How to Kill ANY Improvement Project
The Status Quo Must Change
Anyone who has undertaken an improvement project quickly realizes that no matter how bad the problem, how dire the consequences, or how great the solution, there is a strong and determined defense of the status quo. This is not mere hyperbole; many people in business are viscerally opposed to change and will do everything in their power to ensure the current state remains in place, at least for the time being. In short, people will fight you.
Since this is a fight, let’s look at it in those terms. A few thousand years ago, military strategist Sun Tzu wrote:
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. Sun Tzu, the Art of War
Join the Resistance!
Let’s look at some of the common ways Six Sigma and Lean projects get derailed. This is a partial list and we welcome your comments and additions to this info.
Employ Snipers
Discredit the person running the project. This method doesn’t even require a face to face confrontation. No matter how good the project recommendations are, no one will listen if they don’t trust the person suggesting the change.
Disrupt Supply Lines
Armies move on their stomachs and improvement project move only with timely and accurate data. Cut off or restrict the data flow to a project, and it will slowly die.
Mutiny
Create an uprising among the team members. Sow the seeds of descent. While this is an active approach, it need not be direct.
Death by 1,000 Cuts
This technique requires patience and persistence. Improvement projects are in the business of making data-based recommendations designed to improve an aspect of the business. In this technique, you withhold key information while data is being gathered and recommendations are being made. When the time is right, you let it be known that ‘someone is already working on that’, as you feign surprise. This is sure to demoralize the team.
Hijack
If you are able to see the path ahead and where the improvement recommendations are headed, many times you can undercut the improvement team but jumping right to the solution. The team will waste time gathering and validating tons of useless information, while you are a hero
What to Look for in 2012
03 Jan 2012
6 Important Marketing Trends To Watch In 2012
Every year around this time, we shift our focus from “the year in review” to “the year ahead.” Trend reports abound, and
with a bit of searching you can usually find one targeted to whatever your specific business niche might be. Too often, though, these trend reports get delivered in overwhelming PowerPoint decks crammed with head-spinning data, charts and graphs.
The renowned brand strategy consultancy Landor saves us that migraine in their look ahead with an eminently digestible article that looks at a host of different marketing areas–naming, demographics, image sharing, China, mobile technology, on-demand media, design, innovation, change, and the notion of trends itself–and answers three simple questions: What can we expect in 20102? What is the impact on brands? What brands stand out?
Here are the most relevant trends for entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses for 2012, in the context of marketing and branding.
1. Abstract is the new concrete. Names–for products, for companies–will get more abstract. “Finding a name that is unique, memorable, and–very important–ownable, has become increasingly challenging,” states Jason Bice of Landor. “Names that are coined, abstract, or arbitrary stand the greatest chance of clearing the multiple hurdles involved in the naming process.”
The implication is that you need to become a better storyteller. “Coined names come with zero baggage,” continues Bice. “Unfortunately, they also come without a built-in meaning. Couple that with brands being increasingly accountable to a very vocal and socially networked public, and story becomes a crucial part of what a name needs to deliver.”
2. Boomers–they’re baaack! The 47-65-year-old demographic, aka Baby Boomers, is an afterthought for most marketers. That means the estimated 77 million boomers in the United States are undermessaged and underserved.
“They control over 50 percent of discretionary spending and enjoy 80 percent of all leisure travel,” writes Landor’s Susan Nelson. “They represent about 40 percent of regular Facebookers. But the percentage of marketers targeting the boomers? Neglible.”
That sounds like opportunity calling. A few smart brands are catching on and catching up, but “so many consumer packaged goods and media brands seem stuck in the fallacy that early adopters are all young and cool,” Nelson states. “They don’t get that there are a lot of boomers with plenty of money to spend.”
3. Trending is trending. Hockey great Wayne Gretsky was once quoted as saying “I don’t skate to where the puck is; I skate to where the puck will be.” It’s become a bit of a cliche, but customer and market trends are changing at the speed of a hockey puck on ice. One of the things that’s changing is trending itself.
“The emergence of ‘what’s trending’ is itself an upcoming trend impacting what we see (Charlie Sheen’s #winning), what we don’t see (#occupywallstreet trending blocked by Twitter), and ultimately how we interact with content online,” advises Karl Isaac, Landor’s Executive Director of Digital Branding. “Facebook’s change to feeds organized by top stories sent a clear signal that trending is an increasingly significant influencer of user interaction.”
Easy ways to hunt for trends via Twitter include Trendsmap, Topsy, and Trendistic.
4. The photo’s the thing. It’s true: a picture’s worth a thousand words. Over 90 billion images have been uploaded to Facebook. The ultra simple app Instagram is experiencing exponential growth, and even behemoth GE used it to post “behind the scenes” photos of manufacturing plants and distribution channels to foster a sense of consumer intimacy and authenticity.
