The Deming Cycle
October 21, 2009 at 10:25 pm | In Business, Change, Improvement, Lean Process, Performance, Uncategorized | Leave a CommentTags: Improvement, Performance
Following the Second World War, Japan was struggling to regenerate its manufacturing base and a key feature in this struggle was the need to generate a culture of quality.
Their economic saviour in many ways was Dr W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician who was so influential in creating a culture of quality that Japan still has an annual quality award that bears his name. He is a venerable hero of the Quality movement.
A tool that Deming employed frequently for quality and process improvement was the Plan, Do, Check, Act process.
This later became known as the Deming Cycle.
The key principle of this cycle is iteration and feedback.
The key stages are:
PLAN - Design or change a business process with the aim of improving results
DO - Implement the change and measure the change in results
CHECK - Compare the measurements with the original performance to assess improvements
ACT - Decide on the changes that are needed to improve the process
Repeated time and again the PDCA drives any process towards a peak of improved performance. In many ways, this approach now underpins many of the process improvement approaches used in business today.
The Kaizen approach of the Lean process is an iterative improvement process
Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (DMAIC) of the Six Sigma school is also an iterative approach.
Rummler and Brache (1991) also suggested an approach that repeated a pattern of Identify, Analyse and Improve.
And there are many more.
There are 2 key things to remember about any such iterative approaches:
1. What you measure is critical. You must get your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) correct. Measure the wrong parameter and you improve the wrong thing.
2. If you your process isn’t the correct one in the first instance then you can improve but you are only moving towards a ‘suboptimal’ peak of performance.
The graph below shows what can happen if you focus on only improving the current process.
If you start on the left hand peak, you will optimise, but you will optimse the wrong process.
You should take away from this the need to not only consider improvement as an approach but ensure you are improving the correct process. Suboptimal is exactly that!
Dare to Aspire
Six Thinking Hats
October 20, 2009 at 10:11 pm | In Business, Improvement, Models, Performance, Uncategorized | Leave a CommentTags: Thinking
When faced with a problem, it can be beneficial to consider a number of different perspectives on that problem.
Different perspectives can often reveal different factors and features and can potentially reveal a variety of innovative solutions.
Using a structured approach to selecting these different perspectives is a sign of disciplined and logical thinking and an approach typified in Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.
The approach is extremely simple but can be very effective in problem solving.
Each thinker metaphorically adopts a ‘thinking hat’ and then constrains their thinking to just that perspective. Swapping hats allows you to focus on alternative viewpoints until options are exhausted.
Edward De Bono recommends these 6 different ‘hats’ to guide you into thinking from these 6 different perspectives.
Blue Hat: Wear this hat to define the problem and scope of the issue.
White Hat: Wear this hat and focus on the facts of the situation. Look at the features, factors, functions, gaps in process and knowledge. Look for trends, patterns and developments.
Red Hat: Wear this hat to explore the emotions surrounding the problem. Note what you feel instinctively, what your gut tells you.
Yellow Hat: Wear this hat to explore the positive aspects of the issue. What about this is constructive and what can you benefit or learn from? Look for value and benefit.
Green Hat: Wear this hat to develop creative and innovation options. Imaginative solutions that break the mental mould are developed with this hat.
Black Hat: Look for things that are broken or won’t work. What is weak about the issue or solution?
Although this approach can be used by an individual, it has equal if not more effect when it is used by a group. The blue hat would direct the group, and different members of the team would wear ‘hats’ that explored the various perspectives.
The results from this approach should be interesting and useful and may even be quite dramatic. At the very least you and your team will begin to break out of your normal thinking habits.
Dare to Aspire
10 Tips for Successful of Entrepreneurship
October 11, 2009 at 1:38 pm | In Business, Improvement, Leadership, Performance | 3 CommentsTags: Braincram, Entrepreneurship, Success
Starting your own business can be an exciting and exhilarating challenge. It can also be an overwhelming and somewhat daunting experience for anyone. Here are 10 tips that will help you think about the more strategic level things you need to think about. Don’t forget that you will also need to look after the more detailed part of the business too, delivery, marketing, accounting, cashflow management etc.
Have Goals
If you don’t know what you are going, how will you know if you are moving the right direction and how will you know when you get there? Goals need to be clear and compelling; a vision so appealing that it pulls you out of bed in the morning and keeps you driving on into the small hours of the morning.
