Business Transformation Tools: Business & Process & Project Management: Lean Six Sigma: Strategy: Innovation: Career Success: B
By Mike & Jay: Business Management Trainers | Business Strategy Experts
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Podcast Description
Business Transformation Tools is the only show dedicated to hands-on business management and process management tools to transform your business and career success. Learn the process management and project management tools developed in countless successes (and failures). Join Mike and Jay in making process improvement, strategy and innovation routine in your business. Business management and process management tools are the hardware to transform your company and career - starting today! Overcome daily firefighting and slice through the market's confusion about strategy, innovation, project management, and lean six sigma. You may already be familiar with Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, project management, and strategy deployment. Here, you'll learn how to make these process management and business management methods ROUTINE in your business - without massive investments of time and money executives, managers, and entrepreneurs cannot afford to make.
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CleanBTT 051 | Strategy Storm for Cash Constraints – Part 1 | Strategic Question: If you are not aware of the signals of a cash constraint, more than likely you have products or services that are in one, and you are making moves that may be exacerbating the cash problem rather than driving you quickly through it. Do you know which products are showing slower cash speed? Do you know the dangers and traps to avoid when facing this internal business reality? Today’s show will help you avoid the pain of a cash constraint, and will point out the gravest enemies to businesses in this phase of the Business Constraint Cycle. Business Constraint Cycle Tool Show Notes BTT 051 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 051 – Download Member Content STRATEGY STORM: If you are new to this series, we are teaching you how to conduct your own Strategy STORM. Every business goest through each phase of the constraint cycle as it becomes viable. As we described in the Breakthrough Strategy series, a profit family will begin in a customer constraint, then move to a cash constraint, then to a capacity constraint, and finally to a capability constraint. For each of these phases of the Business Constraint Cycle we are teaching you how to conduct a Strategy STORM, to come up with strategies that align to this dominant reality and drive your business quickly to the next phase. Today, we cover a Strategy STORM when your business or profit family is in a cash constraint. This is the phase of business that normally happens when you are growing a new product or service to meet demand. Most people don’t realize a significant truth about business: Growth is not about customers or marketing, it is about cash. Your use of cash needs to be very precise during this phase, rather than risky. This is new to most people that we talk to and train. Growth is about cash, and we will teach you today what it means to aim small and miss small with cash, rather than aiming big and missing big! In Part 1, we will cover the signals and the the traps, including several that you may not even realize you are already contending with in your business. I will also share a personal story of how my own family business almost went defunct because at the time I did not recognize the dangers of a cash constraint, and how to manage the business differently when facing a cash constraint, rather than a customer constraint. Strategy STORM Acronym review: SIGNALS – In a cash constraint, there will be signals in marketing, in promotions, in cash flow, in the income statement, and more TRAPS – The traps that should be avoided are the “profit mindset,” confusing internal cash flow analyses, and failing to measure cash speed. OPTIONS – We will cover this in Part 2 REACTIONS – We will cover this in Part 2 METRICS - We will cover this in Part 2 This tool is a powerful weapon against strategies that don’t align with reality. We wish you the best of luck on your strategic journey, Mike and Jay | 11/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 050 | Strategy Storm for Customer Constraints – Part 3 | STRATEGY STORM FOR CUSTOMER CONSTRAINTS FINISHES TODAY: In today’s show, we will finish the Strategy STORM by covering the Reactions and Metrics that will drive your strategy to breakthrough current constraints. The business constraint cycle makes it clear that all products will, at certain phases of their product life cycles, face a customer constraint. What we have found in working with companies around the world is most companies are not measuring their profit families in a way that sensitizes the business to changes. In many cases, they may be in a customer constraint without even knowing it. What is worse, if they are not aware, they are probably operating in a way that is in complete misalignment with their business reality. The Strategy STORM helps you to create, deploy, and execute a strategy that overcomes these mistakes, by forcing the business and the leadership to align with reality. In the first 2 parts of this series, we helped you to understand the signals that you are in a customer constraint, as well as the traps to avoid and the breakthrough options you should consider. This final part will help you to think proactively about the reactions inside of your company and outside of it to any potential shift in your strategy, and then help you identify the specific metrics which will drive your company through its current constraint. Business Constraint Cycle Tool Show Notes BTT 050 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 050 – Download Member Content METRICS DO NOT JUST MEASURE BEHAVIOR, THEY DRIVE BEHAVIOR: You will learn today some important insights about metrics that are directly applicable to your strategic direction setting as well as to the long term profitability of your business and organization. Lean Six Sigma-ites will recognize the importance of understanding the transfer function for your business processes, measuring both the inputs and outputs of a process while investigating the correlation and causation between them. Some people refer to these as the critical X’s and critical Y’s, the inputs and outputs, the leading and lagging indicators, and so on. These are all synonyms that tell us how important it is to measure what drives behavior and what comes out of those behaviors. What you measure is what gets done in any organization. If you measure too many things, you dilute the activity and focus of your business. We are going to help you to select the measures that are specifically useful in driving your business through a customer constraint. Output metrics will be the revenue by profit family and the marketing Return on Investment (ROI) by profit family. The trick is to measure these for each profit family, not just at the profit and loss level of a business. The Input metric will be the amount of time it takes to move a customer through the sales funnel. We call this funnel time, and it is a predictor of the the customer constraint. When you see your funnel time growing, you know there are problems on the horizon. INPUTS ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AS OUTPUTS: I share today a misunderstanding that I once held about inputs and outputs as metrics. When first learning about the importance of finding the leading measurements, the inputs, it is easy to make the mistake of dismissing output metrics as unnecessary. As we discuss the specific metrics that drive behavior in your business, you will understand how significant both sides of the equation are. Remember, metrics drive behavior, this means we must be careful in selecting which metrics will drive which behaviors. We are excited to play a part in your breakthroughs and wish you all the best, Mike and Jay | 11/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 049 | Strategy Storm for Customer Constraints – Part 2 | STRATEGY STORM: If you do not know the signals and the traps that happen when you are moving into a customer constraint in your business, you will lose precious months, precious customers and vital profits. Most companies do not realize that some of their products and profit families are already in a customer constraint. This is part 2 of a 3 part series taking you through a strategy storm that will help you not only recognize the signals and traps of a customer constraint, but to understand your options, predict market reactions, and measure the right things to drive you quickly to the next constraint. Only by assessing all 5 parts of the STORM can you create and drive a breakthrough strategy. Business Constraint Cycle Tool Show Notes BTT 049 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 049 – Download Member Content In part 1, we went into detail on the signals and the traps Today in part 2, we will cover the options you should consider to dig your way out or to avoid it in the first place In part 3, we will cover the Reactions and the Metrics of a customer constraint Strategy Storm The Business Constraint Cycle tells us that if you have a customer constraint, that fact defines your reality more than any other fact – and all of your operational and strategic options need to come into alignment with that reality immediately. What you need to realize is that at certain points in your products’ lifecycles, it is completely normal to be in a customer constraint. Today, we will tell you what to do about them to move from one constraint to the next. Options: When you are facing a customer constraint, you must quickly assess your options and make aggressive moves to move out of the constraint. This show will discuss several options, although some are more urgent than others: The first thing to always do when you recognize you’re in a new business constraint is to force your entire Business into Alignment with the reality. You need to know how to become a sales and market driven organization, including budget making decisions You may need to consider a reassignment of key leadership You will need to target new customer segments Learn the difference between innovation and design speed Learn the power of a real Mafia Offer For those of you actually in a customer constraint, this is not an exercise of thought, but real urgent action. Today’s show will give you tangible actions you can take to move beyond the daily battles and traps of a customer constrained business. Often, the hardest part is merely understanding and admitting your current constraint is customers. You have to say we are not yet winning with this product or service, what should we do? Your next actions should leverage the options from today’s show. We wish you all the best, Mike and Jay | 11/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 048 | Strategy Storm for Customer Constraints – Part 1 | Strategic Questions: Which products and services in your business are in a customer constraint right now? If you cannot answer that question, then every dollar you spend and every minute you invest in your business are potentially wasted because you are not focused on overcoming that dominant constraint. Business Constraint Cycle Tool Show Notes BTT 048 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 048 – Download Member Content STRATEGY STORM: Today’s show will bring you through your first Strategy Storm as we cover the signals and traps common to all businesses in this phase of their product lifecycle. We give new understanding on how to use your cash and how to make sense of the signals in your company that you are in a customer constraint. Remember, there are 4 constraints in the business cycle, and a healthy business will move from one constraint to the next in a deliberate path over time. The first step in any product or service is to win customers. You are often in a race against time as you deplete the initial investments, but you are only sustainable when you have convinced enough customers to buy your product or use your service so that it has its own cash source. The problem for so many businesses is that they do not realize certain products or services in their portfolio are actually in a customer constraint. They misspend capital that should be focused on winning customers more than any other priority. Strategy STORM Acronym review: SIGNALS – In a customer constraint, there will be signals in marketing, in promotions, in cash flow, in the income statement, and more TRAPS – The traps that should be avoided are lost time, lost capital, miscommunications, and more OPTIONS – We will cover this in Part 2 REACTIONS – We will cover this in Part 2 METRICS - We will cover this in Part 2 This technique is applicable regardless of the constraint you are in, regardless of the industry, and across and product or service. We highly recommend that you learn to conduct regular Strategy STORM sessions so that you can align your business and operations for breakthrough strategies that move you quickly from one constraint to the next in a healthy business cycle. These tools are yours for life and for business improvement, Mike and Jay Mentioned in this Show: | 11/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 047 | Breakthrough Business Strategies – Part 2 | Strategic Questions: What is the reality of your business today? When I ask that question to most of my clients and other business people, they immediately start discussing the market, the tough economy, the upturns or downturns… Basically, they talk about everything except their actual business reality. What determines your business reality is the internal constraint: There are 4 phases of the business constraint cycle. The phase you are in determines your reality. It is the most important lever for you to push on to make a breakthrough transformation. When you are able to identify the dominant constraint, you can align the business to that constraint. Every aspect of your business, from marketing and sales strategy to operations, IT, HR, and supply chain should and must align or your business cycle will experience friction that slows and debilitates your company’s strategy. Business Constraint Cycle Tool Show Notes BTT 047 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 047 – Download Member Content Your constraint could be customer, cash, capacity, or capability. A healthy business will go through all 4 phases and mature from one to the next. Misalignment between your strategy and your business reality will lead to failure: In today’s show, we reveal the source of several mysteries in business. The mysteries all boil down to a misalignment between the strategy and the business’ internal reality. For example, have you ever wondered why organizations so often “reorganize,” and then fail. In fact, the failure rate is around 75%, they then need to reorganize again and again. Another mystery we address is why companies often grow and succeed only to stall out. Then, when a new company comes in and meets with success, the only difference was a change in the head positions. What really happened? The answer lies in the business constraint cycle. Today, we will also introduce you to STRATEGY STORM: SIGNALS – What are the tell tale signs of what constraint you are in or what constraint your are approaching? TRAPS – What are the traps that are common to businesses in a given constraint? OPTIONS – What are some of the breakthrough strategic options available within this constraint? REACTIONS – What are the expected internal and external reactions, and how can you METRICS – What are the leading and lagging indicators to drive the strategy. This new tool, you will discover, is at the heart of improving profits for your business. We encourage you to review the 4Ps which we introduced in some of our first and most fundamental shows to the business transformation community so that you will be able to learn to focus on what will make you and your team a long-term success. Best regards, Mike and Jay | 10/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 046 | Breakthrough Business Strategies – Part 1 | Strategic Questions: Have you ever noticed that most business strategies are just fancy PowerPoint files that land in the desk drawer, and don’t really change the business’ reality? How do you create and deploy a breakthrough business strategy that wins in reality, not just in the boardroom? Business Constraint Cycle Tool Show Notes BTT 046 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 046 – Coming Wednesday The answers are in this new series on Breakthrough Business Strategies: What we are going to give you in this series is the most important tool and insight you need to create your business strategy and it fills an important gaping hole in a company’s ability to compete successfully. I do not say that it is the most important insight lightly. I am a student and consultant of management strategy. I have used something close to 50 different strategy tools developed by knowledgeable people like Porter, HBR, and brand name consultancies like Accenture, McKinsey, BCG, and others. Here is the problem: Something is always lacking after a strategy session. Sometimes, they are very exciting or very intense debates and even provide a unanimous leadership approach. Everyone walks away happy with the creativity and potential of their business strategy, but wondering “How will we ever really execute on this strategy.” The number one item on the minds of executives is not growth or even cost cutting. The question that dominates the board room these days is how to create a responsive company that executes on their strategy. We don’t want PowerPoints that land in desk drawers anymore. We want to move our organization in a way that helps us win. Now there are all kinds of books that are built around this theme of Strategy Execution (Strategy Deployment models, Execution by Bossidy is quite good, Hoshin Kanri for the Lean guys and more) and the advice is okay, but not transformational. The common advice centers on how to communicate internally, how to measure and align your business, and how to hold people accountable. Those things are wise, but they still miss the real obstacle preventing you from executing on any strategy. What is the Reality for your Business Strategy? There is a hole here. Businesses are still struggling despite all of this wonderful advice. The real problem is that all strategies are based primarily on a business’s external market constraints, but your external market constraints are not the most important constraints in your business. External constraints address: How the market is doing How the business positions itself Competitive Analytics If the external constraint is not the most important, what is? The breakthrough thought you need to create breakthrough business strategies is to recognize that your business reality is actually dominated by the phase you are in on a business constraint cycle. What your internal constraint is determines the options available to you for creating and deploying a winning strategy, not your external constraints. Whether your internal constraint is customers, cash, capacity, or capability, it will determine almost everything about your business direction and operational options. The problem is that most companies are not even aware of the existence of their internal constraint! More than your external market constraints, your internal business constraints will determine what options and what operational moves you can make for the next 1–5 years. After all, the market is not going to change all that much from one year to the next. It isn’t everyday that an iPhone comes around and turns an entire market on its head. Most of the time, the external market is the same as it was last year but a bit tighter from new cost pressures and new rivals. Year to year, what can change dramatically is your internal business reality. That is the lever you can pull on to dramatically change and grow your business. This insight is more important than the i[...] | 10/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT Changes and Vision – Oct. 2011 | Business Transformation Tools is like any other business… we must improve continually! We have made some changes this week to add more value to our community, and to greater focus our product. Find out why we lowered our prices, and why ALL audio is now available to you. Video is in development as well. Listen to see what will be available by November! Thanks for tuning in. Always Improving, Mike & Jay | 10/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 045 | Getting Things Done for Project Teams P3 | Getting Things Done: This is the final part of the a 3 part series on Getting Things Done for Project Teams. This show goes into the remaining steps of Getting Things Done for Project Teams, giving you the practical insights and applications for processing, organizing, reviewing and actually doing project related actions. All along, you have seen that GTD is not only a personal productivity breakthrough, but a team productivity breakthrough. In these shows we are giving you the best practices for applying this powerful methodology in a way that unites your team, eliminates the wastes of miscommunications and lost time processing and reprocessing emails. Perhaps the most loved benefit of GTD for project teams, however, is the peace of mind the team feels when they know there is a system in place that is trustworthy and complete. GTD Template – Team Email Format GTD Template – Master Action List for Team Lead Show Notes BTT 045 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 045 – Download Member Content 5 STEPS of Getting Things Done for Project Teams: David Allen’s book brought the 5 steps into the popular domain: Capture Project Stuff Process Project Stuff Organize Project Stuff Review Project Stuff Do Project Stuff We spent part 2 of this series on the most important step, the very first step. If your collection system is incomplete, the entire Action system is at the mercy of team members’ memories. As soon as you fall off of the bandwagon, recognize it, and get back on. Your team experiences the breakthrough in performance when you hold them accountable to the system and everyone can rely on it. The first step is the foundation that we are building on in today’s show as we go through steps 2 – 5. Please continue to send us your comments and share your stories as you experience GTD in your own project teams, Mike & Jay | 10/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 044 | Getting Things Done for Project Teams P2 | Getting Things Done: We are in the middle of a 3 part series on Getting Things Done for Project Teams. As you probably know by now, GTD is an essential tool for personal productivity. We are sharing with you, however, the lessons we’ve learned in applying GTD in a team environment. The principles and habits remain the same. What changes are the kinds of tools you use and the way you use them. If you are already a GTD fan, take the next step and get the same productivity breakthrough with teams that you are getting in your personal life. A wonderful payoff is in that project teams demand so much of our daily attention, that when you apply our methods you will receive yet another breakthrough in personal productivity, not just team productivity. GTD Template – Team Email Format GTD Template – Master Action List for Team Lead Show Notes BTT 044 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 044 – Download Member Content 5 STEPS of Getting Things Done for Project Teams: Today, we are going to begin covering the 5 steps of Getting Things Done for Project Teams. Just like in David Allen’s book, the steps remain the same: Capture Project Stuff Process Project Stuff Organize Project Stuff Review Project Stuff Do Project Stuff When it comes to GTD for project teams or for personal productivity, the largest failure is usually in the first step. We don’t actually do a good job of capturing the stuff in our lives or in our projects. Some items are in emails, others are in voice mails, most are in the heads of every person on the team – never officially written down or captured in a single, trustworthy location. If teams don’t have the habits and tools in place to make it easy to capture and communicate this stuff, everything else in your project will be disorganized and more challenging . Today, we will camp out on this first step so that you and your team get the right tools and tactics into practice. We will complete the series in part 3 by reviewing the final steps so that you have everything you need for a Getting Things Done system. 