Lean Service Design Presentation at ASQ

I have the pleasure of participating in the conference and will be giving a sixty-minute presentation on Lean Service Design. My presentation will be building offering a unique perspective on applying Lean to the Service Design Field. All participants of my presentation will receive a CD that contains:

• 130 Page PDF eBook
• PDF & Excel work forms
• Training Videos
• Bonus eBooks and Audio Tracks

My discussion will begin with a discussion on Service Dominant Logic and go through the use of Stakeholder and Customer Journey Maps and Buyer Personas. We will use these 3 outlines to develop several service prototypes narrowing it done to a single choice. The Lean Process of moving from EDCA to PDCA to SDCA will be discussed in conjunction with the before mentioned processes. The last part of the hour I will introduce CAP-Do and the use (sorry for the pun) of User Personas and Scenarios creating a process that I call Persona Mapping.   

This ASQ 2013 Service Conference provides how-to’s, step-by-step advice, and the latest in service delivery methods and networking opportunities. Speakers will engage you on topics to help organizations improve customer service, reduce costs, and build both customer loyalty and satisfaction. Join us in Las Vegas for two days of networking and discovery.

22nd Annual Service Quality Conference
October 7–8, 2013 • Las Vegas, NV
THEME: Seizing the Competitive Advantage with Service Quality

REGISTER: Program details are now listed on the site. To or get more information, visit asq.org/sqd or call 800-248-1946. If you are from outside of the United States of Canada, please call +1-414-272-8575.

Customer Retention Assessment

The typical company will focus on growth by emphasizing customer acquisition. However, market share growth is highly dependent on been able to retain customers. In that area, all that is needed is to find the source or the reason why they defect and then slow the rate of that defection. I doubt that you will ever get to a point where you will never lose a customer nor should that even be your goal. But what you should do is it elevate the importance of customer retention to a level of equality to customer acquisition.

Dr. Eric Reidenbach has been a favorite author, mentor and collaborator with me through recent years. We developed the info-program Driving Market Share  where we spent a great deal of time discussing his favorite past time, the subject of value. During that time we created this assessment on Customer Retention. At the bottom of the post is a quick overview of your answers. 

Customer Retention Assessment:

Q1. What percentage of customers do you lose, on average, in a given year?

            ____%    Don’t know ____

Q2. Do you have a program or system for managing customer retention?

            Yes ____    No ____    Don’t know ____

Q3. Do you have a method or system for identifying systemic breakdowns in customer service?

            Yes ____ No ____ Don’t know ____

Q4. Can you measure the dollar cost of a lost customer?

             Yes ____ No ____ Don’t know ____

Q5. Do you do any lost customer analysis?

             Yes ____ No ____ Don’t know ____

Q6. Have your quality initiatives focused on any customer loyalty or retention projects?

              Yes ____ No ____ Don’t know ____

Last week Dr. Reidenbach gave me the honor of posting his latest article which I divided into two blog post:

• Building Value into the New Product Development Process
• Capitalize on the Speed of Value to Insure New Product Success

About Dr. Eric Reidenbach. He is the Director of the Six Sigma Marketing Institute and the author of over 20 books on marketing and market research. A few of them are listed below.

1. Best in Market: The new Imperative for U.S. Manufacturing (Immediate Download)
2. Listening to the Voice of the Market: How to Increase Market Share and Satisfy Current Customers
3. Six Sigma Marketing: From Cutting Costs to Growing Market Share
4. Value-Driven Channel Strategy: Extending the Lean Approach

Assessment Overview:

Churners are those companies that answer “no” or “don’t know” to the questions are companies that tend to be complacent about customer care and customer loyalty. This response pattern suggests that there is no one or no function within the company that is focused on keeping customers. They are companies that are probably losing significant amounts of revenue by ignoring their own customers’ needs.

The costs of customer acquisition runs about 5 times the cost of customer retention and this can have a significant negative impact on profitability.

Retainers are those companies that have provided a “sticky” environment that keeps customers and enjoys the annuity effect of loyal customers. These companies know what their churn rate is (Q1) and have deployed an active program to promote loyal customers.

More advanced retainers will actively seek out information regarding what they are not doing but should be doing. They may undertake a lost customer analysis (Q5) and use this information in their quality programs (Q6) and to improve any systemic weaknesses (Q3). These companies understand that market share is comprised not only of customer acquisition but also customer retention.