Work Hard
Building a business is hard work…Busy, busy, busy, hard work, hard work, hard work. You will need your compelling vision to keep you motivated and ensuring that you persist even when you are struggling to find the energy to keep going. Persistence is critical. Make just one more call, write one more email, do just 10 more minutes work and you will be that much closer to your goal.
Know your Market
Whatever you are doing, you need to make sure that someone is interested in paying you for it. You need to know what you target market wants and how they want it. You will also need to know how to approach them and how to sell the benefits of your service or product to that market.
Be Innovative and Differentiate
If you don’t differentiate, then you are only doing the same as many others and you can only compete on price. All you are offering your customers is another choice in a market of businesses saying ‘Me too!’
If you are doing something different, then you have another way to compete and can offer your customers something that stands out from the crowd. Mercedes Benz cars don’t cry ‘me too!’ to their customers. So should you?
Believe in What you are Doing
People only buy what they know will meet their needs. They will also only buy when they have a level of confidence that a product of service will meet that need. So the sales process is a way to ensure that your customer develops confidence in what you are offering and then commits to buying it.
How will you persuade them that what you are offering will meet their need if you don’t have at least the same level of confidence in what you are offering? The sales process then becomes a conversation aimed at building and sharing your confidence level with your customer so that they are convinced and buy.
Stay Focused
You will achieve more if you are focused on doing one thing at a time. One task, one goal, one business idea. I recommend reading Jurgen Wolff’s book ‘Focus’ to give you some ideas and techniques to help you focus more effectively.
Develop Relationships
All businesses are people businesses. People take the actions, people make the sales, people buy the product, and people promote you business with endorsements and recommendations. The more time you spend developing relationships, the more effectively you will be able to manage and build your business.
Surround Yourself with Great People
As an entrepreneur, you will very soon recognise that won’t be able to do everything yourself. Indeed the very characteristics of being an entrepreneur means that you are better at building a business than achieving the individual delivery tasks within that business.
So ensure you hire or work with great people, especially people who are better at doing key tasks than you are.
If you hire people that are not as good as you, then you will build a company where you are continually checking on people and being disappointed with their output.
Hire great people and then set them free to achieve.
Lead Your Team
Part of being an entrepreneur is giving your team the guidance they need to fulfil the vision. Sharing your vision is not enough. You also need to ensure that the team is continually supported in the delivering that vision and are rewarded when they make significant progress towards achieving it. There are many models of leadership and leading, but the simplest form is to’ know the way, to show the way and to go the way!’
Cheesy perhaps, but it captures the sentiment of leadership in very simple terms.
Never Stop Selling
Never forget that you are running a business and that you need revenue to survive. Let your mantra be ‘Customer and Cash’.
You must, at a bare minimum, satisfy your customers. I would suggest that your best approach is to make them raving fans. But you must always be thinking of how to make the sale. Sometimes you can sell at the first opportunity. Other times you will need to make a continual investment in the relationship in order to establish credibility and have your prospect believe enough to become a customer. Always be building the relationship and the selling will take care of itself.
These are just 10 of many tips that you will read about and learn from myriad sources. Although not exhaustive, they are useful to have in mind when you are building your business.
Dare to Aspire
9 Tips for Effective Networking
June 29, 2009 at 7:25 pm | In Business, career | 5 CommentsTags: Networking
One of the most useful things you can do for personal and professional success is to network effectively. And as with most activities, there is a right way to network and a wrong way to network.
If you have the time, I recommend reading ‘Never Eat Alone’, which is the seminal work on networking and Ferrazzi has a talent for describing the most effective techniques of Networking in an easily understood and accessible way.
If you don’t have the time or the inclination for the big volume then here are some tips for networking:
1. Talk to anyone about anything. Participate in other peoples thinking as much as possible as no one is as smart as all of us are together and you never know who has the innovative solution to your problem.
2. Develop a high tolerance for ambiguity as opening yourself up to other ideas will often result in your challenging your own ideas, beliefs and sometimes even your values.
3. Don’t enter a discussion with an attitude of getting something out of it. By going into a discussion with a viewpoint of giving more than you hope to receive will make you appear truly sincere and helpful and not just out to use the relationship for your own ends.
4. Have a fearless attitude because starting a conversation with people who you don’t know can often be intimidating. Get comfortable with this feeling and you will look at networking as a delight rather than something to fear.
5. Always think about the connections that you could help each person make. One of the most beneficial influences that good networkers develop is being a social node, a person who people will contact just to get to another person in the network. If you add value to relationships you nurture, everyone profits over time.
6. Go on gut instinct. If you think the connection won’t endure, move on. You have to be happy with the person you are networking with in order connect them with others that know and trust you with their details.
7. Expand your conversational topics and your sense of humour. Being confidence when you discuss topics or being able to break the ice with a humorous comment will make you a person that is happy with networking and someone that people will want to network with, making the problem of making the first approach disappear!
8. Have a way of keeping track of the people you meet and what they talk about. It is the chance to think about how they fit into your network and who would benefit from knowing and how they could benefit from others in your network.
9. Maintain the integrity to yourself and your network. People are trusting you with their personal information. Live up to that trust.
If you look at the most successful people, they are generally those people that have the largest network, touch each element of it regularly and add value to all those with whom they connect.
Dare to Aspire
New Article: Developing Self Esteem
June 29, 2009 at 1:48 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentCatch this new article on Developing Self Esteem
Dare to Aspire
Seven Steps to Solving Problems
April 7, 2009 at 6:45 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentNo matter the scale of the problem, a simple problem solving method can help you find a solution. The Seven Step Method shown below. Although simple, is both methodical and effective.
Define the Problem – Sometimes the presenting symptom is not the real problem. Be vigilant to find the core problem.
Define Objectives and Performance Measures – You need an idea of the outcome you want. Knowing what a good job looks like helps you identify the performance measures you will need to decide when you have solved the problem.
Identify the Boundaries and Constraints – Bounding a problem ensures that you are not trying to solve too much. Constraints are those things that restrict your solutions.
Identify, Generate and Prioritise Options – Options are building blocks of solutions. Creating lots of options gives you more choice and more chance of creating a better solution.
Develop Options into a Plan – Develop the promising options further and discard options that offer little if any benefit.
Implement the Solution – Decide how to implement the solution to be most effective. Remember that some solutions can be quite simple but others can be comprehensive and require significant effort to deploy.
Evaluate the Outcome and Ensure the Problem is Solved – Evaluation a continuous process. As your solution takes effect, ensure the change is moving towards your desired outcome. Ask ‘What is working and what isn’t working?’
If the problem is well defined and a working solution well implemented, you should we well on the way to having solved the problem.
Remember that you don’t need a perfect solution first time. Indeed you will probably not create one. A more likely approach is to make consistently better decisions moving you towards a robust solution.
Dare to Aspire
Tips for critical thinking
March 25, 2009 at 9:23 pm | In Improvement, Performance, Thinking | Leave a CommentTags: Thinking
In this sound bite filled world, we are rarely given very much time to think critically about the information that we are presented with.
The media presents the message they want to in a 30 second snap shots and move on to the next story before you question the message. Written articles are little more than hidden agendas presented in small visual fields primed for mental grazing rather than serious contemplation.
Critical thinking is important to ensure you are not left thinking the same as everyone else and in the way that the media want you to.
If we all think the same, then no-one is actually thinking, just following everyone else. Here are a few tips to help you think critically:
- Be informed – Read as much as you can on key subjects and read what different people think about those subjects. Having a variety of opinions to consider allows you to make a more informed decision about what YOU think.
- Avoid making an early decisions – Allow yourself the time to consider and don’t pre-judge any situation or idea. Think ‘vu ja de’ not ‘de ja vu’. Look at everything as though you have never seen it before.
- Be open to new ideas – Having a curious mind will allow you to ask questions more readily and be critical of those ideas read and hear.
- Be honest with yourself – People have prejudices and biases, we all do. They allow us to make rapid decisions without the effort of thinking too much. Being aware of these prejudices and biases can help you be more open to alternative views.
- Look for the truth value – Spin is endemic in the media. Look for the truth in the message and search for the reason a message is crafted in a particular way.
- Find the facts hidden in the opinion – Facts are facts no matter which way you look at them, opinions are different views of those facts. Find the facts and develop your own opinion.
Although not a rigorous set of rules for critical thinking, applying these ideas can help you sort the information from the agenda. Even in this posting!
Dare to Aspire
Eating the Big Fish: Adam Morgan
March 24, 2009 at 8:30 pm | In Book Summary | 1 CommentTags: Synopsis
In Eating the Big Fish, Morgan explains how “challenger brands can compete against brand leaders.”
Morgan’s aims to provide a “magnetic compass” that will allow smaller companies (Small Fish) to compete successfully.
That is, how to become a “challenger brand”?
Morgan suggests that it is based on eight “credos”:
- Break with the immediate past – Forget everything you know and think again
- Build a lighthouse entity – Tell consumers what you are, don’t let them drive your activity
- Assume thought leadership of the category – Be the one that everyone talks about
- Create symbols of re-evaluation – Do things differently
- Sacrifice – Decide what you are not going to do
- Overcommit – Aim beyond the mark
- Use advertising and publicity as a high-leverage asset – Use it to enter the popular mindset
- Become ideas-centered rather than consumer-centered – Constantly reinvent to stay ahead of the trends and competition
Reading this book is worthwhile because:
- It focuses on the practical things that can be done
- It describes how to run a workshop and apply the thinking
- Most of the credos can be used to overcome organisational inertia
- It can help small marketing team do big things
- It can also help brand leaders act like a challenger to become number one
After reading this book, ‘Small Fish’ are able to answer several critically important questions:
- What is the core issue for the Big Fish?
- What business are we in now?
- What business should we be in? What are our best opportunities?
- How can we implement a Challenger strategy to take full advantage of those opportunities?
Dare to Aspire
Blink: Malcolm Gladwell
March 21, 2009 at 9:34 am | In Synopsis | Leave a CommentTags: Gladwell, Synopsis
Blink is another interesting book from Gladwell. In its pages he looks at the phenomenon of intuition and arrives at an interesting conclusion.
Intuition is not some psychic talent that arises from the depths of our mind.
It is the result of long hours of repetition and complete immersion in an environment, skill of behaviour that is constrained by particular rules and principles.
Harnessing the power of intuition can give you a distinct advantage in a world where flexibility is essential. After reading this book, you’ll never think about thinking in the same way again.
The key points from the book include:
- Knowing something in a split second is one of the most powerful skills we have.
- A snap judgement can often prove more effective than a considered decision.
- By focusing on narrow slices of experience we can read complex systems in the ‘Blink’ of an eye.
- Thin slicing is Gladwell’s theory that the first 2 seconds of an encounter will determine how you will respond or the likely outcome.
- For 80% of instances, a snapshot provides all the information that is needed.
Although Gladwell’s argument is well supported with expert experience and examples, the theory seems to only hold true when you are dealing with true experts.
Complete immersion in the environment or experience is essential for results of up to 80% accuracy.
The rest of us are probably less accurate with our intuition, but that doesn’t make it a poor tool, only something that needs to be supported by other evidence and consideration.
Dare to Aspire
Simply Brilliant: Fergus O’Connell
March 16, 2009 at 8:29 pm | In Book Summary, Synopsis | 1 CommentTags: Synopsis
Simply Brilliant is a simple book presenting simple ideas without being simplistic. It advises the reader to look for simple problems, simple solutions and direct approaches.
The general tenet is for you to be nice to people you work with, and to see problems from their point of view.
The key points from the book are:
- The best ideas are often the most simple, don’t search for complexity
- Smart people often fail to demonstrate common sense
O’Connell outlines 7 principles to deal with everyday problems. These are:
1. Many things are simple despite our need to make them complicated
2. You need to know what you are trying to do
3. There is always a sequence of events – join the dots in your mind to see the cause and effect
4. Things don’t get done if people don’t do them
5. Things rarely end up how you planned, so plan for the unexpected
6. Things either are or they are not – Don’t fudge it to meet your expectation
7. Look at things from the other person’s point of view
O’Connell structures the book as an informal manual. It covers:
- How to plan
- How to prioritise
- How to complete projects
- How to remember the customer’s needs
He suggests you write the minutes of a meeting in advance to know what you want to get out of it.
He also highlights the difference between the duration of a task and the time is takes to complete it.
Activity isn’t progress.
He outlines why things don’t get done – Confusion, Over-commitment, lack of knowledge or skill.
He also suggests that you plan your time assuming that there will be interruptions
The final point I think is most telling of people in general is that common sense isn’t all that common in reality.
A good little book that highlights the need to keep things simple in a complicated world.
Dare to Aspire
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