Knowledge Fulcrum

In Ithaca We Trust.  If this is not a clear message of how confident we are, I don’t know what is.   Ithaca Hours is a local currency system that promotes local economic strength and community self-reliance in ways to support economic and social justice, ecology, community participation and human aspirations in and around Ithaca, New York.

Ithaca Hours helps to keep money local, thus building the Ithaca economy. It also builds community pride and connections. Over 900 participants publicly accept Ithaca HOURS for goods and services. Additionally, some local employers and employees have agreed to pay or receive partial wages in Ithaca Hours, further continuing their goal of keeping money local.

I met another person who many of you may know — Simon Sinek — who also has his own currency.  Simon issues Tokens of Inspiration to people who inspire him or others. I keep my token in my pocket to remind me that there are better ways to measure success than how much money we have in our wallets.  What keeps crossing my mind is that fact that, now more than ever, get the opportunity to build a society the way we want…all it takes is creativity combined with thought.  I imagine that we will see a lot more people exchanging new types of currency in the future.

Now I want to walk you through the process we used to document our value stream, and what we were interested in measuring.

Generally it’s good to start your process mapping by looking at the job function level.  Depending on the complexity of your business, you may want to do this by individual department.  You will know if you need to break it down.  Map the current state first.

Use post-its to define each discrete job function in order.  You can use swimming lanes if there are concurrent processes you’d like to map.  Ideally, you’d also be gathering accurate information on the following metrics – to start you may just want to use your best estimates:

• Cycle Time – this is the average time it takes to do the task.
• Process Time – this is the average time it takes including any waiting before or after the task.
• Percent Complete & Accurate - an estimate of what % of the time the task is received complete & accurate.
• Percent Exceptions – this is a measure of how frequently there are exceptions which require special handling.
• Number of Hand-offs – how many times does the work change hands (don’t forget figuratively, if information is emailed around the company).

Now you can start to see how much time is spent on activities other than doing the necessary work.  Be sure to include documents or reports that are built into certain job functions.  For those who are more detailed oriented, you may continue to break job functions down into discrete tasks.

I would start broad until you get a feel for how this works.  If possible, remember to include people from every job function and department.

Now you can add up each type of time.  The total Cycle Time is the actual time spent doing the work to produce your product or service.  The total Process Time is how long it takes you to get the product or service out the door and into the hands of the customer.  Usually the Cycle to Process ratio is VERY low.  But now you should start to see where there’s opportunity to take waste out.

Now that the layoffs have happened – you’ve re-organized the work as best you can, you’ve cut all non-essential expenses from your business, and it’s clear that your remaining work force is working harder than ever.  Now what?

Ironically, I’ve discovered that the best time to implement a Continuous Improvement (CI) Program is during a time of crisis.  A significant amount of time and energy is usually spent demonstrating why CI Programs are important and why everyone needs to be on board.  During a time of crisis the need is already clear to everyone.

When you begin to implement your own CI Program, you will not just be developing habits that will reap benefits for years and years to come – you will provide your staff with what might be a new found sense of control and hope.  It’s already clear to everyone in your organization that what has worked before may not necessarily work in the future.

For the purposes of this blog – I am defining a CI Program as any formal performance improvement initiative that is being led by a team of people in your organization to identify and remove unneeded waste.  Think of it more as a way of thinking rather than a state you are trying to achieve.

The first step will be to start to “see” together.  By this I mean that it’s important that everyone recognizes the types of waste that exist in your organizations (don’t worry — it’s in every organization) and be able to remove the waste and re-establish the standard of work from that point on.

Now, the word waste is where it gets a little difficult.  Waste refers to any activity that does not add value to the customer.  In other words, if it’s a task that the customer is NOT willing to pay for, then it’s a possible source of waste.  This includes things like overproduction, wasted movement, transportation of information or material, repair or rejects, inventory, over processing, and missed opportunities.

A great place to start is to hold a company meeting.  Identify a group of “subject matter experts” who can clearly define the current method for doing all major parts of the job – from the beginning of the customer stream (Marketing and Sales), to Operations, through Customer Service, to Billing or cash collections.  Have the “experts” walk through each step of the process – to identify when something needs to happen, who would interact with the task, and how long it takes to complete.  All you need is a big blank wall, and some post-its.

