This presentation is an overview on how to implement EDCA (Explore – Do – Check – Act) in the field of Lean Sales and Marketing. It includes an outline for standard work, an embedded video that discusses the book, This is Service Design Thinking: Basics – Tools – Cases and reference to another book, 
Related Information:
It’s not about the things we make, it’s how we use the things we make
Successful Lean teams are iTeams
Continuous Improvement Sales and Marketing Toolset
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing
Design and Customer Experience, incorporated in Service Design Thinking are not the future but already upon us as the new norm for being successful in business. These principles address the demand side of the equation. Examples being Amazon, Starbucks, Xerox and IBM to name a few high profile companies. As a side note these companies are also driven internally by continuous improvement.
Lean Thinking can lead the way using the external principles of Service Design. But the internal planning focus of many Lean Companies prevents that. Viewing PDCA as a way to identify the knowledge gaps that exist between the customer and your organizations and closing them is actually what Toyota has done in their supplier management programs (Use that as a template and think of yourself as the supplier). You move up the supply chain with your customer through cooperation, co-producing, co-creation. You create the demand with your customer and Lean (PDCA) is the best way to achieve this.
I wrote a blog post The Death OF PDCA (don’t take literally) where I thought the P prompted us to internalized planning versus using (CDSA) a C to promote the elements of the Co…. (mentioned above) and more of a CoCreate-Do-Study-Adjust.
In Europe, Toyota used EDCA (Explore), PDCA, SDCA in the CRM systems very successfully and the latest extension of that theory is embedded in Service Design Thinking or Service-Dominant Logic theories where the belief that value of your product/service is not obtained till it is put into use. When viewed from that vantage point, “Value in Use” it opens an entirely different view of your product/services and as a result “Demand.”
This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases
