Kranz Dictum: The Miracle behind Apollo 13

Have you ever been part of an impossible project? Next week’s Business901 podcast is Michael Dobson author of Project: Impossible - How the Great Leaders of History Identified, Solved and Accomplished the Seemingly Impossible - and How You Can Too!. The book was a fun read for me and so was the podcast. Michael does an excellent job of weaving project management lessons in and out the stories. Michael, knows a thing or two about project management, he has written over twenty-five books.

An excerpt from the podcast:

Joe: When we think of a crisis like that, how much project planning goes into a crisis, such as Tylenol. Were they just winging it in that instance?

Michael: Well, the part of the background of the Tylenol situation was that a lot of the executives of Johnson and Johnson had just gone through training or some workshop about corporate ethics. Their vision and mission statements and all these good management practices and they really only had one question to ask themselves. Did we mean all this stuff that we were saying? Once they said "Yes, we did mean it," then they had a basis to go on. You'll see this as a theme in a couple of stories. In Apollo 13, you know the famous CO2 exchanger that we all remember from the Apollo 13 movie, the fact is that there had been a tremendous amount of training in crisis response, there was an emergency kit. They couldn't very well have done it without duct tape. Somebody had to think about putting together an emergency kit that included things like duct tape that was available generically. With Patton in the Battle of the Bulge, he didn't do it in 48 hours. He anticipated it and had his planners hard at work. With Caesar at the Battle of Alicia, it was the long term training of the Roman soldier that allowed him to take on the absurd task of building this amazing set of fortifications in a very short period of time with very little in the way of supplies. If you don't start early, if you don't have the foundation, if you don't have the vision, if you don't have the training, if you don't have the emergency kit, well, your ability to handle a crisis when it shows up is extremely hampered. Normally, crisis management by definition is reactive rather than proactive, but a lot of training, a lot of the prep work, a lot of the mind-set comes well in advance and in most cases by the time the project officially starts, it's too late. If you haven't started early, if you haven't built a foundation early, well, there's not much you're going to be able to do to recover.

Joe: In the movie Apollo 13, I think of where the person said something to the effect, "gentlemen" . . . .

Michael: Failure is not an option.

Joe: Failure is not an option. Yes, exactly.

Michael: Gene Kranz who never said it. He never said it. What he did do is he was the guy who developed the NASA response following the Apollo 1 capsule fire that killed Grissom, White and Chaffee. There is a long story about the origins of that. Some of it is in the book, and it was after that he developed and announced what he referred to as the Kranz Dictum that was a preparation and mind-set tool for NASA. He insisted and focused on it from the immediate aftermath of Apollo 1. So, by the time Apollo 13 came around, he had achieved what he did call, perfection in the art of crisis management. Simply no way to make space travel or, any kind of, going up explosive powered rocket, there's no way to make that inherently safe. If you're not ready with crisis management, you have no business going.

Gene Kranz did well with something he never said, His book is titled: Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

MICHAEL SINGER DOBSON, marketing executive, project management consultant and nationally-known speaker, has been a staff member of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, award-winning game designer, and career counselor in his varied career.

The Competitive Advantage of Simplification

For decades, Irene Etzkorn and Alan Siegel have championed simplicity as a competitive advantage and a consumer right. Consulting with businesses and organizations around the world to streamline products, services, processes, and communications, they have achieved dramatic results. Simple is a groundbreaking and invaluable guide to achieving the three fundamental principles of simplicity: clarity, transparency, and empathy. It lays the foundation for organizations that want to enhance the customer experience as a way to drive business results.

Irene, my guest next week on the Business901 podcast, is a worldwide authority on simplicity, built the Simplification practice of Siegel+Gale. As executive director of Simplification, her clients include the nation’s top banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, utilities, and health care providers.

I enjoyed the book,Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity, and the podcast. Below is a brief excerpt from the upcoming podcast.

Joe: What are the secrets to simplification? Is there something that when you walk in that guides you towards complexity? Is there a secret to understanding how to look at things with simple eyes?

Irene: Yes, there is and I think it lies in the fact that clarity is best achieved through an intuitive structure of information. Most often, we find people who have a complicated topic or complicated communication want to begin by re-writing and/or re-designing. Those are two ingredients and important skills and certainly ones that we advocate. They are not the place to begin. It is necessary to begin and look at the process. What is the data, the content? What do you know about this customer? For example, if you already know what state they live in, you don't have to include a lot of "if-then" clauses that say "if you're in Michigan", "if you are in New York", etcetera and have the person deal with all that. Instead, you can push out to them a customized communication. Starting further up the chain and providing a summary to a more detailed approach. Can you answer likely questions for 80% or 90% of the readers or the users upfront? People who have further questions can continue on in the communication, but you haven't created an introductory barrier for the majority of people. In actions, a lot of simplification is about intuitive organization and structure.

