Shipulski On Design

Posts Tagged ‘Competitiveness’

Before you can make improvements, you must identify improvement opportunities.

Before you can identify improvement opportunities, you must look for them.

Before you can look for improvement opportunities, you must believe improvement is possible.

Before believing improvement is possible, you must admit there’s a need for improvement.

Before you can admit the need for improvement, you must recognize the need for improvement.

Before you can recognize the need for improvement, you must feel dissatisfied with how things are.

Before you can feel dissatisfied with how things are, you must compare how things are for you relative to how things are for others (e.g., competitors, coworkers).

Before you can compare things for yourself relative to others, you must be aware of how things are for others and how they are for you.

Before you can be aware of how things are, you must be calm, curious, and mindful.

Before you can be calm, curious, and mindful, you must be well-rested and well-fed.  And you must feel safe.

What choices do you make to be well-rested? How do you feel about that?

What choices do you make to be well-fed? How do you feel about that?

What choices do you make to feel safe? How do you feel about that?

Image credit — Philip McErlean

Improvement is progress.  Improvement is always measured against a baseline, so the first thing to do is to establish the baseline, the thing you make today, the thing you want to improve.  Create an environment to test what you make today, create the test fixtures, define the inputs, create the measurement systems, and write a formal test protocol.  Now you have what it takes to quantify an improvement objectively.  Test the existing product to define the baseline.  No, you haven’t improved anything, but you’ve done the right first thing.

Improving the right thing to make progress.  If the problem invalidates the business model, stop what you’re doing and solve it right away because you don’t have a business if you don’t solve it. Any other activity isn’t progress, it’s dilution.  Say no to everything else and solve it.  This is how rapid progress is made.  If the customer won’t buy the product if the problem isn’t solved, solve it.  Don’t argue about priorities, don’t use shared resources, don’t try to be efficient.  Be effective.  Do one thing.  Solve it.  This type of discipline reduces time to market.  No surprises here.

Avoiding improvement of the wrong thing to make progress.  For lesser problems, declare them nuisances and permit yourself to solve them later.   Nuisances don’t have to be solved immediately (if at all) so you can double down on the most important problems (speed, speed, speed).  Demoting problems to nuisances is probably the most effective way to accelerate progress.  Deciding what you won’t do frees up resources and emotional bandwidth to make rapid progress on things that matter.

Work the critical path to make progress. Know what work is on the critical path and what is not.  For work on the critical path, add resources.  Pull resources from non-critical path work and add them to the critical path until adding more slows things down.

Eliminate waiting to make progress.  There can be no progress while you wait.  Wait for a tool, no progress.  Wait for a part from a supplier, no progress.  Wait for raw material, no progress.  Wait for a shared resource, no progress.  Buy the right tools and keep them at the workstations to make progress.  Pay the supplier for priority service levels to make progress.  Buy inventory of raw materials to make progress.  Ensure shared resources are wildly underutilized so they’re available to make progress whenever you need to.  Think fire stations, fire trucks, and firefighters.

Help the team make progress. As a leader, jump right in and help the team know what progress looks like.  Praise the crudeness of their prototypes to help them make them cruder (and faster) next time.  Give them permission to make assumptions and use their judgment because that’s where speed comes from.  And when you see “activity” call it by name so they can recognize it for themselves, and teach them how to turn their effort into progress.

Be relentless and respectful to make progress. Apply constant pressure, but make it sustainable and fun.

Image credit — Clint Mason

Efficient – How do we do more projects with fewer people?

Effective – Let’s choose the right project.

Would you rather do more projects that miss the mark or fewer that excite the customer?

Efficient – How do we finish the project faster?

Effective – Let’s fully staff the project.

Would you rather burn out the project team or deliver on what the customer wants?

Efficient – How do we reduce product cost by 5%?

Effective – Let’s make customers’ lives easier.

Would you rather reduce the cost or delight the customer?

Efficient – How can we go faster?

Effective – Let’s get it right.

Would you rather go fast and break things or get it right for the customer?

Efficient – How many projects can we run in parallel?

Effective – Let’s fully staff the most important projects.

Would you rather get halfway through four projects or complete two?

Efficient – How do we make progress on as many tasks as possible?

Effective – Let’s work on the critical path.

Would you rather work on things that don’t matter or nail the things that do?

Efficient – How can we complete the most tasks?

Effective – Let’s work on the hardest thing first.

Would you rather learn the whole thing won’t work before or after you waste time on the irrelevant?

