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Jul

Lean Sales and Marketing, the Team Coordinator

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In a previous post, Identifying your Lean sales and marketing teams, I discussed the other roles in the Lean Sales and Marketing Process. This is part of the SALES PDCA framework that we use before starting the PDCA IMPROVEMENT LOOP.

The role of Team Coordinator (TC) is the key person in the Lean Sales and Marketing process. They hold the key to Lean transformation. This individual is not typically a manager but more of a facilitator and coach. The TC role can be looked at similar to a Scrum Master or a Master Black Belt.

The TC helps the team learn and apply PDCA. The TC does whatever is in their power to help the team be successful. The TC is not the manager of the team but instead serves the team, minimizing distractions, educating them on the iterative process of PDCA, knowledge creation and agile methods.

The Team Coordinators role is based on these four things:

Facilitating the team’s progress toward their goal and more specifically the individual iteration they are working on.
Ensures that the work being delivered is in tune with the customer’s needs.
Mentors the team on Lean processes and demonstrates their value. Leading the team’s efforts in continuous improvement: This includes helping the team improve, helping the team take responsibility for their actions, and helping the team become problem solvers for themselves.
Acts as a buffer for outside interruptions and limits team distractions. Many blocking issues will be beyond the team’s authority or will require support from other teams. This role actively addresses these issues so that the team can remain focused on achieving the objectives of the iteration.

Outside the Team, the Team Coordinator facilitates communication flow across the system. The TC is the point of contact for the Value Stream Manager (VSM) and others. The Team Coordinator and the Value Stream Manager should be different people. As the TC runs interference for the team, there may be some priority balancing that is required between the VSM and the TC. The TC protects the Team from outside political noise. This allows the team to remain focused on the job at hand, and if any issue is a priority, the TC and VSM will discuss it and priorities it.

With the Team, the TC validates the project practices, organizes meetings, updates items, and coordinates requirements changes. The TC participates and conducts daily standup meetings used to track the project on a day to day basis. TCs should be trained as team facilitators and should be constantly engaged in challenging the status quo. It is imperative that the TC creates and maintains a manageable flow inside the team. They may help the team break their work into small chunks that can be delivered quickly. The TC will also monitor the team flow through the use of established control points created within the cycle. If the team runs into an impediment it is the TC’s job to find the resources needed to remove it. The Team Coordinator also helps the Team learn and apply Lean.

The Team Coordinator will typically serve several Teams simultaneously. The TC may be organized in a vertical or horizontal fashion in accordance with the pillars of the Lean Marketing House. He could be even part of the team. However, this is the critical role that requires Lean experience in implementing Lean in your sales and marketing.

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Jul

Is PDCA the culture of Lean?

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I have always considered PDCA as the culture of Lean. I get frustrated when I hear about Lean only discussed in terms of flow and waste reduction. In a recent Business901 Podcast, Gemba Coach talks PDCA, Dr. Michael Balle and myself had a discussion on this subject. This is a transcription of the podcast.

Gemba Coach talks PDCA

View more documents from Joseph Dager.

Dr. Balle is a multiple Shingo Prize winner as an author of the The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager. His newest Shingo Prize was on the adaption of The Gold Mine: A Novel of Lean Turnaround to an audiobook that features performances by multiple readers who bring its realistic business story and characters to life.

Dr. Michael Balle is the Gemba Coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute

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Jul

Identifying your Lean sales and marketing teams

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When I use the SALES PDCA approach in Lean Marketing, I emphasize the use of sales and marketing teams. It is one of the underlying principles that is needed. Sales has operated for so many years based on the idea of the individual salesperson calling on “his” accounts and the organization reinforcing this structure through individual commissions that it is very difficult to consider another way even working. A preliminary description of all of the roles can be found in this post: Lean Sales and Marketing Roles.

I am creating a series of blog posts to add more insight into developing sales and marketing teams and there are some basic team development structures that need to be identified at the very beginning. One of these areas is the basic consideration of objectives. I prefer the method established way back in 1989 by Larson and LaFasto and later emphasized in the book, Rapid Development . They state that you first consider the kind of team needed: Problem Resolution, Creativity or Tactical execution.

Once you established the objectives you choose a team structure to match it. Without this process you may have creative teams working on tactical execution or on the other hand a problem solving team working on a creative solution. In the SALES PDCA framework we emphasize before starting the PDCA IMPROVEMENT LOOP is locate the people who understand the process. An abbreviated definition of that step is:

Locate the people who understand the process: One of the key considerations in developing a team is to determine the objective of the cycle. Is it primarily problem-resolution, creativity, or tactical execution? Team structure needs to be considered as well as the participants. You will find a variety of structures will work for you but the typical model in sales and marketing is one of a business team that has a team leader and all others are on equal footing. Many times the team leader is really just a participant but has the administrative work as an added responsibility.

Kinds of Teams: Once you’ve identified the team’s broadest objective—problem resolution, creativity, or tactical execution—then you set up a team structure that emphasizes the characteristic that is most important for that kind of team. For a problem-resolution team, you emphasize trust for a creativity team, autonomy for a tactical-execution team, clarity. Listed below is an outline identifying the team structures.

Adapted from Teamwork and the Rapid Development books:

Problem-resolution team:

Objective: Focuses on solving a complex, poorly defined problems.
Dominant Feature: Trust
Sales Process Example: Sales inquiry for proposal
Process emphasis: Focus on issues
Lifecycle Models: Try and Fix, spiral
Team Members: Intelligent, street-smart, people sensitive, high integrity
Team Models: Business team, professional athletic team, search and rescue, swat

Creativity Team:

Objective: Explore possibilities and alternatives.
Dominant Feature: Autonomy
Sales Process Example: Creating a new advertising program
Process emphasis: Explore possibilities and alternatives
Lifecycle Models: Evolutionary prototyping, evolutionary delivery, staged delivery, spiral, design-to-schedule
Team Members: Cerebral, independent thinkers, self-starters, tenacious
Team Models: Business team. feature team, skunk-works team, theater team

Tactical-Execution Team

Objective: Focuses on carrying out a well-defined plan.
Dominant Feature: Clarity
Sales Process Example: Upgrade to an existing product
Process emphasis: Highly focused task with clear roles
Lifecycle Models: Waterfall, design to schedule, spiral, staged delivery
Team Members: Loyal, committed, action-orientated, sense of urgency, responsiveness
Team Models: Business team. feature team, swat

Do you identify your sales and marketing teams differently?