Do you have a hobby that you absolutely love? Are you an expert at something? If so, you just might be able to turn that hobby into a few extra bucks every month.
I'm sure you've heard that “it’s not work if you love what you do”. In reality, however, most of us are stuck in jobs we don’t love, working for people we don’t respect, and feel we are going no-where fast. We stay, because we are worried about paying the rent and getting out of debt.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could turn what you love to do into your full time job? Time flies when you're having fun — doing what you gladly spend your other 8 hours doing! Why not make money doing that?
Check out Melanie Jordan's book What you know is worth more than you think!
Here are some things to consider:
1. What can you teach? Before you say "nothing", take a moment and really think about this. Take some time to brainstorm your talents, skills and interests. Do you speak another language? Are you a marketing whiz? Have you mastered social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook?
2. What can you do from home? Brand building. Build web sites. Process forms. Do company billing from home.
3. How much can you make? Consultants and teachers can make $100 to $300 an hour! Freelancers can earn $20 - $100 an hour. Not bad for doing something you enjoy.
The list is endless. Limited only by YOUR imagination. Best success . . .
Get started NOW - With the book "What you know is worth more than you think!"
Norm
www.normanbain.com
Monday, November 23, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Untold Secret To Lean
The Untold Secret to Whole Business Improvement with Lean Thinking and the Lies you’ve been told about Lean so far!
More companies are becoming frustrated with their efforts to reduce waste and improve profits by implementing lean tools. In this article, we explore the untold secret of Lean and expose why so many companies have failed to deliver the results promised by Lean Thinking.
I’ve been teaching Lean tools for a decade. I was introduced to the tools when I was working as a Tier-1 supplier for Toyota. Before that, I was a proponent of TQM, SPC, and Six Sigma. The tools and foundation of lean thinking has been with me for most of my working career. It was not until I was in my third year as a Lean Consultant that I realized why Lean does not work for many companies. Why they report disappointing results and why the journey to becoming a lean enterprise eludes so many organizations.
Contrary to popular belief, lean thinking is NOT about reducing waste. It is NOT about value through the customer’s eyes, and it is NOT about applying tools on the value stream.
Like many lean practitioners, I got caught up in applying the tools. Identifying the value stream. Eliminating waste. Introducing flow, laying out work cells, implementing kanban, pull and staging kaizen events. In the process, I missed the point. The point that most companies miss. The secret to what makes lean work anywhere.
The tools seem pretty sexy and we get caught up in the buzz about what tool works where. What is the bottleneck process? How can I elevate the constraint? Why I should not try to solve all the problems at once?
Looking back, every book and training presentation I reviewed about lean touched on the secret. But somehow, I missed it. And I’m betting you did too. So here it is, simply and concisely. The “secret” to making lean work anywhere:
Get the rest of this post by clicking here
Norm
www.normanbain.com
More companies are becoming frustrated with their efforts to reduce waste and improve profits by implementing lean tools. In this article, we explore the untold secret of Lean and expose why so many companies have failed to deliver the results promised by Lean Thinking.
I’ve been teaching Lean tools for a decade. I was introduced to the tools when I was working as a Tier-1 supplier for Toyota. Before that, I was a proponent of TQM, SPC, and Six Sigma. The tools and foundation of lean thinking has been with me for most of my working career. It was not until I was in my third year as a Lean Consultant that I realized why Lean does not work for many companies. Why they report disappointing results and why the journey to becoming a lean enterprise eludes so many organizations.
Contrary to popular belief, lean thinking is NOT about reducing waste. It is NOT about value through the customer’s eyes, and it is NOT about applying tools on the value stream.
Like many lean practitioners, I got caught up in applying the tools. Identifying the value stream. Eliminating waste. Introducing flow, laying out work cells, implementing kanban, pull and staging kaizen events. In the process, I missed the point. The point that most companies miss. The secret to what makes lean work anywhere.
The tools seem pretty sexy and we get caught up in the buzz about what tool works where. What is the bottleneck process? How can I elevate the constraint? Why I should not try to solve all the problems at once?
