901 Blogs: December 2010

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The Lean Thinker on Value Enhancement

The guest on the Business901 podcast was Adam Zak (@leanthinker), founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Adam Zak Executive Search and an accomplished senior executive with more than 25 years of experience spanning the areas of management consulting; financial and operations management; and talent acquisition.

During the podcast I was able to ask questions on Customer Value, Value Proposition, and Value Streams, subjects that I am passionate about. Adam did not disappoint me as he challenged the status quo in the continuous improvement field bringing customer value to the forefront.

Adam has just co-authored a new book, Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation and it was the topic of the podcast. The book takes on difficult subjects outside of the normal Lean arena such as Pricing, Human Resources (Could,have guessed that!), Sales and Marketing, Supply Chain and others. I found the book entertaining and read it rather quickly. However, when finished I found myself thumbing back through certain sections and rereading parts of it. They chose a great title for the book. It reminded me of an Einstein quote: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” This one should be considered for your bookshelf. It is not a fiction book where you get to learn all the answers. It is a book that challenges your thinking through concrete examples with an emphasis on Customer Value. By the way, they allude to know quick fix and ask you to accept the challenge of a journey to excellence. However simple it may seem.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Lean thinker on Value Enhancement

This is a transcription of the Business901 podcast, The Lean Thinker on Value Enhancement (Lean) with Adam Zak (@leanthinker), founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Adam Zak Executive Search and an accomplished senior executive with more than 25 years of experience spanning the areas of management consulting; financial and operations management; and talent acquisition.

Lean Thinker on Value Enhancement eBook -

Adam has just co-authored a new book, Simple Excellence: Organizing and Aligning the Management Team in a Lean Transformation and it details the role of senior management in achieving a successful transformation to organizational excellence. ing the Management Team in a Lean Transformation charts a course of simplification through the complexity often associated with managing performance improvement initiatives.

Maintaining a focus on the big picture, the book explains what value streams are and how to use them to structure your business to align everyone with the things that matter most. It boils constraint management down to its practical terms and lays out a sound approach to accounting that enables everyone to spend money where it adds value and to stop spending money where it doesn't.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

10 Sample A3s by 5 contributors + me

I was honored to have these 5 people contribute A3s for the eBook, Marketing with A3. I had several of my own efforts but felt that I could not offer the variety needed. These contributions are real life examples (names and some data has been changed) that captures the essence of an A3; a small story along the path of continuous improvement. For an A3 example look at this sample A3 on marketing.

Dr. Eric Reidenbach is the Director of the Six Sigma Marketing Institute, a leading organization and authority of Six Sigma Marketing. Dr. Reidenbach has developed a number of unique approaches for measuring and managing value, the best leading indicator of market share growth. Dr. Reidenbach is the author of over 20 books on marketing and market research. Website: http://6sigmarketing.com email: eric@6sigmarketing.com

Mark Greenhouse is based in York (UK) and holds a Masters in Manufacturing Engineering and Management, as well as Marketing qualifications. His business, ResQ was developed in 2005 to take Lean Thinking outside of production functions and has worked with large blue chip organizations and smaller owner manager business across the UK on continuous improvement. Mark is a visiting lecturer on the Executive MBA at Nottingham University Business School and is also published in the Law Business Review.
Website: http://resqmr.co.uk email: mark.greenhouse@resqmr.co.uk

Daniel Matthews is an expert trainer with 30 years of training experience including Lean implementation and Training within Industry (TWI). He has spent fourteen of those years with the Toyota Company where he created and made use of the A3 as a core component of continuous quality improvement. Dan is the author of The A3 Workbook: Unlock Your Problem-Solving Mind and presently employed at the Kentucky Manufacturing Assistance Center. Website: http://kmac.org email: dmatthews@kmac.org

Derek Browning is a Lean Deployment Executive within LeanCor’s Deployment Team. This area of LeanCor executes the lean six sigma training and consulting operations. Team members create customized and effective lean six sigma/logistics and supply chain training programs for all LeanCor customers and coach LeanCor clients through their lean deployment initiatives. Website: http://leancor.com email: dbrowning@leancor.com

Tracey Richardson 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. Website: http://teachingleaninc.com email: tracey@teachingleaninc.com

Thanks Again!

