevant than ever. the reason for the 2nd edition. In Infinite Possibility, Joe applies his leading edge thinking to the Digital Frontier. This is a transcription of theBusiness901 podcast with Joe, The Experience Economy Author, Joe Pine discusses Customer Value on the Digital Frontier.

In Infinite Possibility, Pine and Korn provide a new tool The Multiverse™ that helps your organization to search the infinite possibility of value creation that lies on the digital frontier. The Multiverse consists of eight different realms: Reality, Virtuality, Augmented Reality, Alternate Reality, Warped Reality, Augmented Virtuality, Physical Virtuality, and Mirrored Virtuality. You may want to watch this short video on on the Multiverse before reading, Value on the Digital Frontier.

B. Joseph Pine II is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and management advisor to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups alike. He is cofounder of Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. In his speaking and teaching activities, Mr. Pine has addressed both the World Economic Forum and TED, and is a Visiting Scholar with the MIT Design Lab. He has also taught at Penn State, Duke Corporate Education, the University of Minnesota, UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management, and the Harvard Design School. He serves on the editorial boards of Strategy & Leadership and Strategic Direction and is a Senior Fellow with both the Design Futures Council and the European Centre for the Experience Economy, which he co-founded.

The Difficulty of Mastery = The Difficulty of Lean

2012-01-26T23:15:00.000-05:00

Dan Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us is an excellent description of modern day Lean practices. Just using the example of Mastery from the book will give you an idea on how powerful of a process Lean actually is. I would encourage you to visit the Mastery chapter in Dan Pink’s Drive book for more background. He states that mastery is based on three laws:

Mastery is a mindset
Mastery is a Pain
Mastery is an Asymptote

He also states that flow is essential to mastery: “But flow doesn’t guarantee mastery—because the two concepts operate on different horizons of time. One happens in a moment; the other unfolds over months, years, sometimes decades. You and I each might reach flow tomorrow morning—but neither one of us will achieve mastery overnight.”

In Lean terminology, I can restate these same three laws this way:

Lean is a culture
Lean is grounded in Standard Work
Lean is an Ideal

We also think of Lean in terms of creating flow. But just as flow does not guarantee mastery, flow does not allow us to become Lean. Flow happens along the way of becoming Lean. Many people think they are Lean companies once they have done 5S, Value Stream Mapping or held a few Kaizen Events. The truth is just like mastering anything, it does not happen overnight.

Why does it take so long? Why do so few achieve it? From Dan Pink again: “Mastery is a pain.” That is why it seldom is done. When implementing Lean, most people draw the wrong conclusion and assume it is Leadership. They blame leadership as being shortsighted. This view is not only wrong; it is dead wrong. Our primary problem is not leadership but a long standing culture that is engrained within our organizations. It’s the way we do things. But worse it is also the way others help us do things. The outside forces that surround us to include vendors, customers and for that matter our entire supply chain simply supports the way we have always done things. So, not only do we have to create change internally but externally as well. It is not only a pain but it has to be someone else’s pain. Or does it?

From my blog post, If less than 1% of companies are successful with Lean, why are we doing it?, I stated: What does work is the same thing for both people and organizations. It is the scientific process of trial and error. You don’t get it right at first, you have to break habits, personal habits as an individual and company cultures as an organization. Successful companies do it a little bit at a time. In Lean, we call this scientific method PDCA. We plan, do it, check the results and adjust. It is a purposeful experimentation.

In the book, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success the authors created a strategic, step-by-step guide to breaking longstanding bad habits introduce a system for adopting-and sticking to-better behaviors. I found the work paralleling Lean in many of its approaches and put Lean practices in parenthesis. Their strategy is based on four simple steps:

Identify Crucial Moments (Identify Value)
Create Vital Behaviors (Map Value Stream)
Engage All Six Sources of Influence (Create Flow – Enable Pull)
Turn Bad Days into Good Data (Seek Perfection - PDCA)

What people forget about Lean is that it is the change agent for an organization. In its simplest form, you first go and see the current state. Second, you visualize your process. You make your process steps visible. You visualize things in a way that reveals your problems, not in a way to hide problems. If you understand what standards are, how the process should work because it's very clear, then whenever we see a variation from the process we react immediately. This allows you to chose one problem from the other and just solves them one by one. This is incredibly powerful, this vision we have with lean systems of increasing our competency, increasing our training without having to take people off line, without having to get to classrooms, but by building it into the way we work. It is this empowering aspect that is not easy. But it may be the only way an organization can master Lean.

Can the Lean Knowledge Worker cope with Leader Standard Work?

2012-01-26T22:45:00.000-05:00

Leader Standard Work is becoming more commonplace and the standard for the development of a Lean Culture. It is extremely adaptable and found both in trade and professional services. It excels in experienced based professions but it may struggle in what I would call knowledge-based services. The problem is there are more knowledge-based jobs being created every day. The experience based jobs either get automated or outsourced. For more information on that subject, read Dan Pink’s, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Since Lean is so intrinsically tied to standard work, many believe Lean cannot apply to their “Knowledge Based” occupation. In fact, it is often resisted in these circles.

When met with resistance, I have found that typically there is a good reason why. As I review most Leader Standard Work for knowledge workers, I still find them heavily laden with specific instructions and very results based focus. In Sales and Marketing (I am considering Sales and Marketing to be knowledge work) , you will see instructions such as make 25 calls, send out 15 e-mails, 3 blog posts a week, etc. On the other hand, I do see slack time allowed under the disguise of daily or weekly Kaizen. So Leader Standard Work can apply to Sales and Marketing, or can it?

Leader Standard Work will fizzle out quickly in the Sales and Marketing arena if you simply try to practice Leader Standard Work through Lean Training, coupled with your experience and try to become more proficient through iteration after iteration. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, it may take years, certainly months, to acquire the skills needed. What stops you is that you not only have to learn new skills but these skills and learning are not stagnant. They are in constant turmoil; developing, adapting and evolving while obsoleting the existing structure.

Many companies may fall short as a result of not creating the internal collaboration structure needed for learning. The organization must develop as a whole and this can only be accomplished by developing their personnel by providing the necessary resources and opportunities. We also need to promote individual differences. Instead of teaching the way to do some things, we may need to step back and determine the key points that are required, as Simon Sinek says the “Why” while leaving the how alone (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action).

What will drive Leader Standard Work in Lean Sales and Marketing is the “Why” more so than the “How”. The “Why” provides the clear strategic intent which will provide the fuel for Leader Standard Work. This analogy is wonderfully described in David Mann’s Book Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, Second Edition where he uses the automotive analogy to describe the four principles of the Lean Management System:

Leader Standard Work – Engine
Daily Accountability Process – Gas Pedal and Steering Wheel
Visual Controls – Transmission
Discipline – Fuel

When developing your Leader Standard work for Lean Sales and Marketing address these three items;

Clarification – Minimum standard is explicit
Commitment – Level of commitment is expected from the individual
Connection – A path for support through conversation is provided.

Can your Leader Standard Work pass the 3 C Test?

Marketing with Lean Series – 4 Pack

2012-01-23T20:40:00.000-05:00

Special Offer

It is even more special for a limited time, if you visit the Business901 website and wait 30 Seconds!

Lean Marketing House (More Info): A starting point for creating true iterative marketing cycles based on not only Lean principles but more importantly Customer Value. Recommended 1st reading of series.

Marketing with PDCA (More Info): Targeting what your Customer Values at each stage of the cycle will increase your ability to deliver quicker, more accurately and with better value than your competitor. It is a moving target and the principles of Lean and PDCA facilitates the journey to Customer Value. Recommended 2nd reading of series.

Lean Engagement Team(More Info): The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Recommended 3rd reading of series.

Marketing with A3(More Info): Enables sales and marketing to use the Lean tool of A3 as a structured approach for their problem solving, strategies and tactics. Recommended 4th reading of series.

Save when buying all 4

This series of books are about developing a continuous improvement culture in your sales and marketing and re-positioning your customer as the center of your organization. The further we are from our customers’ knowledge base the more effort has to be made to create a larger and larger supply of prospects. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Successful Sales and Marketing are no longer trying to get their message out but developing strategies to get the message in.

Disclaimer: There is no silver bullet introduced in these books.

Why Prototype? Customer Interactivity is the Most Meaningful Part of Design

2012-01-18T00:35:00.000-05:00

Prototypes are becoming a design deliverable with the advent of many sophisticated software applications spurred by Rapid Prototyping, 3D Modeling etc. However, the initial paper sketch is arguably the best tool, at least in the beginning. Prototyping helps us to design better user experiences. However, many of us still forget to include the user! We still dwell on what we can do versus looking at what the user does! Even at the paper stage of prototyping, I encourage you to try to articulate that feeling and function of the design into a model and put it in the hands of the user. Their interactivity is the most meaningful part of design. Do it early and do it often.

From adaptive path blog, Rapid Prototyping Tools:

Making Effective Prototypes

In order to evaluate a prototyping tool or technique, we first need to define what makes an effective prototype. The best prototypes are ones that slipstream right into our design process. We want the ability to quickly take sketches from a whiteboard to something interactive.

Effective prototypes are fast. We want to use techniques that allow for rapid iteration. A prototype should not just be bolted onto the end of a design process. Incorporating the creation of a prototype into your daily design work allows new ideas to emerge and validates concepts quickly.

Effective prototypes are disposable. Just like with any design deliverable, we are creating an artifact intended to express an idea to someone else (stakeholder, developer, user, etc). Once that design idea has been communicated, the prototype deliverable can be discarded. We don’t have to feel the burden of creating a masterpiece that will live on, and we certainly don’t have to work in production-level code.

Effective prototypes are focused. We want to select the interactions of our design that really need to be prototyped. Look for the parts of your design that have of complexity. Look for interaction patterns repeated throughout the user’s experience. Look for the interactions that bring revenue to your product. A prototype that demonstrates these interactions will be the best use of your time and energy.

An informative presentations on prototyping is from Jonathan Arnowitz who happens to be one of the authors of Effective Prototyping with Excel. In the book, the authors discuss how to use use Excel skills to create prototypes especially for wire frames. It is interesting how such a common and widely owned tool can offer such a wide array of solutions. The presentation below labors on wireframes at the beginning but the message soon turns into applicable information for all.

Effective Prototyping Process for Software Creation

View more presentations from Jonathan Arnowitz

Lean Engagement Team Book Released

2012-01-16T22:55:00.000-05:00

Sales and marketing can no longer operate in a vacuum. It has become a process output that intertwines across many of the departments within the organization. As companies have become flat, their decision making is increasingly being done by committee. As a supplier, you must mimic your customer decision-making path and as a result your sales and marketing will also be done by committee. Our highest priority is to deliver to the customer content that he deems valuable to his decision-making process.

Lean is the future of marketing and one of the main reasons is the development of Agile under the Lean umbrella. Using the Agile Manifesto as a basis for Agile marketing or Lean marketing is a good start. In summary they are based on these principles:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Content-rich material over elaborate promotion
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Response to changing customer needs over following a plan

The further we are from our customers’ knowledge base the more effort has to be made to create a larger and larger supply of prospects. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Successful Sales and Marketing Teams are no longer trying to get their message out but developing strategies to get the message in.

Table of Contents

The Path
Positioning your organization from your customer’s viewpoint
Only the Customer Determine Value
PDCA from the Outside-In
The iCustomer and iTeam
New Lean Thinking
Lean Engagement Tools
Lean Engagement Team
Marketing Gateway of EDCA, PDCA, SDCA

The book is available as a PDF download on the Business901.com website or on Amazon:

Lean Engagement Team (Marketing with Lean, Volume 2) [Ring-bound]

Lean Engagement Team (Marketing with Lean, Volume 2) [CD-ROM]

Timeboxing using Pomodoro!

2011-12-30T22:34:00.000-05:00

The quickest drivers of time management is visualization, focus and clarity. What I talked about the other day is to have an action step with your reference material in hand, Evolution of Standard Work in my Sales and Marketing and Even Seinfeld used Standard Work. Be able to complete the task without having to look for anything. This will help both clarity and from the visual aspect since the supporting material is right there. Amazing how you can just reach for something and get side tracked sometimes.

The other area that is neglected is focus. So how do you focus? There are 2 areas external distraction and internal – self-inflicted. In your home office, make sure there is a door. Open means you can be disturbed and closed means you can’t. You want to focus – close the door! Don’t have your e-mail or Skype pop up if it distracts you. Give yourself 10 minutes an hour, every two hours or something that you do that. Leave other members on the team know that you check and accept messages at the top of the hour for 5 minutes during your time zone of focus.

From Wikpedia:

When I want to get a task done, I use The Pomodora Technique . A time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. This technique uses a timer to break down periods of work into 25-minute intervals called 'Pomodoros' (from the Italian word for 'tomatoes') separated by breaks. Closely related to concepts such as timeboxing and iterative and incremental development used in software design, the method has been adopted in pair programming contexts. The method is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility.

There are five basic steps to implementing the technique:

Decide on the task to be done

Set the pomodoro (timer) to 25 minutes (I use a tomato timer by the way)

Work on the task until the timer rings; record with an x

Take a short break (5 minutes)

Every four "pomodoros" take a longer break (15–20 minutes)

The above is the technique as described in literature. You may find a slightly different time works for you but the secret is to go full bore –a sprint than take a break. The reverse analogy of the tortoise and the hare. It actually works very well. Try doing it for a call session of two hours broken into 4 pomodoros. But make sure you don’t have to get up to reach or touch anything during that time. Let team members know that if they want to call you do so at the top of the hour. You may have to lengthen the break for 10 minutes or to handle outside distractions. But it is important that you do the sprint.

