Post written by: Russ Page Mr. T says “Treat your mother right.” Mother. There is no other.

I spoke at a Lean Six Sigma conference last week, held in Chicago.  The conference was packed with Supply Chain, Logistics, Fulfillment, Manufacturing, Transportation, Healthcare, and Service executives.  

During the conference, I heard a lot of chest-beating, neutron-jack-welch type of comments and also a lot of focus and emphasis on the “tools” of Operational Excellence.  I truly found this part to be quite disappointing, given that the audience and speakers were mostly executives from large Fortune 500 companies.

I thought and expected that people knew better but that’s okay — this represents a challenge and opportunity to do good.

How has Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma gotten to the point where it has forgotten its roots and become a subculture all in itself?  Lean Manufacturing hinges upon 2 pillars — (1) Respect for People and (2) Continuous Improvement.  Why do people focus on (2), but completely forget (1) Respect for People?

L.A.M.E

Mark coined the term L.A.M.E a while ago and I mostly agree with it.  One aspect I’d add is that the term ‘misguided’ also applies to an overfocus to one dimension of Lean and forgetting the other dimensions.  The ironic thing about this is that each dimension of Lean actually supports each other and WAS built from each other.  

Another thing as way of background: the work ‘Lean’ was a term coined by MIT’s International Motor Vehicle Program, led by Jim Womack.  The term was coined to explain how Toyota got by with “half of everything” — how they did so much with so little — fewer people, less space, less inventory, less effort, less safety incidences, less defects, and less capital investment and cash.  

I hear people use “Toyota Production System” and “Lean” separately.  In fact, during the conference I heard a number of people say things such as “We use Lean, Six Sigma, and The Toyota Production System.”  That’s like saying “I drink water, liquid, and H2O”.  

Not L.A.M.E

Toyota describes its system as a combination of (a) Philosophy, (b) Management, and (c) Technical.  Each was built upon the other and exist to support each other.  

For example, some people consider ‘Kaizen’ a tool, often referring to this as ‘Kaizen Blitz’ (which is really ‘Jishuken’, but people confuse the two), which is a team-based, rapid activity that explores a production line or problems in an operation, drive to root causes, and then brainstorm countermeasures to reduce or eliminate those root causes.  

What most folks forget is that ‘Kaizen’ was truly build upon the philosophy that “Toyota builds people and then cars” — that is, Kaizen came from the notion that the collective intelligence of your line workers is valuable and that people, if given the training and the chance, can truly do amazing things.  This is an example where the Technical came from Philosophy — the tools and methods used in Kaizen are supported and even stems from the Philosophy of ‘Respect for People’.     

Good Leadership versus Just Tools

I’d venture to say that if there is good, visionary leadership in place, then I’d take that over any ‘Tool’.  But, that is the elegance of the Toyota Way that most people don’t know, understand, or convienently forget: true Lean Manufacturing hinges upon building Leaders throughout the company — people who know and live the principles of Operational Excellence and also know how to apply the Tools that support those Principles.  

It is possible to implement a tool like Kaizen or suggestion boxes, but if your organization doesn’t respect people or if participative management is not valued, then your Kaizen activities will be mute and your suggestion boxes will be empty.

sidenote: here are a few articles on leadership –

1. Overmanaged and Underled
2. Colin Power on Leadership
3. Team or Staff?
4. Tipping-Point Leadership
5. Abraham Lincoln on Leadership
6. How to transform an Organization: Chime-in Before Buy-in

The Andon of Fear

Here’s another illustration of the subtle, but important difference between Respect for People and Tools.

An Andon is a cord that hangs on both sides of a production line.  It is to be ‘pulled’ when a problem happens on the line and, when pulled, the line stops.  The activity that ensues should be that the entire line of team on the segment of the line gathers, conducts root cause analysis (5-why’s), implements countermeasures, then the line start again.

Now, suppose your organization breeds fear in its people and that questioning the status quo is viewed as bad.  In this type of environment, implementing the ‘tool’ of an andon cord will not work.  The principles at play here are the following:

1. Speak-up if you see a problem
2. Don’t pass problems down the value chain
3. Improve the way you work, the service, and the product
4. There is an end-customer, but the person upstream from you is also your customer

If an organization doesn’t subscribe to these basic principles, then no matter how many Andon Cords are available at your company — nobody will pull them.