According to Russ Meyer of Landor, “Brands that can harness these emerging social behaviors to their advantage, much the way American Express did when it partnered with Foursquare to offer special deals, will see breakthroughs in their relations with the public. To be successful in 2012 and beyond, brands will have to follow the trail blazed by consumers in regularly sharing relevant images online.”
5. Tablets, tablets everywhere. “The tablet is the first true crossover device for use both at home and out in the world,” writes David Keefe. “And brands are starting to understand the tablet’s relevance to retail: Their owners increasingly take them to grocery stores, pharmacies, and car dealerships.”
Keefe’s advice? “Start today. Migrate your audience. Think video. Understand how to integrate tablets into places that intersect with existing brand touchpoints. For example, many new cars will soon be equipped with tablet-like devices.”
6. Creativity takes center stage. According to Landor, the burning question for 2012 is this: How can companies rapidly and efficiently infuse innovation across their entire culture, capitalize on the new ideas they spawn, and create value for customers and equity in their brand?
“It’s no longer enough to move the line,” states Landor’s Allen Adamson. “Companies must reinvent it. For example, Uniqlo has taken the basic Gap formula and made it better, more fun, and more edgy. This trendy Japanese retailer, with its amazing new flagship store in New York, can make anyone look cool, and for a very cool price.”
The implication is that if your company’s DNA doesn’t carry the gene for nimble creativity, you may not make it to 2013.
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You can read the full article here. What might the potential impact of these and other emerging trends be onyour business? How will you respond in 2012?
Reprinted from my OPEN Forum column.
Re-posted from Matthew May’s website, matthewmay.com
How to Make Important Decisions
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
We can easily recall a list of people who lived in the public eye as heroes one day, only to be cast down and regarded as scoundrels the next. As adults we could easily become cynical about life in general. I have come to believe that we can all be heroes in our own way. I see heroes around me every day. Moms and Dads caring for and supporting their families, volunteers serving the community in hundreds of unseen ways. Each of these heroes gives a bit of themselves in the service of others. In return, both are enriched.
Steve Jobs learned how to succeed by failing. The key words here are “learned” and “succeed”. If we never fail, we never learn. Thanks Steve for your insight, your energy, and for showing the world that when you are trying to communicate an important message, that looks do matter.
Bob H
http://bobsleanlearning.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/success-has-no-formula/
Success Has No Formula
People who tell you that they know how ‘you’ can be successful are wrong.
Image via Wikipedia
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
Steve Jobs, From the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.
Evidence that the people who follow their dreams and dare to be foolish in the face of unfailing reason are in fact the most successful people. Recent books from Malcolm Gladwell, (The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009); Daniel Pink,( A Whole New Mind; Free Agent Nation; The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, and Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.); and Ken Robinson (The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, 2009; Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. 2001) each provide volumes of cold hard facts supporting the fact that the people who do what they love, are the most successful humans around, and that none of us succeeds without the help of many, many, caring and loving people along the way.
I strongly encourage you to spend 15 minutes watching and listening to Steve Jobs‘ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. As Steve steps down from Apple’s helm, now is a good time for all of us to remember that life never turns out like you planned, and that we truly are all in this together.
Bob Hubbard - August 2011
Related Links
- Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple (mashable.com)
- This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html (stanford.edu) - Ken Robinson video clips (bobsleanlearning.blog)
- Dan Pink on “What Really Motivates Us”. (bobsleanlearning.blog)
Can Change Be Easy?
Chip and Dan Heath get it. They understand how people are in real life. They debunk our attitudes about how we’d like them to be, or how they are on paper or in hypothetical situations, but how they really are. By that I mean they understand how people find, remember, and assimilate information, (see Made to Stick). And they understand how people change.
Read this book if:
- You think complex problems require expensive and complex solutions.
- You think people act rationally in their own self interest.
- You think that you know why people appear to hate change.
I strongly recommend this book. (I checked the audio book out from my local library.) It is a quick read and full of great insights that will help you if you are in the business of making things different today than they were yesterday.
Bob Hubbard, 04 May 2011
Switch, How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
About Switch
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard is the latest book by Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, the critically acclaimed bestseller. Switch debuted at #1 on both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestseller lists.
Switch asks the following question: Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle, say the Heaths, is a conflict that’s built into our brains. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.
In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results:
- The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients.
- The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping.
- The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service.
In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.
http://www.heathbrothers.com/switch/
Bob Hubbard
How to Communicate Messages that Stick
The following is a re-post from a couple of places about the book, Made to Stick. If you only read one book this year on organizational change, read this one.