If there’s a choice between efficiency and effectiveness, I choose effectiveness.

Image credit — Antarctica Bound

COPYRIGHT GEOFF HENSON

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

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

If you’ve done it before, do it in a tenth of the time.

Do it differently just because you can.

Do it backward. That will make you smile.

Do it with your eyes closed.  That will make a statement.

Do its natural extension. That could be fun.

Do the opposite.  Then do its opposite.  You’ll learn more.

Do what they should have asked for. Life is short.

Do what scares them. It’s sure to create new design space.

Do what obsoletes your most profitable offering. Wouldn’t you rather be the one to do it?

Do what scares you.  That’s sure to be the most interesting of all.

Image credit — Geoff Henson

We all have to-do lists. We add things and we check them off.  This list grows and shrinks.  We judge ourselves negatively when we check off fewer than expected and positively when we check off more than that.  But what’s the right number of completed tasks for us to feel good? How many completed tasks is enough?

If you complete one task per week that saves $5000, is that enough? Is it enough to complete fifty tasks per year?  If you create the conditions that make possible a new product line that delivers $1B over three years, but you do that only once every five years, is that enough? Is it enough to do just that one right thing over five years? What does it look like to others when you complete one exceptionally meaningful task every five years? I think it looks like most of the time you are doing very little.

Sometimes you complete small things and sometimes you don’t.  And sometimes you learn what doesn’t work and that’s the completed task.  And sometimes there are long stretches where nothing is accomplished until you create something magical. Counting tasks is no way to go through life.

But counting and measuring is all the rage.  Look at your yearly goals.  Do ten of these.  Run six of those. Complete twelve of the other.  Why do we think we can predict what we should do next year?  Even sillier, do we really believe we know how many of these, those, and the others we will be able to get done next year?  C’mon.  Really?

What if all this counting prevents us from imagining the future? And what if our unhealthy fascination with measuring blocks us from creating it?

If it’s all about the measurable, there’s no room for the Magical.

Why not make some room for the Magical?

Image credit — Philip McErlean

If you have nothing to say, be the person that doesn’t say it.

If you’re not the right person to do it, you’re also the right person not to do it.  Why is it so difficult for to stop doing what no longer makes sense?

If it made sense to do it last time, it’s not necessarily the right thing to do this time, even if it was successful last time.  But if it was successful last time, it will be difficult to do something different this time.

If we always standardize on what we did last time, mustn’t this time always be the same as last time? And musn’t next time always be the same as this time?

If it’s new, it’s scary.  And if it’s scary, it’s bad.  And we don’t like to get in trouble for doing bad things. And that’s why it’s difficult to do new things.

Deming said to “Drive out fear.” But that’s scary.  What are the attributes of the people willing to face the fear and demonstrate that fear can be overcome?  At your company are they promoted? Do they stay? Do they leave?

Without someone overcoming their internal fear, there can be no change.

If a new thing is blocked from commercialization because it wasn’t invented here, why not reinvent it just as it is, declare ownership, and commercialize it?

If prevention is worth a pound of cure, why do people that put out forest fires get the credit while those that prevent them go unnoticed? Does that mean your career will benefit it you start small fires in private and put them out quickly for all to see?

If you always do what’s best for your career, that’s not good for your career.

When you do something that’s good for someone’s career but comes at the expense of yours, that’s good for your career.

Why not say nothing when nothing is the right thing to say?

Why not say no when no is the right thing to say?

Why not do something new even though it’s different than what was successful last time?

Why not demonstrate fearlessness and break the trail for others?

Why not be afraid and do it anyway?

Why not build on something developed by another team and give them credit?

Why not do what’s right instead of doing what’s right for your career?

Why not do something for others?  As it turns out, that’s the best thing to do for yourself.

Image credit — Steve Hammond

In business, we have vision statements, mission statements, strategic plans, strategic initiatives, and operating plans. And every day there are there are countless decisions to make. But, in the end, it all comes down to one thing – how we allocate our resources.  Whether it’s hiring people, training them, buying capital, or funding projects, all strategic decisions come back to resource allocation.  Said more strongly, resource allocation is strategy.

Take a look back at last year.  Where did you allocate your capital dollars?  Which teams got it and which did not?  Your capital allocation defined your priorities.  The most important businesses got more capital.  More to the point – the allocated capital defined their importance. Which projects were fully staffed and fully budgeted? Those that were resourced more heavily were more important to your strategy, which is why they were resourced that way. Which businesses hired people and which did not?  The hiring occurred where it fulfilled the strategy. Which teams received most of the training budget?  Those teams were strategically important.  Prioritization in the form of resource allocation.