10 Sample A3s by 5 contributors + me

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Are you an influencer?

The word of business is changing. Your typical hierarchy structured in an organization chart may still exist but the age of communication has really changed the work structure and who is influencing the way you do work and from a marketing perspective how your customer is influenced.

Learn the basic concepts of influencing through this video:

INFLUENCERS is a short documentary that explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment.
The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach. Written and Directed by Paul Rojanathara and Davis Johnson, the film is a Polaroid snapshot of New York influential creatives (advertising, design, fashion and entertainment) who are shaping today's pop culture.
"Influencers" belongs to the new generation of short films, webdocs, which combine the documentary style and the online experience.

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

For more information:
influencersfilm.com
facebook.com/influencersfilm

Good book on how to adjust to this new structure: Make Work Great: Super Charge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence One Person at a Time (A definitive guide for today’s multicultural, decentralized business environment)

Lean Marketing House & Marketing with A3, LTD Time offer

The Lean Marketing House is the big picture book, an overview of applying Lean to marketing where Marketing with A3 is more tactical. If you have interest in starting to look at your sales and marketing in a different way consider my offer: purchase the Lean Marketing House and you will receive Marketing with A3 free till the remainder of the 2010 year. This offer only applies if items are purchased from the Business901 website.

Lean Marketing House Overview:

When you first hear the terms Lean and Value Stream most of our minds think about
manufacturing processes and waste. Putting the words marketing behind both of them is neither creative nor effective. But the future of marketing may be closely related more to these terms than you may first think. Whether Marketing meets Lean under this name or another it will be very close to the Lean methodologies develop in software primarily under the Agile connotation.

This book is about bridging that gap. It may not bring all the pieces in place, but it is a starting point for creating true iterative marketing cycles based on Lean principles and more importantly Customer Value. It scares many. It is not about being in a cozy facility or going to Gemba on the factory floor. It is about starting with collaboration with your customer and not ending there. It is about creating Sales Teams that are made up of different departments, not other sales people. It is about using PDCA and A3s. It is about simply being Lean!

Marketing with A3 Overview:

Marketing with A3 starts you down a path of logical thinking and demonstrating results within the internal confines of your marketing. It forces you to Gemba to see the plans in action and as a result start identifying the external problems that you’re trying to solve for customers. It stops short in defining the solution for you. You have to take it to the next level. It is only made to create thought for you to solve your own problems, for you to create your own A3s.

It is a problem solving process that enables you to apply a systematic method to your marketing and sales. You will define your problems clearly; bring meaning to your data, to your actions and to your implementation. Though it seems simple, it forces you to ask tough questions. It forces you to condense your thoughts on to a single page – which is a focusing method in itself.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Is the War Room still useful?

The war room has been around forever and of course the original use was by generals. This enabled them to visualize the field of battle The most famous, War Room was made into a 1993 American documentary film made in 1993 about Bill Clinton's campaign for President of the United States in1992. Though still popular in the Agile Software Development where a Scrum Room and even more intimate, pair programming is still very much in vogue, However, I am finding it less and less popular in the marketing arena. Here is an upgraded War Room that I thought was pretty neat.

Now, this is a War Room!

I actually think the war room is essential in today’s marketing, even for an individual consultant. I actually have what I call a battle wall. Each of my client has their own spot or board which consist of mostly post it notes and a calendar for events. I move the post-it notes to my personal Kanban board located next to my desk on a weekly basis. I like to do many things virtually but I leave the customer drive that versus me trying to get them to try the latest and greatest product.

