No Steve, Jack or Bill, just The Caterpillar Way

How many companies get Leadership right? Do you always have to have that charismatic leader that makes us think about them before the company? Tomorrow’s podcast is with Craig Bouchard, author of the book, The Caterpillar Way: Lessons in Leadership, Growth, and Shareholder Value. If you know my legacy a bit, you understand the high degree of interest.

An excerpt from the podcast:

Joe: What struck me about the book more than anything else is that there was not a Jack Welch, a Steve Jobs, or a Bill Gates. It was a credit to the entire Cat organization. Was that true? Is that how Cat is?

Craig Bouchard:  I really confess. It's incredibly true. I've been the CEO for a couple of companies. I'm the CEO of Signature Group, a public company right now, in a great company. But in the case of Caterpillar, I've never seen such a large group of people so thoroughly dedicated in increasing their revenues and decreasing their expenses as a team - which is kind of simple - but what I'm trying to say is that it's rare in real experience. That company is really - everybody is on the same page and that's a management feat of course that they've accomplished that.

Joe: Yes it's a huge management feat but not to have that person out there waving the flag just amazes me.

Craig:  Yes and when I look at Cat is and the most remarkable thing going back to the 80's. They had basically six incredibly large complicated decisions to change the company during this past thirty years. Six times, they turned the entire place upside-down strategically requiring such a flexibility of their management and their workforce - it's just really remarkable and each one of those decisions could have turned into a disaster and each one like them have turned into disaster for other companies, and Caterpillar went six-for-six. Basically with four different Chief Executive Officers through that time period responsible for those six decisions. Not only did they go six-for-six in decisions, they managed to get it right who was the right person to implement and come up with an implementation for each of them. This kind of a record is almost unheard of in terms of these types of gigantic decisions were implemented.

Joe: Did the CEOs get picked based on the needed initiative, or because they were good at, or did it happen because they were at that?

Craig:  We talked about that a little bit in the book. How much of it is luck and how much of it is that the board of directors, they had at the time, picked the right guy for the right job in the challenges that existed at that time. Between Donald Fites, Glen Barton, James Owen, Doug Oberhelman and George Schaefer before, these five guys are very different people with different skill sets. In whatever way that it was accomplished with the board of directors at Caterpillar and its succession planning is a very determined and thorough process in the company. To put in place the right person at the right time in those challenges during those thirty years and my conclusion because they got it right five times in a row - it is not luck.

About Craig Brouchard ( http://www.craigbouchard.com): Entrepreneur, writer, art collector, great father and pretty good husband. Crafted the first and only "hostile reverse tender merger" ever successfully completed on Wall St and founded two public companies; Esmark and Shale-Inland.

• 2013 - Founded Cambelle-Inland, named for my daughter Cambelle
• 2010 - Founded Shale-Inland, named for my daughter Shale, now public in the bond markets (A3)
• 2003 - Founded Esmark Inc., the highest appreciating stock on Nasdaq for the full year 2008

Improving Interactions through the Lean Value Chain

Making products fly involves more than just the development team. So how do we involve, interact and improve with the non software parts of the value chain? Let Mattias Skarin walk through lean techniques and thinking that helps drive improvements across organizational borders.  Mattius is one of thought leaders of the Kanban Movement and is speaking at the upcoming Lean Kanban Central Europe Conference (It is in Hamburg, Germany, Nov 4-5, 2013). He is speaking about: Improving the full value chain & Visualization – What‘s my brain got to do with it? (Lightning Talk)

Mattias Skarin works as a Lean and Kanban coach, building systems that enables you to cut time to market and improve quality. He has helped several software teams deliver with confidence, scaled Scrum over multiple teams (cutting game cycle time from 24 months to 4) and improved life at operations using Kanban. He is an author of the book, Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both, and regularly train and coach in Lean, Kanban and TDD. He blogs on http://blog.crisp.se/mattiasskarin and the blog has one of the best set of sample Kanban boards on the planet.

 

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Lean Sales and Marketing: Learn about using CAP-Do

Our Decisions Need to be Co-created

When we approach sales we typically think of how we will address the customer’s problem. What needs we need to address and how we will do this in an engaging way? We are in The Experience Economy says authors Pine and Gilmore. Though many of us dwell on the Experience Economy, I think we are moving past that at an accelerated rate. This movement has its foundation in Service Dominant Logic, where the fundamental belief is that value is co-created with customers. The value is in the use of the product or service. This type of thinking is awkward to many organizations. In my latest book CAP-Do: Connecting Demand to the Lean Supply Chain, I begin the journey discussing sales and marketing from a perspective of being systemic, emergent, and participatory.

My latest thinking has been a result of spending time with stakeholder and customer journey maps and building user personas. These processes have assisted me moving from inside-out thinking to an outside –in perspective. It also helped my clients build better customer experiences. What I realized working with customers was that many of common problems they encountered became rather standard to deal with and many even automated. When we addressed sales issues we found a striking number as either straight-forward or responding to “opportunities” we had little chance of winning. If you would like more information on my sales perspective, read the blog post, Lean Salespeople are Challengers, not Problem Solvers.

The world of sales is on the edge of a collaborative way of selling. We no longer can just sell to a customer; we have to understand our customers’ business and our customers’ customer’s business. This can be done through scenario planning and from a perspective of being systemic, emergent, and participatory or The Cap-Do process.

From the book ' target=_blank>' target=_blank>' target=_blank>' target=_blank>Solving Tough Problems, author Adam Kahane classifies problems. His definitions: 

• A problem has low dynamic complexity if cause and effect are close together in space and time.
• A problem has high dynamic complexity if cause and effect are far apart in space and time.

 

• A problem has low generative complexity if its future is familiar and predictable.
• A problem has high generative complexity if its future is unfamiliar and unpredictable.

 

• A problem has low social complexity if the people who are part of the problem have common assumptions, values, rationales, and objectives.
• A problem has high social complexity if the people involved look at things differently.