Emulating Gary Convis

Gary Convis was recently brought in to be the CEO of Dana Corporation (DAN), an $8.7 Billion manufacturer of auto parts. Convis is a 40 year veteran of the auto industry and a former executive at Toyota.  Dana Corporation is a struggling giant, currently in bankruptcy.  When asked what words of wisdom he has to impart to his new team members at Dana Corporation, he said this:

“manage as if you have no power”

For me, that statement elegantly summarizes the the essence of Lean Manufacturing: we teach people principles and the tools that support those principles, then we coach, teach, provide leadership, and trust them to do the right thing.  

+++++

Please find originally-written articles on Queueing Theory below:

• Queueing Theory: Part 1
• Queueing Theory: Part 2
• Queueing Theory: Part 3
• Queueing Theory: Part 4
• What is Waste?
• On Time-Traps and Waste
• Call Centers as Queueing Systems
• Travel Time & Waste
• Little’s Law for Product Development
• YouTube’s Queueing Properties
• Psychology of Queueing and Disneyland
• Queueing, Disneyland, and FastPass
• Multi-Tasking Leads to Lower Productivity
• Queueing Theory and Terrorism
• On Queueing Theory and Elevator Mirrors
• Psychology of Queueing, Haunted Houses, and Halloween
• The Variability Tree
• Attitude and the Psychology of Waiting - The Psychology of Queueing

For a few articles on Operations, lean and six sigma, please visit the links below:

• Managing Constraints Under Peak Volumes

• Order Pipeline of Events

• On Game Theory

• Series on Queueing Theory

• Applied Regression Analysis

• 5S

• Click-to-Ship Processes

• Kanban Sizing and “Pull”

• Lean at Krispy Kreme

• Theory of Constraints and Camping

• Lean for Software Development

• Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

• Featuritis and the Focus on the Customer

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Stickiness is a term used for capturing customers and making them want to stay hang out, buy stuff and then come back often. A book called “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles describes how to create Raving Fans in the offline world, the beauty of ecommerce is that you are the boss, so why not create “Raving Fans” out of your past present and future customers.

“…a Raving Fan, means that your business owns that customer”…

(more…)

All started out pretty good….but… Then she tasted that nasty toothpaste… I’ve been reading a friends blog from time to time about viral marketing.  These two pictures made me think, “If I had a website and I was a Dentist, this would be a perfect viral marketing campaign to get people to come to my site and [...]

Last nights episode of The Office provided some great lessons on sales. Jim takes a potential client out golfing in an effort to try and score the guys business. Here are a couple of good takeaways:

• Never take non-sales people with you on a sales call
• The line between persistence and being pushy is very very thin.
• Always let the client win the game but get the account.

Good stuff:

Last nights episode of The Office provided some great lessons on sales. Jim takes a potential client out golfing in an effort to try and score the guys business. Here are a couple of good takeaways: Never take non-sales people with you on a sales call The line between persistence and being pushy is very very thin. Always let the client win the game but get the account. Good stuff:

I had an interesting conversation with a lady who owns a company that teaches parenting classes that I want to share for today’s viral marketing idea post. Todays post also stems from something I witnessed the other day at my daughters baseball practice. I am not in the business of judging other peoples parenting skills, especially when I feel I have a lot to learn still as a parent of only 7 years, almost 8 but I have seen some parents act pretty bad, and treat their kids even worse in front of everyone to the point of feeling uncomfortable.

What is one to do in a situation like this? For the sake of viral marketing - think like a viral marketer!

I am not trying to make light of the situation here (bad parenting) by making this a viral post, but I am trying to have some fun with it, and maybe it can help get more word out (to those who need it) of help available.

Some of the first things I think of are the images that I know everyone (through all the email forwards) have seen by now of the kids who painted their entire living room with white paint:

It seems like I remember seeing this picture everywhere and on every site imaginable, and this was before all the main stream social media networks were even out there (like they are today). I could be wrong about the time of this picture, but it got me thinking about the funny viral posts that someone in the parenting industry could do.