Looking back, every book and training presentation I reviewed about lean touched on the secret. But somehow, I missed it. And I’m betting you did too. So here it is, simply and concisely. The “secret” to making lean work anywhere:
Get the rest of this post by clicking here
Norm
www.normanbain.com
Monday, November 16, 2009
Changing Behaviour
I have been challenged with involvement and compliance in an office waste reduction initiative. In our self assessment study, we identified that meetings and emails demanded 20% of our office workers week. The same self-assessment indicated that 78% of the time for emails and 57% of the time spent in meetings was considered wasted by those who participated.
Regardless of this result, people working in the office were reluctant to rate themselves and provide feedback to each other on what they considered wasteful and how to improve. Third party audits are snapshots in time - we are looking for ways to engage and change the office culture to eliminate waste.
I ran across an interesting approach taken by Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital (BJSPH) in St. Peters, MO. If you have been struggling with the carrot/stick approach to changing behaviour, their model may be of interest. Click here for their approach.
Anyone seeing the results of our self assessment agrees that we are on the right track. What is your experience in changing behaviour to support "doing the right thing".
Norm
www.normanbain.com
Regardless of this result, people working in the office were reluctant to rate themselves and provide feedback to each other on what they considered wasteful and how to improve. Third party audits are snapshots in time - we are looking for ways to engage and change the office culture to eliminate waste.
I ran across an interesting approach taken by Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital (BJSPH) in St. Peters, MO. If you have been struggling with the carrot/stick approach to changing behaviour, their model may be of interest. Click here for their approach.
Anyone seeing the results of our self assessment agrees that we are on the right track. What is your experience in changing behaviour to support "doing the right thing".
Norm
www.normanbain.com
Friday, November 13, 2009
Why do CI tools fail to deliver results.
I had an interesting discussion with a client this morning. We have been talking through his organizational challenges and he was pondering which tool we should be using next.
I received an email from Seth Godin today that struck me following this conversation. Seth’s message was that “to a person with a hammer, every problem seems like a nail”. While I had heard this axiom before, it really hit home today.
Perhaps this is why many people are not seeing the results that they are striving for with their continuous improvement initiatives. Rather than looking at their organization systematically and identifying the opportunities for waste elimination, we look in our toolbox and select which tool to play with next.
With all the focus on tools, we can easily lose perspective on a systems approach. The opportunities in the organization drive the need for the tools. Our understanding of lean thinking helps us select the right tool to apply. We should not be selecting the hammer and go hunting for loose nails.
Perhaps this is a common problem when learning the tools. Perhaps this is why I hear “we tried that before - lean does not work here”. I’d hate to see the doctor for a head cold and be told he recommends surgery, just because he is a surgeon.
Food for thought.
Norm
www.normanbain.com
I received an email from Seth Godin today that struck me following this conversation. Seth’s message was that “to a person with a hammer, every problem seems like a nail”. While I had heard this axiom before, it really hit home today.
Perhaps this is why many people are not seeing the results that they are striving for with their continuous improvement initiatives. Rather than looking at their organization systematically and identifying the opportunities for waste elimination, we look in our toolbox and select which tool to play with next.
With all the focus on tools, we can easily lose perspective on a systems approach. The opportunities in the organization drive the need for the tools. Our understanding of lean thinking helps us select the right tool to apply. We should not be selecting the hammer and go hunting for loose nails.
Perhaps this is a common problem when learning the tools. Perhaps this is why I hear “we tried that before - lean does not work here”. I’d hate to see the doctor for a head cold and be told he recommends surgery, just because he is a surgeon.
Food for thought.
Norm
www.normanbain.com
Monday, November 9, 2009
The Journey to Whole Business Improvement
Why do change management initiatives fall short of the mark after delivering such promising initial success? Why are gains in one area of the business difficult to duplicate in others? Why are many businesses disappointed with the results of their improvement initiative? Why are the concepts of lean manufacturing difficult to apply outside the factory? How can I engage the entire organization in the improvement plan? These are the questions answered in this brief discussion on whole business improvement by applying “Lean Thinking”.
How profitable is your organization? Profit is the lifeblood of business. Every business needs profit. Without it, they will not be in business for long.
This graph from www.p360.org,
shows the typical profit margins for selected industries. Most fall between 1 and 20%.
