An Unconventional Way To Retain a Client

I have always thought that honest goes a long way.   This approach to life may be interpreted as naive, but I do believe that becoming trustworthy will often work out for your best interests in the long run.   Trustworthiness is beneficial both in your personal and work life.

Charles Green has been an advocate of trustworthiness for a long time, and stresses the importance of using trust as a competitive advantage.  However, becoming easy to be trusted by others often implies taking counter intuitive actions and significant risks.  In one of his books, he has an an excellent example of how an auditing firm approached a situation with an unsatisfied client that was thinking of changing supplier.  New auditing companies were called to present proposals for the required services, and this auditing firm did the following:

"Instead of using their 90-minute time slot to do a conventional presentation, four of their partners acted out a skit for the four client executives. They role-played those very execs having that decisive meeting"

The company took a risk, talked about their current decline in their performance, and how they would improve it.  The result:  they were awarded the business again.

At the end, honesty's all we've got.

Knockoffs Decrease Sales. Really?

Authors Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman have a new book out, The Knockoff Economy, exploring the effects of imitation on innovation and on profitability.

Common sense would say that when imitations (knockoffs) of products appear on the market, the sales of that product will be negatively impacted.  But is this really the case?

The studies the authors conducted show that as long as users can distinguish between the originals and knockoffs, the availability of knockoffs have several positive effects:

• There is free advertising for the brand of the original product

• There are increased sales in the long run, when customers that use the knockoffs products are able to transition into the originals, or in other words, when they can afford them.

A short excerpt from the book:

"In short, copies of branded goods—counterfeits—can have a counter intuitive effect on originals. While these copies can steal away some would-be buyers of the original, they also can help create new buyers through the advertising effect. Some counterfeit buyers “graduate” to the real thing, whereas others who never buy a counterfeit become buyers of the original because the counterfeits serve as advertising."

In conclusion, imitations of your product may actually be good for your company.

At the end, if you are continuously the best in your category, everything will work fine, no matter how many try to imitate you.

Are you the best in what you intend to do?

Trailers and Lean Accounting

Bill Waddell, famous lean expert and consultant, describes in a short talk the basics of Lean Accounting.  It is always positive to see that leaders of various continuous improvement disciplines agree that an accounting and measurement system focused on real value and not artificial numbers is an essential component of effective management.

An example of a company that understand real value and effective metrics is ATC Trailers.   You can understand their lean journey in this short video, and how they defined distinct value streams and eliminated waste to deliver products more quickly and profitably.   End result:  delighted customers, motivated employees and a growing company.

Are you using an adequate scorecard to manage and grow your business?   Are you focusing on performing value added activities and eliminating waste?

Sleep No More, Zimbardo and Milgram

Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo are two recognized psychologists that conducted a some of the most famous social experiments in history to try to better understand human behavior.   What they were trying to prove in their own ways was that behavior can be significantly altered by your surroundings, and a certain environment will induce you to behave in ways that you would not expect to under normal circumstances.  

Enter Sleep No More, a fascinating and different type of theater play, created by an group called Punchdrunk.  Instead of attendees sitting and watching the show in traditional style, they are given masks, walk through rooms, decide when to interact with actors, follow actors into rooms, and even eat and drink.   Every decision the viewer makes shapes your experience, and by being anonymous participants do things that they would normally not do.   Often, at the end of the show, attendees are surprised of their actions.

Read all about behavior, your surroundings and Sleep No More in the latest Freakonomics podcast, Fear Thy Nature.

Are you sure you would act as usual, if your surroundings change significantly?

The Flip a Coin With a Twist Method

Ever been in a dilemma, and have no idea what to do?

When implications are so big that even an conflict resolution diagram will not help you find an answer, there is always the traditional "flip a coin" advice.  But is it really effective?

Although flipping a coin may feel that you are leaving your decisions to randomness, there is an alternative method with a twist, that includes your gut feelings.

Making  decisions is part of life.   When unable to decide, the flip a coin with a twist may help you out.

So what will it be?  Heads or Tails?

Instant America Infographic

In a world were information can be accessed immediately with the tap of a finger, the click of a mouse or a couple of keystrokes, have you asked yourself how the instantaneous world we live in has changed our behavior?

OnlineGraduatePrograms.com created an interesting infographic that shows how impatient we have all become.  To illustrate through an example:

• 1 in 4 people abandon a website that takes more than four seconds to load.

The internet has become as essential as electrical power, one of the great inventions of the ultimate geek.

I just have to wonder what Nikola would have done with the internet.

Are You A Linchpin?

If you don't know about Seth Godin's Linchpins, maybe Hugh's illustration can help to understand the gist of it.

Bottom line:  Are you indispensable?  If not, what are you doing about it?

The Laws of Subtraction - Free Preview

Matt May, the former Toyota consultant and innovation expert, is in the process of writing his newest book, The Laws of Subtraction.

Matt has reminded us over the years that what constitutes an elegant solution is the ability to remove excess detail, and even leave some things unresolved so that users can fill in the blanks.  The Laws of Subtraction guide us through three critical choices inherent in every difficult decision in business, work and life:

• What to pursue versus what to ignore?
• What to leave in versus what to leave out?
• What to do versus what to don’t?

You can download a free preview of his new book, were the Laws of Subtraction are discussed:

• What isn’t there can often trump what is.
• The simplest rules create the most effective experience.
• Limiting information engages the imagination.
• Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints.
• Break is the important part of breakthrough.
• Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing.

In a world were time is limited, it is essential to decide what not to focus on, and just subtract it from your life.

TEDs Top 20 Talks of All Time

You've probably watched many TED videos before.

If not, TED was a venture started in 1984, as an annual conference with speakers sharing new ideas about Technology and Design.   Afterward, it's objective was to promote "ideas worth sharing" about different topics that impact our life, and has featured speakers such as Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Clinton, Larry Page and many other celebrities.

Regardless of your acquaintance with TED videos, it might be worth your while to look at the top 20 TED Videos of all time.

Do you have any ideas worth sharing?

Dan Pink's Inspirational Quotes

We all need some inspiration from time to time.   Need some?  Check out the three quotes that author Dan Pink keeps on this wall.

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.”– Viktor Frankl

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”– Steve Jobs

“Being a professional is doing the things you love to do — even on the days you don’t feel like doing it.”– Julius Erving

If you haven't read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, please do.