1st Step of 5: What to do and What Not To Do Surprises and requests come at you all day as a project leader and this means your team requires a single trusted mechanism outside of their heads to ensure everything gets done. Even more important, you need a way to prevent doing things that actually do not deserve your team’s precious time. Imagine the productivity gains that could come when you have your team relying on a single project collection bucket, committing to capturing next actions, and following standard communications. Picture how much less work time you would need to invest as the project leader if you were able to attend fewer meetings because you knew the actions and ideas were being captured in a fail proof way. Think what you could do with the extra time if your team was as committed to the GTD system as you are. This is the productivity increase that boils up when your team is following the GTD standards we will present in today’s show. If you are saying, “Not my team – I’m on top of all the details,” I would ask, “How much work is it taking?” The answer will be much more than is necessary. “The goal of GTD is to free you from things you don’t really need to be doing, so that you can do what you should be doing!” Some Actions you will learn on how to capture everything as a project team: 1. Begin teaching your team to collect everything in a single format 2. Set up an email account for this specific project – do not use email the way you are using it today 3. Train your team to use the format for communications: Summary, Action, Detail 4. Use the Parking Lot method instead of minutes during meetings 5. Maintain the master action list where all the stuff is filtered into Tell us some ways that you personalize this for your team.For [...] | 9/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 043 | Getting Things Done for Project Teams | Getting Things Done: Most business people have at least heard of GTD by David Allen. It is a revolution in productivity and has not only changed my life over the past 10 years, but has been a key recommendation I make to the clients I work with all around the world. The crucial breakthrough of GTD is that managing your life is not about managing time, but managing specific, discrete actions. Then, the book provides tactical advice on managing inboxes, keeping your system 100% reliable, making real time decisions, and reviewing items in ways that help you remain mentally prepared. GTD took productivity to the street level with the basic tools and habits that allow you to focus on what you are actually supposed to be focused on – rather than being constantly distracted by the subconscious worry over what you are NOT doing. Wouldn’t you like to be at your son’s football game with the peaceful knowledge that everything else is captured in your system, reminders are set where they need to be, and nothing else needs to nag at your mind during this important moment? GTD Template – Team Email Format GTD Template – Master Action List for Team Lead Show Notes BTT 043 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 043 – Download Member Content Getting Things Done Applied to Project Teams: While Getting Things Done or GTD is a revolution in personal productivity, it has an even larger impact on Project Teams because the number of people impacted by the system is greater. Today’s show will present the best practices we have developed over the past decade to take the principles and tactics of GTD into the project environment. Key Points on GTD for Project Teams: GTD answers the questions of what to do, when to do it, and how to do it – and we will show you how to tweak this methodology for Project teams. David explains that GTD is a “vaccination against day-to-day fire-fighting (the so-called urgent and crisis demands of any given workday) and an antidote for the imbalance many people bring upon themselves.” This is even more necessary for a project team, where the potential impact of the project can hit the bottom or top lines of your organization. Project teams need GTD desperately if every hiccup is treated as a fire drill – your teams are unnecessarily unfocused until GTD is installed. How do you know if you need GTD for project teams? If team members are staying late and still getting little progress to show for it, there are root causes that must be destroyed: clutter, disorganized thought, poorly defined actions, and uncollected tasks. The project moves slowly, if at all, because its actions and decisions are scattered across everyone’s emails, voice mails, brains, and individual filings. This 3 Part Series on Getting Things Done for Project Teams: This show will help you and your project team accomplish more with less effort, avoiding rework and lost time so you can focus on what really deserves your team’s attention. We will walk you through the basic habits and tools that you and your team will use to Get Things Done on your project We will reveal the best practices that project teams can use to ensure everyone is keeping the system alive and benefiting from the system. In part 1, today’s show, we will dive into the 3 habits that determine the success of your GTD for Projects system. What is the Major Benefit of GTD for Project Teams? Cognitive Dissonance is multiplied on a project team. What you don’t track well is multiplied as mental distraction across your team. In stead of one person worrying about what needs to be done and what is not being done – EVERYONE is worrying. The impact that I have seen on teams that were managed without GTD and those that are managed with GTD is an enormous productivity increase. When you remove the great source of cognitive dissonance on your team, something else happens – the team starts to enjoy work[...] | 9/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 042 | Project Budgeting with FLOW | Today’s show will eradicate the complexity of budgeting for your projects. We have all struggled as project managers to come up with a reasonable and approvable budget. Reasonable means it will actually cover our expenses. Approvable means it isn’t so bloated that management slices it in half at a moment’s notice. If you applied FLOW in your projects, you have learned how to bring tangible actions to the front of your project plan, and how to cover potential task delays with a bank of time for the project. You stopped adding buffers to individual tasks and started using a reservoir of time the tasks can withdraw from much like a reservoir of water for a town. The benefit is a truly robust plan that handles the daily needs and variations of tasks and team members. The same benefits will impact your project budgets – getting the same project done in less time AND with less budget than traditional project management would allow. Most importantly, you can do all of this with fewer headaches! The Project Flow Map: Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 042 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 042 – Download Member Content The Project Flow Map 1.1 Premium – Download Member Content If project leaders despise one thing most, it is going to management to request additional funding. Unfortunately, asking for more funds is the almost inescapable outcome of following the guidelines of traditional project management. Just as task overruns and time delays are baked into our projects by traditional project management practices, so are budget depletions and contingency requests. Project FLOW is the solution to transform project management. A successful project needs to deliver results on time and, of course, under budget. With project flow, you manage the tangible actions that help you avoid losing time during the project. Mistakes, absenteeism, exaggerated progress reports, expediting fees, and surprise delays are all taxes on projects that do not FLOW. If you take care of the time actions need, then it is not only the timeline but also the budget that will be significantly impacted. What is the real Project Benefit? We shouldn’t talk about budgeting without talking about the project benefits. This is a common mistake. The project benefit should be linked directly to the budget. After all, projects are just like any other business investment of time and money to achieve a specific benefit. The problem is, we don’t slow down long enough to understand what the benefit is and if it justifies the expense. The reality of a project is we are spending cash to make some more cash later. Why? When you strip away all of the clutter of a project and all of the gamesmanship, we are investing cash to make cash. If our project is worthwhile in business, it will generate a return. One of the best practices we will teach you is how to use the cash expenses and compare it to the cash benefits. What, really, is a Project Budget? A project budget can be simply defined as the cash we are allowed to invest during the project. Most definitions of budgeting only confuse the reality. The reality is that as a project leader, you have been given a temporary checking account to spend the business’s cash. This can be uncomfortable… scary even. We are spending cash to make cash. The best benefit of a project is also the simplest – the cash return. This is the one number everyone trusts most. Unfortunately, in large businesses, it is also the number that is most hidden and locked down. If you are having trouble boiling things down for true cost savings, listen to our series on cost savings to learn the most surprising realities about cash savings in your business. Steps for Project Budgeting: Calculate the needed cash for each project task (Next Actions). It may be based on a fixed fee like hiring a professional service, or it may be an hourly rate. For rates, you wil[...] | 9/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 041 | Measure and Minimize Project Burn; From Project Failure to Project Flow P7 | In This Show: The Single Metric of Project Flow: The single metric of Project FLOW is Burn. Manage the Burn and the FLOW will follow, achieving smooth and profitable results. Why is Burn so useful? Because it tells you everything you need to know to track and make progress along the paths of your project. The huge downfall in the metric movement is the loss of simplicity. Balanced Scorecards, for example, usually have more than 30 metrics, and I have seen over 200 metrics on a so-called Balanced Scorecard in one company. The negative impact has been political warfare and battles of semantics and interpretation. Companies waste effort determining who is gaming the system while production and engineering and sales are flat or declining. If you want forward progress, you need simple metrics that tell the whole story in just a few numbers. In the case of Project FLOW, BURN is the single metric you need. It is easy to maintain, straightforward to interpret, and offers no gaming or politicization. Show Notes BTT 041 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 041 – Download Member Content Project Burn simplifies the job of project leader and team members alike: In today’s show we will go on to review project Burn, how to measure it, and who takes actions when it is green, yellow, or red. Burn tells you when a task is struggling before it becomes a disaster. You will have a system working for you that functions just like a Doppler Radar system, alerting you to issues in real time before the storm hits. Your team members will love Project Burn because just as it simplifies the responsibility of a project leader to monitor and maintain the flow of the project, burn simplifies their lives in keeping the team updated. They will provide a daily drive-by that is deliberately simple and quick, stripped of all clutter and useless information. Peace of Mind for the Project Team: FLOW is built to bring Peace of Mind to the the entire project team. Each member knows exactly what they need to do and when, as well as what to do when anything goes wrong – as something definitely will! The trick is to have a trustworthy metric like Burn that means the same thing to everyone on the team. They will know how to react to a green, yellow or red burn status. Just as we implemented baton warnings and time banks, the Burn helps even more of the project Flow to happen on autopilot, with less intervention from the project leader. Project Teamwork: A major difference between a project operating with FLOW and one operating with Traditional project management will be seen in how the team actually works together. We don’t realize how much even the cooperation and togetherness of a team depends on the way we manage it and measure its success. With BURN, the team will learn that a RED item is not just one person’s job to fix – it is EVERYONE’s job. If you task is green, or not yet active, and someone else on the project map goes red, you should take action and make yourself available. Ask, “What can my team or I do to help, if anything?” This will become the way a team bonds together and keeps the FLOW moving through unexpected delays. Nothing is more urgent in a project than overcoming an interruption in the flow that causes a task to go red. But, a red item is not a failure. We can see a project to go red a dozen times and still expect it to be early! Think about how different this is from traditional project management. Would you ever put an item down as red in your status report if you thought you could fix it yourself? Putting an item down as red, in the ordinary project environment, is akin to admitting an absolute collapse in the project. This is no longer true. A red item simply means this task is now burning up more than its fair share of the Time Banks and we must take action as a team to overcome it. We are going to share with you exactly how to communicate t[...] | 9/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 040 | Project Flow Mapping – Step 10 of 10 | The Project Flow Map In This Episode: This is the final step of creating a project flow map and we have come to the single most important metric of project management – the project Burn. You can use this single metric to keep everything moving on a daily basis in your project – with smooth, efficient and profitable flow. Think about the difference this could make in your projects. Everyday you are pulled in many directions as your are copied on endless emails, invited to meetings, and kept up to date on dozens of details. Your management attention is spread too thin, and when something causes a major delay it is usually a surprise because you were focused everywhere else. Sound familiar? With project flow, the BURN rate is a simple metric that focuses your attention where it needs to be, where the most significant risks and delays are smoldering – but long before they burst into flames. The Project Flow Map: Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 040 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 040 – Download Member Content The Project Flow Map 1.1 Premium – Download Member Content Making Lost Time Obvious: With a project flow map, Burn is painfully obvious. Until you commit to using FLOW, you have no way of really seeing the Burn. If you were an assembly foreman, you would have one obsession in life – keep the flow moving. But you could see the delays instantaneously. Project leaders need to have the same obsession, but traditional project management provides you with no way to know when the project is burning your precious banks of safety time, or when it is actually progressing. Because you have created a project flow map and inserted the time banks for each parallel path, you can watch the banks closely and determine exactly when a task is burning more than its fair share of the safety time. Just as you would watch the cash in your bank account, you watch the safety time in the time banks of your project. Now you can see how the previous steps of building a project flow map lead you to this final step where you can actually manage the flow everyday. In the previous steps you built and planned for the FLOW, now you make the project FLOW in real time. In Today’s Show: We will walk you through the simple math of BURN. It is really just a ratio that compares the Bank Time used against the Path Progress made. We will give you a simple and reliable method to know how and when you should get involved as a project leader. The best part of the system is that red, yellow, and green statuses will not be subjective or political. They will be determined by the Burn. We walk you through step by step examples of how to get your Burn rate down, and we reveal some surprising paradigm shifts about managing your project. We also share how to keep the management of your project and daily status updates (called drive-bys) minimal and painless. An example of burn: As an example: if you have already used up 10% of your bank but you have only made 5% of your path, most people would say this is not a big deal. That is entirely wrong. Take action now while you have enough runway left in the project to get on track. In this case, you are burning up twice as much bank as you are making path progress. As soon as that burn ratio goes above 1.0, it is like someone telling you there won’t be enough cash in the bank account at the end of this month to buy groceries. Burn forces us to take action early because it is sensitive to lost progress early in the project, when is is most useful to take action. For the first time, your project has a Doppler Radar system built in. Burn management is alerting you as the project leader of any issues without being copied in every single project email. You don’t want to be pulled in 200 directions. You want to focus on “What are the 2 or 3 things I can do today that will give me the most benefit.” You can use P[...] | 9/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 039 | 5 Steps to Eliminating Project Delays with Time Banks; From Project Failure to Project Flow P6 | In This Episode: Critical Path - Critically Flawed Your projects are late for a reason. That reason is probably not because of a personal failure or because of a lack of planning. In fact, most projects are late because they are fatally designed using traditional project management methods. In this show you will learn how to eliminate deadline delays that happen from tasks running over their individual timelines. This happens in literally every project. The craziest part of the way we are all trained to create project plans is the idea that the so-called critical path has absolutely no slack time. Have you ever really thought about this? What is the one part of the project that needs to be most protected during and between tasks? It is the critical path. But, this is the very path that has no room for error in the way we are traditionally approaching project management. Show Notes BTT 039 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 039 – Download Member Content Project Flow uses Time Banks to protect your deadlines This is a huge change from traditional project management. We will explain why you need to change the way you estimate the task times of your project and how to calculate the safety time your project will require. Everything you have done with project flow up until this point has set you up to take this next step successfully in order to protect your deadlines. Here is the surprising truth we discuss today revealed in a unusual illustration: The traditional adding of safety or slack time to individual project tasks is just like taking a water reservoir for a town and splitting it into buckets or tanks for each home in the town. Ultimately, it would take much more water to supply the town’s need and would make it absolutely inevitable that some homes would run out of water. This seems ludicrous, yet we are taught this method as science when it comes to project management and handling safety time. There is a much better way. Today we share with you the 5 steps in creating a time bank for your project paths and show you how these simple steps will protect your project flow so that you will not miss your deadlines. What about changing deadlines? This sends shivers down every project leader’s back. You convinced your team and all the stakeholders to commit to a project plan and, wham! You are hit with an unexpected deadline change. It turns out that there are 2 types of deadline changes. We call them fake and real deadline changes. A fake request is the most common. If you are still using traditional project management methods, your boss will know that there is a lot of fluff in your time estimates. At least, they think they know that! And without FLOW, you have no way to prove anything different. You will be pressured to accommodate a new date that you secretly know is unrealistic. This is setting yourself and your team up for failure. Beyond that, your team will interpret this as punishment they have to bear because you were unable to say no to the boss. This cycle of negotiating happens in so many projects that most people are numb to it, expect it, and don’t even flinch when it happens. In this show we are going to