When any of the problems exist that are coded in red, they are fairly simple problems to address and most organizations know the answers and their preferred vendors. They may make a decision with preferred vendors or research other vendors just to confirm their decision (The dreaded request for proposal we often receive).

The other set of problems, not in red, we struggle with as organizations. They are often described as messy or wicked problems.  The latest inbound marketing programs that are “social” in nature fail to deliver. They are simply built from our old thinking of a marketing funnel, responders, and workflows. We guide and manipulate the customer down some arbitrary path to arrive at the correct (our) decision.

As Kahane says,

Simple problems, with low complexity, can be solved perfectly well—efficiency and effectively—using processes that are piecemeal, backward looking, and authoritarian. By contrast, highly complex problems can only be solved using processes that are systemic, emergent, and participatory.

We as an organization do not have solutions to problems of high generative complexity. They cannot be calculated in advance, in a journey map, based on our past thinking, but have to be worked out as the situation unfolds. Seldom are they miraculously worked out by “single experts” but rather by a team of highly involved people. A coalition or a team made up of customer(s) and vendor(s)  must accept the fact that there is not one right answer. It must emerge from doing or working towards the problem. Just as value is co-created in use our decisions need to be co-created.

We always equated the experience economy to a theater with actors being the customer facing people, the back stage the supporting cast and the audience the customer. I think that is a broken metaphor. A better metaphor may be a race team where the product/service is the car, and the driver (customer) is using it. The pit crew (vendor) is in constant communication and in support of its use. There is no backstage, we are completely transparent and, in fact, the customer’s own support might be part of the pit crew.

Do you have an analogy that might work?

Stop Looking for Mister Right

They simply don’t exist. I see people building Persona after Persona targeting that Ideal Customer. The problem that exists is that ideal customers are few and far between. In a recent blog post, A Persona Board deserves a Place at the Table, I described creating User Personas from your existing customers and then grouping them into quadrants based on product/market fit or relationships. The purpose of this is not so much to learn about customers as it is to learn about yourself and your core capabilities.

A fun exercise once you have created customer (user) personas, you can segment them according to how they fit in the quadrants mentioned in the above post. Then start asking these questions and others you may think of.. 

Relationship Customers:

1. Which customers buy from you because they dislike the relationship they have with your competitor?
2. Which customers buy from you because they like the relationship they have with you?

Product/Service (I will only use Product going forward) Customers:

1. Which customers buy from you because you have a better value proposition (price/function) than your competitor?

Relationship Prospects:

1. Which prospects buy from your competitor because they like the relationship they have with your competitor?
2. Which prospects buy from your competitor because they dislike the relationship they have with you?

Product Prospects:

1. Which prospects buy from your competitor because your competitor has a better value proposition (price/function) than you?

Marketing is in the business of creating customers. If we want to create a customer, we must take a divergent view versus a convergent view. Most marketing schemes, funnels and all that stuff are great at telling you how to manipulate a customer through the process to create a buyer, but few of them tell you how to create targeted prospects. A simple process is to use existing Customer Personas and create Prospect/Competitor Personas based on Relationship or Product groups.

When we look at the existing differences, we start identifying key points that we can address to gain access to others. In the Lean world, we call these opportunities gaps. We identify these gaps, and create different scenarios on how to close the existing gaps. We seek to understand why prospects may or may not move towards a target.

When viewing this from a structural tension metaphor, we will notice resistance as we try to coerce the customer towards the new target or condition. See my blog post, A New Approach to Lean with Robert Fritz.. We will oscillate between these two positions unless we can find common agreement of purpose. I like using the Theory of Constraints Evaporating Cloud (How to See the Other Side of a Conversation) as the way to resolve the difference. If we can find an overall purpose that will become a shared understanding – it resolves the conflict, it creates an opportunity for us to give an opportunity for prospects to move from one particular state to a different (closer to our thinking) state. It is the shared understanding that must exist to create the change in state.

SD-Logic way to Partnerships

When I first started in consulting, I spent a lot of time going to network meetings in town. It was the thing to do at the time. What I came to realize is that everyone had a product/service for my customer. Few of my services fit their companies. So, what happened is that I had two choices. One, spend a lot of time selling someone else’s product/service with little return for myself. Two, stop going to network meetings and go find a customer. 

This is not meant as a slam on the other networkers. It is even common in the business world. We always see opportunities in how we can partner with others. Mostly on how they need our product/service. They are weak in the area we excel in. The reason most of the time it is not that they are weak or lack expertise; it is more about the energy they are willing to spend on that portion of their business. First, they have not found it profitable or second, they have not found enough demand for developing it.

We view other product/services as not competitive products, but complementary products. I always think that is BS - We are competing for not only the same wallet, but more importantly the time or resources to implement the process. Whoever has the greatest burning platform,and the easiest to implement is usually the winner. If you are depending on your new partners, to sell it for you, you may be mistaken. The time and energy will be spent on their product/service. In this case, few of your products/services are sold and market is a t best minimal or about the same amount you could have created yourself.

If we cannot lead our new partners into acquiring more customers (not retention and up-selling) with fewer headaches; we may not be a good match. I believe the power has to come from acquiring new market-share based on the new synergies. If it only about add-on sells, the efforts are typically very minimal. And with that said, I have not even discussed pricing strategies and how they have to fit in.

Many will say that I may have too many negative thoughts about this. However, I think on a larger scale it is why so many acquisitions struggle for success. Matches are difficult for small companies and large companies. I have found that the correct fit evolves more so than is created. We need the market to drive the synergy not try to create it. Look for partners that you find yourself having a coffee together at a customers. Find them in places where your product/service is being used. In this manner, the customer or market has created the synergy. I liken this to using Service Dominant Logic thinking. Your thoughts?  

Boundaries of Kanban

Markus Andrezak is speaking at the upcoming Lean Kanban Central Europe Conference (It is Hamburg, Germany, Nov 4-5, 2013) about Boundaries of Kanban - Disruptive Innovation. An overview of Markus’s talk sums up our conversation in the podcast quite well.