More about customer retention during the week.

Are there more Maps in Service Design than Time in Lean?

There seems to be as many maps in the Service Design world as there is time in the Lean world.  Have you ever thought of how many different types of time, there are in the Lean World? Lean has an infatuation with time: Lead Time, Takt Time, Cycle Time, Machine Time, Process Time, Value Add Time, etc. Service Design has a few types of maps that they consider, Process Maps, Journey Maps, Blueprint Maps, Net-map, Offering Maps, Mind Maps, etc. Not that I don’t enjoy the tools but it gets rather confusing.

I have been spending quite a bit of time investigating and trying different software.  Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss Process Mapping with Ben Graham. Ben has been helping people make sense of their processes for over thirty years.  He is President of The Ben Graham Corporation and author of the book ‘Detail Process Charting: Speaking the Language of Process; His company pioneered the field of business process improvement, and since 1953 has provided process improvement consulting, coaching and education services to organizations across North America. Ben’s Podcast will post this Thursday.

An excerpt from the Podcast:

Joe: In the service work and the service design type things that I get involved with, there is a lot of interest in customer journey maps or service blueprinting. Are you able to use process software for that?

Ben: We don't get into the emotion aspects of a customer journey map, but we do capture with a process map all the touch points where a customer is directly involved with a process, whether it's an internal customer or external customer. We have a detail process map, captures all the players in the process and where their touch points are. From that aspect, they're comparable. I think that, once again, they could work together.

Joe:  You're saying you can capture the touch points, the front stage actions, the back stage actions, and maybe even some of the support processes. But you're lacking the emotional side?

Ben:  We're capturing reality, regardless of how people feel about it when we're doing an as is process. We're capturing what happens. Now, when we get into analysis and we want to improve the process, that's where having that other map can provide some input possibly. We find out where the hurt points are and that can give us some focus on where we want to make some changes.

I have debated for a long time, whether it is better to master one or 2 process and using those the majority of the time. The problem in doing this of course is that if all you have is a hammer, then everything starts looking like a nail. The advantage though is the ability to distribute and explain the knowledge that is captured versus explaining the tool. There may be a significant advantage as people grow familiar with the tool and start seeing the information contained within it. 

Related Information:
Start with Journey Mapping vs Value Stream Mapping
Value Stream Mapping Workshop
Value Stream Mapping

Lean and Six Sigma training to deployed Soldiers

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!

Related Information:
Using Right Brain Thinking in Business
Left Brain vs Right Brain = Management vs. Marketing
Be Productive, Be Visual, Part 2
Start your Visual Thinking Process with Mind Mapping

Data Driven Problem Solving Program

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

Related Information:
Is Continuous Improvement Continuous?
Marketing with PDCA.
Pair Problem Solving in the Workplace
Sustaining Lean using Continuous Improvement: The Toyota Way
Continuously improving thru PDCA

Lean Sales and Marketing Presentation at ASQ Columbus

This is my presentation on Lean Sales and Marketing at the ASQ Columbus Spring Conference. The notes, I used are with the slides. I have to admit though, that after the first slide, I never looked at the notes at all. I also included link to download the entire PDF. The notes are a little more cleaner in that version.

Lean Marketing at ASQ Columbus

View more presentations from Joseph Dager

Related Information:
Lean Sales and Marketing PDF
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Has Knowledge Management disguised itself as Lean Marketing?
The Future of Marketing is Lean
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation

Lean Sales and Marketing Team Roles

In Lean Marketing, there are three primary roles for the development and management of Lean Sales and Marketing process. It is the Value Stream Manager, the Team and the Team Coordinator. The roles and responsibilities are similar to the three roles used in Scrum which are the Product Owner, the Team and The Scrum Master.

Quick overview of the Scrum roles:

1. The Product Owner represents the stakeholders and the business.
2. The Team is a cross-functional group of about 7 people who do the actual design, implementation, testing, etc.
3. The ScrumMaster maintains the processes in lieu of a project manager.

Quick overview of the Lean Sales and Marketing System:

1. The Value Stream Manager (VSM) represents the product/service markets and the business.
2. The Sales and Marketing Team (Team) is a cross-functional group whose number and expertise is derived from the decision making path of the customer. This Team does the actual sales; providing content, technical functions, trials, testing, etc.
3. The Team Coordinator maintains the integrity of the processes through coaching and predefined control points.

