Want to Make Better Decisions? Simplify…

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

Developing and deploying strategy entails hundreds or even thousands of decisions in a given year.

How do we make better decisions? (Can we raise our decision-making accuracy to six sigma levels – 3.4 defects per million decisions?)

Start by simplifying the chess board. Eliminate trivial, marginal, unnecessary and wasteful activities and factors.

In Chess, if you’re up a pawn on a full chessboard, a sure path to victory is to gradually simplify.

Eventually, your pawn and King face the opponent’s King, and victory is close.

Simplification in business serves the same purpose – the essentials stand out in sharp relief.

We can begin to focus.

In our wired world, simplification is counter-intuitive. If we remove stuff from our chessboard, if we clean up our various ‘screens’, we feel we’re missing something.

(Our motto seems to be “A finger in every pie!”. But that leaves us with sticky fingers and a ruined pies!)

If you accept my premise, the next question is: “How do we simplify?”

An excellent start is to reflect and confirm our Purpose.

What are we trying to achieve? What’s our Shining City on the Hill?

Define Purpose with drawings, dashboards, words and music if need be. Purpose clear as crystal eases simplification.

In Chess, purpose is clear – checkmate the opponent’s King!

We have to make our business Purpose as clear, and then communicate it gently, engagingly and repeatedly.

Simplification inevitably follows.

Best,

Pascal


In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

How do Adults Learn?
Back to Basics – Visual Management
Back to Basics – Visual Order
Back to Basics – Employee Engagement

Want to Make Better Decisions? Simplify…

By Pascal Dennis

Our recent blogs on Strategy & Dieting have generated fine feedback - thanks everyone!

Today I’d like to continue in the same vein.

Developing and deploying strategy entails hundreds or even thousands of decisions in a given year.

How do we make better decisions? (Can we raise our decision-making accuracy to six sigma levels – 3.4 defects per million decisions?)

Start by simplifying the chess board. Eliminate trivial, marginal, unnecessary and wasteful activities and factors.

In Chess, if you’re up a pawn on a full chessboard, a sure path to victory is to gradually simplify.

Eventually, your pawn and King face the opponent’s King, and victory is close.

Simplification in business serves the same purpose – the essentials stand out in sharp relief.

We can begin to focus.

In our wired world, simplification is counter-intuitive. If we remove stuff from our chessboard, if we clean up our various ‘screens’, we feel we’re missing something.

(Our motto seems to be “A finger in every pie!”. But that leaves us with sticky fingers and a ruined pies!)

If you accept my premise, the next question is: “How do we simplify?”

An excellent start is to reflect and confirm our Purpose.

What are we trying to achieve? What’s our Shining City on the Hill?

Define Purpose with drawings, dashboards, words and music if need be. Purpose clear as crystal eases simplification.

In Chess, purpose is clear – checkmate the opponent’s King!

We have to make our business Purpose as clear, and then communicate it gently, engagingly and repeatedly.

Simplification inevitably follows.

Best,

Pascal

Pascal Dennis Bio

Lean & Theory of Constraints

By Pascal Dennis

Lean, Six Sigma, Lean-Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering, TQM, Theory of Constraints...

Hard to make head-nor-tail of the different systems of improvement...

Or are they so different?

In fact, they all converge, just as the martial arts converge.

I studied Aikido. The better I got, the better I came to understand Karate, Taekwondo, Judo and Jujutsu.

They're all expressions of Budo, the way of the warrior, and Bujutsu, the practical application of the Way.

The greatest masters, in my view, approach a form of formlessness - no style or free style.

Free style means the student, after many years of practice -- (and at least 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell tells us) -- has absorbed the core forms into their very being so they don't have to think about them.

This brings me to Lean and Theory of Constraints.

For some reason, some people frame these as 'Either/Or'.

In fact, they are synergistic.

TOC's core tenet is, arguably, Little's Law:

Lead Time = (Work in Process)/Capacity

And Lead Time is the most important Value Stream metric.

Are our materials & services flowing?

To paraphrase Taiichi Ohno, founder of the Lean Business System: "It's all about Lead Time reduction."

We could similarly align Lean and the other transformation systems noted above.

After years of practice, we learn to stop worrying about theology, and simply do.

Lean & Six Sigma

By Al Norval

I deal with several organizations where the competition between Lean and Six Sigma is nothing short of destructive for the organization. These typically large organizations have two camps both of whom are dug in and set in their ways. They seem to spend more time fighting with each other than actually helping people in the organization make improvements. The skirmishes typically involve sending articles around the organization by email where the pundit has an opinion that supports one side or the other.

I’m always puzzled by this as both improvement methodologies are necessary. Some organizations understand this but end up splitting the two improvement methodologies anyway with statements like “Lean is about removing waste and Six Sigma is about reducing variation”

Hogwash. While reducing Muda (waste) is a key pillar of Lean, so is reducing Muri (Strain) and Mura (variation). These three concepts are related as Strain and Variation are causes of Waste. Strain or Overburden applies both to machines and manpower. We can see it when equipment is made to run faster than it’s capable of or IT systems become overloaded with new software. When it’s applied to people it lines up with another pillar of Lean – Respect for People. Strain here often leads to ergonomic issues. Asking people to do work that causes injuries certainly isn’t showing them due respect.

Likewise Six Sigma is about reducing variation but more importantly it’s about making data driven process improvements using DMAIC which is a variant of Deming’s PDCA cycle.

In both cases, organizations have good people working in broken processes.

The trick is to apply the right technique to the right problem. Here’s my recommendation:

When problems require simple problem solving, use Lean. When faced with complex problems use Six Sigma.

Abraham Maslow once said “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it’s tempting to treat everything as a nail”

In my opinion, both improvement methodologies are necessary. Learn to coexist and get on with the real work of helping people make improvements enabling the organization to achieve its goals.

Cheers