Lean Kanban Central Europe Conference: Kanban is fantastic in the support the flow of product development and self improvement of teams in that area. However, at each time the process defined through Kanban poses an impediment to work in the creative field. While Kanban may very well fit to work in the domains of product maintenance and iterative, feature by feature innovation, it does not support evolutionary or disruptive innovation. These types of innovation dip slightly or even more into chaos and are completely non linear processes which simply do not fit the Kanban board and process. The talk will show how to protect innovation from delivery and how to create the necessary level of communication between these areas w/o creating silos.

An excerpt from the podcast:

Joe: I've struggled when I’ve applied Kanban to sales and marketing because it is similar thinking, it is very non-linear. The way I view it is that it's not this linear progression as much as it’s an iterative circle within a certain column. That group could be always there until they come out of the loop somewhere. They could either go backwards or forward. Is that similar type thinking to what you have done or do you have a better way?

Markus: I think it's very interesting what you said because I had this discussion last week with the great guys of TLC Lab in New York, Jabe and Simon Marcus. They came up with the similar idea because they tried to use Kanban in the way that you described it.

What I said to them is that you can put that work on the Kanban board and put a container around it and just ignore that it’s on the Kanban board. What will still happen is that people will look at the container that’s protecting this design work from the production constraints so to speak and somehow feel like it has been a stranger on the board. Now you could have a very great company culture and everybody will tolerate that stuff on the Kanban board. On the other hand, if it's on the Kanban board the Kanban system should be helpful of this work otherwise you would not put it on the Kanban board.

Again, this process is completely non-linear and going on and on as you say, my question would be of what help word Kanban be for the designers and I think of no help. If you look at what's going on in the gaming industry, how they’re coming up with new ideas for the games is in very small prototyping teams which are not working in any method. Maybe Design Thinking or maybe Design Studios, but they’re not working on any development-like or production-like methodologies. Rather what they do is something which Toyota might call set base design, so highly parallel work in very small teams to come up with lots of new ideas for a similar problem. I think this is good but you can't organize it on a Kanban, at least not that it would help so you could do Kanban but I think it would be of no help for anybody.

About Markus: Markus Andrezak has been active in different contexts as Product and Development Manager for high traffic and high revenue web sites. During the last years his main focus has been transitions towards Lean and Kanban product management and development practices across his portfolio. With Arne Roock, he also co-authored 'Replenishment', a free eBook on Kanban. His Blog: Portagile and Twitter: @markusandrezak. You can find more information at his company website: http://ueberproduct.de/en/.

Lean Service Design Slidedeck

At the ASQ 2013 Service Conference, this week, I had the honor of giving a sixty-minute presentation on Lean Service Design. All the participants of my presentation received a CD that contained my Lean Service Design Program. This is the slidedeck from the presentation.

Lean Service Design Presentation at ASQ Service Quality Conference from Business901

I also introduced CAP-Do (More Info) to the audience. CAP-Do is a systematic way to address the problems (pain) or opportunities (gain) from the use of our products and services.

Purchase the Lean Service Design Program!

Or, purchase the 130 page PDF for download, Lean Service Design

Kanban Thinking with Andrezak

@markusandrezak aka Markus Andrezak has been active in different contexts as Product and Development Manager for high traffic and high revenue web sites. During the last years his main focus has been transitions towards Lean and Kanban product management and development practices across his portfolio. With Arne Roock, he co-authored ‘Replenishment’, a free eBook on Kanban. His Blog: Portagile and Twitter: @markusandrezak. You can find more information at his company website: http://ueberproduct.de/en/.

Markus is one of thought leaders of the Kanban Movement and is  speaking at the upcoming Lean Kanban Central Europe Conference (It is in Hamburg, Germany, Nov 4-5, 2013) about Boundaries of Kanban – Disruptive Innovation.

A written excerpt  from our conversation was posted last week, Boundaries of Kanban in Sales and Marketing.

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The Starbucks Way of Connecting with Customers

It is a lesson in strategic marketing that few books meant for that purpose can even come close. After reading, most of Joseph Michelli’s books, and doing a podcast with him several years ago, I concluded after reading Joe’s latest book, Leading the Starbucks Way: 5 Principles for Connecting with Your Customers, Your Products and Your People, that it is his best work to date.

From the forward of the book:

Each of Dr. Joseph Michelli's books offers a learning laboratory that's rich with examples from leaders as they address the aforementioned challenges and opportunities. They provide information, insights, and analysis on how leaders seek to create a high-performance organization that operates through the lens of humanity. This book demonstrates both the setbacks and the breakthroughs that the Starbucks leadership has encountered as it has attempted to position its products and people to deliver consistent, engaging, and loyalty-enhancing experiences.

Herve Humler
President and Chief Operations Officer
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C.

I have another compliment for Joe. There may not be a better interviewee that can make an interviewer feel that good about himself. At times, I had to remind myself who the “star” was. – My hat goes off to Dr. Joseph Michelli. 

P.S. When you find out Joe’s next book subject, you will be anticipating the arrival for the next two years.

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Using Scenarios for Current Applications

This video does an excellent job of explaining Scenario Planning. The most common application of is for futuristic thinking and considering the different scenarios that may play out. In the video, it will comment on how this method is used in lieu of forecasting or maybe even when Predictive analytics, no longer work (Podcast,  The Power to Predict Who will...).

When you view this video take a different approach. Instead of looking at the limiting perspective of Scenario Planning for the future view it from a perspective of building Customer Scenarios along the Customer Journey. Instead of assuming a customer was going to react a certain way, we match them to the Scenarios that may happen as a result of being in this position.

 

If we view the Customer’s Journey as a Scenario Journey does that cause a different reaction? Would that help us to seek to understand first?