Steaks, Patents, Trade Secrets and Trademarks

Want to learn the difference between patents, trade secrets and trademarks, using a Vegas Steak as reference?   These kind of analogies only happen at Freakonomics, but as usual offer practical ways to learn.

If you are interested in where the Coca-Cola secret recipe falls in the Intellectual Property domain, and if the the rumor that only few executives at the company actually know the recipe is true?

John Wanamaker famously said: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

Seems the Marketing Execs at Coca-Cola do know which half is working.

Beyond the Jipp Curve

The Jipp Curve proves that there is a relationship between telephone density (teledensity) and the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country.   Back then, data showed that richer countries had higher penetration and use of telephone lines.

With the introduction of Smartphones a little more than decade ago, the Jipp Curve has been turned over its head, and Smartphone growth is spreading faster than any other previous technological innovation.  Some other incredible facts, taken from Dan Pink's blog:

• In 2006, smart phones accounted for just 6% of U.S. mobile phones sold that year. Today, "smart phones represent more than two-thirds of all U.S. mobile-phone sales."

• "In 1982, there were 4.6 billion people in the world, and not a single mobile-phone subscriber. Today, there are seven billion people in the world — and six billion mobile cellular-phone subscriptions." Of those subscriptions, 73 percent are now in the developing world, even though those countries account for just 20 percent of the world's GDP."

• Right now the world has 1.4 billion PCs in use. "Mobile phones, on the other hand, are already selling more than 1.4 billion units every single year."

Even if the world's connectedness will continue to bring enormous benefits to mankind, I wonder when being online, all the time, will overwhelm us to the point of saying, enough!

It is incredible to think about how two decades ago, without internet and Smartphones, everything worked well.  I guess every generation asks this question at a given point in time. 

Means I'm getting old, I guess.

The Secret of Life, According to Steve Jobs

There are many inspiring speeches out there.   From no other than Steve Jobs, I recently watched an obscure interview about life and changes that he gave when he was still working at NeXT, before returning to Apple as CEO.

Some excerpts from the interview:

"When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

"The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing. It's to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.  — Steve Jobs 

Steve Jobs could have been a certified jerk, but his relentless focus on doing things with the potential to change the world, is admirable.

I just hope more of us had his vision and courage.

Don't Break The Chain!

Turns out Seinfeld was not only brilliant at comedy, but also at suggesting a simple tool that can make your life more productive.

It has even become an iPhone app, which I recently downloaded, and started to test.   Aptly titled Wonderful Day, you can take a look at the introductory video to understand how it works.  I'm planing on using it for getting disciplined on daily blogging, daily reading and healthy eating.   

I can imagine Seinfeld's voice reminding his audience:  "don't break the chain!".

If Seinfeld's methodology doesn't work, you can always use Charles Duhigg's habit changing methodology, which is simple and effective.

How disciplined are you in the things you want to achieve?  Are you breaking the chain?

Measuring Wizards

Charke Ching, a TOC colleague recently wrote a humorous short story about wizards and quality, in an attempt to illustrate the possible consequences of applying the concept of "you can't manage what you don't measure" combined with the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Clarke's story reminds me of Eli Goldratt's famous phrase:

"Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I will behave", or the flipside "If you measure me in irrational ways, do not complain if I behave irrationally".   

Long story short:   be careful what you measure and what you reward.

A critical skill of any effective manager is the ability to bring out the best of people, by identifying what specific behaviors are productive to the organization,  and then reinforcing them and rewarding them appropriately.   It is the systematic application of this reinforcement process, along with a rewarding environment, that can propel your organization to superior levels of performance.

What are the key things you measure in your organization?  How is that working for you?

Guess Who's Back?

After some weeks of handling delicate family matters, ending some previous projects and starting some new ones, I am "back in business".

Even if this blog was created initially for my personal development, it is good when a friend asks you where have you been and when you'll be back.

Thanks to all for reading. And please give me feedback, to continuously improve!

The Icarus Deception, a Godin Kickstarter Project

It all started with the Domino Project, an initiative for authors based on the assumption that when you have a tribe, or group of people following you, publishing your work under a different model may work, and big advances, publishers and brick and mortar bookstores may not be necessary.

Seth Godin's latest initiative expands on his previous work, and is based on the following assumptions:

• You have a "tribe" of people that follow you, respect you, and are eager to know and share your thoughts

• Your tribe is big enough to help you fund and launch projects, in exchange for something special in return, such as a special edition of a book, exclusive interview, or others

• Brick and mortar distribution will work in your favor, expanding on the initial efforts of your tribe

The book to be published under this format is called the Icarus Deception, launched as a Kickstarter Project.  It was funded in record time, just a few hours, showing how big Godin's tribe is.   With this book, Godin will try to challenge the notion that you need to convince the publisher of a new book idea before publishing a book, instead of convincing your audience and by default, your publisher.

Do you have a big enough tribe?   Find something you are good at, and start building it slowly over time.  This is one of the biggest asset you'll have in the long run.

The Dip, Revisited

For all of you that like Seth Godin and his thoughts, The Dip is one of his bestselling books, talking basically about when it's time to quit something you are doing...or stick with it until you make it.

Some excerpts (paraphrased) from his book:

• The famous phrase, "winners don't quit", is jut wrong.
• Winners quit, the right things, at the right time, all the time.
• Quit the wrong stuff, stick to the right stuff.  Have the guts to do just this.

If you want a short audio introduction of the Dip, listen here.

Jim Collins has some thoughts along these lines too, with his New Year's Resolution Stop Doing List, where he advice readers to stop doing stop that make you lose focus on what you really want, as time for all of us is  the scarcest resource and limited.

So, how good are you at quitting?   Are you focusing on the right things?

You're Not Special

We have all heard famous high school and graduation commencement addresses, and some become internet phenomenons such as Steve Jobs'  "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish".   It's difficult to find a really inspiring graduation speech, isn't it?

David McCullough, an English teacher at Wellesley High School recently gave an inspiring speech to the summer high school graduates.  In his speech, titled "you are not special", David suggests that with so many people in the world with your same qualifications, we are all basically a commodity, regardless of the Lake Wobegon effect.   It all boils down to how much you care, and if that inspirations follows you for a long enough time, to get over the the Dip.

Are you still a commodity?  How many people are knocking on your door, begging you to work for them?

The Executive and The Consultant

For all of us who have been both independent consultants and employees, the Deming impersonator Mike Micklewright explains the difference between both roles very clearly.

For some of us, the ever lasting conflict between security (having a stable job) and satisfaction (attempting to solve problems in a wide variety of industries) is not easy to break.   Some find other income generating activities, others work as internal consultants for companies, others find jobs as consultants.  Having a job also does not guarantee stability, and can sometimes make your mind "dormant", as you become used to a job's procedures and processes.

The key is to never lose the "consultant mindset", regardless of what you do for a living.    Look at things from a higher perspective.  Always think and make decisions as if you were the owner of the company.   Constantly read about new things, share, learn.  Experiment, Learn, Experiment again. Tap into the wisdom of crowds.  Ask why constantly.  Give yourself time to reflect and think.

We all have a consultant mindset.  How often do you use it?

The Constanza Principle

There is a famous Seinfeld Episode where George Constanza starts doing the opposite of what his inner mind suggested.   After adopting his contrarian view on life, Constanza starts being very succesful in most of his endeavors.

Now, we all now the "lizard brain" or amygdala is there since evolutionary times to protect you from danger and to protect your family...but every once and again it may be good to stop listening to it, as hyenas and other dangers are not as common as before.

How often do you listen to your lizard brain?   What if you said yes, instead of no?

Standing On The Shoulders of Giants

This week I am at the yearly TOC ICO in Chicago, understanding the latest development in Theory of Constraints and meeting good friends and colleagues. It will be the first conference without Eli Goldratt, and the conference theme has been based on one of Eli's last ideas, which is based on the famous Newton quote:  "If I haven been further it has been because I have been standing on the Shoulders of Giants".   

Last year, Eli G developed a process to help TOC practitioners to improve the current body of knowledge.    The basic (summarized) version is the following:

1.  Identify a Giant, or a current solution that you want to expand on
2.  Identify the Area Not Addressed by The Giant, or the new area you want to expand the solution into
3. Get on the Shoulders, using previous effective concepts that have worked well in the past
4.  Identify the Conceptual Difference, or have the courage to identify "inconsistencies" between expected results and current results in the new area that you want to expand the solution into
5.  Identify the wrong assumption, or check which of the current assumptions that the solutions uses is not valid in the new area of application
6.   Conduct the full analysis, or do your due diligence

Although the process is a little difficult to grasp at first, the basic idea is that when you are trying to improve a particular solutions for a problem, try to find the instances where it is not working (untouched area), find why it is not working (wrong assumption) and expand the solution, using previous knowledge.

Improving and finding better solutions is not easy, but as Eli Goldratt used to say:

Do you want an easy life or a meaningful life?

The Power of Reflection

Reflection after the fact is not a popular practice among western management.   True, meetings to analyze results are held, but are root causes identified?  Or is it an exercise in finding the best excuse possible to explain results we don't understand?

Management gurus have implicitedly suggested reflection in their general approaches to continuous improvement.   Some examples could be (in bold the reflection part of the process):

• Deming, with the Plan-Do-Check-Act 
• John Boyd, with OODA, Observe, Orient, Design, Act
• Eli Goldratt, with the Five Focusing Steps, warning of inertia in Step 5.

Matt May recently described the reflection process that the former and very successful NY chief of police William Bratton used to apply with his team.  Initially developed by the US Army, the method is called an After Action Review (AAR), and some of the main principles are the following:

• It is mandatory and held after a key milestone, to check the effectiveness of a strategy, tactic or action
• It reviews both expected and unexpected effects that were observed in reality, regardless of if they were positive or negative in nature
• Three basic questions are asked to understand the results:  what was supposed to happen, what actually happened, how do we account for the differences.

The analysis of expectations versus results is ingrained in the Toyota Culture, as part of the kata that everyone must follow.   The late Eli Goldratt also placed great emphasis to understand the cause and effect of environments, and particulary when surprises, or gaps between expectations and results happened.   He used to tell the story of a fashion clothing manufacturer that sold all the collection they had launched early in the season.   Management was very excited as this had been a great success.   But then Eli reminded them that what it meant was they had run out of stock, and were unable to replenish as quickly as possible, and if this could have been done, sales would have been significantly larger.   This insight caused the management to reflect about these kinds of situations, and redefine their criterias of success.

So, do you reflect on what your actions and the gap between expectations and reality?  If so, what can you improve?

Math52, a Kickstarter Project for Learning Math

Who said math should always be a boring subject?  Enter Math 52, a project currently being funded in Kickstarter:

From Math's 52's pitch in Kickstarter:

"According to a Raytheon study, 61% of middle school students would rather take out the garbage than do their math homework, and teacher job satisfaction is at its lowest point in over twenty years. Students and teachers are hungry for something new...but not everyone knows what that looks like."

Math52 intention is to teach Math through weekly videos, using concepts that are easy to relate to:

• How far would you have to run to burn off a Big Mac?
• Do people with small feet pay too much for shoes?
• Is it ever a good idea to buy AppleCare...
• ...and what can this tell us about health insurance?

Although the platform used for teaching isn't very different than the other multiple online education alternatives, what's interesting is their way of approaching subjects, which on first hand seems to have behavioral economics related subjects and use a style similar to Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the authors of Freakonomics.

Do you have an idea you could launch using Kickstarter?  What are you waiting for?

Raising The Bar, Constraints and Creativity

The late Eli Goldratt, founder of the Theory of Constraints, proposed that in order to find innovate ideas to improve a situation, you should raise the targets or objectives significantly.  As an example, if you were the manager of a company and needed to increase sales, what kind of responses do you think you would you get when asking the following questions to your team:

1. How do we increase sales by 10%?
2. How do we increase sales by 100%?

To answer the second question, a totally different mindset, probably a paradigm shift, is required.  Complemented with positive reinforcement measurements, the approach should be effective.

Tina Seelig, of Stanford University's Technology Ventures, offers an alternative approach to get the creative juices flowing:   change the constraints.  Although Tina is using the word constraint in a way similar to linear optimization, the idea is to impose less flexible rules, which usually means limiting the amount of resources available, so that there is no other choice than two think in alternative (and possibly counter intuitive) ways of solving problems.