I actually use this technique in writing all the time. The first 15 minutes I just force myself to write and don’t stop. I stop for a minute and start again. If I slow up I just press the space bar at a slower rate. I do this twice equaling 30 minutes. The next 30 minutes after a break I edit what I wrote. Then I go back and start over. I repeat this over and over. I will typically edit it one or two times more but you get my drift. A great book on the subject of overcoming writer’s block is Accidental Genius. A mind map is located on the Business901 Mindmap page.

Related Book: Pomodoro Technique Illustrated

Blog Carnival Annual Roundup 2011: How to implement Lean Thinking in a Business

2011-12-29T22:55:00.000-05:00

Tracey Richardson’s How to implement "Lean Thinking" in a Business is my third and final blog review for the John Hunter’s Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Carnival. Tracey is a trainer, consultant and principal of Teaching Lean Inc. She has 22 years of Lean experience and worked at Toyota Motor Manufacturing KY as a team member, team leader and group leader in the Plastics Department from 1988-1998. She has over 460 hours training in Toyota Methodologies and Philosophy and currently is a trainer for Toyota, their affiliates in North America, and other companies upon request. Tracey experience in Toyota methodologies including: Lean Problem Solving, Quality Circles, Lean Manufacturing tools, Standardized Work, Job Instruction Training, Toyota Production System, Toyota Way Values, Culture Development, Visualization (Workplace Management Systems), Continuous Improvement (Kaizen), Meeting Facilitation/Teamwork, and Manufacturing Simulations.

Tracey also was the 2010 recipient of the Business901 Podcast of the Year! The podcast discussed A3 problem Solving.

Tracey likes to discuss the culture before jumping into problem solving but she takes a look at culture from a different perspective than others. It just about comes across as an attitude (in a very polite way) and there is type of swagger about the whole thing. Why not? When you become #1 in the world such as Toyota did and you are #1 methodology in the world which Lean probably is, why not have that swagger to your discussion? It is not pompous, it is an attitude that what you are doing works! She doesn’t write enough in my opinion because of her commitments as a trainer but her blog is one you should follow, you do not want to miss a word she says. You can also find her answering questions on the Lean Enterprise’s A3 Dojo Website.

What does the word "Lean" mean to you or your Company?

As I travel around the U.S. working with various companies that make a variety of different products, I realize a common denominator throughout them. How do they define the word "lean", as well as the word "culture"? What I have realized is very interesting!

When I first started consulting I felt it was all about the "tools", and that's what companies seem to want, so of course, that's what they got. As I have matured as an instructor/consultant I, like many, I have led and learned at the same time. In my experience at Toyota, especially back when we were led by the Japanese and their questioning approach; we all as new leaders were being led but at the same time leading others, so it was bringing about the "respect for people" and developing the workforce as a team. I can't ever recall in my time at Toyota (Toyota Motor Manufacturing KY - TMMK 1988-1998), that we ever labeled what we were doing in a specific word like "Lean", nor did we really think about our daily actions as a "culture". It was just in the atmosphere. It wasn't until I left Toyota to teach others, that those words started to surface. Somehow we felt the need to give it a name, and as I've experience the last 13 years as a consultant, I feel that can have somewhat of a hindering effect…..

Pathway to creating a "Lean Culture"

As I travel around to various clients they are always asking me, "How do you implement or create a culture like Toyota has"? I tell them that's a very loaded question :). There are so many aspects of creating that culture it's hard to give a short answer or even "wave a magic wand" to say... "Here is what you should do!!". I wish I was that good . How I see it, you really need to differentiate the People side of Lean versus the Tool side. The People side will always be the most difficult aspect of the discipline needed to create this thing called Culture. The tools are just what they are, mostly countermeasures to change some discrepancy in our process. For the tools to be successful, People must understand their involvement or the purpose behind the tools. As I have stated in previous blog posts you must explain from the company perspective the WHAT, HOW and the WHY of any change or expectation within a persons work….

Tracey’s website: http://teachingleaninc.com and email: tracey@teachingleaninc.com

Use the tools of Political Campaign Marketing to turn your Social Media into a Handshake!

2011-12-28T22:18:00.000-05:00

Campaign Marketing was discussed in the Business901 podcasts, What Political Campaigns can teach business, part 1 of 2 and part 2 of 2. Part one was more of a strategic view and part 2 more tactical. This is a transcription of both of the the podcasts. I find political campaign marketing very relevant to typical business marketing. Political campaigns have more experience in creating touch-points, managing limited budgets and crafting their message to the audience that they are addressing. An excellent primer when developing a social media strategy and turning it into a handshake.

Derek A. Pillie has served public and political candidates for over 15 years. He has served on the staff of Indiana’s Third Congressional District, most recently as District Director for just over a decade. In that role, he oversaw Indiana operations of the office; including constituent outreach and helping taxpayers solve problems with federal agencies. He also worked on crucial economic development projects and was heavily involved with advising the office on online media and marketing decisions.

After his federal service expired Derek started working at Cirrus ABS, an online marketing and technology development company. He currently manages their business development efforts. Cirrus ABS has added political campaigns to the portfolio of industries they serve since Derek joined the team, and he continues volunteer efforts on behalf of candidates he supports.

Standard Work in my Sales and Marketing

2011-12-27T23:20:00.000-05:00

Make no mistake about it; EXECUTION is what we are looking for from standard work.

If you execute, you can do anything. When a company has a clear mission, and people know how their individual mission fits into the big picture, everyone paddles in the
same direction. —Stephen Cooper

The biggest influence on my ability to execute has been Stephen Covey’s, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It provided me a personal method to perform standard work. A later program developed by Franklin Covey was the The 4 Disciplines of Execution which I still listen to for reinforcement but without the context of the training, I would not necessarily recommend it. The actually four disciplines serve as a great guideline for execution:

Focus on the Wildly Important: Human beings are wired to do only one thing at a time with excellence. The more we narrow our focus, the greater chance of achieving our goals with excellence.
Create a Compelling Scoreboard: People play differently when they're keeping score.
Translate Lofty Goals into Specific Actions: To achieve goals you've never achieved before, you need to start doing things you've never done before. • Using an entrepreneurial
Hold Each Other Accountable-All of the Time: Knowing others are counting on you raises your level of commitment.

These disciplines are what guides my own work and has allowed me to guide sales and marketing teams into higher levels of performance.

As I started my consulting path a few years back, I became a facilitator for the Get Clients Now – 28 Day Program. I always struggled with it somewhat because of the language used, appetizers, desserts, etc. but for the most part it provided a simple and concise action plan for assembling Wildly Important into Specific Actions into a Compelling Scoreboard (The Action Worksheet). When used with teams, it provides an excellent format for providing you a line of sight in daily stand-ups and weekly meetings. It was easily modified for individuals and organizations in Google docs for the teams that I was working with. As we all know, most sales efforts fall short in their ability to follow up which is at the core of the Get Clients Now Program. This outline became the core of standard work for my training programs.

Follow-through is the cornerstone of execution, and every leader who’s good at executing follows through religiously. Following through ensures that people are doing the things they committed to do. - Larry Bossidy

In my previous project management experience, I had found it was a matter of available resources that was the biggest inhibitor to actual execution. In most instances, thinking from a manufacturing or using GCN terminology a cook’s perspective, it was a missing tool or ingredient. When some has all the tools and/or material to do the job, they usually get the job done efficiently and at a high quality level. It holds true for sales and marketing. However, it always seemed to me that many action steps were started without the necessary resources available. The secret to what we needed to document in sales and marketing’s standard work was the needed resources to complete the action step and accept no workarounds.

In Scott Belsky’s (founder of Behance) book, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, he uses an approach called The Action Method. which has become my management planner of choice. It is extremely simple and highly intuitive for a single person and/or team. I use the paper, online and the app for my iPhone all in combination with very little of redundant work. What the Action Planner does is creates a systems that emphasizes action steps and having the supporting resources available. This is the essence of standard work for the Lean Engagement Team. Making the resources you are utilizing and highlighting what you are missing to the rest of the team, Team Coordinator and Value Stream Manager is the single most important part of the Daily Standup and Weekly Tactical. It allows work to flow.

I have found that most organizations prefer to customize and many still use Google Docs as the reporting method of choice. However, the point is not what tool you use. The point is mastering it so it takes little effort to make your work visible to the rest of the team. This line of sight is what makes teamwork possible. Both of these methods require little if any experience and more importantly can be completed quickly.

The typical daily stand-up goes like this:

State the action item and report did you do it: yes or no
If not, what stopped you? Was a resource missing?
What I am going to do today. Am I missing any resources? Who can help (if so, meet afterwards)?

The biggest problem I have had in these daily standups is that the managers have a tendency to turn them into longer sessions. They want to manage. The idea behind a daily standup is for tactical purposes. It is meant to enable team members to carry out their actions; nothing more, nothing less. Managers if they are participating should be enablers of the actions or in Lean terms the role of servant leadership.

P.S. The Action Planner resembles a simplified version of Kanban system such as the one offered by Lean Kit Kanban (my favorite online Kanban system).

Journey Mapping vs Value Stream Mapping

2011-12-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

Value Stream Mapping is process most consider an exercise for finding and removing waste. It is a foundational Lean Tool that typically gets introduced early in a Lean Transformation. A Systems2win Excel template is depicted below: In Sales and Marketing you will utilize a Value Stream Mapping process on a project by project basis but it is typically limited for an internal process. It is a difficult correlation for customer facing experiences and as a result seldom used. The preferred method of mapping the customer experience is through a journey map. I prefer two styles one just a basic Excel Template that is very similar to a typical Swim Lane chart commonly used in Lean.

From Smart Cities - A guide to using Customer Journey Mapping

Another being a more circular method demonstrated by the Lego Wheel. Lego uses tool called a ‘customer experience wheel’ to map an existing experience. “We understand what is and what is not important to the customer in that experience and then we design a ‘wow’ experience to improve it.” Though I like the wheel better I have not found a program that could make it easy for me to draw and distribute. The advantage of creating this map utilizing the Excel template is that you can easily add notes and drill down further down into a process by adding columns and rows. Drawing in Excel is rather easy once you understand how, Become Proficient Drawing with Excel in 30 minutes! and remember you can do MATH, CHARTS and everything else you already know about Excel. If you want more information on how to create a journey map below is an excellent slide show describing the process. If you want to learn more about Value stream Mapping, drawing in Excel or Swim Lanes, I would recommend downloading the trail templates at Systems2win.com.

The Journey Mapping Guidance Cabinet Office[1]

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A good post on discussing some of the pros and cons of different types of Journey Maps can be found at Visualizing the customer experience using customer experience journey maps. You may also want to consider viewing the Lean Marketing Game presentation. It is based on extending the journey map through out your organization.

Lean and Six Sigma training to deployed Soldiers

2011-12-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

Just received a copy of an article, Resolute’ brigade provides Lean Six Sigma training to deployed Soldiers from Tim Fowler, a CPS Professional Services contractor assigned to Task Force Resolute at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan. Tim is teaching a group of U.S. Forces about Lean and Six Sigma. They are applying this training immediately through improving the logistics capabilities of the command. More information can be found in the article.

Quote from the article:

“Through Lean Six Sigma, soldiers and leaders will learn how to properly manage time and resources while delivering a top quality product the first time,” said Chief Warrant Officer Jackie Vuorinen, the TF-Resolute safety officer. “This is a program all soldiers can use to save Army resources while providing higher quality products.”

Tim appeared on the Business901 podcast, Are right brain thinkers better leaders? Tim is a University of Kentucky Certified Lean Master, a Goldratt Institute Theory of Constraint Supply Chain Expert, an ASQ-Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, and a Licensed Social Worker with a SECRET clearance and his website, BusinessLeadership.com is a popular venue for leading edge thinking.

Thanks Tim for passing this on and wish you and everyone else at Kandahar Airfield a safe and Happy Holiday!

The Resilience of PDCA

2011-12-09T22:33:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I wrote the blog post, The Death of PDCA that stated following traditional Lean thinking leads us to focus our efforts of continuous improvement internally versus externally. Knowing my interest in the Evolution of PDCA, Karen Martin a well-regarded Lean consultant and co-author of The Kaizen Event Planner sent me Evolution of the PDCA Cycle.

The paper covers the development of PDCA from the introduction to the scientific method (you could argue between Aristotle or Galileo) to the latest development covered by the paper with the addition of the Model for Improvement published and described in The Improvement Guide. This book was published in 2009.

In reading the research paper, I discovered that somewhere along the line when the Japanese executives recast the Deming wheel at the 1950 JUSE seminar into the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle till now, we lost that all important external outlook of PDCA to one of an internally focused improvement methodology. In the book, Kaizen: The Key To Japan's Competitive Success, Masaaki Imai shows the correlation between the Deming wheel and the PDCA cycle in Figure 5 developed at the seminar.

Design – Plan: Product design corresponds to the planning phase of management
Production – Do: Production corresponds to doing-making, or working on the
product that was designed
Sales – Check: Sales figures confirm whether the customer is satisfied
Research – Action: In case of a complaint being filed, it has to be incorporated into the planning phase, and action taken for the next round of efforts

In the paper, Evolution of the PDCA Cycle, it goes on to state:

By the 1960’s the PDCA cycle in Japan had evolved into an improvement cycle and a
management tool. Lilrank and Kano state the 7 basic tools (check sheet, histograms,
Pareto chart, fishbone diagram, graphs, scatter diagrams, and stratification) highlight the
central principle of Japanese quality.

I believe that somewhere between these two points the Check stage of PDCA due to the introduction of the 7 Quality Tools became internally focused and developed along that path during the years of process improvement.

In the last decade we have evolved from the processed driven culture of the 90’s through the Customer Centric to the new culture of User Centric. The scientific method and PDCA works. As a result it adapts and evolves with time. A measure of that is the popularity of Eric Ries and the Lean Startup with the use of Build – Measure – Learn. Also the latest evolvement of Design Thinking and more specifically the Service Design field highlighted in my post, Can Service Design increase Customer demand? has established a basis for EDCA (Explore-Do-Check_Act).