As we become more virtual, I think that the war room will certainly go online. At this time, ideas are still best nurtured at the coffee house, the bar, or other space that fosters collaboration. Creating that atmosphere is tough online for most. Many are still in a learning curve. There seems to be big gap in the use of technology between the geeks and the others. I am not really sure if that gap is closing or growing?

Is there online technology that can facilitate setting up a war room?

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Drucker and Deming on Lean Marketing

Peter Drucker moved management away from the the command and control theories of the past bringing the concept of setting objectives and allowing teams to work toward them to management practices.

In Lean Marketing practices, I advocated the use of Value Stream Mapping Process to identify:

Customer’s Decision Making Path
Sales and Marketing reaction to support that
Identify the Resources needed
Identify the People needed to deliver it

Once this is identified and organized you are well on your way in creating a great marketing system. Now, all you have do is put it into action. Granted a well-defined problem is half the work but how do you enact it and improve upon the process.

If you review the concept of the Lean Marketing House and the Value Stream Marketing Methodology that I discuss you will notice the Pillars of the house. They represent a particular value stream defined by a particular Customer Market. You could have one or fifty depending on your organization. Many people will relate this to a marketing funnel. This Value Stream is represented by three iterative spirals loops of Collaboration, Sales/Buying and Repeat/Upsell. These loops actually represent individual PDCA cycles.

From Wikpedia: A fundamental principle of the scientific method and PDCA is iteration—once a hypothesis is confirmed (or negated), executing the cycle again will extend the knowledge further. Repeating the PDCA cycle can bring us closer to the goal, usually a perfect operation and output

As the Customer/Prospect travels through their decision making process our marketing efforts are implemented in spirals of increasing knowledge of their process that converges on the ultimate goal – the correct solution for the customer. The spiral gets tighter as we progress. I like to think of it as an increase in cadence. Passing through from one spiral to the next is a result of the customer or better put our increase in knowledge about the customers problem and the match of our proposed solution. This handoff from one PDCA Cycle to the other is typically managed through a control point.

This entire Value Stream(VS) could be managed by one VS Team or it could be passed to another VS Team that manages only that cycle. It all depends on how you set up your organization. Viewing your Value Stream/Marketing Cycle in this manner creates endless opportunities for improvement. It is also much easier to handle the team concept of Sales and Marketing with a thought process of continuous improvement.

Deming said, “What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.”

P.S. These two giants Drucker and Deming practically existed on parallel paths. One seemed centered on bring improvement from the bottom to the top and the other on bringing improvement from the top down. I wonder if they ever met?

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Marketing with A3 Introduction

Most of our marketing centers on providing a solution for our customers. Everyone has a solution and just about all of them can be made to work for you, sound familiar! But is there anybody out there that can adequately define the problem? The definition of the problem is more important than the solution. We have always heard and most of us believe, “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” - Charles Kettering. It really is that simple. We must move our marketing and sales efforts from a solution-centric culture to a problem-centric culture. Sales and Marketing ultimate goal must be to become part of the problem defining culture of a customer or prospect.

Many organizations define their sales and marketing goals as a way of getting people to take actions to purchase their product or service. They are focused on selling the benefits of their product. Elaborate plans are designed to guide their action for today, tomorrow and in the future. This serves as a platform for their marketing goals. They might even send the goals through the SMART procedure to make sure that they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-specific. The problem with this is that it is mostly internally focused.

At the present time supply exceeds demand in most markets. Many companies are seeking new markets and extending their reach with a hope of more business. They focus on innovation in their own markets and/or adapting existing products to the new markets. These efforts seldom prove effective for the majority of us. Most of the time someone is already entrenched serving that need, new entrants just seems to drive prices down and reduce market share for all the players.

Marketing needs to be part of the problem solving process of their customers. What if your marketing processes seek to identify problems versus solution? What if you were seen as a diagnostic expert than a solution provider? What if you guaranteed to find the problem and collaborate on the solution? Would you build a more trusting and stronger relationship?

