Next month (yes, I’m giving you early notice so you can put this in your calendar) TRIZ expert, Ellen Domb, will once again be on air with Steve Wilson of Quality Conversations, discussing practical applications of TRIZ.

Tuesday, Nov. 3rd, 11 AM Pacific. Be there.

Ellen is also speaking at the iSixSigma Live Summit & Awards in Miami next year. If you are looking for a reason to attend, Ellen’s TRIZ workshop would be reason enough - it’s fantastic.

Over the weekend, I happened to stumble upon this news link on Yahoo.

The L.A. Times apparently published a front page advertisement that looked very much like a regular news ad. Of course upon inspection, the advertisement disclaimer was there. According to AFP:

"Publisher Eddy Hartenstein told the Times he had decided to run the ad despite protests from the newsroom because he was trying to ensure the newspaper's survival.

'Because of the times that we're in, we have to look at all sorts of different -- and some would say innovative -- new solutions for our advertising clients,' he said."

Here is another example of innovation gone bad in my opinion. Clearly, revenue has taken a front seat to customer value in this case, with a potential long-term impact to customers and reputation.

I'm starting to see a trend here....

In our BB training we use the terms Divergent & Convergent thinking during the Improve phase. We cover a raft of brainstorming & lateral thinking techniques to encourage people’s divergent thinking. So please take a few moments to answer this question:

• How many uses can you think of for a Brick?

How many did you get? Maybe you got just the one, “build a wall”? Or maybe you freely came-up with half a dozen? We could possibly use brainstorming here; try answering the question as if you were Pablo Picasso. Does that work?

Looking in more detail at this took me to Liam Hudson who devised this simple test to illustrate people’s thinking styles. But what Liam did was look deeper into the way we are educated to be Convergent thinkers.

The school system is based on achievement of exam results. This means being able to understand information and produce Model Answers that most accurately match what the examiner wants to see. Being good at this convergent thinking brings its rewards, recognition and good jobs become available.

Equally to what degree is divergent thinking encouraged. Starting an exam paper with, "I think the real question to answer here is......" or “I have looked at the course curriculum and believe it should be changed here and here”.

So what is the potential impact of focussing on Convergent thinking without balancing Divergent thinking? To what degree do the most successful people across industry focus on having a sense of imagination to challenge an approach? Who were the people who looked at the risks building in the financial system and saw the consequences?

It seems we should be regularly training and rewarding people for Divergent thinking rather than having as a small part of a BB training they might attend.

One of the aspects of Six Sigma that makes the process so great is the focus on the customer, and the gathering of the VOC (voice of the customer). Using the VOC information a company can begin designing ways to improve customer value, by designing products and processes that are centered around customer requirements. Doing this effectively maximizes profits while adding value to customers. In addition to these things, the company begins to build a solid foundation based on business principles that are aligned with customer expectations. The real advantage gained is the link between the customer and the company.

However, what happens when a company (or an entire industry for that matter) places the highest priority on maximizing profits, even at the expense of customer value? My opinion is that the current financial crisis is a direct result of mortgage companies doing this very practice.

Let's look at the "pre-bubble explosion" state of affairs in mortgages in general. How easy was it to obtain an interest-only loan from lenders in the United States? Virtually anyone could. How does an interest-only loan add value to the customer? Short-term, the customer has a lower monthly payment... but is that real value added when the customer's monthly payments balloon in a few years, and the mathematics between annual income and amount borrowed doesn't even make sense? Since I don't work in the financial sector, I'm not sure, but I have a feeling that there was some hedging going on based on projected property values....

Innovation without regard to real customer value is a disaster waiting to happen, especially when customers perceive that they are getting value.

I will say that the whole interest-only mortgage design is very innovative and for sure is designed to maximize profits.....but ultimately, who is paying the price for all of that "short term" innovation?

Well, let me start by saying - its GREAT to be back! After two years, a LOT can change from both a professional and personal standpoint, and I am really happy to contribute again!

To kick the conversation off, I'd like to talk a little bit about a concept called Nimawashi, which in the Toyota context means building consensus before taking definite action. Seems like common sense, right? Well, not always. Let's look at a case study.

You have a major concept or breakthrough that you need upper management approval on, and you have to present at a decision meeting two weeks from now. What process do you follow in order to be successful at selling your idea? You decide to slave over a detailed presentation for the two weeks, sweating the event the whole time leading up to the actual meeting. The meeting comes, and you present your idea. At the end of your presentation, the questions start. VP number 1 asks you a doosy, but you get by with a good answer. VP number 2 asks you a another question that came out of nowhere, and you weren't prepared for it. You say the "I'll get back to you on that, sir" line, and in the background you see the president looking at you with a skeptical look.

Needless to say...it didn't go that well - you get the idea.

So how can Nimawashi help you in the above circumstance? The key enabler of Nimawashi is to allow you to build consensus on a topic before the major decision point. In this case, the decision point is the meeting. Using the concept of Nimawashi in the above example, before even beginning the presentation, your first priority is to make appointments with the key VP's one-on-one well ahead of the meeting so that you can present your ideas. It's a lot easier to convey a new concept on a person-to-person basis instead of a whole audience, and you can also take advantage of the time to allow for questions one-on-one as well. After a week of brief meetings with the VP's, you now have a week to answer any new questions or tweak your presentation in order to make it perfect for the meeting. Now, when the event comes along, you have already "pre-aligned" your concepts with the key decision makers, and most likely they have already aligned with the boss (president in this case) as well. At the end of the presentation, it's most likely that you will get a "rubber stamp" of approval - WHEW!