In addition to our thinking, we must change our toolset. We need a complimentary toolset which was outlined in a previous post, Continuous Improvement Sales and Marketing Toolset. I am not saying that we throw away the 7 Quality Tools but we do not use them before their time. They have become more useful in the Standardization process and therefore the SDCA cycle. This is a list of the 7 basic Quality Tools to be used in SDCA:

Cause-and-effect diagram
Check sheet
Control charts
Histogram
Pareto chart
Scatter diagram
Stratification

In 1976, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) saw the need for tools to promote innovation, communicate information and successfully plan major projects. A team researched and developed the seven new quality control tools, often called the seven management and planning (MP) tools, or simply the seven management tools. This is the set that I propose to be used in PDCA:

Affinity diagram
Relations diagram
Tree diagram
Matrix diagram:
Matrix data analysis
Arrow diagram
Process decision program chart (PDPC)

Today’s world has introduced more and more uncertainty. As a result it has forced us to get closer and closer to our customers. This reduces are reaction time and allows us to make better informed decisions. This methodology has been introduced to us through the concepts of Design Thinking. This is the set that I propose to be used in EDCA:

Visualization
Journey Mapping
Value Chain Analysis
Mind Mapping
Brainstorming
Concept Development
Assumption Testing
Rapid Prototyping
Customer Co-Creation
Learning Launch

I am not saying that tools cannot cross over into other cycles. Tools must be used as and only when needed. But through the process of defining your toolset it will assist you in understanding the cycles of continuous improvement in Lean Sales and Marketing.

So, like the possum that has adapted and survived where others have become extinct, the scientific method and PDCA will continue to evolve and live.

LabWorks Opens On the Lean Marketing Lab

2011-12-03T22:02:00.000-05:00

The virtual community of the Lean Marketing Lab open its doors (gateway) on Monday. November 21, 2011. This online community was created to further the cause of bringing continuous improvement to the sales and marketing community. The foundational work is in Lean but you will find a flavor of Service Design and Design Thinking intertwined. Now, the paid membership section LabWorks Group has also opened for training and consulting. The presentation below describes the offer..

So before you buy the books above or enroll in a Business901 program check out the special offers that are provided for being a member of the group.

Developing a winning Culture the Zappos way!

2011-11-25T22:20:00.000-05:00

My guest on the podcast Joseph Michelli takes you through the Zappos company culture now and maybe the future. Joseph’s latest book, The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW has generated my interest on the relationship of employee and customer experience as demonstrated in my blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?. We discussed this and the Zappos approach that Michelli breaks into five key elements:

Serve a Perfect Fit—create bedrock company values
Make it Effortlessly Swift—deliver a customer experience with ease
Step into the Personal—connect with customers authentically
S T R E T C H—grow people and products
Play to Win—play hard, work harder

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Against all odds this online business (known primarily for selling shoes in a playful and emotionally engaging ways) has revolutionized social media strategies, developed an environment which has earned it a consistent spot in the top ten of Fortune Magazine’s best places to work, created zealous fans, and attracted Amazon.com as a purchaser for more than 1.2 billion dollars. It’s time to integrate (not balance) work and fun. It’s time to benefit from the unique and effective customer employee and customer engagement techniques of Zappos!

Joseph A. Michelli, Ph.D., is an internationally sought-after speaker, author, and organizational consultant who transfers his knowledge of exceptional business practices in ways that develop joyful and productive workplaces with a focus on the total customer experience. His insights encourage leaders and frontline workers to grow and invest passionately in all aspects of their lives. Dr. Michelli has been recognized by Focus as “one of the top five Customer Service Influencers to Track in 2011.”

Play is nature's learning engine…

2011-11-24T21:27:00.000-05:00

…says games researcher and author Aaron Dignan. In other words, we're hardwired to enjoy games - they're addictive, skill-building, and satisfying. So the question is: How can we integrate game concepts into our work lives to help us push ideas forward? In this talk, Dignan walks through the principles of creating a great game and suggests ways that we might use them to overcome email exhaustion, spice up workaday meetings, and more.

Aaron Dignan: How to Use Games to Excel at Life and Work from 99% on Vimeo.

Aaron Dignan dressed up like a superhero for 180 straight days of the first grade, which marked the beginning of his life as an iconoclast, observer, theorist, and performer. Now, as a founding partner of the digital strategy firm Undercurrent and based in New York, he advises global brands and complex organizations like GE, PepsiCo, Ford, and Estée Lauder on their future in an increasingly technophilic world. Aaron's first book, Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success, was released on March 8th, 2011.

Links:
www.gameframers.com
www.undercurrent.com
@aarondignan
http://the99percent.com/

What to do with foursquare!

2011-11-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

One million new users per month. Twenty-three check-ins per second. Millions of people—in every city, in every country, on every continent, and even from the Space Station—are vying to become mayors of their favorite shopping locations. What is foursquare and why has it become the hottest customer magnet ever conceived? Internationally bestselling author Carmine Gallo not only has had unprecedented first-hand access to foursquare’s founders, he also has interviewed dozens of business owners and marketers who have revolutionized their businesses through The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers to Check In Wherever They Are.

Watch the slideshow as you listen to the podcast!

The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers to Check In Wherever They Are

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo

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About: CARMINE GALLO is the communications coach for the world's most admired global brands. A former anchor and correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gallo has addressed executives at Intel, Cisco, Google, Medtronic, Pfizer, and many others. Gallo writes My Communications Coach, a regular column for Forbes.com. He has written several internationally bestselling and award-winning books, including The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Carmine Gallo may be found online at www.carminegallo.com.

Is your organization a learning organization?

2011-11-23T21:37:00.000-05:00

This is an interview with David Garvin and Amy Edmondson, Professors, Harvard Business School. Learning organizations generate and act on new knowledge. The ability to do this enables companies to stay ahead of change and the competition.

This is the the link to the PDF of article that is discussed in the interview, Is Yours a Learning Organization? Or, you can view it below.

Is yours a learning organization

Drawing with Excel in 30 minutes!

2011-11-22T22:45:00.000-05:00

Using Microsoft Excel as a drawing tool is a surprise to most of us. When we think of using Excel, we think of creating a spreadsheet and maybe if we are adventurous creating a graph. But there is a hidden power contained in Excel, the ability to draw. One of my most popular blog post of all time, Draw your Value Stream Map in Excel includes a You Tube video of the rendering of a Excel drawing depicting Transformer (You remember the Children’s heroes). If you need proof take a look at these drawings from The Spreadsheet Page:

It turns out that Debbie is an artist, and she uses Excel as her primary drawing software (now that's odd!). The figure below shows an example. The image on the left was scanned from a catalog. The image on the right was created by Debbie, using Excel's drawing tools. The drawing consists of hundreds of individual shapes, combined together

.

According to Debbie, "Most of my drawings do not take longer than two hours or four hours max to get the outlines done and the fill colors put in. I often use photographs that I've scanned and inserted into Excel, then I use the drawing tools to change the photographs into drawings. As you have already noticed I've become quite proficient at drawing on Excel, so it doesn't take me as much time as it did when I first started, now that I've figured out all the tricks.

I have a tendency to use other more “graphic” software packages in lieu of Excel but I am amazed at the simplicity of using Excel once you start. Why should I care? Most of the tools of Lean are visual in nature. In fact, one of the sayings that have been very common in Lean is “If you’re not visual, you’re not Lean.” However, in Lean and with any continuous improvement methodology metrics are important. So, if you want to be successful you cannot divorce the visual aspect and the metrics. Excel offers the marriage between the two. Listen to the advantages described by Dean Ziegler of Systems2win:

Can you become proficient in only 30 minutes? Watch these Systems2win videos to learn how:
Types of Drawing Objects
How to Select Objects
How to use Excel as a drawing tool

It’s the Who, not the Why

2011-11-21T23:06:00.000-05:00

Start with Why is an excellent book which I have highlighted in my blog post, Does your customer know why you do it? with author’s Simon Sinek Ted appearance. It is a great message and his discussion of the Golden Circle really nails his point. However, it is a little internally focused for me and like so many others it attempts to drive your message home from the inside out. Who is the keyword, not Why.

Why is simply yesteryear. When asking Why we focus on solutions for the customer. There are plenty of people that can solve a customer’s problem. Why is a commodity based approach that does not separate you from the competition. Simon does an excellent job using the Golden Circle to demonstrate how you have to have the passion for “Why” and translating that into the How and the What you are doing. He says that you will find like customers that share the same “Why” passion. However, this philosophy still centers on the fact that there are plenty customers out there. It does not consider the fact that for most, there is a short supply of customers.

An example of Why thinking using a simple purchase such as a new refrigerator: we address the concerns of the customer by asking why we need one, how much do they want to spend and what fits in the hole. If we start with the Who; we center on their lifestyle, who is using it, who will be installing it, who will be removing it, and maybe even who will be paying for it (if we don’t have terms to delay payment till next year). We develop a customer experience that is extended into delivery, warranty and service agreements.

We live in a replenishment society, most of us do not need anything else. We have everything. It is the company that takes the time to understand the customer and their behaviors that enables them to not simply design a solution but centering on the Who to create an outstanding customer experience. If we do that, we end up creating products and services that customers can’t resist and competitors can’t copy.

Who…

Externalizes your thought processes
Creates customer centric organization
Enables a spirit of
- Community
- Co-operation
- Co-learning
- Co-producing
- Co-creation

Who is the key in developing an obsession to understand the customer and allow us to deliver on customer desires and wants versus just their needs. Average companies deliver on customer needs, above average companies deliver on desires. Which one are you?

Lean Marketing Lab Opens! :: Business901

2011-11-20T23:02:00.000-05:00

Lean Marketing Lab Opens! :: Business901: The virtual world of the Lean Marketing Lab will open its doors (gateway) on Monday. November 21, 2011. This online community has been created to further the cause of bringing continuous improvement to the sales and marketing community.

Lean Marketing Lab Opens!

2011-11-20T16:45:00.000-05:00

The virtual world of the Lean Marketing Lab will open its doors. A gateway for this online community has been created to further the cause of Lean in Sales and Marketing. Reviewing this slide presentation will give you the background on the project. Hope to see you at the Lean Marketing Lab. – Joe

Lean Marketing Lab

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Related Information can be found at Business901.com

Deming was just simply wrong about variation…

2011-11-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

..when applied to Lean Sales and Marketing. We have all heard the saying attributed to John Wanamaker, a department-store magnate in the late 19th century, famously said that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted, but that he didn't know which half. That theory is substantiated in a blog post, Why Should 50% of your marketing should fail (statistical proof offered by by Don Reinertsen). So I would offer a simple explanation that we do need variation for sales and marketing to work. But it goes much deeper than that, it is the thought of the average customer.

When continuous improvement is applied to sales and marketing most think about reducing waste and segmenting customers. As Deming said, “Variation is the enemy”. Sales and marketing is a process. If we can reduce the variation and the inputs to a process, we increase the predictability of the outputs and it makes it a whole lot easier to manage those processes. As a result, we can focus on things that really do need our attention.

This is supply-side thinking. We segment out customers till we can define the “average” customer”. People that understand variation know that average is a poor measure. You could have one foot in boiling water and another in ice cold water and on average you are ok. So why do we market to the average? It makes it easier!

If we focus on Demand thinking, we must focus and embrace variation. We must ask ourselves how our customers differ and how their experiences differ. Focusing on these differences and grouping them accordingly offers us a chance to market to a broader spectrum.

An example of this is the philosophy of Mass Customization. From Wikipedia:

Mass Customization is the method of effectively postponing the task of differentiating a product for a specific customer until the latest possible point in the supply network." (Chase, Jacobs & Aquilano 2006, p. 419). The concept of mass customization is attributed to Stan Davis in Future Perfect^[1] and was defined by Tseng & Jiao (2001, p. 685) as "producing goods and services to meet individual customer's needs with near mass production efficiency". Kaplan & Haenlein (2006) concurred, calling it "a strategy that creates value by some form of company-customer interaction at the fabrication and assembly stage of the operations level to create customized products with production cost and monetary price similar to those of mass-produced products".

In a Demand Driven world, organizations must embrace customer variation. They must encourage it and make provisions for variation to increase. This is a key strategy in a demand driven world. It is where you find new customers and is a key to you innovation. Variation is not the enemy. WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND HE IS US. Embrace Variation; do not try to rid yourself of it.

Lean Canvas for SALES EDCA/PDCA/SDCA

2011-11-10T18:28:00.000-05:00

SALES PDCA is the framework I use for the process that takes place in the customer groups. It is nothing more than a standard PDCA cycle except the SALES part of the framework is where the sales team gets its directions and coaching from the team coordinator and value stream manager. Within the actual PDCA stage the sales team is empowered to make their own choices and determine their own direction to accomplish the goals of that cycle. This framework is introduced in the Marketing with PDCA book.

Continuing with my Lean journey and the development of the Lean sales and Marketing platform, many of the PDCA cycles became standardized and SDCA was introduced. Graham Hill had mentioned the concept of EDCA (Explore-Do-Check-Act). Graham was the head of CRM at Toyota Financial Services. He stated that:

Marketing in highly competitive markets is about exploring new propositions on the innovation fitness landscape. The environment determines where to start and complex marketing environments need EDCA. EDCA = Explore, PDCA = Plan, SDCA = Standardize, marketing operations are all about moving along the EDCA>PDCA>SDCA pathway.

