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.