Now go ahead and implement that great idea!

After a long and extended absence, I am back to share some practical tips to help your Six Sigma program in times of economic turmoil. For starters, during the measure and analyze phases of a project, any of my readers know I talk about, this point of all projects and the introduction of BI, or business intelligence.

Business intelligence represents the data within organizations that helps operationally drive, tactically drive and strategically drive better, more data driven decision making. Six Sigma, in parallel, is a process and quality methodology for reducing variation, defects, or increasing quality.

Use this template as a starting to do list and status report out for all BI related project tasks. Click here for form

Targets appear in all shapes & sizes. Sometimes seen as positive, “we operate a target-driven culture” and sometimes negative, “targets drive the wrong behaviour”. So what is true? Given the sheer diversity of targets, I want to focus on a specific area, daily work targets in a services environment. Let’s look at a scenario.

Imagine an operator works in a services business. Work comes in three types and timing tests show each type can be completed within 20 minutes in most cases. Now imagine the operator being given items of work and being asked to work under two different management controls:

• Control 1, Work items are targetted to be completed within 22 minutes.
• Control 2, There are no targets and work items must be completed regardless of the time required

Statistically speaking, an assessment of the two approaches could be made, something like:

Ho = There is no difference between the time taken to complete work items under control 1 or control 2

I am looking at running some tests to see if there is a difference as this is related to a project I am working. But what is your gut feel on the expected performance difference?

I have tried this in a very small trial and found that when working under a time target, you focus on the time target. As the pressure builds on any individual work item because you are watching the clock you find it more difficult to focus on the task in hand and end up missing the target. You lose valuable time because of the target.

So what does this show? Does this describe an example of why targets drive the wrong behaviour? Does it show that getting it right first time saves money? Does this show operator’s pulling work? Does this show a difference between batch and continuous flow?

I’m not sure but I feel I am looking at something quite important here, just not sure exactly what it is yet……..

I used to work in the IT business and we were always on the look-out for the next “big thing” to cash in on. It was things like moving from mainframes to open systems and onto Microsoft Windows, relational databases, business intelligence systems, OLAP reporting and CRM systems.

So while I was travelling home from Sydney (around 1995) after a weeks consulting, I read about the next big thing, it was called the World Wide Web. This was going to be big, bigger than big. People working in IT should get ready to cash in on this next big growth market. Turns out to have been more than right, but the article didn’t go BIG enough!

And how the world has changed. In the olden days (pre-WWW) my options to get information were limited. Today I can access just about anything directly on my computer. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but working in such an information rich environment does have its challenges.

I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of options, methods and approaches I can choose from. There does not seem be a part of human existence that someone hasn’t studied, developed a methodology and written a best selling book. I struggle to know which to believe or which to follow. Every year there are new crops of ways to solving problems, things like Blue Ocean/Red Ocean and Good to Great. So I have come-up with a way to deal with information over-load

I recently went into a second-hand book-shop and couldn’t believe my luck. I managed to buy a first-edition copy of the Tom Peter’s classic Thriving on Chaos for only £1. I don’t think the copy I bought had ever been opened let alone read! What Tom offers is a series of about 40 lessons in management & leadership.

So here is what I do. Along comes the next radical break-through innovation that will completely change the world, just like the World Wide Web. I thumb through Thriving on Chaos to see how it was done back in 1987. It’s my baseline.

Last Week, Ben Worthen, of The Wall Street Journal, interviewed Randall Spratt, chief information officer at McKesson Corp. McKesson was one of the pioneer healthcare companies to use Six Sigma, starting in 1999 and still going strong today.

In the interview Spratt talked about how the use of Six Sigma and technology are making operations more efficient. He first gave the quick Six Sigma spiel and then went on to share an example where a Six Sigma project led to a technology based solution to a warehousing problem:

WSJ: One technology that McKesson developed is a small computer that warehouse workers wear on their wrists and that is attached to a scanner on the worker's finger. How did you come up with this system and what has it accomplished?

MR. SPRATT: It came from a Six Sigma analysis. Most errors in the warehouse came at the point of picking, which is taking something off a warehouse shelf, associating it with an order, and putting it in the right bin for shipping. The second-highest error rate came from stocking errors. If you stock a drug in the wrong place, the pickers have to search for it and they waste a lot of time. So they sat down and said how can we solve these problems.

This is classic Six Sigma meets Innovation. Analysis reveals where the problems are and then innovators develop a solution to the problem, Six Sigma makes sure the new innovative system stays in control. And who says Six Sigma and innovation don’t get along?

The interview is great read for all Six Sigma practitioners, and especially for the healthcare IT professional.

Our Lean Manufacturing program is stepping-up a gear and as part of this we are looking to present the approach to a large audience of about 200 people. And I am looking for some inspiration.

If anyone has a good ice-breaker, simulation, case study or other activity that would take about 30 minutes and engage a large audience then please let me know.