Another example of that is insurance policy. Property casualty insurance, people do not read their insurance policy, for some, they are novel. They read them usually at the time of need when they have a claim. Putting what to do if you have a claim as the first item in a policy is much more customer focused. That is a reflection of the organization of the company that's producing it. It is a more meaningful document for the consumer.

Joe: I think you made the great example there because it's amazing how many times the redundancy is built in and I think of health care right away where I am asked the same question so many times that I feel that I probably had to have answered it wrong along the way.

Irene: Absolutely and that's a good example because one of the 3 key principles that we've talked about in the book to achieve simplicity, one of them is empathy and emphasizing with the circumstance of the communication or the interaction is really important. When you mention health care, that's a great example, not only are you sometimes being asked for the same information repeatedly, you may be in a state where half the time you are drugged or you’re ill. Obviously, for some reason, you're seeking health care. It's not your finest moment probably in terms of clarity of thought and emotional state etcetera etcetera. It's a good example where even more so in that circumstance, you would want things to be accessible, clear and not redundant certainly.

Joe: You mentioned empathy, what are the other 2 key principles?

Tune in next week to the podcast for the answer or if you cannot wait buy the book,Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity.

About Siegel+Gale: (www.siegelgale.com) Simplicity is the centerpiece of the strategies they develop that reveal the unique truths of an organization, the engaging stories they create that connect brands with their audiences and the meaningful experiences they deliver that are both unexpectedly fresh and remarkably clear. Since 1969, Siegel+Gale has championed simplicity for leading corporations, nonprofits and government organizations worldwide.

Standards create the WOW in Business

Many people see Lean as another process methodology still mired down in the process thinking world of the eighties and nineties. The facts are that companies, such as Danaher, Toyota, Ingersol Rand and Amazon have embraced Lean thinking or similar concepts and have excelled in the new millennium. What makes these companies stand out? They have created repeatable business models with an emphasis on continuous improvement and adaptability. We can create numerous names for this model, but the Lean Business Model has proven to be the most resilient and consistent producer of results and of growth. Lean is introduced as a growth strategy through the processes of SDCA, PDCA and EDCA. This three step process for using Lean is defined in this way:

1. Standard Work (SDCA): Define core business and put the majority of company resources into the core until it achieves its full potential.
2. Continuous Improvement (PDCA): Most big ideas are made up of a series of successful smaller ideas driven by a simple and repeatable business model.
3. New Markets and Products (EDCA): Define what you cannot do and explore what you want to do?

If you are a Lean Startup^TM or an Entrepreneur with a new product, you have just completed an exercise that is called Product Market fit. You have gone through the EDCA (Explore-Do-Check-Act) stage and converted it to a hypothesis that is proven through PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). Once proven, you standardize (SDCA) your product/service and build your first repeatable business model.

How do repeatable models succeed? In the books Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change and PProfit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times, the authors use studies from the Bain and Company to point out the three design principles (the parenthesized parts are mine) most associated with success.

1. What is the essence of success? A well-differentiated core (EDCA)
2. How do we make sure we keep improving and adapting? Closed-loop learning (PDCA)
3. How do we align our people to focus on our key strengths? Clear nonnegotiables (SDCA)

In the book, the authors distinguish three different growth strategies based on repeatable business models.

1. Individual business driving core growth (Examples of companies with a single core, simple structure: Vanguard, IKEA, Tetra Pak)
2. Businesses moving into adjacencies by modifying their model (Examples of companies with a single core, complex adjacency expansion: Nike, Apple, Olam)
3. Multicore business managing a portfolio (Examples of companies with a multicore, multi industry: Danaher, UTC, P & G)

The repeatable business models are very diverse. They are highly fluid but repeatable. I view SDCA or Standard Work in much the same way. When we have clear nonnegotiable standards, it allows the fringes of our businesses to operate effectively with little intervention.

Standards are what makes business models adaptable. In recent years, Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur developed the Business Model Generation Canvas. It identifies nine building blocks required for the business model. It is an iterative approach to see what underlying structure is required to institute and develop change for innovation. A PDF download can be obtained here: Business Model Canvas. What this model does is provide clarity around the core value proposition. You may believe the model is too simple for larger companies. However, I believe that simplification is the point, and a simplified structure is in Lean terms, standards.

Standards are the most fundamental and misunderstood concept needed for growth. Your core values are the way you go about what you do and how you do it. It is what your customer understands and experiences. Standards create the WOW in your business. When an employee steps out of the box to do something remarkable, it is a result of having the clarification that this is what are standards (values) would encourage us to do.

Lean embellishes standards, not as a way of being restrictive. It embellishes standards as a way of clarity and focus providing agility, speed and relevance throughout not only to the organization but to the market. It makes growth more understandable for existing customers, new markets, and new products. When viewing the recent growth of Amazon, Apple or Google, most product/service successes occurred building upon their standards. When viewing the troubles, of Starbucks and Dell, it was a movement from their standards and the correction being a return to them.