Her approach reminds me of the situation Toyota had after the second world war, and when the company was in a disastrous financial position.    Under severe cash limitations, the company had to figure out how to make quality cars, at a low cost, and had them available when the customer needed them.    The rest, as they say, is history.

So, in what ways are you motivating your team to find creative solutions?   Are you raising the bar, limiting the available resources, or both?

Not Metrosexual, Datasexual?

When you think about the current  interconnectedness of the world, and after seeing the overwhelming infographic about social media, Dominic from BigThink describes a new emerging type of individual, also known as the Datasexual:

Taken from the article:

"....he same cultural zeitgeist that gave us the metrosexual - the urban male obsessive about grooming and personal appearance - is also creating its digital equivalent: the datasexual. The datasexual looks a lot like you and me, but what’s different is their preoccupation with personal data. They are relentlessly digital, they obsessively record everything about their personal lives, and they think that data is sexy. In fact, the bigger the data, the sexier it becomes. Their lives - from a data perspective, at least - are perfectly groomed"

I don't know how else to react, except to invoke Garfield:   Auntie Em!  Auntie Em!

The Overwhelming World of Social Media

For all of you that think that you are not connected enough, or that don't have that latest app on your smartphone, let me give you some bad news:  it will never be enough.

Recently shared on LinkedIn, check out this amazing Infographic showing all the social media services that exist today, and how complex the online world has become.

Makes you wonder were the days of Altavista, ICQ and Hotmail went to, part of the small number of services that existed less than a decade ago.

The bubble has to burst at some point.   Maybe the recent trouble with Facebook is a sign of this trend.   Humans have less time than ever, and we know that multitasking is a myth.

But being connected is now an essential isn't it? How many days can you spend without checking your email?

The Laws of Subtraction Videos

Matt May, former advisor of Toyota and creative thinking expert, is currently writing his fourth book, The Laws of Subtraction, covering subjects related to Creativity, Innovation and Design Strategy.

Matt recently spoke in a venue in California, and shared his 6 basic laws of subtraction.   Each video is less than 5 minutes, and the whole series covers topics from the David Chase's famous ending of the Sopranos, the Mona Lisa, creativity and resource constraints, among others.

Law #1  - What isn't there can often trump what is.  
Law #2  - The simplest rules create the most effective experience.

Law #3 - Limiting information engages the imagination.

Law #4 - Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints.

Law #5 - Break" is an important part of any breakthrough.
Law #6 - Doing something isn't always better than doing nothing. 

The challenge is to always think how to solve problems in a simple and effective way.   As Einstein used to say:

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

The Effect Of Abstract And Specific On Change

Part of being an effective manager is having the capability to motivate and persuade the people you lead in a desired direction.  For someone to change, both the why change and the how to change are necessary.   Many other elements are important in a change process, but for the moment lets ask:  when should managers discloses the Why and when the How?

Bob Sutton recently shared the results of a study that show how vague versus specific messages affect credibility.  Using presidential candidates, the study showed that if elections were several months away, candidates that spoke in vague terms where the most liked by potential voters.   But if elections were very close, candidates that spoke in specific terms were the most liked.   For the brain context is essential, something my colleague Jack Vinson constantly reminds me of.

The study got me thinking about when you should speak in vague versus concrete terms.  Perhaps when in the initial steps of a change initiative, it is better to speak in broader terms, as this might help you create a shared Urgency of Change, as Kotter's work suggests.   In later phases, when a shared vision is in place, specific terms might work best.

How do you convey the Why and How in your organization?  Do you always share them with the people you lead?

The Legal Rebel Videos - PointOneLaw Venue

For all of us who like Matt Hoffman's, also known as The Legal Rebel, the PointOneLaw videos have been published for everyone to view.

PointOneLaw is an interesting venue created by Matt, where lawyers from different origins and backgrounds present new ideas that are relevant to the legal profession.   For this year, 12 lawyers spoke from topics ranging from Social Networks and the Legal Business, Flash Mob Law and How to Reinvent Customer Services.  Each speaker has a limit of 6 minutes and 20 slides, so presentations are on point.

In a world were lawsuits are common, and are significantly hindering the ability of many organizations such as health, education, and others to provide quality services at a low cost, the ideas from these venue are refreshing.   Matt and his colleagues think out of the box, looking for real win-win between all parties involved.

Although PointOneLaw is mainly for the the legal profession, there are many useful nuggets for business managers

Stand Up Gamblers

Last week I blogged about how to run meetings more effectively, including the famous "stand up meeting", where people have to stand up during the whole meetings because chairs have been removed.  The lack of chairs causes attendees to quickly focus on the topics on hand and make decisions as quick as possible.   In short, the environment has been set up to improve effectiveness.

Behavioral economists have shown that people make mistakes in their decision making, specially when deciding on complex issues, where feedback is slow or lacking.   In these cases, it makes sense to "nudge" people in the right direction, so both the person and society gain from improved decision making.

A recent Freakonomics article talked about how an organization in Australia is thinking about tackling the problem of gambling, using an adequate environment and nudges.   Basically, their suggestion is to remove chairs in casinos, so gamblers have no choice than to go and rest in a different area, other than the black jack table, when getting tired.    How would this change in the environment impact a gambler's behavior?

Are you considering your company's environment?   Is it adequate for your company's purposes?

How Much Time Do You Waste At Work?

My colleague Jack Vinson recently shared an infographic about how people waste time in their workplace.

Although waste needs to be defined more precisely to get the infographic into context, there are several assumptions being made that are not necessarily correct:

• Every contribution made by an employee contributes equally to the bottom line
• All employees are paid on an hourly basis
• The busier someone is with work related activities, the more productive that person is

The first and second assumption imply that local efficiencies sum up to global efficiencies, someone that we know is incorrect.   And how are most employees hired, on a contract base or a salary base?

Related to the third assumption, test have shown that people actually have improved cognitive ability when they take small breaks, because the mind can rest to go back into full active mode.  And if people are achieving their   objectives, does it matter if they are taking small leisure breaks?

Instead of focusing on why people are wasting time, a manager should work on building a company culture that is interesting, engaging, and where employees ideas and input are actually used to improve processes.    Would you really worry about time spent when the company improved on a daily basis by its employees?