A company with a 6% profit margin must generate $983,000 in sales to pay for a $59,000 improvement project. Is that what your employees think about when they propose that new computer system?
Most manufacturing operations have a profit margin of less than 8%. While the target gross profit margin is typically much higher (35%), the finance and G&A costs erode that number significantly.
While other industries can generate higher profit margins, we commonly hear the following statements in traditional organizations:
• It takes too long to get products through the process.
• Administration costs are climbing faster than sales.
• We need more people.
• Problems with our products go undetected until our customers are using them.
• Things are fixed, but they don’t stay fixed.
• Our inventory is too high. Yet we don’t have what our customer wants in stock.
• We tried that before. It won’t work here.
• You don’t understand the culture here. That’s not the way we do things. Its different in our industry.
• We have quality teams, continuous improvement teams, ISO programs, re-engineering efforts, balanced scorecards, six sigma trained black belts. Its like the flavour of the month program, yet we are not seeing the results in real numbers.
When you hear the word Lean, what do you think about? “Manufacturing”, is the usual first response. “Lean Manufacturing”. Toyota is the example most often used. Toyota and Cars. Assembly line manufacturing. That’s what most people think Lean is.
Manufacturing is also the first place many people look to implement improvements. Yet manufacturing processes typically account for less than 20% of the total process lead time (the time it takes from when you get a customer order, to when you cash the cheque).
It may seem surprising, but Lean thinking has nothing to do with cars - or manufacturing. It is about eliminating waste and solving problems in processes. Any process.
The challenge with lean is in seeing the problems, identifying the waste.
In most manufacturing operations, only 5% of activities add value for the customer. Adding value means (1) it changes the thing going through the process, (2) the customer is willing to pay for the activity, and (3) it is done right the first time. This implies that 95% of what we do does NOT add value and is potential waste. In offices, the waste is even higher.
Managers and supervisors will only see 2% of the waste.
In office and administrative service environments, supervisors and managers only see 2% of the waste. They are too far removed from the daily work to see the waste.
The people doing the work have learned to live with the waste. They may have created work-arounds in the system to get things done. These, in themselves, add more waste.
What are these unseen wastes? The time it takes to find a document. The extra signature required on an expense statement. The rework on a proposal because the correct template was not used. The time it takes to walk across the building to photocopy a report. A power point presentation made, just in case the boss asks for it. The meeting that does not start on time or runs too long. The manager who “walks the floor” to “see what is going on”.
In a typical office, it is assumed that if people are at their desks and look busy, they are adding value. All seems well, especially if they have a good attitude.
A purchasing person who works hard, never takes breaks and is always helpful will be seen as a stellar employee. The fact that he takes 25% longer to complete the task due to poor training or lack of resources will be overlooked.
When we apply Lean Thinking in an organization, we look at how we do the work, how the system can be improved, what waste we can find and eliminate. Its not about the person doing the work - whether they are a “good worker” or not. Its about improving the work methods, standardizing processes, providing training and increasing skills.
Lean thinking is about is solving problems, elegantly, with innovation
Learning to identify and eliminate waste is fundamental to lean thinking. We must learn to see waste, and systematically eliminate it.
Thinking of problems as opportunities is not something we are trained to do. With lean, we need to learn to treasure problems - celebrate finding them – this is our opportunity to improve!
Once we clearly see the problem, the root cause must be identified. This requires some structured problem solving. We need to avoid treating the symptoms. Unless we identify the true root cause, the problem will re-occur.
Once the problem and its root cause is clearly understood, we can create solutions. An elegant solution can be a single tiny idea that changes everything. Quite often, this solution is not spending capital.
An elegant solution is one in which the desired effect is achieved, with the least amount of effort. John W. Gardner, the former US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, once said, "We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insolvable problems."
Elegant solutions are not obvious, except in retrospect.
Organizational Change.
Leaders like silver bullets. Take this tool, transplant it to my organization and everything will be magically fixed.
That’s the flavour of the month.
We end up with so many tools and initiatives underway that we can’t support them all. We keep dropping the ball.
