Archive for Standard Work
Inspiring Innovation thru Standard Work
Posted by: | CommentsStandard work should be an enabler of innovation, not a hindrance. In an upcoming Business901 podcast with Terri Griffith, we will take a look at a few of these principles and find out why it is so important to access where you are at before venturing into the unknown. In the premier show of Innovators Exchange, Tad Milbourn, senior product manager of Intuit Brainstorm, speaks with Terri Griffith, author and professor of Management at Santa Clara University. Tad and Terri discuss her new book, The Plugged-In Manager
Related Information:
The importance of PDCA in Marketing
Even Seinfeld used Standard Work
The SDCA Cycle Description for a Lean Engagement Team
Is your Innovation a Gateway for Others?
SDCA Cycle for a Lean Engagement Team
Posted by: | CommentsThis presentation is an overview on how to implement SDCA (Plan – Do – Check – Act) in the field of Lean Sales and Marketing. It includes an outline for standard work of this cycle and an embedded video with Dr. Michael Balle, the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise discussing Standard work in a knowledge creating department – Engineering.
Graham Hill former head of CRM at Toyota Financial Services states that:
Marketing in highly competitive markets is about exploring new propositions on the innovation fitness landscape. The environment determines where to start and complex marketing environments need EDCA. EDCA = Explore, PDCA = Plan, SDCA = Standardize, marketing operations are all about moving along the EDCA>PDCA>SDCA pathway.
Standard Work should only encompass part of your time. In fact, knowledge workers should have a a fair amount of slack time built into their process, i.e. Google, 3M. On the other hand, just about every person wants some form of standard work. Most enjoy doing tasks that they are comfortable with and gives them a sense of accomplishment in completion. The amount of Standard Work that you decide for your teams will differ from organization to organization and from team to team. The bigger picture is that Standard Work is what provides line of sight for your team. It enables support and provides opportunity for managers to serve you.
More information is available in my posts, Lean Canvas for Lean EDCA-PDCA-SDCA, The PDCA Cycle Description for a Lean Engagement Team and The EDCA Cycle Description for a Lean Engagement Team.
Have we reached the end of the pathway? We have actually just started. Standardizing your work provides opportunity to spread it within your organization and will make it easier for customers to go deeper into your organization for knowledge sharing. As a result, it will provide a flood of new ideas for innovation and co-creation opportunities. But even more importantly it secures a vendor-customer relationship or partnership that is difficult for others to replicate. More on this in the blog post, Positioning your organization to learn from your customers.
Standard Work does not need to be boring: Is Zappos the Next Toyota?
Related Information:
Servant Leadership in the Toyota Culture
What will your workplace be like in 2020?
Reducing Muda for Others with Kaizen
Even Seinfeld used Standard Work
Posted by: | CommentsIf you want execution, keep it simple!. From a business stand point, there are many more success stories, that are founded on simple, focused ideas, than complex ones. Lean Sales and Marketing is a very simple concept, it is a learn be doing approach. If you can master this, you will be successful in sales and marketing. It can be taught in 3 steps:
- Go and See the USER.
- Form a vision of where the USER wants to go.
- Visualize the USER’s decision process.
In practice, Lean Sales and Marketing is essentially a knowledge transfer system; it’s a training system on how to define knowledge gaps and close them. How you learn or develop this new skill is the same way you are taught to become proficient at anything. It is how often you do something, not how much you do. As a result, the best way to learn is keep it simple (clarity), do it often (repetition/iteration) and make it manageable. In the Lean sense, make standard work visual and uncomplicated. 
A great example of making something simple is the Seinfeld calendar. On the lifehacker blog , he described the calendar that Jerry Seinfeld used to make himself write:
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing; I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
The idea is to have a calendar for each action step. Write the task above it and start building your chain.
And yes, there is an app for this called Streaks!
This daily action builds habits. I encourage the Lean Engagement Teams that I work with to create daily habits through their reports used at the daily standup meeting. Going through their action plan and either answering a yes or no or maybe a number they start creating a daily plan something very simple. The secret is not to break the chain. After doing this for a while it becomes a habit and something you enjoy doing. It is like a checkmark on a checklist or moving the card on a Kanban to the “Done” Column. You could even equate it to a batter on a hitting streak and use an app.
Related Information:
The SDCA Cycle Description for a Lean Engagement Team
The Resilience of PDCA
Lean Canvas for Lean EDCA-PDCA-SDCA
Successful Lean teams are iTeams
