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

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.

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Download this episode

or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

Mobile Version

Android APP

Standards create the WOW in Business

Many people see Lean as another process methodology still mired down in the process thinking world of the eighties and nineties. The facts are that companies, such as Danaher, Toyota, Ingersol Rand and Amazon have embraced Lean thinking or similar concepts and have excelled in the new millennium. What makes these companies stand out? They have created repeatable business models with an emphasis on continuous improvement and adaptability. We can create numerous names for this model, but the Lean Business Model has proven to be the most resilient and consistent producer of results and of growth. Lean is introduced as a growth strategy through the processes of SDCA, PDCA and EDCA. This three step process for using Lean is defined in this way:

1. Standard Work (SDCA): Define core business and put the majority of company resources into the core until it achieves its full potential.
2. Continuous Improvement (PDCA): Most big ideas are made up of a series of successful smaller ideas driven by a simple and repeatable business model.
3. New Markets and Products (EDCA): Define what you cannot do and explore what you want to do?

If you are a Lean Startup^TM or an Entrepreneur with a new product, you have just completed an exercise that is called Product Market fit. You have gone through the EDCA (Explore-Do-Check-Act) stage and converted it to a hypothesis that is proven through PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). Once proven, you standardize (SDCA) your product/service and build your first repeatable business model.

How do repeatable models succeed? In the books Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change and PProfit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times, the authors use studies from the Bain and Company to point out the three design principles (the parenthesized parts are mine) most associated with success.

1. What is the essence of success? A well-differentiated core (EDCA)
2. How do we make sure we keep improving and adapting? Closed-loop learning (PDCA)
3. How do we align our people to focus on our key strengths? Clear nonnegotiables (SDCA)

In the book, the authors distinguish three different growth strategies based on repeatable business models.

1. Individual business driving core growth (Examples of companies with a single core, simple structure: Vanguard, IKEA, Tetra Pak)
2. Businesses moving into adjacencies by modifying their model (Examples of companies with a single core, complex adjacency expansion: Nike, Apple, Olam)
3. Multicore business managing a portfolio (Examples of companies with a multicore, multi industry: Danaher, UTC, P & G)

The repeatable business models are very diverse. They are highly fluid but repeatable. I view SDCA or Standard Work in much the same way. When we have clear nonnegotiable standards, it allows the fringes of our businesses to operate effectively with little intervention.

Standards are what makes business models adaptable. In recent years, Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur developed the Business Model Generation Canvas. It identifies nine building blocks required for the business model. It is an iterative approach to see what underlying structure is required to institute and develop change for innovation. A PDF download can be obtained here: Business Model Canvas. What this model does is provide clarity around the core value proposition. You may believe the model is too simple for larger companies. However, I believe that simplification is the point, and a simplified structure is in Lean terms, standards.

Standards are the most fundamental and misunderstood concept needed for growth. Your core values are the way you go about what you do and how you do it. It is what your customer understands and experiences. Standards create the WOW in your business. When an employee steps out of the box to do something remarkable, it is a result of having the clarification that this is what are standards (values) would encourage us to do.

Lean embellishes standards, not as a way of being restrictive. It embellishes standards as a way of clarity and focus providing agility, speed and relevance throughout not only to the organization but to the market. It makes growth more understandable for existing customers, new markets, and new products. When viewing the recent growth of Amazon, Apple or Google, most product/service successes occurred building upon their standards. When viewing the troubles, of Starbucks and Dell, it was a movement from their standards and the correction being a return to them.

Growth Principle: Standards create the WOW

therefore

Standards have to be at the center of your growth strategy.

For more information on SDCA, PDCA, EDCA, I would recommend you to browse through the Business901 training content located in the Lean Service Design Trilogy Training Section.

Is there a Fifth way to Grow a Business

We normally define four basic ways for a business to grow:

1. Market development: Taking current products into new markets.
2. Market penetration: Taking our current product lines and penetrating our current markets more deeply than we have in the past.
3. Innovation or Product Development: Introduce new products into our current markets.
4. Diversification Strategy with Innovation/Product Development: Introduce new products into new markets. This often is accomplished through acquisition and mergers with other companies.

I often like to look at these strategies and determine what I would call the speed of value. As Roger Martin says in the book, Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, you have to be able to win the two moments of truth. One is at the point of purchase and the other at the point of use.  From a marketing stand point, I might argue that there is another moment of truth, the awareness stage. If they are never aware of us, we never get the opportunity to play for anything.

Typically, in a product development process, people should be asking questions such as:

• Is value apparent?
• Is value substantial?
• What do you see as the value?