Growth Principle: Standards create the WOW

therefore

Standards have to be at the center of your growth strategy.

For more information on SDCA, PDCA, EDCA, I would recommend you to browse through the Business901 training content located in the Lean Service Design Trilogy Training Section.

Sales and Service Planning with PDCA

Many of us use different planning instruments and schedulers. Kanban being one of the most familiar methods to readers of this blog. In the last several months, I have written about the Last Planner®  (Last Planner is a registered trademark of Lean Construction Institute (LCI)) and have had several podcast on the subject most notably with Lean Construction experts  and specifically with Alan Mossman discussing his latest updates in the Last Planner® – 5 + 1 crucial & collaborative conversations for predictable design & construction delivery.

In the podcast, We don’t use a Transactional Contract for Marriage, Why for Projects?, with Alan Mossma of The Change Business we discussed The Promise Conversation Cycle. An excerpt from that conversation is in the blog post, The Discipline of Managing Promises. This conversation is the key component of The Last Planner. If we are going to create collaboration, a social process, we must define and adhere to a structure that builds trust and removes uncertainty in an uncertain world.

Our world is increasingly more collaborative driving changes in the way decisions are made. Our organizations need to change to a collaborative structure but the question is, where do we begin? I am amazed how Lean happens to be there when I am ready to use it. It reminds me of the old Buddhist proverb, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” The workplace mission is defined within Toyota from the question “For whom and what type of value added products and services should be provided?” In this way, measures are created from the value added problems from the conversation.

When people consider Lean in Service Design or in Sales and Marketing, they think of Standardization. In the people word of Design and Sales, it is strongly resisted. Even in software development, I see strong resistance to the term standards. They instead call them policies. In another post, I disagreed with the terminology used in  David Mann’s book,  Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, Second Edition (which I consider the bible for Leader Standard Work). In the book, he allocates the time spent in standard work from a high as an operator of 95% to executive having as little as 10%. When that message is translated to services or sales many times people/organizations take that number literally and try to apply it to sales and service. I think customer facing jobs should have a high degree of flexibility and the reason for is stated very well in  Dave Gray of The Dachis Group recent book, The Connected Company. He says,

Customers have a tendency to resist standardization. The more you try to standardize their service requests, the more you will anger them. Not a good recipe for customer satisfaction or long-term business growth.

Dave’s also discusses The Law of Requisite Variety stating that any control system must be capable of variety that’s greater than or equal to the variety of the system to be controlled. We will agree that the greatest variability and greatest value occur in our customer facing jobs of sales and service. If we also use the “Job to be Done “ metaphor of Clayton Christian explained in blog post, Can we drop Product and add Value to Development or Innovation?, we recognize the place of work in sales and service needs to handle the greatest variability.  It seems to be a non-standard process.

Lean is a methodology, some call it culture, that is built on the scientific problem-solving method which is in Lean terms called PDCA.  We form a (P) hypothesis, (D) test it, (C) measure it and (A) adjust to it. PDCA is a method that is built to handle the variability. It is a perfect match but why is it so often resisted. First, if we choose to recognize our conversation with the customer as a mini-PDCA cycle, Lean starts making sense. Earlier, we discussed the Promise Conversation Cycle; I see it as a well detailed conversation based on PDCA. However, we split the PDCA cycle in half with one side being the Performer (Seller) and the other side the Customer.

The fundamental goals of this cycle should be one of discovery, learning and adaptability with a shared responsibility for a successful outcome. That implies that it is all about engaging both organizations into effective problem solving and learning. In applying this, think of the cycle in terms of a series of iterative loops of problem solving and knowledge creation.  For a more detailed explanation of this refer to blog post, SALES PDCA Framework for Lean Sales and Marketing.

How this fits in with Lean Standard Work and The Connected Company will be discussed in a series of blog posts this week.

You may be interested in the Lean Service Design Trilogy Workshop.

Culture Change, What we want is ROI

A lot of mutual trust and respect, and that faith has to develop over a period of time. We have to prove that the system is going to yield the kind of culture change results that we're looking for. You don't have too many CEOs that are out there looking for culture change. – David Adams

Below is an excerpt from next week’s Business901 Podcast with David Adams (@commanderadams), the executive director of the Kennametal Center for Operational Excellence. As of this writing there is still time to attend their North American Operational Excellence Summit. It is being held in Latrobe, PA at Saint Vincent College on October 16th this year. This year’s theme is “A Blueprint for Kaizen Culture“ and intends to draw connections between current continuous improvement efforts and the need for a human and operational balance.

David Adams: There has to be some sort of a management system that undergirds the system of tools. It's the management system that's the harder thing to get. You can throw a book about the Toyota management system at a group of people and say, "Go do this." But implementing a management system is like switching from Windows to Mac OS. It's a painful experience. You have to retrain your mind to think about the decisions that you're making, perhaps even down at the values level, if you will.