This is a picture of the first value mapping session I was part of.  As the founder and CEO, it was a painful experience.  But, I would say that it only made visible what everyone already knew – we had some pretty screwed up processes that were causing us to be incredibly inefficient.  When you put it all down and try to measure how much time you actually spend adding value along the way, it’s a very sobering experience.  It isn’t until you can see together that you can start to improve together.

In my next installment, I will walk you through in more detail how we documented our work and what we were interested in seeing.

In a recent Nielsen study, “member communities” like Linked in are now used more (67%) than email (65%).  The social network landscape is changing quickly.

In my former survey research business, we were fighting the fact that American households were cutting off their phones in droves.  At last count, 17% of households have no land-line telephone.  Technology is re-shaping our world right in front of our eyes.

How is your organization using new tools to better connect your employees, and customers to increase collaboration — and ultimately performance?  I’ve heard a number of entrepreneurs complain that applications like Facebook are a time sink and have limited access by employees from their network.

I would propose that social networks and other cutting edge applications are merely tools that, if used in the right way, can help your organization better compete by providing your people with better access to information.

Social Networks – using applications within your company can help increase visibility among your staff around critical functions such as product expertise, specialized knowledge or special interests.  Using these applications increases collaboration and communication — particularly if your organization has locations across multiple geographic areas.  In addition, if you have virtual staff - this is the perfect application to keep everyone connected.

Wiki- using wikis is a great way to share standards and knowledge across the organization.  By building wiki platforms around problem identification and problem solving, you will increase your organization’s ability to adapt to the ever changing business environment.

Podcast – when you place training programs online, you insure that when a staffer is trained on a procedure or standard that everyone gets the same information, delivered in the same manner.  This results in more consistency.

Organizations can either resist the changes that are happening around us or embrace the new technology and find the best way to use it for every one’s benefit.  Please share your examples of how you’ve used web 2.0 technology in your business successfully.

I’m just sick.

As I watch the Liddy hearings on Capitol Hill,   I try to calculate how much time and energy has been expended over the last few days.  Think of all the news sources, the congress, the executive branch – how many people like me who are disgusted to see this not just happen — but now to be dragged through the mud.

I used to do polls for a living.  I would bet that nearly 99% of people like you and me think there’s a simple solution…just do the right thing — give the money back, and invest this time, energy and money on trying to put people to work and getting our economy back on track.

I recently read an interesting article about the effect that feeling helpless has on our emotional state and sense of control.

“Even the most laid back among us crave a sense of control, and when we feel helpless we scour our surroundings for anything that will restore predictability.  New research shows that when we lack control we don’t simply wait for order to return: we impose it, if only in our own minds, by imagining patterns and trends where none exist.

In six experiments, psychologist Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas at Austin and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University manipulated subjects’ sense of control. Results showed that not having control caused participants to mistakenly see an image in a field of static, to smell conspiracy in other people’s benign behavior, to embrace superstitious  beliefs and to perceive nonexistent stock-market trends.  Such illusory perceptions evaporated when participants were first denied control but then given an opportunity to write about their most deeply held values, an activity that bolsters psychological security and quells feelings of helplessness.”

So I now ask myself: is it therapeutic to write as much as I do, and about what I do?  It might be considered therapeutic.  But I also know that I have something to say.  I know that I have experiences to bring to the table in this current economy. As I write, and when I write, I find myself taking stock of my experiences in my 20 year career.  I ask myself — how can I wield those experiences and invest them, infuse them into this blog so that readers, and as a collective, we can all change the course, and apply what we know.  There’s a galaxy of collective wisdom among us.  The best and brightest in our Nation’s Capitol are at work on the issues of our day.

I’m not sure that my craving for control is real because after all, what is “real” anyway?  I do believe that it’s our nature to express our thoughts and beliefs and in the process we constantly shape and re-shape our own sense of reality and control — the sense of ourselves to ourselves.

I have a son who’s 11 and a daughter who’s 8.

This speech is the most sobering thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.  Delivered in 1992 at the United Nations, it’s just as relevant, if not more so today that it was almost 20 years ago.  Give a listen.

The story goes something like this…

A couple is at home preparing a dinner of  beef roast together.  As  he starts to prepare the roast for the oven, he takes a knife and proceeds to cut both ends off.  Perplexed by his action his wife asks, “Why in the world are you wasting that meat?”  To which he replies, “This is how my father taught me to cook beef roast.”

Certain that something didn’t seem right, she calls his father to ask why.   The father’s response?  ”That’s how my mother prepared beef roast when I was young.”  They then called his grandmother.  They asked her why she  cut both ends of the roast off before putting it into the oven.   She calmly replied that it was ”…because my pan wasn’t big enough.”