Lean requires a more systematic approach. It has some well known tools to use, but requires discipline, structure and mentoring to make it work. This is why so many organizations report they are disappointed with their lean initiative results. The tools are applied without the systematic approach. “Lean does not work here”, they say.
A flaw with Lean is in the tools themselves. They are simple and when observed in the factory, they seem like common sense. So leaders take the tools from the plant floor and transplant them on their office or service organization. They don’t transplant easily. I don’t see accountants and engineers respond well to tape outlines for their stapler and keyboard.
Truth be known, Lean Thinking works anywhere. Health care, offices, engineering design, sales teams, construction projects, mining industries. Anywhere work gets done, Lean Thinking can be applied. However, it takes a strategic and systematic approach to be successful.
How do I do that?
Working on how we do the work.
A key limitation of traditional improvement initiatives is that they focus on ...
Click here to download the rest of this article.
Norm
www.normanbain.com
How profitable is your organization? Profit is the lifeblood of business. Every business needs profit. Without it, they will not be in business for long.
This graph from www.p360.org,
shows the typical profit margins for selected industries. Most fall between 1 and 20%.
A company with a 6% profit margin must generate $983,000 in sales to pay for a $59,000 improvement project. Is that what your employees think about when they propose that new computer system?
Most manufacturing operations have a profit margin of less than 8%. While the target gross profit margin is typically much higher (35%), the finance and G&A costs erode that number significantly.
While other industries can generate higher profit margins, we commonly hear the following statements in traditional organizations:
• It takes too long to get products through the process.
• Administration costs are climbing faster than sales.
• We need more people.
• Problems with our products go undetected until our customers are using them.
• Things are fixed, but they don’t stay fixed.
• Our inventory is too high. Yet we don’t have what our customer wants in stock.
• We tried that before. It won’t work here.
• You don’t understand the culture here. That’s not the way we do things. Its different in our industry.
• We have quality teams, continuous improvement teams, ISO programs, re-engineering efforts, balanced scorecards, six sigma trained black belts. Its like the flavour of the month program, yet we are not seeing the results in real numbers.
When you hear the word Lean, what do you think about? “Manufacturing”, is the usual first response. “Lean Manufacturing”. Toyota is the example most often used. Toyota and Cars. Assembly line manufacturing. That’s what most people think Lean is.
Manufacturing is also the first place many people look to implement improvements. Yet manufacturing processes typically account for less than 20% of the total process lead time (the time it takes from when you get a customer order, to when you cash the cheque).
It may seem surprising, but Lean thinking has nothing to do with cars - or manufacturing. It is about eliminating waste and solving problems in processes. Any process.
The challenge with lean is in seeing the problems, identifying the waste.
In most manufacturing operations, only 5% of activities add value for the customer. Adding value means (1) it changes the thing going through the process, (2) the customer is willing to pay for the activity, and (3) it is done right the first time. This implies that 95% of what we do does NOT add value and is potential waste. In offices, the waste is even higher.
Managers and supervisors will only see 2% of the waste.
In office and administrative service environments, supervisors and managers only see 2% of the waste. They are too far removed from the daily work to see the waste.
The people doing the work have learned to live with the waste. They may have created work-arounds in the system to get things done. These, in themselves, add more waste.
What are these unseen wastes? The time it takes to find a document. The extra signature required on an expense statement. The rework on a proposal because the correct template was not used. The time it takes to walk across the building to photocopy a report. A power point presentation made, just in case the boss asks for it. The meeting that does not start on time or runs too long. The manager who “walks the floor” to “see what is going on”.
In a typical office, it is assumed that if people are at their desks and look busy, they are adding value. All seems well, especially if they have a good attitude.
A purchasing person who works hard, never takes breaks and is always helpful will be seen as a stellar employee. The fact that he takes 25% longer to complete the task due to poor training or lack of resources will be overlooked.
When we apply Lean Thinking in an organization, we look at how we do the work, how the system can be improved, what waste we can find and eliminate. Its not about the person doing the work - whether they are a “good worker” or not. Its about improving the work methods, standardizing processes, providing training and increasing skills.
Lean thinking is about is solving problems, elegantly, with innovation
Learning to identify and eliminate waste is fundamental to lean thinking. We must learn to see waste, and systematically eliminate it.