give you the steps to convince your boss that your timeline is real because it is based on FLOW. We will even share with you exactly what you should say and how you can turn a bad confrontation into a winning sales call for your project. On the other hand, there are real deadline changes that come down from a customer or business need. These are less common, but when they happen, you need to know exactly what to do. First, never simply agree to the deadline and then go back to your team asking for their support. This will undermine everything you have achieved in developing a project FLOW plan. Instead, use our 5 step method for changing deadlines with project FLOW. Not only will you keep your project team’s support, you will earn the trust of [...] | 8/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 038 | Project Flow Mapping – Step 8 & 9 of 10 | The Project Flow Map In This Episode: Protecting deadlines should not be so difficult in projects, yet it seems to be. It is nearly impossible to protect deadlines when you use traditional project management. The sad statistical truth we have had to face is that even if you follow all the recommendations of traditional project management, you end up late 70% of the time. This is baked into your project plan from the very beginning, hidden in the way tasks are created and the way task owners work together. In today’s show you will learn how to lead your team through the Warning stage of creating FLOW in your project. The Warning stage happens in 2 steps, and these actions will protect your deadlines and ensure a project plan that will move with smooth, profitable flow and is on time, on spec, and under budget. You will also discover 2 of the gravest errors of traditional project management and how the warnings in FLOW completely transform the way your team works together during the project and alters the way you allot safety time to your task owners. The Project Flow Map: Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 038 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 038 – Download Member Content The Project Flow Map 1.1 Premium – Download Member Content Protect your projects from delays DURING Tasks: Steps 8 & 9 of creating a project flow map cover a significant amount of ground as we learn to protect the flow and protect our deadlines. First, you will add time banks to your projects that will protect your deadlines in the real world of surprises, unexpected delays, and new demands. The one thing we can be certain of in project management is that something uncertain will happen. Time banks are the best approach to protecting your projects from delays that happen during tasks. Instead of splitting your safety time across every task, you will group it into a single bank for each path of your project. This will provide you as the project leader with a tool to monitor how effectively your project is moving every single day! Much like a checking account, you will monitor the time withdrawals and if one task is burning up more than its fair share of time, you will know to take action before delays become inevitable and expensive. Protect your projects from delays BETWEEN Tasks: We described project flow early on in this series by saying, “Pass the baton and win the race.” If your task owners are ready and waiting for the task handoff during a project, it will move much faster than traditional projects. We will walk you through the actions and exactly what to ask your team as you build these handoffs directly into your project flow map. Instead of worrying that each task is getting off to a slow start, there will be early warnings that alert the next task owner to be ready for the handoff. The best part is that the team not only designs these warning batons themselves, but they carry them out as well. Every project leader knows the frustrations of trying to keep a project moving between tasks only to see the baton dropped again and again. Now you will learn how to make this happen on autopilot. An Amazing Result: When you go through the final stage of FLOW in creating your project flow map, you will discover that the project is actually a much faster plan when using flow than using traditional project management. We have eliminated so much of the waste found in project management. The key wastes are both during the tasks and between the tasks. This is the stage where you complete your project flow map as a team. In the final step 10 you will learn how to work with your project flow map and ensure flow continues day-to-day. Best of luck to you as you transform the way your projects flow! Mike and Jay | 8/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 037 | Making Projects FLOW – Part 2 of 2 | In This Episode: Welcome to part 2 of 2 in learning how to make your projects FLOW. This is a hands-on series that gives you the know how to lead your project team without the hassles, endless emails, and missed deadlines we are all so used to. In today’s show, you will learn how to order the paths of your project and insert the proper warnings to protect flow. These are new concepts for most project leaders and you will find them invaluable in moving your projects to be on time, on spec, and under budget. Show Notes BTT 037 – Download Member Content – Coming Soon Enhanced Podcast BTT 037 – Download Member Content – Coming Soon If you are just joining, we recommend that you first listen to part one which will walk you through the Framing and Listing stages of project flow. This show will move on to Ordering and Warning, the final stages of FLOW. Remember, FLOW is a 4 step process: 1. Framing the Project Flow 2. Listing the actionable building blocks of Flow 3. Ordering the actions into paths that flow 4. Warning to protect the flow The Critical Path is not what you think it is: The most surprising lesson in today’s show is that we have all been mislead about what is critical in a project. The most critical path is not the longest path. In fact, that is usually the easiest part of the entire project to manage. Unfortunately, this poor definition of critical path is used everywhere and is baked into MS Project and every other project management software. What is the most critical thing about your project? Where are you most likely to drop the ball or have someone on your team fail to maintain smooth, profitable flow? In the paths that have the most dependent handoffs. Make your projects flow: We discuss this critical insight of flow and show you exactly how to lead your team to manage these handoffs on autopilot – saving you, the project leader, countless emails, phone calls and headaches! Don’t follow the standard path of project management any longer; it isn’t delivering reliable results. You need to install FLOW in your projects, starting today, if you want to advance rapidly in your business and career. Projects are a part of almost everything we do in organizations – isn’t it time that those projects flowed rather than lurching forward in fits and starts? We hope you are challenged by today’s show, Mike and Jay | 8/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 036 | Project Flow Mapping – Step 7 of 10 | The Project Flow Map In This Episode: We have learned that projects fail at the task level, and they struggle most in parallel paths. Most projects that fail will fumble first in the parallel paths while the project leader is focused on everything else. In today’s show, you will learn how to organize and lock in these parallel paths so that you avoid the mess of an ordinary project plan. In traditional project management the project leader will have hundreds of dates to manage across their critical path and parallel paths. This is a fundamental flaw in traditional project plans. We will show you how to manage the flow of a project perfectly while using only 5 – 10 dates. Imagine how much more focus you could place on the important dates in your project if you only had the necessary 5 – 10 dates rather than hundreds to manage? The Project Flow Map: Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 036 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 036 – Download Member Content The Project Flow Map 1.1 Premium – Download Member Content Project Flow Mapping is a team activity. In this step, you will have your team lock in the flows of the project paths with the start dates for each path. In practice, this only takes a few minutes with your team. This show will dive deeper into why this works so well and how you and your team can lock in the flow of your entire project. The project leader has 2 major responsibilities in FLOW: 1. The project leader must manage the dates 2. The project leader must manage the burn Project Management Dates: This show will dive into the first major responsibility – managing the dates. Because FLOW organizes your project into parallel paths differently than traditional project management, you have very few critical dates to manage. This is why with project FLOW the project leader will almost never miss a date. We all know what a pain in the neck managing task dates can be in a typical project. It falls on our shoulders as project leaders to keep each task moving, reminding people to get started, to notify the next task owner, and then to repeat the process. If we let our guards down, the project stalls. Project FLOW eliminates this disorganization. Project FLOW turns traditional project management on its head because it is handling the tasks very differently than we have been trained in the past. This show will give you the tips and action steps to take to ensure it is done in a smooth and comprehensive way. When you complete step 7 of 10 in making a Project Flow Map with your team you will have locked in the flow and ensured a successful plan. However, the final steps of creating a project flow map will put in the warnings and time banks that protect the flow of your project in real time. We are excited to hear about how FLOW is impacting your projects. People are using Project FLOW all over the world and we are so happy to see people moving away from past practices that cripple their teams. Best wishes to you and your projects, Mike and Jay | 8/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 035 | Making Projects FLOW – Part 1 of 2 | In This Episode: Finally, it is time to get hands-on with building Flow into your projects. This is the show that will give you the who, what, where, when and how of creating projects that actually flow. In the previous shows, project managers discovered just how broken project management itself is – leading us directly into the 7 Deadly Sins of Traditional Project Management. There is only one effective antidote – we must adopt and maintain FLOW in our projects. Today, you will get practical advice and step-by-step actions to follow so that you will know exactly who to talk to, what questions to ask, and how to approach your team to get them flowing together from the first moment of your first meeting. Show Notes BTT 035 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 035 – Download Member Content Creating FLOW: FLOW is essential because it is the only way to plan and deliver a project that will be on spec, on time, and under budget. FLOW throws out the antiquated tools and misunderstandings that are baked into most project plans. It designs your project to move from task to task without wasting time or burning safety. Creating project FLOW is not difficult except that it requires us to think a little differently about our role as project managers – we are not going to be firefighters, but coaches. And our daily work will actually be smooth, visual and naturally prioritized. We are hoping that you will hear part 1 and 2 of this show, Making Projects Flow, and ask yourself, “Why on earth haven’t we done things this way since the beginning?” That is the questions, after all, that led to our discoveries on Project Flow as well as Project Control. FLOW in 4 Steps: In this show, we will take you through the first two letters of FLOW: 1. Framing the Project Flow 2. Listing the actionable building blocks of Flow 3. Ordering the actions into paths that flow 4. Warning to protect the flow Project FLOW is a 4 step process, with each step building on the previous. It is essential that you Frame the project scope correctly and List the task actions without falling back into the bad habits of traditional project management. If you get this foundation built solidly, the rest of the project will be designed to FLOW. And that is more than you have ever been able to achieve in a project without these new tools and insights because traditional project management bakes in friction, not flow. You will find some surprising discoveries in today’s show, including: Framing the project scope and milestones is your job as the project leader before the team even meets. Scope creep is inevitable – but you can take actions early to minimize it The best way to define the scope How many milestones your project should have The actions you must take with the project sponsor before you meet with the team What questions you ask and in what specific order to get the listed actions project flow requires How to create accurate and trustworthy task time estimates The traps of accountability for task ownership that you must avoid This show should be one of those re-listeners! Our Premium Members will also want to download the Project Flow Map Tools and the the Project Flow Map Series that walks you through every step and question you need to answer with your team as you create your own Project Flow Map. A Project Flow Map is the hardware that bakes FLOW into your project planning. The map eliminates the need to make Gantt charts, PERT diagrams, Network diagrams, and many other traditional project management tools. We are very excited to share this show with our listeners around the world. Please keep us posted as you learn to implement FLOW on your projects. Mike and Jay | 7/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 034 | Project Flow Mapping – Step 6 of 10 | In This Episode: Projects fail everyday, and they are failing at the task level. This means, projects that flow must treat their tasks very differently than projects that lurch from task to task. You will discover in today’s show that most project plans are not real plans at all – they fail not only to properly define the tasks, but then to order them into a flow. As we move into Step 6 and order the project tasks into parallel paths, you will define the shape of your project for its entire duration. At the same time, you will identify what is truly critical about a project. A critical path is not as “critical,” as we are led to believe. In fact, the largest risk you face is not from the longest tasks, but the shortest tasks where there are many handoffs. The main path of your project will be defined by these handoffs. If you learn to plan the tasks correctly, and order them into parallel paths along a main path, you will solidify the FLOW of your project. This is what you will learn to do in today’s show! The Project Flow Map: Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 034 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 034 – Download Member Content The Project Flow Map 1.1 Premium – Download Member Content There are 2 realities we face when considering the order of tasks on a project flow map: 1. Most plans don’t have a thorough listing of the actions 2. Most don’t have the right sequence of paths – this show will take us there Project plans generally lack the details and the navigation points that any other map would have. If you were lost in the wilderness, you would want to know the bearings and distances you need to go; elevations, landmarks, etc. Anything less than that would be insufficient on your map and in your plans. You would want a real plan to survive and navigate in the wilderness. You wouldn’t just say cross this mountain, go left, etc. Yet, this lack of detail and lack of understanding plagues almost every project plan I have ever seen before a people learns how to make a proper Project Flow Map. Let’s consider where you are with your project team in making a project flow map. The first 5 steps focused on framing the project flow and listing the project actions. Framing the flow was your responsibility as the project leader while listing the actions was a team based activity. With that foundation, ordering the project actions into parallel and series paths is a quick activity, and only requires you thinking of your project differently than traditional project management would lead you to. You are no longer interested in sequencing the longest tasks, but sequencing the handoffs to control the risk and ensure the project will actually flow. If you are following our recommendations on how to build the Project Flow Map, using post-it notes with your team, this is the step where your project map will begin to really look like a map. You are giving shape to your project flow. Some surprising things you will learn in today’s show include: A project’s main path should be treated like an assembly line, with the parallel paths showing up just-in-time Handoffs can hold up the project, much like a $40 part holding up a $7MM jet engine assembly Time is worth much more than we think it is on individual tasks The way to ensure project flow has nothing to do with the “critical path,” as defined by traditional project management Defining parallel paths is as easy as asking 1 specific question for each of your tasks Most failures in a project do not happen on the main path, but on parallel paths – it is a struggle to move everything along without project flow Remember, a project is just a series of tasks linked together to achieve a goal. Project Flow Mapping walks you and your team through defining and linking the tasks to ensure the goal is achieved with speed and profit. No other project planning and[...] | 7/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 033 | The 7 Deadly Sins of Traditional Project Management; From Project Failure to Project Flow P3 | In This Episode: You will not find a list of well known complaints or regurgitated thoughts about project failure here. There are countless books, articles, and blogs that point out the same old excuses, arguments and cliches. None of them strike the problem at its roots. There is only one way to transform the staggering project failure rates of 70%, and that is to face the hidden truth of project failure itself. There are 7 deadly sins that are baked into your projects by traditional project management methods, not by failures to plan, motivate, or manage a project. The failure is happening in the way we design project plans – especially when we follow the advice and tenets of project management as it is practiced and taught worldwide. Show Notes BTT 033 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 033 – Download Member Content The problem is far worse than most people recognize. Unlike the 7 Deadly Sins that are vices of human behavior, a project will not suffer from just 1 or 2 of these deadly sins. Your project will suffer from all 7! The 7 Deadly Sins: 1. Inaccuracy Inaccurate time estimates are designed into project plans by the way we are trained to ask for them. 2. Vagueness Vague task definitions are not actionable, compounding the poor time estimates. 3. Lurching Lurching from task to task in endless jerking motions is built into the project plan, by design. 4. Fear Fear of being done early and being labelled a sandbagger means we will never make up for lost time. 5. Division Dividing safety across every task ensures it will not be available when and where it is needed most. 6. Vanity Vanity is found in every diagram and tool that is used just to get credit for doing them, rather than moving the project forward. 