When introducing Lean Thinking many of us would start with the five core concepts of Lean depicted in the classic books, The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking by Womack and Jones.
The basic thought process goes something like this: As value is
specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and
flow and pull are introduced. And we begin the process again and
continue it until a state of perfection is reached in which perfect
value is created with no waste.
5 Core Concepts of Lean Thinking:
- Identify Value
- Map Value Stream
- Create Flow
- Establish Pull
- Seek Perfection
As a sales guy, I have a hard problem identifying with these
concepts. When I am thinking of value…I am thinking of what Theodore
Levitt said 50 years ago…he would argue that people don’t want to buy a
drill; people want a hole in the wall. When sales guys look at value,
they look at how a customer uses the product or the service..the job
that needs to be done. When sales people look at value streams we are
looking at how a customer arrives at their point of use, their decision
process. When we think of Flow…we are thinking about how easy it is for
the customer to buy, get a proposal and the reliability of my company
to meet market windows. Pull…..is about agility and being adaptive…is
that not the promise of Lean Operations to sales…less WIP, more agile,
more flexible? Continuous Learning….the company that can learn from
their customer at a faster rate than the competition is the winner
today…perfection is constantly delivering value faster than your buddies
down the street.
5 Sales Concepts of Lean Thinking
- Identify Value = Job To Be Done
- Map Value Stream = Customer Journey thru Use
- Create Flow = Rhythm
- Establish Pull = Adaptive, Agility
- Seek Perfection = Continuous Learning
The value of course depends on context. But if Lean has delivered in
your organization… it has created a strategic, competitive advantage,
not from the idea of Better, Faster, Cheaper. Instead, Lean should allow
us to speculate, experiment, measure and iterate forward. It is a
method of learning and adapting faster than your competition.
Many wonder how to put this in practice and for a template I use the five phases of
Agile Project Management by
Jim Highsmith. I adapted his description to a marketing tone.
Envision. Speculate. Explore. Adapt. Close.
- Envision: Determine your marketing vision and objectives and constraints, your community, and how your team will work together.
- Speculate: develop the capability and/or feature based launch to deliver on the vision.
- Explore: plan and deliver running tested stories in the short iteration, constantly seeking to reduce risk and uncertainty.
- Adapt: review the delivered results, the current situation, and the team’s performance, and adapt as necessary.
- Close: conclude the launch, pass along key learning, and celebrate.
Even more important, is this key point; we’re not concentrating on
the flow, we are concentrating on the cycle, the rhythm. Continuous
short iterations are constantly happening to improve the value of the
offering. No longer can we wait for the perfect scenario. We build the
scenario as an ongoing process. Customer relationships need to be as
collaborative as possible. Customers then can define the capabilities
needed to provide value. When that scenario can no longer be adapted or
improved upon, the life of that marketing cycle is over or exhausted.
This effort enables customers to view the value they need and give the
opportunity for both to adapt and iterate forward. Your sales and
marketing team must always be in contact with the customer and
continuously asking: Is what we are doing providing value in our
customer decision making or efforts to complete the job they need done?