Thinking of problems as opportunities is not something we are trained to do. With lean, we need to learn to treasure problems - celebrate finding them – this is our opportunity to improve!
Once we clearly see the problem, the root cause must be identified. This requires some structured problem solving. We need to avoid treating the symptoms. Unless we identify the true root cause, the problem will re-occur.
Once the problem and its root cause is clearly understood, we can create solutions. An elegant solution can be a single tiny idea that changes everything. Quite often, this solution is not spending capital.
An elegant solution is one in which the desired effect is achieved, with the least amount of effort. John W. Gardner, the former US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, once said, "We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insolvable problems."
Elegant solutions are not obvious, except in retrospect.
Organizational Change.
Leaders like silver bullets. Take this tool, transplant it to my organization and everything will be magically fixed.
That’s the flavour of the month.
We end up with so many tools and initiatives underway that we can’t support them all. We keep dropping the ball.
Lean requires a more systematic approach. It has some well known tools to use, but requires discipline, structure and mentoring to make it work. This is why so many organizations report they are disappointed with their lean initiative results. The tools are applied without the systematic approach. “Lean does not work here”, they say.
A flaw with Lean is in the tools themselves. They are simple and when observed in the factory, they seem like common sense. So leaders take the tools from the plant floor and transplant them on their office or service organization. They don’t transplant easily. I don’t see accountants and engineers respond well to tape outlines for their stapler and keyboard.
Truth be known, Lean Thinking works anywhere. Health care, offices, engineering design, sales teams, construction projects, mining industries. Anywhere work gets done, Lean Thinking can be applied. However, it takes a strategic and systematic approach to be successful.
How do I do that?
Working on how we do the work.
A key limitation of traditional improvement initiatives is that they focus on ...
Click here to download the rest of this article.
Norm
www.normanbain.com
Monday, November 2, 2009
Trust, Respect and Integrity
People say you can't do business with friends and family. They strongly caution against it. They say it is a recipe for disaster.
I say this is a fallacy. My business is built on relationships. The majority of my business comes through my network of contacts. Through the business relationship we become friends and referrals follow. The key is mutual Trust, Respect and Integrity.
I've been doing a great deal of work on the topic of Lean Communication. Through my association with OEM Consultants, I have been working with groups to understand and build on this model of 100% trust and 100% respect. While I'm discovering this communication model, I'm learning that lean communication is not easy or simple. Its tough to communicate clearly, with few words and no assumptions. I know what happens when I assume things ... I make an ASS of U and ME. Yet assumptions continue to be prevalent in my life and my discussions, as I'm sure you experience in yours.
I was taught that trust and respect is earned. I preached that mindset to my kids. My professional experience has shown that there are people who will benefit from my action and ideas to my own detriment. I've discovered that this belief is one reason why change is resisted in organizations. Who will get the credit? I've also learned that this is not the norm. Most do not react this way.
If you are building a team that will effect change in an organization, you must understand the organizational culture. You must build accountability into the team. And that demands mutual trust, respect and accountability.
I started my career in management when teams were all the rage. Individual effort was ignored and individual recognition was discouraged. There is no "I" in "Team". I began to speak in terms of we, rather that I. So much so, that I once had a recruiter ask me exactly what my involvement was in an important improvement project I was describing. I had led the project and driven the results, but had been programmed to talk in terms of "we", not "I".
Times have changed. We live in an age of perceived "entitlement". People tend to think the world owes them something, yet they are not accountable for anything. Perhaps we lost that accountability by focusing on teams. Who, exactly, is "we" when the team work is not done.
There may not be an "I" in team, but there is a "me" if you look for it. Part of lean communication is understanding my responsibility, accepting that responsibility and being accountable for delivering in my role on the team.
I'm coming to understand that lean communication may be the foundation for lean thinking. If we can communicate more effectively, we drive out waste. That is a key principal in lean thinking. And lean thinking can be applied to manufacturing, health care, offices, design houses or any business model.
Lean communication starts on a foundation of trust and respect. Without trust and respect we lose accountability. We lose integrity. And without accountability and integrity we miss the results. So becoming a practitioner of lean communication my be a great foundation to becoming a lean organization.
