Lean Marketing House » A3

Critical and Creative Thinking benefits the Problem Solver

admin — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 05:16:00 +0000

Below is a presentation that I gave recently to the Plantmix Asphalt Industry of Kentucky. It was during the winter training school and focused on using both Critical and Creative Thinking benefits the Problem Solver. It also included how to prevent the failures of most decision processes. This an hour long presentation. What are your thoughts? Any improvement ideas?

Problem Diagnostics – Q & A

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My Engagement Strategy – Appreciative Inquiry

admin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:32:00 +0000

Most people want ideas and applications that I would propose before we start working together. I equate that to starting on the right side of the A3 (with the answers in layman terms). So recently I have developed a structure that makes more sense. I leave the customer determine the price and budget for the encounter.

I believe in creating a Lean Marketing system. You can’t write and teach Lean Sales and Marketing. It is a Learn by doing approach. What I do is provide you a platform for co-creation through joint experiences and incorporate feedback as we put them into practice. The steps of Lean Sales and Marketing are first you go and create a current state. Second, you form a working vision from the user (customer) experience, an ideal situation of where the user wants to go. Third, you visualize the user’s process. If you do that, it’s more obvious to see what your next reaction should be and when to trigger it.

Many people respond to the latest fad or solicit the cleverest idea to implement some sort of solution, thinking it will make them better. What makes your marketing better is understanding the user or customer experience and their processes. Then with hard work, take the time to figure out how to engage with them. It’s this process, that empowers you and which leads you to create better and more performing processes. Using this approach, a Lean system will outperform any other approach in engaging the customers you need, maintaining customers and working with people you like and who will be loyal to you and refer others to you forever.

This is the initial sequence of steps we use to create a Lean Marketing System in an organization. It ensures we carefully think through what outcomes we want to create, what supports and barriers we need to plan for, and who we have to involve within your organization to guarantee success. Our starting point:

(Definition) What are you presently doing and how do your clients and organization feel about them?
(Discovery) What is your present value proposition for retaining customers? What is your present value proposition for acquiring customers?
(Dream)What are your targets? How will we measure success?
(Design) Do you understand your customer’s decision making process? For each product/market segment?
(Destiny) What’s your investment strategy – not only in media, but in time and events?

What I ask for is simply a marketing budget for me to manage. We allocate a percentage of the budget for fees, creative and production, with the balance going to media, materials, internet presence and other out of pocket expenses. At the beginning it is slanted towards the fee side and overtime shifts as we don’t need to recreate materials and programs from scratch. It can be very cost effective if I am able to use my own resources and fold you into existing processes. I host and manage websites, post products to Amazon, handle news releases, create interview opportunities, host guest blog posts and podcasts, orchestrate events, create info product and manage shopping carts at little if any additional costs. There is little time spent by the client except for telephone interviews and final review of materials.

P.S. What I will not do is masquerade as your persona in social media. I believe that this typically backfires both in creditability and expected results.

Unbeknownst to me what I described in the starting points is the outline for Appreciative Inquiry. In parenthesis above; Definition, Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny is the AI Process, which I detail below:

Definition: What frames our inquiry?
Discovery: What gives life?
Dream: What might be?
Design: What should be?
Destiny: What will be?

Never knew I was an Appreciative Inquiry guy!

Using A3 to introduce Lean – Dr. Balle Video

admin — Thu, 19 May 2011 02:22:00 +0000

Lean technology has now evolved from the manufacturing floor to the whole enterprise. Many companies have found real value in applying the fundamental concepts of Lean throughout the organization. The lean concepts of Kaizen, PDCA and the tools such as Pareto Charts, 5 Why’s and even Poka Yoke are commonplace.

As a result of discussing a Lean Enterprise with Dr. Michael Balle, I asked him about his thoughts on Introducing PDCA or A3 to services is it feasible?

Dr. Michael Ballé is a business researcher and consultant and has studied lean transformation for the past 15 years. He is Associate Researcher at Télécom Paris Tech and the co-founder of the French Lean Institute (www.institut-lean-france.fr) and the Project Lean Enterprise (www.lean.enst.fr). He coaches CEOs and senior executives in using lean to radically improve their businesses’ performances and establish lean cultures.

Dr. Balle is also a 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.

Learn the One Page Project Manager

admin — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 04:05:00 +0000

I have been a big fan of the The One-Page Project Manager for many years. In fact, the author Clark Campbell reminded me in a recent phone call that I was the first one to write a review on the first book. Since then, he has added two more books to the collection:

I have not read the OPPM for IT but of course have the first one and the latter which is the OPPM for use with an A3. If you are familiar with an A3, I would recommend the original OPPM as you will find the A3 material rather basic. If you are not familiar with A3 the description of the process is quite good in the book but it does not go into the tools used to construct the A3 in much depth.

The One Page Project Manager is not meant to replace a full blown project management system. It helps you identify and communicate the essential details of a project. I recommended the book in my book, Marketing with A3 (Marketing with A3(Kindle Version)) as an effective reporting tool. Utilizing Lean methodologies, I always felt that in the project management area Lean never had a defined method such as the “C” in Six Sigma DMAIC. I think the OPPM completes the job and is a great companion to Lean and especially A3s. I utilize the OPPM with A3s slightly different than the book describes. I use the entire back side of the A3 for the OPPM. I take advantage of a little artistic interpretation of what constitutes one page.

Though I have not read the OPPM for IT, I would assume from reading the Table of Contents it does not address agile practices. However, since it is basically a communication and reporting tool, it may be an ideal bridge between agile teams and management. Most managers are familiar with the Gantt style and no so much with burn charts. Using the OPPM to report progress may be an ideal crossover.

I have certainly stretched the use of OPPM and managed some rather in-depth and lengthy projects with it. In fact one such project I actually reconfigured the Excel sheet to hold over 100 tasks. It is a tool that should be in anyone’s toolbox. Below is a rather detailed view of the OPPM.

Using The One Page Project Manager

P.S. Clark Campbell is putting on a half-day OPPM workshop at the 2011 Shingo Conference.

Lean Problem Solving approach

admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Practical problem solving is at the heart of the Toyota Production System and a Lean culture. These skills are based on the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle and are the bases of the A3 problem solving process. Why is learning the foundation of problem solving so important? When you start looking through the lens of Why? Why is this happening? Why is it this way? You start building a learning organization, a problem solving culture that will grow every minute of the day. The very best competitive advantage that you can instill within your organization.

Ron Pereira at the Gemba Academy introduces the 8 step Practical Problem Solving methodology in this video and touches on a few others. The steps are:

Clarify the problem
Breakdown the problem
Set a target
Analyze the root cause
Develop countermeasures
See countermeasures through
Evaluate both results and process
Standardize successful processes

Does Lean Marketing deliver what the customer wants?

admin — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Customers do not want more choices. They just want what they want, period. And in an economy that there is less demand than supply, they can get it. Companies in response to this create more features, more options in their products or services. They will take the deep dive into segmenting their markets and through the use of technology may be reaching the ultimate goal of marketing to a single person. Marketing technology exists that allows us to customize mass mailings, e-zines, recordings and other media in an attempt to personalize each and every marketing effort.

Companies have embraced this marketing technology and without anything more than data can provide a very unique message. Their products and services are also provided under the disguise of tailored to your needs while just being a version of a core product line. You do not need to look any further than the universities. Their customized mailings to your children and the breadth of degrees they offer are just phenomenal. It is the manipulation of data that provides this ability and I venture to say does little in swaying a high school student to attend. I believe that decision is reached by the influencers in that person’s network.

This technology is important though. It allows us to capture information about clients in a non-offensive way and in a format that allows us to automate much of the information for distribution. From a product/service standpoint creating the different version of our core product allows us to extend our reach to a greater audience. Case closed?

If it is, we forgot about that influencer thing I mentioned. Trust is difficult to obtain from data. Trust comes from people. Knowing all the influencers and marketing certainly can help but quite unfeasible in most circumstances. The data you obtain must be used to facilitate a learning atmosphere between you and your customer/prospect. You must also be willing to share seats with the customer and leave him teach you versus you being the teacher. The more they teach you the more difficult it becomes for a competitor to take them away.

In the Marketing with PDCA cycles that are utilized in Lean Marketing, we create that collaborative environment where learning and knowledge creation takes place. In the landmark book, The Experience Economy , the authors built a pyramid of “The Progressions of Economic Value and Valuable Intelligence. You can think of your own product stages and how a customer/prospect looks at your product. Each level of economic value corresponds to a level of valuable intelligence (commodities to goods, goods to data, etc.). From the book:

While the economic offering becomes more and more intangible with each step up the next echelon, the value of the offering becomes more and more tangible. Economist often talk about the “line of intangibility” between goods and services – to which we add the line of memorability” before experiences and the “line of sustainability” before transformations. Goods and services remain outside of the individual, while experiences actually reach inside of the individual to the value of the offering.

They go on to say:

Nothing is more important, more abiding, or more wealth-creating than the wisdom required to transform customers. And nothing will command as high a price.

PDCA is looked at most as problem solving methodology. I think it is the core of a Lean Culture. In the beginning stages of developing a Lean Marketing program I distinguish the difference by using Marketing with A3 as the problem solving tool of choice. This enables me to distinguish the difference between the tool A3 and PDCA which is the knowledge creation culture that is the essence of Lean Marketing. The sharing, experience and interaction of knowledge with the customer created through PDCA is what the customer wants. He proves it by the value he assigns to it.

This is why I believe the Future of Marketing is Lean!