Getting back to my conversation with this parenting class teacher, she was telling me about some of the funniest videos they have ever caught of either kids throwing temper tantrums, or the parents throwing their own (which she said were much funnier) when they just reach the breaking point with their kids. I am sure you have all watched the hit show Supernanny, and if you have you have seen some pretty amazing footage of kids and parents behaving badly. Doing a quick Google search for videos reveals even the more raw real (sometimes even scary) footage of parents and kids behaving badly. I could use this a goldmine of opportunity for viral blog posts if I were trying to drive more traffic to my parenting website (and get more leads).

This is the exact conversation, and advice I gave this parenting coach to drum up more interest in her blog. If she were to find videos of kids caught on tape making complete asses out of themselves in Wal Mart, at a soccer game, eating out etc and gave it the title “The Most Intense Temper Tantrums Ever Caught On Film” or “5 Kids You Don’t Want To Take Out To Eat” and show the videos of kids going absolute nuts inside the restaurant.

You can then take the time to let these people know about your wonderful parenting classes, and tie it in perfectly! This may seem like a no brain-er, or DUH (to us viral marketers), but you would be surprised how only after this conversation, and giving this lady some ideas that the light finally went on, and she was giving some brilliant ideas herself. Once you train yourself to think like a marketer then it becomes much easier to pull these out of your back pocket. Thats where this blog comes in, and our viral marketing idea Fridays - we know that you are busy running your business, and not focusing on being a marketer so we want to help!

Please feel free to ask any viral questions, or leave comments about your business and what you would like to see viral ideas for. You can do it on this post, or any of the viral marketing idea Friday posts.

There is nothing I love more than sitting down with a fellow entrepreneur (I’m more of a wantrepreneur) and talking shop. We certainly have a lot of great start ups here in Utah and its always exciting to meet new and upcoming entrepreneurs. I often get asked to lunch to talk about various issues and problems inside local startups. I have found that a lot of people like to go to lunch with someone outside their organization just to get a different perspective on things. That’s smart. I’m always more than willing to get together over lunch to talk about anything.   

But how do you know if a relationship has passed from friendly advice to consulting? Here are several key indicators:

• When you’re spending more than 30 minutes per week giving free advice to the same person/company.
• When you start to incur non-reimbursed expenses.
• When you attend meetings on behalf of the company.
• When you’re calling in continual favors on behalf of the company.

So how do you transition? Its not hard. When you see the above factors playing out in a relationship, use something like this:

“So and So, I really enjoy spending time with you. I appreciate the fact that you seek me out for advice. Given that I have started to spend more time with you and that I’ve even incurred some personal expense, I think with regards to your business we have crossed over from ‘friendly advice’ to consulting. I’m more than happy to spend time with you and help you - I’d like to be even more involved - but that means we may probably should enter into a formal relationship where there is some form of compensation exchanged for the value I’m providing you. What are your thoughts on that?”

Well…at least that’s the line I use. After all, if you’re providing value shouldn’t you be compensated for it? 

The one exception to this is that I have a strong policy of never charging students a consulting fee. It especially annoys me when educators use their position to get paid consulting gigs inside student startups. I’m aware of one such “professor” who charges students for consulting. On top of this being a huge conflict of interest - it is also my understanding that this person’s “consulting” lacks the value he charges. It makes him look bad and it makes his school look bad.

There is nothing I love more than sitting down with a fellow entrepreneur (I'm more of a wantrepreneur) and talking shop. We certainly have a lot of great start ups here in Utah and its always exciting to meet new and upcoming entrepreneurs. I often get asked to lunch to talk about various issues and problems inside local startups. I have found that a lot of people like to go to lunch with someone outside their organization just to get a different perspective on things. That's smart. I'm always more than willing to get together over lunch to talk about anything.    But how do you know if a relationship has passed from friendly advice to consulting? Here are several key indicators: When you're spending more than 30 minutes per week giving free advice to the same person/company. When you start to incur non-reimbursed expenses. When you attend meetings on behalf of the company. When you're calling in continual favors on behalf of the company. So how do you transition? Its not hard. When you see the above factors playing out in a relationship, use something like this: "So and So, I really enjoy spending time with you. I appreciate the fact that you seek me out for advice. Given that I have started to spend more time with you and that I've even incurred some personal expense, I think with regards to your business we have crossed over from 'friendly advice' to consulting. I'm more than happy to spend time with you and help you - I'd like to be even more involved - but that means we may probably should enter into a formal relationship where there is some form of compensation exchanged for the value I'm providing you. What are your thoughts on that?" Well...at least that's the line I use. After all, if you're providing value shouldn't you be compensated for it?  The one exception to this is that I have a strong policy of never charging students a consulting fee. It especially annoys me when educators use their position to get paid consulting gigs inside student startups. I'm aware of one such "professor" who charges students for consulting. On top of this being a huge conflict of interest - it is also my understanding that this person's "consulting" lacks the value he charges. It makes him look bad and it makes his school look bad.

