Business901

A Collaborative approach to Value Stream Mapping

business901 — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:55:00 PST

Value Stream Mapping has been a practice that was first introduced in the book Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA by Mike Rother and John Shook. This groundbreaking workbook, which has introduced the value-stream mapping tool to thousands of people around the world, breaks down the important concepts of value-stream mapping into an easily grasped format. Dan Jones and Jim Womack followed that book with Seeing the Whole Value Stream which took the mapping methodology through an improvement process that converted the traditional value stream of isolated operations to a broader view of the entire value stream.

Recently the co-authors, Womack and Jones in response to feedback asking for examples in other sectors and questions about how to understand supply chain costs more accurately, have added five essays to the book for this new edition. These essays demonstrate how real companies have taken on the challenge of improving their extended value streams working in collaboration with their suppliers and customers.

The new essays for the book are:

Spreading value-stream thinking from manufacturers to final customers through service providers—extending the wiper example.
Applying extended value-stream thinking to retail—a look at the Tesco story.
Learning to use value-stream thinking collaboratively with suppliers and customers.
Product costing in value-stream analysis.
Seeing and configuring the global value stream.

The one particular essay that stood out to me was Learning to use value-stream thinking collaboratively with suppliers and customers. The objective of this effort was to garner their suppliers and customer in a true collaborative effort to create value. It was the first time any of these five companies had ever viewed a shared value stream. They started with a few modest objectives for improvement. However, it turned into much more than an improvement effort but rather a deeper type of organizational relationship. The reason they cited was that they learned how to communicate with each other. You can view the experience: Video of Matthew Lovejoy’s presentation on the Acme Alliance story.

This story exemplifies the power of collaboration and what can be developed from it. Collaboration in a Value Stream Mapping exercise can be a difficult process. You open your doors to all the skeletons you have in the closet for both vendors and customers to see. Most people are surprised by the reactions. It is typically not one of disgust or insecurity but rather a helping hand is extended and many times consideration that certain requirements may not even be needed.

The spirit of this venture serves a valuable insight that co-producing, co-creation and open innovation is not as far-fetched as it may seem. A single Value Stream Mapping process led to four years of increasing engagement. I wonder what would happen is they shorten that iteration a bit?

P.S. If your 1^st edition of the book looks like mine, it’s time for the 2^nd edition anyway.

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Service Design via a Design Thinker ebook

business901 — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:32:00 PST

Design Thinker, Arne van Oosterom, Partner at DesignThinkers in Amsterdam was my podcast guest recently. This is a transcription of the podcast. Arne is also a lecturer and chairman of the Service Design Network, Netherlands. He works with a broad range of associates around the world, and in a network allowing them to be extremely flexible to the customers’ demands and up to date with the latest design and design thinking methodologies. One of these latest design thinking methodologies is Service Design, and that was the topic of our conversation.

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Lean Sales & Marketing Summit Announced

business901 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:48:00 PST

I am honored to be included on the same agenda with noted author, speaker, and lean pioneer Bill Waddell. On April 17th, Bill will be presenting
Aligning the Entire Organization to Achieve the Sales Strategy. He will show you how to devise a sales and marketing strategy built around creating the most value for your customers; how to set prices strategically, rather than on the basis of standard costs, assuring that prices will not cause you to lose a sale. We will align the entire company around assuring the success of the sales strategy, with a focus on maximizing value for your customers and using lean tools to eliminate everything that is not contributing to the prices you charge. When we are finished you will see a clear and practical path to devising a practical plan to creating and accomplishing a sales and marketing strategy, and succeeding not by becoming the lowest cost and price competitor, but by becoming the highest value source in your markets.