We are encouraged to do this so that the product/service can be engineered and designed into the product in such a way that when the product comes out, people can immediately determine and understand the value that's in it. That whole adoption process and customer due to the speed of value are imperative in choosing where to compete. Growth can come about through improved and innovative ways of supporting the product, innovative ways of warranting the product, innovative ways of selling the product, and so on and so forth, all of which are value adding within the existing value delivery system.

That brings us to the other key question that strategic planning should be focusing on. Where does the organization choose to compete? Because they have a bunch of different opportunities and different market segments, they can focus on any specific product/service market, but which one?

The above are all proper questions, and some excellent books on strategic planning have been written around. We can even bring into the discussion Red and Blue Oceans. However, my thoughts go back to the original question of this post, Is there a Fifth way to Grow a Business? One could argue that another growth strategy would be services, but for the sake of simplicity, we will consider services a product at this time. I believe this is where, Service Dominant Logic (SD-logic) may play a vital role. The basic concept is that customers are always co-creators of value.  It’s the way that the customer sees value, whether it’s in the physical good, or if it’s in a service or a combination of both of those and if they don’t see a benefit to them they’re not going to engage with you.

When I think of being co-creators with my customers, will I continue to look at the four components of growth the same way? Will all three moments of truth be already won? Will Playing to Win mean just becoming a role player on a bigger team? Will value already be apparent? Hmm! Is the fifth way to grow a business embedded in Service Dominant Logic  thinking?

P.S. My take on Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works is that it is very much a Hoshin Kanri approach. The structure of the process are amazingly similar. The book itself is an excellent read. Often times you hear me refer to  Franklin Covey’s, The 4 Disciplines of Execution as Lean Simplified. I believe Playing to Win could be called Hoshin Kanri simplified.

Related Blog Post: 4 Disciplines of Execution equals Lean Simplified

Lean more at this upcoming event: Grow your Small Business with Lean

Standard Work in Lean Marketing

Leader standard work is a concept in Lean Management, popularized by David Mann in his book “Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, Second Edition”, that creates standard work for managers. For many in the Agile community, the notion of “standard work” brings a repellent idea of standardization and work standards, and the oppressive boot-jack command culture that comes with that. And yet, the way that Toyota implements standard work, it is much more akin to coding standards or working agreements, where you record the current best agreed upon way of the workers in the system for doing something, than an oppressive regime of Quality Checks.

David describes the principle nicely in his presentation on Creating a Lean Culture Process Focus and Leader Standard Work. The purpose of Leader Standard Work is to create behavioral change that drives Lean Leaders to visit the place where work is being done. This, along with Visual Management and a Daily Accountability process helps ensure the technical improvements in the Lean Transformation aren’t lost to the culture of firefighting and backsliding into what he calls the “pit of instability and despair” or what I like to call, “business as usual.” So, there are many organizational benefits to Leader Standard Work. And the good news is, it’s also a great way to drive some sanity into your day as a manager.

Since Lean is so intrinsically tied to standard work, many believe Lean cannot apply to their “Knowledge Based” occupation. In fact, it is often resisted in these circles. When met with resistance, I have found that typically there is a good reason why. As I review most Leader Standard Work for knowledge workers, I still find them heavily laden with specific instructions and very results based focus. In Sales and Marketing (I am considering Sales and Marketing to be knowledge work) , you will see instructions such as make 25 calls, send out 15 e-mails, 3 blog posts a week, etc. On the other hand, I do see slack time allowed under the disguise of daily or weekly Kaizen. So Leader Standard Work can apply to Sales and Marketing 9Knowledge Workers), or can it?

Leader Standard Work will fizzle out quickly if you simply try to practice Leader Standard Work through Lean Training, coupled with your experience and try to become more proficient through iteration after iteration. It doesn’t work that way. In fact, it may take years, certainly months, to acquire the skills needed. What stops you is that you not only have to learn new skills but these skills and learning are not stagnant. They are in constant turmoil; developing, adapting and evolving while obsoleting the existing structure.

Many companies may fall short as a result of not creating the internal collaboration structure needed for learning. The organization must develop as a whole and this can only be accomplished by developing their personnel by providing the necessary resources and opportunities. We also need to promote individual differences. Instead of teaching the way to do some things, we may need to step back and determine the key points that are required, as Simon Sinek says the “Why” while leaving the how alone (Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action).

When developing your Leader Standard address these three items;

1. Clarification – Minimum standard is explicit
2. Commitment – Level of commitment is expected from the individual
3. Connection – A path for support through conversation is provided.

Can your Leader Standard Work pass the 3 C Test?

 

Grow your Small Business with Lean

Custom Magnetic & Dry Erase Comic Strip

Do you need a customizable comic strip that lets you create your own comics using magnetic characters? It’s a great start for a service design project and creating a customer experience. It’s part of a Kickstarter project by Erik Heumiller. There are loads of options on the website from $1 to $300.