Lean Service Design Presentation at ASQ

I have the pleasure of participating in the conference and will be giving a sixty-minute presentation on Lean Service Design. My presentation will be building offering a unique perspective on applying Lean to the Service Design Field. All participants of my presentation will receive a CD that contains:

• 130 Page PDF eBook
• PDF & Excel work forms
• Training Videos
• Bonus eBooks and Audio Tracks

My discussion will begin with a discussion on Service Dominant Logic and go through the use of Stakeholder and Customer Journey Maps and Buyer Personas. We will use these 3 outlines to develop several service prototypes narrowing it done to a single choice. The Lean Process of moving from EDCA to PDCA to SDCA will be discussed in conjunction with the before mentioned processes. The last part of the hour I will introduce CAP-Do and the use (sorry for the pun) of User Personas and Scenarios creating a process that I call Persona Mapping.   

This ASQ 2013 Service Conference provides how-to’s, step-by-step advice, and the latest in service delivery methods and networking opportunities. Speakers will engage you on topics to help organizations improve customer service, reduce costs, and build both customer loyalty and satisfaction. Join us in Las Vegas for two days of networking and discovery.

22nd Annual Service Quality Conference
October 7–8, 2013 • Las Vegas, NV
THEME: Seizing the Competitive Advantage with Service Quality

REGISTER: Program details are now listed on the site. To or get more information, visit asq.org/sqd or call 800-248-1946. If you are from outside of the United States of Canada, please call +1-414-272-8575.

A Simple but Effective Communication Model

The Process Communication Model (PCM) was developed by Dr. Taibi Kahler and Judy and Joe Pauley have been teaching and implementing this model for over twenty years. I enjoy the simplicity of PCM and the fact that it has been used over such a wide spectrum. Judy and Joe Pauley have written books demonstrating the use of it in:

• Teaching; Here's How to Reach Me: Matching Instruction to Personality Types in Your Classroom
• Healthcare: Establishing A Culture of Patient Safety: Improving Communication, Building Relationships, and Using Quality Tools
• Leadership: Communication: The Key to Effective Leadership

They have written more books by the way and their website for more information is Kahler Communication.

At the ASQ 2013 Service Conference, The Pauleys will be presenting Seizing the Competitive Advantage with Service Quality on Monday, October 7, 2013 at 2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Participants in this fun filled session will learn how to apply the concepts of Dr. Taibi Kahler’s Process Communication Model with their clients in building a positive relationship with each individual with whom they interact while providing quality service, thereby seizing the competitive advantage and building for the future. On Tuesday afternoon, I have the honor to be presenting at the same conference, Session T06: Lean Service Design

An excerpt from next week’s podcast:

Joe D.: You are one of the top rated presenters at ASQ. Can you tie all this back into quality? Can we rate conversations by the quality of them?

Judy: When we want people to hear what we have to say it certainly helps to speak to them in the way they prefer to be spoken to, and that’s the bottom line. Knowing what each personality type is knowing what the personality type of the person you’re communicating with is, and using their favorite “language.” If everybody speaks English, there are six different versions of English and six different ways of communicating the same thoughts and ideas. We talk about how we perceive the world through thoughts, opinions, feelings, reflection, reaction and action. Those are the basis of the six different personality types and we have all six in us, but some of them are more developed than others and those are the ones we respond to most readily.

Joe D: I’m a sales and marketing guy so when I look at it, I think this has some great value to a sales guy. What I just took from what you said is that I should be really trying to understand how that person communicates before I start trying to communicate. How they look at the world and how best to reach or communicate with them.

Joseph P.: That’s a great observation, you’re absolutely right that is what it’s all about. As a matter of fact, we have a sales course where people get to practice individualizing their approach based on the person that they are interacting with, and each of those six types that we mentioned buys for a different reason. We give the salespeople knowledge of what that motivation is going to be before they ever go in so that they can plan their approach, make the approach, you asked about PDSA, study the results and analyze them and then make any changes that they have to make to be successful. We do the same for managers, for leaders, and for everyone who has to talk to another person.

The Six Personality Types of the Process Communication Model identified by Dr. Kahler are; Reactor, Workaholic, Persister, Dreamer, Rebel,  and Promoter.   

Of the six traits, which one do you think is the most popular?
Answer is below the bios.

Judith Ann Pauley, PhD, is the CEO of Process Communications Inc., an international management communications training and development company.  She also is an Adjunct professor in the graduate education departments of 7 universities from New Hampshire to California, including the Education Leadership Program at George Mason University in Virginia and the Education Department at California State University San Marcos.

Joseph F. Pauley is the President and COO of Kahler Communications (Washington, D.C.) and is an Adjunct professor at the same universities as Judith Ann.   Mr. Pauley served in a variety of   leadership positions in the navy during the Korean War.  After his naval service, he had a very successful 34-year leadership career with the U.S. government.  Twenty-one of those years he and his wife lived in Asia where he became an authority on managing, communicating with, and motivating people from other cultures.

The answer is the Reactor.

Lean Service Design Program

Lean Service Design changes the way you think about business. No longer can companies focus their efforts on process improvements. Instead, they must engage the customer in use of their product/service rather than analyzing tasks for improvement. We no longer build and hope that there is a demand. We must create demand through the services that we offer and Lean Service Design is the enabler of this process. It changes our mindset of thinking about design at the end of the supply chain to make it look good and add a few appealing features. Instead, it moves design and the user themselves to co-create or co-produce the desired experience to the beginning of the supply chain.

The umbrella of Lean offers Service Design a method of entry into a well-established market. Lean has been very successful in Services and Design through traditional practices. However, we must move away from these traditions and institute a wider scope of Design to Services. This download contains a 130-page PDF book, workbook with forms, PDFs and training videos.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 – Lean (SDCA)
• Chapter 2 – Service (PDCA)
• Chapter 3 – Design (EDCA)
• Chapter 4 – Trilogy

In addition, for a limited time, I have included 2 popular eBooks from the Marketing with Lean Series:

1. Lean Engagement Team (More Info): The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible.
2. CAP-Do (More Info): What makes CAP-Do so attractive is that it assumes we do not have the answers. It allows us to create a systematic way to address the problems (pain) or opportunities (gain) from the use of our products and services.