The next day, I will be presenting Using Lean to Create Repeatable and Scalable Sales and Marketing Systems: A Customer Centric Approach Through Lean. The workshop will be two-thirds presentation and one-third interactive exercises. A partial listing of the subject matter:

Why value can no longer be defined by what the customer will pay for.
The New Rules of Marketing in a Demand – Driven World
The Marketing Gateway of EDCA > PDCA > SDCA
Lean Engagement Team
Leader Standard Work for Sales and Marketing
Achieving Mastery

All Participants will receive a Marketing with Lean workbook to include a CD that will contain the four published books in the series; Lean Marketing House, Marketing with PDCA, Marketing with A3s and The Lean Engagement Team.

Learn how Lean Sales and Marketing is essentially a knowledge transfer system; it’s a training system on how to define knowledge gaps and close them. Not from the perspective of educating the customer but from the perspective of learning from the customer and understanding how your customer uses and benefits from your product or service.
Learn how to let your customer be the professor, the Sensei, who will take you through their decision making steps and how to improve your reactions to these steps in a systematic way.
Learn how to apply the Marketing Gateway of EDCA to PDCA to SDCA.
Learn how Leader Standard Work is the foundation of Lean Sales and Marketing and the fundamental process that replaces the “Silver Bullet” found in most typical marketing jargon.
Learn how to take responsibility for finding and creating demand.
Learn what makes Lean Sales and Marketing so incredibly powerful.

Lean Sales and Marketing is built upon the philosophy that there has been a subtle shift to knowledge as the way to engage, develop and retain your customer base. Your Lean Engagement Teams must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets. Successful Sales and Marketing departments are no longer just responsible for getting the message out but also for developing strategies to get the customer’s message in. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer has become the strongest marketing tool possible. Lean Thinking is the fundamental process needed to achieve this but it must be viewed from the demand side of the supply chain. We no longer live in a world of excess demand and supply side thinking is no longer valid. Learn how to change your mindset and bring continuous improvement to your sales and marketing through Lean. Join me in Indianapolis on April 17th to listen to Bill and stay the following day to participate with me on April 18th.

The host of this event is Lean Frontiers. They provide high-quality, laser-focused events aimed at integrating organizational silos in support of the lean enterprise. These focused events provide an ideal venue for like-minded professionals to explore the common issues they face in supporting lean. Upcoming Workshops will held in Fishers, IN (Indianapolis Suburb).

P.S. If you buy the book series before the event and attend, I will refund the purchase. Marketing with Lean Series – 4 Pack.

This event will sell out!

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The Strength of an Architect is in their Collaborative Abilities

business901 — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:30:00 PST

My initial interest for this podcast was the perspective of Design from an Architect’s viewpoint. How does it differ from an industrial engineer or even an industrial designer, or other Design fields such as marketing? What makes an architect thought process different? I was surprised not in the answers that I received from my guest, Zachary Evans, an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc. What did surprise me is the lens that they looked at things. In musical terms, they were not the composer of magnificent musical piece but rather the orchestra leader that enable a variety of talents to perform at their best for the audience (the customer).

I might have been just lucky selecting the right architect to interview but I found that the strength of design was in the collaborative ability of the designer. There was no shying away from customer involvement, it was welcomed and actually a sign of failure if it was not solicited. Thinking like an architect has many similarities to SD-Logic (The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing by Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch) where the premise that products and services only create the opportunity to provide value. Value is created only when the customer uses the product or service. Enabling the use is the central theme of most architecture and Zach does a good job in relating that concept.

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Zachary Evans is an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc., a Fort Wayne architecture, planning, and urban design firm. A Ball State University graduate (Muncie, Indiana), Zach holds professional architectural registrations in Indiana and Ohio and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). He is an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Fort Wayne Chapter, and currently serves on the City of Fort Wayne (Indiana) Downtown Design Review Committee.

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Should your Organization start Thinking like an Architect?

business901 — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:50:00 PST

We accept that Architects have an ability to design pleasing structures. I feel another part of their repertoire is equally as important; It is the ability to visualize the change needed between current and the future state and to successfully chart the path for evolving to it. You may believe that these traits are common in organizations through engineering, project management and operations but Architects do it a different way. They do it through the lens of design.