This story illustrates how easy it is to take what happens in your organization as making sense.  At one time it may have, but chances are that it may not now make sense to keep doing it.  In my own experience, I estimated that 20% of what people did no longer made sense - it was just wasteful.  Reports were generated and distributed, which no one ever read, and procedures and processes were still followed diligently but no longer served a need.

The moral of this story?  Everyday – make a part of your daily rhythm an exercise where everyone stops to ask — why are we doing this? And is it adding value to our customers? I guarantee that if this hasn’t been a regular routine in your organization, then you’ll be shocked at how much “waste” just keeps happening.

This week I experienced two examples of what’s possible by living a truly purposeful life.  Both examples happened on the same day, at the same place, and for the same reasons – is that any surprise?

Example #1 – Makin’ Bac’n

How do you take something as simple as bacon and turn it into a business? I’d like you to meet Scott Kventon – the biggest fan of bacon I’ve ever met.  This week, Scott shared his story of the fast track start to his first business that went from concept to revenue in less than two months.  It’s the epitome of what a small group of passionate entrepreneurs can accomplish.

Scott’s the founder and inspiration behind the coolest site about bacon I’ve ever seen… http://bacn.com/.  In fact, it’s the first website about bacon I’ve ever seen.  Scott’s passion for the pig, coupled with his knowledge and endless energy, have resulted in a sustainable business that started from his garage.

So, what did I learn?  First, I learned more than I could have hoped about bacon.  He had me at “hello,” as I’ve been a fan of the pig for quite some time now.  More importantly, what I learned was that if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, you’d better watch out because there will be someone who is — and it’s likely they will kick your ass.

The next generation of entrepreneurs is a unique group of individuals.  They talk fast, they think fast, and they ACT fast!  On top of it all, they’re having fun.  If you can’t see this from BACN.COM, then you should unsubscribe from this blog and never come here again.  If it’s as clear as the nose on your face, then you get it.

Example #2 – Energizer Bunny

Take an empty office building, add a dose of brilliance — and you have NedSpace.  Josh Friedman and his partners are onto something big.

NedSpace is a new concept to me — providing rented desk space for young start-ups on the cheap.  The thing makes this such a value is not the $175/month desk but the ENERGY that you feel by being around other driven entrepreneurs.  By renting offices and desks to serial entrepreneurs, they provide an atmosphere that can’t be replicated by working from home.   NedSpace is a great concept which takes advantage of the glut of office space that’s out there, while creating a great environment for start-ups to work and collaborate.  My only question is — why don’t I have my office here?  Nicely done, Josh!

So much of what we hear today is focused on negative banter about what’s happened, who’s to blame, etc.  Maybe we need to spend more time talking and thinking about what is possible. 

We are beings driven by our conscious and sub-conscious minds.  Our behaviors are directly linked to our thoughts.  We control more than we realize.

I’ve been a huge fan of R. Buckminster Fuller for many years.  In his first book “Nine Chains to the Moon” Fuller coined the term ephemeralization – which refers to the ability of people to use technology advances to continuously do more with less.  His vision was that ephemeralization will result in an ever-increasing standard of living for an ever-growing population despite finite resources.

Here’s a simple illustration of this idea.  In 1520 Magellan spent 2 years sailing in a wooden boat around the globe.  350 years later steam ships could navigate the earth in just 2 months time.  75 years later an airplane, made of alloys, took  2 weeks to fly around the world.  35 years later a space capsule, made from exotic alloys, needed one hour to circle the earth.  The rate of advancement is increasing at an exponential rate.  

How has ephemeralization affected what is possible?  Talking and thinking about what is possible starts with you, and it starts with me.  We define how and what we can do to make our world different.  Maybe it’s simply spending 1 hour a day thinking about what’s possible for your life, dreaming of what will make your life better for you, your family, and your fellow humans without any limitations.  I do know that we cannot turn back time and change the place we find ourselves living in today.  We’re being carried to the doorstep of “necessity” – as it becomes increasingly clear that our past and current ways of dealing with our crisis won’t yield the desired results.  Today we have the opportunity to elevate our culture, our society, and ourselves beyond our primal urges.  We can exchange greed and fear for collaboration and acceptance.   And, we do this simply by our actions right now.  Perhaps a starting place would be to think about one small thing you can do today – now — that will begin to make your dream a reality.   Inaction is our only means of failure.