So how much time are your employees wasting?   Is this even the right question to ask?

Do You Give a Damn?

Bassam Tarasi, from Colipera, says it best:  Give a Damn.

Standard, averages, status quo is now way to delight others and to have a meaningful life.

Find out what you want to be the most of, work relentlessly, don't expect to please everybody, and results will come.

Nobody said it would be easy...

The Power of X

Have you seen the Power of X?

Amazing what people can do, when they include scarcity in their daily life equation.

What You Stand For?

Focus is key in management.   Too many daily problems, not enough time to solve them. Too many potential markets, not enough manpower to go after them.  Too many new projects to launch, not enough money to start them.

Great companies know how to focus, and they usually have a vision that is clear to all and must be followed.  Southwest focused on improving plane turnaround, and became the low cost and reliable airline.    The Ritz Carlton focused on wowing their customers, and became exemplary in the customer service arena.  Toyota focused on reducing the time from receiving an order from a client to collecting the money for the good that was sold, and became the best manufacturing company in the world.  The common pattern:  every company was the most of something, and didn't try to be a little of everything.

In a world with so many alternatives, average does not make the cut anymore.   Are you even questioning the way business has always been done around here?

What do you stand for?   What makes you different from the alternatives?

Eliminate Slogans, Use Creative Signs?

Deming's Principle #10 of Management reminded managers to "eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets in the workplace", meaning that these elements are not useful to motivate employees to improve.   Usually, what is broken is the system, and the employees have no other option but to follow broken rules.  What would you think as a plant floor operator is there was a sign that said "Quality is your responsibility", but at the end of the month management orders you to manufacture as much as possible, to hit the monthly production quota? Are you in control of quality?

Regardless, I do think there are some signs or slogans that could be useful, that Dan Pink calls Emotionally Intelligent Signage.   Although this sign is not directly related to a business setting, it begs us to be creative when  using slogans, and remind us of things we can do to improve, that are directly under our control.   And remember, we are human and sometimes we need gentle nudges or reminders to go in the right direction.

Bottom line:  only when strictly necessary, devise slogans or reminders that move people in the right direction.   And make sure what you think is the right direction, is actually the right one.

Do you have any other examples of creative slogans or signs?

Titles vs Results

Education is a big deal in the business world.  Some of us are lucky to go to graduate school, some of us are self learners, some both and some none.   How much education is enough, and when does experience and real life results kick in?

Companies that are looking to fill new positions usually filter candidates by the titles a person has acquired.  PhD, MBA, Jonah, Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Lean Sensei, Certified Public Accountant;  the more the merrier. Granted, in some cases, it is a requirement to have a specific title to perform specific duties, but I suspect this is the exception rather than the rule.  Are titles the right filter to start with, and should we categorize people using this criteria?

Matt Hoffman correctly reminds us that The What is More Important Than The Where.   Instead of focusing on listing all the titles you have acquired, why not focus on the results have you achieved with the education you have received?   After someone introduces themselves by listing all their titles and degrees, I wonder if their list would be as long if asked what significant results they have achieved.  Would the list be as long?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for education, and as Deming used to say, experience without theory brings no real learning.   But sometimes people get titles for the sake of it and to get paid more, instead of focusing on what they can do with the knowledge they learn and having the courage to question and improve their area of responsibility.   Of course, the system is at fault, and note the people, as titles are the default filter that the business world uses.  But ask yourself, as the owner of a company, would you be willing to pay more for someone with a long list of titles or someone with a long list of results?

What significant results have you achieved with your knowledge?  What are you waiting for?

Nudging Your Way To Commitments

Finally, I got around to reading Nudge, the behavioral economics book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.

The book is based on the concept of Libertarian Paternalism, which basically assumes that people frequently make mistakes in their decision making, specially for big and complex decisions, and that providing subtle nudges so people make better choices will help society as a whole.  By using Choice Architecture, or the way information and choices are presented, effectiveness in decision making can be significantly increased:

"A simple example of a nudge would be placing healthy foods in a school cafeteria at eye level, while putting less healthy junk food in harder to reach places. Individuals are not prevented from eating whatever they want, but the arranging of the food choices in that way has the effect of decreasing consumption of junk food and increasing consumption of healthier foods..."

The other  idea I found attractive was a methodology to increasing goal achievement based on nudges and choice architecture, that is being used by an online service called Stikk.    With Stikk, users set a specific goal, a time to achieve them, a way to measure them objectively by a third party, and put down a certain amount of money as a guarantee.  When the deadline comes, if the goal has been achieved, the person gets a refund of his money;  if the goal has not been achieved, the money is donated to charity.  Stikk may help people improve the odds of achieve the goals, even if many times people would do it just to avoid losing their money.  However, I wonder if this system could be used in other domains?

Imagine a 500 million dollar manufacturing company that has made the commitment to implement Lean in all of its manufacturing operations, in less than 3 years, will be measured by standard lean measurements by an auditing party, and guarantees the fulfillment of the goal with 1 million dollars.  If in 3 years the measurements have not been achieved, the company would donate the money to charity!

Utopian?   Maybe.  Can it work?

The Irreducible Components of Leadership

Paul O'Neill, former Secretary of State and CEO of Alcoa recently gave a talk about The Irreducible Components of Leadership to a health care audience.

His ideas include what it means to be an good manager and how to create a right environments for companies to improve.   When being CEO of Alcoa, he instituted a concept called "theoretical goals", like for example having zero accidents in all plant locations worldwide, which were more than 150 at the time.  Even this goal seemed impossible to achieve, he suggests that with a right leadership and corporate culture in place, significant improvement can happen:

"There are several pushbacks to the idea of habitual excellence. One is to say  ‘ well, we can never be perfect and we don’t want to set goals we can’t achieve.' I found in my own early days at Alcoa when people told me that about workplace safety, then I said to them, ‘OK, if you don’t want to have a goal of zero, then let’s go around and find out who wants to volunteer to be hurt to make sure we reach our goal of somebody being hurt'..."

O'Neill jokingly says that nobody ever volunteered to get hurt to reach a non zero goal.

His ideas are valuable for organization leaders, be it business or healthcare.   In health care, were around 100,000 patients die per year in the US because of medical mistakes, his ideas could give some valuable insights.  If interested on his views on healthcare, you can listen to a recent podcast with Mark Graban, were they discuss general problems in the health care system in the US.

