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First Solutions Might Not Be Best

Lesson 11 from: Run a Better, Faster, Leaner Business

John J Murphy

First Solutions Might Not Be Best

Lesson 11 from: Run a Better, Faster, Leaner Business

John J Murphy

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Lesson Info

11. First Solutions Might Not Be Best

Lesson Info

First Solutions Might Not Be Best

00:00:02.04 --> 00:00:04. So I like to start off with quotes is just as you 00:00:04.34 --> 00:00:08. know from before and here's one from henry david thoreau 00:00:08.48 --> 00:00:10. you know I know of no more encouraging fact than the 00:00:10.72 --> 00:00:12. unquestionable ability 00:00:13.78 --> 00:00:18. of man and woman to elevate life by conscious endeavor 00:00:18.36 --> 00:00:18. so then this 00:00:20.38 --> 00:00:22. segment what we're going to do is we're going to get 00:00:22.39 --> 00:00:26. into improvement oh yes you know earlier we talked 00:00:26.36 --> 00:00:29. about damayanthi emma I see we define the current 00:00:29.42 --> 00:00:32. state we measure it we establish a base line were 00:00:32.11 --> 00:00:35. grounded in facts in reality we go into the analysis 00:00:35.57 --> 00:00:39. tools to find out where the root causes are and these 00:00:39.21 --> 00:00:42. leverage points we find the right lever leverage we 00:00:42.31 --> 00:00:45. can we can change the ...