But wait, you can get a CD with this same content free if you attend my presentation at the 22nd Annual Service Quality Conference, October 7–8, 2013 in Las Vegas, NV. The theme of the conference is 
Seizing the Competitive Advantage with Service Quality. REGISTER: Program details are now listed on the site. To or get more information, visit asq.org/sqd or call 800-248-1946. If you are from outside of the United States of Canada, please call +1-414-272-8575. Look forward seeing you in Las Vegas! Or, purchase the Lean Service Design Program!

Purchase the 130 page PDF for download, Lean Service Design  at a special price for the next 4 four days.

Mindfulness for Sales?

I have this on and off relationship with Meditation, NLP and Yoga through the years. An extension of this is the practice of visualization. Many of us will consider this for sports and have at one time practiced the technique of visualizing our next golf shot from behind the ball. Of course, we can argue the success of this technique for ourselves, but most professionals do practice the technique.

If it works for sports, why would it not work for sales? Would it be a crazy practice to sit in the car and just visualize the outcome of the sales call? Would it help rehearsing the problems that may be encountered or the people you might see during the call? There is an easier and more beneficial practice that could occur. It is the act of mindfulness or unloading. If we just take a break to rid ourselves of everything going on around us and participate in the presence – would that make us more effective?

When is the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking? Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that: Refreshing your mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment. (No need for incense or sitting in strange positions.)

Jose Silva is the person that may be best known for bringing meditation to the western culture or at least North America. He also is one of the few that has taken this type of material and applied to the sales arena. His book, Sales Power the Silva Mind Method for Sales Professionals, provides an outline for the process. It is somewhat dated material but I do enjoy the Silva Intuition System. This program has been updated by his daughter Laura Silva and provides an excellent introduction to meditation. If you try it, let me know your results.

The Power to Predict

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die was called by Tom Peters, “the most readable big data book I’ve come across, By far, great vignettes and stories.“  Author, ERIC SIEGEL, PhD, is the founder of Predictive Analytics World and Executive Editor of the Predictive Analytics Times. Eric makes the how and why of predictive analytics understandable and captivating.

From Eric’s website:

Predictive analytics taps this rich vein of experience, mining it to offer something completely different from standard business reporting and sales forecasting: actionable predictions for each customer. If you predict it, you own it.

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Predictive Analytics book description: This rich, entertaining primer by former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of predictive analytics, showing how predicting human behavior combats financial risk, fortifies healthcare, conquers spam, toughens crime-fighting, and boosts sales.

Do Personas, Stakeholder, Journey Maps work?

Successful companies are now viewing their marketing as a method for getting the message in from the marketplace versus pounding the message out. It is this inbound marketing stuff we have been talking about the last few years. The new methodologies of User Experience, Service Design, Design Thinking and the Lean Startup^TM are all about using this found wisdom and all expound to be “Customer Centric” and concentrate on the “Customer Experience”. It is that Outside – In thinking.

The three tools that have become prevalent are Customer Personas, Customer Stakeholder and Customer Journey Maps. They are tools that we use to understand and improve the Customer Experience. There is seldom a workshop that does not utilize these three tools, and they have been widely adopted in the community. I use them myself and find them quite fun to talk about and to do.

I wonder after a workshop, how many participants actually go back to their organizations and create personas, stakeholder and journey Maps. I am familiar with a few that have, especially the customer personas. However, if you are like most, you go back to your everyday job and work. It was an exercise and only an exercise. If you do make the attempt, you do it in an isolated group with participants that already have a decent idea on what is needed. There is little disruptive change that occurs. We may bring a few “outsiders” in, but those people seldom understand the bigger picture of the organization (said in jest).

The truth is if you try to use these tools you find them cumbersome. There is not the external knowledge of the customer present, and so assumptions are made. If sales is included, they seldom are, the salespeople are disengaged and looking at their smartphones and stepping out to make urgent calls. The innovative organization would like to have both salespeople and customers included but without mastery of the tools find it difficult.

Lately, I have been challenging organizations to turn back and think internally. Think inside-out versus outside-in. At the end of a workshop or webinar, I no longer ask participants to take this knowledge back and design customer facing services or involve sales and marketing. I ask them to do it for their vendors. I ask them to take one of their own particular services or outsourced products that they use internally and create Customer Personas, Customer Stakeholder and Customer Journey Maps. I encourage the Lean Champion to head the project if and only if he can stop it from making it the typical Lean or Six Sigma Project. We are empathizing with the users and discovering how decisions are made within our own company. Our goal is one of discovery and definition. Seek to understand not fix.

We first need to address the users of the service/product and create the Customer Persona Map. Then view the stakeholders and who is influenced by the use of this product and who influences them. Mapping the Customer journey in our organization can also be enlightening. If you want to have a little fun, have your supplier create his own three maps and see how they compare. Now, bring who you would designate as your outbound map makers and show them the results. How valid will one be with your customer? Would it be worth your time? Or, would yours look like the one created by your supplier?

Where Strategy and Customer Service Meet, Part 2 of 2

John Goodman, Vice Chairman of Customer Care Measurement and Consulting (CCMC), has published scores of articles including “Using Service to Grow the Top Line” in the AMA Journal, 8 articles in Quality Progress as well as BrandWeek, the American Banker and Marketing News. Business Week credits John’s research for creation of the GE Answer Center, the original customer satisfaction contact center, as well as instigation of service initiatives at American Express, Coors and Toyota. The American Management Association published his book, Strategic Customer Service, in May, 2009.

John was my guest in the podcast, Where Strategy and Customer Service Meet, Part 1 of 2

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John will be presenting at the ASQ 2013 Service Conference. He holds a pre-conference on Sunday, October 6^th WKSP01: Using the Voice of Multiple Customers (VoC) to Drive Quality: Be Easy to Do Business and Monday’s  Session M04: Beyond the Buzzwords: Using Data to Enhance Loyalty and Service ROI. On Tuesday afternoon, I have the honor to be presenting at the same conference, Session T06: Lean Service Design.