Out of this was the further refinement into three separate distinctive cycles of SALES EDCA, SALES PDCA, SALES SDCA. Viewing your value stream/marketing cycle in this manner creates endless opportunities for improvement. It is also much easier to handle the team concept of sales and marketing with this thought process. The sales and marketing team is a cross-functional group whose number and expertise are derived from the decision-making path of the customer. You must first have established directives for a particular marketing cycle and a structure to match it. Are you looking for creativity (EDCA), problem resolution (PDCA), or tactical execution (SDCA)? Once you have established the objectives, you choose a team structure to match it. Without this process you may have creative teams working on tactical execution or on the other hand a problem-solving team working on a creative solution.

The question remained how do we make this knowledge explicit? Several years ago, I would have just framed this as an A3 report and placed the SALES on the left side and the ECA/PDCA/SDCA on the right side. However I have decided to use the terminology of a canvas versus an A3n following the concept developed in the Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder. The BMG Canvas has its roots in Design Thinking which provides a better conduit for focusing outside the organization.

Lean Canvas for SALES EDCA/PDCA/SDCA

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In the upcoming week, I will blog about the individual Lean Canvases and Standard Work templates. But for now this slide show will serve as the introduction to the concept.

What political campaigns can teach business

2011-11-07T09:35:00.000-05:00

According to social media analyst Charlene Li, selling a product is much like selling a candidate. The best approach is tap into your core group of supporters, empower them to evangelize on your behalf and then let go! Li says that the rise of social networks has impacted the way politicians communicate with their base and that businesses can learn to have a conversation, rather than "message" their audience. Another tip -- businesses should develop a thicker skin when it comes to negative feedback and respond to criticism in real-time, like politicians are doing via the internet.

Charlene gives a great overview in the video and this is the theme of my upcoming podcast with Derek Pillie, a fifteen veteran of the political campaign trail.

There are some great lessons that businesses can take away from politics. People have a tendency to evaluate and expect marketing to create immediate business for them. Many times they evaluate marketing firms based who has the “best idea.” If that is the case, why try to convince customers to change their mind? Instead, embrace them!

As a marketing consultant, I view political campaigning as one of the most productive methods of creating immediate business. Campaign Managers are experts at using the vast array of available touch-points to reach customers and more importantly, they are Deadline Driven – Election Day.

I wonder what business can teach politics?

Will Lean always internalize the customer?

2011-11-04T23:20:00.000-04:00

I was in a recent LinkedIn discussion that referred to Sales and Marketing customer as being the internal organization and their role was to optimize the throughput of the observation. The sales and marketing role was further explained in the terms of takt time based on optimal production of the organization. The goal of sales is to keep the factory optimized?

I respectfully disagreed based on this reasoning.

You can (maybe) do that if you have excess demand. You can then try to improve efficiencies. However, most of us live in a world that supply exceeds demand. It is not about getting rid of waste. We have excess capacity. Tell me a company that won't accept more prospects into their sales funnel or are refusing orders. In sales and marketing you have to drive revenue. I believe that the role of continuous improvement and Lean lies in this area versus the area of waste.

I have a problem understanding applying takt time in relation to sales and marketing. Theoretically, it sounds great but in actuality how does it apply with Takt Time= Net Available Time per Day / Customer Demand per Day. Who determines the acceptable and projected Takt Time for sales and marketing? Is customer demand determined by the capacity of the operations? Or is it by market share?

How can you have takt time without customer demand? Can an internal measurement be relevant to sales? If it is the measurement that we force sales to use, it is not a Lean process. We are pushing in lieu of pulling. Pull comes from the marketplace and is one of the principles of Lean. Holding sales and marketing to an internal measurement that has little if any meaning to the marketplace or the customer confuses me. The fundamental question could be what the marketplace demand is and what our percentage of that market is. That leads into the questions of retention and acquisition. Setting targets in those areas would drive the process of sales and marketing, innovation and hold operations accountable to a realistic level.

The metrics we have been traditional using are based on an economy with excess demand. Since we live an economy that has excess supply, fundamental beliefs must change. Sales and Marketing does need a process for improvement but it is one that must be created from the marketplace and I actually believe the principles of Lean are best suited for that journey.

Another wayward thought or the truth about Process Improvement in Marketing?

I came across a blog post by Brad Powers (a recent podcast guest) on the Harvard Business Review, How Marketing Can Lead Process Improvement. In reading the post the communication with customers seems to be orchestrated. As a result, the examples discussed seem archaic and more an extension of a command and control function than one of empowerment. It left me wondering if there are examples of sales and marketing teams that are being empowered.

Just calling something continuous improvement does not mean that it is. Continuous improvement is not a series of pilot tests and deployment. Rather it is empowering your workforce to practice it every day. In modern organizations it is the practice and the power of continuous improvement that is driving results. Factory workers, Software Programmers and Health Care professionals, to name just a few are being empowered as problem solvers and knowledge workers. I would think that the sales and marketing structure should be leading the way versus being the laggards.

There is not a more important function in sales and marketing than the ability to share and create knowledge with your customer. In the 3 examples given in Brad’s post, I see the key terms optimize, experiments, research versus words like cooperation, co-create, community and surprisingly “value”. I see that heads of marketing need to spend time with employees rather that interact with customers. What’s wrong with spending time directly with customers?

There are companies doing this. A good example is many of the gaming companies that interact regularly with their players. They are highly influenced by the top players and not only seek their opinions but join in and play with them. The players I have discussed this with are amazed at the access they have to top management. Other examples include SalesForce, BMW, Lego, Kraft and P & G.

A customer does not realize any value from your product/service till he uses it. When you view your product/service as an enabler of value creation versus the center of value than you can see how increasing knowledge flows between you and your customer is at the center of sales and marketing. Value is an input to your company not an output. There is only one person that determines the value of your organization and that is the customer. I think many continuous improvement methodologies have hijacked the term customer. It is not an internal person. The customer is the person that purchases and uses the product.

When viewing Lean and PDCA as a knowledge creation vehicle versus a waste reduction tool, Lean becomes applicable to sales and marketing. Without this understanding, I see little hope for Lean in the sales and marketing process.

Fantastic Conversation on the Multiverse

2011-11-03T23:35:00.000-04:00

Every marketer and gamer should watch this!

Joe Pine seeks to do nothing less than redefine our known universe -- a bold goal which manifested itself in The Multiverse, a 3D framework he created. By examining the fields created at the intersection of three axes (space/no space, time/no time, and matter/no matter), Joe introduces us to eight realms for creating value by innovating experiences. Physical virtuality, for example, involves designing things virtually and then making them a reality, such as the way 3D bio-printers manufacture human tissue and organs. Through Joe's eyes, we see the future and it is mind blowing!

From a San Diego TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Sustain a Lean Culture, use Lean Tools

2011-11-02T23:12:00.000-04:00

I recently worked the Systems2win booth this week at the AME Conference in Dallas, TX. I enjoy the opportunity tremendously as I get to spend a great deal of time with hundreds of Lean Practitioners in a variety of positions and industries. Discussing the Systems2win word and excel continuous improvement templates offers me the opportunity to revisit many of the basic Lean principles.

You need leadership and a mindset or cultural shift in a Lean Transformation but I support the thinking that most of us use tools to learn and sustain improvement efforts. If we are unable to use the tools, we can’t implement. I use the analogy that a carpenter becomes a carpenter by becoming proficient with a hammer. You become proficient with Lean by using Value stream Mapping, Standard Work and the others.

I stray away from some of the traditional tools of Lean as a result of my work in sales and marketing. Spending the time in the booth discussing the breadth (there are over 150 templates) of Lean foundational tools that Systems2win supplies was for me a refresher course. It re-cemented the practical applications of Lean to standard work (no pun attended). Lean is firmly rooted in accomplishing work. It is not about creating elaborate control structures. It is simply about learning by doing and how better to accomplish that but through the use of the tools.

After coming home, I looked through a few of the Systesm2win templates on YouTube to strengthen that learning. I have included the Introduction to Value Stream Mapping.

I found that taking a Value Stream Mapping project off of a board and documenting it on software besides the obvious attributes of archiving and sharing, it creates, distributes and reinforces the knowledge of the process and the use of the mapping process for other projects.

Shalloway on Teamwork in Kanban, part 3 f 3

2011-11-02T22:36:00.000-04:00

Alan is an industry thought leader in Lean, Kanban, product portfolio management, Scrum and agile design. He helps companies transition to Lean and Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in these areas. He is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives and also can be found on twitter @alshalloway.

Alan is the primary author of
Essential Skills for the Agile Developer: A Guide to Better Programming and Design
Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility
Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
And a favorite of mine: Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams

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This podcast is broken down into 3 parts. I had trouble running Alan down and finally caught him on his cell phone so the quality is not the best. However, Alan delivered great content and we could hardly stop talking. His view of the Agile community, Scrum, Kanban and Lean is unique and refreshing.

Part 1 of 3: Alan Shalloway discusses the state of Agile!, part 1 of 3
Part 2 of 3: Can Agile work at the Enterprise Level with Alan Shalloway?

Auction & Giveaway for Haiti Relief

2011-10-27T08:45:00.000-04:00

A fellow Lean Blogger, Mark Graban is holding an auction this week, Charity eBay Auction & Giveaway for Haiti Relief – Signed Lean Books & More. His explanation:

It has been almost a year since the publication of Russell Maroni’s e-book After the Haiti Earthquake: A Healthcare Missionary’s Personal Journal, a fundraiser for ongoing earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. We have collected $395 in donations from readers of the free e-book along with $43 from Kindle version sales… but we hope this new project can raise even more.

A number of my friends in the Lean community have donated books or other items to be auctioned through the eBay CharityWorks program. 100% of the auction proceeds will be given directly to Friends of the Orphans, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that supports orphanages in Haiti and other countries. This charity was selected personally by Russell. This is Round 1 of the auction with a likely Round 2 to follow with more great Lean stuff.

Note: Many of the book titles link to Amazon (via an affiliate link that earns 6% for Friends of the Orphans). To bid on an item, via eBay, click on the linked word “bid” in front of each item. The auctions run 7 days and all end at about 9 PM or 10 PM Eastern on Sunday October 30.

You should be able to see all of the items via this link or go to www.leanblog.org/auctions. You can see the retail value of each item or set of auctions on the eBay page.

I encourage you to consider. This is a good cause that is being attempted by a small group of people that are trying to do something out of the kindness of their heart, nothing more. When they say 100& will be given, 100% will be given. Please place a bid, even if you don’t win, it is fun just participating. Everyone likes an auction, right?

Related Information:
Using A3 for Special Causes – Lean for Haiti

Mind Maps on Leadership and Teamwork for the Lean Agile Crowd

2011-10-26T23:55:00.000-04:00

Looking for DIY Teamwork and Leadership training? Start with these books (since they are all fables, they make for great listening) Patrick Lencioni Library (Five Temptations of a CEO; Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive; Five Dysfunctions of a Team; Death by Meeting). If you are a Lean Startup, Agile Software Development or even a Lean Enterprise this information is readily digestible by anyone in your organization and coincides with these disciplines that you will wonder where Patrick received his Lean training.

If you feel like this is an endorsement of these products, it is! I have used these mind maps as examples and referred more people to the books and materials than to any other single source. This is my collection of mind maps created from listening or reading to the Patrick Lencioni business series of books.

Patrick Lencioni Mind Maps

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Hansei in Lean Marketing

2011-10-26T16:08:00.000-04:00

Lean Sales and Marketing is built upon the philosophy that there has been a subtle shift to knowledge as the way to engage, develop and retain your customer base. The sales and marketing team must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets. If this is true, how do create new knowledge? How do we learn? Most studies show that we learn best by doing and by being forced to resolve our perspective with those of others who disagree with us. This means that you have to encourage contradictions and be willing to push the envelope with your customers.

This is a strange paradox. Disagreement with your customer can hardly be seen as a positive mechanism for sales and marketing. However, it is the embracement of this understanding that will move your sales and marketing efforts to a higher level of performance.

Can you disagree with a customer? Can you purposely cause tension? You must! You must move away from the comfort zone and create a healthy tension and instability in your sales and marketing process.

The next step in the process is surprisingly easy but difficult to do. It is the process of reflection or in Japanese, hansei. There are three key components of hansei:

Recognize that there is a problem – a gap between expectations and achievement – and be open to negative feedback.
Voluntarily take responsibility and feel deep regret.
Commit to a specific course of action to improve.

The first step, acknowledge that there is room for improvement is not that difficult. However, putting a number to it may be a different story. When we create a performance gap we identify 2 things, one where we are at now and where do we want to go. Of course we may not get there overnight but there will be limitations. You have to determine what is realistic to achieve. A simple but effective way of looking at it is, “From what to what by when”.

The second step can simply be stated – don’t look for excuses. Take responsibility, feel a little humility and move forward. Without this, you will never fully release from the past and it may be much more difficult to bring fresh ideas to the table.

This is your action plan to move forward. However, without step 2, you will seldom be passionate about step 3. It will just be another effort and ownership will be limited. Ownership cannot be done without an emotional attachment.

The steps of Respect first, Reflection second will drive the 3^rd step of Kaizen or continuous improvement. This is the process and culture of PDCA in your marketing cycle. It is the embodiment of tension, a performance gap to send you off on a new path. This path acts as expanding spiral of co-creation of knowledge with your customer that will be truly valued. THE ABILITY TO SHARE AND CREATE KNOWLEDGE WITH YOUR CUSTOMER is the strongest marketing tool possible.

Few companies will take this path. Few companies will take the time to develop the level of respect required. Even fewer will use hansei and look at performance gaps releasing their own pre-determined reasons. Few will ever practice continuous improvement in sales and marketing.

Will you?

Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution

2011-10-20T23:40:00.000-04:00

This is part of my blog series on using the principles of Demand Drive MRP and its five primary components. I would recommend reading the blog posts in order for better understanding:

This particular blog focuses around Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution.