What does customer‑first focus mean? How does that translate into a daily decision‑making experience whenever problems are occurring in, say, quality or productivity or cost? Which one do I work on first? There're thousands of problems occurring every day. Which one do I work on first? If I'm customer‑first focused? We may address the quality over the cost problem, depending on the severity of it.

Joe:  When you take this on as an organization, there has to be such a leap of faith. It's not quite the blind leading the blind, but you have that feeling, don't you?

David: Absolutely. In your introduction, you mentioned mutual trust and respect. The first thing that has to happen is mutual trust and respect has to develop between the coach, and substitute whatever word you want there. We use the word "coach" the same way people use the word "mentor" or "sensei."

We've been down the road. We've seen the system and the framework implemented in enterprises as far‑ranging as car sales, to automotive or motor manufacturing, to health care settings and hospitals. A large portion of our business right now is in hospitals. Part of that is just developing mutual trust and respect, and it has to be at the highest level of the organization.

A perfect, perfect match for us is whenever a CEO, myself or my colleague coaches, would see eye‑to‑eye. You've heard the phrase or the cliché, "Being like‑minded," and that's essentially what it is. I can work with CEOs that maybe are expressing their management system differently, but if we're like‑minded, then we can begin to have that mutual trust and respect.

It involves the kinds of things that you wouldn't expect, the CEO who calls ‑‑ maybe even the most tactical question that he or she might have ‑‑ they're calling back to say, "How does this work in the system? How does this work in the framework that you're trying to teach us?"

A lot of mutual trust and respect, and that faith has to develop over a period of time. We have to prove that the system is going to yield the kind of culture change results that we're looking for. You don't have too many CEOs that are out there looking for culture change.

They may be mouthing those words and saying, "We want culture change," but truly what they want is a return on their investment and a change on the bottom line. We can get you there, but we can only get you there after you change the culture that undergirds your improvement system.

Can we drop Product and add Value to Development or Innovation?

I think the terms Product Development’ and Product Managers have become obsolete. This is not new thinking on my part, see past blog posts:  Do You Know the Right Job For Your Products? or Will Product Managers embrace Open Innovation? or not even, so I can promote of Lean Service Design. 

If you have not been under a rock in Product Development, you will recognize how Eric Ries’s, The Lean Startup has been all about Customer Development and product/market fit. The classic “Pivot” may be more about adjusting product to fit market than it is market to fit product.

Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator's DNA and The Innovator's Solution to name just a few of his books, talks about the “Job to be Done.”

Product and customer characteristics are poor indicators of customer behavior, because from the customer’s perspective that is not how markets are structured. Customers’ purchase decisions don’t necessarily conform to those of the "average" customer in their demographic; nor do they confine the search for solutions within a product category. Rather, customers just find themselves needing to get things done. When customers find that they need to get a job done, they "hire" products or services to do the job. This means that marketers need to understand the jobs that arise in customers’ lives for which their products might be hired. Most of the "home runs" of marketing history were hit by marketers who saw the world this way. The "strike outs" of marketing history, in contrast, generally have been the result of focusing on developing products with better features and functions or of attempting to decipher what the average customer in a demographic wants.

Thomas Koulopoulos on a Fast Company blog post said:

We are at the tail end of an era that has focused almost entirely on the innovation of products and services, and we are at the beginning of a new era that focuses on the innovation of what I like to call “behavioral business models.” These models go beyond asking how we can make what we make better and cheaper, or asking how we can do what we do faster. They are about asking why we do what we do to begin with. And the question of why is almost always tied to the question of how markets behave.

He goes on to say:

The greatest shift in the way we view innovation will be that the innovation surrounding behavior will need to be as continuous a process as the innovation of products has been over the last hundred years. The greatest shift in the way we view innovation will be that the innovation surrounding behavior will need to be as continuous a process as the innovation of products has been over the last hundred years. It’s here that the greatest payback and value of innovation in the cloud has yet to be fully understood and exploited.

If you are reader of this blog, you know that I believe most of us are defined not by their products but the services they offer. Let’s admit it, your product 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).

The internal thinking of product development hinders us more than what we care to think. If we viewed our products as “enablers of use” or in SD-Logic the “Value in use” the opportunities for development and innovation would skyrocket. In many Lean Organizations there are no longer Product Managers, they are Value Stream Managers. Why do we continue with Product Developers or Produce Development? Should we not have Value Development or Value Stream Developers? I know you may think it is just a word thing, but it isn’t. When people think about products, they automatically internalized their thoughts. Think about where you work and depict a product or service. Do you picture it in use? Now think about something you own. Do you think about it being used?

What if we started thinking about it from the perspective that we own this product. If we begin viewing first how our customers use our products and how we might extend that use or make it easier. Maybe, we need a lesson on Empathy Development? Maybe, we all need to use the products we work for?

