Articles by: Ankit Patel
04/01/10 by Ankit Patel | fun, thinking thursday | No Comments »
Thinking Thursday is a day to think about something besides lean, business improvement, six sigma, or the usual items discussed. Sometimes topics can relate to the business world and other times it’s just plain fun.
I came across this question just surfing the internet and I thought it was something noteworthy. Why doesn’t McDonald’s sell hot dogs? Sure you could go the case study type answers like “it’s not their branding” or “the supply chain costs don’t justify the potential benefit.” I think the answer is a little deeper than that. This is just what I’ve heard but Roland had a heart attack and because he’s on medication for his hear he can’t have food with nitrates. What’s in a hot dog you ask- NITRATES!
Of course eating McDonald’s probably didn’t help in the first place but hey you got to support your own company. I can’t prove that I’m right but according to talk radio since you can’t prove I’m wrong I must be right! Other thoughts welcome.
03/31/10 by Ankit Patel | wiki wednesday | No Comments »
Wiki Wednesday is where we have 1 topic and several thoughts on the topic from Lean practitioners.
“If you were doing a VSM for news reporting how many customers would you have and what would be the value that is delivered?”
Please leave your thoughts on the comments section. Here are some thoughts to get you started:
You would have a few customer bases:
1) The government interest
2) The tech interest
3) The business interest
4) The international news interest
5) The local news interest
6) Casual fan
With all of the markets the value would come from objective information from all sides of the argument, consistency in the way news is reported, and speedy delivery (news trifecta) of information. Each market may have a different other items that are valuable:
1) Government – news trifecta, government related news and happenings (tv, radio, online, phone)
2) Tech – news trifecta, tech related news and multiple access points (tv, radio, online, phone)
3) Business – news trifecta, business related news, multiple access points (tv, radio, online, phone), market watch and how the news effects the markets
4) International – news trifecta, international news, multiple access points (tv, radio, online, phone), 24/7 coverage
5) Local – news trifecta, local related news and multiple access points (tv, radio, online, phone, how the information will effect them directly in their communities and lives
6) Casual – Looks for news to reinforce his/her beliefs (aka MSNBC, Fox News, etc.), Entertainment/shock value in news (catchy headlines and commentary like “death panels” and “war monger”), higher value on quick news without having to do more research
For more wikiing please contribute to
http://leanway.wikidot.com/
03/29/10 by Ankit Patel | behavior change, motivating employees | No Comments »
I wrote a blog post recently on Motivating Employees Without Money where I talk about different techniques you can use to motivate your workforce without giving out money. You have to understand how to motivate people from a psychological standpoint.
Motivation comes from several factors but how do you keep behaviors going after motivation fades? Motivation does fade but habits are more permanent. You have to make tasks that are done through motivation into a habit. For example: your staff goes from having a staff meeting a day where you just make excuses about issues to having 2-3 shorter staff meetings where you find root causes and fix the root cause instead of ignoring the problem or putting in a band-aid. How do you make sure you make these behavior changes permanent because it is hard to fix root cause issues?
Here is a simple model to use: Behavior changes = Attitude changes & Attitude changes = Behavior changes. What this means is that if you change your behaviors your attitude will eventually change to match your behaviors and if you change your attitude your behaviors change to match your attitude. This can be a powerful tool for you if you have behavior and/or attitude changes due to motivation to change.
What I have noticed is that you have to keep the behavior going and If you can you will have a much easier time to make changes permanent. Here are four ways to make the transition easier:
1) Standardize = Make your changes permanent by making it the standard. Tasks are performed in an x,y,z manner.
2) Make changes visible = Making things visible makes people accountable. If you are not fixing root causes to your problems it is much harder to do than band aid a process. To make sure you keep fixing root cause have a tracking board that is reviewed daily with status updates and owners.
3) Measure the right things = People respect what you inspect. It depends on what you want to change but you may consider going from machine utilization as a metric to total facility processing type.
4) Provide quick and accurate feedback = The longer you wait to teach after a mistake the less effective the feedback. Feedback should be as close to instant as possible to drive true change.
Related posts:
Combining Lean With Emotional Intelligence Case Study
The Missing Link To Lean Six Sigma – Emotional Intelligence
Friday Factoid – Culture = Profits
Motivating Employees Without Money
03/26/10 by Ankit Patel | factoid, motivating employees | No Comments »
What motivates employees? It’s not necessarily money. Here are factors that motivate employees from a Business week article in 2008:
- Empowerment to Make Decisions
- Opportunities for Growth & Development
- Variety
- Mutual Support and Respect
- Sense of Purpose
- Desirable Future
Find out more at an article Motivating Employees Without Money
03/25/10 by Ankit Patel | thinking thursday | No Comments »
Every business school will tell you a company exist to make money. I think this paradigm will lead to very poor businesses. A business does need to make money but if you look at the most successful businesses their primary goals aren’t to make money. In the book Build To Last the author talks about the secret to companies being successful. None of the top principles included focusing on share holder returns as a primary objective.
I would suggest a different paradigm. A company exists to fill a need, innovate, and be socially responsible. On top of that the people or person starting a company should be passionate about what they are doing. To me a company cannot last for a very long time if it doesn’t have these qualities.
Caring only about money is partly what got us into the financial crises of 2008. I don’t think there is anything wrong with making a profit but it should be more of a by product instead of the main objective. In a Lean company you care bout the customer and delivery superior value and the financial results will take care of themselves. In traditional companies too much emphasis is sometimes put on the bottom line so you end up with processes that aren’t so good for the customer.
One of my favorite examples is collections. In most companies collections usually is a very painful process where you will never see that customer again. If you truly want to serve the customer either make collections customer friendly or do not have collections. The message is do the right thing and the profits will come. Look at HP, Toyota (post recall), 3M, Disney, etc.
03/24/10 by Ankit Patel | wiki wednesday | No Comments »
Wiki Wednesday is where we have 1 topic and several thoughts on the topic from Lean practitioners.
“In 140 characters or less how do you sustain lean?”
Today’s post was inspired by @LeanBlog on Twitter. I’ll be posting the comments to twitter throughout the day and if you have a twitter account then please put @NAME first. Please keep everything you type under 140 characters. Also thank you to @TimALeanJourney for building on the idea
Please leave your thoughts on the comments section. Here are some thoughts to get you started:
@AnkitTheLeanWay really good system with quick feedback, process adherence, and strategic alignment
For more wikiing please contribute to
http://leanway.wikidot.com/
03/23/10 by Ankit Patel | visual controls | No Comments »
I drove into a townhouse complex the other day and found a sign that said 9.5 miles per hour (mph) is the speed limit. My first thought was I am going to just go 10 mph. This triggered me to think about one of my favorite topics, visual controls. I consider a visual control anything you can see that is meant to inform, direct, and/or change you or your behavior. First thing I always do is ask what is the goal? In this case the goal is to have a safe neighborhood without having any incidents from vehicles. With the combination of speed bumps and a speed limit sign you have ways to slow down traffic.
Do the signs work? I ask 3 questions if visual controls are working:
1) Do you pay attention to the visual controls – YES I noticed the sign
2) Do the visual controls achieve the goal intended – YES I noticed the sign and made sure to slow my speed.
3) Will people notice the visual control after long term exposure – MAYBE I’ve been seeing odd speed limit signs since I’ve been driving and this one really caught my attention and may stay with me for a long time.
From the anecdotal sample size of one I would say the decimal speed limit sign is effective. How would you make a successful visual control where you work? Follow the three steps criteria from above, make it so easy a 3rd grader could understand what you are trying to communicate and experiment. I wrote a recent post about Occam’s Razor In Business Problem Solving where I talk about simple solutions are usually the best. I wrote a post Keep Iterating Or Go For The Big Fix? Which Way Works Better? where I talk about how crucial it is to experiment and change often to find what works best.
03/22/10 by Ankit Patel | motivating employees | No Comments »
At a recent trip to one of my favorite stores Costco I came across an interesting problem that you might also have in your business. Their checkout cashiers were rated on three factors: 1) How quickly they scan 2) How many customers they scan in an hour [minimum of 50] 3) Percentage of products scanned vs. key entered [minimum 98% scanned]. How did I know? They had it posted at the end of the cash registers. I first read it and thought wow this would have been helpful if I could know which cashier was in each lane and the board was placed on the other side of checkout.
As I checked-out and walked to the exit. Costco has a final check where you hand your receipt to a person at the exit and they check to verify you don’t have too many items in your cart. The best I can tell is that it’s there to deter thefts. I didn’t walk very far until I was in another line waiting to be “checked-out” again by the receipt checker. How many places have you been where you have to wait in line to walk out of the business after you are done?
This made me think is Costco, along with most other employers, motivating their employees incorrectly? This is the classic silo approach to a problem where we want to manage by what is easier for the managers instead of by what makes most sense to the customer. If Costco had a metric like total wait time for the customer that would be a much more effective metric then scan times per employee. It may not motivate an employee to do anything more than be faster at scanning items. If they get good at their job then the lines go down during checkout but go up at the exit. Motivate your employees to find a way to have zero wait for the customer. Possible solutions include a flex model where you flex the number of people at the cash registers and the exit door.
This hits to the point that you measure what’s important. By measuring individual scan times you are sending the message that the customer is not #1 but instead you are motivating the employees to be better scanners. What about adding more value to the checkout process? What if the cashier were to tell the customer about some specials that they could purchase at checkout? What about ensuring the customer has little no wait before checkout and after checkout? What about giving employees latitude to experiment with new ideas like an express checkout lane? Motivate your employees to do what’s best for the customer and not what is easier to manage. Managing consistency and rate of scan is a concern and can be addressed by standard work and training. Motivating employees to do what’s right for the customer is a bit more difficult but will give your company an edge over others.
03/19/10 by Ankit Patel | factoid, motivating employees | No Comments »
Here are some statistics on why employees leave a company:
25% of respondents reported leaving employers because of ineffective leadership
22% cited poor relationships with their managers
21% said their contributions were not valued
Source: http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/adimComment?id=26632
We see all kinds of issues related to company culture. Employee retention is not only a big concern but it’s very expensive for companies to hire and train new employees. Plus how do you know you are not going to have the same issues again? I wrote a post on motivating employees without money where I talk about the factors that motivate employees and some solutions on how to address the concerns of happy employees. If your employees are happy then they are much less likely to leave. What do you think are good ideas on preventing employees from leaving?
03/18/10 by Ankit Patel | thinking thursday | No Comments »
Thinking Thursday is a day to think about something besides lean, business improvement, six sigma, or the usual items discussed. Sometimes topics can relate to the business world and other times it’s just plain fun.
I love it when I see the news and they ask a question to a guest like “Do you agree healthcare reform or do you not agree with healthcare reform”. This is a logical fallacy called the false dilemma. Giving a multiple choice (usually 2 options) and choosing between the two when there are really other options. There is actually the same problem with the way we are asking questions. Let’s use 1 persons health and forget about the politics. Let’s say someone has type 2 diabetes. When you are treated we usually go to the doctor and say “doc fix me.” But are we asking the right questions? What about asking “Doc how did I get into this mess” and “Doc how can I fix this without drugs?” Sometimes we ask these questions but all the type 2 diabetics I know really don’t care about the root cause and really just want to get on with their life.
The root cause of type 2 diabetes is from too much insulin production in the body. The insulin production is caused by a large spike in carbohydrates. If your type 2 diabetes gets really bad they give you more insulin. Heres another way to put it: If your partner had a lot of perfume/cologne on and it really smelled strong but after about 10 minutes with them you couldn’t smell it anymore. If you wanted to smell it you could either put more of the perfume/cologne on or you could just get away from them for a few minutes. With the more insulin option you are just making your condition possibly worse. If you regulate your insulin by cutting out bread and get your carbohydrate sources form vegetables and fruits you can effectively do the same thing.
The point is are we asking the right questions. If we look at the root cause of the type 2 diabetes it’s a combination of diet and exercise. Ask for the root cause and fix the root cause and you resolve your issue.
How do you ask the right questions?
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