Well I missed the two year anniversary of my blog last month. So its now officially two years and one month new. Frankly, I find myself wondering why I continue to do this…

Really…why do I continue to do this?

Well I missed the two year anniversary of my blog last month. So its now officially two years and one month new. Frankly, I find myself wondering why I continue to do this... Really...why do I continue to do this?

Post written by: Russ Page The media markets Seth Godin said it better than I’ve been trying to say for months. “The media markets. The product they sell is drama.” He continues . . . There isn’t media bias in favor of Hillary (my friend Jeff is the first to point that out). Nor is there media bias [...]

I asked someone at PRWeb the best day to release your press release. They said on a Tuesday or Wednesday. That’s generally speaking. I’d avoid Friday or weekends in most cases.

Is your business “turned on”? Are you making consistent sales every day? Are new and more exciting opportunites coming up around every door? Why (or why not)? A few days ago I wrote about stepping out of your comfort zone and making things happen with your business. One of the toughest [...]

Search Results Will Bounce Around

You’ll notice that in the first few weeks of a release you’ll come up higher in search engines. But since Google in particular counts freshness, you probably won’t stay there. As the news matures your rankings will most likely drop. It’s just one tool among many to get backlinks and distribute information about your business online.
Social Bookmark Your Press Release

One way to increase its visibility long-term is to social bookmark and inner-link to related press releases. That means Sphinn, Digg, and Delicious it (etc). Put a feed of them on your Facebook page. Blog about them, put them on your main site. In other words, you can do things to increase the visibility of your press release.

PRWeb is ideal for their social bookmarking and extra features (attaching images, PDF files, podcasts, video, etc). What I’d like to know, for search engine optimization purposes, do you still think PRWeb is the best bang for your buck? I need to run a test: running a release at each level at PRWeb and comparing them. Then, taking another release and running it through some other PR sites.

Test, Test, Test

One of my favorite posts still is the one where I ran a test and found that our $200 PRWeb press release performed by far the best. However, I’ve never tested it against other PR services. Maybe the next time I’m on the phone I could see if PRWeb would sponsor a test between levels. I know there are several factors that influence how much traffic a press release gets besides the distribution, but it’s probably one of the most influential.

Post written by: Russ Page Why doesn’t my website show up in Google? My wife sent me an email from one of her friends asking why a website didn’t show up in a search engine. It was kind of a fun exercise to see if I could explain to someone the “why” knowing they didn’t know anything [...]

I get an email from HR that says “free pizza in the break room.” The second I read it I call out, “Free pizza - RUN!” I’m hungry so I sprint. Then the entire SEO team starts running behind me. I’m laughing as I run. I have flashbacks to the movie Run Lola Run. We arrive and it’s already a madhouse but we beat most of the crowd there.

At OrangeSoda we’re still hungry. I find that makes for the most creative juice. It fuels a startup. It might explain why people are leaving Google (cashed in on stock options) to go to Facebook (possibility of lucrative stock options). That hungry stage usually fades to complacency and order.

Interesting enough in my personal life I’m going from famine to feast and I have mixed emotions about it. It’s welcomed but I want to keep that hungriness too. Except I don’t like worrying about eating (irrational though it may be). I noticed my fridge is a lot less full these days because when I’m scared about money I stock up. Now I’m clearing out to make and keep space.
5 mins after the email I hear there are 2 slices left…and speaking of still hungry….

