Virtual Organizations will change the Org chart?

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.

Related Information:
Will Product Managers embrace Open Innovation?
Why bother with Value Networks?
Identifying your Lean sales and marketing teams
What will your workplace be like in 2020?
What’s behind Collaboration and Value Networks?

Design Thinker exposed as Left Brain Dominant

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?):

1. What is? Exploring the current reality
2. What if? Envisioning alternative futures
3. What wows? Getting users to help make tough choices
4. 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!

Related Information:
How new is Service Dominant Logic and does it apply now?
Asking the right questions about Lean?
Service Design Thinking
Steve Blank on the Lean Startup at Ann Arbor

Using Right Brain Thinking in Business

Timothy W. Fowler (also known as The Right Brain) is CEO of BusinessLeadership.com. He details numerous process improvement efforts utilizing right-brain dominant-skills in this transcription of the Business901 podcast, Are right brain thinkers better leaders?

Using a Right Brain in Business

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. He will also be speaking at the ASQ Columbus Spring Conference. It is a one day event on March 24th with registration beginning at 7:30 AM and the conference from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Additional information and registration can be obtained at http://www.asq-columbus.org.

Related Information:
ASQ Columbus Spring Conference will host Marketing with Lean
Left Brain vs Right Brain = Management vs. Marketing
Be Productive, Be Visual, Part 2
Start your Visual Thinking Process with Mind Mapping
Power of Visual Thinking in your Visual Workplace

Respect in Sales and Marketing Tool

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 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 first step in doing this is that you must create an atmosphere of respect. It is such an important function of Lean Sales and Marketing that I asked Dr. Michael Balle to define respect within a Lean Company. This is what he said:

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:

1. Recognize that there is a problem – a gap between expectations and achievement – and be open to negative feedback.
2. Voluntarily take responsibility and feel deep regret.
3. 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?

Related Information
Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute
The Future of Marketing is Lean
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer

Approach to Innovation used by Disney

Innovation requires a balance between ideas and reality. In this segment Ed Muzio describes a method of keeping those two competing elements in balance to create new, innovative ideas. Ed uses an approach developed by Walt Disney and based on the roles of Dreamer, Realist and Critic. In the video are some great tips on how to put this into practice. I once read that Walt could play all the roles and many times when he walked into meetings everyone wondered which role he was going to take on. He also experimented with having separate rooms for each role. This approach should be considered when creating the future state during a Value Stream Mapping Session.

Ed Muzio, president and CEO of Group Harmonics was a guest on the Business901 podcast, Creating a Great Workplace. During the podcast, he discussed several more innovative ideas in transforming your workplace. He has just recently published a new book Make Work Great: Super Charge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence One Person at a Time.

Related Posts:
Kanban Communication
How effective does your Sales and Marketing team work together?
Kaizen
A Look at Innovation from a Different Angle

World of Work Will be Witnessing 10 Changes

 

Gartner Says the World of Work Will Witness 10 Changes During the Next 10 Years

 The world of today is dramatically different from 20 years ago and with the lines between work and non-work already badly frayed, Gartner, Inc.  predicts that the nature of work will witness 10 key changes through 2020. Organizations will need to plan for increasingly chaotic environments that are out of their direct control, and adaptation must involve adjusting to all 10 of the trends.

“Work will become less routine, characterized by increased volatility, hyperconnectedness, 'swarming' and more,” said Tom Austin, vice president and Gartner fellow. By 2015, 40 percent or more of an organization’s work will be ‘non-routine’, up from 25 percent in 2010. “People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,” he added. “In addition, simulation, visualization and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.”

1. De-routinization of Work
2. Work Swarms
3. Weak Links
4. Working With the Collective
5. Work Sketch-Ups
6. Spontaneous Work
7. Simulation and Experimentation
8. Pattern Sensitivity
9. Hyper connected
10. My Place

I think Austin makes some excellent points in the article and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. When, I sit back an observe this structure it is very similar to many of the agile practices that have been developed in the Lean Software Development field. Agile software development is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. Though these practices were a result of improvement in a knowledge based field that are starting to be applied in other areas such as Marketing, Supply Chain and even Hardware Development. One of the difficulties people have in grasping this concept is that it is more about flow and speed of the overall process versus efficiencies. 

The article is a definite read and raises some interesting concepts for all of us to consider.