world so 00:00:46.22 --> 00:00:49. remember one thing if you're a solo preneurs or a 00:00:49.58 --> 00:00:53. small business owner you just might be an r a leverage 00:00:53.85 --> 00:00:57. point yourself so you can make a break a business 00:00:57.36 --> 00:01:01. simply by either learning what we're talking about 00:01:01.98 --> 00:01:06. uh or getting in the way so we see it all the time 00:01:06.08 --> 00:01:08. a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs most entrepreneurs 00:01:08.9 --> 00:01:12. never make it uh two years in business without major 00:01:12.62 --> 00:01:14. problems and oftentimes that results in their business 00:01:15.23 --> 00:01:18. just going under so we'll talk more about those common 00:01:18.69 --> 00:01:21. failure modes as we get into this but uh we want to 00:01:21.32 --> 00:01:24. learn from those and avoid it open up the doors to 00:01:24.72 --> 00:01:25. success 00:01:26.78 --> 00:01:30. so this session this segment we're in now is going 00:01:30.68 --> 00:01:34. to take us to this improve phase of the make the eye 00:01:34.48 --> 00:01:37. it's tempting to go rightto eye without the d a and 00:01:37.26 --> 00:01:40. the m a d a you know his cat was talking about and 00:01:40.41 --> 00:01:42. uh and we mean well when we do that we you know we 00:01:42.54 --> 00:01:44. wantto make improvements we want to see things better 00:01:45.48 --> 00:01:48. but so often we jump into an improvement and then 00:01:48.64 --> 00:01:52. we run into resistance because we're not aligned somebody 00:01:52.68 --> 00:01:55. sees it differently the team sees it differently so 00:01:55.68 --> 00:01:59. because we haven't defined clearly where we are so 00:01:59.94 --> 00:02:04. we're r r r r wheels aren't aligned we haven't established a clear understanding of why we even need to change what's the baseline where the ut iss these undesirable effects we haven't done the analysis together to figure out where the real root causes her and everybody's got an opinion on how to make it better we all jumped to the I and then we run into what we commonly call resistance why won't people except my idea why won't people buy into my idea because in our minds we've run through the dna we've come up with a solution and somebody challenges it's honest so I find that people don't resist change they resist pain and if they perceive the change is painful they're gonna push back but they perceived the change is positive and healthy and optimal optimal they're going to jump on board so the d and the yemeni I help us with that perception factor we're gonna come back and talk more about that as we go on so we're going to prove the customer experience at the end of the day is the customer experiencing a better performance especially the big c customer the end user we're going to prove the flow of value through the value stream so we're actually healthier as a business okay and we're going to certainly improve the performance and the results and we're going to measure that to prove it so this gets back to that hole comment I mentioned yesterday but show me the data so show me the data to prove there's a problem show me the data to prove that you you've improved it you made it better and we're going once again we're going to bring that lean signal game out to bring these concepts and tools toe life also want to say that this course is designed with flow in mind so while it might be a little bit of a struggle early on and uh january referenced this earlier might be a little bit struggle but sometimes I like to think of it like reading a good novel sometimes when you get into a good novel you're intrigued otherwise you put it aside you're intrigued enough but you don't really know where it's going and all of a sudden you go from one chapter to another that don't seem to be related at all and then you're into a third chapter that doesn't seem to relate but by the end of the day by the end of the novel so to speak everything comes together and we get these wow ha ha's thes these these awakenings that's how this course is designed each each module feeds on prior modules and those are hot we should see some of those that has this today in this segment and the next few seconds all right so in jamaica again it's imperative so we never really get there we make improvements we make things better and then we're back to making them better again so it's a continuous philosophy of of improvement and the pru improve phase we're going to cover a few more tools these that you can add these to your tool kit because we want to have a good tool kit one tool is the problem statement itself because I mentioned earlier it's absolutely critical that a team be focused and clear what problem is we're trying to solve if we've got confusion there the wheels are going to start to fall off again all right so what's the what's the problem statement look like then we get into something called solution specs I'll explain what solution specs are but we want to have a good idea the parameters and the the specs if you will the specifications that are important to uh solving problems in a innovative and healthy way ah, we're going to get into brainstorming techniques and analysis. Techniques around that brainstorming you, noah, finito, sizing things like that. And then we're going to spend time on kaisa. And I'll review what cousins all about. And then we're going to actually demo a couple of caissons. Appoint kaizen in a flow kaizen. So the problem statement is designed to make sure that we're very clear on what it is we're trying to accomplish what problem it is we're trying to solve and why it is a problem so so we say this is a problem why is this a problem prove it show me the data it's got to be clear it's got to be concise and it's got to be easy to understand because once again if we're confused upfront uh the will start to fall off all right so I've got a few examples here going back to our our simulation one example of a diet of ah problem statement when it came it that diamond department and it says and incidentally a good problem statement aims at a major lever her leverage point that causes multiple you tease we covered that in an earlier