Decision Velocity - Out of the Chaos with Speed and Direction

The New Shewhart Cycle - Accelerate Change!

You might already know the drill of the Shewhart Cycle: Plan Do Check Act… PDCA .

I suggest that in many organizations (and you know if you work in one) where innovation seems to occur in a geologic time-frame, that a “revised” DV accelerated Shewhart Cycle would work better.

DO:CHECK:ACT:PLAN

DO your thing (be not afraid)
CHECK the results (good and not)
ACT to fix
PLAN to do more! Quickly!!

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Add comment April 13th, 2007

Not Music to MY Ears! A World-Class Product without the Right Customers

What makes for a solid product strength? Think about your business and the products or services you offer. Can you list strengths? Probably. And lots of them. And you could be mostly wrong. Why?

Because for a product or service to truly have a strength, it must have a corresponding explicit need with a customer. No need. No strength. In fact, some perceived strengths can actually be weaknesses if there are no customer demands for them. For example, try selling thermal underwear in Key West.

So, when a world-class musician decided to experiment with Washington D.C. subway commuters, why should anyone be surprised that very few people stopped to listen at length, let alone toss money into the violin case? You can read the Gene Weingarten’s Washington Post article here.

It’s simple enough. People who pay $100 or more to go to symphony hall expect to hear a great performance, have allocated enough time for the experience and generally enjoy the classical music genre. So its a safe bet that customer satisfaction will drive towards the high end of the scale.

Now let’s consider the subway population. They’re in a hurry to get to work. Musically they’re not as monolithic as the symphony hall attendees. Some might like classical some not. Based on symphony hall sizes and sales of tickets it’s likely more do not. Then there’s the base rate. That is, more music played in the halls of the subway really is quite bad compared to world-class. So the expectation upon hearing music is not favorable to stopping for a good listen.

Decision Velocity is about getting ourselves and other people to sometimes, stop and listen. But without a solid product strength matched with a solid customer need, even a world-class product will garner only a few coins into the violin case.

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Add comment April 13th, 2007