The Value Stream Manager is responsible for maximizing return on investment (ROI) through his particular Value Stream of Customer Identification, Customer Value, Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention and Customer Monitoring. (Value Stream Mapping Customer Value). He translates this Value Stream and assigns it in conjunction with the Team Coordinator to particular Teams similar to a typical Sales Manager would to his Salespeople. The VSM and the Team Coordinator will routinely evaluate the outcomes to determine best fit. The VSM may work with Multiple Teams for his Value Stream. The VSM has profit and loss responsibility for the product/service. The VSM represents the Voice of the Market which may be thousands of individual clients, distributors, brokers and agents. As with Scrum’s Product Owner, the VSM has the final authority.

The Sales and Marketing Team is first and foremost the listening post for the customer (prospect) that enables them to provide the customer with the information, technology, and support that is required. This is done through a PDCA/SDCA Cycle that depending on the complexity may constitute an entire sales cycle or just a certain portion of the customer’s decision making process. The team is cross-functional and includes the expertise required to fulfill the requirements of the customer through his decision making process. It may include but not limited to salespeople, marketing, IT, service, etc. It is self-managing with a very high degree of autonomy and accountability. The team decides what to do, what commitments to make and how best to accomplish it. Stable teams are important for internal productivity but also since they are in direct contact with the customer. When these teams only serve part of the decision making process of the customer, the Team Coordinator becomes directly involved during the handoffs form one team to another.

The Team Coordinator serves very similar to the ScrumMaster. The TC helps the Team learn and apply PDCA. The TC does whatever is in their power to help the team be successful. The TC is not the manager of the team but instead serves the team, minimizing distractions, educating them on the iterative process of PDCA, Knowledge Creation and Agile methods. The TC and the VSM must be different people. As the TC runs interference for the Team there may be some priority balancing that is required between the VSM and the TC. It is imperative that the TC creates and maintains a manageable flow inside the Team. If the Team runs into an impediment it is the TC job to find the resources needed to remove it. The TC will also monitor the Team flow through the use of established control points created within the cycle.

The confusing part for most organizations is in defining the role of the team. Look for an upcoming blog on that particular subject.

Related Information:
5Cs of Driving Market Share Program
Where is the path in Continuous Improvement for Sales and Marketing?
Why does sales and marketing operate to a different quality standard?
The Future of Marketing is Lean
PDCA for Lean Marketing, Knowledge Creation
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer

Could your Six Sigma Storyboard Compete?

A Six Sigma Storyboard provides a quick, visual summary of a team’s work. They are very well suited as presentation materials to highlight the work of the project, the improvements made and for executive overviews.  I think Six Sigma Storyboard presenters should take it up a notch. A DMAIC presentation can have a little Jazz to it. Take a look at what these 87 entries did with a simple Wallboard.

BTW: I am still looking for a couple of Six Sigma Storyboards that I could use for before and after examples. If you have one that you would like to work with me on, please contact me through the email icon on the top right of the Business901 page.   

The Ultimate Wallboard contest ended last December but showed a great collection of wallboards. I have included the Sony Wallboard for no other reason except I vote it for best music. However, it is pretty awesome what they do with it. I encourage you to view all 87 entries as I think they are great collection of boards that you may generate an idea from. Many of them are just pictures so it does not take that long.   

Website: http://ultimatewallboard.com/

Related Information:
Six Sigma Storyboards
Is the war room Still Useful?
Practical Approach to Innovation used by Disney
Storyboards give Insights to Space and Time
Storyboarding for Business
Marketing Kanban Cadence
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
Value Stream Mapping your Marketing

How Lean, Six Sigma and Agile all work under the same umbrella at Xerox

This is a transcription of the podcast, Adding Customer Value in Development at Xerox that featured Patrick Waara talking about Xerox’s use of Agile techniques. Pat has been with Xerox for nearly 25 years teaching Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile techniques to Xerox’s software development community improving their software development capability. Our conversation originally was designed to discuss swarming and Lean problem solving. However we ventured off into the subject of how Lean, Six Sigma and Agile all work under the same umbrella.

Adding Value in Development

Pat has both a BS and an MS in computer science from Michigan Technological University.  He has held a variety of jobs at Xerox including developing user interface systems for Xerox’s DocuTech and Systems Architect for Xerox’s iGen3, all dealing with software development and systems.

