Jun 20, 2011 | Communication, Marketing, Operations
Experience is hard won, experienced people have an intuition built up over time that is not always obvious, and is certainly not a “by the list” analysis of all the factors, weighing up the relative importance of each, and reaching a conclusion. Somehow it is a cognitive process that happens really quickly.
Some years ago my daughter had an accident in a gym, and very badly broke her arm, to the point of being almost severed. Whilst it was treated as an emergency, and substantial resources immediately swung into action, 24 hours later it was an experienced nursing sister, someone with many years orthopedic trauma experience who noticed a couple of very minor inconsistencies, and demanded a specialist review. That saved my daughters arm from gangrene setting is as a result of Carriage Syndrome. When I asked her how she recognised it, when nobody else had, all she could say was that she “just did”. Experience. She knew enough through experience, had seen enough cases in the past with all the nuances that occur, to recognise cognitively what was going on, rather than just knowing what to do to apparently address the all the apparent problems of a severe compound fracture.
Psychologist Gary Klein has made a lifetime study of decision making, describing the impact of experience on decision making, and how it works in situations of stress, ambiguity, and time critical situations.
Considering the value of this experience should shake some of the corporations around who hire 30 year olds rather than 50 year olds, (and 60 year olds) because of a perceived “vim and vigor” benefit, but what about the instinct and intuition built of long experience? Experience covers all aspects of life, the positive impact of experience influenced decision making is just more obvious in some situations than others. Experience enables those who have it to instinctively see what is going on, rather than just responding to the more obvious what to do.
Jun 19, 2011 | Innovation
These two terms are often used interchangeably, but have a different meaning that I have mumbled about from time to time. This post on the PARC blog in response to Malcolm Gladwells article in the New Yorker is terrific articulation of the difference.
“Simply put: “invention” is the manifestation of an idea or creation of something new. It doesn’t become an “innovation” until it’s applied successfully in practice”
Gladwells article examines the often told story of Steve Jobs visit to PARC where he saw the work being done by PARC scientists on user interface and early mouse, and raced back to the Apple garage, changed the direction of the development programs, and brought the first Macintosh to the market.
Jun 16, 2011 | Lean, Operations, Strategy
One of the reasons it is sometimes hard to keep a lean initiative alive, or indeed, get it past first base after the initial adrenalin has worn off is the manner in which the traditional accounting systems monitor performance. Often, accounting is the hardest function to win across, because their whole rationale is brought to account, if I may use such a bad pun.
Lets just consider a few of the more common things accounting does to (unintentionally) frustrate lean:
- Counts inventory as an asset, encouraging a build up of inventory, at best, not discouraging it
- Fails to monitor capacity, so simple improvements such as reducing downtime, reducing changeover time, speeding up throughput, do not get counted until a full bill of materials review is done, and often not then. Therefore, good work is not seen on the bottom line.
- Fails to monitor the performance, other than direct cost ,of individual steps in a value stream to understand the impact one may have on the whole value stream.
- Rarely is there a full value stream costing done, including sales and marketing costs, Accounting simply do not have the tools in their kitbags.
- Customer value is a foreign concept to accounting, “marketing takes care of that” (“by the way, what is it?”) making it easy to ignore anything outside the ledger
- Fails to understand that lean builds capacity, and the benefits start to flow only when the freed up capacity is utilised
- Fails to recognise that value streams are cross functional, and rarely fit comfortably into the common functional responsibilities and performance measures that are applied.
So, perhaps task No.1 in a Lean initiative is to get the “beenies” on board and thinking about how the impact of the initiative can be counted, made transparent, communicated, and improved upon.
Jun 15, 2011 | Innovation
How easy it is to believe that the only thing needed for a successful NPD&C process is assets, money, people, time, capabilities, market position, and so on, but how often is it that the real innovations emerge from places where these benefits are absent.
On those occasions, the element that makes it all possible is insight.
Apple, Google, Amazon, Zappos, Intel, Skype, Hewlett Packard, Cochlear, et al all evolved from a position of great insight by passionate people, and little else.
So which is the most important component, the core of innovation?
Passionate insight, by a mile.
Jun 14, 2011 | Collaboration, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
“Immediacy” is perhaps the watch-word to describe the way in which our society works. Communication is so instant that we expect reaction to the communication to be just as quick, and this expectation of virtually instantaneous reaction can be a death trap for those not adequately prepared for it.
Just think what would have happened last week had the MLA properly prepared for the predictable backlash from the 4 Corners program. Rather than a muted response, David Palmer (MD) and other stakeholders in the industry should have been out there, TV, blogs, twitter, U-Tube, et al, with stories, pictures, and commentary that articulated the facts on a personal level, with emotion, and honesty.
There is an alternative view to the sensationally emotional 4 Corners story. There is a modest number of very good abattoirs that process a substantial majority of the animals sent to Indonesia, many of the smaller works, whilst not perfect, are working towards better standards, the local employment around the feedlots and works in Indonesia adds substantially to the local economy, the success of the investment MLA has made over many years to lift standards, the care Australian farmers and logistics suppliers take, and so on. Had this story been well told, we may not have had the level of knee-jerk we have had, and the attention would have been focused on how to improve the minority of the trade in Indonesia that is substandard, rather than a total ban which throws years of work, an important industry in Indonesia and Australia, and the relationship with the biggest neighbor we have against the wall.
Even better, knowing it was coming, use all the electronic tools of the immediacy generation to get the message out there in front of the 4 Corners program going to air to further mitigate the dumb, emotional knee-jerk we are now seeing in the community. Whilst a bit was done, it is bland, unemotional, scripted stuff with no emotional connection, and clearly sets out to arse-cover, rather than tell the story in a memorable way. It failed at both.
What was delivered to our couches last week was pictures of the worst of the worst, highly effective, emotional shock tactics that achieved their objective. The lesson for the rest of us is to prepare for the worst, while hoping for the best, because when the worst happens, your response has to be convincing and immediate.