The Pull in Lean Construction

Gregory A. Howell, co-founder and managing director of the Lean Construction Institute (LCI), a non-profit organization devoted to production management research in design and construction. A popular speaker, educator and author Howell regularly addresses industry groups on the need for a lean production revolution in design and construction. His expertise in improving productivity has resulted in consulting engagements on power plants, petro-chemical facilities, commercial and industrial buildings, and infrastructure projects in North and South America and Africa.

Being the project management fanatic that I am, we centered most of our discussion on The Lean Project Delivery System™ (LPDS) and The Last Planner.  LPDS uses lean methods to provide improved project control. The decentralization of decision and the empowerment of the people that are in direct contact with the work are the key components of the work. Many of us will think there is nothing  new; this is what we have all been talking about the last few years. The revelation I had is that Greg has been doing this for 20 years.  Lean and the construction industry are both fortunate to have Greg as a leader of this movement. Enjoy the podcast! 

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

Mobile Version of Business901 Podcast

Related Information
Do You Know the Right Job For Your Products?
A Good Architect is an enabling Orchestra Leader,
Creating Lead Measures with Kanban
Turning your Conference Learning into Action

Continuous Improvement Program for Sales and Marketing

The Lean Marketing Lab opened several months ago, an online community created to further the cause of bringing continuous improvement to the sales and marketing. The foundational work is in Lean but you will find a flavor of Service Design and Design Thinking intertwined. Recently, I have moved the Marketing with Lean Series of books to this site and when you purchase the books you will receive free membership to Lean Marketing Lab community till the end of the year.

Marketing with Lean Book Series:

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.

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.

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.

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

When joining, you will receive immediate access to all four books, additional Learning A3s, 130 eBooks, numerous downloads, and forms all centered on Lean Sales and Marketing. If you are interested in beginning a journey to bring Lean to your Sales and Marketing this is the next step. In addition, I am presently creating learning tracks that will be shared only in the community for developing Lean Sales and Marketing from three different views: An Internal Lean Champion, Sales and Marketing Manager and as an outside Consultant. An additional fee may apply to these programs but there will be a substantial discount offered to the initial group.

Purchase the Marketing with Lean Book Series  and receive free membership to Lean Marketing Lab community till the end of the year.

I look forward to your participation – Joe

Traditional vs. Emerging Thoughts on Pricing

In the 1990s, we were led by the process methodologies of Lean, Theory of Constraints and Six Sigma. Better, Faster, Cheaper was the mantra. The goal was to gain a disproportionate advantage by leveraging internal resources to their fullest advantage. Many of us are finding that faster, better, cheaper is not the game changer that it once was. Not only do we have to improve, but we have to improve at a faster rate than our competition. Ref: Is Lean and Six Sigma a waste of time?

Typical pricing is based on research, focus groups, surveys, statistical modeling, and other techniques to get a better understanding of customers identifying trends, costumer preferences, and evaluate the relative strength of competitors' positions. Organizations also organize consumers into segments that enable them to efficiently address consumer needs. The further you can define your segments, the more it is perceived as a competitive advantage. However, organizations can no longer feed products to customers, Kill the Sales and Marketing Funnel. Customers have the ability to access resources and information comparable to their suppliers and choose suppliers by their own definition of value and how that value should be created.

A focus on control and ownership of pricing is giving way to the importance of shared outcomes with customers and suppliers. Ownership is not as important as the way you influence resource allocation within the network. “The goal of the emerging company is not to own all the resources but to influence how resources are allocated by providing intellectual leadership for the entire network. The co-creation process also challenges the assumption that only the firm's aspirations matter. Every participant in the network collaborates in value creation and competes in value” (1).

Traditional (T) versus Emerging (E) thought:

• Unit of Analysis: (T) Organization vs. (E) Collaborative Network
• Basis for Value: (T) Products/Services & Features/Benefits vs. (E) Co-created experiences and Value in Use (SD Logic)
• Interaction: (T) Transactional based and goal to deliver faster, better, cheaper vs. (E) Series of experiences and goal to keep the game evolving
• Infrastructure: (T) Limited by physical, financial and internal knowledge vs. (E) Access to resources through external knowledge and networks
• Boundaries: (T) Limited by features and benefits offered vs. (E) Progressing through knowledge sharing

As we have moved into the Customer Experience Economy and as many feel we are at the threshold of the User Experience Economy. As a result, we have seen the rapid expansion of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Agile type methodologies gain traction. Service Design in my thinking being firmly rooted in Service Dominant Logic (SD-Logic) is the most applicable to the area of Sales and Marketing.

SD-Logic use of co-creation of value pushes the perspective on all areas of business to include pricing. Why should pricing be limited to what is available within the organization and their supplier network? Could your pricing structure access your customer communities as well? Organizing to access pricing from an extended network of suppliers, partners and customers to include knowledge, infrastructure, and financial capacity—can significantly expand the notion of available pricing structures.