Marketing Campaign Project Map

For quite a few years, I have used this outline to organize marketing campaigns, create web pages or so-called squeeze pages and many other marketing efforts. I first ran across this outline in the book, The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market by Jahn Zagula and Richard Tong. I have adapted it through the years to meet my needs, but essentially it has remained the same. The book explains the process in greater detail. However, the outline in itself offers a good description.

We are all enamored, with are tools, to include the latest canvases and maps. We always seek to find this deeper understanding or epiphany from creating a buyer persona, customer journey or stakeholder maps. These tools, though quite useful, are all strategic type tools. For me, I like to go in the weeds and work on more tactical projects. This is an outline after completing allows me to write copy, create buttons and add pictures very easily. It is what I call a tactical outline. I do want to mention that seldom have I used the Marketing Campaign Project Map without modifying it in someway depending on the client and their needs.

Marketing Campaign Project Map from Business901

Progressing to SD-Logic Thinking

Joseph Michelli, author of Leading the Starbucks Way: 5 Principles for Connecting with Your Customers, Your Products and Your People is tomorrow’s podcast guest and like all his books he bases them around five principles. This is Michelli’s second book on Starbucks, the first one was The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary. In the first book, the five principles were…

1. Make It your Own
2. Everything Matters
3. Surprise and Delight
4. Embrace Resistance
5. Leave your Mark

In one of my highest rated blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?, I discussed the The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW. The Zappos principles were…

1. Serve a Perfect Fit—create bedrock company values
2. Make it Effortlessly Swift—deliver a customer experience with ease
3. Step into the Personal—connect with customers authentically
4. S T R E T C H—grow people and products
5. Play to Win—play hard, work harder

The first Starbucks book was written about 10-years ago and the Zappos book two years ago. As you can see, the progression of the principles from a focus on operations to customer experience. In his new book, Leading the Starbucks Way, I asked the author about the new set of five principles.

Joe: In all your books, you frame them in a certain way which I really like. You base them on certain principles that companies can identify with. Could you start out by giving a brief introduction to the principles that you used in Leading the Starbucks Way?

Joseph Michelli: I'll be glad to. I think for me I have to kind of get it in bite size pieces. There is so much information when you're dealing with a company the size of Starbucks. If I can kind of comeback and pull the cameras back a little we can get on that, some of the principles that we talked about in this book are really kind of around focusing on product and making sure you can savor and elevate your product. They have to do with really extend employees so that the love and I know it can be a tricky we can talk about, but the love that you extend is a leader to your employees is something then that moves into the life of the customers.

We are talking about mobilizing the connection in this book. The world has changed, and the notion that people are just going to walk into your store front or on to your page on online business is just not there. You going to have to go out and find where their lives are and mobilized your connection to make sure that you step into that space with them. There really is a principle in the book that really kind of looks at the importance of not just focusing on transaction or the customer relationship of the day, but really extending yourself out in the life of the customers by challenging your legacy, making sure that you have a lasting legacy statement that goes out into the customer’s space.

In the world which we live today there is a need to have a global of a connection with your customers as possible will also maintaining nuance for cultural relevance. So the business principles in the book are specifically dedicated to that and by name….

1. Savor and Elevate
2. Love to be Loved
3. Reach for Common Ground
4. Mobilize the connection
5. Cherish and Challenge your Legacy

The new perspective of these five principles is similar to many of the forward thinking companies today. We have progressed from operational to customer experience to Service Dominant Thinking (SD_Logic). This is where value is co-created. Delivering great experiences requires participation. We must engage our customers so that they are part of that experience and so much so that they may even take responsibility on delivering part of it. It is not a theater anymore. It not actors delivering to the audience, rather the audience and actors have joined together. For example, think about reality shows. Think about customizing your smartphones. It is the personalization of your experience that elevates it, and you savor the moment.

Framing Big Data, part 1 of 2

If you have two sets of researchers who are telling you contradictory things, and they have their own data sets to support it; how do you tell which one is believable and which one is junk. In Numbersense, what I try to do is to give people, as you say, a framework to start thinking about how you would interpret all these things out there.

…says Kaiser Fung, author of a new book, Numbersense a previous book, Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do and the popular blog, Junk Charts. Kaiser Fung is a professional statistician with over a decade of experience applying statistical methods to marketing and advertising businesses. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, in addition to degrees from Princeton and Cambridge Universities. He is Vice President of Business Intelligence and Analytics at Vimeo, a high-quality video hosting platform for creative people. He previously worked at Sirius XM Radio, American Express, [X+1], Exodus Communications, and Sonus Networks. He is also an adjunct professor at New York University teaching practical statistics.

This is the first of two podcasts with Kaiser. The second one will post next week.

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What is your Organizational Persona? Map it!

Do we focus on the customer too much? Most of us would disagree and say no that we should focus on the customer more. However, recently we have seen a tremendous amount of books written on organizational clarity. One of the reasons is that without understanding our purpose as an organization or as an employee of organization we limit our effectiveness. Dating myself, you go back to the 80’s where a tremendous amount of work was done on corporate vision and mission statements.

In a recent interview, Handling Impossible Projects, I asked author Michael Dobson, “When we think of a crisis like that, how much project planning goes into a crisis, such as Tylenol. Were they just winging it in that instance?”

Michael: Well, the part of the background of the Tylenol situation was that a lot of the executives of Johnson and Johnson had just gone through training or some workshop about corporate ethics. Their vision and mission statements and all these good management practices and they really only had one question to ask themselves. Did we mean all this stuff that we were saying? Once they said “Yes, we did mean it,” then they had a basis to go on.

This demonstrates how this understanding will guide is organizational decision making. Simon Sinek message of starting with Why, (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action)) embodies this message. Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” He then draws another circle with “How” and another with “What”. It is powerful message and one of best Ted videos of all time. Not to downplay the effectiveness of the message but it is a very clever packaging of the old mission and value statements created in the 1980s.

How do we convert to a powerful Why statement?