Bob H
From the Heath Brothers‘ website: http://www.heathbrothers.com/
The Book
Since its release in 2007, Made to Stick has become popular with managers, marketers, teachers, ministers, entrepreneurs, and others who want to make their ideas stick. It’s been translated into Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Dutch, and 25 other languages. Made to Stick made the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists and was retired from the BusinessWeek list after a 24-month run. It was named to several “best of the year” lists and was selected as one of the best 100 business books of all time. Want to give the first chapter a read?
About Made to Stick
Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas-businessmen, educators, politicians, journalists, and others—struggle to make their ideas “stick.”
Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the Heath brothers reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.”
In this indispensable guide, we discover that “sticky” messages of all kinds—from the infamous “organ theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a product vision statement from Sony-draw their power from the same six traits.
Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of idea success stories (and failures)—the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher’s simulation that actually prevented prejudice . Provocative, eye-opening, and funny, Made to Stick shows us the principles of successful ideas at work—and how we can apply these rules to making our own messages “stick.”
The following is a re-post from Laura Boggess at Post by Laura Boggess at High Calling Blogs (http://highcallingblogs.com/ )
by Chip Heath, Dan Heath in Books
Post by Laura Boggess at High Calling Blogs (http://www.thehighcalling.org/culture/what-sticks)
Keep it simple, they say.
They are Chip and Dan Heath–the brothers and co-authors of our new book club selection, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. And by stick these boys know what they are talking about:
By “stick” we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact—they change your audience’s opinions and behavior.
What writer or speaker doesn’t want to be understood? What photographer or artist wouldn’t want their work remembered? What business or spiritual leader wouldn’t want to change behavior? Who in the world doesn’t want their ideas to stick?
This is a book for everyone.
You might say the Heath boys are experts on understanding sticky ideas. They’ve been studying the things for over ten years. Along the way, they’ve identified six common traits of sticky ideas. We’ll be discussing each one as we go through the chapters of Made to Stick over the next six weeks.
Keep it simple, they say.
That’s the first principle of a sticky idea: Simplicity.
That’s just common sense, right? I mean, no one is going to remember a bunch of gobbledygook. Trouble is…keeping it simple is, well, not that simple.
Finding the Core
The first step in making an idea stick is to find the core of the idea, say the brothers Heath.
“Finding the core” means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence. To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important but just aren’t the most important idea.
It’s all about prioritization, the authors say. What if I have three good ideas to communicate? What’s wrong with simply laying them down in a list, point by point?
No one will remember them, that’s what. Too many points and you run the risk of burying the lead, the authors say.
Burying the Lead
A good news reporter recognizes the importance of finding the core idea of a story. News seekers don’t want to have to search a sea of words to find what’s happening in their world.
…if finding a good lead makes everything else easy, why would a journalist ever fail to come up with one? A common mistake reporters make is that they get so steeped in the details that they fail to see the message’s core—what readers will find important or interesting…“Burying the lead” occurs when the journalist lets the most important element of the story slip too far down in the story structure.
That is what will happen to our message, the authors say, unless we prioritize. If we have too many competing ideas, none of what we say will stick.
But how do we communicate complexities and prioritize our core idea? By maximizing the meaning of our message concisely.
A Bird in the Hand
One way to get our message across succinctly is to capitalize on the existing memory terrain of our audience. Heath and Heath say two effective ways of doing this are to use proverbs and generative metaphors.
Generative metaphors and proverbs both derive their power from a clever substitution: They substitute something easy to think about for something difficult. The proverb “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush” gives us a tangible, easily processed statement that we can use for guidance in complex, emotionally fraught situations…Proverbs are the Holy Grail of simplicity. Coming up with a short, compact phrase is easy…On the other hand, coming up with a profound compact phrase is incredibly difficult.
Stick It to ‘Em
The brothers Heath say that finding the core idea is step one of two in making an idea stick. Step two is sharing the core. That’s what the rest of the book is about.
So now I know that if I want my message to be sticky, I must keep it simple. Keeping it simple means more than keeping it short. I have to pack a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging. As writer, this means finding the core of my idea and staying focused on that one message. It means using metaphors and proverbs that are meaningful to drive that point home.
What does keeping it simple it mean to you in your particular role?
Laura Boggess’ Made to Stick posts:
Concrete: You Can Walk Around On It
Posts by Laura Boggess.
Related Articles
- How Made to Stick was Made to Stick: What Ideas Survived and What Died (800ceoread.com)
- Simple (highcallingblogs.com)
- EC Book Review: “Made to Stick,” by Chip and Dan Heath (entrepreneur.venturebeat.com)
- Change Agents: Are You Sticky? (time.com)
- Dan and Chip Heath Say Nix Ambiguity and Focus for Lasting Change (fastcompany.com)
- Top Techies Share Their Summer Reading Lists (pcworld.com)
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