Simply launching purchase order (POs), manufacturing orders (MOs), and transfer orders (TOs) from any planning system does not end the materials and order management challenge. These POs. MOs. and TOs have to be managed effectively to synchronize with the changes that often occur within the execution horizon. The execution horizon is the time from which a PO, MO, or TO is opened until the time it is closed in the system of record. Demand -driven MRP is an integrated system of execution for all part categories in order to speed the communication of relevant information and priorities throughout an organization and supply chain

The above is from the Orlicky’s Material Requirements Planning 3/E. written by my recent podcast (Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP) guest Carol Ptak and Chad Smith of the Demand Driven Institute.

Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution starts in one place in a sales and marketing environment and that is in the customers’ playground. If you want to be visible, if you want the opportunity for collaboration, you literally need to play with the customer. Even more precisely, it should be synonymous to your prime target market. This allows you to see the market swings at the same time your customer does. For example, if your customer has a downturn in business you will sense that immediately versus seeing months later. Your market upswings will also be maximized for basically the same purpose. Theoretically it sounds great but is it that easy? Again, the customer-vendor relationship and the degree of trust in one another are imperative. It is not simply something that just happens it must be orchestrated.

Not everyone wants to be your partner. As a result, other segments may produce wider swings in variability and may require different lead times or even more frequent contact (touches) than even your prime customers. It based on what your customer needs are and the resources you are willing to dedicate to the segment. This is not an arbitrary thing; it is a well conceived execution of the plan developed.

When we talk about visibility and collaborative execution, it is not just an external requirement. It is an internal one as well. You must have transparency, open collaboration and no hidden agenda that will compromise your organizational efforts and especially your sales team.

In the sales and marketing arena the ability to execute is dependent on two major themes; clarity and autonomy. On both macro and micro level clarity has to be well established to enable a team to work autonomously. When considering a particular customer segment at the macro-level a well-defined value proposition with revenue goals must be established. At that level, I use the Business Model Generation template to provide the clarity for a particular customer segment.

Within that customer segment, the micro-level will be dealing with the individual cycle that is facilitated the increase of knowledge for the customer decision making process. This individual cycle is where the sales team needs to have total autonomy to make execution happen. They are on the street with the customer and should contain the expertise and authority to complete the mission. Many would compare them to a Swat Team or even a Navy Seal Team. That being said the teams may require extensive training in these specialized areas to assist in the customer decision making process. In these Customer decision making cycles I use the Sales PDCA outlined in Marketing with PDCA as my execution template.

Service Innovation – Rethinking Customer Needs

2011-10-20T22:35:00.000-04:00

True service innovation demands that you shift the focus away from the solution and back to the customer. To achieve this shift in your business--one that takes you from making educated guesses to building a clear model to guide service innovation—Lance Bettencourt instructs on the finer points of how to rethink your approach to the customer's needs: how the customer defines value in a product or service. Among the numerous key ideas and practices are:

Insight on understanding the different types of clients you serve—and how your products deliver value to them
Ways to design specific frameworks for discovering service innovation opportunities for new, improved, and supplementary service products
Practical guidance on staying focused on the "fuzzy front end" of service innovation
The fundamental elements of a winning service strategy

We did not get to all of these points in the podcast with Lance. You would have to read his book,Service Innovation: How to Go from Customer Needs to Breakthrough Services to find all of them. But we did begin the conversation discussing Job-Centric Innovation, an idea that Lance is an expert on.

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After several years on the marketing faculty at Indiana University, he began his career as an innovation consultant with Strategyn. His book is a melding of his personal skills and passion for services and innovation. He is currently an independent innovation speaker and trainer, providing executive education to many of the world's leading companies.

Alan Shalloway discusses the state of Agile!, part 1 of 3

2011-10-20T06:45:00.000-04:00

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This podcast is broken down into 3 parts. I had trouble running Alan down and finally caught him on his cell phone so the quality is not the best. However, Alan delivered some great content and we could hardly stop talking. His view of the Agile community, Scrum, Kanban and Lean is unique and refreshing.

Related Subject discussed in podcast: A transcription of the Business901 Podcast, Should you Manage your Organization with Agile Techniques?. My guest was Steve Denning’s, author of the new book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2010).

Data Driven Problem Solving Program

2011-10-17T22:35:00.000-04:00

Steven C. Wilson, one of the leading Lean Six Sigma trainers in the state of Iowa has released a new program, Data Driven Problem Solving. The entire program can be downloaded as a PDF and MP3 on IowaQualityTraining.com.

Data Driven Problem Solving includes a 100 page book with over 4 hours of audio. In addition, a copy of Lean Six Sigma for Leaders book is included. The Data Driven Problem Solving program is a result of material covered in a 2-day workshop presented by the author Steven C. Wilson. It was created to support the training both before and after the class. It provides many of the questions people had about problem solving utilizing DMAIC. They need not fully comprehending the tools of Six Sigma. With an understanding of Data Driven Problem Solving, it will allow more participation in your organization’s problem solving efforts.

Data Driven Problem Solving uses activities based approach and is comprised of multiple separate sessions, which follow the Six Sigma DMAIC approach without the need of the typical Black Belts, Green Belt hierarchy associated with Six Sigma organizations. It is presented in a unique question and answer format providing information about how to use and implement a problem solving methodology in an organization.

Topic that are covered:

Process Improvement Basics
Roles and Organization – Teamwork
What is Our Quest? – The Define Phase
How is the Current Process Performing? – Measure Phase
What are the “Deep Dive” Causes of a Problem? – Analyze Phase
What will We Change? – Improve Phase
Are We There yet? – Control Phase

About: Steven C. Wilson is the host of Quality Conversations and can be found at Wilson Consulting and Training Services, Inc (WCTS, Inc – www.stevencwilson.com). Wilson has over 20 years of experience applying quality improvement tools, methodologies, and principles in a variety of industries that include automotive, healthcare, logistics, distribution, education, and numerous manufacturing venues. He has dedicated himself to the cause by training/coaching over 600 Six Sigma practitioners in over 70 companies with an emphasis on getting results. Wilson possesses a very engaging style of leadership, training and consulting, and provides an experienced eye for companies on the road to organizational improvement.

Program is also available on Amazon:
Ring Bound:Data Driven Problem Solving
CD Format: Data Driven Problem Solving

Systems2win will exhibit at the Dallas AME Conference

2011-10-16T22:35:00.000-04:00

Systems2win will exhibit at the AME, Association of Manufacturing Excellence, Dallas 2011 International Lean conference to be held October 24-28, 2011. Systems2win is a supplier of Lean and Six Sigma software tools and will be highlighting their Value Stream Mapping, A3 Management tools and their Standard Work template.

Dean Ziegler, founder and owner of Systems2win says, “Along with the Value Stream Mapping, A3 and Standard Work Management templates, we will also be highlighting our recent Multi-Language Excel templates. Now with a simple click of a button, every Systems2win Excel template can switch between English and another language." Dean also added, "Our software actually provides a learning platform that strengthens your Lean experience. It is not an additional step in the process; it is part of your Lean journey.”

Systems2win booth will display their collection of Lean and Six Sigma software that are bundled in the following groups:

Lean Tools
Value Stream Mapping
Kaizen and Project Tools
Six Sigma Tools
Free Training Tools

Also, in the booth will be yours truly providing a High Level Overview of the product! Stop by and say hello if you are there!

These bundles have been created to provide an organized structure in supporting the above process. In these bundles, the Lean Management tools of Hoshin Kanri, Standard Work, A3, Fishbone, SMED, 5S, Setup Reduction, Balance Scorecard and more are supported. In addition, the training tools provide not just introductory Lean material but a comprehensive Lean and Excel learning tools that are embedded in the templates providing you help and assistance on exactly what you need, when you need it. They are also designed so that a training course can be developed separate from the templates. An overview of the tools:

About Systems2win: Systems2win provides business process improvement tools and training to companies all over the globe. People are provided with easy-to-use fill-in-the-blanks Excel templates that come with self-help online training to improve the speed and reduce the cost of every step of your project. Systems2win templates were originally developed during 14 years of manufacturing systems consulting by the founder of Systems2win, Dean Ziegler, CPIM. The Systems2win templates and online training has been field proven, and continue to be continuously improved by hundreds of Systems2win clients.

Lean needs Marketing, more than Marketing needs Lean!

2011-10-12T22:45:00.000-04:00

In The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing edited by Robert Lusch and Stephen Vargo they present the case to use SD-Logic as a foundation versus a total integrative marketing method. I believe that Lean viewed through the lens of PDCA as a knowledge creation platform can serve as the vehicle for implementation of this Logic. The principles of SD-Logic cannot be implemented in various silos of an organization, just as the basic principles of Lean cannot. It requires a cultural and fundamental shift within the organization placing the customer and user experience becoming the center.

Let me start by listing the foundational principles of Service Dominant Logic described in the before mentioned book:

The application of specialized skill(s) and knowledge is the fundamental unit of exchange: Service is exchanged for service.
Indirect exchange masks the fundamental unit of exchange: Micro specialization. organizations, goods, and money obscure the service-for-service nature of exchange.
Goods are distribution mechanisms for service provision: "Activities render service; things render service"
Knowledge is the fundamental source of competitive advantage: Operant resources, especially know-how, are the essential component of differentiation.
All economies are services economies: Service is only now becoming more apparent with increased specialization and outsourcing; it has always been what is exchanged.
The customer is always a co-creator of value: There is no value until an offering is used—experience and perception are essential to value determination.
The enterprise can only make value propositions: Since value is always determined by the customer (value-in-use), it cannot be embedded through manufacturing (value-in-exchange).
A service-centered view is customer oriented and relational: Operant resources being used for the benefit of the customer places the customer inherently in the center of value creation and implies relationship.

My premise is that if you are Lean Zealot and understand Lean as a knowledge Creation machine versus a waste reduction machine these principles are not only compatible but harmonious. There is little or no difference.

I asked Dr. James Womack this question in a podcast:

Joe: Most people don't think of Lean as, a capturing knowledge mechanism. Do you?

Dr. Womack: Well, of course. That's what the whole idea is. It's an experimental process that you try things. They are right. Deming most famously captured it in PDCA. But again, Deming didn't exactly think of science. Hey, let's give Galileo a little bit of credit.

Now look, it's by design and experimental process. By the way, Kaizen is nothing but an experiment. There's a plan based on grasping the situation, I hope, which is to say what is the issue? Then you do it, and that's to run the experiment. You can run a valid experiment because you have baseline data on how the current state works. So then you change something in a future state, and you measure the difference and decide whether that's a good or bad result and whether to standardize it or not.

The entire idea here is to capture knowledge in books of knowledge and the product development system in a progression of A3s which, of course, we talk about a lot at LEI. But A3s are really nothing but a way to put an experiment in context. You put PDCA in context and so they become their own book of knowledge as time moves ahead. If you're not trying to learn something and not trying to cumulatively learn something, so you don't have to do the same experiment over and over, as I often see in companies. Well then, you need some sort of a way to write it down. To standardize it so you can sustain it as well as discover it.

I find a striking resemblance in the Economic Pyramid model (on right) of Pines and Gilmore (The Experience Economy) and the Toyota Supplier hierarchy (on left) depicted by Liker and Meier (The Toyota Way Fieldbook).

Lean offers a guiding light for implementation of Service Dominant Logic or maybe a more correct and broader term would Customer (User) Experience Centric Platform. This change is occurring and Lean can be part of the solution for many companies. It is a platform that is well understood and readily accepted. But with that understanding emanates a platform of internal focus based on a waste reduction mentality. This focus may actually hinder the growth of the Lean Methodology into the higher culture that it professes to emulate.

Can Agile work at the Enterprise Level with Alan Shalloway? Part 2 of 3

2011-10-12T22:35:00.000-04:00

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Part 1 of 3: Alan Shalloway discusses the state of Agile!, part 1 of 3

Preview of Political Campaign Marketing Podcast

2011-10-10T16:55:00.000-04:00

At the end of the interview for my upcoming podcast with Derek Pillie, a fifteen veteran of the political campaign trail, we went over a few additional thoughts.

Lean Sales and Marketing

2011-10-06T23:13:00.000-04:00

At Agile Cincinnati last week, I had the opportunity to present the Lean Sales and Marketing presentation, It’s not your Grandmother’s Lean Anymore! The reason I choose this title is that so many identify Lean with waste reduction where I view Lean and PDCA from the aspect of knowledge creation. The first part of my slide deck discusses that and the new thinking that social media has brought upon us. That part was delivered with a hint of sarcasm. After setting the stage, my tone change dramatically after the slide, “Why Lean!”

It's not your grandmother's lean anymore!

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Special thanks to the group at Agile Cincinnati. They engaged the speaker through out the discussion and made my part very simple. An enjoyable experience.

Resources I used:

Books:
This is Service Design Thinking: Basics - Tools - Cases
The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated
The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage
The Toyota Way Fieldbook
The Service-dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, Debate, And Directions
Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers

Websites:
Value Co-Creation: Wim Rampen Slideshare
McKinsey Quarterly: We’re all marketers now
Forrester: Welcome To The Era Of Agile Commerce
Scott Brinker: 8 things every marketing technologist should know
Janet R. McColl-Kennedy: Co -creation of Value and S-D logic

Get Clients NOW! Answer Center

2011-10-06T10:30:00.000-04:00

New in the Get Clients NOW!^TMAnswer Center
Here are this month's new additions to the Answer Center. (You need a password to log in.)