If you missed the first session of Jeremy Palmer’s affiliate marketing course, you can listen to a recording of it on WebEx’s web site. There are other free webinars on the site that sound good too. I wish there was some sort of rating system because it’s basically just a list with no promotion. It’s not just a free webinar on finding a niche - it’s by an industry leader who is qualified and also good at teaching! I also wish I could subscribe so I get reminders of new webinars by my favorite presenters.

Also, I’m thinking, where’s their blog? Then they could promote webinars and get comments on them.

Basically Jeremy is giving away information that he’s invested a lot in learning - high quality information - free. He invests a lot in keeping up on the industry, testing, and reading. The best motivation is no results no pay. In other words, he’s not on salary. The feedback I’ve heard so far is that it’s the information is excellent and presented well. I heard one person say, “what’s the catch?!!!?” and “is this for real??!?” In this case there is no catch and he is for real.

I write about Jeremy a lot since he’s the super affiliate I know best. There aren’t many super affiliates and I only know a couple. As his business has grown he’s been more open to sharing what he’s learned as an affiliate marketer with more people. Don’t miss out.

Don’t Schedule Press Releases Too Close Together
This is a mystery solved from over a year ago. I had a client who had me write a press release every week. We had to scramble to find news and sometimes it was difficult. But then I talked to someone at PRWeb and learned that you’ll start to see diminishing returns if you publish press releases too often (and the contract ended because he said he wasn’t getting the return he expected).

The releases go to Google News and Yahoo News first and stay there for 28 days. You’re basically spamming those news sites if you distribute a release too much more often than that. You want to keep in the news, but not saturate it.

Post written by: Russ Page 2008 Utah Jazz Playoff Schedule Jazz and Lakers Playoff Schedule The series schedule: Sunday, May 4: Jazz at L.A. Lakers, 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 7: Jazz at L.A. Lakers, 8:30 p.m. Friday, May 9: L.A. Lakers at Jazz, 7 p.m. Sunday, [...]

My article on SEO for blogs was featured in the March/April 2008 issue of Engage Magazine. My friends Nash and Shahar started the magazine. They do a great job making internet marketing subjects simple for small business owners.
http://www.engagemag.net/archives/Engage-Mar08Web.pdf

Utah CEO Magazine’s latest edition is about “Web 2.0″ and Utah companies. Geoff Griffin wrote a great article about general outsourcing and asked me a few questions about relinquishing control when you are outsourcing to a tech company where you may not completely understand the industry. The full article is available online (after registering) as well as many other interesting web business related articles.

Post written by: Russ Page ABC News: Cheap on Charity An interesting segment on charity by John Stossel.

Targeting Cities with your Press Release
Here’s another PRWeb tip (I will have time in a few months to finish recording all I’ve learned about PRWeb) about the MSA regions you select. When you submit a press release, you can select 5 US cities/areas to target your release to. These are in addition to the entire US.

There are two ways this is helpful: first, there’s a link on PRWeb’s home page that says, “search by MSA” that lists the cities alphabetically. So anyone can click there and see a list of cities. From there you can see all releases from that particular area. Second, people can sign up to get RSS feeds from PRWeb. So if a news organization is tracking news from their state, they could subscribe to that feed. They can also limit the press releases they see by area, category, and by editorial score. I only sign up for scores of 4 or 5 otherwise you get too many and you’ll get lower quality releases.

Todays viral post is going to be a little different, but I wanted to share a few tips for going viral that have been on my mind this week, so here goes:

#1 Think about the audience - You need to research out the group of people you will be targeting, and the social communities they use. There are a ton of targeted social networks out there, but trying to get on them all with one post is just plain silly. Angling Masters is one of the biggest social networks for fishermen, but probably not the best place for a viral piece about fashion disasters. If you know you can create a viral piece about going Green, or something to help the environment then finding the social communities for eco-friendly stories is what you want to be looking for. Go and check out the stories that are popular, or that have made it popular in the past. Find the ones that have received the most votes, and research out the titles, content and exactly just what made them go “viral”.

#2 Create Amazing Content For Actual Readers - Don’t just think $Dollar$ signs when creating a content piece you want to go viral. The truth of the matter is very little stories that go viral actually make people any money. Especially the ones that go viral on some of the bigger communities that are out there like Digg, Reddit or Delicious. How you benefit is from exposure, and the links that will be built up over the months and years. I have stories that made the front page of Digg years ago that still get new links every week, and I still see traffic from every single day. Thats right - EVERY SINGLE DAY! Why? The content is worth reading, and content worth reading is worth sharing and sharing again.

#3 Think Like A Viral Marketer - Now when you get good at this, it will scare you. You will be doing normal everyday stuff and think to yourself - “That could make a good viral post”! Sometimes its even sickening … The other day I was driving and right in front of me (I am talking RIGHT in front of me) a HUGE car crash … someone blew threw a stop sign and t-boned a truck toeing a trailer, and that truck started spinning right towards me. The first thing I thought of? Get my iPhone out and take a picture, and my second thought was that I wish I had a camera to capture that because one of my clients is in the Trucking safety industry, and there has got to be something I could use that video on!!! Then the ideas started flowing - “10 of the Craziest crashes ever caught on video” or “10 Of The Craziest Crashes Ever Filmed By An Amatuer”. You get the point - my mind is sick and wrong. Its funny because even the simple everyday interactions with my kids - I have a never ending supply of viral posts because of all the funny stuff they do for anyone in a kids industry! Now would be a good place to remind you of a post I did a while ago on “how to think like a social media marketer“.

#4 Networking - It is one thing to just become a “member” of a social network and vote on stuff, but if you can truly understand the point of the community, become a good active member of it, and contribute to it, you will see amazing results. Make friends, vote on their stuff, share it with others of every single network you are a part of, and in turn they will do the same for you. Just today I saw a post of mine show up on another targeted social network for women from a person I made friends with about a month ago. It all does come back, so don’t be greedy with your time or participation.

#5 Have Fun - If you can’t have fun, or make fun of yourself and what you are doing then you have no place in the social networks. People who thrive in the social communities and have stuff go viral all the time are the ones that love what they do. They live, eat, breathe, and drink social media. I am not saying you have to become that crazy, but if you love what you are doing, then you will become good at it. If you are new to social networking my biggest piece of advice would be to have fun, make friends, contribute to the community and enjoy the networks that you are a part of! You will see it pay off in the end!

Post written by: Russ Page Headline News Friday (full of misleading “news”) When I logged onto CNN this morning the headline had a gut wrenching photo that had a big (-20,000) on it in reference to the loss of jobs for April. Minutes later, the headline read ‘Not as bad as we thought.’ Well, which is it? The [...]

I’m going to hit Ironman at lunch today with the boys from Sapha. I hope its as good as the critics say it is.

Funniest line overheard this week: “I overpaid for this shirt at savers.”

My blog went down again yesterday. What the heck is going on at BlueHost!?!?!

My wife is due with our forth child this coming July. She came home with a baby chair on Wednesday and it finally sunk in - I’m going to be a dad…again! Liz, are we done at four???

When things get a little crazy I always remember this true scripture from Proverbs chapter three verses five and six:

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart and lean not unto thine understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Now that’s the best advice spiritual direction I’ve ever seen!

Have a great weekend.

I'm going to hit Ironman at lunch today with the boys from Sapha. I hope its as good as the critics say it is. Funniest line overheard this week: "I overpaid for this shirt at savers." My blog went down again yesterday. What the heck is going on at BlueHost!?!?! My wife is due with our forth child this coming July. She came home with a baby chair on Wednesday and it finally sunk in - I'm going to be a dad...again! Liz, are we done at four??? When things get a little crazy I always remember this true scripture from Proverbs chapter three verses five and six: Trust in the LORD with all thine heart and lean not unto thine understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Now that's the best advice spiritual direction I've ever seen! Have a great weekend.

When writing a sales letter there are some key elements that you want to follow. The first is you need the headline to grab the reader’s attention. If the headline does not check the reader’s attention then they are not going to read your letter. Having a great header will make the reader stop and say, “I have to check this out!” In the header you want to use conversational tones, appeal to the reader emotion.

The purpose of the sales letter is not to make yourself look good or to entertain and be funny. Its only purpose is to bring in money. You do this is by appealing to the reader’s emotions. People don’t care about the manufacturer’s merits or heritage; they want to know what the product can do for them, a “What is in it for me?” mind set. If you do a good job answering that question the orders will start flowing in. The way to do this is to convey the benefits not the features of the product. (more…)