Whether you call it Why or Vision, there is not anything else that maybe more instrumental to your success. Do you believe your organization has a heart? Does that mission pulsate throughout the entire organization? It’s not an iterative process. It is not anything that is cloudy or mysterious to your organization. It is Why you get up in the morning and go to work. With Vision, With Why, a unifying theme of purpose exists. All of your objectives, all the measures, all the targets, etc. become aligned.

I believe the simplest method of crafting our Why is through the use of an Organizational Persona Map. We use build personas to understand and empathize with customers but do we have one to understand our own organization? Can we easily identify what is the personality of our organization? As Sinek says, we know what we do and how we do it but do we know why? A humble attempt at creating an Organizational Persona Map:

Organizational Persona from Business901

Without vision, without why, you seldom provide a unifying theme of purpose. All of your objectives, all the measures, all the targets, etc. become disjointed. In a Business901 Podcast, Ari Weinzweig, CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, MI said, “Vision comes from the heart”. That should dictate how we act and the personality of our organization. Does it? How would your customer complete this?

Related Information:
The Kipling Growth Strategy Map
The Lean Business Practices of a Deli

Framing Big Data, part 2 of 2

Let us say you have Google or even Facebook – you have a billion users. It is almost impossible for Google and Facebook to understand whom their customers are. Intuition or even just like talking to some customers is going to give you an extremely biased view. You are going to basically base your entire description of one billion people based on interactions with what a hundred people? Having the data and the numbers are really important. Like we said previously, completely trusting the numbers and the analysis is also very foolish. You need human intelligence to interpret these numbers. It is really an interplay of the numbers and your interpretation because ultimately, even though the numbers will never give us cause of information – they can never really tell you with certainty that A causes B, it would tell you that A is related to B. It is human interaction that is needed that kind of tie these things all together into a credible story. Forget the notion that you will find one story that is correct, and everything else is wrong. All we are trying to look for is a story that is our best story, given our constraints of what we can and what we cannot.

…says Kaiser Fung, author of a new book, Numbersense a previous book, Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do and the popular blog, Junk Charts.

Kaiser Fung is a professional statistician with over a decade of experience applying statistical methods to marketing and advertising businesses. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, in addition to degrees from Princeton and Cambridge Universities. He is Vice President of Business Intelligence and Analytics at Vimeo, a high-quality video hosting platform for creative people. He previously worked at Sirius XM Radio, American Express, [X+1], Exodus Communications, and Sonus Networks. He is also an adjunct professor at New York University teaching practical statistics.

This is the second of two podcasts with Kaiser. The first one posted last week, Framing Big Data, part 1 of 2.

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Cap-Do Audio Excerpt of Book

When we use our typical sales and marketing approach, we form an idea of the way things should be, forming maps or journeys that we want our customer to adhere to. As they get further along, we have so much invested that our manipulations get stronger. When they push back, we push back. When we apply what Stephen Covey said, “Seek first to understand,” we only do that for qualification purposes. Successful companies are destined to create the future of the outcomes with their customers. It is not incremental change or problem solving. It is not a prediction, it is what we think will happen.

We can only bring this about through challenging ourselves to first let go of our pre-determined thoughts and build structures based on possible scenarios. It requires experimentation, prototyping and the practice of learning by doing. This is not an easy process and one that requires a well structure outline. CAP-Do offers such an outline and will create a process of understanding and collaboration to help determine the future with our customers. In the Check and Act Stages leads to discovery of what we must attempt, experiment within the Plan and Do stages.

Enjoy the brief introduction of the book

 

 

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CAP-Do is included in the Marketing with Lean Book Series at no additional cost.

CAP-Do: Connecting Demand to the Lean Supply Chain

CAP-Do: What makes CAP-Do so attractive is that it assumes we do not have the answers.  It allows us to create a systematic way to address the problems (pain) or opportunities (gain) from the use of our products and services. CAP-Do is an emergent process. You may know the outcomes that you desire but that is relatively unimportant in today’s world or The Challenger Model. It is the outcomes that your customer requires and how you adapt to his/her processes to produce their needed results. This takes a willingness to discover as you go versus leading the way. The essence of Pausing or as Peter Senge calls it “Presencing” is the act of acknowledging that there is more than right a answer. We refrained from trying to find answers or problem-solve in the Check and Adjust stage. We can now gather and understand the actions, roles and uses of our product/services. This is the stage where the connection between supply and demand occurs. Most organizations try to choose between what we know (Check) and what we learned (Adjust). The key though is acceptance and understanding or as I have explained earlier; empathy. This empathetic connection is important; not only to our customer, but as an external team we must also empathize with our internal organization. It is this preparation, done with a pause, before we move into the planning stage that is imperative. As we cycle or iterate between the supply and the demand world we will discover complementary answers. The obstacles will get smaller and smaller. The organization that instills the CAP-Do process will put a tremendous amount of faith in the Sales and Marketing teams. These teams must work and overcome the tension between supply and demand. CAP-Do is a Lean process that supports the tenants of Service Dominant Logic and Jobs to be Done. It requires a fundamental understanding of the idea that there is not one single answer in this world for any problem. The answers lie with the people that are addressing the problem at the moment and have a particular job-to-get-done. It is in understanding their needs and their outcomes with greater wisdom. More fundamentally, you create a way to get your own job done in any situation.

If you would to purchase CAP- Do, it is available for download as a PDF.

Chapter Outlines:

Check Chapter 1 - Structural Conflicts Chapter 2 - Enterprise Thinking Chapter 3 - A Learning Process, not a Teaching Process Adjust (Act) Chapter 4 - A Perspective of Strength Based Principles Chapter 5 - Lean and the OODA Loop Pause Chapter 6 – Pause Plan Chapter 7 - Lean Sales Methods Chapter 8 - Retool your Sales and Marketing with Lean Do Chapter 9 - Experiment through Prototypes Chapter 10 - Lean Thoughts Chapter 11 - Doing CAP-Do Chapter 12 - CAP-Do Process – Working with SDCA, PDCA, EDCA

CAP-Do is included in the Marketing with Lean Book Series at no additional cost.