Related Posts:
Kanban at Xerox Corporation
Need a primer on Lean Six Sigma?
Xerox Operational Excellence Program
Xerox drives Agile Processes thru Lean Six Sigma
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing

Lean Marketing: Sales Quotas lead to Waste

When everyone thinks of Lean they think of Muda or the waste. I am a firm believer that you never directly attack Muda in sales and marketing simply because most people do not know what works and what doesn’t. Lean is not all about Muda. James Womack himself suggested that Lean practioners should think about Mura (unevenness of flow) and Muri (overburdening of the process) first and then Muda (waste).

My example of this is sales quotas. Think about what happens at the end of month or end of quarter and even the end of the year. Sales are driven by milestones which often lead to discounts and delivery promises that cause Mura which results in Muri which turns into Muda.

Lean’s goal would be to reduce to reduce the range of variation and then adjust or improve the process to reach the needed output. I would suggest that sales quotas would be a form of tampering which leads to special-cause variation. Dr. Deming went to great lengths to illustrate the common forms of tampering in his famous red bead experiment. Tampering is present when adjustments are made to a process that only shows common cause variation. He proves that you actually do more harm than good.

Just about all variation within a process is due to chance causes, inherent in the design of the process. This process may or may not be controlled by you, it is likely determined by your customers buying process. Even at that, limits within which the common variation of a process can be determined from data collected. When all data points fall within these limits, the process is said to be in control and stable. Watch this video.

Control Charts

Back to Deming’s red bead experiment, problems arise when sales and marketing reacts to common cause variation as if it were special cause variation. Think about how many times pressure is applied to salespeople who have little control over the variation resulting from the design of the process? As a result, emphasis is placed on point-to-point variation rather than working to decrease all variation and improve the average.

No two customers are alike, all sales are different, and there is simply too much variability to ever make a process work. Variation is unavoidable in sales and marketing. However, the simple use of a control chart allows one to easily observe when the process is outside the limits, thus indicating special cause variation within the process. Your decisions should be geared toward improving the common variation versus increasing the number of special-cause variations.

Knowledge gained from understanding variation in your sales and marketing process will add improvement to your entire organization. As Deming states, “Management’s job is to optimize the entire system. Sub-optimization is costly.” All sales and marketing people should strive to reduce special-cause variation.

Related Posts:
Drucker and Deming = Lean Marketing
Marketers must understand the systems they manage.
Introduction to Marketing with A3
The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota
Best Marketing Advice Ever, yes Ever!

Lessons from Escaping the Improvement Trap

Fact: Within any industry – be it hospitals, public accounting firms, manufacturing, governmental organizations or law firms -- 20% of the organizations will be dramatically improving much more effectively than 80% of their competitors. 

What does the top 20% do differently than the rest in their respective industries? In The Escape the Improvement Trap: Five Ingredients Missing in Most Improvement Recipes , the authors reveal the five most important ingredients that the top 20% exploit, but the remaining 80% do in a mediocre fashion:

1. Create value for customers.
2. Create an environment in which employees excel to their fullest potential.
3. Measure performance in a more meaningful fashion – Use the “right” metrics not all the metrics!
4. Apply process thinking to all areas of work.
5. Use an “executive mindset” to improve the way the organization goes about the business of improvement.

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This podcast I had with co-author Michael Bremer was exhilarating for me as a host. By the end of the podcast, you will look at your continuous improvement efforts from a totally different perspective. Mike does a great job summarizing the five steps and you will be surprised and maybe how simple it is. He simply nails it!

Related Posts:
Outside in Strategy– Customer Value
Practical Approach to Innovation used by Disney
Faster, Better, Cheaper is the Norm. What are you doing different
A Quick Tool for Value Analysis
Using Value Stream Mapping in Lean

Six Sigma Marketing Institute releases Audio Program

This is the audio section of the program I use to provide the basis for Customer Value in my Lean Marketing programs.  The series serves as a template for organizations needing to change from a customer satisfaction focus to a customer value focus. It has been deployed in a number of Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies and has produced positive market share growth.

Author Dr. R. Eric Reidenbach says, "For organizations that have deployed Six Sigma or other quality initiatives, the 5 Cs approach provides a user friendly bridge for moving the quality focus from the manufacturing floor to the marketplace. Those seeking to become best in market must shift their focus from a product orientation to a market orientation, from an internal efficiency focus to an external focus. Best in market companies will be those that can make this transformation and make it soon."