Repeat the process for this year’s operating plan.  Where is the capital allocated?  Where is the hiring allocated?  Where are the projects fully staffed and budgeted?  Regardless of the mission statements, this year’s strategy is defined by where the resources are allocated.  Full stop.

Repeat the process for your forward-looking strategic plans.  Where are the resources allocated?  Which teams get more?  Which get fewer?  Answer these questions and you’ll have an operational definition of your company’s forward-looking strategy.

To know if the new strategy is different from the old one, look at the budgets.  Do they show a change in resource allocation?  Will old projects stop so new ones can start? Do the new projects serve new customers and new value propositions?  Same old projects, same old customers, same old value propositions, same old strategy.

To determine if there’s a new strategy, look for changes in capital allocation.  If the same teams are allocated more of the same capital, it’s likely the strategy is also the same. Will one team get more capital while the others get less?  Well, it’s likely a new strategy is starting to take shape.

Look for a change in hiring.  Fewer hires like last year and more of a new flavor probably indicate a change in strategy.  And if people flow from one team to another, that’s the same as one team getting new hires and the other team losing them.  That type of change in resource allocation is an indicator of a strategic change.

If the resource allocation differs from the strategic plan, believe the resource allocation. And if the resource allocation is the same as last year, so is the strategy.  And if there is talk of changing resource allocation but no actual change, then there is no change in strategy.

Image credit – Scouse Smurf

The time to start getting ready is before we need to be.

We don’t get ready because the problem hasn’t yet kicked us in the head.  It has only started getting ready to do so.

We don’t get ready because we don’t see the early warning signs.  Like the meteorologist who doesn’t make time to look at the radar and satellite images, if we don’t look, we can’t see.  And if we’re really busy, we don’t make time to look.  What if it was part of our job to look at the satellite images? Who in our company should have that job?

We don’t get ready because we don’t heed the early warning signs. Seeing the warning signs is much different than justifying the reallocation of resources because someone says the tea leaves suggest an impending problem.

We will solve no problem until it’s too late to do anything else.

We don’t get ready because we forget that it takes time to get ready.  We do so little getting ready, we’re unfamiliar with the work content and timeline of getting ready.  We forget that getting ready is on the critical path of problem-solving.

We don’t get ready because everyone is fully booked and we have no excess capacity to allocate to getting ready.  And by the time we free up the resources to get ready (if we can do that at all), we miss the window of opportunity to get ready.

We will solve a problem only after exhausting all other possibilities.

We don’t get ready because the problem is someone else’s.  If we don’t have capacity to get ourselves ready for our problems why would we allocate the capacity to get ready for someone else’s?

We don’t get ready because we try to give our problem to someone else.  Isn’t it easier to convince someone else to get ready than to do the getting ready ourselves?

We will solve no problem until we know we’ll get the credit.

We don’t get ready because problem avoidance won’t get us promoted, though putting out a fire that could have been avoided will.

If a problem is avoided, there is no problem. And since there’s no problem, there’s no need to avoid it.

We don’t get ready because there’s no certainty a problem will be a problem until we have it.  And we can’t get ready to solve a problem once we have it.  Getting ready requires judgment and trust – judgment by the person who sees the early warning signs and trust by the person who allocates the resources.  It’s that simple.

Because we’ve conditioned people to be afraid to use their judgment, they don’t use it.  And because we’ve conditioned people to be afraid to spend the time needed to build trust, they don’t build it.

Now that we have these two problems, how can we make it safe for people to use their judgment and spend the time needed to develop trust?

Image credit — Leonard J Matthews

X: When will you be done with the project?

Me: This work has never been done before, so I don’t know.

X: But the Leadership Team just asked me when the project will be done. So, what should I say?

Me: Since nothing has changed since the last time you asked me, I still don’t know. Tell them I don’t know.

X: They won’t like that answer.

Me: They may not like the answer, but it’s the truth.  And I like telling the truth.

X: Well, what are the steps you’ll take to complete the project?

Me: All I can tell you is what we’re trying to learn right now.

X: So all you can tell me is the work you’re doing right now?

Me: Yes.

X: It seems like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Me: I know what we’re doing right now.

X: But you don’t know what’s next?

Me: How could I?  If this current experiment goes up in smoke, the next thing we’ll do is start a different project.  And if the experiment works, we’ll do the next right thing.

X: So the project could end tomorrow?