This foundation of trust, respect and integrity is what makes friendships and family work so well. We don't betray that foundation with family or friends. So why do we in business?
If you would like to learn more about lean communications, contact George at OEM Consultants. Its a different approach. I'm finding it effective. I think its fascinating. I have a lot to learn before I become a lean communicator.
Norm
www.normanbain.com
For more information, see my post on Leadership and Self Deception
I say this is a fallacy. My business is built on relationships. The majority of my business comes through my network of contacts. Through the business relationship we become friends and referrals follow. The key is mutual Trust, Respect and Integrity.
I've been doing a great deal of work on the topic of Lean Communication. Through my association with OEM Consultants, I have been working with groups to understand and build on this model of 100% trust and 100% respect. While I'm discovering this communication model, I'm learning that lean communication is not easy or simple. Its tough to communicate clearly, with few words and no assumptions. I know what happens when I assume things ... I make an ASS of U and ME. Yet assumptions continue to be prevalent in my life and my discussions, as I'm sure you experience in yours.
I was taught that trust and respect is earned. I preached that mindset to my kids. My professional experience has shown that there are people who will benefit from my action and ideas to my own detriment. I've discovered that this belief is one reason why change is resisted in organizations. Who will get the credit? I've also learned that this is not the norm. Most do not react this way.
If you are building a team that will effect change in an organization, you must understand the organizational culture. You must build accountability into the team. And that demands mutual trust, respect and accountability.
I started my career in management when teams were all the rage. Individual effort was ignored and individual recognition was discouraged. There is no "I" in "Team". I began to speak in terms of we, rather that I. So much so, that I once had a recruiter ask me exactly what my involvement was in an important improvement project I was describing. I had led the project and driven the results, but had been programmed to talk in terms of "we", not "I".
Times have changed. We live in an age of perceived "entitlement". People tend to think the world owes them something, yet they are not accountable for anything. Perhaps we lost that accountability by focusing on teams. Who, exactly, is "we" when the team work is not done.
There may not be an "I" in team, but there is a "me" if you look for it. Part of lean communication is understanding my responsibility, accepting that responsibility and being accountable for delivering in my role on the team.
I'm coming to understand that lean communication may be the foundation for lean thinking. If we can communicate more effectively, we drive out waste. That is a key principal in lean thinking. And lean thinking can be applied to manufacturing, health care, offices, design houses or any business model.
Lean communication starts on a foundation of trust and respect. Without trust and respect we lose accountability. We lose integrity. And without accountability and integrity we miss the results. So becoming a practitioner of lean communication my be a great foundation to becoming a lean organization.
This foundation of trust, respect and integrity is what makes friendships and family work so well. We don't betray that foundation with family or friends. So why do we in business?
If you would like to learn more about lean communications, contact George at OEM Consultants. Its a different approach. I'm finding it effective. I think its fascinating. I have a lot to learn before I become a lean communicator.
Norm
www.normanbain.com
For more information, see my post on Leadership and Self Deception
Sunday, November 1, 2009
An on-line 5-why problem solving tool
I have had several questions come my way lately about how 5-why can work as an effective tool for problem solving. I explored this topic on this blog at this post in the past.
I thought it might be fun to create a tool to manage the 5-why process for team problem solving on-line. I could not find one, so I built a 5-why problem solving website. Its free for anyone who wants to try it.
You can explore it by adding a problem here:
http://www.leanjourney.ca/5Why/5why.php
To explore the 5-why example in the earlier post click below:
http://www.leanjourney.ca/5Why/problemsolve.php?qid=1&qcode=uocz3vae
Have fun!
Norm
www.normanbain.com
I thought it might be fun to create a tool to manage the 5-why process for team problem solving on-line. I could not find one, so I built a 5-why problem solving website. Its free for anyone who wants to try it.
You can explore it by adding a problem here:
http://www.leanjourney.ca/5Why/5why.php
To explore the 5-why example in the earlier post click below:
http://www.leanjourney.ca/5Why/problemsolve.php?qid=1&qcode=uocz3vae
Have fun!
Norm
www.normanbain.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