How to Network at Professional Associations - Article by Donna Feldman
An often overlooked place to network and find referral partners is professional associations. These associations serve people working in a particular industry or profession and can provide you with many resources, as well as valuable connections. You may not think that networking within your profession will provide any client leads, but you'd be surprised! Colleagues refer to others in their field for a variety of reasons -- it could be an issue of scheduling, timing, differing specialties, or specific expertise.
Future of the Coaching Business - Audio by C.J. Hayden
C.J. Hayden is interviewed by Milana Leshinsky on the future of coaching as a business and what coaches need to do to succeed. Including: why marketing "coaching" is not the best way to attract clients, the critical difference between marketing classes or products and marketing yourself as a coach, and essential elements of marketing and sales to land coaching clients.
To Get More Clients, Let Your Light Shine - Article by C.J. Hayden
"I think I'm really good at what I do," declares technical writer June, "but I don't ever seem to get a chance to show people." June is experienced, highly-skilled, and has written dozens of procedure manuals and other how-to guides throughout her career. But she isn't getting enough work to earn a living as a freelancer.
Success Story Template - Tool/Example by C.J. Hayden
A helpful tool for presenting your services to prospective clients is a repertoire of success stories about the results your clients get from your work. Here's a template and example for composing some success stories of your own.
What Are You Choosing? - Article by Grace Durfee
Is it human nature to keep making the same choices over and over again? Perhaps with the wisdom collected over years of experience we weed out what doesn't appeal to us and choose to stick to what we know works. There's comfort and safety in routine and the familiar. But boxing ourselves into a limited repertoire may begin to wear thin. If boredom and frustration set in because one day looks exactly like the next, it could be time to broaden your horizons and investigate new options.

Check out how you can get this resource Free!

This link is the only thing stopping you from getting more clients!

Offer Ends Friday!

Lean or Six Sigma which fork in the road do you take?

2011-10-05T22:44:00.000-04:00

People will see my comments floating around the Internet on the subject of Lean Six Sigma. I am not an expert and probably take too much liberty in the application of them to even proceed but it was important to me to basically post my view.

There will always be a strong debate between Lean and Six Sigma people about using the 2 terms jointly. I am not positive of the lineage of it but I believe Michael George at the time of the George Group (later to be Accenture) coined the term. I assume he viewed the two methodologies as compatible and more effective in conjunction with each other versus separately. I am not even sure that many (Case in point being that many of today’s “Lean” consultants were trained as Lean Six Sigma Black Belts) disagreed at the time except for the very traditional Lean stalwarts.

Dr. Mikel Harry, credited as one of the founders of Six Sigma states that Six Sigma is not a culture and was developed as a quality tool to gain breakthrough performance for an organization. I adhere to that statement and think Six Sigma offers great opportunities for an organization and provides a very precise and workable structure in achieving this. I am not against the hierarchy of belts and the formalities of DMAIC, DFSS, etc. Many organizations need this type of structure to be successful. I am avid defender of Six Sigma in the Lean circles many times to the chagrin of others.

Lean was developed by the MIT group under Dr. James Womack from a study of automotive companies and more specifically the Toyota Production System. Its approach is based on continuous improvement with a direct correlation to PDCA and Dr. Deming’s philosophies. Lean made its first inroads in many companies and gains in popularities (IMHO) because of the ease of entry into the methodology. Removing waste and improving flow was Lean’s mantra in the 90’s and the tools of 5s and Value Stream Mapping soared in popularity. However, as Lean continued developing tools of A3, Hoshin and Standard Work became common place. But even more so, the culture of PDCA and the spirit of Kaizen started to take hold.

Six Sigma was the methodology of choice for many manufacturers as a result of the significant strides that GE and Motorola had made. Later, Lean seemed to gain and Six Sigma wane in popularity. Lean became the path to a customer as an enabler of some quick wins. You could then take the deep dive with Six Sigma when you wanted to get “serious”. As Lean continued to steamroll and Six Sigma still continued with somewhat lackluster performance many organizations and consultants dropped the attachment to Six Sigma and became “Lean”. Popularity does create a crowd. This may not be an entirely accurate description but it serves as a basis for my views and the following comments.

What makes Lean Six Sigma work? When you first start using any methodology, you are typically introduced through the tools. Using Lean initially versus Six Sigma makes perfect sense, it is an easier introduction. And why reduce variability on non-value activities? But sooner or later you get to the fork in the road. One path says Six Sigma and the other path is this thing they call culture (Lean). So do you want to take the deep dive with a breakthrough structured approach (still has a steep incline) or do you want to try and instill a culture of empowerment. There is not a right or wrong answer. You can take either. Where I disagree, is that you can take both.

Six Sigma has always been about structure and tools. It is very, very good and does an outstanding job when applied properly. In Six Sigma thinking, you can use Lean tools initially and get to 95%. To finish the job, you use Six Sigma. And as a result, Lean Six Sigma was developed. If your organization grew out of the Motorola and G.E. world it seems like a perfect fit.

If you adopt the Lean mentality and the spirit of Kaizen (continuous improvement is not an event) you become immersed in the culture of Lean, as Dr. Balle wonderfully described in the Zen Story about the mountain. Summed up in the blog post: Lean Tools and Culture as it Relates to Zen

Have you ever played yourself in a game? On a basketball court or even a simple game of checkers, sooner or later you have to pick a side to win. It is inevitable. This is the ultimate wedge between the two methodologies and can simply be stated. Six Sigma is a structured methodology and Lean is a cultural driven learn by doing approach. That is not to say that Six Sigma does not have its prototyping options and that Lean is not without statistical control (it did evolve from Deming). But it is saying that they are both on two completely different paths that you must choose between.

If you take the path of and see Lean as Lean, Six Sigma does not make sense and is not a compatible technology. There is a significant culture difference and approach. If you take the path of Six Sigma, you view Lean as only a set of tools nothing more and why not, Lean has a great toolbox. If you take the path of Lean you still can be just as efficient and just as effective as Six Sigma, you just do it differently.

I make no qualms about stating that I believe and follow a Lean philosophy. Lean works in my world much better. PDCA which is basically form a hypothesis, test it and adjust is what sales and marketing is all about.

I support the idea of Lean Six Sigma without hesitation. What I have trouble understanding is how you can be philosophically aligned in Lean thinking and practice Six Sigma. So I believe you must ask yourself; Which fork in the road do you take?

Gaming can make a better world

2011-10-04T22:29:00.000-04:00

Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.

In love with your products more than your customers?

2011-09-30T23:10:00.000-04:00

Only the customer can determine value. Your product or service has zero value in it. You cannot build value or even create it through clever marketing. Value is only created when a customer puts it into use. This is Service Dominant Logic Thinking (Vargo and Lusch (2006).

If you take this they approach and view your product or service as enabler of customer value a different world opens up for you. Companies like John Deer, P & G, Crayola and Mar’s M & M’s have re-invented themselves by understanding value in use. Each of these companies has taken it a step further and included their customers in the co-creation of products.

When we think about co-creation, we have a tendency to think only in the terms of innovation. Most of us are not ready for that step. In fact, it is a rather large one. However, Janet R. McColl-Kennedy Professor of Marketing UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia recently published a paper where she discussed the 7Cs of Co-Creation:

Co-operate (compliance)
Collate (sorting, assorting, synthesizing)
Combine complementary skills, knowledge, expertise
Connect eg with family, friends, service providers, support groups
Co-learning
Co-produce (self-service, co-design, new service development)
Cerebral activities (eg positive thinking, reframing, emotional regulation)

These as not earth shattering revelations but better yet they allow you to start working with customers in the co-creation space. Something as simple as a checklist designed around these 7 Cs could enable you to review sales and marketing material or presentations. If you start asking questions like:

Does this comply 100% with what the customer requested?
Can we sort our information to make it more meaningful?
Can we group our material differently for the different customer departments?
What complementary skill does the customer have that will facilitate the problem solving?
Who do we need to connect with internally or externally (downstream or upstream)?
What can we learn together that will assist to move forward?
What changes may be required to our product/service that provides better use?
Is the customer using our product/service differently than intended?
Does the customer modify our product/service?
How could we reframe our proposal/offer to allow our customer to change it?

Changing our mental model and making that great leap to co-creation is mind boggling for most. Starting simply by starting to ask the right questions around are existing procedures and content, the perspective begins to change. It’s a lot like dating. Start slow; ask the right questions, listen and the next thing you know, you just might be walking down the aisle.

Will we handle privacy and recycling?

2011-09-29T10:40:00.000-04:00

Following publication of his book "Shaping Things (Mediaworks Pamphlets) ", American Science Fiction author Bruce Sterling share his views and visions at LIFT France 09 about the future of Design, the broad concept of an "Internet of Things", and reflects on two important issues: Privacy and Recycling. Bruce has been a regular speaker at LIFT events.

Interesting concepts and Bruce shows a real passion for his subject. His book was written six years ago and it is amazing how many of the ideas are still prevalent today.

Lean Marketing Board Game Introduction

2011-09-24T04:03:00.000-04:00

Following The Lean Startup Principles of Build, Measure, Learn, I am introducing a MVP version of the Lean Marketing Board Game which surprisingly is not based on the Lean Startup but instead my book the Lean Marketing House. I really don’t teach Build, Measure, Lean and the Pivot, I just stick to the old PDCA cycle. Now granted my Plan–Do-Check–Act (Adapt maybe) do resemble the Build, Measure, Learn – Validate theories of Eric Ries but even though we beat to same drum, we go about it slightly different.

The main difference being is my adaption of viewing Lean as a knowledge building platform and using Service Design or Design Thinking Principles that put the customer at the forefront versus the product or service. My thinking is also firmly rooted in the Service Dominant Logic theories that your product/service has little or no value without the customer. The value comes in the use of your product/service by the customer. Your marketing should be centered on that side of the fence versus internally.

I have put a presentation of the initial steps of the Lean Marketing Board Game in place. My Minimum Viable product, I hope you enjoy.

Lean Marketing Game

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The game will be included in my upcoming Lean Marketing House 28-day Program.

Answers to Sustainability

2011-09-23T22:55:00.000-04:00

I was participating in a discussion on LinkedIn and came across an article, How to Sustain Front Line Process Improvement Activities from the Harvard Business Review and like most of us, if it says sustainability we take a look. It has to be the most difficult part of any continuous improvement process.

I found the author of the article, Brad Power handling the comments masterfully and engaging in a great dialogue with the commenters. He is actually researching sustaining attention to process management and is currently conducting research with the Lean Enterprise Institute.

Our podcast centered on Brad’s research of sustainability and his findings so far may not be unique but the structure he puts to his information is. Also, I think you will find out as much about researching and the questions you ask as you will sustainability. At times I wondered who was being interviewed.

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Brad Power is a consultant and researcher in process innovation. In his latest consulting engagement, for over a year he's been helping a healthcare insurance company reengineer its interactions with providers and members to reduce cycle times. And for the last three years he's been researching why few companies sustain their attention to process management — how they can make improvement and adaptation a habit (even fun?). He's been collaborating with the Lean Enterprise Institute on his research. You can see some of his research insights in his blog posts at The Harvard Business Review at bradfordpower.tumblr.com. He's interested in hearing stories of companies which embarked on a process improvement program and either kept going, or didn't, and why.

Profiling the customer by knowledge gaps

2011-09-21T22:50:00.000-04:00

This is part of my blog series on using the principles of Demand Drive MRP and its five primary components. This particular blog focuses around Buffer Profiles and Level Determination or in the marketing sense, profiling the customer by your knowledge gaps.

Once the strategically replenished positions are determined, the target levels of those
buffers have to be set initially based on several factors. Different materials and parts
behave differently but many also behave nearly the same. Demand-driven MRP groups
parts and materials chosen for strategic replenishment and that behave similarly into
buffer profiles. Buffer profiles take into account important factors, including lead time
(relative to the environment), variability (demand or supply), whether the part is made
or bought or distributed, and whether significant order multiples are involved. These
buffer profiles are made up of zones that produce a unique buffer picture for each part as
their respective individual part traits are applied to the group traits.

The above is from the Orlicky’s Material Requirements Planning 3/E. written by my recent podcast (Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP) guests Carol Ptak and Chad Smith of the Demand Driven Institute.

I think it may be interesting to group customers not by traditional segments but by the level of knowledge that we have of each other (customer and supplier). If we were to view the stages such as described in the blog post, The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota we would see a natural progression through the stages of the supplier – customer engagement. This serves as a good outline for the knowledge that we gain in participation with our customer.

I believe that this type of segmentation leads to better results than a traditional buying cycle. It may seem that many of us are already doing this. If your product groups are actually defined by customer markets and your customer defined by the knowledge gap as distinguished by a method such as the Toyota supplier relationship hierarchy you are halfway there. The first question after that, you must ask yourself when looking at the levels within those cycles is the amount of people or organizations that your company can maintained in that particular cycle. At what amount does it become it an asset or a liability? It is very similar to carry the right inventory. Too little and you miss orders and too much you have resources tied up. Your buffer zone or Work in process(WIP) between these two points is an asset.

Sounds somewhat nonsensical, but this is where we can take many of the Lean Marketing principles and scale them to a larger organization. We are not going to be able to take each individual customer and mirror their decision making paths, it would simply be overwhelming. Instead, we must review the first step in our Demand Driven Marketing Resource Plan, Strategic Position: Positioning your organization to learn from your customers and determine where we have the most customer knowledge or as I like to term it where we have the ability to play in our customers’ playground. Defining this market area allows us to market much more effectively and systematically.

There are four factors that are considered in traditional DDMRP:

Item Type
Variability
Lead Time
Significant Minimum Order Quantity

They are worth mentioning here as they correspond very closely to a DDMRP marketing system. In DDMRP the item types are designated by purchased, manufactured or distributed. Variability is designated by supply or demand component with further classification of high, medium and low. In the marketing sense we typically group customers similar through the buying channels, but why? What about grouping them through the knowledge hierarchy? Further defining them in the individual cycles that make up the knowledge hierarchy? The reasons are:

The level of support is readily defined within these cycles.
Variability is definable by rate of touch points.
Lead Time is a function of their decision making process..
Minimum order quantities would relate to size of company.

