Shipulski On Design

Archive for February, 2024

In that familiar situation, how did you respond in an unfamiliar way?

Instead of your usual yes, did you say no?

With your regular chair available in the conference room, why not sit in a different one?

Instead of using your right hand to brush your teeth, why not try your left? How would it feel?

When someone misbehaved in a meeting, how did you respond? Or did you?

If no one recognized your different behavior, was it different enough? Why not rerun the experiment?

With the same choices on the menu, what’s in the way of asking for a special order?

Instead of going to the meeting, did you ask someone to go in your place as a growth opportunity?

When you pay attention, you notice more opportunities to demonstrate novelty. Do you pay attention?

If it didn’t create a sensation in your body, did you do anything novel?

When you saw someone respond differently, did they like it when you praised their behavior?

When you have a chance to help someone be successful, why not help them?

When you have the chance to make a different choice, why not make it?

When you have a chance to respond differently, why not do it?

When you have a chance to feel uncomfortable, why not feel it?

One more question for you — What novelty did you demonstrate today?

Image credit — Mike Beales

What would happen if the factory had to support demand that increased one percent per week? Without incremental investment, how many weeks could they meet the ever-increasing demand?  That number is a measure of the system’s flexibility.  More weeks, more flexibility.  And the element of the manufacturing system that gives out first is the constraint.  So, now you know how much demand you can support before there’s a problem and you know what the problem will be.  And if you know the lead time to implement the improvement needed to support the increased demand, in a reverse-scheduling way, you know when to implement the improvement so it comes online when you need it.

What would happen if the factory had to support demand that increased one percent in a week?  How about two percent in a week, five percent, or ten percent?  Without incremental investment, what percentage increase could they support in a single week?  More percent increase, more flexibility.  And the element of the manufacturing system that gives out first is the constraint.  So, now you know how much increased demand you can support in a single week and you know the gating item that will block further increases.  You know now where to clip the increased demand and push the extra demand into the next week.  And you know the investment it would take to support a larger increase in a single week.

These two scenarios can be used to assess and quantify a process of any type.  For example, to understand the flexibility of the new product development process, load it (virtually) with more projects to see where it breaks.  Make a note of what it would take to increase the system’s flexibility and ask yourself if that’s a good investment.  If it is, make that investment.  If it isn’t, don’t.

This simple testing method is especially useful when the investment needed to increase flexibility has a long lead time or is expensive.  If your testing says the system can support five percent more demand before it breaks and you know that demand will hit the system in ten weeks, I hope the lead time to implement the needed improvement is less than ten weeks.  If not, you won’t be able to meet the increased demand.  And I hope the money to make the improvement is already budgeted because a budgeting cycle is certainly longer than ten weeks and you can’t buy what you need if the money isn’t in the budget.

The first question to ask yourself is what is the minimum flexibility of the system that will trigger the next investment to improve throughput and increase flexibility? And the follow-on question: What is needed to improve throughput? What is the lead time for that solution? How much will it cost? Is the money budgeted? And do we have the resources (people) that can implement the improvement when it’s time?

When the cost of not meeting demand is high, the value of this testing process is high. When the lead times for the improvements are long, this testing process has a lot of value because it gives you time to put the improvements in place.

Continuous improvement of process utilization is also a continuous reduction of process flexibility.  This simple testing approach can help identify when process flexibility is becoming dangerously low and give you the much-needed time to put improvements in place before it’s too late.

Image credit — Tambako The Jaguar

Praise is powerful, but not when you don’t give it.

People learn from mistakes, but not when they don’t make them.

Wonderful solutions are wonderful, but not if there are no problems.

Novelty is good, but not if you do what you did last time.

Disagreement creates deeper understanding, but not if there’s 100% agreement.

Consensus is safe, but not when it’s time for original thought.

Progress is made through decisions, but not if you don’t make them.

It’s skillful to constrain the design space, but not if it doesn’t contain the solution.

Trust is powerful, but not before you build it.

A mantra: Praise people in public.

If you want people to learn, let them make mistakes.

Wonderful problems breed wonderful solutions.

If you want novelty, do new things.

There can be too little disagreement.

Consensus can be dangerous.

When it’s decision time, make one.

Make the design space as small as it can be, but no smaller.

Build trust before you need it.

Image credit – Ralf St.

With projects, there is no partial credit.  They’re done or they’re not.

Solve the toughest problems first.  When do you want to learn the problem is not solvable?

Sometimes slower is faster.

Problems aren’t problems until you realize you have them.  Before that, they’re problematic.

If you can’t put it on one page, you don’t understand it. Or, it’s complex.

Take small bites.  And if that doesn’t work, take smaller bites.

To get more projects done, do fewer of them.

Say no.

Stop starting and start finishing.

Effectiveness over efficiency. It’s no good to do the wrong thing efficiently.

Function first, no exceptions. It doesn’t matter if it’s cheaper to build if it doesn’t work.

No sizzle, no sale.

And customers are the ones who decide if the sizzle is sufficient.

Solve a customer’s problem before solving your own.

Design it, break it, and fix it until you run out of time.  Then launch it.

Make the old one better than the new one.

Test the old one to set the goal. Test the new one the same way to make sure it’s better.

Obsolete your best work before someone else does.

People grow when you create the conditions for their growth.

If you tell people what to do and how to do it, you’ll get to eat your lunch by yourself every day.

Give people the tools, time, training, and a teacher.  And get out of the way.

If you’ve done it before, teach someone else to do it.

Done right, mentoring is good for the mentor, the mentee, and the bottom line.

When in doubt, help people.

Trust is all-powerful.

Whatever business you’re in, you’re in the people business.

Image credit — Hartwig HKD