The Magnet Comic is a dry-erase comic strip that uses magnetic characters with a variety of different facial expressions to make the comics you want to make. It also lets you make comics a part of your every day life whether at home or work because it's a physical comic you can display and interact with.

Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology. Kickstarter is full of ambitious, innovative, and imaginative projects that are brought to life through the direct support of others

Back this Project!

This project will only be funded if at least $6,500 is pledged by Sunday Dec 16, 3:17pm EST.

P.S. Pledge $10 and get a Comic Character of yourself emailed to you.

The Marriage in Lean Service Design

This may sound like Abraham Maslow’s saying, “If all you have is a hammer; everything looks like a nail” and if it does, I will admit that my principles and practices are with a Lean based approached. Most of the work I have seen to date in Service Design has been educational or Public Sector work. I have seen where private companies have instituted Service Design but many times the cost has been funded from a public entity. I think Service Design and its forerunner; The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing type thinking may be Crossing the Chasm from early adaptors to early majority.

In my use of Service Design, I have had mixed results with most companies very interested in learning more about Service Design but few willing to take the initiative to design and implement Service Design.

It has been very similar to what I have found in Lean Sales and Marketing; interested but to implement? As a result, the best prospects are mature companies well into their Lean Journey and willing to take on a pilot project. Even at that, it is usually initiated by the Lean Champion who wants to introduce the Standard Tools of Lean and improve processes versus using Lean as a vehicle for growth.

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, Lean Design is rooted in tangible applications (excluding software for the moment). The leap of faith that must occur is to move away from these traditions and institute a wider scope of Design to Services. The Design Thinking concepts that are most commonly associated with IDEO seems to provide the clearest and accepted understanding.

Below is a Venn Diagram on how I view the three disciplines of Lean, Service, and Design. I have also included SDCA, PDCA, EDCA as a way to demonstrate the use of Lean in Services and Design. I like to use the term EDCA learned from Graham Hill  to designate the Explore aspect of Lean.  I view it as more of Design Type thinking content that allows for that collaborative learning cycle with a customer. This is a link to my blog post on the tools of SDCA, PDCA, EDCA: http://business901.com/?p=8490.

We live in a service centric world. Even companies to include most manufacturers are defined not by their products but the services they offer. Can we continue to give away services to sell products? Has production capacity slowed that we now have excess overhead? Maybe, we are a mature Lean Company and have become so efficient in our services that we have excess capacity? Is it time that we design around our services? Is it time to discover, how to develop our services into a profit center?

Shameless Plug: Lean Service Design Workshop  You could also attend a live presentation by joining our SlideCast on Thursday July 12^th at 1:00 PM Eastern. It is by invitation only, so drop me an email through the contact page on my website.

Can a Mature Company risk Experimentation?

In next week’s Business901 podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Saul Kaplan, the author of The Business Model Innovation Factory: How to Stay Relevant When The World is Changing. An excerpt from the podcast:

Joe:  Can a mature company afford to take that risk, with their brand to do that type of experimentation out there and be transparent with the customer?

Saul:  I would put a counter argument out. Can a mature company afford not to? How many "mature companies" are incredibly vulnerable to being Netflixed to having somebody new come in to their space that does not compete in the traditional industry the way they define it, that is not interested in taking a share of point away from them, but is interested in completely redefining the market and how value is delivered to a customer. If you are a leader and you are watching this activity go on today, and you don't have the capacity to understand it, to do some experimentation of the various models might work, you are going to be disrupted.

I tell the story in the book, about Sony Corporation. Here is a company that is in a world of hurt right now. They watched the entire music business get swept away from them by Steve Jobs and Apple. Should that really have happened to Sony? Think about it, they had a huge division that was in the music business, had under contract some of the world's greatest star performing artists, had another huge division that made the coolest products and new technologies. It even brought us the Walkman for heaven's sake. I am old enough to have had one.

Everybody had one. What happened to Sony? They had all the parts, all the capabilities that they needed to completely change the way music was enjoyed, and delivered to consumers. But they were so stuck in their current business model, and the political infighting between the divisions, that they couldn't do experiments that recombined the parts to do what Steve Jobs ultimately did. Companies the size of Sony, they want to stay competitive, are going to have to create the platforms and the sandboxes to do that experimentation, and put resources in there to be able to play with new business models, because if they don't, someone is going to come along like Apple did, and take them down. This is not going to be the exception in the 21st century, this is going to be the rule.

How do you do that is what I outlined in the book. We don't have all the answers, but we have a lot of experience, tell and share a lot of stories about how you go from tweaks to transformation, and we are beginning a conversation with like‑minded innovation junkies, to be able to explore those ideas and put them into practice.