segment so problem statement might read something like this the problem is that the product does not flow efficiently through the diamond operation this causes here are the beauties this causes late shipments lost revenue excess inventory poor quality hi carrying costs poor utilization of resources and a negative customer feedback a cost to this problem and then we feel in up a cost we try to capture how much what what is this problem costas on an annual basis or something like that so again part of the data collection that defining and measuring and the analyzing gets us here so we go through define measure, analyze to actually get to the problem statement that's confusing to people cause a lot of people think well, is that the problem statement something you do right up in the define phase of jamaica? Because we're often trained toe right? Problem statements around symptoms. The problem is I have a headache. All right? That's a symptom? No, the real problem. Like the example we talked about yesterday from a systems perspective isn't anywhere near your head it's somewhere else in the body that's causing the headaches. So through the five wise through the reality tree some of the tools we covered in an earlier segment. Now we get to the real problem which is the root cause this is the difference between very common problem solving this we solve one and we create another two. We actually eliminate the problem. We don't move it. It's gone. That's knowledge that's very powerful process. So we say, john, prove it. Prove that this is a problem. Show me the data because I've talked about. Show me the data. Show me the data you tell me. Did we have late shipments yesterday? Indeed, we did that. We capture this. We had two shipments accepted by the customer in fourteen and a half minutes when the customer said well what I really really need is thirty in ten minutes we weren't even close so there's the data all right did we have lost revenue? We left a lot of money on the table because we didn't get that product through excess inventory we started with zero we finished with fifteen we had inventory piling up in in the system all right did we have poor quality yeah we had delivered sixteen and only two we're good we had all kinds of quality promise in addition to that we had another eight or another six I think it was in process hi carrying cost you all of that cost money as a result we lost a lot of money we had an imbalance of our resource is our people on the equipment and the customer was very unhappy so there's the data now how are we supposed to define the problem clearly in a problem statement that requires that kind of thought if we haven't done a defined in a measure and analyze so the problem statement comes in after we've done a little research to say we've clearly got a problem here all right now we haven't figured out how to solve this yet but that's what we do in the approved face another example of ah problems statement might be this problem is that the organization is not designed for optimal value stream flow we had all this jerky motion start stop start hurry up and wait type type of thing going on we see this all the time and businesses large and small this causes excessive movement in motion those were two of the seven wastes we covered earlier miscommunication misunderstanding I thought you were reviewing that I thought you were reviewing that we saw that imbalanced activity poor utilization of space and resource is late shipments and lost revenue the cost of this problem is estimated at x all right so it's a problem statement that's it's clear it's concise it's simple it's backed up by data quantifiable data and so now we say all right imagine that we're a team we're going to run a kai's an event and we're going to solve one or two of these problems um does everybody understand what the problem is we have and we went through the cause and effect yesterday to uncover some of that we had a really constraint going back to theory of constraints with diamond we had tails coming off those diamonds and causing defects we had way had a throughput problem in terms of getting the right amount through so this is what we have to solve for so solution specks this is sort of like if you're going to go out and buy a house or car before you go shopping you might wantto specify somethings that you're looking for what what, what do you want to see in a solution? Well, I you know I want a car that's got four doors I want a house it's got three bedrooms and two bathrooms or whatever your specs might be I've got certain goals I want to accomplish in my my solution I want to cut my cycle times in half I 00:12:11.433 --> 00:12:15. want to double my throughput I want to I want to hire 00:12:15.09 --> 00:12:18. nps score with my customers things like that higher 00:12:18.66 --> 00:12:19. feedback rating 00:12:20.81 --> 00:12:25. ah I've only got so much money to spend so I gotta 00:12:25.04 --> 00:12:27. find a solution that fits within my budget 00:12:28.31 --> 00:12:32. so don't come back to me with lamborghini pricing 00:12:32.81 --> 00:12:34. when I can afford a you know 00:12:36.41 --> 00:12:36. you know, 00:12:37.91 --> 00:12:41. car half that price so uh, what about time? Well, 00:12:41.35 --> 00:12:43. that might be a speck well, we've gotta have a solution 00:12:43.77 --> 00:12:44. by a certain date 00:12:46.31 --> 00:12:49. or we've gotta see measurable results within a certain 00:12:49.31 --> 00:12:52. period of time we don't have a year to fix this we've 00:12:52.55 --> 00:12:55. got a type a tight time frame so that would be a solution 00:12:55.81 --> 00:12:58. speck so don't come back to me with solutions they're 00:12:58.87 --> 00:13:00. going to take three years when we've got to get it 00:13:00.58 --> 00:13:03. done in six months those don't fit don't put this 00:13:03.56 --> 00:13:03. back 00:13:05.31 --> 00:13:07. and we could use the same thing when we're writing 00:13:07.02 --> 00:13:10. a business plan. Okay, I've got an idea I'm a solo 00:13:10.1 --> 00:13:12. preneurs I'm actually writing a business plan now 00:13:12.83 --> 00:13:15. so what do I want accomplish with my business what 00:13:15.7 --> 00:13:19. are