Who Is Your Customer? (Part III–the saga continues)
I am writing this blog post as a rebuttal to all those out there who implied (or explicitly stated) that in Part I and/or Part II of this 3-part “Who’s Your Customer?” series I suggested that the overall context and alignment of the internal processes within any organization (The big Picture) are not important. The
Who is Your Customer? (Part II)
Since I received a great deal of commentary on my July 7, 2012 blog post, entitled “Who is Your Customer?”, I have decided to blog about the topic some more this week to provide additional clarifying information. It is the inability to differentiate between the distinct elements of the value stream that leads to poor
Who Is Your Customer?
I have had many conversations that are focused on voice of the customer with business professionals in numerous different industries. It is truly surprising to me how often I find that process owners at both high and low levels within their organizations have misidentified the customers of their processes. While the answer to
The Importance of Precise and Accurate Definitions
Faulty definitions are the root cause of numerous issues that manifest themselves as significant business problems. In other words, a lot of businesses fail to achieve what they want to achieve because they fail to properly define what they want to achieve. Most business processes are operated by people—people who are subjective and prone to
Price Is Not Quality
In numerous conversations that I have had with business leaders, all too often the business leader will assert to me that his or her biggest quality issue is price. It’s not surprising to me that the organizations these individuals lead are experiencing difficulty getting their customers to pay the price that they are asking for
The Process of Business
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines a process as “a series of actions or operations conducing to an end.” This definition is not unlike the classical process improvement definition that identifies a process as those certain activities that are undertaken to transform raw materials or inputs into finished products or outputs. In accordance with the definition, every
Variation: Process Enemy Number One
One of the key tenets of Lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, and a host of other business process improvement philosophies is the reduction of variation within business processes. The variation-focus is so important because process variation has profound implications for the repeatability and sustainability of the process itself. In other words, it is impossible
Capitalism 2.0
Capitalism 2.0 is derived from recent statements made by Bill Gates, suggesting that companies should sacrifice profits for the public good. While Henry Ford had suggested a similar concept as early as 1916, his shareholders overruled him. The more popular and widely accepted view of Capitalism is that of Milton Friedman which suggests that the