Marketing with A3 is my attempt to improve the problem solving process of Sales and Marketing. Using A3 in the marketing process will provide you a standard method of developing and creating your marketing programs. It will recap the thoughts, efforts, and actions that take place for a particular campaign, such as advertising or public relations or even a launch. An A3 can highlight the value that marketing supplies. You will learn how to format your A3 report in a way that most effectively communicates your story to your team and others.

The A3 tool provides a structure and a template for achieving this. A3 is a one- page document used to capture the dialogue in a problem solving process. Sending your marketing through such a process will enable you to create the clarity to areas such as CRM, Social Media, Joint Ventures, Client Retention, Client Acquisition, and more. It is a tool that can be used both strategically and tactically. It has developed in its own right to become a thinking process.

Stretch your thinking of using an A3. It stimulates thought creativity and when stretched allows many other interactions from others. Marketing with A3 is a new way of thinking; a whole new philosophy. To become truly proficient, you must go through a paradigm shift. You must build a Lean Problem Solving Culture into the way you create your marketing and think of your marketing. You have to move from solution centric to problem centric. You must develop strategies to focus on the right customer conversation – their problem?

P.S. The ebook, Marketing with A3 releases next week! If you purchase the Lean Marketing House eBook above, I will send you a copy of this book on the release date.

Couple of excellent Books on the subject of A3:
Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of Toyota’s PDCA Management System
Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management Process

Monday, December 20, 2010

Outside in Strategy– Value

I did a podcast with Christine Moorman, the co-author of the book (Amazon Link) Strategy from the Outside In: Profiting from Customer Value. As you know from browsing my site, I have a strong belief that Customer Value is not old hat. I think it is a pretty important item to have on your agenda. However, the way you and your organization look at it could possibly use a little tweaking and her book is a great way to start. For more information visit the McGrawhill Website: Strategy from the Outside In Website.

Excerpt From the McGrawHillPro You Tube Site:

We've spent years looking at these companies (and many less successful ones) searching for patterns and commonalities that explain their stellar results, and we've concluded that they offer these important lessons: * These companies approach strategy from the outside in. They begin with the market, not their own capabilities. While that may sound easy, it is incredibly difficult. In the vast majority of companies inside-out thinking dominates practice and inevitably leads to eroding customer value and company profits. * These companies invest in generating and deploying unique market insights to inform and guide their outside-in view. They don't guess or fly blind. * These companies focus every part of the organization on achieving, sustaining and profiting from customer value.

These actions are the major focus of our book because we find it's what really distinguishes market leaders from other companies that are just muddling through over the long-run. Market leaders stay focused on creating and profiting from customer value by excelling at four principles we call the customer value imperatives.

In Strategy from the Outside In, we explain that the key to lasting and highly profitable success is the ability to compete on and profit from customer value using the customer value imperatives. We show this means seeing, operating and living from the outside in. It means always building strategy on market insight, and ensuring that every part of the company puts customer value first.

We will take you from theory to practice, with an emphasis on real world stories, practical models, and usable metrics so that you can profit from customer value. From the outside in.

Lean thinking in Sales and Marketing

Corporations can no longer prosper in a system designed for excess supply. The simple fact is that supply exceeds demands in most cases. You must challenge yourself to think about business differently.

There are companies that have prospered during these times. Consider Wal-Mart, Toyota, Amazon, and Southwest Airlines. They have advanced where others have simply failed. It is simply not a matter of copying what they are doing. You can’t achieve excellence and move ahead of competition by copying. It is about learning and adapting quicker than your competition but not in your playing field but your customers.

My new book, Marketing with A3 does not solve 1 thing! In fact, it suggests that you only use a pencil and a piece of paper and a little collaboration. It will make you better at defining your problem in every aspect of your sale and marketing and as you develop your proficiencies internally, you will move that expertise into your customer playground.

Marketing with A3 starts you down a path of logical thinking and demonstrating results within the internal confines of your marketing. It forces you to Gemba to see the plans in action and as a result start identifying the external problems that you’re trying to solve for customers. It stops short in defining the solution for you. You have to take it to the next level. It is only made to create thought for you to solve your own problems, for you to create your own A3s.