The Five Cs gives you excellent background knowledge on how to build an effective and efficient marketing data set based on customer value. Customer Value is the only true measure for Driving Market Share. Learn the process of transitioning to using Value as a basis for Driving Marketing Share. 5 CD program or instant download that includes the titles:

1. Customer Identification
2. Customer Value
3. Customer Acquisition
4. Customer Retention
5. Customer Monitoring

Digital MP3 Download…$49.99

 

Audio CD Package……$79.99

 

Six Sigma Marketing is a fact-based, disciplined approach for growing market share in targeted product/markets by providing superior value. The Six Sigma Marketing Institute is dedicated to the advancement and deployment of Six Sigma Marketing. At the heart of SSM is a modified DMAIC process that provides the architecture for growing top line revenues and market share.

More about the rest of program can be found at DrivingMarketShare.com.t.

Disclosure: I participated in the creation of this program and have a vested interest in the success of i

Related Information
Press Release: Six Sigma Marketing Institute releases the 5Cs of Driving Market Share
Applying Six Sigma Marketing to become Best In Market
Trainers sought for Six Sigma Marketing Program
The Bridge Between Six Sigma and Marketing
Lean your Marketing by Dominating with Customer Value
Value Stream Mapping differs in Lean Marketing
Can Voice of Customer deliver?

Storyboards give Insights to Space and Time

Would like to have additional insights to your customers’ ACTIONS? Maybe, even additional insight to your organizations RE-ACTIONS? The benefits to visualizing your processes have been proven over and over again with the practices of Mindmaps, Value Stream Mapping, Process Charts, Charts, and other visual tools to include Powerpoint! Through the use of Storymapping, you can extend these tools and create a more graphical description. I believe this adds more insight to the process through a better understanding of space and time. 

In the book, Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity, author David Sibbet points out to some of the successful companies that utilize the Storymapping Process. We are not talking Disney or Pixlar but maybe less creative types.

Examples of organizations that have achieved great results this way include:

• National Semiconductor shared its turnaround vision worldwide in the early 1990s, and in tour years achieved 95% vision recognition throughout the company.
• Hewlett Packard Labs shared potential new business ideas to top management using plotter-generated murals instead or slides.
• Ralcy's top management shared its history, vision of the future, and strategy of their grocery store chain store with managers.
• Save the Redwoods League shared its vision, strategies, and goals with all its stakeholders in three different 5 year planning processes.
• VISA corporation orients all new employees with a large graphic history (updated three times so far).
• Adobe Systems created a graphic history of Adobe and Macromedia when the two organizations merged.
• The RE-AMP collaborative illustrated bow its system works to the 120 environmentally oriented non-govcrnmciit organizations and I5 foundations at its annual meeting in the upper midwest. They also used large charts to map progress toward their goal of cleaning up
  global warming pollutants in the energy industry.
• Nike communicated its visions for its Treasury function, and then later for its IT function using large Storymaps.
• National Academy Foundation designed large Storymaps to illustrate its process of establishing high school learning academies.
• The San Francisco Film Society used a large Storymap as a centerfold for its five-year business plan focused on growing this very successful, full-service film arts organization.

They went on to further explain the results of the National Semiconductor Vision Map in more detail stating:

Every top executive could tell this story, using this mural as a backdrop. It shows the overall vision to the far right, the history to the left, leading to the unassembled spaceship represented current realities. Critical business issues lie in front of the ship. Key values are the windows. Marketing messages are in the talk balloons. The top of the spaceship illustrates the new organization. The way forward has question marks intentionally; because Amelio wanted to enroll the rest of the organization in redesign. This vision got 95% recognition in employee surveys by 1994.

So how can you use Storymaps in your business? Use it as a communication tool. People learn through pictures and it directly engages people if designed correctly. A Storymap won’t do it all. You still have to show up and tell the story. However, having all the information visible allows a person to leave the story unfold as they tell it. I like the big visuals where everyone can soak in the entire picture as you are talking.

After the presentation, leave the Storyboard up or have small handouts. I thought the added question marks in Amelio’s Vision were an excellent way to stimulate additional thoughts. Welcoming and having additional post-it-notes lying around so that ideas can easily be added is the best form of suggestion box that you can have. They can be anonymous or not and I would encourage a different color so that you can tell that they were added at a glance.

