Lean Six Sigma :: Business901

Archive for Lean Six Sigma

Dec

Turning Leader Standard Work Upside Down

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

I find one of the problems that exist in Leader Standard Work practices is not at the Team Leader Level nor even the Supervisor Level but many times right at the top. 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), states that Leader Standard Work should break down in this percentage for standard work:

Operator – 95% their time might be devoted to completing leader standard work
Team Leaders – 80%
Department Supervisors – 50%
Value Stream Managers – 25%
Executives – 10%

These numbers will differ according to the environment and whether it is production, office or development work but Leader Standard Work should be consciously designed to be layered from bottom up. The act is what produces results, not the thinking. There should even be a degree of redundancy between the layers to ensure accountability. This is where I believe that the problem starts developing.

Tracey Richardson wrote a blog post, You want a tangible action for your leaders trying to do Lean? Try this! GTS “squared” where she states that one of the fallacies of problem solving is the inability of Leaders to “Go See”. I find that true outside of the factory as well. Leaders seldom do the 10% or 25% of Standard Work required. They even will sit down in a meeting and go over the subordinate’s standard work and instruct him on how to improve without ever observing the process. Even more importantly that shared accountability through redundancy is seldom instituted.

In Lean Sales and Marketing, Standard Work will have a difficult time achieving 95%. In fact, most “front-line” Sales and Marketing workers will have responsibilities that clearly cannot be defined as Standard Work. Leader Standard Work may often only border around 50 to 80% or lower. I think immediately of the conversation I had with Joseph Michelli on Zappos company culture. Joseph’s latest book, The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW discusses the relationship of employee and customer experience as demonstrated in my blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?. Lean Sales and Marketing is first and foremost about the Customer Experience.

As we progress up through leaders, supervisors, etc., the percentage of Leader Standard Work should not drastically be reduced as it does in a manufacturing environment. It is the Servant Leadership role that must surface. Empowering the front line staff with the necessary resources to enable their actions to deliver an outstanding customer experience becomes Leadership’s primary function. The Leader Standard Work may actually become more standard as we move away from the main influencer and/or disruptor – the Customer.

Share this:

Categories : Lean Six Sigma, Sales

Comments (0)

Dec

Can the Lean Knowledge Worker cope with Leader Standard Work?

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can your Leader Standard Work pass the 3 C Test?

Share this:

Categories : Knowledge Management, Lean Six Sigma, Team Building

Comments (0)

Dec

Lean Sales and Marketing works because of Leader Standard Work

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

People struggle with Lean in sales and marketing because they don’t believe that many of the fundamental concepts of Lean, such as Standard Work can apply to the S & M discipline. If you review the slide shows under the Lean Engagement Team section on Slide Share, I think you will find how much they are based on standard work. Think about Leader standard work, it is intentionally designed to focus multiple layers of attention on the same process. For example:

The Team Leader’s Standard Work might including adding new call scripts into a follow-up campaign for a certain webinar or trade show. The team leader also heads a brief daily stand-up meeting with the team which is part of the regular agenda to ensure that appropriate action has been taken or initiated. The Team Coordinator should attend but not head the meeting.

The Team Coordinator might then work with the team to go over playback of scripts for training. He may bring in additional trainers as part of a weekly program to improve delivery. The TC ensures that program has been coordinated with other actions in the marketing communication department.

The Marketing Communication department sends follow-up emails, auto-responders and/or direct mail.

The Value Stream Manager might allocate budget for calling program and meet once a week to check progress and to lead a regularly-scheduled meeting with the TC, TL and MC to discuss the problems or opportunities.

It is this way that standard work is layered to ensure focus on the processes that produce the results. It is one of the most challenging aspect of the transition from a traditional results-only culture to a lean results-and-process-focused culture.

A quote from Dr. Michael Balle, “Lean is not a revolution; it is solve one thing and prove one thing.” Leader Standard work is the foundation of Lean Sales and Marketing and the fundamental process that replaces the "Silver Bullet" found in most typical marketing jargon.

What are your thoughts? Is your marketing efforts based on standard work?

Systems2win(who I work with) has an excellent description on the website, Leader Standard Work tool.and a new video out (below) that explains Standard Work.

Share this:

Categories : Lean Six Sigma, Marketing with Lean

Comments (0)

Dec

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

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pathway to creating a “Lean Culture”

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

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

Share this:

Categories : A3, Lean Six Sigma, PDCA

Comments (0)

Dec

Blog Carnival Annual Roundup 2011: Graham Hill at CustomerThink

Posted by: business901 | Comments (0)

Graham works in innovation, service design, value co-creation and private equity with DesignThinkers, Optima Partners, Loyalty Factory, and Nyras Capital. Graham was formally the head of CRM at Toyota Financial Services and can be found at the Customer Insider Blog on the Customer Think website. I am honored this year to be part of John Hunter’s Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Carnival and equally honored to introduce Graham to this audience.

For several years now, I have been developing concepts and practicing Lean Marketing in conjunction with Six Sigma, and the Theory of Constraints. Lean was always the guiding light but it was not till I started to get involved in Service-Dominant Logic, Service Design and Design Thinking that my thoughts crystallized. In fact, it strengthened and reinforced my Lean Thinking. Lean has developed as the architecture in software over disciplines such as Agile, Scrum and Kanban. Lean has similarly developed as my architecture for sales and marketing. Graham Hill did not start me down this path but he has certainly reinforced my thinking with his comments and articles he presents. I remember few doors that have been open such a vast amount of knowledge and learned experiences than Graham did when he used 3 tweets to say:

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

Another comment of Graham’s that reinforced my journey into Design Thinking and Service Design:

I was taught and used Toyota’s approach to lean, to improve all aspects of Toyota’s and its dealers’ customer-facing business. Toyota doesn’t see lean as a collection of tools (unlike many so-called lean experts), but rather as an organizational philosophy to engage the whole organization in creating more value together with customers. Toyota’s approach to lean is much closer to design thinking than you may think.

You can read the entire explanation on this blog post, Asking the right questions about Lean?

The real value that you derive from following Graham is his cutting edge thoughts and practices that he exhibits in his Customer Insider blog, such as:

Seven Simple Steps Towards Better Collaboration: In an earlier post on CustomerThink I described Ten Principles that Drive Effective Collaboration. And why just implementing collaboration technology would not improve collaboration. Worse, how it would make you into an ‘Expensive Old Organization’; with all the costs of the new technology, but none of the desired benefits. If simply implementing new technology isn’t the way to increase collaboration, what is? Fortunately getting started with collaboration is much easier than you might think. In fact, you are probably doing some of it already.

What’s Your Platform for Value Co-Creation?: A couple of years back I wrote a speculative blog post at CustomerThink entitled How Customer Co-Creation is the Future of Business. In many ways my prediction was right, Customer Co-Creation IS the future of business, but not exactly in the way I had imagined.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been with us for over 20 years. It is built around using customer analytics to improve marketing, sales and service touchpoints. And it works very well. Or at least it does for companies. But it doesn’t offer much of any value to their customers. And as a result, its effectiveness has started to fall.

Customer Experience Management (CExM) was created about 10 years ago as an antidote to the blatant one-sidedness of CRM. It still uses the same customer analytics, but it applies the insights generated to improve all the…

Social CRM: What’s Right, What’s Wrong, What’s Next? Inside Scoop with Graham Hill: CustomerThink Founder/CEO Bob Thompson interviewed Graham Hill in a discussion about Social CRM.

P.S. In the world of Social Media, I can think of few people that have a more engaged following especially from an individual that uses it to serve his purpose (not meant in a selfish manner) in lieu of having a social media presence. You can tweet him @grahamhill.

Share this: