Marketing with Lean Series – 4 Pack
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Lean Marketing House (More Info): A starting point for creating true iterative marketing cycles based on not only Lean principles but more importantly Customer Value. Recommended 1st reading of series.
Marketing with PDCA (More Info): Targeting what your Customer Values at each stage of the cycle will increase your ability to deliver quicker, more accurately and with better value than your competitor. It is a moving target and the principles of Lean and PDCA facilitates the journey to Customer Value. Recommended 2nd reading of series.
Lean Engagement Team(More Info): The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Recommended 3rd reading of series.
Marketing with A3(More Info): Enables sales and marketing to use the Lean tool of A3 as a structured approach for their problem solving, strategies and tactics. Recommended 4th reading of series.
Save when buying all 4
This series of books are about developing a continuous improvement culture in your sales and marketing and re-positioning your customer as the center of your organization. The further we are from our customers’ knowledge base the more effort has to be made to create a larger and larger supply of prospects. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer is the strongest marketing tool possible. Successful Sales and Marketing are no longer trying to get their message out but developing strategies to get the message in.
Disclaimer: There is no silver bullet introduced in these books.
Related Information:
Lean Marketing House
Marketing with PDCA
Lean Engagement Team
Marketing with A3
Turning Leader Standard Work Upside Down
By · CommentsI find one of the problems that exist in Leader Standard Work practices is not at the Team Leader Level nor even the Supervisor Level but many times right at the top. In David Mann’s book Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions, Second Edition (which I consider the bible for Leader Standard Work), he states that Leader Standard Work should break down in this percentage for standard work:
- Operator – 95% their time might be devoted to completing leader standard work
- Team Leaders – 80%
- Department Supervisors – 50%
- Value Stream Managers – 25%
- Executives – 10%
These numbers will differ according to the environment and whether it is production, office or development work but Leader Standard Work should be consciously designed to be layered from bottom up. The act is what produces results, not the thinking. There should even be a degree of redundancy between the layers to ensure accountability. 
This is where I believe that the problem starts developing. Trace Richardson wrote a blog post, You want a tangible action for your leaders trying to do Lean? Try this! GTS "squared" where she states that one of the fallacies of problem solving is the inability of Leaders to “Go See”. I find that true outside of the factory as well. Leaders seldom do the 10% or 25% of Standard Work required. They even will sit down in a meeting and go over the subordinate’s standard work and instruct him on how to improve without ever observing the process. Even more importantly that shared accountability through redundancy is seldom instituted.
In Lean Sales and Marketing, Standard Work will have a difficult time achieving 95%. In fact, most “front-line” Sales and Marketing workers will have responsibilities that clearly cannot be defined as Standard Work. Leader Standard Work may often only border around 50 to 80% or lower. I think immediately of the conversation I had with Joseph Michelli on Zappos company culture. Joseph’s latest book, The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW discusses the relationship of employee and customer experience as demonstrated in my blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?.
As we progress up through leaders, supervisors, etc., the percentage of Leader Standard Work should not drastically be reduced as it does in a manufacturing environment. It is the Servant Leadership role that must surface. Empowering the front line staff with the necessary resources to enable their actions to deliver an outstanding customer experience becomes Leadership’s primary function. The Leader Standard Work may actually become more standard as we move away from the main influencer and/or disruptor – the Customer.
Related Information:
Can the Lean Knowledge Worker cope with Leader Standard Work?
Lean Sales and Marketing works because of Leader Standard Work
Does the Customer Experience mimic the Employee Experience?
When Efficiencies and Innovation no longer work, is Customer Centricity the answer?
Job-Centric Innovation is Rethinking Customer Needs
People struggle with Lean in sales and marketing because they don’t believe that many of the fundamental concepts of Lean, such as Standard Work can apply to the S & M discipline. If you review the slide shows under the Lean Engagement Team section on Slide Share, I think you will find how much they are based on standard work. Think about Leader standard work, it is intentionally designed to focus multiple layers of attention on the same process. For example:
The Team Leader’s Standard Work might including adding new call scripts into a follow-up campaign for a certain webinar or trade show. The team leader also heads a brief daily stand-up meeting with the team which is part of the regular agenda to ensure that appropriate action has been taken or initiated. The Team Coordinator should attend but not head the meeting.
The Team Coordinator might then work with the team to go over playback of scripts for training. He may bring in additional trainers as part of a weekly program to improve delivery. The TC ensures that program has been coordinated with other actions in the marketing communication department.
The Marketing Communication department sends follow-up emails, auto-responders and/or direct mail.
The Value Stream Manager might allocate budget for calling program and meet once a week to check progress and to lead a regularly-scheduled meeting with the TC, TL and MC to discuss the problems or opportunities.
It is this way that standard work is layered to ensure focus on the processes that produce the results. It is one of the most challenging aspect of the transition from a traditional results-only culture to a lean results-and-process-focused culture.
A quote from Dr. Michael Balle, “Lean is not a revolution; it is solve one thing and prove one thing.” Leader Standard work is the foundation of Lean Sales and Marketing and the fundamental process that replaces the "Silver Bullet" found in most typical marketing jargon.
What are your thoughts? Is your marketing efforts based on standard work?
Systems2win(who I work with) has an excellent description on the website, Leader Standard Work tool.and a new video out (below) that explains Standard Work.
Related Information:
Blog Carnival Annual Roundup: 2011: The 99 Percent Solution
Six Sources of Influence in Change
The Difficulty of Mastery = The Difficulty of Lean
Even Seinfeld used Standard Work