7. Disruption Disruption occurs between projects, waiting for handoffs and the next task owner to be ready to work the project. This is not a set of problems you can overcome by working harder, you must overcome them by working differently. Traditional project management will bake in all 7 of these sins. You will learn in this series how working with FLOW avoids these failure modes. After describing what each of these 7 sins are, we challenge you to consider your own projects. It will probably surprise you that you will be familiar with each of them – too familiar. In the next shows, we will teach you the who, what, where, when, why and how to move your team through the phases of creating project FLOW – Framing, Listing, Ordering, and Warning. Today’s show is perhaps a hard dose of honesty, but we must face the problem as it really is in order to overcome it and achieve project flow. We wish you success in your projects – and freedom from every one of the 7 Deadly Sins Mike and Jay | 7/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 032 | Project Flow Mapping – Steps 3, 4 and 5 | In This Episode: Today, we will continue helping you to create a Project Flow Map with your team. Remember, a project flow map is the only tool specifically designed to create and deliver projects that actually flow! Every other tool you are familiar with from Traditional Project Management not only fail to create flow, but as we learn today, create friction against the flow. The Project Flow Map: Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 032 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 032 – Download Member Content The Project Flow Map 1.1 Premium – Download Member Content Team Kick-Off Email Template The project flow map walks you and your team through the phases of designing FLOW into your project: Framing, Listing, Ordering, and Warning. In the first part of this series (episode 30), you framed the scope of your project and the flow of milestones before meeting with your team. The next 3 steps you’ll take will form the building blocks of flow and involve your team in an interactive first team meeting. Continuing to equip you as the Project Leader: As you now know, the project flow map uniquely generates a thorough project plan as a team. Today’s show will help you to coach your team in creating the flow, answering key questions, and designing a project that will flow. Once again, our focus here is not just to explain what each step is, but to give you the what, where, when, why and how behind it. With that in mind, you will find this series to be extremely hands-on, as practically every minute is filled with actionable advice and steps you can lead your team through. Most teams have a lot of fun doing this exercise together. In fact, it is the best way to kick-off a new project. Rather than sitting in a room describing the background and trying to decide what to do next, you will have a game plan to create flow that gets your team out of their chairs and working with their hands and brains. This builds ownership right from the first team meeting because nothing works better than the team designing the project themselves, following the step-by-step actions for creating the Project Flow Map. We are including a template in today’s show to help you address your team before the first meeting. Many people struggle to prepare their teams, not knowing how much to say or how to generate interest ahead of time. Just download our template, available for premium users, and adapt it to your project. This show covers the Listing Steps of creating a Project Flow Map – Steps 3-5: FRAME the SCOPE FRAME the FLOW of milestones LIST NEXT ACTIONS under each milestone LIST OWNERS of each NEXT ACTION LIST FOCUSED DURATION TIMES ORDER into PARALLEL & SERIES PATHS ORDER the START DATES for each PATH WARN with TIME BANKS WARN with TASK BATONS WATCH the BURN BOX Listing the actions is the most important task to complete as a team. If you follow the advice and take the steps in today’s show, you will already have the building blocks for flow – the rest will lay successfully on top of this foundation. Here are some of the things you’ll learn in Steps 3 – 5 today: The best way to begin any project – and it is not the typical kickoff event! How to generate buy-in and immediate action with your team How many owners there can be for any project action The major difference between focused time estimates and traditional project management durations How to use a little friendly peer pressure to the team’s advantage Which actions are best done together as a team, and which separately before reporting to the team The key phrases and questions to share with your team to ensure they build flow Project Flow Mapping is one of our favorite and most powerful tools. It can transform the way you plan, manage, and deliver projects in research, quality, turnarounds, consulting, and more. Every project can and should flow – most do not. It is time we changed th[...] | 7/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 031 | The Hidden Truth of Project Failure; From Project Failure to Project Flow P2 | In This Episode: Why do projects fail so often? Why do they struggle, despite such high levels of effort, skill, and planning? I don’t know about you, but I am tired of useless cliches about project failure – most of them absolute myths. “The project leader failed to plan… The project leader and team did not possess the right skill levels… There was a lack of organizational support…” No. None of these myths explain why the majority of all projects in all industries will fail to be on time, on spec, or below budget. These excuses may explain why 5% or maybe even 10% of projects fail. But something else must be driving the great majority of all project failures. Show Notes BTT 031 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 031 – Download Member Content We must first face the reality of project failure before we can overcome it. Most Projects Fail. Research studies are depressing on the subject, almost unanimously presenting statistics above 70% for failure rates. Some studies show failure rates are much higher; around 85%. If our projects are going to depart this trend, we will have to do something very different from what everyone else is doing in project management. I know. Your projects will be different. Somehow, you will make them successful against all of the odds. You are smart, creative, driven, persuasive, and diplomatic. So, ask the question differently: Do you feel the same way about everyone else’s projects? Will their projects be successful: on time, on spec, and under budget? Even from here, I can see the doubt on your face – or is that contempt? How do you suppose your boss, your peers, and your employees would respond when I ask them about your project’s chances of success? The reason we are all so doubtful is that project success and failure has little to do with your intelligence, creativity, drive, persuasiveness, or diplomacy. Those traits are common among project leaders, and they are not related any higher with project success than they are with project failure. Something other than your traits and skills as a project leader will predetermine your success or failure in any project. And that is the hidden truth about project management and project failure. The Hidden Truth about Project Failure: Stop and ask yourself: What is a project? I have read many complex descriptions that attempt to relate to customer and business expectations, management methodologies and cross-functional teams. Actually, a project is a simple thing to understand. A project is a set of tasks, linked together to achieve a goal. A project could be titled ”organize the garage”, while another project could be “turnaround the commercial product lines”. We need to understand that projects are failing at the task level. But, that alone is not the hidden truth. Tune in to today’s show to find out what exactly is causing such a high project failure rate – by design, not by accident or by neglect. Projects That Do Not Flow: One thing that can be agreed even before learning the hidden truth of project failure is that projects do not flow as they should. There is no provision for the 4 steps of FLOW: Framing: Sets borders on the flow Listing: Builds the flow Ordering: Locks in the flow Warning: Protects the flow Project Flow: A roadmap to project success In Part 1, The 4 Phases of Project Flow, we talked about a new thought for many project managers: project flow. Many people are surprised to learn that a project can flow, let alone that a project should flow. This is the major insight you need to run successful projects: a project should achieve smooth, profitable flow; just like any other business investment. We will teach you how to create, plan, and maintain flow in a hands-on, action packed series. You will also learn how to lead your team through the process. I believe today’s show will resonate with someth[...] | 6/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 030 | Project Flow Mapping – Steps 1 and 2 | The Project Flow Map In This Episode: Welcome to a premium series on creating a Project Flow Map – our unique, powerful tool for effective project management. In fact, the project flow map is the only tool specifically designed to create and deliver projects that actually flow! Project FLOW is the antidote to Project Failure. It is the goal of every project leader to achieve smooth and profitable flow in their projects. Today, we are introducing the first tool that can actually guide the project leader and their team to plan and create a project with successful, genuine flow. The tool that helps project managers create the 4 phases of F-L-O-W is a Project Flow Map. The project flow map is not an “extra” tool – it is the “only” tool that you need to have a successful project plan. It replaces counterproductive, ineffective and outmoded methods such as Gantt Charts, PERT diagrams/Network diagrams, and other traditional project management diagrams. The Project Flow Map: Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 030 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 030 – Download Member Content The Project Flow Map 1.1 Premium – Download Member Content The project flow map uniquely generates a thorough project plan as a team. You will learn in this series that “creating flow is a team sport.” This training will equip you, as the project leader, to know how to lead your team through each of the 10 steps of developing a project flow map, and to ensure they have ownership and drive to deliver on the project plan. The project flow map will not only help you plan for flow, it will help you drive flow in real time as the project moves forward every day. Equipping you as the project leader means we will walk you step-by-step through: What to do in each phase What questions to ask The answers to expect Tips and tricks to make it fun and easy How to keep your team moving and interacting The specific phrases that work the best, and more At the same time, we are going to teach you the principles behind project flow, why they work, as well as the key differences between project flow and traditional project management. There are a total of 10 steps to create a project flow map. It can usually be completed in 1 – 2 team meetings. Today’s show will take you through the first 2 of 10 mapping steps. These first 2 steps will be useful for framing any project, especially projects designed to flow. If you are just starting a new project, or plan to assign a project in the coming months, listen to this show first. You will see how quickly you create a proper frame for your project that will keep you aligned with the business needs, the boss’s expectations, while minimizing scope creep during the project. You will also discover that there is no better way to run a project than to ensure it is run with FLOW. The 10 steps to create a project flow map are: FRAME the SCOPE FRAME the FLOW of milestones LIST NEXT ACTIONS under each milestone LIST OWNERS of each NEXT ACTION LIST FOCUSED DURATION TIMES ORDER into PARALLEL & SERIES PATHS ORDER the START DATES for each PATH WARN with TIME BANKS WARN with TASK BATONS WATCH the BURN BOX Notice that they go in sequence with project FLOW: Framing the project scope and flow, then listing the actions that create your project plan, ordering the actions into paths, and finally installing the right warnings to maintain and protect the project flow. Here are some of the things you’ll learn in Steps 1 and 2 today: How to protect your team from scope creep The best way to use a SIPOC diagram The 9 specific questions you need to ask before starting the project How to change a vague business problem into a specific problem statement in only quick steps What project milestones really are and how to select them How many milestones should you create for your project What to do before your first team meeting to set th[...] | 6/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 029 | The 4 Phases of Project Flow; From Project Failure to Project Flow P1 | In Todays Show: Welcome to a brand new series and a powerful tool that will deliver you from the headaches of the fits and starts of Project Management. In this show, and throughout this series, we are going to teach you a concept that is absolutely critical to your success in any project, yet most Project Managers have never even thought about it before. You are going to learn how to make your projects flow, the same way that so many people have struggled to make their processes flow. The good news is that project flow is amazingly simple to understand and painless to apply. With hindsight, you may find yourself saying, “That was so obvious.” You will no longer need Gantts, PERTs or other project diagrams – most of these time-consuming tools are actually part of the problem that fights against flow in your projects anyway. Show Notes BTT 029 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 029 – Download Member Content WHAT IS PROJECT FLOW? FLOW is an acronym we’ve created to lead you through the 4 phases of creating projects that actually flow through their milestones and actions to deliver value on time, under budget, and on spec. Yes, it can be done! There are 4 steps to creating Project Flow: Framing Listing Ordering Warning These 4 steps will completely eliminate the bottlenecks, wasted time, and disorganization of project management. That is quite a statement, ins’t it? If you have been running projects for years, you know that it will require a fundamentally transformed approach to accomplish Project Flow. In fact, the more you learn about Project Flow, the more you will understand the root causes of such high failure rates in completing projects. Almost every study in the past 10 years quotes grisly statistics of 70% failure rates, or higher, in delivering projects to their original dates, specs, and budgets. VISUALIZE FLOW LIKE A RELAY RACE: This fundamental transformation to Project Flow can be visualized as a project that moves like runners in a relay race. Your Project Team will learn how to “Pass the Baton and win the race!” With each lap, the next runner sprints away to complete their portion as fast as possible. They are focused on only that specific task – and that is how you keep the race team moving forward. They are not multi-tasking or caught off guard. PROJECT FLOW MAP: The Project Flow Map is our visual tool to guide you and your team through making projects flow. This map replaces antiquated and counter-productive tools and diagrams that most Project Managers accept as law. Gantts have been around for 100 years. PERTs have been around for 50. Have they solved the enormous failure rates in project management? As we will demonstrate, they actually exacerbate the problems. You need a map that is specifically designed to guide your team through Framing, Listing, Ordering, and Warning. (To be released as the series progresses on our tool page.) THE KEY INSIGHT OF PROJECT SUCCESS: We want to secure a key insight in your mind during this show, and then we will walk you through how to achieve it in the following shows. The key insight is that a project must have smooth, profitable flow – just like anything else we attempt to do in business. We are in a project to create profit for the business – therefore, let’s do it as quickly and smoothly as possible. If you take just a moment, you might realize that this is a new thought altogether in Project Management. As Project Managers, we don’t slow down long enough to consider how to make, measure, and move our projects along with Flow. We have only ever known a universe where projects require all of our diplomacy, energy, enthusiasm, and tenacity. In spite of all of these efforts, projects still fail. It is time we learned how to deliver projects success not some of the time, but nearer to all of the time. MOVING FROM PROJECT FAILURE TO PROJECT FLOW: We are excited to share these concepts [...] | 6/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 028 | Cash Speed for Professional Services; Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P8 | In This Episode: If you are an accountant, engineer, consultant or profession within any other professional services firm, you may have listened to this series and wondered how you can generate cash speed if you don’t have access to the same hidden bank accounts and accounts receivables that production businesses have. In some ways, generating cash speed is more challenging because of the inherent lengthy process for winning contracts, delivering projects, and receiving milestone payments, etc. There are several unique options your firm has, however, that can help you generate speed and cut costs in ways only a professional services firm can. For example, the way you use the bench of employees not currently working on chargeable contracts is going to radically change. Also, the types of contracts you are pursuing and even the focus of sales and marketing is going to change dramatically. Cash Dashboard 1.5 Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 028 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 028 – Download Member Content Cash Dashboard 1.5 Premium – Download Member Content We will share with you ways to both generate cash and cut costs effectively in a short period of time. This show is not for long term strategic changes in the firm, but rather keeping your doors open if you are facing a cash crisis. Because the cash cycles are slower than production industries, it is important that you develop a nose for sniffing out cash problems before they weigh down fully on your firm. One of the ways you will see it coming is by watching closely how much your bench is growing week to week. If you see a stead decline, even if you have plenty of cash for the next few months, take aggressive and immediate actions. A professional services firm also needs to reconsider its funnel. There are opportunities that seem very low probability, but could be won with the right speed offers. We will help you identify them and put the offer together in today’s show. Perhaps you are considering a layoff. This is a reflex in a cash crisis, but most firms fail to realize the bench is the very resource that is going to help them generate cash speed. The common problem is that professional firms are shackled to poor use of this bench by adherence to cost accounting. We are going to help you break away from a terrible practice that almost every professional services firm suffers from – overemphasis on chargeability. Remember, in a cash crisis you need to throw away the old ways of measuring profit, and move to a cash speed mindset. Your goal is to take the smallest amount of cash to generate the maximum cash return in just a few short weeks. ‘Chargeability’ is a sacred monument that must be toppled. If you take the steps we recommend in this show, you will not only enable your firm to generate cash speed now, you will also give yourself a competitive advantage by sustaining the practice into the future. This is the simplest thing to do – and yet almost no firms are doing it. Tune in to the show to find out exactly what these recommendations are and why it could be your ticket to beating the competition today and tomorrow. Everything that we have covered in the Cash Crisis Survival Guide series still applies to the professional services firm, so we do not repeat it here. You need the cash team, cash meetings and cash dashboard working for you. But you have some unique options such as selling limited rites to your intellectual capital that may be just enough to move you through the cash crisis. Small and medium sized professional services firms are hit the hardest by tough times, and they are the least prepared to weather the storm. If you sense cash trouble coming for your firm, don’t wait and hold your breath hoping for that one big contract to save the day. Take the actions we recommend here and divert the cash crisis before it limits your options further. Wishing you the best, [...] | 6/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 027 | Cash Speed Offers; Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P7 | In This Episode: Acting on previous shows in this series should have you turning the corner in your cash crisis turnaround. You gained the tools and actionable insights to stop the bleeding, freeze expenses, and start generating cash speed. You also learned how to access hidden cash bank accounts; the only added cost was throwing out some counterproductive mindsets. In this show you will learn how to generate more cash speed with a unique offer to your customers that will move you even closer to a turnaround. Cash Dashboard 1.5 Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 027 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 027 – Download Member Content Cash Dashboard 1.5 Premium – Download Member Content Building in a Transformation: Something special will happen in this show. Even while you are fighting for survival, we have designed this survival guide to build in the bottleneck management to transform you company for future profitability, speed, and reliability. Most companies know that they need to link their management and procurement practices to the slowest steps in their process; It doesn’t make sense to operate on economic order quantities and batch sizes that undermine a lean operation. Yet, these same companies just can’t make the painful changes needed to do this during normal operating periods. During the cash crisis, the same steps you will take to save your company and generate cash speed will lock in these principles. In essence, the cash crisis becomes the elusive catalyst you have been waiting for. You will get action items for your cash team, your sales team, your procurement managers, and your production managers in this show. Everything is done with a commitment to focused efforts that reserve cash and set your operations up to make faster and faster cash returns. It is important, however, to know just how far you need to take these actions. You will learn the answer to this question is linked to the bottleneck in a precise way. As a hint: You never want to purchase more material than the bottleneck needs for a single production cycle when you are in a cash crisis. This is the kind of thinking that needs to permeate your business, and the cash dashboard ensures that everyone is literally on the same page. Making the Cash Speed Offer: When you only have a few weeks to turn an operation around, it is essential that you focus on the areas that can shrink the cash speed timeline immediately. It is very difficult to shrink the production lead time in just a few days. It can be done, but many operations are already lean. We must look elsewhere to get the needed cash speed. The most obvious place is in how fast your customers are willing to give you the cash for the products they have received. Accounts receivables in most manufacturing companies range between 4 and 12 weeks. This is a major problem in a cash crisis. We will walk you through selecting the right customers to make a cash speed offer to, as well as how to make the offer, the traps to avoid, and when to stop. Even if your company is not facing an all out cash crisis, this is a tool you want in your toolbox in order to generate a short term windfall of cash for other timely investments opportunities. We are excited to hear about your turnaround efforts and wish you a successful journey, Mike and Jay | 6/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 026 | Hidden Bank Accounts; Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P6 Premium | In This Episode: It is time to take those actions that will actually save your company. First, we had to stop the bleeding. That meant getting your Cash Dashboard set up, putting a Cash Freeze in place (that may have made you very unpopular), and refocusing all decision-making on cash speed. But, focusing on the bottom line will not save your company. So many firms make this mistake. You cannot cut deep enough or fast enough to turn a company around – you must also generate the cash. Cash Dashboard 1.5 Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 026 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 026 – Download Member Content Cash Dashboard 1.5 Premium – Download Member Content Cash Speed Worksheet – Download Member Content Cash Speed Worksheet Example – Download Member Content Today’s show will reveal some hidden bank accounts for generating this cash and show you exactly what to do with it. You must know how to use the little bit of cash that you generate today to get the cash speed cycle working in your favor, and you cannot afford mistakes. We will share with you what to do and what NOT to do in this show. In other words, we are moving from the bottom line to the top line of the income statement to help turn your business into a cash making engine. You will be interested in learning how to maximize cash with these hidden bank accounts if you are in a cash crisis or just in a slight downturn. The only thing