Related Information:
What’s New in Business Model Generation?
Do You Know the Right Job For Your Products?
Will Product Managers embrace Open Innovation?
Steve Blank on the Lean Startup at Ann Arbor

An Architects view of Prototyping and Modeling

Next week’s Business901 Podcast guest is Zachary Evans. He is an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc., a Fort Wayne architecture, planning, and urban design firm. A Ball State University graduate (Muncie, Indiana), Zach holds professional architectural registrations in Indiana and Ohio and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). He is an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Fort Wayne Chapter, and currently serves on the City of Fort Wayne (Indiana) Downtown Design Review Committee.

In recent podcasts I have discussed the concepts of Prototyping, Service Design, Design Thinking and Business Modeling.  Looking for different perspectives, I felt the field of architecture should be introduced. Zach does a wonderful job in the podcast adding both a view of the architect but takes a step further in how “Designers” think.  This is an excerpt from the podcast.

Joe:  I have always been intrigued by the modeling concept in architecture. How do you start with prototyping and modeling? And can you take us through a smaller project, with some modeling characteristics, steps that you go through with the customer?

Zachary: Architects are trained to think visually and many times young adults get involved in architecture because of their visual thinking skill. I think a lot of people who aren't in architecture can do that but there are a many people that cannot visualize a three dimensional space in their mind so modeling becomes extremely important. We do drawings in two dimensions and three dimensions. Typically, the two dimensional drawings are for the construction drawings that are given to a contractor for building purposes and the other type of modeling is done digitally is 3D modeling. There are really two different reasons to do modeling. The first is for design intent. These can be digital or physical models that we do early in the design stages, especially when we're doing the conceptualizing and brainstorming.

We use cardboard or foam cord boards. Sometimes it's as crude as hot glue guns and cardboard to create something that you can turn, flip upside down, and hand to a client that helps us get a sense of what that space might feel like if they were inside of it, if it were a full‑size structure.

Digital models we use to convey design intent works well. There's simple programs that can be used such as Google SketchUp and more complex 3D modeling software that is out there that we use. The real purpose of those is to allow the design team to work and coordinate a conceptualize design and convey that information to a client.

The second big type of digital modeling is typically use a little bit later, after a design at least has been approved conceptually and moves on to one of the middle stages of design that we call design development and is BIM. BIM stands for Building Information Modeling and has become very prevalent lately and is really the software of the future and process of the future where all of the building systems are put into a single digital model.

The structure is modeled, the mechanical system including all the ductwork and air handlers are modeled, all the architectural elements are modeled, the doors and corridors. Also all the written information, product information, design intent statements, can be included in it. It's a single file, single model that contains all the information for that project. It can even be used by contractors to work off of during bidding and construction.

Disclaimer: Zach did not design any of the buildings in the picture. I wonder if they started with hot glue guns and cardboard?

Related Information:
A Product Marketers perspective on Prototyping
Service Design Thinking Podcast with Marc Stickdorn
What’s new in Business Model Generation? Customer Value Canvas and more
Service Design through the Eyes of a Design Thinker

Mind Maps on Leadership and Teamwork for the Lean Agile Crowd

Looking for DIY Teamwork and Leadership training? Start with these books (since they are all fables, they make for great listening) Patrick Lencioni Library (Five Temptations of a CEO; Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive; Five Dysfunctions of a Team; Death by Meeting). If you are a Lean Startup, Agile Software Development or even a Lean Enterprise this information is readily digestible by anyone in your organization and coincides with these disciplines that you will wonder where Patrick received his Lean training.

If you feel like this is an endorsement of these products, it is! I have used these mind maps as examples and referred more people to the books and materials than to any other single source. This is my collection of  mind maps created from listening or reading to the Patrick Lencioni business series of books. 

Patrick Lencioni Mind Maps

View more presentations from Business901

Related Information:
What is a great Team?
Why bother with Value Networks?
Identifying your Lean sales and marketing teams
There is no Team in Kaizen
Improve Communication – Have more meetings?

Mindmap of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team

This is a five part afternoon series depicting the mindmaps that I have created on the books of Patrick Lencioni. His website and company, The Table Group offers additional information on these subjects.

This Mindmap was constructed during the listening of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series). From an Amazon reviewer:

This book is helpful to anyone who serves on a team and specifically helpful for team leaders. You will see yourself and your team in this book. More than that, you will find specific steps you can take to make your team better. Through a real life fable, Pat leads you through the steps you need to take to move a team from dysfunction to health. You will find a clear model as well as examples that are as relevant as your last meeting.

As I read this book I discovered:

1. A vocabulary I can use with my team to discuss dysfunction.
2. A self-analysis that will get the discussion started.
3. A clear model for implementation.