The authors went on to suggest a few ideas that Storyboards could be used for…

• Orienting to histories and culture of an organization.
• Communicating the need for change.
• Understanding driving forces in an industry.
• Understanding customer needs.
• Sharing new visions and strategies.
• Sharing implementation plans.
• Communicating new process designs

The above picture may represent a persons experience in purchasing a car. What they consider: price, payments, usability, function, gas mileage, looks. Storyboarding the process out tells me a little more on how they look at it, what is important to them.and what the choice says about them. It is not much easier to develop your sales and marketing process from this description? 

Lean has always relied on Value Stream Mapping as one of its core tools. Six Sigma Storyboards have also been popularized to document the project results. In my opinion, both of these seem to follow to rigorous of a process and don’t include some of the great visualizations tools that exist. The Agile, Kanban and Scrum contingencies have introduced a much more visual aspect to their boards. Even assigning cartoon characters to people to designate who is responsible for the task. The point is allowing a little fun in the process not only creates a better environment but also enhances and extends the learning experience.

Picture Credit: http://www.sketchartist.tv

Related Blogs:
Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service
The Disney Way
Using DMAIC for your A3 Report in the Lean Marketing House
Lean Six Sigma Storyboard
Crafting your Storyboard
Converting Storyboarding to Marketing or Value Stream Mapping
Storyboarding for Business

Faster, Better, Cheaper is the Norm. What are you doing different!

That’s right the old Mantra; Faster, Better, Cheaper is the norm nowadays. It really is not separating you from the crowd, it is only the average. How are you going to build Market Share? How are you going to be increase revenue? When you are only average?

People start utilizing methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma and start showing remarkable improvements. However, the market is a living thing and most companies have a tendency towards improvement which means that the bar is being continuously raised. As a result the "average" continuous improvement project gets you absolutely nowhere. Unless you can make significant improvements there is only one way to make those improvements effective.

In any given product/market there are Critical to Quality components that are important to the customer that makes them buy your product over another. You may have the WOW, availability, price, etc. The market may define those CTQ's or other CTQ's differently and that is why they buy another product. The acronym may make it sound complicated but it really is not most of the time. I mean really does anyone buy an iPad for reliability or price. No, they buy it because it is cool and seemingly will make their life easier. You still have to be competent in other areas but they are not the driver of sales.

That dirty little secret is that most companies take an inside out approach to improvement and really don't concentrate on the CTQ's of the customer for retention and the CTQ's of the market for acquisition. So if you take an outside in approach in improving quality you will improve more than the average guy and as a result improve market share and/or profits. It really is that simple.

I had three recent discussions on this very subject and they all took a slightly different approach but all had a central theme of Customer Value.

1. Dr. Eric Reiedenbach when we discussed Best in Market on the podcast Applying Six Sigma Marketing to become Best In Market. Eric discussed finding the Critical to Quality Issues that determined how a Customer defined Value in your Product(Service)/Markets.
2. Mike Bremer co-author of Escape the Improvement Trap: Five Ingredients Missing in Most Improvement Recipes. Mike discussed tying all improvement efforts to the CTQ’s components and more specifically to your Value Proposition.
3. Christine Moorman co-author of Strategy from the Outside In: Profiting from Customer Value. Christine discussed developing your strategies and the deployment of those strategies through an Outside in approach.

These are three very unique perspectives that really approach the issue of customer value totally different. They all take a different path, disdain average but arrive at the same place. They even agreed on the same metrics: Market Share and Profitability. I wonder if all three of them have found the Holy Grail?   

Related Posts:
Profiting from Customer Value
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing
What does a Customer want?
Six Sigma Marketing introduces 5 Cs of Driving Market Share Webinar Series
Your Value Network Participants; Who are they?

Crafting your Storyboard

A plug for the Business901 Podcast this week: My guest will be Claudio Perrone aka the AgileSensei. He is a great story-boarder in his own right and author of The Rise of the Lean Machine Storybook. Claudio has also developed a technique that we discussed in the podcast on how he crafts his presentations. He has a 7-step process that he follows:

1. Research (Data Dump)
2. Prepare
3. Fill and Cluster Content
4. Identify Story Ideas - Reverse Benefits
5. Create a dramatic outline
6. Launch Powerpoint
7. Refine

Crafting Outstanding Presentations - Storytelling Techniques

View more presentations from Claudio Perrone.