it will cost you is to go through a paradigm shift. Remember, we pointed out at the beginning of this series that the first thing you need to do is throw away your old metrics in a cash crisis. You will not be operating in the Profit Mindset, but in the Cash Speed mindset. In this show, you will see just how lethal cost accounting and the way we value inventory can be to a company in a cash crisis. We will talk about how to maximize cash from your finished goods inventory, obsolete inventory, and aging inventory and give you the specific recommendations that you can use to do this, any time. Hidden Bank accounts on the Dashboard: The hidden bank accounts help you to finally get your cash speed above the red line (Cash Survival Level) on the Cash Dashboard. That is when you can take your first small breath of air because you are getting the dominoes falling in your favor; just the first few dominoes – but that is better than you were 2 days ago. You are in the cash rescue zone and you can select which products to invest in and get the cycle working in your favor. Your goal is to use that little bit of cash coming in to cover your redline expenses and buy just the right amount of materials for just the right products. We have created a worksheet for premium members to download (and an example worksheet) which makes this process easier, although it is a team process and you will need the input from your sales manager, production manager, and others. The remaining shows: This show marked the turning point from cutting and freezing costs, to generating cash. In the next shows we will share creative solutions that increase your cash speed while simultaneously building in production speed that will drive you forward. Finally, we will address all of the professional services firms who say, “What about me, I’m in a cash crisis but I don’t have any products to sell, only services.” You will be surprised to find out just how many options you do have! If you have come this far in your cash turnaround, we commend you for taking action and not giving up on your company, your future, or your people. Please write to us if we can help you in any way, Mike and Jay Post Show Question: What are the cash banks in your company, and is there anything holding you back from approaching them? | 6/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 025 | Cash Freeze; Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P5 | In This Episode: When a turnaround specialist enters a new job, on day 1, they immediately freeze all capital expenses down to the last penny. This is not to establish a police state, but as a matter of survival. When a patient is wounded, you must stop the bleeding or no amount of CPR will matter. This is the case with a business in a cash crisis. On day 1 of your cash crisis turnaround you will announce a cash freeze and take complete accountability for every expenditure (maintenance, printer cartridges, and IT upgrades included). In this show, we walk you through exactly when and how to do the freeze without creating enemies. We will use this as a bell that rings across the organization, which is critical to mark the embarkation of a turnaround journey. In a crisis, you must do this today if you have any chance of survival. Cash Dashboard 1.5 Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 025 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 025 – Download Member Content Cash Dashboard 1.5 Premium – Download Member Content I know of one client in the Specialty Chemicals industry that entered a 2 year long cash crisis. The CEO was eventually removed because he refused to “encroach on his people or micromanage.” We pointed out earlier in this series that the one thing you cannot afford in a cash crisis is inaction. It is an offense against the entire organization that this executive was retained only to allow his directs to move on with their own agendas. Strong leadership requires this first, decisive action – take it today! In this show, we will also share some unexpected places you should look to make a significant freeze – but never at the expense of cash speed. With your approval, there are certain variable costs that should be paid to generate higher cash returns per week. Here are some of the show’s counterintuitive recommendations: Do NOT purchase more materials than you need for the immediate cash cycle Do NOT combine freight to get a discount at the expense of cash speed Do NOT try to increase your utilization numbers by producing more than actually ordered. Do NOT combine dispatches to get a discount at the expense of cash speed And much more. The freeze begins now. Believing in your turn-around, Mike and Jay | 5/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 024 | The Cash Dashboard Part 2; Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P.4 | In this Episode: Today we continue our deep dive into the workings of the Cash Dashboard. Building your cash dashboard is the first step you and your cash team must take. In The Cash Dashboard Part 1 Show, you learned how to fill up the red Cash Survival line. This gave you explicit information about something you should always have in your business, although very few businesses ever have the discipline to monitor them; your weekly, monthly and quarterly cash expenses. Cash Dashboard 1.5 Basic Snapshot – Download Letter Template to Creditors – Download Word2011 | Word97 Cash Dashboard 1.5 Premium – Download Member Content Show Notes BTT 024 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 024 – Download Member Content We are trained in business to be in a profit-making mindset, and this is good under normal operating conditions. Unfortunately, in a cash crisis, the profit mindset will lead you even faster into bankruptcy or liquidation. With sometimes just a weeks of cash remaining, only the strategy of the Cash Dashboard can help you turnaround the company. This second part will build on the red line of cash survival and help you generate cash speed. You will learn the products that you should start selling and the products that you should stop selling today, as well. This is important. Your sales people are meeting clients, spending money trying to get a sale, and the products they are selling are the slow cash movers, not the fast cash movers. You need to take action immediately. In a cash crisis, you cannot waste hours, let alone days. Get started with the actions we advise in this show. There are several key questions we answer for you in this show: Which products should you be selling? How should you measure cash returns? How do you increase the cash speed? How do you know when you are at a cash turnaround? How much cash should you spend on raw materials? This is the level of detail you need to address in just your first steps if you hope to turnaround your company. The future shows in this series will build on your cash dashboard, helping you to make the decisions every day that will generate more cash volume and more cash speed, until you finally hit the turnaround level. You can make it if you are willing to take action, Best regards, Mike and Jay | 5/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 023 | Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P3 – Intro to Cash Speed P2 | In This Episode: STOP! Put down the phone. You may be on the verge of calling your creditors, partners, and family to tell them you are going to have to close the business after a long financial battle. If you are willing to take the steps we identify in this show, you may be calling them in just a matter of days with a very different story. Your goal is to prove you can be a viable business by taking specific actions that give you the best chance of winning with cash speed. If you make it through the first few steps and survive the next 2 weeks, you will likely turn the entire business around. Even better, the actions you take in the cash crisis will lay a foundation to catapult you ahead of the competition – if you are willing to take action! Cash Dashboard 1.5 Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 023 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 023 – Download Member Content Cash Dashboard 1.5 Premium – Download Member Content We set the stage last week to take you from cash crisis to cash turnaround. This week we are in a position to understand the first steps you must take if you hope to survive and win in this economy. Think about the situation so many small and medium firms find themselves in as the recession deepens (yes, the recession is deepening in many markets, despite a leveling and even slight up turn in other markets). Even in a great economy, 99.7% of all companies cannot afford top tools and advice. If they cannot afford the Ferrari price tags when times are good, how will they afford them when they need those tools and advice the most, during a turnaround? This is the passion of Business Transformation Tools. We provide the management hardware you need to transform your business, especially in a cash crisis. This series will give you the who, what, where, when, why and how of managing in crisis mode, taking steps to rescue your company, and giving you the advice that even top consultants do not have (I know, I’ve paid the Ferrari price tags and been disappointed!). A final question for you: If you are in a cash crisis, what do you really have to lose by taking the aggressive actions that could save your company and career? This show is going to be exciting as we discuss the step-by-step turnaround plan including the responsibilities you MUST take over TODAY! We will help you set up a Cash Team Establish Cash Meetings And most importantly set up your Cash Dashboard You will take over ALL cash expense responsibility – TODAY You will begin a Cash Freeze And more in the next shows! If you are coming to this series in a cash crisis, we know the power of this methodology is your last, best chance for survival. But we offer you more than that here, you will find that taking these actions bakes into your company a new ethic of responsiveness, improvement, speed, and analytics. These are topics you could spend years devoted to, long after the doors of your company shut! A better approach is to harness the tools here, such as the Cash Dashboard, to lead your company and install these best practices in real time, learning as you go. That is really the only way to save your company and win! Believing in your turn-around, Mike and Jay | 5/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 022 | The Cash Dashboard; Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P.2 | In this Episode: Today we will be taking a deep dive into the workings of the Cash Dashboard, and the steps you’ll take to turnaround your company. The Cash Dashboard is a surprisingly powerful and visual tool that forces your team to think through the reality of your cash position, and enables you to take the aggressive action that will accelerate cash speed. You will set your Cash Survival, Cash Rescue, and Cash Turnaround Levels on the dashboard and drive your company to make it first above the Red Survival line, and then moving ever closer to the Green Cash Turnaround line. This is the only tool of its kind that provides you a heads up display of your progress in a cash crisis, and allows you to track sales and cash returns in real time. We’ve worked hard to ensure it is simple enough to build on a wall with your Cash Team, while being robust enough to handle almost any kind of company. Cash Dashboard 1.5 Basic Snapshot – Download Show Notes BTT 022 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 022 – Download Member Content Cash Dashboard 1.5 Premium – Download Member Content Cash Speed Worksheet – Download Member Content Cash Speed Worksheet Example – Download Member Content Cash Crisis – Cash Team 1st Meeting Agenda – Download Member Content Are you interested in knowing the specific cash turnaround steps to take? This 2 part show on the Cash Dashboard will take you through the steps so that you can see the strategy from beginning to end, and help you to understand the mechanics of the Cash Dashboard while you are learning. In part 1, you will learn the steps to take that ensure your immediate survival. We will share who should be on your cash team, and what your meetings should be like. Remember, if you are in a true cash crisis, you can say good bye to sleeping for a while. These next 2 to 4 weeks will literally determine the future of your business. You will be busy, but we will help you direct your efforts to the few critical actions and decisions for the best chance of winning. You can do it if you are willing to TAKE ACTION! By the end of today’s show, you will know which specific items to track down immediately so that you can put the Red Line on the Cash Dashboard. All of your fixed expenses divided out across your week will help you determine how much cash speed you must generate in week 1, 2, 3, etc. Buckle up, if you want to dig your company out of a cash crisis, this is the series for you! We at Business Transformation Tools know how hard it is to turn a company around when you don’t have solid information and advice on what to do each step of the way. What is worse, most of the information in text books and consulting services is absolutely wrong when you are in a cash crisis. We will help you in any way that we can if you are in this situation. Listen to all of the shows and don’t hesitate to reach out to us with your specific questions. One last comment: we have a fundamental belief that has paid off time and time again in our own careers: “Your only hope is in taking action. Inaction is the one thing you cannot afford more than any other expense!” Don’t wait, get started today – You Can Still Win! Best regards, Mike and Jay | 5/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 021 | Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide P1 – Intro to Cash Speed | In This Episode: You have found real hope for companies facing a total cash crisis. You may even be closing your doors in 2 weeks – but there is hope if you are willing to act on the step-by-step advice, and use the hands on tools we share in this series. You will need to start now, there is not time to waste in a cash turnaround, and you will need to set up your cash team, cash dashboard, speed offerings, and more. You will be changing most of the way you look at your company – overnight! Let’s get started! Show Notes BTT 021 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 021 – Download Member Content In this new series, we are introducing the Cash Crisis Survival Guide. Most successful business people will face a cash crisis at least once in their careers, most look back on it with anything but satisfaction. Do you realize that handling business decisions in a cash crisis is completely different from handling business decisions in regular profit-making conditions? Most people do not realize that the very decisions they are making to help save the company in a cash crisis are actually destroying the company at a faster rate! You may be thinking, “Sure. That’s true for other people. But not me. I’m too smart for that.” Let me just ask you the first question that you need to ask in a cash crisis, and you will see how counterintuitive the cash crisis world really is: “In a cash crisis, in order to turn the business around, what do you think is the most important metric?” You may be thinking the amount of cash – that is close, but fundamentally wrong, too. You may be thinking it is profit or margin – no – that is also fundamentally wrong. You might be thinking operational expenses – also wrong. If you make decisions based on any of these criteria, you will move your organization deeper into the red. I should tell you that I have been guilty of all three in my career! There is one and only one metric that you must focus on, and you will need to listen to today’s show to gain this insight. This series on Cash Crisis: A Survival Guide could not be more urgent for people. Just today, as I type this message, I saw another one of my favorite local stores bite the dust. I never even knew they were in trouble – and they made the best hot wings in town! This economy is claiming more and more businesses, more and more hopes and dreams. We MUST take action today to avert any more crises. The fact is, almost everything in print or in the public domain on what to do in a cash crisis is sadly a waste of time. When you are shutting the doors in 2 weeks because you simply can’t pay the bills, there is no time for hype and untested theories. Now is the time to ACT! This is so close to the heart of what we do in Business Transformation Tools, hands-on tools that transform you business and your career – tools that just work when you need them to. Today we will discuss what a cash crisis really is, and the grave mistakes companies make believing they are doing what is best for the company. We will give you the one focus that you need more than anything else in such a dry time – if you get this right, you will probably survive – if you get this wrong, you have no chance of survival. If you are not in a cash crisis, but you have tight budgets or you think you may be heading into a cash crisis in the near future, listen to this series, you may be able to avert the disaster before it even strikes. Folks, this series is something truly unique and powerful. When we say we are committed to hands-on transformation, you are going to feel it and live it in this series. Many of these insights are just not available anywhere else in the world of business management training; and when you are facing a crisis, you don’t have time to learn as you go. Follow these specific action steps we lay out, and you will find the high[...] | 5/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 020 | Identify REAL Cost Savings Part 3 | In This Episode: In this final part of the series on Identifying Real Cost Savings, we will tell you exactly what not to do and what to do with your cash and management efforts. It is absolutely essential to your career and to your business that you apply this advice and overcome the fallacies that are so pervasive in the business world about cost savings. With so much of our efforts being misdirected, is it any wonder that only a small fraction of our projects and process improvements actually move the needle for the business. Real bottom line savings and top line growth seem like a promised land that is unattainable. It is, usually, unattainable – until you break away from these old patterns and adopt the necessary changes to make clear, focused decisions. Show Notes BTT 020 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 020 – Download Member Content What measures should you put in place? If every decision must be weighed against the impact on the flow of profit through your constraints, then we need to have the right numbers in place to help us do this. The typical measures we use in business such as traditional product costing and the margins they generate will only lead us to make poor decisions. We may, for example, believe that our product cost for a tube of toothpaste is $4. This seems right because we are placing a portion of every expense in the business on that poor tube of toothpaste. We make it account not only for material costs and transportation costs, but also warehousing, employee healthcare, electricity, sales and general accounting, and on and on. You get the idea. That tube of toothpaste has nothing to do with the fixed costs. An analogy to help you understand: This is much like having more kids so that the mortgage of your home can be divided over more heads. Did you save money? It sounds ridiculous… Then why do we do this in business and believe we are making brilliant decisions? In today’s show we’ll help you focus the use of your cash where it counts, we’ll show you where cost savings can actually be found, and we’ll give you the formula that changes the way marketing and sales impacts your company. Stay tuned for something special in our upcoming series for a cash crisis: All you have to do is drive around for a few minutes and you will see how this economy is closing doors and destroying businesses. We have decided to release our Cash Dashboard and dedicate a series starting next week that will help businesses go from cash crisis to cash cow! Really. If you are closing your doors in 2 weeks because you don’t have the cash to pay suppliers or keep the lights on, this series is dedicated to you. We will walk you through the specific steps that you can take today, tomorrow and the rest of this week that will immediately generate the cash you need while installing the transformation that will eventually make you profitable in a way that wasn’t possible before the crisis. We will be telling you more about this as the series gets closer, but feel free to contact us if you are in this situation today and you would like to know what to do. There is a light at the end of the tunnel if you are willing to fight and take action! In this economy, it is so important to make wise decisions with your time and money. We know you can be much more fruitful if you understand how to apply both and we wish you all the best as you go through these series and make changes in your own business and career. Sincerely, Mike and Jay | 4/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 019 | The Project Control Tower FAQ; From Project Chaos to Control P7 – Premium | In this Episode: Today we have something special. We answer the most common questions and really help you to customize the Project Control Tower to your unique situation. The great power of Business Transformation Tools is their adaptability. No business tool is useful if it cannot be applied to the specifics of your situation. Unfortunately, so many of the solutions we in the business world purchase prove to be a waste as they never seem to work quite right in our own process and system. Why is that? We try to mold our process to fit their solution! That is wrong and always ends with people saying, “See… I told you that stuff doesn’t work here.” Business Solutions should adapt to the business, not the other way around! Show Notes BTT 019 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 019 – Download Member Content Today, you will hear some questions and answers that span the range from dealing with conflict, to building the Project Control Tower, and even whether or not to use Excel. In other words, we will give you some rules of thumb and guidance on using the Project Control Tower so that you can customize it to meet your needs. We work diligently to make our tools visual and simple to use, but the principles behind the tools are enormously powerful. Approaches such as Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Business Process Management, Balances Scorecards, Cash Turnaround Diagnostics, Decision Paths, Waste Elimination and many more are literally