It is a problem solving process that enables you to apply a systematic method to your marketing and sales. You will define your problems clearly; bring meaning to your data, to your actions and to your implementation. Though it seems simple, it forces you to ask tough questions. It forces you to condense your thoughts on to a single page – which is a focusing method in itself.

The Lean Marketing House is the big picture book, an overview of applying Lean to marketing where Marketing with A3 is more tactical. If you have interest in starting to look at your sales and marketing in a different way consider my offer: purchase the Lean Marketing House and you will receive Marketing with A3 free at the time of release. This offer will expire when Marketing with A3 is released.

An Overview of the Lean Marketing House

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Lean and Agile Stories eBook

This eBook is a transcription of the podcast, Stories of Lean and Agile with the Agile Sensei with Claudio Perrone, aka Agile Sensei. Our podcast was a collection of his thoughts on the use of Agile and Kanban and his work in the development of presentations such as Crafting your Storyboard and The Rise of the Lean Machine Storybook. Claudio has also developed a technique that we discussed in the podcast on how he crafts his presentations.

Lean and Agile Story eBook -

Claudio Perrone is an independent Lean & Agile software development consultant, public speaker and dramatic storytelling journeyman. Currently based in Dublin (Ireland), he offers vital transformational leadership and management experience to help individuals and organizations achieve phenomenal improvements. His current work on Lean Enterprise Architecture is set to enable tighter strategy alignment and collaboration between business and IT in service organizations.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Customer Value – Developing an Outside In Strategy

This is a transcription of the Business901 podcast, Outside in Strategy– Customer Value with Christine Moorman. She is the co-author of the book (Amazon Link) Strategy from the Outside In: Profiting from Customer Value.

Outside in Strategy– Customer Value ebook -

Excerpt from the transcription:

The other point is the fact that we try to make clear, which is I know something really important to executives is that the world just keeps changing from underneath you that you have this position of value. And as soon as the competitor comes in, they teach the consumer something new and their perception of what's valuable or not valuable starts the shift. Maybe also that competitor takes the position that's more attractive on that particular value than you've been able to achieve.

So, it's a case in managing this position of customer value leadership that is really being very vigilant, staying in touch with what's going on in the market, what are competitors doing. More importantly, how customers see those competitors and what they're doing. Do they see them as taking that position that's greater than yours?

That's a very important aspect of this outside‑in mentality, and profiting from customer value that a lot of companies aren't willing to do over time, to really take seriously that we are going to have to monitor the market, monitor what customers are thinking on a continuous basis, and find a way that makes sense of that so that we know how to move at which direction, at what time, in response to what's happening out there.

Christine Moorman is the T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor and founder of The CMO Survey at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Professor Moorman is the author of over 60 journal articles, reports, and conference proceedings.

Storyboarding for Business

I have always enjoyed the process of creating a storyboard and felt that they should be included early and during the process versus just as a summary at the end of a summary. If you observe the way people read or listen to things you realize that there aren't many of us with a linear attention span. Visual information is much more interesting than verbal information. So if you want to make a point, do it with images, pictures and graphics. And what better way to learn than through a storyboard.

A plug for the Business901 Podcast next week: My guest will be Cladio Perrone aka the AgileSensei. He is a great story-boarder in his own right and author of The Rise of the Lean Machine Storybook.

This is an example of how movie-makers use storyboarding in their planning to ensure that their final product is the best it can be for its audience. Business analysts can learn a lot from this tool. It's a great way of communicating the intent of systems in a storytelling fashion, so that workflow and process can be accurately captured.

Monday, December 13, 2010

How does your State of Mind alter your Decisions?

Dr. Reldan, "Relly," Nadler was my guest on the Business901 Podcast. Our talked centered on leadership and developing the state of mind for making effective decisions. It is interesting what I learned about our mental models and as a result our everyday decisions.