How do Architects think? A study, Thinking like an Architect. by Kyle Gabhart explores the subject of architects and how they view and ultimately solve problems.

The overwhelming indication here is that building-style toys (LEGOs, blocks, Lincoln Logs, etc.) were a favorite toy of those individuals that eventually grew up to become architects. Could it be that the abstract thinking and pattern-recognition that is inherent in building-style toys was already being developed and enhanced at such an early age? The second contender is board games, which has a strong component of rules sets and also pattern-recognition. Here again, the impressionable mind of the future architect may already be creating mental categories, placeholders, and thought patterns for future architecture activities.

LEGOs is not that surprising but another part of the survey listed these results:

53.08% of respondents studied / trained with a musical instrument
36.97% pursued mathematics studies beyond the basics required by a degree program
22.27% engaged in formal singing activities, including music theory and sight-reading

What does that tell us? A background in music may mean a great deal of regimented practice and the ability to take instruction. In combination with LEGOs it shows the ability to build on an existing process and achieve future results. It may also say a lot about teamwork, since many that play music in high school participate in the band.

Architects offer traditional core services but they also balance human, technical and business factors as well, managing these factors to achieve their outcomes. Architects build and coordinate teams from a variety of services. Just doing this within our own organizations seems insurmountable at times. Think about outsourcing your entire business?

Our products/services are increasingly become more strategic. We must enable the use of our product/service to serve clients more effectively and to increase customer engagement. Architects add a great deal of value to this thought process. They have always started with customer engagement in their design practice. Design is not an afterthought, it is the reason for engagement. There is no such thing as features and benefits at this point. That only comes through a definition of the needs of the clients. Interesting?

Tomorrows podcast is with Zachary Evans, an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc., a Fort Wayne architecture, planning, and urban design firm.

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How to Design like an Architect

business901 — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:28:00 PST

Doug Patt of How to Architect created this video, How to Design like an Architect which is a great intro to this weeks podcast, Design from an Architects Perspective. I encourage you to visit Doug’s site. It is well constructed and very impressive from both a visual and ease of use perspective. Doug has a new book coming out and could it be named anything else: How to Architect.

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Co-Creation and Open Innovation from HYVEinnovation

business901 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:34:03 PST

One of my favorite videos recently has been the HYVEinnovation video on Co-Creation and Open Innovation. If you have not seen this it is well worth your time to view.

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An Architects view of Prototyping and Modeling

business901 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:30:00 PST

Next week’s Business901 Podcast guest is Zachary Evans. He is an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc., a Fort Wayne architecture, planning, and urban design firm. A Ball State University graduate (Muncie, Indiana), Zach holds professional architectural registrations in Indiana and Ohio and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). He is an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Fort Wayne Chapter, and currently serves on the City of Fort Wayne (Indiana) Downtown Design Review Committee.

In recent podcasts I discussed the concepts of Prototyping, Service Design, Design Thinking and Business Modeling. Looking for different perspectives, I felt the field of architecture should be introduced. Zach does a wonderful job in the podcast adding both a view of the architect and taking it a step further in how “Designers” think. This is an excerpt from the podcast.

Joe: I have always been intrigued by the modeling concept in architecture. How do you start with prototyping and modeling? And can you take us through a smaller project, with some modeling characteristics, steps that you go through with the customer?

Zachary: Architects are trained to think visually and many times young adults get involved in architecture because of their visual thinking skill. I think a lot of people who aren’t in architecture can do that but there are a many people that cannot visualize a three dimensional space in their mind so modeling becomes extremely important. We do drawings in two dimensions and three dimensions. Typically, the two dimensional drawings are for the construction drawings that are given to a contractor for building purposes and the other type of modeling is done digitally is 3D modeling. There are really two different reasons to do modeling. The first is for design intent. These can be digital or physical models that we do early in the design stages, especially when we’re doing the conceptualizing and brainstorming.