baked into these tools. I think this Frequently Asked Question show will reveal how robust these visual tools can be in helping you to implement these powerful solutions and methodologies, while making them a ROUTINE part of your business. The Questions we answer in this show are: Should I put the Project Leaders’ names on the Project Control Tower, publicly? What specific talking points should I use when I introduce my team to the Project Control Tower to generate enthusiasm, not resistance. I still need some of my people available for projects that aren’t on the tower and random weekly requests, what should I do? What do I say to the Project Leader whose project is not moving well, especially now that it is visual and obvious? Why shouldn’t I just do this in an Excel spreadsheet? How big should the Project Control Tower be? How can it be made practical and visual? Our Project Control Tower status meetings are taking just as long as the old status meetings, what should I do? How do I deal with projects that should be canceled after they’re already in flight? How does the Project Control Tower fit with the other Business Transformation Tools, such as Profit Maps, Waste Maps, Project Flow Maps, DIMWIT FOOL wastes, etc.? These questions are a lot of fun to answer and they often have surprising, counter-intuitive answers. Please enjoy the show and feel free to send in more questions, we will respond directly and put together future FAQ shows to share the answers with over 130 countries! This show also begins with an update on Business Transformation Tools and Mike’s consulting work. Thank you for making this show a wonderful success and a fun way to share this content, Mike and Jay Recommended Resource: Manager Tools Podcasts | 4/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 018 | Identify REAL Cost Savings Part 2 | In This Episode: 99% of the cash you spend in business is misapplied because it fails to identify, focus, and improve where it counts most. Yes, you do get some returns when you invest in new employees here or there. Yes, you see some spikes in productivity immediately after a training seminar. You may even see your efficiencies improve when you put in new machines and replace Windows Vista with Windows 7… But most of your returns are not found there. Most of your business results come from the 1% of your cash that happens to be directed at the constraints in cost, quality, and speed. What would happen to your business and your career if you could figure out what the constraints are and flip the way you invest upside down? Put 99% in the constraints and 1% everywhere else. Show Notes BTT 018 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 018 – Download Member Content Remember the key from Part 1 in this series: Every decision must be weighed against the impact on the flow of profit through your constraints! Get this right, and you will make very different decisions than you are currently making about overtime, layoffs and hiring, training, capital outlays, vendor usage, prioritizing the mix of products, which markets to penetrate and so much more. Today, we will discuss what those decisions are and how you should make them to see real bottom line savings. A larger part of the problem is the great misunderstanding around what products actually cost to produce. You will see that the numbers we have are not only unreliable, they are dead wrong. If we use them to justify investments, we end up misapplying our precious cash. Even if you are trained to use IRR, Payback, EVA, etc., you will still get the wrong answer because we are not asking the right question: How will this impact the constraint? We get more practical today in giving you specific advice that may buck the status quo a bit in your workplace. Nothing sells like success; and if you want to sell these improvements in your workplace, apply them right where you are and let the results sell themselves. Download our new article that covers many of these topics. Stay tuned for something special in our upcoming series for a cash crisis: All you have to do is drive around for a few minutes and you will see how this economy is closing doors and destroying businesses. We have decided to release our Cash Dashboard and dedicate a series coming just around the corner that will help businesses go from cash crisis to cash cow! Really. If you are closing your doors in 2 weeks because you don’t have the cash to pay suppliers or to keep the lights on, this series is dedicated to you. We will walk you through the specific steps that you can take today, tomorrow and the rest of this week that will immediately generate the cash you need while installing the transformation that will eventually make you profitable in a way that wasn’t possible before the crisis. We will be telling you more about this as the series gets closer, but feel free to contact us if you are in this situation today and you would like to know what to do. There is a light at the end of the tunnel if you are willing to fight and take action! We believe in you and your ability to transform your business and your career, Mike and Jay | 4/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 017 | Get 200-300% from Your LSS Black Belts; The Project Control Tower for Lean Six Sigma – PCT Part 6 | In this Episode: In this show, we will reveal how to get 200-300% more value out of your black belts by using The Project Control Tower and the 7 recommendations we make in this show. As a Master Black Belt for a consulting agency, I have led dozens of deployments for various clients, some global and some local – some successful and some losers, too. After designing, teaching, coaching, and supporting Lean Six Sigma deployments for over 20 clients in just the past 3 years, I can say unequivocally what NOT to do! If you adopt the methods and advice we give in this podcast, your success will multiply with LSS. Show Notes BTT 017 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 017 – Download Member Content Here is a test: Close your eyes and picture yourself running a recent project. Picture the conversations you would have and the changes you would like to make. Are you arguing, brainstorming, agreeing? Now, STOP. THINK… Where are you in your mind? You are in a conference room!!! Or, you are in front of your computer screen. Do you see a problem with this? Using ROUTINE, you must do what Lean teaches us and go to the Gemba (the actual place). 1st Recommendation: Use ROUTINE to Drive LSS It is a common mistake to force-fit every improvement into a DMAIC structure and bring in the Belts (process improvement specialists). When the means becomes the ends actual improvement dwindles away. We must get away from this ineffective model of training only specialist resources, and move to training our people at the ground floor. I encourage you to listen to our series on how to make transformation ROUTINE in shows 4-7 and learn how you can make LSS, and process transformation, ROUTINE. Using the Project Control Tower, LSS practitioners can benefit from being forced through the selection and sequencing steps, which will often lead to freezing existing projects that should have been abandoned in favor of truly profitable projects. 2nd Recommendation: Do NOT use Belts as Project Leaders. This is such a grave mistake! You invest so much time and money into the specialist training and then waste these resources running projects (making phone calls, working the politics, etc.). At first, this seems correct. But consider the real value of these resources in helping the organization to improve. Is there a better way to maximize their value added contribution? Consider further the cost of the opportunity you are missing. What if they could complete 5 projects in the time it takes them to close 2 projects? Use belts as co-leaders or consulting support for their true value – helping other project leaders technical support for 5 projects. Assign a project leader to do the data crunching, setting up PERT diagrams and team meetings, making powerpoint charts, etc. The few specialized resources that we have in companies are getting fewer. Therefore, what is the way to maximize their value add? On the Project Control Tower, add a name next to the leader’s column, and allow a given black belt to support up to 5 projects. In the premium show notes, we actually show you exactly how to do this 3rd Recommendation: Start with Selection – FREEZE the wrong projects If you have gone through any kind of LSS training, you have experienced this problem. On the first day of training we ask for people to put their hands in the air and let us know if they do not currently have an assigned project. What is the problem? We are skipping the elements of Project Control that make it successful. You are using one of your largest investments based on time and cost of training, and you are just picking projects that ‘seem’ like good ones. This skips the idea of mapping profit and selecting projects focused on the constraints. Think about the lost value – one of your most trained resources was off learning LSS for 6 months and they might end up with a project focused on reducing the time to generate a repo[...] | 4/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 016 | Identify REAL Cost Savings Part 1 | In This Episode: COST is a ’4 letter word’ in many plants. Either we don’t really understand the costs or we are trained not to think about other factors that seem like costs (overtime, manpower, outsourcing, etc.). We are supposed to aggressively minimize costs, even though we don’t know what they are. Do you realize that we are actually TAMPERING with profits and causing higher costs, until we understand exactly how costs really impact the profit of any given profit flow? Because of this, most of our so-called cost savings and predicted returns on investments are mirages, not reality. Show Notes BTT 016 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 016 – Download Member Content In this show, we will begin to eradicate false beliefs that still plague operations from manufacturing to hospitals and everything in between. No matter what systems you are using to track expenses and costs in your facilities, you need to listen to this to find out how they may be misleading you. Our commonly held beliefs are wrong and will lead us to make decisions that seem beautiful and heroic, but are actually eroding the profits of the company or organization! There is another reality we must all face, and this may be preaching to the choir. At least 50% of cost saving efforts such as reengineering and layoffs, FAIL! They fail to yield any bottom line savings at all! In spite of massive effort, humungous sacrifice, tough decisions, fighting day and night to get results – the final outcome after all of this is 50% chance of NOTHING! In “It’s Not Luck“, the hero, Alex Rogo, explains, “Every time bottom line improvements are pressed for, the instinctive action is to cut expenses, laying people off. We need to put this effort into figuring out how to get more market…” He discovers that “Wall Street is no longer impressed by such actions (even efforts to reduce costs by 7% or more). The latest statistics show that more than half the companies that laid off did not improve their bottom line.” (Goldratt) What does this mean for those of us who are working every day to make our companies and organization (and hopefully our careers) successful? We must cut through the false notions of cost; and we must do it NOW! There is no time to make mistakes when it comes to precious cash investments and the cost of capital is raising daily for companies. Therefore, even if you are familiar with accounting standards (especially if you are familiar with them), listen to this series we are beginning today and find out how to identify the real costs in your organization, as well as avoiding so many common mistakes. Here is the key: Every decision must be weighed against the impact on the flow of profit through your constraints! Get this right, and you will make very different decisions than you are currently making about overtime, layoffs and hiring, training, capital outlays, vendor usage, prioritizing the mix of products, which markets to penetrate and so much more. We believe this series’ concept is essential to success in making transformation routine and look forward to your comments, Mike and Jay | 3/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 015 | Managing with the Project Control Tower Part 2; From Project Chaos to Control P4 – Premium | In this Episode: Projects are the way work gets done in every organization. Hate them or love them, you need them! Learn how to complete them in half the time and with superior consistency in today’s show, the second part of taking you step-by-step through using the Project Control Tower in daily management. The first part of this show went through selecting a project, and managing priorities on the project runway, and the handoff to project leaders as the project goes into flight. In this show we finish off the remaining steps on the project control tower and give you the tips and tactics you need to walk your team through the project flight path and project closeout. Show Notes BTT 015 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 015 – Download Member Content Even more important, you will see the total picture of how to use the burn rates and project lessons to drive the right behaviors across your entire team. In this show, we will also teach you how to drive team performance through your team with our recommended reward and review process. Hint: You will find out that the 360 Degree Review process and almost every other Performance Review Process is entirely unfair. Learn a way to adopt fairness for your team and measure them by the teams Project Control Tower performance. In stead of rivalry, for once, you will have real team work! We recommend that you begin with our free production: “Cut Your Project Times in 1/2 with ZERO Added Cost!” and the previous project control tower shows, “From Project Chaos to Control – Part 1″ and “Rolling Out the Project Control Tower”. The power of Project Control happens in your daily life by making the actions you and your team need to take to cut project times in half In the previous show in this series, we answered the who, what, where, when, why, and how of rolling it out; it is our goal in this show to answer the who, what, where, when, why and how of using the tool once it is already rolled out. Here are a some of the additional insights from this second part of Managing with the Project Control Tower from today’s show: Project Burn Rates help you stay ahead of the project buffers. This protects you from late starts, late handoffs, and late finishes that currently plague all of your projects. The problem with so many other project approaches is that we burn all of the extra time allowances and budgets up early in the process. Find out in this show how to manage proactively with these simple tools. The solution for procrastination is in this show! Our tools will fight the Student’s Syndrome of various team members to wait until just a day or two before their actions are due, and then “cram for the exam.” We also give you the insights to start a very important checklist that helps your quality, timeliness, and consistency mature with every project. We call it the preflight checklist. It is our goal to help you actually coach your team through these stages, and we give you the specifics of topics to cover in your coaching conversation. Remember, you do not need to be the master trainer as a coach. You are simply holding the project leaders accountable for the deliverables and helping them move along the flight path. We explain the specific action items that your team members should take and WE WILL SAVE YOU HOURS in project meetings by using the advice we have in this show. You will get exactly what you need from team members daily with a minimum of work or labor. This solves the problem of always hunting for project updates. Finally, how do you push back on the Vice President when their pet project comes rolling down hill on your head? We will give you the exact words on how to handle this difficult situation. We will also share how to incorporate their project if all else fails without disrupting your Project Control. You will also hear about the Project Flow Map and the ROUTINE process [...] | 3/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 014 | Master and Control the BIG 3; From Project Chaos to Control P4 | In This Episode: Have you ever wondered why each and every due date never seems to be enough? There are 3 fundamental questions you must answer to fight back against this due date scourge. Today’s show will go over not only what they are, but how to answer them – and the crazy thing is that most people do NOT know these fundamentals about their key processes. Show Notes BTT 014 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 014 – Download Member Content When I ask my classrooms to name them, I get many fantastic answers: overtime, downtime, staffing, working capital, scheduling, training, etc. These answers are good, but they are not fundamental. These issues are symptoms of the real underlying process definition. Tune in today to learn what the BIG 3 are and how to control them – don’t let another day slip by with the BIG 3 working against you. If you learn to ask and answer these 3 questions about your key processes, you will being to move from chaos to control because the BIG 3 work for you or against you. Are you struggling to identify the real losses and wastes in your processes? You will not be successful as long as the BIG 3 are unmanaged and uncontrolled. Also, in this show, we answer an important question about Project Control: Why is it necessary to cut 85% of project clutter to get a 50% reduction in Project lead time? The short answer is that all of us, as part of the privilege of being human, wait too long and tweak too much. It’s called Student’s Syndrome and Parkinson’s Law. Student’s Syndrome tells us that we will cram for a test the night before the exam whether the professor sets the exam date in 1 week or 1 month. The same thing happens with project activity. This is why bosses push down hard on timelines, figuring that you will cram the project to completion at the end of 1 week, rather than at the end of 4 weeks. Our tool, The Project Control Tower is the antidote to Student’s Syndrome because it drives visual control and progress. It’s also the perfect weapon when the boss pushes down on your timelines. Now that your timelines are real, visual, and controlled, the boss’s real complaints are addressed. If you are working on it, maybe they don’t need to push so hard… Parkinson’s Law is a witticism that says “Work expands to fill the time allotted for it.” Let’s say it’s Friday afternoon and the boss wants a project report on Monday, most project leaders will tweak and tweak and tweak until time runs out on Monday morning. There are text boxes to move, wordings to rephrase, and slides to adjust. If the boss said Tuesday afternoon, what would you do? Most people would tweak and tweak and tweak some more! We’ve all been in this situation countless times. You roll your eyes as the manager asks for “just one more slice of the data, just one more rephrased letter to the customer, just one more…” until time runs out! This show is likely one of the most fundamental we could offer and we hope you leverage it immediately in your own work, projects, and processes! Best of luck to you on your journey of transformation, Mike and Jay | 3/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 013 | Managing with the Project Control Tower; From Project Chaos to Control P3 – Premium | In this Episode: In the previous show, you learned how to begin using the Project Control Tower – but what do you do next? It is time to get very hands-on in this series. While there is no better way to kick-start a transformation than to cut 50% out of your project lead times, the real power comes in managing your daily work in a visual, controlled manner. This show will walk you through the daily activities from selecting a project, preliminary steps you will want to take before a project hits the runway, and what actually happens in project takeoff as you coach your project leaders. This show is loaded with advice on how to actually use and leverage the tool, how to say “no” to projects without offending powerful people, and more. Show Notes BTT 013 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 013 – Download Member Content We recommend that you begin with our free production: “Cut Your Project Times in 1/2 with ZERO Added Cost!” and the previous project control tower shows, “From Project Chaos to Control – Part 1″ and “Rolling Out the Project Control Tower”. However, if you already have the project control tower on your wall and you’re ready for action, this show is the step-by-step guide to managing the work in your area and using the tool with your team to deliver successful projects, and ensure you sustain the 50% project time reduction. In the previous show in this series, we answered the who, what, where, when, why, and how of rolling it out; it is our goal in this show to answer the who, what, where, when, why and how of using the tool once it is already rolled out. Here are a few insights on managing with the Project Control Tower from today’s show: Project Selection is not automatic. You must go through a selection process that deciphers the impact of every project on the constraints in quality, cost and speed. The best tool to accomplish that is our Profit Map (the subject of an upcoming series) You can say “No” when powerful people push to start the project immediately by bringing them to your Project Control Tower and showing them the consistency and speed your new tool delivers. Executives confide in us that their real worry isn’t how fast the project is getting done – they just believe that if they don’t push, their managers will let the projects just sit idly. Your Project Control Tower tells them, visually, that you have a system that maintains flow and progress and that will almost always satisfy their real concerns. Vague “Problems” do NOT a Project make! Before a project can make it onto the runway, you must answer 5 Focusing Questions that we reveal in the show. Before a Project can get onto the project runway, we reveal how to quickly estimate its timeline and create a single bank account of time! THIS IS POWERFUL. If you have done project management in the past, you know that even when you follow all the rules of PERT/CPM – it works against you. You are behind before you begin and that feeling never leaves. Why? Because PERT/CPM does NOT work – we reveal why in todays show and give you the surprising solution of Critical Chain and Lean methodologies. It is surprising because the tower makes it so simple! Once