Dr. Nadler is a leading psychologist and Executive Coach focusing on developing and providing cutting edge Emotional Intelligence tools and strategies for CEO's, Executives, leaders, managers and their organizations and teams. His company, True North Leadership, recognizes and addresses the challenges leaders face today:

Problems:

The USA lost 8.4 million jobs from 2007 to 2009.
40% of the American workforce will be eligible for retirement in 2010. Leaders have to contend with a projected shortfall of 10 million workers in the next few years.
The Baby Boomer generation that is retiring has a higher Emotional Intelligence than Generation X and Y people who are coming into leadership positions. This is due to their time utilizing technology rather than face-to-face interaction with others.
Developing leadership bench strength has been a priority for organizations for the last 4 years.

His newest book, Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On Strategies for Building Confident and Collaborative Star Performers' target=_blank>Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Hands-On Strategies for Building Confident and Collaborative Star Performers' target=_blank>Leading with Emotional Intelligence, gives hands-on solutions to these problems and more. After working with over 15,000 leaders over 30 years, Dr. Nadler has distilled some of his best advice and tips. After Daniel Goleman sold 5 million copies of Emotional Intelligence, readers and leaders have been looking for hard-hitting ways to raise their Emotional Intelligence and the people they lead.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Create a Great Workplace

Ed Muzio, president and CEO of Group Harmonics was my guest on the Business901 Podcast and we had a great discussion on how to make Make Work Great: Super Charge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture, and Gain Influence One Person at a Time. He is a leader in the application of analytical models to group effectiveness and individual enjoyment. This is a must listen for Kaizen Leaders and participants. Great tips and tools that can be instantly implemented. I was very impressed on his ease of explanation and mastery of the subject.

Ed is also the author of the award-winning book Four Secrets to Liking Your Work: You May Not Need to Quit to Get the Job You Want (FT Press, 2008).

Originally trained as an engineer, Ed has started organizations large and small, led global initiatives in technology development and employee recruitment, and published articles and refereed papers ranging from manufacturing strategy to the relationships between individual skills and output.

Ed's analytical approach to human productivity has been featured in national and international media, including CBS, Fox Business News and The New York Post; he is a regular guest on CBS Interactive. With clients ranging from individual life coaches to the Fortune 500, he serves as an advisor and educator to professionals at all levels, all over the world. Prior to founding Group Harmonics, Ed was President and Executive Director of a human services organization, and a leader, mentor, and technologist within Intel Corporation and the Sematech consortium.

A Cornell University graduate, Ed's accomplishments include the creation and stewardship of a worldwide manufacturing infrastructure program, a nationally-recognized engineering development organization, and a non-profit organization providing residential services to at-risk youth in his home town of Albuquerque, NM.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

How to have a 22–minute Meeting

Great 5 minute video – Lots of fun! Found it via @MindEdgeOnline on Twitter.

Meetings can be a huge productivity & time suck. So what if you took out all of the stupid, wasteful stuff and left only the useful parts? Nicole Steinbok explains how to do just that in 9 easy steps.

The Poster for the 22 Minute Meeting
Website: http://22minutemeeting.info

901 Blogs

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The Lean Thinker on Value Enhancement

Monday, December 27, 2010

Lean thinker on Value Enhancement

Sunday, December 26, 2010

10 Sample A3s by 5 contributors + me

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Are you an influencer?

Lean Marketing House & Marketing with A3, LTD Time offer

Friday, December 24, 2010

Is the War Room still useful?

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Drucker and Deming on Lean Marketing

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Marketing with A3 Introduction

Monday, December 20, 2010

Outside in Strategy– Value

Lean thinking in Sales and Marketing

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Lean and Agile Stories eBook

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Customer Value – Developing an Outside In Strategy

Storyboarding for Business

Monday, December 13, 2010

How does your State of Mind alter your Decisions?

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Create a Great Workplace

Thursday, December 9, 2010

How to have a 22–minute Meeting

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