Kaizen Event sounds a lot like a GE Workout

A shorten definition for Kaizen is continuous improvement and the Kaizen Event is a short-term team based activity that focuses on a localized continuous improvement effort. The team is very often a cross-functional team that will be brought together for a short period of time, typically 2 to 5 days. A Kaizen event can be Read More …

A Preview to Kaizen Week

This week the Business901 blog will center our theme on Kaizen, one of the most often used Lean words but practically ambiguity has set in on the term. Kaizen stands for Continuous improvement, the Kai to break apart, to change and the Zen to study or to improve. Recently, the Kaizen Event and/or Kaizen Blitz Read More …

Evaluating your Marketing Funnel, Only Seven Levers matter

In my Marketing Your Black Belt webinar, I have created several tools to measure your effectiveness and how to create a meaning full value stream in your marketing process. One of the resources that I used was an excellent book, Professional Services Marketing: How the Best Firms Build Premier Brands, Thriving Lead Generation Engines, and Read More …

Death of the Marketing Calendar – Part1

Marketing people talk about it all the time, and it must be from the days of buying so much print media, television and radio spots. I have marketing calendars and here is what I have figured out to do with them. Deskpad to take notes. Video on how to create one. Google calendar for my Read More …

Using FIFO for Marketing

I was doing a Value Stream Mapping project for a customer and as we were creating their marketing segments to create the map, we were having difficulty creating the typical Marketing Hourglass, (Marketing Funnel, Sales Pipeline) for this particular segment. We also wanted to remove some prospects in the middle of a segment. Some of Read More …

Lean Tools & Culture as it Relates to Zen

There’s been a big debate lately on tools and the thinking processes of lean.When you talk about a system, one of the first things that I think of is the tools that are used in the system. I use the tools to make sense out of a system, but I thought that Michael Balle author Read More …