a Project is on the Runway – it is where you manage priorities. The runway is not static, but fluid. As real time business needs change, you adapt. As burn rates on specific project go from green to yellow to red, they may trump other projects in the runway Don’t forget to download the show note presentations which are excellent teaching resources when you share these topics, or refer to them yourself as you are making change happen in your area. Stay tuned for the next shows in this particular series: Answer all of your FAQs like: how to select and prioritize projects, what to do when your boss forces you to do more projects than yo[...] | 3/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 010 | Making Product Innovation Routine P3 | In This Episode: Stop wasting time and money on empty promises with innovation and product improvement. Start using the ROUTINE of product improvement. Access Real Innovation with the ROUTINE of product & design improvement: There is so much latent value that you can access when you apply ROUTINE innovation to improve your products and services. Unfortunately, most managers are paying a high price for a buzzword – innovation – and getting very few actual results for their investment. It may be under the guise of diagnostics, software, advice or designs support, but companies are paying for services that don’t close the real gap with innovation. ROUTINE innovation closes the gap by providing the actual process of improvement for designs and the straightforward tools and tactics to ensure designs, products, and services deliver valuable services with speed, quality, and reliability. Show Notes BTT 010 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 010 – Download Member Content Here we will go deeper with ROUTINE innovation. If you listened before to shows 4 – 7, you were introduced to how to make process transformation ROUTINE. Today’s show will help you to harness that latent potential in improving your actual product or service. It is literally 10 times as valuable as process improvement. That is not just my experience, it is also the rule of 10 Juran taught us. We will show you that ROUTINE applies even more powerfully in improving products and designing high value new products than it does in process improvement. Ask yourself this question: “How many literal Ferraris could you have purchased for the money you’ve spent on innovation and improvement offerings?” Companies invest in Lean and/or Six Sigma, often they’ll then invest in Design for Lean Six Sigma and Lean Development or TOC, and it ordinarily becomes a mess in large companies. Smaller and medium companies don’t have access to many of these tools – and as it turns out, that is a blessing in disguise. We need one solutions, not dozens, that drives improvements and makes innovation ROUTINE. To Tollgate or Not To Tollgate: In today’s show, we also address an overwhelming and costly problem with design, innovation and product improvement efforts. Consider that Lean Six Sigma DMAIC projects require 5 formal tollgates? These are the formal meetings that dissect the performance, findings and results of the project as it progresses. These formal meetings are actually show-stoppers for most organizations. If you have just 50 projects in a single year, that is 250 tollgate meetings! That’s in addition to the countless meetings you’re already attending! What value do these meetings add? Not much – at least not the way we use them today as an IQ exam for Black Belts and Green Belts or Design Engineers. Today, you will find out when you should and when you should not use formal tollgates. There is a much better way to approach this in organizations that avoids the waste of “death by meeting.” Our approach is built on the best practices of A3 Management, while still making ROUTINE innovation and ROUTINE process improvement part of the fabric of your organization. In fact, you may be surprised how infrequently you actually need formal gated reviews. In the majority of cases, as we will discuss, this coaching model is more effective than a toll-gated approach, without losing the powerful decision points along the process. We reserve the formal structure for where they are most valuable to the organization – all this and more in today’s show. What Are You Missing in the Premium Show? We hope you had a chance to join our premium shows and learn the how to apply the project control tower which will help you reduce project lead times by 50%. We are going deep into the details of this tool which makes critical chain, lean six sigma, and buffer manag[...] | 3/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 012 | Rolling Out the Project Control Tower; From Project Chaos to Control P2 – Premium | In this Episode: This is where you should begin with your team (or just by yourself) in rolling out the project control tower. There is no better way to kickstart a transformation than to cut 50% out of your project lead times across the board and bring order to chaos. You and your team will love the freedom that this visual tool can bring – and there is no software and no capital required (just a little petty cash at your local office store). Show Notes BTT 012 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 012 – Download Member Content We hope you listened already to our free production: “Cut Your Project Times in 1/2 with ZERO Added Cost!” and the previous show, “From Project Chaos to Control – Part 1″ that actually described the Control Tower and its 3 visual components. Now it is time to get hands-on and answer the who, what, where, when, why, and how of rolling it out. This show is action-packed with advice that covers how to communicate the changes, how to get your team involved, how many people to begin with, how to show the new method to your bosses and peers, and much more! In future shows about the Project Control Tower we will also reveal specific tweaks when you are selecting and controlling projects for a Lean Six Sigma deployment, we will also provide two complete shows on how to manage day-to-day using the project control tower, and you will learn a simple metric that is more valuable than charting project delays, project budgeting, and project progress. If you are looking for hands-on guidance to walk you through a transformation, this show will let you know just how detailed and actionable we intend to be. This is your chance to learn from the many failures and successes we’ve had with these tools. In fact, I am writing this blog entry just after teaching the Project Control Tower and beginning to implement it at one of the world’s largest telecomm providers (Hint: they just got the iPhone). Not only are we going to help cut their customer delivery and testing times dramatically, we are going to organize and control the flow of work with a tool that just works! Stay tuned! Together, in the next few episodes, we will not only give you the background and description of the project control tower but you will also get step-by-step advice and action plans to: Start using the Project Control Tower right where you are today. Answer all of your FAQs like: how to select and prioritize projects, what to do when your boss forces you to do more projects than you can handle, what is the key metric in project management, what to do about virtual teams, and more… We even have 2 shows dedicated to walking you through managing with a control tower action-by-action. If you are rolling out Lean Six Sigma – we have an entire show for you! Remember: You do not have to continue failing or struggling with projects. Success is a matter of applying project control. The Project Control Tower is not found anywhere else. You won’t read about this tool in a book. You won’t hear about it on any other website, seminar, or training material. It is our unique and powerful tool that harnesses the best practices of Lean Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Project Management, Queuing Theory, Work Control, and Critical Chain into one powerful – obvious – tool! And it is yours today, just for becoming a premium member. Don’t wait! Our introductory prices may only last for a few months as demand for our products is now growing in more than 100 countries. Thank you so much for listening to our shows and we wish you absolute success as you learn how to transform your business and career with straightforward, exclusive tools only available here! We wish you the best as you become a doer, and not just a hearer of transformation! Mike and Jay | 2/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 009 | Making Product Innovation Routine P2 | In This Episode: Many people believe innovation requires brilliance, but brilliance is baked into your business through innovative routines, not the other way around. Making product innovation routine means you don’t have to wait for lightning to strike, or a good idea to buck the system. You can improve your products and services right where you are, beginning today. Show Notes BTT 009 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 009 – Download Member Content There is a view of innovation that can be overcome by the right transformation tools: OLD View = Innovation is like waiting for Lightning to Strike NEW View = Make Innovation ROUTINE OLD View = Innovation is about Growth NEW View = Innovation is about Survival OLD View = Innovation is rare – hope to find it… NEW View = Innovation is Everywhere – make it ROUTINE What do innovative companies do differently from average companies? They have the same caliber of brilliance, peppered with some mediocrity here and there. They have some good products and some great products and some poor products, too. So what is different? If we look at companies that continually grow and innovate, it is because they are doing something very different with innovation itself. They bake innovation into their processes, and the best way to do this is make innovation ROUTINE. The average company is built on a few early innovations and they ride that wave for 10 years, at most. Unfortunately, most companies will not grow for more than 10 years! Why? If you are not innovating your products, you are slowly dying through commoditization. You just might not realize that the very products and services that give life to your business require new life every year, every quarter. Only the ROUTINE of innovation can accomplish that! If you are part of the community of improvers, this is a huge, untapped area of growth and success for you. Don’t wait around for a royal flush, install the ROUTINE of innovation. Listen today and find out that “For every penny you struggle to save in process improvement, there is a dollar to save with routine innovation for your existing and new products. We are playing with the pennies and missing out on the dollars!” TRYING HARD: Don’t get us wrong – Companies are trying hard to innovate. You can learn Design for Lean Six Sigma, utilize the Innovator’s Toolkits, install innovation software, use creative consultants, and perform “ideation” trainings. You can pay for benchmarks and buckets of options. Like many, you may be left more bewildered than before you started investigating. If you want real change, you need the tools that will hardwire innovation; not give you a grab bag of untested options… You need to learn ROUTINE! Business Transformation Tools is about providing you the hands-on tools to make innovation ROUTINE, without the Ferrari Price Tag! We wish you the best on your own journey of transformation, Mike and Jay Recommended Resource: Manager Tools Podcasts – Excellent Manager ‘Software’ | 2/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 011 | From Project Chaos to Control – Part 1 – Premium | In this Episode: Transform from Project Chaos to Project Control with a powerful, visual tool! There is only one word to describe project management as we know it today: Chaos. If you are a project manager, you need to implement control – but how? Today’s show will take the 4 steps of project control discussed in our free audio show “Cut Your Project Times in 1/2 with ZERO Added Cost!” one step deeper and give you the first look at our template for the Project Control Tower. Show Notes BTT 011 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 011 – Download Member Content This show is part of a Premium Series in which we offer the kind of tools that make transformation simply a matter of using the right tools – not a matter of luck! Not only will you learn the 4 steps and see the much anticipated Project Control Tower template, you can also download the template and show notes to guide your team as you begin implementing control. Stay tuned! Together, in the next few episodes, we will not only give you the background and description of the project control tower but you will also get step-by-step advice and action plans to: Start using the Project Control Tower right where you are today. Answer all of your FAQs like: how to select and prioritize projects, what to do when your boss forces you to do more projects than you can handle, what is the key metric in project management, what to do about virtual teams, and more… We even have 2 shows dedicated to walking you through managing with a control tower action-by-action. If you are rolling out Lean Six Sigma – we have an entire show for you! Our goal is to equip you to move from chaos to control while answering all of your questions along the way. Whether you are managing a factory area, an HR area, a finance area, bank, restaurant, or law practice, you all have one thing in common – we are actually project managers. If our projects are out of control, so are we. This is why projects are running late, coming up short, and overshooting their budgets. You do not have to continue failing at projects. Success is a matter of applying project control. The Project Control Tower is not found anywhere else. You won’t read about this tool in a book. You won’t hear about it on any other website, seminar, or training material. It is our unique and powerful tool that harnesses the best practices of Lean Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Project Management, Queuing Theory, Work Control, and Critical Chain into one powerful – obvious – tool! And it is yours today, just for becoming a premium member. Don’t wait! Our introductory prices will only last for a few months as demand for our products is now growing in more than 70 countries. Thank you so much for listening to our shows and we wish you absolute success as you learn how to transform your business and career with straightforward, exclusive tools only available here! Good luck on your journey of transformation, Mike and Jay | 2/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 008 | Making Product Innovation Routine P1. | In This Episode: Have you ever considered that Product Innovation is just as much our responsibility as managers as process improvement? Today, we’ll show you how we are often fighting for pennies in process transformation, while missing out on dollars in product innovation. You will discover that there is 10 times (literally) more value in applying the ROUTINE of organization improvement in Product Innovation than Process Transformation. You may already be hitting your mental brakes when you hear that. As soon as we say innovation, most people check out mentally because people tend to believe it is not their job. NOT TRUE. If you desire success in your business and career, you must build ROUTINE into the process, product, profit and people. Show Notes BTT 008 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 008 – Download Member Content Unfortunately, this word – innovation – is overused and watered down in the market. It’s now a fuzzy word that sometimes means brainstorming and other times strategizing. Business Transformation Tools gives you tools to create winning products and services by making tangible innovation ROUTINE. We want real value that customers will pay for. Not fuzziness and art; we want ROUTINE innovation. We’ll help you install the processes that support and enable innovation into the product no matter where you are in your organization. If you’ve listened to our previous shows, you are already familiar with the building blocks of transformation: applying ROUTINE in each of the 4Ps. That is good news; after all, there are only four areas, not 20 or 200… However, product improvement is an untapped focus area, one of the easiest to improve, and can set your career and business on a new trajectory of success. We’ll show you how. These next few shows will lay the foundation of tools and practices to address Product Innovation. This is a truly under-represented opportunity and we hope you find these shows both insightful and helpful in your journey of transformation. Good luck, Mike and Jay Recommended Resource: Manager Tools Podcasts – Excellent Manager ‘Software’ | 2/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT S001 | PREVIEW: Cut Your Project Times in HALF with ZERO Added Cost! | Audio Preview: Today we are providing a professional audio production sharing our hands-on tool to “Cut your Project Times in 1/2 with ZERO Added Cost! We considered calling this program: “Slash 85% of the Nonsense and Clutter from Your Work Without Getting Fired!” but thought it might be a little over the top – but still true. You see, either way, today’s tool is going to set a great portion of your time free to focus on what truly matters to your career and your business. Buckle up your seat belts please! Of course, this is easy to do if you are just going to throw resources at your projects, but we will show you how to slash your project times in 1/2 without spending anything. If you don’t have a healthy office supply closet, you might find yourself spending a whopping $40 total at your local supply store. Today’s audio production will explore a powerful methodology that cuts your project lead times in 1/2 BEFORE you even begin an individual project. In fact, you will discover today that no project leader, no matter how skilled they may be, can overcome the inescapable fate of “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” Therefore, the largest gains to be made in our daily firefighting cycles is in how we control them before they begin, not necessarily after they are officially started and teams begin their endless rounds of meetings. We will have tools that follow today’s free show that address these issues as well, and we believe you will find them immediately applicable to the projects you already have on your plate. Simply sign up below to receive this FREE training! Listen to a Preview At Business Transformation Tools, we reveal the hands-on tools that overcome these problems. We are not interested in helping you be 10% or 50% better than your current methodologies. We want to help you breakthrough to orders of magnitudes in speed, quality, cost, and delivery! With that in mind, today we will show you the steps of project control and project management with actionable advice you can implement immediately to access these time savings in your projects. Fortunately, it is not hard to stand out in the world of project managers. We will talk about an astounding failure rate that 18,000 executives reported in an annual project survey and how all of our project management software, training, body of knowledge, and expertise has accomplished a shift in that success rate – but not nearly as much as you would have hoped for in the past 20 years! You will learn how to Select, Sequence, Secure, and Supply your projects, and how to improve the process over and over as you and your team learn from each cycle of projects. The results we get with these techniques are astonishing, counter-intuitive and fun! Because of this, we will also share some of the math that is at work behind the recommendations we make. This is so important to your business and career success, because the projects you are working on will probably define your career for several years. For example, you may be turning around a portion of a business, designing new products and services, stabilizing a department that has undergone recent turmoil, growing a department, or solving problems for clients, customers, and management. All of these things require projects – investments of time and money from a team of people that draw on common resources. Don’t wait one more day to implement these straightforward, hands-on tools in your workflow today. You will turn heads in your company and begin to form the habits that will take you and your business to the top. You won’t find these resources anywhere else in a form easy to implement with paper and pen – right where you are with what you have. In other words, we’re not hawking some software magic pill, we are giving you the real tools that work in any environment whether you are a civil engineer, a design team manager, a quality supervisor, [...] | 2/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 007 | Making Process Transformation Routine P4. | In This Episode: Today, we conclude this miniseries by looking under the hood at the final steps of ROUTINE: Test, Iterate, Normalize, and Equip. ROUTINE is the backbone tool for process transformation. It is an intrinsic method of improvement that is part of the nature of organizations. Our goal is to make improvement just as much a ROUTINE as payroll and operations. Build the ROUTINE into each of the 4Ps: People, Product, Process, and People, and you will see returns for your business and career that seemed impossible to achieve in all of the daily firefighting. Show Notes BTT 007 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 007 – Download Member Content We hope you are seeing that the tools and tactics in our shows are not overly-complex. In business, the more complex a mess looks, the more simple the solution needs to be. Consider Lean Manufacturing, it is radically simple in its control mechanisms and algorithms when compared to MRP systems and push schedules. Likewise, the complexity of our organizations are best improved with a straightforward tool, ROUTINE, to build improvement into our processes. This will create the healthy processes you need to deliver healthy profits. TESTING: As a chemist working in an aerospace many years ago, I learned the value of testing assumptions. This tradition was not adopted in business. Even in Lean Six Sigma, what we call testing is more like a statistical exercise. Testing in a lab takes a small sample and mixes vial A with vial B to ensure our predictions are correct. In business, we may believe we have identified the root causes, but only after going through a hands-on test can you be certain you have the right root causes, and you understand the per cent contribution of each root cause. Failing to test derails many otherwise excellent projects. We believe our team identified the root causes, we used Fishbones and C&E Matrices, we brainstormed and we even