If we view pricing as an outcome and value from the use of our product or service (SD Logic), should value not be based on the price of the service that the customer receives and our level of participation? Should Net 30 terms be replaced by a co-created funding process that allows for shared risks and greater rewards over the lifetime of the product? Can we co-create pricing with a customer? Are customers already doing it for us?

P.S. Would that not force product/services to strip away all features and benefits that don’t deliver on the needs of the customer? We now receive a “basic” smart phone and only add apps as needed. Realistically, would your life be simpler without every product you own being intelligent?

Book Resources for this blog:
The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers
The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing

Related Information:
Lean needs Marketing, more than Marketing needs Lean!
Does Lean Marketing deliver what the customer wants?
Do you understand where demand comes from?

A Product Marketers perspective on Prototyping

Matthew Yubas is the author of Getting Your Prototype Made Quick and Easy and a Marketing Consultant for the Small Business Development and International Trade Center. He has developed products for 24 years as an Engineer, Product Manager, and Consultant for startups, small business, and Fortune 500 companies. As an young entrepreneur, he was a co-founder of a software company that developed one of the first personal information management software products.

Matt has launched new products such as software applications, wireless devices, and websites. In addition, he has helped clients in a diverse number of industries that include photography equipment, auto accessories, soy candles, children's clothing, sporting goods, digital art, and home décor. Matthew is the author of several articles, eBooks, kits, and the popular book Product Idea to Product Success: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Making Money from Your Idea .

 

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

Matt’s mission is to help inventors, entrepreneurs, and everyday people with ideas. He Says, “You might have an invention that can benefit society and make our lives easier. No one can do it alone. If you haven't taken a product to the market before, you need a coach to help you get over the hurdles and past the many pitfalls. Be persistent, be smart, and gather the right information before you make your next move”. Mark can be found at http://productcoach.com.

Related Information:
Prototyping into a Working Form
Prototypes provide a Pathway for Connecting with Customers
Your First Prototype is with Pen and Paper
Why Prototype? Customer Interactivity is the Most Meaningful Part of Design

Can the Lean Knowledge Worker cope with Leader Standard Work?

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:

1. Leader Standard Work – Engine
2. Daily Accountability Process – Gas Pedal and Steering Wheel
3. Visual Controls – Transmission
4. Discipline – Fuel

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

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

Can your Leader Standard Work pass the 3 C Test?

Related Information:
Lean Sales and Marketing works because of Leader Standard Work
Inspiring Innovation thru Standard Work
It’s the Who, not the Why @simonsinek

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

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

Related Information:
The Death of PDCA
Spontaneous Marks help you think – Doodling
Brilliant – Learn by Doing
Lean Thinking: Prototype early and often

Sustain a Lean Culture, use Lean Tools

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.   

Related Information
Data Driven Problem Solving Program
Lean or Six Sigma which fork in the road do you take?
Continuous Improvement Sales and Marketing Toolset

Lean Sales and Marketing

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!

View more presentations from Business901

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: WimRampenSlideshare
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

Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP

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.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

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

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.

Related Information:
The Perfect Storm has come together of Excess Capacity and Product Variety
Will Product Managers embrace Open Innovation?
Implementing the TOC Supply Chain Solution
Transforming your Supply Chain to a Lean Fulfillment Stream eBook
Lean Six Sigma applied to Supply Chain
Application of Lean Six Sigma to the Supply Chain

Is it an insult to say that it's documented?

Lindsay Jackson Nichols discussed the business benefits of ISO Certification and how it can be used in conjunction with continuous improvement in the Business901 podcast, Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean? Lindsay is the CEO of MOCG, a management consulting firm specializing in implementing process improvement and ISO based management systems. This is a transcription of the podcast with added content. An excerpt from the transcription:

Joe:  That's one of the big resistances to Lean is the perception that you are standardizing all the work and making robots out of everyone. But standard work is kind of what you're saying that ISO is all about. It's making work standard. I mean, being explicit in what it is. And that's not a bad thing because if there is a deviation from it, you would raise the flag, or in the Lean terms, someone would pull an Andon cord.

Lindsay:  Exactly. You find me one new employee joining an organization that will ever complain that there is something in documented form that tells them how they should be performing something. They cry out for it. But how many times do you hear people say "Oh yeah, it's baptism by fire here." Nobody likes to be in that situation. I mean I've been through it myself; it's disconcerting. People want to be productive; they want to get up and running fast. What you tend to hear from the more seasoned people is "Oh, but it's so unique, what we do. There's no way you could possibly standardize it." Of course that's complete nonsense. There are certain things, obviously, every order is different. The flavor of what a customer wants versus the next one, absolutely.

Is it an insult to say that it's documented

View more documents from Joseph Dager.

Related Information:
MOCGISO You Tube Videos
Agreeing on Standards in a Lean Enterprise
Is Standard Work needed in Sales and Marketing?
Where is the path in Continuous Improvement for Sales and Marketing?
Why does sales and marketing operate to a different quality standard?

