We had a (virtual) conversation with a prospective customer the other day. The call was largely attended by the customer’s engineering community. We pulled together some preliminary analysis on a development process. It had a very small sample size, which we noted and detailed using appropriately wide confidence intervals. During the call, several of the team members chose to pick on this fact rather than the key conclusion that their process simply was not capable of meeting their customers’ needs. Fortunately, Zeno gave us this playbook long ago:
“We have two ears and one mouth, to listen twice as much as we speak”.
So we kept our cool during the discussion and listened closely as the team indicated that they really needed help looking in a different part of the process.
Bingo!
We politely took an action to address their concerns and dig into the data from this other part of the process. Customer relationship: re-invigorated.
This quick story reminded me of a presentation Dan and I made at the Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME), one of the biggest Lean conferences in the US back in 2014. I think it nicely illustrates how no one continuous improvement methodology is universal. And, it demonstrates how right Zeno was even about something as arcane as process improvement! Here is the approach we outlined back then. Slightly modified, it still holds for our practice today:
- Listen closely to the customer. Diligently try to understand what problem they need solved
- Review the full portfolio of potential problem-solving approaches
- Select what looks like the best fit for their unique situation
- Get feedback quickly and be prepared to adapt
Sign up below to get the full presentation we made at the AME conference. Enjoy!