When I lead Kaizen and encourage others to participate and, over time, as I take a smaller role and “allow them to increase while I decrease”, I have seen people blossom.  Indeed, experiencing humans develop is a very cool thing and I’m so fortunate to have helped others grow.

I found this poster on someone’s wall.

For the record, I don’t agree with the its message.  But, the poster is an indictment of most businesses and organizations that preach one thing, but behave completely contrary to the development of the individual and team.

The poster is a satirical commentary on most businesses; a dilbert-ian commentary on what you and I experience in world of work.

What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree?  What is your experience?

I am reminded of something my older brother taught me a long time ago.  He said simply (I’m paraphrasing):

You will be financially fine if you can make people’s jobs easier or make money for a company or make things cheaper for a company.

He’s right.  All those elements add value.  I’ve chosen to expand upon what he said and share the items below as practical tips to add value.

I believe what my brother taught me is still right: if you do some of the things below really well, you will likely be always in demand and be financially just fine.

In summary,

• Increase: Revenue, Profit, Growth, Market, Share, Retention, ROA or ROI, Efficiency, Cash Flow, Visibility
• Reduce: Cost, Time/Effort, Complaints, Risk, Turnover, Conflict, Paperwork
• Improve: Productivity, Process, Service, Information, Morale, Image, Reputation, Skills, Quality, Loyalty
• Create: Strategy, System, Process, Business, Product, Service, Brand

Thanks for the inspiration.

We also continue to make heavy use of Six Sigma to drive quality improvements and lower our costs across the company.  Our Six Sigma savings in 2009 were nearly $500 million well above our target and all our business units exceeded their goals for the year.

I don’t know the nature of how Cummins achieved those savings, but for the CEO and Chairman to credit the savings to their Lean and Six Sigma initiatives is quite impressive, to say the least.

To open an account, call xxx-xxx-xxxx and to talk to a real person, push “0″ anytime.

In the radio commercial, they emphasized “real person”.  Interesting.

In a time when most companies are running away from their customers, Ally Bank is running toward them.  I think that’s admirable and smart business.

To be clear, I’m not recommending Ally Bank and I’m not a customer – I have actually never heard of them until this morning.  But they clearly recognize that, in today’s climate, the populous are not pro-big bank and there is a lot of distrust and low confidence in institutions that were supported by the very customers that they let down.  This is just a fact that companies need to recognize and create a sustainable strategy to overcome this perception.

It appears that Ally Bank is doing just that by differentiating themselves as “different” than the rest of the banks; “straightforward banking” is their mantra.  It’s a smart marketing move and one I think customers will appreciate.  In their words:

We talk straight. We don’t hide behind confusing jargon and fine print. We’ll always tell it to you straight. Because we believe it starts and ends with the customer.

We do right by you and your money. No minimum deposits or balances required. No hidden fees or penalties, either. We’re committed to finding the pain points in banking and fixing them so your money works harder every day.

We work to help you save more than other banks. We keep our overhead low, our rates competitive, and design every Ally product to maximize your savings.

Don’t run away from the customer – it’s not good business.  It’s also practical wisdom that most people and companies forget:

common sense, but not common practice.

Disambiguating the Fence

A fence can be understood a few different ways:

• A Silo: A fence marks “mine” from “yours”.  This is NOT what we are talking about.
• Privacy: A fence visibly prevents “outsiders” from seeing what is inside the fence.  This is NOT what we are talking about.
• Protection: A fence protects us from harming ourselves and from potentially from harming others.  In an organizational setting, this means that a Framework can prevent us from harming the organization and from causing undue costs, chaos, or future rework to the organization.

Freedom

When deploying Lean Thinking in an organization, it is important to abide by the principle of Freedom within Framework.  This is important because human beings are sometimes threatened by “new” business approaches or philosophies and, when resistance sets in, it is a hole that is very difficult to climb from.

preserving human free agency is the core message

We must constantly remind the organization that free agency will not be trampled on.

A Framework

Yet, we must work within a framework, so that we collectively speak the same language, understand business challenges and opportunities with approximately the same worldview, and approach them according to company values.

So, the analogy of the Fence works here.

A Framework can prevent several things from going wrong:

• A Framework can prevent the use of many and incompatible software languages
• A Framework can prevent tarnish to a brand during international expansion
• A Framework can reinforce brand consistency and customer expectations
• A Framework can ensure the use of the same methods and the application of the same principles to business problems and opportunities.

An Example

McDonald’s Corporation is a worldwide brand.  To expand internationally and still have fidelity to the brand image, processes, and customer expectations, they follow the principle of Freedom within Framework:

It’s good to get back to the basics of the business, to do the basics right.  At McDonald’s that means “freedom within a framework,”.  We offer franchises flexibility in marketing, in the community, [and] in deciding compensation.  But the McDonald’s framework is consistent. The brand is the same around the world.

Back to Lean Thinking: Different Flavors, Same Principles

The familiar Plan-Do-Check-Act in Lean Thinking has evolved into a number of like-acronyms:

• Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA): This is practiced primarily by the Military.
• Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (DMAIC): This is the standard phases in Six Sigma, heavily influenced by Deming and PDCA.
• Ideas-Build-Code-Measure-Data-Learn (IBCMDL): This is taken from the Lean Startup movement, where Lean principles are applied to the business startup environment.  This is a customization of PDCA for startup companies and software.

As you can see above, the different permutations of the basic PDCA model from Lean has been changes and customized to suit the needs of the company or situation.  Hence, Freedom within Framework.

preserving human free agency and flexibility and fidelity to a core set of organizationally-understood and followed principles and methods is a core message