Wilson Training to introduce new iQuality Training Programs at SWIMAQ

Partnering with IWCC on customized Adult Learning programs

At the upcoming Southwest Iowa Manufacturers Alliance for Quality program Steven Wilson of WCTS, Inc. will be discussing how partnering with IWCC on customized programs for Quality and Six-Sigma can provide dramatic results for your business. The program will be held from 9:30AM to 2:30PM on Tuesday, May 24, 2011 and will be held at the Iowa Western Community College, Council Bluffs Campus.

Steve will address specific issues on why many people shy away from quality or continuous improvement programs and as a result, they are unable to see the direct benefits of it. He will also outline and introduce the latest adult learning training methods and how the training is adapted to the 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.”

Southwest Iowa Manufacturers Alliance for Quality program will also include presentations on:

• Non-Destructive Evaluation update/hands-on demo)
• Iowa’s National Career Readiness Certificate
• CIRAS update
• Technology Commercialization
• Plant Tour: SIRE Ethanol, LLC

The Iowa Western Community College College offers instruction in career education, adult and continuing education and the first two years of college and university study.  Iowa Western exists to serve the needs of adults who can benefit from further education and guidance, whether by specially designed occupational programs, pre-professional college transfer programs or adult education. The Council Bluffs Campus, which includes the college administrative offices, is situated on a 282 acre site located 2 ½ miles northeast of the Council Bluffs business district.

Steven C. Wilson founded Wilson Consulting and Training Services, Inc (WCTS, Inc) as a process improvement consulting firm.  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 500 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.

Related Information:
Best in Market
A Gemba Talk with Womack on Lean
Kaizen
Lean is not a revolution, Lean is solve one thing and prove one thing!

Lean Sales & Marketing the Final Frontier for the Lean Enterprise? – Free Webinar

Webinar Registration

Free Webinar...Lean Sales & Marketing:
Title: Lean Sales & Marketing: The Final Frontier for the Lean Enterprise?
Date: Friday, May 6, 2011
Time: 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM EDT
Cost: No fee.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/536606993

Why is Lean Sales & Marketing the Final Frontier for the Lean Enterprise?
Marketing activities such as developing promotion programs, branding, developing ads and writing copy are seen as creative processes that don’t lend themselves to systematization without losing the ability to think outside the box.

Most efforts to improve Sales and Marketing so far have come from Six Sigma or Lean Office programs that largely derive their practices from the production environment.
The personality style of a star salesperson or an innovative marketer clashes with the type of person who is going to embrace standardized processes and continuous, incremental improvement.

If these arguments sound familiar, they are the same ones used ten years ago to keep lean out of Research & Development: breakthrough innovation cannot be standardized, lean manufacturing practices don’t work and star technologists don’t appreciate process excellence. The solution is to recognize that like R & D, sales and marketing functions are knowledge creation processes.

Product developers add value when they deepen their knowledge about the product design and then convert that knowledge into a product that a customer can buy. Similarly, marketing and sales functions add value when they deepen the company’s knowledge about customers and market needs, and then support R & D as they make decisions that lead to products to meet those needs. They also add customer value when they deepen the customer’s knowledge about the product. In fact, the best sales people are those who take the time to deeply understand an individual customer’s needs so that they can recommend the products and services that will best meet those needs.

We will be able to conquer the final frontier for the lean enterprise when we recognize that when the value a process creates is knowledge, it must be managed as a Knowledge Creation Value Stream to maximize the value we get from the knowledge created, and minimize the wastes of knowledge loss, ineffective decision-making.

P.S. You want a fresh approach to marketing that is something other than just a new set of tools. Consider attending the Lean Sales and Marketing Summit. You will get them there. I have a limited amount of discounted tickets, please contact me to check availability.

Related Information:
The Role of PDCA in a Lean Sales and Marketing Cycle
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing …
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer

Does the Juran Trilogy = PDCA?

Rarely, do I find researching a topic so easy as I did in researching Dr. Juran and the Juran Institute for my recent podcast, Business Improvement thru Quality, the Juran Way, with Juran Institute CEO Joe DeFeo. The research started reaching over to my bookcase and reviewing the Quality Control Handbook, 3^rd edition by Dr. Juran. In retrospect, the book has been there my entire adult life.

From what I understand, the greatest difference in Deming vs. Juran thinking is that Deming views are describing a transformation and Juran describes how to manage quality functions. Dr. Juran says quite frankly, that the way you talk quality to executives is through the language of money.

Dr. Juran provided a systematic and linear approach to managing for quality. He looked at improvement on a project by project basis with emphasis on the vital few and useful many (Pareto Principle). This project by project basis closely resembles continuous improvement and the PDCA cycle.