Are you setting a right environment and giving people the tools to achieve ambitious goals?  Are you walking the walk?

How Confusing Is Your Practice?

Sometimes we think that the more complex a solution is, the more powerful it will be.   Other times, it may be that things seem complex because the bottom line is we don't understand them well.   As Einstein used to say:

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

Matt Hoffman, The Legal Rebel, invites us to reflect about how we can simplify our business by removing the confusion.   Making things as simple as possible will not only help by making transactions between parties, it will also increase trustworthiness in a growing sharing economy.

How confused are your clients?   Can you make it easier for them?

Free Education: CourseRA, Open CourseWare, Khan Academy

Online Education has been an alternative for several years now, and like everything in life, it has advantages and disadvantages.  But some things are undeniable, such as: it is low cost, easier to access, and is schedule flexible.

Several initiatives have been started over the years, with the mission to provide education to the world for free:

• MIT Courseware, one of the pioneers in online education and have opened a large portion of their curriculum online, with thousands of courses available to anyone

• Khan Academy, that started as a student's personal project, and now provides thousands of education videos on a wide variety of subjects, of short and long duration, and where progress of students can be monitored

• CourseRA, a new initiative by University of Michigan and other Ivy League colleges, offering courses about different graduate school topics, that last several weeks and were anyone can enroll

Although many of us believe that online education will never be a substitute for a real life class room experience, where interaction and collective learning takes place, technology will always provide new ways of delivering education in effective and creative ways to anyone willing to learn.

The availability of free quality education will inevitably result in an increase of the general levels of proficiency worldwide.  Even things such as learning how to polish the floor on your house or cooking a new vegan dish can be taught for free by millions of teachers, in the world's biggest and free Television Channel, YouTube.

How are you using online education to improve your education?

A Company In Lean Nation - Vibco Vibrators

There are few CEOs that really understand continuous improvement and lead their company through this journey.

Karl Wadenstein is the CEO of Vibco Vibrators, a company in Wyoming that manufactures industrial vibrators.  Taken from the company website:

"Lean Manufacturing at VIBCO Vibrators is about more than reducing waste and improving processes. It's about doing whatever is necessary to provide our customers with the products and services they want, exactly when they want them.We are proud to manufacture all of our products in the USA at our Wyoming, RI headquarters."

Check out the video section of the Vibco Vibrators Website, to understand their Lean journey and how proud every employee is of it.

Karl is passionate about Lean Manufacturing and continuously promotes Lean ideas through his Lean Nation podcasts, where he interviews top Lean thinkers in the country.

How serious are you about continuous improvement in your company?

Beyond Black Swans - About Fragility

I recently saw a video of Nassim Taleb giving a talk in Princeton, discussing his new ideas about fragility, risk, probabilities and future events.   These ideas are the basis of his upcoming book, Antifragility.

I specially liked the approach he discusses to "predicting" the future. Although the majority of us know that the future can not be predicted, Taleb's approach was to identify the things that would not exist in the future, instead of identifying what things would be there.  For Taleb, things that will not exist in the future have fragility, or have a low probability of withstanding future events.  For example, he predicts that most banks nor the FED will exist in their current form, because of their fragility.

Taleb has always been a controversial speaker, bu his insights from the stock market have helped people in the business world to think about risk in a different way.

How are you protecting yourself from Black Swans?  Are you in a position to benefit from them, in case they appear?

A Bar With Dynamic Pricing

The laws of supply and demand are one of the basic tenets in traditional economics.  In a nutshell, all other things constant:

• If supply stays constant and demand increases, prices will go up.   

• If supply stays constant and demand decreases, prices will go down.

Pretty simple, right?   

Apparently, a bar in California is using these concepts.  Prices for drinks change constantly, based on demand, meaning popular drinks go up in price and unpopular drinks go downs in price.

I have recently been thinking among similar lines about the price model for online media, such as music tracks, movies and others.  For example, should the price of downloading a popular song be the same than an unpopular one?  On the other hand, if a popular song is worth US $3 instead of US $1, what could be the unintended consequences?

Back to the dynamic pricing bar example, I would assume that people would shift to unpopular drinks when the price of popular ones are increased.  But after a few drinks, can someone still control their decisions?


So, can you use a dynamic pricing model based on current demand?  What would be the unintended consequences?

How To Change a Habit Infographic

I recently blogged about Charles Duhigg's methodology for changing habits, to improve the quality of your life.

He recently published an infographic on the changing habits methodology, describing the three simple steps to try to change a habit:

• The cue, or what is the context when the habit is triggered
• The reward, or what the person gains when after performing the habit
• The routine, or the method to replace the reward for the cue

I am a relatively heavy coffee drinker, so I have been applying the three steps to try to shift my coffee drinking to more healthy and natural drinks such as water.   Let's see how it goes.

What habits would you like to change?   Try the method with the habit changing methodology!

Talking About Remarkable - Caine's Arcade

And just when you are wondering why things are so tough in the world, you find the video of Caine's Arcade, describing the project of a 9 year old that wanted to build an arcade out of cardboard boxes in his father's shop.

Check out how Caine controlled the validity of passes with an elegant solution.   Caine's Arcade website posted the objective of raising funds for his college education, and was able to raise $180,000 in less than 10 days through PayPal donations.   Take a look also at Nirvan Mullick, the person who produced the video for Caine's Arcade website, who is also doing some interesting projects to foster entrepreneurship.

Remarkable is scarce, and it boils down to a personal choice and a way of life.

What remarkable project are you embarking on today?

Beyond Maslow: Compensation In The Workplace

Last week I blogged about how to influence people by asking irrational questions.

Maslow was a psychologist of the 20th century that that tried to decipher the science behind human motivation, developing his famous hierarchy of needs.

A key component of motivation in the workplace is compensation.  Logic would tell us that the more compensation, the more motivated your employees will be.   However, modern psychologists like Alfie Kohn have proven this assumption wrong, specially in knowledge related areas.

Dan Pink has also tackled the subject of the relationship between compensation and motivation in the workplace.   In this interview by the Curious Cat Blog, some of the basic ideas behind his book are described, including and how they can be applied at work.

How are you compensating employees today?  How is that working for you?