went to the Gemba to go see the work. We are “probably” right. At this point, we need to conduct a test. Six Sigma specialists are trained in Designed Experiments and we are fans of this method because it is the best way to turn knobs and twist dials and see all the interactions, complexities, unexpected outcomes, and outputs. DOE scares many people because the way it is taught is deeply statistical. It is a bit like trying to learn programming before you use Microsoft Outlook. In a future show, we will walk you through what we call simple-DOE, which takes the best fractional designs and Taguch principles, but makes them plug and play. We will provide the templates you need. Yet there is an even more basic tool that we should always use in the testing phase: Piloting. For people I have trained all over the world I show them one of the 10 commandments of a Lean Six Sigma project, “Thou Shalt Do a Pilot!” My most expensive failures occurred because I allowed my teams to simply skip the pilot. We were smart. We were ambitious. We thought we were right. We were dead wrong! The outcome of the testing phase is that we turn assumptions into proofs. ITERATING: This is something that was lost by most businesses who adopted it as a method 50 years ago, when Deming began teaching Plan/Do/Check/Act. Even in Lean Six Sigma projects, when we are working a problem, we have a mistaken belief that we are after “the one solution.” What we actually want is a set of countermeasures that will have various weights in a final solution. This is very different from looking for “a solution.” We use a set of countermeasures to optimize the outcomes we are monitoring. Software and IT solutions are often guilty of this poor belief. We are always looking for that next software solution that will solve our problems. We often end up cementing poor process behavior because it is now hard wired into the programs. A much better approach is to use ROUTINE to install Lean Six Sigma and Theo[...] | 1/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 006 | Making Process Transformation Routine P3. | In This Episode: We left off in the last show learning that “ROUTINE is not designed, it is discovered.” The power of ROUTINE, and the fun of it (if you can believe it), is actually doing ROUTINE. Using it step-by-step to transform processes that withstood our previous efforts. Our teams get excited because they are not just part of the transformation, they are at the helm. As the manager or improvement agent, you can find the hands on tools and tactics to lead your people through the transformation here at Business Transformation Tools. Today’s show turns a corner as we go yet a layer deeper and talk specifically about the first three phases of ROUTINE: Rank, Orient, and Understand. Show Notes BTT 006 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 006 – Download Member Content If you are a Premium Member, the Show Note presentation will highlight the specific actions and insights of each phase. RANKING: Most process transformation efforts try to begin with projects preselected or brainstormed by upper level managers. Having attempted to lead many of these so-called “Project Selection Workshops,” I lost credibility in front of my clients because there was no science to the approach. If you are familiar with standard protocol, it is similar to Strategy Creation and Deployment workshops. We get smart people in the room, use a few facts about the current state of the business, and attempt to set priorities. As a consultant, believe me, I tried to apply all kinds of math and tools to legitimize these brainstorming sessions. I’ve used multi-voting, Pareto analyses, mind mapping, SWOT analyses, and more. At the end, we are still left with the best guesses of the smart people in the room and our own experience in similar situations as consultants (outside experts). ROUTINE overcomes this gaping hole in process improvement efforts by applying the operational techniques of Theory of Constraints to the flow of profit, identifying and prioritizing the constraints in quality, cost and speed. Only then are we ready to begin a transformation. ORIENTING: You may be familiar with Six Sigma’s powerful Voice of the Customer concepts. There are tools like Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Kano Analysis, interviews, focus groups, and surveys which give us lots of data to play with in Minitab 16 or Excel 2011. Unfortunately, most VOC is nothing more than lip service. We rarely get down to the specific, rigorous understanding of value for each customer segment. We go through the motions in Black Belt projects and since the sponsors don’t expect much more, we say we are ready to go from the Define Gate. The activities in Orienting force us to harness the spirit of VOC, not just the motions. In a complex marketplace, it is more important than ever to understand the specific values, and the prioritize order of values. The winners are the organizations with the deepest understanding of customer segment priorities. The word orienting connotes the idea of a traveler in the woods, keeping track of true North regardless of the momentary course changes. A specific tool we recommend is one that is traditionally used in supply chain analyses to compare suppliers of similar services and products: a Key Buying Factor Analysis – with a few modifications. We will get into specific actions in future shows dedicated to each of the phases of ROUTINE. UNDERSTANDING: Perhaps our favorite phase, because we get our hands dirty and dissect the process for its waste, work and variation (bewilderment). The idea is you need to go to the gemba, go to the area where work is happening and get your hands dirty. Don’t trust the data in your PC (although it may be slightly more reliable if it’s a Mac). We need to understand things the way an 8 year old boy understands – by taking things apart and putting them together again. “Did I take this apart (whether I was supposed to or no[...] | 1/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 005 | Making Process Transformation Routine P2. | In This Episode: We continue to understand one of the most powerful tools you can have in your arsenal as a manager – the ROUTINE of business transformation. Organizations follow certain rules because they are made of more than one person. Most of the time, we are working so hard to improve them with tools that were not designed for organizations, but for science, for manufacturing environments, and for individuals. This is why we say “ROUTINE is not designed, it is discovered.” In other words, ROUTINE is the way organizations must improve. Show Notes BTT 005 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 005 – Download Member Content Managers that stumbled on parts of this formula have seen their business and career take off. How much further along could we be if we began applying this ROUTINE across our organization, and especially across our processes, one year ago? Now is the time to begin. What about Lean Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints? As a master trainer in LSS and master black belt, I have led and participated in dozens of global deployments and trained over 700 Black Belts and Green Belts. I have been responsible for many wins and just as many failures (those of you who have worked with me know what I’m talking about As much as I love these approaches, I am fully aware of their glaring weaknesses as we discussed in the previous episode BTT 004. These approaches work as well as they do because they are closely aligned with ROUTINE, but fall short in a few ways. We specify three of the steps in ROUTINE that have made the difference between success and failure in transforming organizations but are not captured by any other methodologies. Tune in today as we also go one step deeper in each step, and discuss some of the tools available on our website to help you begin right where you are. Future episodes will be devoted to each phase of ROUTINE, as we are committed to giving you the tools and tactics – the management hardware – that will propel your business and your career. We are excited to share these tools with the community of hardworking improvers. Good luck as you continue in your transformation, Mike and Jay | 1/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 004 | Making Process Transformation Routine P1. | In This Episode: The Third Law of Management Success is that Transformation follows a ROUTINE. Most of us in management have survived at least one major change in our organizations and may still be suffering Post-Traumatic Stress, perhaps from a merger, a cost transformation, or an improvement deployment. What was your experience? Most likely, nothing seemed routine. It was a dizzying spell of running as fast as possible to make everything work and deliver on near impossible promises someone else made. Show Notes BTT 004 – Download Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 004 – Download Member Content There is a much better way to transform your organization, without the needless trauma and expensive consulting fees. Learn today how transformation evolves from the right routine, and it can start right where you are, today. If you are starting here, you may find it useful to at least listen to BTT 003, where we explain the overall picture of improving the 4Ps and briefly introduce the ROUTINE of business transformation. Most managers are in the midst of some process improvement effort and can immediately benefit from this miniseries on Process Transformation. As a master trainer and Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma, I have seen the best and the worst of current management practices and improvement approaches around the world. In today’s show, I’ll help you avoid some of the major pitfalls of these current improvement efforts. If you are starting today with Business Transformation Tools, you should know that we believe your fundamental role as a manager is not merely to manage people, but to manage improvement. This 4 part series on making transformation ROUTINE in your process will be a tool you can leverage in your existing and future efforts to improve your own processes. Just as an Olympic level athlete uses the best tools available to shave 1/100th of a second off their sprint times, we provide you the highest caliber tools and thinking to shave time, defects, and cost out of your processes. Why is process improvement so powerful? Because healthy processes drive healthy business profits. It is the ROUTINE, of course, that makes a person healthy – and that is just as true for a business. We can forecast our personal success or failure based on the daily and weekly routines we’ve adopted today. Your ability to hit all of your key metrics is built on your process performance. Learn now to install the most effective ROUTINE for process improvement and begin your transformation today. When companies invest, it involves consulting fees, research, analyses, training, etc. The great majority of these investments are not recovered in actual cash savings or profitability. All of the activity seems good, but we are not after good. We are after unimpeded flow of profit through the processes. How many of your current projects and focus areas are going to free profit that is locked up in your organization processes? Listen today to discover the three major weaknesses in traditional deployments of process improvement and how to leverage your daily routine to avoid these pitfalls. Here is a hint: Traditional improvement efforts (including my beloved Lean Six Sigma) require Special Forces, a Special Focus, and Special Projects. These limitations are responsible for the struggles many of us face implementing transformations in various industries and functions. Next week in Part 2 we’ll dive into the acronym and understand ROUTINE step by step. If you are starting to implement these tools and tactics, please share your experiences and we are happy to help in any way we can as you move forward. Future shows will present you with step-by-step instructions for each of these tools, and Premium Members will always be able to download the weekly presentations, tools, and templates to support your transformation efforts. Best of luck on your journey of improvement, Mike and Jay Mentioned Resource: [...] | 1/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 003 | The 4Ps of Business and Career Success | In This Episode: This is the show you asked for! It is high level enough to give you the entire overview of the 4Ps. If you improve these 4 things, your business and career will absolutely take care of themselves. Of course, the flip side is if you do everything else correct, but fail to improve these 4 things, you are probably destined for a mediocre career. Remember, our goal is to equip managers with the who, what, where, when, why and how of improvement. We want to free you from the daily battles and help launch you on a journey of transformation. The 4P Presentation Basic Snapshot – Share the 4Ps with your team. Show Notes BTT 003 – Download FREE TRIAL Member Content The 4P Presentation Tool – HD – Share the 4Ps with your team. Enhanced Podcast BTT 003 – Download Member Content Although today’s show is high level, we still get hands-on enough to give you practical insights and useful tips. If you are a premium member, you will find the show notes and slide presentation especially valuable today, as it contains key tools and insights for each of the 4Ps (Profit, People, Process, and Product). Although future podcasts are dedicated to the ROUTINE model, today we introduce it at a high level and it is included in the show notes as well. Learn how to make Lean Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, and problem solving a routine at the ground level of your process, people, profit, and products. Because ROUTINE is the intrinsic improvement methodology of an organization, it is the most powerful mechanism to transform any of the 4Ps. If you are already involved in Lean, Six Sigma, or any other program, you will find ROUTINE even more valuable, as it gives you the insights to overcome some of the expense and weaknesses of those approaches, while harnessing the many strengths of each tool set. These are new tools, not available any where else; but you will probably agree – they just seem so obvious! That is our test of any useful tool or insight, it should be obvious in retrospect. Simplicity is, after all, the hardest thing to achieve, but the most powerful to apply! This show should be a starting point for anyone on a journey of organization improvement, cost turnarounds, or business transformation. Please share your thoughts and let us know how we can continue to support your career success. Good luck, Mike and Jay | 1/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 002 | The Most Important Thing You Will Ever Hear About Your Job. P.2 | In This Episode: Find out if you are improving the right things - regardless of the particular tool set or methodology you may be using. Part 2 of this show will continue to lay down the foundation and help you to focus your management time on the areas that will propel your business and your career. Toward the end of today’s show, you will get your first glimpse of the 4P’s. These are the most vital focus areas for your improvement efforts, and we will teach you in these upcoming shows how to make transformation literally a routine in each of the 4P’s. The 4P Presentation Basic Snapshot – Share the 4Ps with your team. Show Notes BTT 002 – Download FREE TRIAL Member Content The 4P Presentation Tool – HD – Share the 4Ps with your team. Enhanced Podcast BTT 002 – Download Member Content Today, you will also learn the second law of management success. It is kind of a bummer – actually, because once you know it, you may be kicking yourself for not harnessing it some time ago! You may experience some heartburn over learning what does and does not count as moving you forward on your career. Here is a hint: Did you improve the right things to really propel your business and your career this year? Remember: If you are improving the right things in the right sequence, you get the fastest payback for your business – and your career will take care of itself. To get on a trajectory of success, we must realize firefighting and shotgun improvement efforts will simply not get us there. We set right a mistaken belief about managers and we even give some hope for the jerks out there in this episode, all in a spirit of good fun. The most exciting part is saved for last, when we share the 4P model which will become the framework for future shows and for guiding your improvement efforts. We hope you enjoy today’s show! You are probably already making some progress using common process improvement tools, or you may have come far enough to see the weaknesses in many current approaches. As a master trainer and master black belt in Lean Six Sigma, I am particularly sensitive to both the strengths and weaknesses of that approach. The 4Ps and the ROUTINE of improvement introduced in upcoming shows will focus your efforts on tangible results. We are always after the right tools and tactics, in the right place, at the right time – that is the trick. BusinessTransformationTools.com exists to give you the tools and tactics of the exclusive few, the Fortune 500, without the Ferrari price tags. We will be your hands-on guide to know what to improve, what tool to use, and what sequence to make your improvements. In future shows, you will learn to use tools like our exclusive Profit Map, which will help you harness the best of strategy deployment, Lean Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, and problem solving – with a visual tool anyone can use. Not only that, we will walk you through how to coach your team, drive results, and continue to transform. Please let us know your thoughts and we look forward to participating in your journey of improvement! Sincerely, Mike and Jay | 1/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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CleanBTT 001 | The Most Important Thing You Will Ever Hear About Your Job. P.1 | In This Episode: Listen and discover the most important thing you will ever hear about your job! It is probably not even mentioned in your job description, and yet, it is the key to your business and career success. You may have learned some management techniques and improvement methods, but today you will begin to learn the hardware of management success. Our goal is to equip managers with the who, what, where, when, why and how of improvement. We want to free you from the daily battles and help launch you on a journey of transformation. Show Notes BTT 001 – Download FREE TRIAL Member Content Enhanced Podcast BTT 001 – Download Member Content The tools and solutions you’ll learn in these episodes can’t be found anywhere else, although they are birthed in Lean, Six Sigma, TOC, and turnarounds we’ve helped win and lose around the world. Question: Why should the best tools only be available to a select few executives already at the top of the management food chain? Mostly, they are the only ones with the million dollar budgets to afford access. Podcasting has given us a way to provide these Fortune 500 tools and tactics to the community, without the Ferrari price tags clients are used to paying! You will find step-by-step advice and battle-hardened tools to literally make improvement routine throughout your processes, products, people, and profit making. A few key insights from today’s episode: Firefighting will NOT make you successful (You already knew that, right?). Here is a shocking reality: Accepting more responsibilities will NOT ensure your bonus or promotion at the end of the year. More responsibilities will NOT make you successful. Why not? We all like to think that if we are taking on more of our boss’s responsibilities, we should eventually be paid like the boss and get their office. The problem is that every single person in business is inheriting more responsibilities. That no longer differentiates anyone. To be successful in your business and your career, you need to understand and apply the first law of management success. To find out what that is, please listen in on this free episode of Business Transformation Tools. Good luck on your journey of transformation, and thank you for joining us! Sincerely, Mike and Jay | 1/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 53 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Engaging and Thought-Provoking
This is very exciting. I was just promoted at review-time to a newly created position starting implementing process improvement and quality management for my product line after getting my Green Belt last year! So, I've been looking for every possible resource to learn more project development and process management techniques - I've listened to several other podcasts which were decent and have a couple books on the table right now. I've already listened to the first three podcasts here and it sounds like this is going to be very good. Excellent audio quality too. I'm looking forward to listening to some more on the way into work tomorrow! Great so far, and I'm looking forward to hearing about the tools, these first few were very "big picture," and it's making me think about the projects I just signed up for! I've learned a good bit, but I know I'm just starting out. Again, great podcast and can't wait to hear more.
An inspirational business and management podcast... Who knew!?
Fantastic podcasts. I have listened to these on the way home in lieu of my usual audiobooks, and have not been disappointed. I must admit "improvement" projects that I have personally been on the implementation team for (on the internal marketing side) have not quite brought the benefits we were pitching - it has been very difficult to obtain genuine employee buy-in. The consultants did give us what I still feel is valuable information, and I think if we can get buy-in we could still go somewhere with what we started. That being said, thank you for renewed motivation to revisit this and for providing some excellent clarifications to what I thought I knew and understood. I will definitely keep listening.
The Content is Quite Good
This is one of the first podcasts to which I have subscribed and must say I am very impressed. I appreciate the paradigm shift and higher level thinking provided in these and would like to hear more regarding the tools you have mentioned (e.g. profit map and waste map). All in all, the podcasts I have listened to thus far are all exceptional. This informal near-consulting method holds great potential and I am finding value in listening. Thank you for some keen insights and provocative dialog.
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- Category: Management & Marketing
- Language: English
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