those specs I want to aim for I want I want to 00:13:19.59 --> 00:13:22. make a certain amount of money annually I want to 00:13:22.36 --> 00:13:26. grow my business at a certain pace okay I need I need 00:13:26.99 --> 00:13:30. thio hit a certain number of touch points through 00:13:30.81 --> 00:13:34. social media things like that to build my my my market 00:13:35.1 --> 00:13:38. minder and my image and the market my brand you know 00:13:38.3 --> 00:13:40. whatever you're whatever your specs might be I need 00:13:40.99 --> 00:13:44. to create a brand I need to establish a brand okay 00:13:44.09 --> 00:13:48. so this doesn't get to the how yet it gets to the 00:13:48.53 --> 00:13:51. what is it we're trying to accomplish all right and 00:13:51.72 --> 00:13:54. now we can go shopping for that house or that car 00:13:54.07 --> 00:13:56. that solution that's going that's going to get us 00:13:56.69 --> 00:14:00. to the specs maybe some of my specs and certainly 00:14:00.24 --> 00:14:02. they should I have something to do with the customers 00:14:04.4 --> 00:14:06. the customer in our case said I need thirty and ten 00:14:06.81 --> 00:14:09. minutes let's make that a speck we got to get thirty 00:14:09.92 --> 00:14:10. in ten minutes 00:14:11.71 --> 00:14:14. maybe there are regulatory issues compliance issues 00:14:14.92 --> 00:14:19. with you know the f a a the fda, osha whatever that we need toe keep in mind so we have to understand those those requirements in those specs as well. So we come up with specs and to do that we start with brainstorming well that's well it's just brainstorm specs and in a guy's an event and a team event. This is where we get the team together to say all right what I like to do is with teams let's just let's give everybody a stack of a pattern post its and for the next five minutes without saying a word just write down a suspect once back proposed it straight down you thought write down your thoughts and then we can capture all of those on a foot chart and we could start to affinity eyes um organized them into groupings so we've got specs on time get specs on budget we get expects on the customer requirements things like that and then we separate those into must haves and from nice tohave so these air things we've gotta have to stay alive is a business these are things we have to have the critical successfactors and then these would be some nice to haves but wouldn't it be great if we didn't just meet the client's needs for thirty in ten minutes but we did it in such a way that the client went out and raved about us and helped promote us alright while when that be awesome so we've got to think about what we absolutely have to have make those suspects and then of course we want to stretch to see if we can do even better than that right and there we go first of some solution specs so some examples of solution specs might be something like this. We need to find a way to reduce our cycle time by fifty percent that's it that's. Kate, we have to find a way to increase our productivity by one hundred percent. We need to be able to double our through put in our case. We have to do better than that if the customer wants thirty, and we got him, too. So we've got to figure out a way to get our productivity up by working a lot smarter. It's not going to be helpful if we just, uh, give everybody a red cape and an s for their front of their shirt and say, okay, you guys gotta learn how to go faster and, you know, super speed and fly good people. Bad system. It doesn't matter how super you might be your trap. Okay, so we have to figure out a wayto. Build a better system. We've got eliminate waiting time. We had all kinds of waiting time in white spaces. We talked about it earlier, so we've got to figure that out. We've got to reduce errors by at least fifty percent better than that. In our case, fifty percent we've got we gotta re stairs by almost one hundred percent. All right, get down to practically no airs at all adjustments, things like that. Maybe we need to reduce the number of adjustments this we look at the diamond department, for example, a lot of motion and movement going on over there. We've got to figure out a way to implement instantaneous admission approval. So we've got these checks in place. But how do we know instantly, it's if it's good or bad, can we come up with some kind of fixture or something like that? It's going toe? Tell us instantaneously that it's, it's, it's, good or not, good. These days we're surrounded by visual control systems and things like that there's ways to to do that. It would probably not be a good idea, since we had two people yesterday in the in the in the simulation and earlier a session. Checking to say, well, we had to. And we still got lousy product through to the customer. So maybe we should have three. And we laughed but companies do that we need to add more people a t end of the line to inspect when all of the cost of poor quality is built in already what we need to do is shift from reaction and detection to prevention we haven't found the root cause yet so we need to explore that all right we've got again it improve our increase our throughput and then we've gotta find a way to demonstrate measurable results with an ex period of time sixty days five days by the end of the week we've got we've gotta have something measurable because measurable results is gonna build enthusiasm is going to build credibility it's going to change the way people's think especially the skeptics when they start to see evidence that it's better and that they're not actually working harder or faster that they're working they're part of a smarter system wow that's when the wiles take of take effect and the gates open up people get excited about change truth is about change we are all designed for change we cannot not change so when you hear people talk about while people naturally resist change that's an assumption it's most certainly not a fact were designed to change it would be a curse to not change it would be it would be a serious courage curse so we we naturally change our minds change our moods change our clothes change our eating habits we can't we change all the time change our