Me: That’s right.

X: Or it could go on for a long time?

Me: That’s right too.

X: Are you always like this?

Me: Yes, I am always truthful.

X: I don’t like your answers. Maybe we should find someone else to run the project.

Me: That’s up to you.  But if the new person tells you they know when the project will be done, they’re the wrong person to run the project.  Any date they give you will be a guess.  And I would not want to be the one to deliver a date like that to the Leadership Team.

X: We planned for the project to be done by the end of the year with incremental revenue starting in the first quarter of next year.

Me: Well, the project work is not bound by the revenue plan.  It’s the other way around.

X: So, you don’t care about the profitability of the company?

Me: Of course I care.  That’s why we chose this project – to provide novel customer value and sell more products.

X: So the project is intended to deliver new value to our customers?

Me: Yes, that’s how the project was justified.  We started with an important problem that, if solved, would make them more profitable.

X: So you’re not just playing around in the lab.

Me: No, we’re trying to solve a customer problem as fast as we can.  It only looks like we’re playing around.

X: If it works, would our company be more profitable?

Me: Absolutely.

X: Well, how can I help?

Me: Please meet with the Leadership Team and thank them for trusting us with this important project.  And tell them we’re working as fast as we can.

Image credit – Florida Fish and Wildlife

X:  Me:  format stolen from Simon Wardley (@swardley).  Thank you, Simon.

Before a design can be accused of having too much material and labor costs, it must be able to meet its functional specifications.  Before that is accomplished, it’s likely there’s not enough material and labor in the design and more must be added to meet the functional specifications.  In that way, it likely doesn’t cost enough.  If the cost is right but the design doesn’t work, you don’t have a viable offering.

Before the low-cost manufacturing process can be chosen, the design must be able to do what customers need it to do.  If the design does not yet meet its functional specification, it will change and evolve until it can.  And once that is accomplished, low-cost manufacturing processes can be selected that fit with the design.  Sure, the design might be able to be subtly adapted to fit the manufacturing process, but only as much as it preserves the design’s ability to meet its functional requirements. If you have a low-cost manufacturing process but the design doesn’t meet the specifications, you don’t have anything to sell.

Before a product can function robustly over a wide range of operating conditions, the prototype design must be able to meet the functional requirements at nominal operating conditions.  If you’re trying to improve robustness before it has worked the first time, your work is out of sequence.

Before you can predict when the project will be completed, the design must be able to meet its functional requirements.  Before that, there’s no way to predict when the product will launch. If you advertise the project completion date before the design is able to meet the functional requirements, you’re guessing on the date.

When your existing customers buy an upgrade package, it’s because the upgrade functions better.  If the upgrade didn’t work better, customers wouldn’t buy it.

When your existing customers replace the old product they bought from you with the new one you just launched, it’s because the new one works better.  If the new one didn’t work better, customers wouldn’t buy it.

Function first, no exceptions.

Image credit — Mrs Airwolfhound

Finishing a project is usually associated with completing all the deliverables.  But in the real world there are other flavors of finishing that come when there is no reason or ability to complete all the deliverables or completing them will take too long.

Everyone’s favorite flavor of finishing is when all the deliverables are delivered and sales of the new product are more than anticipated.  Finishing this way is good for your career.  Finish this way if you can.

When most of the deliverables are met, but some of them aren’t met at the levels defined by the specification, the specification can be reduced to match the actual performance and the project can be finished.  This is the right thing to do when the shortfall against the specification is minor and the product will still be well received by customers.  In this case, it makes no sense to hold up the launch for a minor shortfall. There is no shame here.  It’s time to finish and make money.

After working on the project for longer than planned and the deliverables aren’t met, it’s time to finish the project by stopping it.  Though this type of finishing is emotionally difficult, finishing by stopping is far better than continuing to spend resources on a project that will likely never amount to anything.  Think opportunity cost.  If allocating resources to the project won’t translate into customer value and cash, it’s better to finish now so you can allocate the resources to a project that has a better chance of delivering value to you and your customers.

Before a project is started in earnest and the business case doesn’t make sense, or the commercial risk is too high, or the technical risk is too significant, or it’s understaffed, finish the project by not starting it. This is probably the most important type of finishing you can do.  Again, think of opportunity cost.  By finishing early (before starting) resources can start a new project almost immediately and resources were prevented from working on a project that wasn’t going to deliver value.

Just as we choose the right way to start projects and the right way to run them, we must choose the right way to finish them.

Image credit — majiedqasem