Bring Out The Tanks

Nothing better than to look at The Oatmeal from time to time to get you thinking on how to do things in a remarkable way.

Are you building cars or tanks?

How Might We Run Meetings In A Different Way?

Meetings make a big part of our lives.   Many of us feel that most of them have a lot of non value added activities, or that they should not be there in the first place.   How should meetings be run, to increase their effectiveness?

The Agile and Lean world has been promoting over the years the "stand up meeting", where basically people meet standing up, as there are no chairs.   This induces people to get to the point, make decisions, and move on.   Apart, they're probably healthier too!

Matt Homann recently shared in his blog a different way of conducting meetings that is used at innovation firm IDEO.   It is based on participants to generate ideas, by asking the open question "how might we", and keeping a collaborative environment at all times.

Of course there are many other methods and techniques for running effective meetings, and everyone should use what best adapts to your particular situation, the key question is:

What are you doing to improve the way you conduct your meetings?

Ask Two Irrational Questions To Motivate People

Motivation and influence is a one of the key functions of managers in companies. When executing new initiatives, if employees are not convinced to follow you in the direction your are proposing, efforts are most likely to fail.

It has been proven over the years that both logic and emotion are big components of motivation and influence.  Suppose you have a situation where the logic has been explained, and people have bought in emotionally.  What other things can you do if your team is stalling?

Some answers are provided by behavioral science, and authors like Dr. Cialdini have proposed useful ideas for influencing people that have been tested with some success.

Dr. Pantalon's ideas to influence are based on asking people two irrational questions, to induce people to take action:

• How ready are you to, on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means not ready at all and 10 means totally ready? 

• If the person picks a number higher than 2, ask, “Why didn’t you pick a lower (yes, lower) number?”

Confused?  Read the complete post by Dan Pink.   

If your are interested in Dr. Pantalon's book, it is called Instant Influence.

Sometimes, maintaining the status quo is not an option anymore, so if asking irrational ideas helps you change it, go for it.

An Alternative Solution To Rising Tuition Costs

Graduate education costs are one of those big expenses (or investments) that students (or parents) have to make in their lives.

We all know several people that are still paying off their college tuition debts, that have high income to debt ratios, and have to sacrifice quality of life to pay off their loans.

Is there another feasible way to fund your education costs?   Although this proposed model to finance tuition costs is not new, it definitely raises some interesting questions.

I would think that if a college were to apply a revenue sharing model with students, they would do several things differently, such as:

• Ensure quality of education if exceptional
• Ensure that concepts taught are practical in real life
• Ensure that students accepted are top quality and are committed to success

Both parties have a lot to win and lose, so probability of success has to be guaranteed somehow.  I wonder if students could also get "success insurance", just in case things did not turn out as you expected, as life usually teaches us.

Would you enroll to a college that allows you to pay education costs with revenue sharing model?

Unlimited Vacation Time As Standard Policy?

A recent article in Fast Company describes a new idea that companies like Hubspot, Accesibility Partners and Netflix have been exploring for managing vacation time, and that is, to Offer Unlimited Vacation Time.

The key idea behind this vacation scheme is that as long as employees do what needs to be done, they can take vacation whenever they want and for the length of time they want.   This may seem counter intuitive, but  apparently it fosters an environment of trust, productivity and reinforces many positive behaviors that you would like to see in employees.   Additionally, what would an Unlimited Vacation Time policy, in a company that's doing a lot of things right, do for it's Net Promoter Score?

I am sure many of us would agree that a significant percentage of HR policies in companies are significantly broken, ranging from people development, performance appraisals, compensation schemes, among others.   We can't forget that Deming reminded top management of all this several decades ago, but nothing significant has changed.



Would you recommend colleagues to work for a company with an Unlimited Vacation Time?  Why?

Special Q&A with Bill Waddell

I recently had the pleasure of doing a special Q&A session for the APICS Chapter with the one and only Bill Waddell, about continuous improvement and the challenges that lie with it.

Below, an excerpt:

Humans constantly resist change. How can I even deal with this?

I don't agree with the premise.  People change all the time – willingly.  What we resist is change we don't understand, or change that threatens us.  I think that puts the matter back on us – the lean leaders.  We have to a better job of explaining the change we ask people to make.  Our message can't be "trust us – it works for Toyota" and expect executives to radically transform entire organizations.  That would be irresponsible on their part.  When we can't answer all of the questions and making a compelling financial case for lean – when we ask people to take a leap of faith – it is our fault the people and companies won't change. 

Definitely great material.   A must read for all managers and change agents out there.

Airport Security and Muda

While reading on the web, I recently found this InfoGraphic about airport security practices in the US.   Many of these practices have been copies and implemented in multiple countries around the world.

The questions I have are the following:

• What assumptions would you question regarding current practices?   Which ones do you think are not valid any more?
• Are there non value added activities, or Muda involved?  Which ones would you eliminate?

How much Muda do your current processes have?


Bonus:   For a free resource describing the types of Muda or Waste, click here.

Back To The Toyota Kata

Some weeks ago I blogged about Toyota Kata, a concept described in one of the best books I have ever read about the essence of continuous improvement.  Kata refers to a pattern of behavior.  Toyota Kata, are the behaviors that every Toyota employee exhibit, and make them a world class compa.

If you haven't read Toyota Kata yet, you can read a book review by Larry Leach, that was also featured in a local APICS chapter newsletter.

Trust and the Sharing Economy

Charles Green recently published a paper describing the growth of a concept he calls the Trust Economy, describing also new businesses that are operating in this new economy, such as:

• AirBnb, allowing home owners can rent out rooms in their homes to the general public
• TaskRabbit, where people in need of specific services (babysitting, shopping, or decorating) can subcontract people that are reliable and capable people that can deliver those services
• RelayRides, allowing car owners to rent out their cars to people looking for leasing a car at a good price 

The common elements of the business model behind these companies are:

• They help owners of assets to increase asset utilization and improve return over investment
• Transactions usually occur between parties that do not know each other, so a measure of trust of each party is required

How to determine trustworthiness is a major obstacle in the Trust Economy.  Companies such as Ebay and Amazon have tried to minimize risk by providing rating systems to help the parties involved.   Currently, a unified and global system to determine trustworthiness does not exist...is it possible to create one?