Related Posts:
Value Stream Mapping your Sales Team
Is your Value Stream Mapping backwards?
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
The Pull in Lean Marketing
Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept

Utilizing the Theory of Constraints in Product Innovation Ebook

In the three part podcast I had with Mike Dalton the founder of Guided Innovation Group, we discussed utilizing the Theory of Constraints in Innovation, the Customer Value Lens and Alliances in great detail. This is a transcription of the entire 3-part series. 

Theory of Constraints in Innovation

In Mikes recent book, Simplifying Innovation: Doubling speed to market and new product profits – with your existing resources, he discussed the Guided Innovation’s unique TOC-based approach to rapid innovation improvement is helping companies slash time to market in half and nearly double new product profits. Whether you are struggling to get more sales impact from your new product and innovation investment or are growing strongly but still interested in taking your innovation performance to the next level. Customer Value Lens and much more. The book was just released in January and has received some good reviews.

Related Posts:
Product Relaunch – Try serving Chocolate Milk
The Hell with the Economic Stimulus Package – I’ll Lead
How to Form an Innovation Strategy

SPIDER Product Launch Program by Business901

News Release Issued Today

Fort Wayne, IN – This program is based on the Business901 SPIDER product launch template which will allow participants to organize their launch plans into a series of actionable items based on present marketing conditions and practices. The participants can use the template to determine areas to differentiate their product, better define their buyer persona and use present technology to accelerate the launch. Joe Dager of Business901 will launch this new product launch program called SPIDER with an introductory webinar on March 12. You can sign-up at http://productlaunching.eventbrite.com or review the product at http://www.productmarketingprocess.com. There is a discount code of "Spider" that is available till the end of February.

The actual program was created to provide businesses with everything they could ask for in terms of ongoing marketing support, guidance, accountability and know-how to help them overcome the challenges facing them in launching a product in 2009. “It is not your typical, Internet launch program. If you are looking for a web based product launched, this is not for you,” says Dager. He adds, “It contains a mix of products, services, an authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach to walk you through the process and the SPIDER Template to integrate your launch not only on the web but more importantly offline through your targeted industry.”

SPIDER is an acronym for See, Plan, Imagine, Design/Sell, Execute and Renew. Dager also added: “This is compilation of 30 years of product marketing launches in the process equipment field. I not only credit the Duct Tape Marketing System, which I use as an important part of process, but my recent training in the Effective Product Marketing program hosted by Pragmatic Marketing. This EPM seminar explored outbound marketing roles, priorities and processes that characterize market-driven technology companies.”

The SPIDER template also utilizes the newly formatted Ultimate Marketing System from Duct Tape Marketing. “We believe in installing a system,” says Dager. “Our experience is that a system will always outperform any other approach. We define your objectives; develop strategies to achieve them, than institute tactics to carry out your strategies. We deliver the package in One on One Sessions or you can even participate in group coaching.”

The program needed to be affordable, as well as a combination of powerful resources to truly give a business a track to run on as they moved from designing their system to building the components, to execution and finally measurement and re-implementation,” said Dager.

About Business901: Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as target marketing and organized referral marketing. As a certified coach of the Duct Tape Marketing Consulting organization, Joe provides practical, information-rich, immediately applicable direction that profoundly impacts the success of small and mid-sized businesses. His experience includes numerous start-ups, several turnarounds in variety of industries to include manufacturing, retail, and professional services to include marketing.

Technorati Tags: product launch,product marketing,pragmatic marketing,duct tape marketing,SPIDER Template

Mystery e-mail,Good Info

I had this in my email box but did not know where it came from. I had forwarded it to myself. I think it is pretty good info: It looks like Pragmatic Marketing, so that is who I am going to credit it too. 

But if you concentrate on crisply and clearly documenting the answers to five key solution selling questions, you can save yourself a lot of time and become a hero in the process.  Those five questions are:

1. What are a few things sales people need to know to more intelligently discuss the most important customer’s needs and problems your solution solves?

2. Why should solving those problems be a high and urgent priority for your customers?

3. How should sales people identify and qualify the best prospects for your solution?

4. How does the customer use your solution to solve each need and problem?

5. What is the value of your solution’s differentiation in the context of each need and problem?

These sound pretty simple, but getting the sales force to institutionalize this knowledge sure isn’t easy.  Any experienced Product Marketer however,  should have this information down cold, so the key is to figure out a way to organize  this knowledge so sales people can get access to it and handle the 20% of the conversations that drive 80% of the solution selling process without bringing you or another product expert on the sales call. 

Pragmatic Marketing Training

Joe Dager, Business901 completes Pragmatic Marketing training For Effective Product Marketing