Dr. Juran concepts are explained in the well-known Juran Trilogy which is comprised of three stages: Quality planning, Quality control, and Quality improvement. I have taken the liberty to adjust them to a sales and marketing perspective and hope I did not do too much damage to the overall message. The part in bold is Dr. Juran’s heading.

Quality Planning

1. Identify the customers, both external and internal: Since this is about sales and marketing - customers should be segmented using the Pareto principle placing more of your emphasis on your most important customers.
2. Discover your customers’ needs: Determine not only what your customer values but your market values. But don’t stop there, identify the vital few and useful many that drive these markets.
3. Develop products features that respond to the customer needs: Understanding the vital few and useful many should drive each improvement and innovation.
4. Develop a process that can produce the product features: Be able to engage the sales team into meaningful collaboration with the customer to understand and express what they value.
5. Prove process capability: Determine metrics in achieving these standards.

Quality Control.

1. Choose and establish Measurement: Determine metrics in achieving these goals. These metrics should not be based only on closed sales but also on critical touch points. Use statistical tools for analysis.
2. Measure and interpret actual performance to operating goals: Using statistical tools, data and “tribal Knowledge” interpret the any differences between actual versus standard.
3. Take action on differences: Since you are working off of standards, you should find that differences can be attributed to identifiable causes or breakdowns.

Quality Improvement

1. Prove the need and identify specific projects for improvement: The projects should be identified that will provide the most financial gain (most profitable sale) and the amount of potential (customer evangelism) the project may have.
2. Organize to guide and diagnosis causes: In the Juran type of thinking this may lead to the formation of a Quality Council. In sales and marketing this may be a hierarchy that will look at these decisions from a broader perspective than an individual sales team.
3. Provide effective remedies: Remedies based on root cause and ones linked to the critical to quality issues discussed in the planning stage. This may also include training and additional resources.
4. Provide for control to hold the gains: In sales and marketing we want to prevent backsliding with a customer or prospect. We may institute additional or even a different type of support such as a sales team with a stronger service or product background at this stage.

This post was just an exercise for me to walk through the Juran Trilogy from a sales and marketing perspective. In my mind, I was creating a high level outline for an improvement project in the sales process. The purest of each methodology (Lean/Juran) may beat me up for this comment but the Juran approach does not seem that much different than the Lean/Toyota mindset of PDCA. It resembles a 3-step approach to PDCA. You could possible look at in a macro (1 overall PDCA) and a micro approach (3 individual PDCA cycles). 

P.S. Did you Know: Juran is widely credited for adding the human dimension to quality management. He pushed for the education and training of managers. For Juran, human relations problems were the ones to isolate. Resistance to change—or, in his terms, cultural resistance—was the root cause of quality issues. Juran credits Margaret Mead's book Cultural Patterns and Technical Change for illuminating the core problem in reforming business quality. He wrote Managerial Breakthrough, which was published in 1964, outlining the issue. – From Wikipedia

Related Information:
A Newer Edition: Juran's Quality Handbook 6/e
Understand Scrum, Understand Implementing PDCA
The differences in Lean and Agile
Continuously improving thru PDCA

Future of Marketing is Lean

The sales and marketing structure has drastically changed. The typical structure still used by many is when competition was not as great and technology was not the force that it is today. Most of the time sales and marketing sold solutions without every defining the customers problem. The typical sales forecast was derived on increasing sales a certain percentage. That's changed. In today's business setting many companies are fighting for survival. Competition has never been so keen and the elements of the past are simply not working.

The new wave of marketing has seen an entire new set of tools being used with the components of social media leading the way. No longer do we trust print media, radio, television and other forms of traditional media. The tools have all become a commodity. Some organizations have even questioned the need for a sales force. To make effective marketing decisions, you need a clear understanding of what the customer values and what your company strategy is to support them.

Companies have found that they must listen at higher level than ever before to their customers, focusing on improving processes, and using teams. Companies have to build a culture that supports agility, relevancy and speed. To accomplish this there has to become an open sharing of information that will accelerate creativity and innovation. Value has to be understood that it is delivered at the point of consumption, not when it leaves your hands.

Lean Marketing is about installing a continuous improvement methodology to your sales and marketing process. It’s about constantly improving ever step up the way. In the smaller scheme of things it is about improving a launch, an advertising campaign and even a sales call. However, in the bigger scheme of things it is about building a structure that creates a learning organization based on an ever increasing knowledge of what the customer values.

The Lean practice of PDCA is ideal for learning and creating knowledge activities. Following this process it allows individuals and teams to recognize and take advantage of opportunities, make decisions faster, and be more responsive to customers. As part of the PDCA cycle you get feedback on the action from listening to customers and the companies’ measurement systems. Having information, taking informed action and getting feedback is part of the natural PDCA cycle.  Effectiveness comes from when you use and take advantage of all your resources.

This why I believe the Future of Marketing is Lean!

Related Posts:
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing …
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer
Start with A3 for Continuous Improvement in Sales and Marketing