The example for this reasoning can be found again in the 7 Step Toyota Suppler model. The 3^rd level, Control systems in the hierarchy can be used as an example. Striving to improve the measurement systems, feedback, target pricing areas and cost management structure between vendor and customer are very tangible and smart goals with defined outcomes. It is not a task that is easy but it is readily definable and as a result a method that continuous improvement can be applied.

The questions really is can a customer profile be readily applied that is not so general in nature that everyone fit sit or so singular in nature that each company has a separate profile. If we view just that cycle we can identify the support required, the customer decision process for each task and the size of the company we are working with.

What may be needed is to define the variability of these individual companies? Profiling them based on variability or high, medium and low touch companies creates an opportunity to judge the level of support and frequency required. Your higher touch companies will more than likely have a shorter sales cycle. This may be accomplished by condensing the decision making process or eliminating several steps. Going back to the Toyota example, a high touch company may disregard vendor measurement systems and require little feedback. They may be only interesting in target pricing. If you claim that a customer wants to be high touch but have the entire spectrum of services, you will probably find out that may not be a customer you would want anyway.

It is somewhat beyond this blog post to demonstrate calculating the buffer levels but sizing of the buffer levels for each individual component and cycle is possible. The advantage in doing this is that you start managing sales and marketing by demand. You “sense and adapt” to market changes and penetration levels. It is a continuous deployment of a SWOT analysis on a micro and macro level.

Profiling customers based on these four components would allow for a support structure to be developed and ultimately buffer levels developed. If a buffer level is developed, you start managing resources and adjusting capacity much earlier in the sales and marketing cycle. This will result in better use of capital, people and a saving in time for your customers where it is needed most.

Using Design Thinking for Growth

2011-09-19T22:34:00.000-04:00

Using Design Thinking for Growth is a transcription of a the Business901 podcast, Design Thinker exposed as Left Brain Dominant. I am not sure if it was the title or the timing of the podcast (it was released around the 4th of July) but this podcast did not reach the listenership that I had thought it would.

Great thoughts on how Design Thinking may be to Business Growth the way Lean and Six Sigma has been to quality.

Using Design Thinking for Growth

In a recent blog post, It’s not your Grandmother’s Lean anymore! I introduced a few thoughts from Tim Ogilvie, CEO of innovation strategy consultancy Peer Insight new book Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers. I would encourage you to visit that post before reading the transcription or listening to the podcast and leave the diagram up or print it out as the discussion takes place.

Recent Posts:
Podcast: Design Thinker exposed as Left Brain Dominant
How new is Service Dominant Logic and does it apply now?
Asking the right questions about Lean?
Service Design Thinking

When Lean Thinking is not enough!

2011-09-15T01:46:00.000-04:00

When are Lean Thinking, A3 Problem Solving, PDCA, Kaizen and Continuous Improvement not enough? There is actually a time when considering small incremental improvements are the wrong thing to do.

When you are dealing with a high degree of uncertainty, there still needs to be a process in place. If not, you may end up fighting the process versus working on the problem. I am not sure where I heard this but it is worth repeating here: “How many good ideas have you lost because of a poor plan?”

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) tries to solve some of these problems but it is a fairly laborious process for the most of us. I came across a book by Tim Hurson recently, Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking that I thought was well written and the examples in it make implementing the process described quite simple.

I created a quick PowerPoint to walk someone through the process.

When Lean Thinking is Not Enough!

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An excerpt from an Amazon review:

I'll admit to being a bit jaded, and the first few sections of the book offer more of a history lesson about innovation and innovative thinking than I felt necessary, but for those approaching the topic for the first time, the concepts of the monkey mind and gator brain are compelling, since they demonstrate that our current methods of thinking avoid risk and most often simply react to threats or patterns. The book starts to get really interesting in the fourth chapter, which deals with resisting the urge to quickly arrive at an answer. Instead, the book encourages us to "Stay with the Question". In his approach, Hurson sucks us in, peeling the onion a little at a time and getting agreement, till we are in violent agreement that we must change drastically. Then he rolls out section three of his book, which outlines a process for creative and innovative thinking, supported by a number of simple but powerful tools.

The phases describe a method to generate better ideas, use some divergent then convergent thinking to stretch them, then move on to evaluate and determine which ideas should be considered for evaluation. What I also like is that he adds a step for deciding actions and assigning resources. Too often we get excited about selecting ideas for further investigation without determining and identifying the resources and plans necessary for the critical next steps. Along this process he introduces a number of tools: the I-cube or the C-5 or the DRIVE model, all of which are relatively easy to use and bring shape and focus around thinking and decision making that traditionally has been very subjective.

7 Principles of Universal Design & Beyond

2011-09-09T23:36:00.000-04:00

The 7 Principles of Universal Design were developed in 1997 by a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers, led by the late Ronald Mace in the North Carolina State University. An excellent poster is available, The Principles of Universal Design. These principles are even applicable to many marketing activities from content creation thru website design.

Equitable Use: Useful, appealing and marketable to all people including diverse abilities.
Flexibility in Use: Accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. It provides choice in methods of use and provide adaptability to the user's pace.
Simple and Intuitive: Makes it easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
Perceptible Information: Communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of conditions or the user's sensory abilities.
Tolerance for Error: Minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
Low Physical Effort: Use is efficient and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.
Size and Space for Approach and Use: Reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user's body size, posture, or mobility. Provide a clear line of sight to important elements for any seated or standing user.

I enjoy reviewing “basic principles” such as Dr. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge, the basis for application of Deming's famous 14 Points for Management. Principles ground me in my thoughts and provide a structure for me to develop new ideas. They serve as my starting point and assist me in becoming more creative, not less.

Dr. Weinschenk shares seven principles beyond usability to make your website more engaging - principles of persuasion, emotion, and trust.. You can download the poster of the video at http://www.humanfactors.com/PETposter.asp

Dr. Susan Weinschenk is the author of 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) and Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? .

P.S. In a grander sense and a little off subject but this could serve as a reminder that organizations need to have their “basic principles” well defined. Recently all the talk has been about change, constant innovation, pivoting and iteration. I think employees and customers want to know what an organization stands for. Principles give us refugee in an uncertain world.

The Lean Agile Train Software Transcription

2011-09-09T23:00:00.000-04:00

Dean Leffingwell author of Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise (Agile Software Development Series) was the guest on the Business901 podcast. I talked to Dean so long that I divided the podcast into two parts, Lean Agile Software Train, part 1 and Lean Agile Software Train, Part 2. This is a transcription of both podcasts.

Lean Agile Software Train

About: Dean Leffingwell is a consultant, entrepreneur, software executive and technical author who provides product strategy, business advisory services and enterprise-level agility coaching to large software enterprises. Dean was founder and CEO of consumer marketing identity company ProQuo, Inc. Dean has also served as chief methodologist to Rally Software and as business consultant to Ping Identity Corporation and Roving Planet, Inc.

Info on Dean:
Dean’s Website
Dean’s Blog
Dean’s other Book(Amazon): Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises

Mind map on Crucial Conversations

2011-09-09T22:37:00.000-04:00

This is one of my all time favorite mind maps and I really do use it many times before having a conversation on the phone just to remind me of a few key points. I actually have found myself reviewing while talking on the telephone. The book, Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition is literally the definitive guide on the subject.

I find few people invest the time it takes to improve on creating effective dialogues. We will send people to learn many techniques but when is the last time you took a class on “How to have a Conversation”. The book starts out with a self-assessment of yourself. In an engaging manner, this was an audio book for me, the authors use examples and exercises to learn the techniques described. How many of us know the magic of making it safe for others to express their true feelings and desires?

P.S. This is an excellent book for any facilitator.

Other books:
Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series)

Mind Map on Getting Naked

2011-09-09T14:15:00.000-04:00

This is a five part afternoon series depicting the mind maps that I have created on the books of Patrick Lencioni. His website and company, The Table Group offers additional information on these subjects. This Mind map was constructed during the listening of the book, Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty (J-B Lencioni Series) . Patrick Lencioni says about he book:

Consulting or service firms that practice the naked approach will find it easier to retain clients through greater trust and loyalty. That is the first and most obvious benefit. But they’ll also be able to attract clients better because naked service begins before a client actually becomes a client. It allows firms to be more open, more generous and less desperate in the sales process, and creates great differentiation from more traditional sales approaches. Finally, firms that practice the naked approach will attract and retain the right kind of consultants and professionals who yearn for an honest, natural way of working, both with clients and with one another.

How the Toyota Production System defines the Challenge

2011-09-08T22:52:00.000-04:00

The Friday Video Series continues with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute. This series of videos continues with a central theme of Kaizen.

Dr. Balle is a multiple Shingo Prize winner as an author of the The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager. His newest Shingo Prize was on the adaption of The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround to an audiobook that features performances by multiple readers who bring its realistic business story and characters to life.

Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute

Past Videos with Dr. Balle on the Biz901 You Tube Channel

Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP

2011-09-06T22:31:00.000-04:00

Is Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning the blueprint for the future and revitalization of formal planning in the 21st Century? Some people think so as Carol Ptak and Chad Smith were asked to co-author the new Orlicky's Material Requirements Planning 3/E. But more impressive are the full houses of practitioners that Carol and Chad are talking too. The one simple reason for that is that they understand the problem.

Carol and Chad both were on previous podcasts with me, In a Supply Chain, Where is more important than How Much! and Can MRP be a Demand – Driven Tool?. These podcasts were my most quotable ones this past year. For example Carol Ptak, said in her podcast said:

A lot of people have focused on the fact that the Economic times right now are really bad. What a lot of people are missing is the fact that the world around us has fundamentally changed.

A we see now across the world is that we have excess capacity when you add to that the Internet where we get on the Internet we expect to have an experience like Amazon, or order it is going to tell me instantly when I’m going to get it. If you don’t provide it at the price I want to pay and the time I want to pay then I can just go someplace else. Why can I do that? That’s because I have all this excess capacity out there.

So what companies are seeing today is volatility like they never had to manage before and at the same time they no longer have the reliability of understanding what the customers are going to demand and when they’re going to demand, because customers are increasingly fickle.

So what we’ve got is the perfect storm that has come together of excess capacity and incredible product variety.

The two of them did not disappoint me. These two people are have rewritten the book on MRP and if you don’t think MRP or even your Lean Supply Chain could not learn from this podcast, think again.

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Carol has written several books on MRP, ERP, Lean and Theory of Constraints. She is the Past President of APICS International and former Vice President and global industry executive for manufacturing and distribution industries at PeopleSoft. Chad co-founded Constraints Management Group in 1997 after working under the tutelage of Dr. Eli Goldratt for several years. Constraints Management Group specializes in demand driven supply chain and manufacturing solutions for a variety of industries. Clients have included Boeing, Unilever, IBM, LeTourneau Technologies and Roseburg Forest Products.

What is Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning (DDMRP)?
Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning is an innovative multi-echelon pull methodology to plan inventories and materials. It enables a company to build more closely to actual market requirements and promotes better and quicker decisions and actions at the planning and execution level.

Are Kaizen Events against the principles of Kaizen?

2011-09-04T22:29:00.000-04:00

Part of the Business901 video Series with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute. This series of videos continues with a central theme of Kaizen. This particular video centers on why would you use Kaizen Events. Is that against the principles of Kaizen?

Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute

Past Videos with Dr. Balle on the Biz901 You Tube Channel

Prototype your Value Proposition

2011-09-03T10:40:00.000-04:00

If you read this blog, you know that I am a big advocate of the Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (Wiley Desktop Editions). I have bought this book at least four times since I ended up giving it away. Though I have blogged about it and listen to Steve Blank discuss it, Steve Blank on the Lean Startup at Ann Arbor I have ever watched Alex Osterwalder present the approach.

Alex Osterwalder is the best-selling author of Business Model Generation. He tells us how organizations start approaching the challenge of designing business models in a radically new way. Companies learn how to test their business models upfront, iterating on the feedback received from their clients, thereby reducing the risk of failure.

Simplifying Lean and Six Sigma eBook

2011-09-02T22:34:00.000-04:00

In a recent Business901 Podcast, Simplifying Lean and Six Sigma for Government and Healthcare, Jay Arthur author of many books on Lean And Six Sigma and most recently , Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals: Simple Steps to Fast, Affordable, and Flawless Healthcare discussed making these methodologies available to the masses.

Jay has always been a master at simplifying these process and reducing the cost of entry into a methodology. His belief is that you can go a long way (5 sigma) by just doing it and utilizing only a few basic tools that he discusses in his money-belt videos.

This is a transcription of the podcast.

Simplifying Lean and Six Sigma for Government and Healthcare

Are you having this conversation with marketing?

2011-09-01T22:45:00.000-04:00

Essential concept in the new way of thinking about Marketing the SD Logic, is that customers are always co-creators of value... It's the way that the customer sees value, whether it's in the physical good, or if it's in a service or a combination of both of those and if they don't see benefit to them they're not going to engage with you.

So, is your marketing firm having this conversation with you? If words like SD-Logic, Service Dominant, Co-Creation, Value in Use, Customer Decision Making Process, Experience Economy, etc. are not just part of your normal marketing conversation, you may need to re-consider your marketing communication efforts.

Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing

2011-08-31T22:35:00.000-04:00

The subject of Design Thinking and Service Design has become more and more prevalent in my thought process recently and many find those words somewhat fuzzy type thinking. But it is really targeted at people that want to become more humanistic in their way of thinking and from my viewpoint their sales and marketing process.

A recent podcast guest of mine, Tim Ogilvie, CEO of innovation strategy consultancy Peer Insight and co-author of a new book Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers when asked how to define Design Thinking said:

I'm trained as an engineer, and I grew up in the quality movement in the late '80s and early '90s. In the quality movement we use a method of thinking I would refer to as analytical thinking. You have a data set to work from and you reduce that data set to a series of insights, and you build potential new answers based on that. Design thinking is another problem solving approach that is a complement to analytic thinking.