Related Information:
Converting Storyboarding to Marketing or Value Stream Mapping
Storyboarding for Business
Using DMAIC for your A3 Report in the Lean Marketing House
Lean Six Sigma Storyboard

Lean Marketing House ebook

Lean Marketing is the Future of Marketing

Released as an ebook, Lean Marketing House is now available on the Business901 website. "When you first hear the terms Lean and Value Stream most of our minds think about manufacturing processes and waste. Putting the words marketing behind both of them is neither creative nor effective. But the future of marketing may be closely related more to these terms than you may first think. Whether Marketing meets Lean under this name or another it will be very close to the Lean methodologies developed in software primarily under the Agile connotation,

The book uses the symbolic Lean House to symbolize the five basic principles of Lean:

1. Identify Value (Roof)
2. Map Value Stream (Header)
3. Create Flow (Value Stream – Pillars)
4. Establish Pull (Foundation)
5. Seek Perfection (Base)

In addition to these five sections, the book also includes a section on Lean Tools and Tips for the marketing process. The book consist of 112 pages and over 40,000 words. The book is the first in the series of the Marketing with Lean Program: This series consist of the five individual products.

1. Lean Marketing House
2. Driving Market Share
3. Value Stream Marketing
4. Using A3 in Marketing
5. Marketing your Black Belt

Related Information:
Lean Marketing Creates Knowledge for the Customer
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing …
The Pull in Lean Marketing

How do you Profit from Customer Value

I had the pleasure this past week of interviewing the co-author of the book Strategy from the Outside In, Christine Moorman for an upcoming Business901 Podcast. Christine is the T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor and founder of The CMO Survey at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.

She stated that many strategies such has shareholder value, core competence, six sigma and right sizing  have lured many companies into a dangerous internal focus, viewing the world from the inside out. As a result, companies lose sight of the market, which leads to poor results over the long run. Inside-out thinking distracts companies from the core purpose of a business: to create and serve customers.

In research for the podcast, I came across this video by the other co-author George S. Day. George is the Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor and co-Director of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this video he emphasized that we must stop looking at your customer as another competitive force but rather embracing how they perceive your relative market position. Understanding this as your market orientation will allow you to achieve greater revenue and profit. He also claims that this orientation with allow you to react sooner sooner to market shifts.

  

The four imperatives that are discussed in the video:

1. Be a customer value leader
2. Innovate new value for customers
3. Capitalize on the customer as an asset
4. Capitalize on the brand as an asset

If you have been reading my blog for any period of time, you realize George is preaching to the choir here. Great delivery and a real enforcer of why Customer Value is so important.

From the Driving Market Share Website: Every customer is looking for value, and practically every company claims to offer it. Yours is likely no exception. But do you really know what value means to your customers? If you suspected they were less than thrilled with your products and services, how would you go about discovering why? And if you discovered that you were missing a piece or two of the value equation, what would you do to address the problem? These are questions that every business leader should consider, especially in today’s economy. When you make an effort to figure out what value looks like to your customer—and take steps to provide it—the results can be extraordinary.very.

And remember, Customer Value is the best Leading Indicator of Growing Market Share.

Related Posts:
Why Lean Marketing? Because it is the Future of Marketing
Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or is it just a Marketing Funnel?
The Pull in Lean Marketing
Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept

Using the Theory of Constraints in Services

The Business901 Podcast featured John Arthur Ricketts, a distinguished engineer at IBM Corporate Headquarters. As a consulting partner and technical executive, he has dealt with many services management issues, including those faced by clients in their own services businesses. His work in applied analytics led him to become a focal point on Theory of Constraints (TOC), and then to delve deeply into its potential for services management. 

John is very informative with a practical approach to applying TOC to services. I believe anyone involved in continuous improvement field will benefit from this podcast. 

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John is also a practitioner and innovator in the field of Theory of Constraints. His book, Reaching The Goal: How Managers Improve a Services Business Using Goldratt's Theory of Constraints , was published in 2008 by IBM Press. Reviewers on Amazon.com soon gave it a five-star rating. And Dr. Eli Goldratt, founder of the Theory of Constraints, said it’s one of the best books ever written on TOC. John is also the author of "Theory of Constraints in Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (Chapter 29 of Theory of Constraints Handbook) ,” a chapter in the Theory of Constraints Handbook published in 2010.

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Your Internal Marketing Constraint is still Important
Quickest way to deal with a Marketing Constraint, Slice it!
Problem Solving – Think 3, Not 5
Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!