TrustCloud is attempting to do just that, by providing a system to measure trustworthiness of individuals.   Just like US residents have a Credit Score that measures their creditworthiness, TrustCloud tries to measure Trustworthiness through a Trust Score, that ranges from 1 to 1000, and is determined by measuring online social behavior patterns.

Although the Trust Score is probably far from perfect, it is an important step to the objective a having a way to measure how trustworthy someone is, in an economy that will increasingly involve the concept of "strangers" doing business.

So, what minimum Trust Score would you require to do business with a stranger?

The Power of Habits

LifeHacker shares some excellent ideas about habits, originally referenced in the book the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

With all the habits we have, how do we choose which ones to focus on to improve the quality of our daily lives?  According to Duhigg, the key is to focus on changing keystone habits, or those that can be leveraged upon to cause chain reactions in our lives.   Keystone habits share three characteristics:

• Characteristic One: The Science of Small Wins
• Characteristic Two: Create New Platforms
• Characteristic Three: Establish a Culture Where Excellence Is Contagious

Each of the characteristics is illustrated in the LifeHacker article using Olympic World Champion Michael Phelps as an example, and showing how his keystone habits were the key to his success.   In the world of continous improvement in the corporate world, exemplary companies such as Toyota work continously to reinforce specific Kata, or patterns of behavior that employees should exhibit.

So what Keystone Habits you will focus on to improve your life?

Who's on Your Most Wanted Client List?

Jorge suggests creating a Most Wanted Client List, to focus your marketing and sales efforts.

Just like Interpol has it's most wanted criminal list, why not create a list of the ideal customers you would want to have?

Best Quotes From Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams!

Ivan shares a summary of the 42 best quotes in Seth Godin's recent ebook.

To get the original ebook, click here.

A must read for all of us that are interested in education.

Small Is The New Big

Matt Homann, of the Non Billable Hour, shares a great video about a small bike shop that is building custom bikes.

I frequently think that most sales interactions (think car, home or similar purchases) would benefit significantly if the sales person would ask questions like:

• Who are you?
• What kind of person are you?
• What are you interested in?
• What are you not interested in?

Knowing the answers to some of the above could make the difference in offering exceptional service and  really helping customers to purchase solutions that are adequate for their needs.  Although the lessons from the small bike shop probably are not easy to apply in mass production environments, there are a lot of useful ideas that could be used to improve customer service.

As Seth Godin reminds us, sometimes small is the new big.

Poets or Plumbers?

Bob Sutton, Stanford professor and author, describes how society's current preference of people with visions versus people who actually execute the visions, can be actually counter productive.   Paraphrasing James March, a Stanford organizational theorist:  organizations need both poets and plumbers.

Bob is spot on:  poets may lead the way, but the devil is in the details.   In summary, we need both.

Have A Tough Problem? Try Daydreaming!

If you have a tough problem to solve, maybe what you need is to daydream.   Apparently, the less you focus on the problems and it's details, the easier it is for your mind to find associations between ideas and give you new insights.

Not any kind daydreaming will work, so sitting around looking at the sky is not the best method.    See Matt May's article about daydreaming to see how this works.

TOC, Lean, Six Sigma?

There are many methodologies to chose from when leading a company into continuous improvement project.  From the highly acclaimed Toyota Production System, to Lean, to Six Sigma, to Theory of Constraints, each of them has the same end state in mind, just different ways to get there.   

During the last decade we have seen a trend to start to join the different approaches, to get superior results.   We have even seen new buzz words such as Lean Six Sigma and TOC Lean Six Sigma, and the results of using each one alone or combined have been published in the past

There are also new books that have come out showing how you can get superior results by using TOC, Lean and Six Sigma, such as Epiphanized and Profitability Without Boundaries.  But always remember, no matter what you choose, focus on principles first and then on the tools themselves.

So what are you using to improve your organization today?

How YouTube is Driving Creativity

TED Curator Chris Anderson gave a talk last year to show how the power of crowds and technological platforms can help accelerate innovation.   According to Anderson, this concept is called Crowd Accelerated Innovation, and has three basic requirements:

• Crowd, group of people who share a common interest
• Light, clear open visibility
• Desire, or a genuine interest in something

The talk includes concepts that have also been treated in Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, and Tribes

So, how are you tapping into the Wisdom of Crowds?

How Society Works - 8 Psychological Insights

PsyBlog has published a summary of 8 social experiments performed by Stanley Milgram, trying to understand and decipher social behavior.

From Milgram's famous experiment about compliance through electrical shocks, to how helpful people are with lost children, all of these experiments give some insights into how we behave in society.

How Big Is The World Economy?

Have you ever wondered how big is the world's economy?   Intuitively you know who the big countries are, but it's worth taking a look from time to time.

Having a global view of things, including the magnitude of the companies we interact with, is important to keep things in perspective.

Disruptive Innovation - Interview with Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen, the author behind Disruptive Innovation, was featured recently in a video interview from HBR, where he describes the basics of his ideas.

Disruptive Innovation occurs when a particular technology is produced more efficiently and opens the doors to new business solutions that markets can adopt in an easier fashion.   As an example, mainframe computers where once the norm, and only big corporations or big education organizations had them.  But later, a series of disruptive innovations happened over time, and the mainframe evolved into a personal computer, laptop and now into smartphone and tablet computers, every time making it easier for the masses to adopt and use them.

As a result of Disruptive Innovation, companies face the Innovators Dilemma.  This happens when companies  ignore markets that are susceptible to disruptive innovations, many times because they currently have a profitable solution for the markets they are currently serving.  Thus, sometimes the traditional advice of "focusing on the customer" can become counter productive for management.   You could argue that something similar happened to Kodak during the last decade, and as a result they filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.  

How are you dealing with the Innovator's Dilemma in your company?

Free Webinar on Statistical Process Control

Mark Graban, Lean author and consultant, recently held a webinar on Statistical Process Control.

Using Don Wheeler's ideas on Statistical Process Control, Mark shows how to use control charts to improve your role as a manager, emphasizing on the importance on understanding the difference between signals and noise, to clearly identify when real changes in processes are happening or not.

Many people think that control charts should only be used in manufacturing, but is manufacturing the only area in a company that needs improvement?   Control charts can be used in any process that needs improvement, and helps improve managements ability to predict.

It's available for a limited time only, so watch it soon.