Sometimes I get blurry eyes when I present the idea of Lean Thinking at my small business marketing seminars. At HALO, our entire marketing philosophy and coaching programs are based on lean thinking.
Matt over at 37signals wrote an article that might help remove some of the haze – he summarized the Toyota way of doing things (all based on Lean Thinking). Here are some excerpts from the article and comments.
Take a personal interest in your customer experience…
"Toyota’s chief engineers consider it their responsibility to begin a
design (or a redesign) by going out and seeing for themselves — the
term within Toyota is genchi genbutsu — what customers want in a car or
a truck and how any current versions come up short. This quest can
sometimes seem Arthurian, with chief engineers leading lonely and
gallant expeditions in an attempt to figure out how to beat the
competition."
Back office efficiency leads to success on the sales floor…
Improving efficiency in the factory, though, doesn’t
necessarily lead to greater profits. Savings on the assembly line can
mean a nicer dashboard without making the customer pay more for it. “If
you’re efficient in the things the customer doesn’t see, then you can
put it into the things the customer does see,” Ron Harbour, a
consultant whose company rates the efficiency of auto plants, told me.
A result is a car more popular with customers. Success on the assembly
line, in this way, begets success in the showroom.
Eliminate waste wherever you can and build a rainy-day fund…
Toyota’s systems and worldview derive from an
economy of scarcity. In 1950, the company’s near-bankruptcy during a
difficult year further defined its philosophy of frugality. Toyota soon
began to focus obsessively on reducing muda — or waste — and building
up a vast storehouse of cash for security.
The message really is as important as the media…
Toyota’s executives recognized early on that
improving the process by which cars are designed and built is just as
important as improving the vehicles themselves.
And from the comments – I hope this applies to us here at HALO…
”….the Japanese concept of the three actuals—go to the actual place,
work with the actual people or part and understand the actual
situation.” —Speed!
Last week a client of mine described what she said to another small
business owner about working with me: "I warned her not to expect
immediate results. That the first part of the coaching relationship you
made me muck through a bunch of stuff I didn’t want to do. But now that
it’s all come together, the results are huge." It’s that lean thinking
being applied.
Are you a Toyota? I hope we are.
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