We use cardboard or foam cord boards. Sometimes it’s as crude as hot glue guns and cardboard to create something that you can turn, flip upside down, and hand to a client that helps us get a sense of what that space might feel like if they were inside of it, if it were a full?size structure.

Digital models we use to convey design intent works well. There’s simple programs that can be used such as Google SketchUp and more complex 3D modeling software that is out there that we use. The real purpose of those is to allow the design team to work and coordinate a conceptualize design and convey that information to a client.

The second big type of digital modeling is typically use a little bit later, after a design at least has been approved conceptually and moves on to one of the middle stages of design that we call design development and is BIM. BIM stands for Building Information Modeling and has become very prevalent lately and is really the software of the future and process of the future where all of the building systems are put into a single digital model.

The structure is modeled, the mechanical system including all the ductwork and air handlers are modeled, all the architectural elements are modeled, the doors and corridors. Also all the written information, product information, design intent statements, can be included in it. It’s a single file, single model that contains all the information for that project. It can even be used by contractors to work off of during bidding and construction.

Disclaimer: Zach did not design any of the buildings in the picture. I wonder if they started with hot glue guns and cardboard?

Picture Credit: DESKARATI – AN ECLECTIC MIX OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND THE ARTS

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What’s New in Business Model Generation?

business901 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:35:00 PST

The Business Model Canvas is an analytical tool outlined in the book Business Model Generation. It is a visual template preformatted with the nine blocks of a business model, which allows you to develop and sketch out new or existing business models. This book has sold over 220,000 copies the past two years and has established itself as one of the leading sources of modeling for both startups and established businesses. This is a transcription of the podcast I had with co-author, Alex Osterwalder.

Sample of What’s inside:

What you want to figure out is, what’s the best way? If you’re a business, what’s the best and most profitable way to do that? So it’s not about finding a solution, it’s about finding a good design. That’s something that designers are good at. They have techniques to do that.

If you’re an engineer, you have the problem solution approach. You’ll try to find in a linear way, the solution to your problem. You’ll look at it as an equation, and you’ll use different methods. I think the methods that we really want to look at are those by designers who look at 10, 20, 30 different alternatives and try to find the best design for a specific context.

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Critical and Creative Thinking benefits the Problem Solver

business901 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:13:18 PST

Below is a presentation that I will be giving this week to the Plantmix Asphalt Industry of Kentucky. It will be during the winter training school and focus on using both Critical and Creative Thinking benefits the Problem Solver. It also includes how to prevent the failures of most decision processes. This an hour long presentation. What are your thoughts? Any improvement ideas?

Problem Diagnostics – Q & A

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Service Design through the Eyes of a Design Thinker

business901 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:40:00 PST

My podcast guest was Arne van Oosterom, Partner at DesignThinkers in Amsterdam. DesignThinkers is a Strategic Design agency that specializes in social innovations, service innovations, customer centered design, marketing 2.0 and branding. They provide a bridge between business opportunities and creative solutions.

The podcast typifies what I enjoy about Service Design and the people surrounding it. They view the methodology as a constantly evolving process. There are no linear thinkers in this crowd, so much in fact it may even be called circular reasoning.

Service Design does not even assume it will find the best answer, you may want to call it the most compatible answer. They assume the answers are found through collaboration and co-creation and seem to value the journey even more so than the outcome.

Arne provides his own interesting perspective in the podcast.

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About Arne van Oosterom: Arne is a Designer in Residence at the Oslo School for Architecture and Design & Norwegian Center for Service Innovation, Founder of the Design Thinkers Network, Co-Founder of the Service Design Network Netherlands, Catalyst at WENOVSKI and Founder of the Healthcare Initiative CareToDesign and Keynote Speaker at various International Universities and Conferences.

