Little Bets – The Way to take an Affordable Risk

Start Small, Iterate a lot, Scale – that’s the advice from Peter Sims, the author of the new book Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. When reading the book, you can’t help but think about Eric Ries of The Lean Startup fame. Eric characterizes his Little Bets with the description of the Read More …

Does Success Always Start with Failure?

This book had an impact on me this week and needless to say, I recommend it. In my first reading, it was not the main message of the book that sparked my interest. It was the parallel path it runs with PDCA and the importance of sampling or pilot programs that so many of us Read More …

There is no Team in Kaizen

The Friday Video Series continues with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute. The next series of videos has a central theme of Kaizen. Dr. Balle starts out the program with a statement that floored me, Kaizen is profoundly individualistic. Dr. Balle is a multiple Shingo Prize winner as an author Read More …

Improve your Sales Cycle, Work on your Feedback Loops

When I start talking about speeding up the sales cycle the initial reaction is that the sales cycle is controlled by the customer and there is just not much we can do about that. I usually counter with, most companies understand that there is an average sales cycle time and if we just agree that Read More …

The Little PDCA Sales Loop

The fundamental goals of your sales cycle should be one of discovery, learning and adaptability with a shared responsibility for a successful outcome. That implies that it is all about engaging both organizations into effective problem solving and learning. In applying this, think of the sales cycle in terms of a series of iterative loops Read More …

Can there be a marriage between ISO and Lean?

On the Business901 podcast, Lindsay Jackson Nichols discussed the business benefits of ISO Certification and how it can be used in conjunction with continuous improvement. Lindsay is the CEO of MOCG, a management consulting firm specializing in implementing process improvement and ISO based management systems. When you first think about, you may think that Quality Read More …