As a team leader, this book challenged me to:

1) Lead selflessly
2) Take risks
3) Encourage conflict
4) Embrace the power of meetings
4) Direct my team around a common theme

This book is simple, practical and filled with wisdom. Highly recommended.

Related Information:
Teamwork and Collaboration thru the eyes of Cisco
PDCA from the Outside-in
What is a great Team?
SALES PDCA Framework for Lean Sales and Marketing

How to give great service mind map

Entrepreneurial phenomenon Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of the much-loved Zingerman's Deli, shares the secrets to providing world-class customer service. Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a beloved deli with some of the most loyal clientele around. It has been praised for its products and service in media outlets far and wide, including the New York Times, Men's Journal, Inc. Magazine, Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, USA Today, and Fast Company. And what started out as a small deli has grown to a flourishing restaurant, catering service, bakery, mail-order operation, creamery, and training business. – says Amazon of the Book

These 2 mind maps were created from the audio version of Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service. I think this book or audio should be part of any employee introduction and would recommend a trip to one of their Deli’s to see if they really walk the walk (Hint: they do). Zimmermann's also offer one of the best mail order catalogs on the planet.

Related Information:
In love with your products more than your customers?
Collection of Mind Maps
The Service-dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, Debate, And Directions
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing

12 Steps to business Survival

If you want to survive, what do you need to do?

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales officially distilled these observations down 12  points the seemed to stand out concerning how survivors think and behave in the clutch of mortal danger. Some of the same steps for staying out of trouble. Here's what survivors do:

1. Perceived, Believe: Even the initial crisis, survivors perceptions and cognitive functions keep working. They notice the details and may even find some humorous or beautiful. If there's any denial, is counterbalanced by a solid belief in the clear evidence of their senses. They immediately begin to recognize, acknowledge, and even accept the reality of their situation. They may initially blamed forces outside themselves, to; but very quickly they dismiss that tactic and recognize that everything, good and bad, emanates from within.
2. Stay calm: In the initial crisis, survivors are making use of fear, not being ruled by it. They understand at a deep level about being cool and never ever on guard against the mutiny of too much emotion.
3. Think/analyze/plan: Survivors quickly organize, teams, and institute discipline. In successful group survival situations, a leader emerges often the least likely candidate. irrational voice emerges and is often actually heard , which take control of the situation. Survivors perceive that experience as been split into two people and they obey the rational one.
4. Take correct, decisive action: Survivors are able to transform thought into action. They're willing to take risk to save themselves and others. They are able breakdown very large jobs into small manageable tasks. They set attainable goals and develop short-term plans to reach them. They are meticulous about doing their task well.
5. Celebrate your successes: Survivors take great joy from even their smallest successes. That is an important step in creating ongoing feeling of motivation and preventing the descent into hopelessness.
6. Count your blessings: This is how survivors become rescuers instead of victims. There is always someone else they are helping more than themselves even if that someone is not present.
7. Play: Since the brain and its wiring appear to be the determining factor in survival, this is an argument for expanding and refining it. Just as survivors use patterns in rhythm to move forward in the survival voyage, they use the deeper activities of the intellect to stimulate, call and entertain the mind. Careful, careful, they say. But they act joyfully and decisively. Playing also leads to invention, an invention may lead to a new technique, strategy, or piece of equipment that can save you.
8. See the beauty: Survivors are attuned to the wonder of the world. The appreciation of beauty, the feeling of awe, opens the senses.
9. Believe that you will succeed: All the practices just describe lead to this point: survivors consolidate their personalities and fix their determination. Survivors admonish themselves to make no more mistakes, to be very careful, and to do their very best. They become convinced that they will prevail if they do those things.
10. Surrender: Survivors manage pain well. Resignation without giving up, it is survival by surrender.
11. Do whatever is necessary: They know their abilities and do not over or underestimate them. They believe that anything is possible and act accordingly. Survivors don't expect or even hope to be rescued. They are coldly rational values in the world, obtaining what they need, doing what they have to.
12. Never give up: There's always one more thing that they can do. They are not easily frustrated. They are not discouraged by setbacks. They accept that the environment is constantly changing. They pick themselves up and start the entire process over again, breaking it down into manageable bits. They come to embrace the world in which they find themselves and see opportunity in adversity.

If you are tough times, I recommend pinning these 12 points up and reviewing them several times a day.

P.S. Buy the book, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

Related Information:
Businesses that Die, Die of confusion
Overcoming Resistance and Backsliding
Marketing Kanban
Story of Going Lean in Healthcare: On the Mend
It takes guts, to start with lean training in a turnaround!
When those old guys say stuff, you should listen!
How much Planning is enough – Use Lean and Standardize

Small Business Lean

My guest on the Business901 Podcast was Ankit Patel, the founder of The Lean Way Consulting. We discussed applying Lean principles to Small Business. Ankit is a Lean Practitioner that has taken his expertise to the front-line of many small business. Little theory was discussed in this conversation. There was little if any should “do’s” but more what we did and what was learned from this. I call it practical and implementable items, not ideas.

In the past, Ankit has been a Lean consultant for Dell Inc. overseeing Dell’s Manufacturing, and Re-Manufacturing production processes in Lebanon TN.  Ankit helped guide the multibillion dollar plant in strategic planning, coaching executives at the plant, facilitating Kaizen events, and training Lean leaders at all levels of the organization.  Ankit is no stranger to the board room or the shop floor and has run several strategic initiatives as well as 100’s of Kaizen events

Ankit has also had several years of small business ownership.  He has owned a Liberty Tax Service, started his own online computer education company My Computer Buddies and has been a partner in a sandwich shop and a motel.  Ankit has guided a variety of small and medium size businesses ranging in services from veterinary clinics to tattoo parlors.

His experience to change and grow companies ranges from small businesses to multinational fortune 50 companies. Ankit has an Industrial Engineering Degree from Georgia Tech and lives in the Nashville TN area.  You can follow Ankit on the bloghttp://theleanwayconsulting.blogspot.com.

 

Powered by Podbean.com

 

Related Posts:

THEMES THAT DRIVE OUR MARKETING

Your Marketing Vision should define your Customer’s Core Problem

Theory of Constraints Podcast with Dr. Lisa Lang

My guest this week (yes, we talked to long) and next week was “Dr. Lisa” Lang. She is considered the foremost expert in the world in applying Theory of Constraints to Marketing and currently the President of the Science of Business. She recently served as the Global Marketing Director for Dr Goldratt who is the father of Theory of Constraints and author of The Goal. Dr Lisa has a PhD in Engineering and is a TOCICO certified expert in Theory of Constraints. She is currently serving on the TOCICO Board of Directors.

This week podcast centered on applying the Theory of Constraints internally within an organization and creating a Control Poit within you system.  If you focus on what’s important and leverage your resources where they can have the largest impact, the results are quick and substantial.  Theory of Constraints is the focusing mechanism and then Lean and Six Sigma tools are used to leverage.

Dr. Lisa is the author of 3 books: Maximizing Profitability, Achieving a Viable Vision, Increasing Cash Velocity, and Mafia Offers is due out in May 2010. Science of Business specializes in increasing profits of highly custom businesses and applying Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma to sales and marketing, having developed the Mafia Offer Boot Camp, Velocity Scheduling System, and Project Velocity System.

Before becoming a consultant, Dr Lisa was in operations, strategic planning, purchasing, R&D, and quality while working for Clorox, Anheuser-Busch and Coors Brewing. She is known for having developed the Anheuser-Busch plastic beer bottle. In addition to consulting, Dr Lisa is a highly sought after Vistage/TEC speaker on “Maximizing Profitability”. Dr Lisa also provides professional keynote speeches and workshops for organizations like: TLMI, ASC, NTMA, MCAA, NAPM and private events for corporations like: TESSCO, Bostik, GE, Pfizer and Sandvik Coromant.

 

Powered by Podbean.com

Technorati Tags: Theory of Constraints,Marketing,Mafia Boot Camp,Manufacturing,Machining,Velocity Scheduling

Related Posts:

Great Resource on the Theory of Constraints: Ebook on Integrating Theory of Constraints with Lean Six Sigma

Improve throughput, cut your customers in half!

Lean your Marketing thru Segmentation

Is Differentiation the same as Business Survival

A recognized senior executive leader and business consultant, Roy Osing knows what it takes for businesses to survive in today’s chaotic times and achieve extraordinary levels of performance. With over 30 years experience creating and building businesses, he possesses an in-depth knowledge of what it takes to immunize organizations from failure and catapult their performance to extraordinary levels. Osing is an accomplished speaker and presenter. He presents his ideas in a compelling and entertaining style that captivates and motivates audiences.

How is your book different than other business books?

There are three aspects of my work that I think make it unique in the highly competitive business book market.

First, it is a practical ‘how to’ book not just a theoretical approach. My book shows the reader how to implement the concepts that I advocate in very simple terms. It is a book at “playing field” level, not at the 50,000 foot level. From my observation, most other business improvement literature discusses the theoretical appeal of taking a particular course of action but doesn’t really give the reader a specific roadmap to follow to successfully implement them in their organization.

Second, the ideas I present to the reader have been ‘road tested’ in the real world. I have successfully implemented them in businesses varying in size and complexity. As experience shows there is a big different between an idea that conceptually should work in an organization and an approach that actually does work in the human dynamics that pervade every human enterprise. My readers can be confident that if they choose to go down the BE DiFFERENT path success awaits!

Third, my book is different from others in that the BE DiFFERENT ideas I advocate include all of the critical functions of an organization. I offer ideas to thrive and survive in the areas of business strategy development, marketing, sales and customer service. Most books that I have seen focus on a specific area of expertise, like marketing for example, and give the reader a vertical slice of high level guidance. My book, on the other hand, provides in handbook fashion detailed guidance in each of the critical functions of an organization; possible only because of my broad background as a successful business executive.

I hope you enjoy the Business901 podcast.

Powered by Podbean.com

Related Posts:

Be Different or Be Dead Author Roy Osing Interviewed

Have you Achieved Expert Status?

Website: Be Different or be dead

The Book: Be Different or Be Dead, Your Business Survival Guide

Technorati Tags: Differentiation,Survival,leader,consultant,Author,Expert Status,marketing

A Professional Practice utilizing Lean Concepts

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Sami Bahri the first dentist known to utilize Lean Management techniques to continuously improve the delivery of quality dental care. This implementation has benefited patients, employees, dental laboratories, suppliers, etc. In 2006, Bahri Dental Group provided the same amount of dental treatments as 2005, but needed 40 percent less resources, thanks to the application of “Lean Dental Management.”

An excerpt from the Podcast:

Joe:  What have you learned from this that you think applies to other professional practices?

Sami:  I think Joe, not only Lean, but any management theory. I am going to talk about the same ones that we already mentioned; TQM, Theory of Constraints, Six Sigma; they all apply to anything that you are doing.

Joe:  They all apply to a process and if you are doing a process they apply.

Sami:  You can use any, right? So it is just which system or which theory gives you the best results. And so far, in our practice, Lean has given the best results. I really think it applies to everything. Now the key is what do we teach people? And my experience is really in that regard. I learned it on my own from books and I have fallen in a few traps. The first one, the first trap that I fell in would be eliminating waste. You teach someone who doesn't know about Lean and you say, "Lean is about eliminating waste." And you say anything that you do not need to apply right away is a waste.

So what we did was looking around us and eliminating waste and eliminating waste going nowhere. Why? Because, we were not eliminating waste in our main flow, the patient. I would eliminate waste at the front desk and the way they are handling insurance. Or how they are filing insurance, or verifying insurance.

But, I was still making several appointments for my patient. Until we decided what our main flow is. The principal flow is the patient flow. Anything else: like how to prepare the appointment, how to set up the room, how to prepare the insurance verification and the patient's file in the computer. All of these are support flows.

As long as you are working on improving your support flows without really paying attention to the main flow, we didn't see any improvements. My main message would be if you want to learn the Lean tools at least learn them while you are improving your principal flow. Decide what your principal flow is and work on that. That is where Lean is. Anything else like improving operations which is the same as support flows did not give us the results that we were looking for. That is probably one of the main lessons that I learned.

Dr. Sami Bahri Book: Follow the Learner: The Role of a Leader in Creating a Lean Culture (Amazon Link)

Technorati Tags: Lean,Lean Dentist,Professional Practice,Professional Services,Dentist,Orthodontist

Start with 300, Get to 1,000 in 2010

This past year I have given the following workshops:

• Getting Started in Social Media
• Marketing your Black Belt
• Get Clients NOW!
• 7 Steps to Small Business Success aka Duct tape Marketing
• Become Employable
• Becoming Self-Employed
• Lean your Marketing with Referrals
• The Pillars of the Lean Marketing House
• Get Hired NOW
• Lean Marketing Assessment
• Funding your Nonprofit
• Etc.

The reason I list them is that there is a common theme that is in all of them and in Seth Godin’s Blog today he mentioned it in a slightly different way:

Seth’s Blog: First, organize 1,000

In Summary: What's difficult? What's difficult is changing your attitude. Instead of speed dating your way to interruption, instead of yelling at strangers all day trying to make a living, coordinating a tribe of 1,000 requires patience, consistency and a focus on long-term relationships and life time value. You don't find customers for your products. You find products for your customers.

He also mentioned Kevin Kelly’s blog The Technium discussion on 1,000 True Fans.

In Summary:  The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.

So what was my common theme: Most people know approximately 300 people on a casual basis. In fact, when not knowing, many wedding planners, funeral directors will use than number as a figure.  So if you know 300, does that mean your wife or husband will know 300 probably not but maybe a 100. What about both of your parents, your siblings, your cousins and people that know you well? Everyone knows 300 people. If you start working with just the people you know in a short time period you can effectively  be marketing to a 1,000 people. If you are a professional service provider, looking for a job or even a nonprofit. Getting to that 1,000 people plateau can be very effective.

1,000 is not that big of number! And it is a great goal for the New Year,  Go for it!.    

Related Post:

Where do you start your job search?

Using the Theory of Constraints in Marketing

Another word for Marketing – How about Voice of the Customer?

Technorati Tags: Seth Godin,The Technium,Marketing,Prospects,Job Seekers,Black Belt,Lean

Business Plan Mistakes

Affiliate Post of the Week: Business Plan Mistakes

By Palo Alto Software, Inc.

Often you may hear about what a business plan consists of. While including the necessary items is very important, you also want to make sure you don't commit any of the following common business plan mistakes:

1. Putting it off: Don't wait to write a plan until you absolutely have to. Too many businesses make business plans only when they have no choice in the matter. Unless the bank or the investors want a plan, there is no plan.

Don't wait to write your plan until you think you'll have enough time. "There's not enough time for a plan," business people say. "I can't plan. I'm too busy getting things done." The busier you are, the more you need to plan. If you are always putting out fires, you should build firebreaks or a sprinkler system. You can lose the whole forest for paying too much attention to the individual burning trees.

2. Cash flow casualness: Cash flow is more important than sales, profits, or anything else in the business plan, but most people think in terms of profits instead of cash. When you and your friends imagine a new business, you think of what it would cost to make the product, what you could sell it for, and what the profits per unit might be. We are trained to think of business as sales minus costs and expenses, which equal profits. Unfortunately, we don't spend the profits in a business. We spend cash. So understanding cash flow is critical. If you have only one table in your business plan, make it the cash flow table.

3. Idea inflation: Plans don't sell new business ideas to investors. People do. The plan, though necessary, is only a way to present information. Investors invest in people, not ideas.

Don't overestimate the importance of the idea, particularly the importance of the uniqueness of the idea. You don't need a great idea to start a business; you need time, money, perseverance, common sense, and so forth. Very few successful businesses are based entirely on new ideas. A new idea is much harder to sell than an existing one, because people don't understand a new idea and they are often unsure if it will work.

4. Fear and dread.

Doing a business plan isn't as hard as you think. You don't have to write a doctoral thesis or a novel. There are good books to help, many advisors among the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), business schools, and there is software available to help you (such as Business Plan Pro, and others).

5. Spongy, vague goals: Leave out the vague and the meaningless babble of business phrases (such as "being the best") because they are simply hype. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, and for results, you need tracking and follow up. You need specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and milestones. Then you can follow up. No matter how well thought out or brilliantly presented, it means nothing unless it produces results.

6. One size fits all: Tailor your business plan to its real business purpose. Business plans can be different things: they are often just sales documents to sell an idea for a new business. They can be detailed action plans, financial plans, marketing plans, and even personnel plans. They can be used to start a business, or just run a business better.

7. Diluted priorities: Remember, strategy is focus. A priority list with 3-4 items is focus. A priority list with 20 items is something else, certainly not strategic, and rarely if ever effective. The more items on the list, the less the importance of each.

8. Hockey-stick shaped growth projections: Have projections that are conservative so you can defend them. When in doubt, be less optimistic.

Source: bplans.com

Technorati Tags: Business Plan,Marketing,Marketing Plan,Palo Alto Software,Planning

Can you use the Obama plan to be successful.

I am going to print a trillion dollars to make it through the next couple of years. That is good sound advice that I can give you and let YOU IMPLEMENT IT! If you pull it off, I can be the hero. By the way can I have a referral?

Oh, you want an alternative strategy, then deal with reality. Take you budget, reduce your s ales income, balance your expenses and get efficient so you can make money. The most important requirement to be successful right now is common sense. You are embarking on a journey that will make your company more successful than it ever has been. Start think like a turnaround, it is not hard, put yourself in survival mode now. Begin by asking 4 simple question:

1. Determine where you are at now in each category and from each perspective. The categories you can start with are Financial, Human Resources, Customer, Product/Services.

2. Create your vision. Where do you want to go and don’t be afraid to think long term. Where would you like to be in 3 to 5 years.

3. How are you going to get there? What strategies are you going to use. There is lot to this step and you may find out a few of these do not work but you must get them in place and carry them out.

4. Set your objectives and measure them. Hint: If you can’t measure them, quit doing them. This will be the one thing that will keep your on course.

That is it. Now, I could probably throw in action plans to carry out the objectives but here is the real secret: I just described the One Page Business Plan to you. Go out and build one for each department, for each person and your company will survive and you will not have to spend a trillion dollars to do it.

Technorati Tags: Obama,Budgets,One Page Business Plange,Turnaround