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Quality through Individual Actions Presentation

business901 — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:42:48 PST

Below is a presentation that I will be giving this week to the Plantmix Asphalt Industry of Kentucky. It will be during the winter training school and focus on Building a Quality Program through your Actions. This an hour long presentation and I noticed a few parts that the subject matter may seem to jump off course but it actually flows pretty well for me. What are your thoughts? Any improvement ideas?

Improving Quality

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Do you co-create value with your Customer?

business901 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:40:00 PST

My podcast guest next week is Arne van Oosterom, Partner at DesignThinkers in Amsterdam. He is a Designer in Residence at the Oslo School for Architecture and Design & Norwegian Center for Service Innovation, Founder of the Design Thinkers Network, Co-Founder of the Service Design Network Netherlands, Catalyst at WENOVSKI and Founder of the Healthcare Initiative CareToDesign and Keynote Speaker at various International Universities and Conferences. A preview of the podcast is below:

Joe: I think you have to go deeper than relationships. You have to actually start playing in the customer’s playground. You’ve got to be there with them in the use of the product. Does service design support that theory?

Arne: Well, it’s support service design in the sense that we really believe in what we call a value co?creation. Value is always being co?created, and we are moving away from what we call value in exchange, to a world where value is being used as a center stage. Value in exchange very simply means that you put a lot of value into a product as a factory as a producer, and then you exchange your product for money with a consumer. I buy something for my company, and I give them money, they give me a product. That’s value in exchange. That’s what we are focusing on right now, which is the product?dominant logic.

But you’re moving more towards a service?dominant logic, which is something you can see, for instance, with smartphones. I always say, a couple years ago when you would buy a non?smartphone, a traditional Nokia when we were still buying Nokias, you would buy the phone. But if you put the phone in your closet, Nokia wouldn’t care. The deal was made, money was exchanged, so that’s fine.

Nowadays, if you buy a phone, either the producer of the phone ?? be it Samsung, be it Nokia, be it Apple ?? they will not be happy if you’re not starting to use the phone. You need to have the phone, because it’s connected to all kinds of other stuff, and it’s part of this ecosystem. This ecosystem is only healthy when it’s in use.

So it has to have value for me in use, and that is something that is very much different, because I think what we’ll see is that more and more products will become connected. And data becomes more and more important, because that is actually the way you have your relationships with your customers. That’s your conversation you have with your customers.

I specifically enjoyed the comment, “This ecosystem is only healthy when it is in use.” Do you look at your product or service from that point of view? Do you treat your product/service as an enabler of value? IT frames your perspective entirely different. In fact, it is one of my key theories on how you create demand. Is your product unhealthy because you added more features and benefits to appeal to a wider audience? Would you have been better off increasing the use of your product through additional product/services? To accomplish this, you have to be involved with your customer. You cannot just be observing, you need to roll up you’re sleeves, take off your boots and play in their playground.

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A Service Design Thinking Primer

business901 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:30:00 PST

My blog and podcast for next few months will focus on Business Strategists, Design Thinkers, Appreciative Inquiry Coaches, Architects and of course Lean Thinkers. I could not think of a better way to start this series than having a podcast with co-author Marc Stickdorn of This is Service Design Thinking. This is a transcription of the podcast.

Open publication

Rather Listen? Service Design Thinking Podcast with Marc Stickdorn

About: Marc Stickdorn graduated in Strategic Management and Marketing and worked in various tourism projects throughout Europe. Since 2008 Marc is full-time staff at the MCI – Management Center Innsbruck in Austria, where he lectures service design and service innovation. His main areas of interest are service design and strategic marketing management particularly in a tourism context. This involves research such as the development of a mobile ethnography application for mobile phones, the Customer Journey Canvas and various publications and presentations. Marc is co-founder and consultant of “Destinable – service design for tourism” and guest lecturer at different business and design schools. His Websites: http://thisisservicedesignthinking.com/, http://www.servicedesignresearch.com.

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