Design thinking is perfect for situations where we're looking at a future that doesn't exist yet. Joe, if we're trying to figure out a future that may or may not come into existence, we don't have any source of data. And so, the analytic tools break down very quickly. Then as a practicing manager you think, "Well, I don't have tools for that."

Design thinking is the tools for that, to say, hey, we can actually prototype alternative futures. Rather than creating data for them, we can simply have target users experience those prototypes. We can observe from behaviors and preferences which ones are working better than others.

The core of what's in a design thinking approach is extreme focus on the user and their experience; visualizing multiple options, testing those in the hands of the users, and iterating very quickly from less appealing options to more appealing options. It just relies on experimentation which analytic problem solving processes don't need to rely on those as much because, in the world of analytics, we have source data from which to work.

I think you must be careful in defining an exact science to Design Thinking as it needs to remain very humanistic. However the iterative steps of exploration, creation, reflection and implementation are a very basic approach. There are other frameworks mentioned in the book, This is Service Design Thinking that include; identify-build –measure (Engine, 2009), insight-idea-prototyping-delivery (live work, 2009), discovering-concepting-designing-building-implementing (Designthinkers,2009), to mention just a few. Recently, I have came across IR4TD which has a cycle of idea generation-proof of concept-prototyping-commercialization.

As I reviewed these to put them into practice, I found myself going back the Lean principle of PDCA. Graham Hill had mentioned the concept of EDCA (Explore-Do-Check-Act). Graham was the head of CRM at Toyota Financial Services. He stated that:

Marketing in highly competitive markets is about exploring new propositions on the innovation fitness landscape. The environment determines where to start. Complex marketing environments need EDCA. Complicated ones often start with PDCA ½.” EDCA = Explore, PDCA = Plan, SDCA = Standardize. Marketing Ops is all about moving along the EDCA>PDCA>SDCA pathway.

The concepts of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing have very close resemblance and ties to each other. The acronyms at some point become meaningless. They only important to the ones that compete on image and brand. The ones that compete in their customer arenas can probably call anything they want.

The New Names of Marketing are still PDCA

2011-08-31T01:28:00.000-04:00

There is a changing emphasis on customer interaction and the importance of embracing uncertainty in your organization. In an interview in the MIT Sloan Management Review with Michael Schrage on Value-Creation, Experiments and Why IT does Matter, he stated:

“The cost of experimentation is now the same or less than the cost of analysis. You can get more value for time, more value for dollar, more value for Euro, by doing a quick experiment than from doing a sophisticated analysis. In fact, your quick experiment can make your sophisticated analysis better.”

Later in the interview, in answer to the question, "Can you summarize the three things you think companies need to get good at?" Michael Schrage also stated:

The most important thing I would urge companies to do would be to experiment, by crafting good business hypotheses. I can now look executives in the eye and say, "The cost of experimentation is now the same or less than the cost of analysis. You can get more value for time, more value for dollar, more value for euro, by doing a quick experiment than from doing a sophisticated analysis. In fact, your quick experiment can make your sophisticated analysis better

The second is to promote greater collaboration, interaction, and diversity—not politically-correct diversity, but diversity of skills and points of view.

And the third is to think more clearly about innovation. It’s no longer about creating new features and functionality. We have to move away from the notion of innovation being about greater creation of choice. Instead, it’s about greater value from use.

To paraphrase from an outstanding book, Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer:

Most of us (marketers) have more data than we know what to do with. The real problem that exists is what we are doing causing increased sales or what we are measuring is the correlation between the two.

Differentiation between correlation and causation can be extremely difficult. The authors recommend running an experiment. Without an experiment they conclude that it’s actually close to impossible to ascertain cause and effect, and as a result measure real return.

They view experiments not as a one-time exercise that either yields the answer or doesn’t, but rather as part of an ongoing learning process that is built into the process.

Iterative Cycles seems to be the buzz word these days: Just look at the new books:

All of them focusing on iterations but they are fundamentally just PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Act). Test a hypothesis, improve on it and test it again. Marketing is about moving along the cycles of EDCA = Explore, PDCA = Plan, and SDCA = Standardize. Sometimes you may not uneven use a full cycle but rather use more of a game environment half-cycle version of Inspect and Adapt (IA). These iterative process are responding to the ever increasing world of uncertainty that we live in.

Iterative cycles are best handled through team interactions. Decisions made in isolation seldom have a chance of success. And isolation means your organization, not an individual. You have to gather outside influencers from the markets you serve. To do this, the team must be empowered and schooled with the new toolset. You can find these new sets of tools by researching subjects like: Design Thinking, Cynefin, Value Networks, Open Innovation, Co-creation, Lean Startup, Service-Dominant Logic, Q-Storming, Game Storming, and Kanban.

The tools used in sales and marketing are certainly changing. Gone are the days of being trained in cold-calling and the art of closing and in are the days of iteration, open innovation, co-creation and collaboration. Funny, I did not even mention social media?

Virtual Organizations will change the Org chart?

2011-08-26T22:40:00.000-04:00

It may take a while to get here but the organizations that start making the change to “Virtual-ality” will have the best talent and a hidden asset better ways to communicate with your customer.

Dorian Selz's companies are great examples of what could be deemed virtual organizations. Flat hierarchies, less management, geographically dispersed teams are all part of his daily life with local.ch and now Memonic. He will share his experience on how new technologies are reshaping the way our organizations function.

Mindmap on Death by Meeting–the 4 Meetings

2011-08-26T14:15:00.000-04:00

This Mindmap was constructed during the listening of the book, Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business (J-B Lencioni Series) where the author discusses how meetings should be interactive, not passive, and they should be structured with issues of immediate importance discussed in "weekly tactical" meetings, and issues that will fundamentally affect the business addressed in "monthly strategic" meetings.

Mindmap on Writing Well

2011-08-26T00:30:00.000-04:00

Not all the time do I get the opportunity to create a Mindmap on an audio book but there have been a few special ones that I have. It usually occurs on the 2nd listen since I typically am listening to them while I am driving or walking the dog. Well this one has been listened to more than a couple of times.

This particular book is a timeless classic and has been one of my favorite ones for many years. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, first published in 1976, has sold almost 1.5 million copies to three generations of writers, editors, journalists, teachers and students. I recommend it to any inspiring writer or blogger.

Most of my writing and podcast are geared towards a learning experience for me. It may sound somewhat selfish but I have found that is the best way to immerse myself in a subject. Another of Zinsser’s books, Writing To Learn was the basic structure of how my blog and podcast has developed.

About: William Zinsser, a writer, editor, and teacher, is a fourth-generation New Yorker, born in 1922. His 18 books, which range in subject from music to baseball to American travel, include several widely read books about writing.

P.S. I own the hard copy of both books.

Using Lean and Six Sigma for Government and Healthcare

2011-08-25T22:35:00.000-04:00

Improve Healthcare and Government thru Lean and Six Sigma…You just Gotta Wanna! This was the theme echoed numerous times by my podcast guest, Jay Author of QI Macros. We started out discussing his book, Lean Six Sigma for Hospitals: Simple Steps to Fast, Affordable, and Flawless Healthcare but soon moved into a discussions that can be applied to any organization.

Jay started many years ago simplifying the Lean Six Sigma process through his early books, Lean Simplified and Six Sigma Simplified which eventually led to Lean Six Sigma Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide. Jay has always been a master at simplifying these process and reducing the cost of entry into a methodology. His belief is that you can go a long way (5 sigma) by just doing it and utilizing only a few basic tools that he discusses in his money-belt videos. Though I was in introduced to Lean and Six Sigma through other books and people, Jay’s first book on the subject Lean Six Sigma Coloring book was the one I used for the first application I participated in at the manufacturing level.

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Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Simplifying Lean and Six Sigma or go to the Business901 iTunes Store

Jay Arthur works with companies that want to plug the leaks in their cash flow using Lean Six Sigma. Jay is the only improvement specialist that understands and can help you pinpoint areas for improvement in processes, people, and technology. Jay is first and foremost a Money Belt; he knows how to use data to pinpoint broken processes. Jay helps teams understand their communication styles and restore broken connections. Jay has 30 years experience developing software on everything from mainframes to PCs.

Lean Engagement Team

2011-08-25T15:03:00.000-04:00

The next book in the Marketing with Lean Series will be the Lean Engagement Team. It will concentrate on the development of a sales and marketing structure that can support customer engagement through out the organization. This structure will be self-organizing at times and provide for customer touch points deep within the organization. The book will also contain chapters on Co-creation, Design Thinking and provide a framework for organizing sales and marketing teams.

Lean Engagement Team

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The book is approximately 60 days away from completion. Anyone that purchases the Lean Marketing House Trio on the Business901 website will receive a free download of this book when it is released. I would recommend reading the others before this one anyway.

P.S. Don’t think you need a Sales Team quite yet? Read McKinsey Quarterly: We’re all marketers now

Design Thinker exposed as Left Brain Dominant

2011-08-18T23:00:00.000-04:00

In a recent blog post, It’s not your Grandmother’s Lean anymore! I introduced a few thoughts from Tim Ogilvie, CEO of innovation strategy consultancy Peer Insight new book Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers. I would encourage you to visit that post before listening to the podcast and leave the diagram up or print it out as the discussion takes place.

If you have been Design Thinking challenged this book is for you. The book is built upon these four questions (A Design Thinkers PDCA?):

What is? Exploring the current reality
What if? Envisioning alternative futures
What wows? Getting users to help make tough choices
What works? Making it work in-market, and as a business

Aligned to the four questions are ten tools, including customer journey mapping, value chain analysis, customer co-creation, and the learning launch. To make them come alive, readers are introduced to a number of practicing managers who are all using design thinking to drive innovation and growth in their organizations, including accountants, marketers, a nurse and an engineer – none of whom have design training.

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I believe what is more intriguing than the description and use of tools (Design Thinking must be going mainstream if we start having tool discussions), is the way that the tools are viewed. This, I believe is the real secret sauce in the book. As I read the book, I realized how easy it was to take and modify my Lean tool set to the desired applications or as others may put it to the culture of the company. One of the strengths of Lean that may be forgotten is that it is the adaption of the tools and culture and the process of making them your own which is the most important ingredient. Certainly we are not going to make major changes to PDCA but what is wrong in using an A3 Report laid out like the Business Model Generationtemplate.

We might have torched a few sacred cows during the podcast. One of them is thinking differently or moving away from the traditional Lean tools and the other is exposing a so-called Design Thinker, such as Tim as Left Brain Dominant!

Grow Revenue thru Lean Sales and Marketing

2011-08-16T02:20:00.000-04:00

It's not your grandmother's lean anymore!

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Technorati Tags: Lean,Lean Sales and Marketing,Agile,Agile Marketing,PDCA

Special thanks to the group at Agile Cincinnati. They engaged the speaker through out the discussion and made my part very simple. An enjoyable experience.

Resources I used:

What is a great Team?

2011-08-05T23:40:00.000-04:00

In a recent Business901 Podcast, Transforming Ordinary Teams to Extraordinary, Geoff Bellman co-author of Extraordinary Groups: How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results discussed what makes a great team. Geoff discussed the 8 points that they found common in those teams and how you can use them to improve your chances of creating a extraordinary team.

What is a Great Team? -

Geoff can be found at http://extraordinarygroups.com/.

Ways to Improve your Marketing!

2011-08-05T22:32:00.000-04:00

This Ted video offers some great ideas about design in a a spectacular (and often quite funny) slide deck of surfer-turned-designer David Carson work and found images. He also exposes some surprising description of several prominent magazines handling of sensitive media.

Lean about Design, Discover and Humor and not in any particular order.

Reducing Muda for Others with Kaizen

2011-08-04T22:30:00.000-04:00

Kaizen is about involving employees to get them not only the way to do work but to help improve the way others do their work. The Friday Video Series continues with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute.

Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute

Past Videos with Dr. Balle on the Biz901 You Tube Channel

Books Mentioned in this discussion:
One Team on All Levels: Stories from Toyota Team Members, Second Edition
Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way
Toyota Kaizen Methods: Six Steps to Improvement

Iowa Blended Learning Programs in Lean Six Sigma

2011-08-04T07:37:00.000-04:00

Many people shy away from quality or continuous improvement programs since they are unable to see the direct benefits of it. Steven C. Wilson a leading Lean Six Sigma Trainer in the State of Iowa outlined a unique training program at the Southwest Iowa Manufacturers Alliance for Quality program. He introduced his latest adult learning training methods and how the training is adapted to a particular organization.

Steve commented on the training, “Too often, training programs are not utilized when employees get back to work. Based on my twenty years of assisting organizations and individuals improve quality through training, I have identified several components that will encourage employees and their organizations to change and use these new skills. Under the title of iQuality Academy, I have moved our training programs from tactical learning and acquiring new skills to providing the path from training to improved business performance.”

I think this is a unique approach and a great way to use the advantages of virtual learning. If you can’t tell by listening, Steve does voice over work and works with authors, trainers and studio producers, to make their presentations more effective and entertaining. He is also the host of Quality Conversation, Quality Conversations, an internet based radio program dedicated to the discussion of “all things quality”. Currently the program is heard in over 35 countries.

I was fortunate to have Steve participate in a podcast if you would like to take a deeper dive on the subject. The podcast centers around being a successful trainer and consultant. Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Iowa Quality Training or go to the Business901 iTunes Store

If you are from Iowa, Steve hosted a program about Funding Quality Training. Bernie Duis, Director of Economic Development at Iowa Western Community College (www.iwcc.edu), joined Steve for a discussion about Iowa's quality training funding programs, administered by the state's 15 community colleges.

Disclaimer: I work with Steve but felt this was an excellent presentation to share. I thought he did a masterful job of presenting and it was a good example of what how voice over work might improve your presentations.