May 24, 2011 | Collaboration, Lean, Operations
The lean tool, 5s, is often a starting point for lean implementation. It makes sense, as on the surface, it is relatively easy, “straighten, sweep, set, standardise, and sustain”, but it is this last bit that catches people out.
A clean, tidy workplace with everything in its marked place is great, a good start, but in itself, it is a bit like having your 15 year old son clean his room, looks nice, but doesn’t necessarily convert him from computer games to his poetry homework.
A lean implementation is hard, detailed, collaborative work requiring time, commitment and leadership, if it is to make an impact on work flow, changeover times, preventive maintanence programs, inventory management, safety, and all the other things that go to make up a lean workplace. Unfortunately, it cannot be sufficiently simplified to make any PowerPoint presentation any more than a superficial representation, an awareness builder.
So next time someone pulls out a slick presentation designed to part you from your money, consider the real work that needs to be done, and dismiss the hyperbole for what it is, hyperbole. You need to be prepared to knuckle down to some hard work to get anything useful and sustainable done, or just leave it all alone, save yourself some money and sweat, and just continue to bumble along.
May 23, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Management
It is a bit ironic to think that in the midst of the information revolution that is surrounding us, that we are in some ways reverting to the ways of pre-agricultural humans.
Bit of a stretch? Just think, pre-agricultural humans lived by what they knew, where the water was, how to track an animal, then kill, dress, and cook it, which plants were edible, and so on. There were no personal possessions, everything was shared, and the group succeeded or failed by group effort and their relative position in their environment.
We moved away from this collaborative model as we started to grow things and gain possessions, but in the information revolution we are going through now, perhaps we are going back to some of the foundations of what made hunter-gathers sufficiently successful to evolve into us.
If this is the case, maybe we should be looking at the social and organisational behaviours that made hunter gatherers so successful. Forget the strategists, bring in the anthropologists.
May 22, 2011 | Small business, Social Media
They are.. Just look around at what they are doing. I wish I had written this post.
May 19, 2011 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
It will be worth watching the way Microsoft goes about leveraging their $8.5 Billion (should have paid Aussie dollars?) purchase of Skype, there will be a swarm of lessons to be learnt:
- Integration of a “free” service into a product/profit business model. This challenge will create sufficient tensions and cultural speed bumps to keep the academics busy for a long time. History is against Microsoft, most purchases like this that seek to integrate differing cultures fail to add value in the long term.
- Skype has a huge customer base, but is only marginally profitable, turning that around without risking the loss of the existing customer base who want a free service will be problematical
- To what extent is this the foundation of a marketing effort by Microsoft to protect their hugely profitable Office franchise from cloud based competitors like Google Docs, and how will this all pan out?
- Will the existing Skype customers continue to support the service now it is part of the “evil empire”
- How will Apple and Google react, both appeared to have been beaten in an auction for Skype. They both have communication products that compete with Skype, but few users.
- Can Microsoft assemble the capabilities to build new, risky, communication products that undergo a process of continuous improvement in the market with the input from users.
As a user of Skype’s free service, I am not sure how I would react to being charged, probably just “suck it up” but the commercial opportunities for conferencing calls using video must be immense, and the free service is a great entry point with a huge existing user base. Hopefully Microsoft sees it that way
May 18, 2011 | Lean, Operations
In a recent conversation I again found myself between two smart blokes, one who was a black belt 6 sigma consultant who believed the problems of the world could be fixed by some aggressive, numerical focus on process improvement, and an exponent of Lean, who was of the “build the right culture and they will come” school.
To my mind, they are both right, and both wrong.
Six sigma means defects of less than 3.5/million. This requires rigorous emphasis on elimination of anything that creates variation in a process, or series of processes, ensuring that the output is exactly the same every time. Good six sigma implementations take great care to ensure that the output of the processes that are so exactly the same are adding value to the customer, but this can become lost in the welter of statistics and process control mechanisms.
Lean, by contrast starts with the macro question of “what customer value does this process add? What would the consumer prepared to pay for it?” Anything that does not add value to the customer, inventory, rework, excessive movement, and others, is deemed to be “waste” and is rigorously targeted for improvement using the old “Plan, Do, Check, Act” process, the ultimate objective of which is “flow” through a process.
The tools of lean and 6 sigma are widely interchangeable. I have seen 6 sigma implementations going through a 5S process, essentially a lean tool, and Lean implementations using SPC extensively to identify and manage out waste in a process.
It can be said, as my conversationalists did, that 6 sigma is an analytical, quantitative tool box, and Lean is a Cultural, management alignment toolbox. They they are both right, and both have their place, indeed elements of both are essential to competitive improvement.