Empathy is the Fundamental Principle of Understanding.

From my blog post, Do you only Listen through your Ears?:

Empathy is a major differentiator between the traditional process methodologies of Six Sigma, and I say this tongue–in-cheek, Lean. Many times when you review Design for Six Sigma, Lean Startup, Lean Product Development, and Lean Design (the list goes on), seldom when you search (like never) the index of the book will you find the words Empathy. I think that is a major difference in Design Thinking, Service Design and as I like to call it, EDCA.

That word empathy is a hard thing to practice. Some people may say you are born with or raised with it. I think you can acquire it, but it takes a different set of listening skills than most of us  develop.

In a recent article in the New York Times, The Morality of Meditation, I have taken the liberty of pulling several quotes:

MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing.

This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the (perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended.

The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another.

Meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.

They confirmed that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others’ distress — areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person’s degree of felt associations with others.

If we want to connect with our customer, if we want to develop an intuitive read of his organizations needs, do we not need first to have compassion and empathy. It is the act of empathy that we develop through using the Sales Neuro Charger and/or meditation that allow us to utilize them in the sales process. Empathy is the fundamental principle of understanding. How can we develop objective views without it?

How do you Handle an Impossible Project?

Michael Dobson (@sidewisethinker), author of Project: Impossible – How the Great Leaders of History Identified, Solved and Accomplished the Seemingly Impossible – and How You Can Too! said in the podcast:

Well, to be honest one of the things, if it hasn't happened in your career yet, I'm saying this to the audience. I'm sure you've been there. If you haven't been given a project that is sort of absurdly impossible on the face of it, well, you haven't been around for a very long time. Impossible projects in any field in any discipline, well, this is just one of those little situations in life that sooner or later we are all confronted with for better or worse. Win, lose or draw, we all have to face it.

Listen to the rest of the conversation on impossible projects.

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MICHAEL SINGER DOBSON is a marketing executive, project management consultant and nationally-known speaker. He has been a staff member of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, award-winning game designer, and career counselor in his varied career. My favorite book of Michael’s, out of twenty or so he wrote, is Creative Project Management. You can find Michael on Twitter @sidewisethinker or his main website sidewiseinsights.com

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Voices Matter: Are you helping the situation?

Everyone is talking about conversations but are we really having them? Are 90% of conversations incorporated in 140 characters or thinking of the latest sound bite to get our message across? In Russ Unger’s new book Designing the Conversation: Techniques for Successful Facilitation (Voices That Matter) he discusses the ability to communicate and the practice of setting up the conversation to make it productive. Stephen Anderson sums up the book:

A book on facilitation? I wouldn't have thought this was needed, but after reading Designing the Conversation, I'm reminded of all the valuable skills we learn—with some difficulty, mind you—on our own. Fortunately, all that stuff is covered here, from preparing for a session to handling the difficult personalities. And it's all delivered in a way that's short, to the point, and packed with plenty of pop culture references, making this a fun, lively read! You'll grin at uncomfortably familiar situations and nod in agreement as bits of invaluable advice are served in style through every chapter.

I enjoyed the book as much Stephen did and almost as much as Russ’s first book, A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter).

 

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Russ Unger is a user experience consultant and is on the Advisory Board for the Department of Web Design and Development at Harrington College of Design. His workshops have been attended by a variety of companies, from lean startups to large corporations. Since 1993 he has helped many companies incorporate user experience strategies and tactics into their designs. You can find Russ at http://userglue.com.

Uncovering Compelling Insights

Steve Portigal. author of Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights, is the founder of  Portigal Consulting. He has interviewed hundreds of people, including families eating breakfast, hotel maintenance staff, architects, rock musicians, home-automation enthusiasts, credit-default swap traders, and radiologists. His work has informed the development of mobile devices, medical information systems, music gear, wine packaging, financial services, corporate intranets, videoconferencing systems, and iPod accessories.

Steve speaks regularly at corporate events and conferences such as CHI, IxDA, Lift, SXSW, UIE, UPA, UX Australia, UX Hong Kong, UX Lisbon, and WebVisions. His articles about culture, design, innovation, and interviewing users have been published in interactions, Core77, Ambidextrous, and Johnny Holland. He blogs at www.portigal.com/blog and tweets at @steveportigal.

Steve was gracious enough to secure a discount code for the book, IUBUSINESS901 for 20% off,  if purchased through Rosenfeld Media, Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

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A Story of Sustaining Lean

Robert B. Camp holds a bachelor of science degree in engineering from the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, and a master of business administration from Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, New Hampshire. Robert spent almost 20 years of his career working for Mobil and Lockheed Martin. Throughout his career, he has performed roles that have drawn heavily on his increasing body of Lean knowledge and experience. He is a board member of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence and the author of Go and See: A Journey about Getting to Lean, and most recently Sustainable Lean: The Story of a Cultural Transformation.

In the podcast, Robert discusses a particular area that I thought brought out a very clear message. When you are talking culture and transformation, you cannot hire someone else to come in and do your work. An excerpt from the podcast:

Robert Camp: The problem is, they're unsustainable, unless, leadership with the organization agrees that they're going to change. I make a point of referencing that in my book, early in the book, the protagonist, Jim, who is a plant manager is talking to a consultant that he's heard at a gathering, and he approaches him afterwards. Jim approaches the consultant afterwards and says: "I hired these external consultants to come in and we did great. They did better than they even promised me they would do. Then, I was pressured by corporate to cut off the contract, and in the two years since, things seemed to have drifted back to where they had been". Frank, the external consultant, says to him: "What you did wrong was you entrusted the transformation to somebody else. Unless, you are willing to lead it, it's not going to be sustainable". I think, therein lies half of the answer that A is got to be led by the leaders of the organization. The second piece to that is by leading they literally get out front which means they need to understand Lean as well as anybody else and they actually have to drive the transformation. They can't hire somebody to come in and do that for them.

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