age so we have to learn to embrace change ride with change that's the that's the dow it's the great current in life the great flow talk more about that in a future session as well so now we start brainstorming and like I said before you know we can do that in a number of different ways sometimes we can just get together and just say let's just capture ideas and things like that now the real secret here is if we do it verbally there's a temptation oftentimes to start to negate one another's ideas and judge them are criticized them before you even get him captured so what I like to use a silent brainstorm and I'd like to say let's just take five or ten minutes everybody just process this right your ideas down all right and see what we come up with and stretch anything you know anything is his game go ahead and write you know write down whatever comes to mind and it's amazing because in five to ten minutes with a team of six or eight people we could have forty or fifty ideas now there's a lot of redundancy among those ideas what does that tell us if if if all of us have some similar ideas it tells us well maybe we were already aligned around some of these things this is just great so we're all aligned around. We should probably do something about that ruler we should all do we should do something about the way we're located things like that so we offended ties these and an officer in and you know it starts to kind of starts to look like this we start with the ideas all right and could be any number of things no judging just go ahead and silently brainstorm it's very efficient because all of a sudden we've got to know a whole whole bunch of ideas I'd like to get people up on their feet in these skies and events where you know we're up in front of a wall or a whiteboard things like that were writing them down and sticking them to the wall and then what we do is something we call a fen it ties which is group into category so to speak so is an illustration you know we had this simulation the lean sigma came and we had the diamond show up as a a major constraint so using that problem statement we say well here's some of the ideas we collected we had a whole lot ideas ah surface around find and use a better tool for the diamond that ruler was just a new sense with eight adjustments per sheet we had tails on the diamonds there was just in fact well maybe there's a way for us to mistake proof the process so we we can't have tails we outsmarted it's a common human error with that particular tool so that's if we can outsmart it another uh group of ideas was let's add more qualified people you know let's get kurt some help well that's adding not subtracting but sometimes that's the right thing to do that's an idea maybe we need improve the training maybe there was just a misunderstanding around what was acceptable and what wasn't acceptable and we need to come up with better training and we could have a number of different ideas here so is there a way we could perhaps even couple some of these ideas together isn't like we have to do one or the other could we combine some of them into some kind of hybrid solutions some joint solution and frequently frequently there is maybe we could combine the tool it's also got a built in mistake proofing element to it and not or and provide some better training along with it and how to use the new tool and then let's see what happens so that's just something to hold on to you jane this track like I'm thinking can one person do all these tasks where would that would that be like just on idea sure would step back sure that's an important thing it's attracting yeah maybe we need teo I think about the way we're organized so yeah let's could we could we cross train one another yesterday here in the earlier segment we couldn't way couldn't do help each other out we were all specialized so could we could we break that rule to come up with a cross training could we relocate things like that oh yeah so that's what that this is the fun part because now we're all aligned on the problem we have to find we've measured we've analyzed it now we've got a chance to collectively I call it the collective mind we've got a collective mind now working on it together and that's where your synergy is going to come from and yours energy because we're going to start getting excited about what we see all right so we list the best options we sorry well let's let's see if we can't agree on what we think of the maybe the top two or three options here for problem one let's go to problem if we're solving more than one problem let's look a tte let's look at the other problem as well so the problems are the problems statements so that first problem statement was about the diamond and the tooling and no the the bottleneck the constraint of diamond the second one was about our organizational design our process design and things like that but let's focus on just one problem for now the problem number one and we had several options we said well we could improve the tool we could figure out maybe even a wayto mistake proof the process combined that with a tool we could now come up with better training we could add more people what do we think is the best option and we're in a kaizen event we'd break out and we'd actually come to some consensus on this we debated we discuss it all right but the the most common one for problem one is we really need a better tool this is so based on running this the simulation hundreds of times people say well it's just so obvious we need a better tool so let's play with that okay let's play with that that that option and then eso what why should we and why should we not so I mentioned earlier that two of the chapters in the book is enterpreneurs what were called why on why not the force field analysis tool is just an illustration off those two chapters why do it why start this business why take the risk you know if if you're thinking about starting a business and then ask why not why not do it what what are the forces against me when I first wrote my first book twenty years ago what it was a speck I had created so I wanted to write a book why write a book well publish or perish in this line of work it's also common statement in the in the university's publisher parrish you're going to be a great consultant. You gotta have something written published okay. What? Why else? Well, it could it could build your income you could help you reach a lot of people without traveling every week. I think you could teach through your writings things like that whole list, the wise, but then I had to ask, why not? Because this is where the rial energy lies, why not write a book? I don't hold this to stuff number one, I don't know how to sew a lot of right book. I don't have a publisher, I don't have an agent and you have to have an agent to get a publisher in most cases, big publishers, I don't, but I really just I don't have the time. I don't have the money to stop working to write a book I don't know how, how in the world am I going to do this now if I can't figure out a way to overcome those forces against, I'm dead in the waters where you can do it, so this is very important, particularly to sola preneurs people want to get started, you know, working on their own, we have a tendency to understand the forces for it's a dream it's a passion it's really wanted it. But we're not necessarily aware of all those forces against us it's the forces against us that trip us up so we kind of we got to be clever and wise too to realize that there's always forces for and against that's the yin and the yang of life all right and then come up with our countermeasures so you know what I come up with a better tool for the for the diamond department well it's going toe improve throughput we believe it's going to prove quality we believe okay it's going to make your job easier current so wow there's already some three pretty good reasons why not do it how much does it cost? Yeah well that's a question you'll hear a lot in business how much you asking for by this tour things like that are how long's it going to take his especially the tool could be a software could be, you know, aarp system it could be some something that's cost millions of dollars or could be something that's simple loza you know, a download okay, but we have to identify those forces foreign against so that we could come up with now that we've really done our analysis on these different ideas what's the best solution to start with what do we want to actually try let's go ahead and try something so project a might be we're going toe start with the diamond department it's the obvious constraint it's where all the errors were most of the heirs throughput problems et cetera we went through all that project b and projects he will come back to those later so we're gonna kai's in the diamond department we're gonna run a kaizen event on the diamond department and leading up to that event we've done all of the dust fine in the measure and a lot of the analysis so we're coming into this kaizen event is a kaizen team now aiming at making change making good change that's what kaizen means all right so we've we've got the term right here it's a it's a japanese word one word that's that comes from two words cayenne zen and it translates simply into good change not perfection it's more in the pursuit of perfection recognizing that pursuit of perfection is a moving target so we're always searching for even better ways to do things that takes pressure off by the way if I know I come into a kaizen event I don't have to make it perfect which creates a lot of fear and skepticism and doubt because it sze not realistic but I come into that event and I'm going to make it better and I'm going to gain met momentum and enthusiasm is energy as I get into it because I could see the progress it's measurable wow that's awesome so again it kai's an event then it is it's quick it's generally less than a week three, four five days sometimes too I tried not to do him in one day because one day just puts too much pressure on you here's the thing about kai's an event if we have a kaizen event we think it's going to take probably two three to four days to execute this thing so let's trim it down to three with probably just made a big mistake and the reason we made a big mistake is because if it indeed takes three and a half you know how long that next half a day is going to take it could take a month because once we leave the skies an event and people go back to wherever they came from the vendors go back the customer goes back there where the team members go back to their different functional departments kidding confirmation and consensus and final approval and execution on that last half a day could easily take a month or two because it's back and forth and back and forth what I always advised you get the right people in the room with the right amount of authority and knowledge you get it done you get it done the changes in place before you leave the event and it's it's it's it's powerful so the very action based we're not sitting around in fact I've for years I've gone into organizations they say well, we did it guys an event on such and such and I said really on the first question I'll ask is if you did it kai's an event what did you change why did you change show me the data if they go well we haven't changed anything yet but we came up with a whole lot of really good ideas I will say to them you just had a meeting and you put a new label on it and you don't get it because having meetings calling them cousins is not getting it guys it is about making change at the end of the week you ought to be able to say while we eliminated five steps in the process we eliminated several adjustments are throughput is twice what it was before we've got measures in place to prove it okay we've redesigned certain jobs we've made good change and we can prove it now people will say you're going to get all that done in three or four five days absolutely so that's a paradigm shift for a lot of people too because they'll say well that normally takes us like months to get that kind of alignment get that kind of approval and they will kaizen is culture changing its habit changing so we actually in caissons relatively simple if you think about it if if you want to paint a room in your house all right and you blitz it so to speak you get the materials you get the the people the painters all right you can see and change you concede good change in hours you know in in days you could you can have it it's obvious that's kaizen you've executed improvement very quickly god but if you don't use that kaizen methodology okay that room could end up half painted for months my mind what's brilliant about it you always hear cos complaining how the consultant's came in and we pay them so much money and they came in and they cut off and they did this and we hate them and they never they always fight you for it but this way you get them involved smile well there's consultants to come in and sell you fish there's consultants who come in and teach you how to fish and when you teach people how to kaizen I'm working with a company right now we're in the last twelve months we've done over seventy kaizen events seventy seven zero so the good change has taken place people are enthusiastic hundreds and hundreds of people have been involved in these these good changes that's that's that's culture changing and we've done it with one consultant and a part time consultant I use that bring him when I can and uh and that's it but we're teaching this particular client how to fish not stringing them along with a bunch of consultants what a lot of consultants do do as they do that define in the measure and the analyzed to some extent so they come in with what's often called the diagnostic so we've coming in and we've done a health check on your business and there's a huge bill for it and these are all the things that need to change and if you'd like our help to change any of them here's a new bill which is huge okay um and a lot of those suggestions just end up collecting dust their idea it is their idea I just show him how to find the ideas and then how to capture the ideas and turn them into results sure I don't need the credit I don't I don't need to credit I want them to actually have the credit so I guide I teach I facilitate but I don't come in and tell people what to do and this is important because you don't want to do this to people you want to do it with people because when you when you do something to people you're going to meet that resistance you talked about it earlier you push they push back you push they push back if you pull and you use a more socratic more open questioning involving technique that's it's incredibly powerful so I urge everybody to take that very seriously pull don't push all right so tell skies and events are very powerful events they're taking data which is worthless until we do something with it and there are a lot of companies and organizations that are what I call data rich an information poor we've got data all over the place. We've got spreadsheets, we've got gobs and gobs of data, but no one's really done the analysis. No one's really talked, take taking the data and come up with intelligence from it with knowledge. Some of the things we talked about earlier that transfer function, that wise, a function of x what's, the correlation. So we turned the data into meaningful information. We take that information and turn it into knowledge. We're going to play around with that more and more in the next few sessions. That knowledge, we translate that into innovation and improvement, and, uh, and we prove it with results. And when we get those results, people start really getting on board. The credibility is now, really. Being cultivated and that that's energy. So we're gonna do a point kaizen in this session and we're going to follow it with a flow kaizen in the next session so ah point kaizen is when we have identified a single point in a process or in a value stream or in a system in an organization a single point it is clearly a problem we've done our d find our measure are in analyzed and we're going to focus on that it's very tight event and so we're going to simulate that using the lane sigma game with the diamond department in this session we're going to come back then in the next session and we're going to the next segment and we're going teo do a flow kaizen we're now we look at the whole value stream and we might just make make multiple changes all in one kaizen of them as opposed to just one change all right both type types are valuable depending on circumstances but this is about making change and make leading change and doing it effectively not just talking about it surprise the principles for kaizen when we run these and incidentally if your solo preneurs small business you may not literally say well I don't I don't have six people or five people are eight people toe pull together and do a three day event all right you can do it these these events in a couple of days with with whoever you do business with bringing your customers bring in your vendors bringing people to say, look, I want to come up with a better way to interact and we can design the kaizen event to be maybe it's uh it's it's four half days instead of two full days, something like that, but we're going to come up with a we're gonna blitz this thing and I've taken kaizen teams on on airplanes and on buses to other countries to do kaisa events with with customers took a team from france up to england and we did it guys an event with one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies this company has ten thousand suppliers and that year they awarded this client of mine a top ten supplier of the year award and a significant amount of new business because of this event which was such a great synergy great a great improvement for for both companies win win truly win win all right so how do we how do we run an effective kaizen event? What are some of these key principles? One is we have to be prepared ahead of time you don't come into a caisson event wing it so this would be any entrepreneurs enterpreneurs solo print preneurs prepare ahead, do your homework do you research? Define and measure your your voice of customer your market the things we covered in earlier segments get the fax all right get the data get that baseline established and be careful with opinions stay focused on what really matters and make sure that includes the customer it's in fact even consider bringing the customers into the caissons I love to do that because it's right there keeps the whole thing honest it's a demonstration of trust and partnership and win win thinking very powerful we want to challenge the assumptions and the paradigms many of which are hidden were not even aware we're making them here's the thing if we're trying to solve problems inside a box inside a paradigm and it's the actual box that is the problem we're moving chairs around on the titanic all right? We're missing the whole point so we've got to make sure that we we understand what the real problem is and a lot of times people say think outside the box and you're like what box I don't know what you're talking about the boxes that mental paradigm and there were the world's loaded with um so we need to challenge those things I would like to say think creativity before capital that's a common mantra toyota create creativity before capital before we throw a lot of money at it you know is there something we can do creatively to take out a lot of the the ways before we add is that there are things we can subtract I'm very, very important step into the wisdom if you will. The intuition and what I like to call the genius of a team doing a kai's in event number years ago up in canada. And, ah, very dominant type of manager was in the event, and he wanted to make sure that, you know, he was going to get his way. So after we did a round of introductions and things like that, he asked the question. He said, well, what are we going to do when we don't agree? Who's gonna have, like, the last say. So I asked the team including him do we have any geniuses in the room you have any genius is in there and work the room went silent as you can imagine and uh I said well if we if we don't have any geniuses in the room then I would suggest we use the genius of the team that's called consensus now my job being here is to find a way to pull us all together so that we do agree that we're alive a lot of people approach these events with we can't agree or we won't agree we can't get a line in mind they actually expect to not agree with each other because that's what they've grown up with well that's not an option we're not leaving the room until we all agree we need to agree on that to start with and I said I want you to hold me accountable by day to using this process do you may I say I want you to hold me accountable by day two to see that we're aligned I agree that we're not aligned right now that's obvious we're rarely aligned on day one of a kind isn't it day two even you've got people coming in and arguing and point fingers and all kinds of stuff so that's that's normal the transformational part is when that's happening on monday and tuesday and on wednesday thursday friday you're seeing this whole orchestra come together and play is one unit it's powerful that's that's his energy so in this case that's exactly what happened by using the defined tools the measure tools and the analysis tools mid week we're all completely alive and it was it was an awesome thing to see I do guys and events probably three weeks I every month and so I'm doing these things all the time and it's just a wonderful way to lead very very powerful change so let's tap that wisdom and intuition and genius of the team let's trust it I have to find ways to mitigate the risk so ok what could go wrong there's a tool called failure mode in effect analysis I'll talk more about that later but let's identify what could go wrong with those potential failure modes are let's do the analysis let's come up with the counter measures this is similar to a force field analysis it's come up the countermeasures and let's just do it so it has a very just do it type of aa field to it if you will let's remember better not best that means that it's not going to be perfect but let's make it better all right not freak ourselves out and finally let's consider that you never really get it done and you never really get there so let's just enjoy the journey let's be sure by friday we have evidence that it's better let's have a great week. Let's have fun and that's uh, and that's. Just that's. Great business. So whether we're actually kai's ending within a large company, or we're creating a new cousin anytime we're making good change, that's, kaizen, and and my challenge to andy solo per two preneurs any entrepreneur, any business leader is that your job is to make could change if your business idea. If your value property proposition is gonna work, it better be big. Make things better for somebody that's value, and they had better pay for it. Cause that's business that's how it works. So some of the steps to pre prepare for kaizen would be one on one when we got to define what it is we're going to do where we're going to do it things like that logistics and all that we gotta prepare and then collect the data that typically that first yellow section usually takes place two or three sometimes four weeks before the actual event so if I'm writing a business plan and that's my plan is to uh execute ah to start up a new business I got to get I got to get the business incorporated or I got a form uh l l see if some sort I got to come up with a sole proprietorship whatever type of business I want to run okay I've got a I've got I've got to do my homework so that front end part is the homework part to just get our heads around it okay and then I'm actually going to execute so we execute in the event that's what we would write the policy we'd write the procedures we'd write the business plan wade optimize the process we come up with a better tool for the diamond department things like that and then toward the end we've now got evidence that it's better we have to figure out a way to sustain it and standardize it and lock it in that's this this is the sea and domestic down here to make sure that we keep it to sustain it.

Class Materials

bonus material

Facilitators Guide for LeanSigma Game.pdf
LeanSigman Game - The Customer Role.pdf

bonus material

John Murphy Course Syllabus.pdf
LeanSigma Game Worksheet.pdf
John Murphy Session 1.pdf
John Murphy Session 2.pdf
John Murphy Session 3.pdf

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