Clarity to your Marketing Process

One purpose of Value Stream Marketing is to provide clarity to an individual or organizations marketing process. This gives you the ability to walk a prospect through the process, understanding where they are at in the process. Typically, I have a customer add the activities or in lean terms map the process he uses to gain a customer. It should mimic the path a customer makes in his decision process.  However, don’t look at this as just a simple exercise for a small organization. I use this in larger organizations by just repeating this process for each sales channel they may have. The secret to this is that it really forces you to layout your marketing process and is really the beginning of development of transferring your marketing into a process.

The purpose in creating your Value Stream is to achieve better cooperation of the multiple phases. Each interlinking phase depends upon the other links. In each of them, you will have different capabilities, normal variation and a changing workload making it practically impossible to balance. (You will often find that the Value stream is dependent upon the cooperation of all phases and as a result it highlights the strength of your handoffs. I have often found that in many organizations the individual steps or phases of the value stream are quite good but the quality of the handoffs is where the problems occur).  

Many organizations do not look at their sales and marketing process in a linear fashion, let alone segmenting it. When organizations first map out the process, they look at connections where people come from being all over the map such as the diagram to the right. They look at a simple linear process as an oversimplification of reality.

Not everybody goes through each step of the cycle. Some will skip from step one to step three. Someone may enter the cycle in step three. These interconnections are not trivial, it is what makes your process work and it also may be stopping it from working. So what is the purpose? The purpose of creating your Value Stream is very simple: Which is harder to manage, the above diagram or the next one? (The Post-it notes represent a tactic such as a webinar, newsletter, financing, sales calls, etc.)

Your flow system, your Value Stream will allow an organization to operate at maximum efficiency. The secret in creating such a linear flow is segmentation. Without it, you will continue to operate in less than an optimum manner.  Keep segmenting your list, till you gain a linear flow. Yes, there may be a few exceptions.

This is a simplified version of how a Value Stream would look. As you can see the natural progression of the flow (Involve, Interaction, Influence… flow to the right), the enablers or information to move the process forward is provided above each step. Taking a group of current customers, you can identify this in your current process. If this seems difficult, make a certain group that you can segment and document the process. Many companies will find huge gaps in their processes, which are supported by other departments such as sales or service or maybe by repetitive marketing.

Creating a horizontal segment/swim lane for each of your marketing channels will allow you to not only create your value stream but also serve as a basis for your Marketing Kanban and execution of your marketing process.

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Marketing Kanban Category
Don’t Market Without Your Kanban
Value Stream Marketing Category

Unclear Customer Value leads to Failure

All of us know we must distinguish ourselves in the marketplace to be successful. However, do we go to the marketplace to find that unique dimension of matched value is? In fact, there’s been study after study showing that we don’t even get out of our own organization with an understanding of our own unique value proposition.

When organizations were dominated by one single individual your value proposition was very clear. Different views and questions were discouraged. Now in the age of collaboration, it is becoming more and more difficult to arrive at a clear understanding of the value that you provide your customer.

One of the classic marketing books, The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers, Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market says that the only way to reach common ground is to find fact-based answers to 5 very fundamental questions:

1. What are the dimensions of value that customers care about?
2. For each dimension of value, what proportion of customers focus on it as their primary or dominate decision criterion?
3. Which competitors provide the best value in each of these value dimensions?
4. How do we measure up against her competition on each dimension that I?
5. Why do we fall short of the value leaders in each dimension of value?

The authors go on to say; Value stems from the product - from unique features that deliver superior results - and from the kinds of service benefits provided . They are measured against customers expectations, so products and services really offer benefits only if they substantially exceed competitors offerings. Competitive parity, after all, creates a base level for customer expectations.”

These 5 questions are just a starting point. Your value proposition must continue to increase at a more rapid rate that your competitors. However, you cannot sustain your customer value proposition without being part of your customers business. Everyone in your company must walk in the shoes of your customer. Experience what they experience. If you do that, your head might just rise above the clouds that your organization has been in and start living the value experience. Remember, Customer Value is the best leading indicator of Future Market share!

Related Program: 5Cs of Driving Market Share

Related Posts:
Linking the 4Ps to Lean Marketing
Best in Market eBook
Value Stream Marketing and the Indirect Marketing Concept
Marketing Kanban: Marketing Kanban
Value Stream Mapping
Lean Six Sigma: