Kata – Picking the Obstacle to Overcome

This particular video, Picking the Obstacle to Overcome was one of my favorite passages during this series. The 7-part video series with Brandon Brown on the Toyota Kata touched upon some of the finer points of the Toyota Kata versus staying at the 20,ooo foot level. Toyota Kata is documented in Mike Rother’s book Toyota Read More …

Sales Relations Card

Do you carry a card around with you as a reminder? For many years, like 20 or so, I carried around a card clipped out of the book “Yes” or “No”: The Guide to Better Decisions  by Spencer Johnson. for those that do not recognize the name he co-authored The One Minute Manager with Ken Read More …

Startup Training at Purdue

Juliana Casavan is a Training Manager at Purdue Foundry where she creates and facilitates workshops that concentrate on the first step of looking at a business and helping them identify their value proposition. Purdue Foundry is a hub to transform innovators into entrepreneurs. It is a place that Purdue faculty, staff and students find fast, effective ways Read More …

Structure of Lean in Sales

When Applying Lean to Sales and Marketing many companies try to use traditional approaches and use the typical segmentation strategy. I like to organize the Structure of Lean in sales through the path of SDCA, PDCA  and EDCA. This is a quick summary for part of a webinar, I did for Lean Frontiers the other Read More …

How Important is a Brand for a Startup?

Joe: Well, in a startup world, where you’re kind of always marketing towards customer development and product market fit and, we stay pretty focused in that. Is there an ‘Aha’ moment for a company or a time when we start shifting gears and start thinking about their brand? Laurel Mintz: I think that that’s a Read More …

Establishing the Target Condition

This 7-part video series with Brandon Brown on the Toyota Kata was a lot of fun for me. It allow me to discuss some of the finer points of the Toyota Kata versus staying at the 20,ooo foot level. This particular video, Establishing the Target Condition is an example of the depth that we explored Read More …