Lessons

Lesson Info

Create a Reality Tree & Causal Circle

This takes us into a tool called the reality tree it's, a wonderful tool because of five wise, like the fishbone chart limits us, tio. Basically one ut at a time, why were relates, okay, why were we having tails, things like that? What if we have, ah, a whole bunch of beauties like those top ten? Is there a tool we could use when we've got a really big mess on our hands, that might help us, where they cut to the chase? And the answer is yes, of course, there's there's a couple, I'm going to reveal three one of them's called the the reality tree, and what we do here is we might take a bunch of post its, and we say, I will want one ut we had was late deliveries, so as a team, we get together and we go, all right, we got late deliveries. So we've got late deliveries. Help me out. What were some of the other ones? We had a customer. Unhappy? All right, we lost money. We left. I won't do all ten. We left revenue on the table, right? We had long a cycle time. We had no low productivity. By t...

he way, some of the best 00:01:57.277 --> 00:02:01. ways to do this type of exercise is with a team. Get 00:02:01.34 --> 00:02:04. him up on their feet. You get him in front on a wall 00:02:04.04 --> 00:02:07. or, you know, a whiteboard. You'd want to do it with 00:02:07.45 --> 00:02:10. post its like a drum up here if I wanted to. I like 00:02:10.72 --> 00:02:12. using post its for the reality treat, because you 00:02:12.61 --> 00:02:14. might find it. You're gonna then move him around. 00:02:15.27 --> 00:02:18. All right, mom, and I'll throw one more out here. 00:02:18.04 --> 00:02:19. We had high inventory. You know, we had lost revenue and things like that as well, but we'll just start with a few and what the reality tree does, it says, believe it or not, all of these beauties are connected in a true system and systems thinking, everything's connected. There is no independent action, so to speak, that doesn't have an effect on other things, so now it's, more or less well, if we're going to build out a reality tree, how do they connect? Mmm. And I always like to start with something close to the customers. So if I've got a customer who's unhappy, all right, my drawing a roll in here and say, well, what? Why is the customer unhappy? Think about what? Why the unhappy? Well, a couple reasons why, oh, all right, well, let's, look at those reasons. One wass. Late deliveries. All right. That the only reason why, so we're always testing for sufficiency? Well, no, that wasn't the only reason why there was another reason why wei had it listed as a u t, I think, but we, uh, I didn't write it down. It was poor quality, right? Incidentally, even if it wasn't captured as a uti, we'd still write it on a post it and show it because this isn't just about connecting the beauties it's about getting to the actual causes you, these air effects. So now we say the customer was unhappy. Why late deliveries, that's. One level of why poor quality that's. Also one level of why were they unhappy for any other reason? So low productivity. The other customer doesn't even know what your productivity is. But your productivity is causing. Poor flo, poor long cycle times, things like that that's going to so low productivity is going to show up in the equation. There's, no question about it, but what is the customer experiencing right at this level? I want my product. I wanted to be right. I want the amount I wanted to be, right there was something else I was complaining about, yeah, invisibility, communication, invisibility, so I could call it here, and it wasn't listed as a uti, so I might just put it on. Here is a different posted, poor visibility. I couldn't. I was in the dark. I couldn't see anything, so I could say what there is another reason why, and by the way, there might have been other reasons why, but that's goingto cover thick, back to parade oh, that's going to cover that eighty twenty big. Those three things are big, so that's all considered one level of wise. So the reality to kind of builds on the five white concept of drilling deep. Well, why were we late with the delivery? What's, let's, go down to another level of why there's a couple of reasons for that? Probably, right. Well, because we, uh, we take a long time to do what we do very long cycle time. All right, why else? Well, this could be could be where low productivity comes in and impacts the client, all right, any other reasons why we relate with delivery? Okay, so, uh right here. In other words, we didn't understand. I'll put that one on a green. We didn't understand. And I'll just capture it as v o c voice of customer right? So we did not understand the voice of the customer and as a result it hurt us because but not understanding the voice of customer we had a whole lot of poor quality which caused late deliveries and really upset the customers, so now you'll start to see the reality turned into this spiderweb of arrows and complexities that system's thinking that side effects that's how everything's connected, but we don't necessarily see it this way, so this is a brilliant tool for seeing the cause and effect relationship in a very sophisticated system. This is kind of like saying, well, you got a headache? Why do you have a headache inflamation in the neck white have information in the net because you're favoring one side while you're favoring one side's down here in your hips and you're down with that fifth level of why you're like going, huh? Just 00:07:16.2 --> 00:07:19. doesn't make sense at first, but that's the complexities 00:07:19.16 --> 00:07:22. that were so frequently dealing with bata entrepreneurs 00:07:22.06 --> 00:07:24. and solo preneurs and business people are suddenly 00:07:24.7 --> 00:07:27. out of business and surprise because they they feel 00:07:27.28 --> 00:07:29. like they got blindsided I didn't see that coming 00:07:30.3 --> 00:07:31. well, they didn't see it coming because they weren't 00:07:31.86 --> 00:07:36. trained to think in terms of a systems all right system's 00:07:36.58 --> 00:07:37. thinking, 00:07:38.5 --> 00:07:41. by the way there's an unhappy customer cause anything 00:07:45.47 --> 00:07:46. that's. Undesirable. 00:07:47.78 --> 00:07:49. Yeah, yeah, yeah! 00:07:51.5 --> 00:07:54. So I'll put that one on pink, just for fun. 00:07:57.9 --> 00:08:00. Hell is other. People don't hire them. 00:08:01.95 --> 00:08:03. Exactly. Hurry! 00:08:06.7 --> 00:08:08. You know, we could say business gone. Or 00:08:12.2 --> 00:08:16. business you know I know detractors in the net promoter 00:08:16.72 --> 00:08:19. scoring kind of system we've got customers out there 00:08:19.62 --> 00:08:22. going on down to business you know was so and so because 00:08:23.4 --> 00:08:25. I had the worst experience and she's 00:08:26.6 --> 00:08:31. so yeah you've got on the flip side you put a smile 00:08:31.44 --> 00:08:35. here and you get promoters you get advocates it could 00:08:35.51 --> 00:08:37. be your best salespeople ever do you know in twenty 00:08:37.97 --> 00:08:40. six years running my business I've never had a sales 00:08:40.16 --> 00:08:45. person and I really ever make a sales call I don't 00:08:45.09 --> 00:08:48. go on sales calls well how do you run a business without 00:08:48.03 --> 00:08:51. making sales calls or having sales people where in 00:08:51.55 --> 00:08:52. the world your business company 00:08:54.4 --> 00:08:57. we're mouth if you're clever promoter's how do you 00:08:57.76 --> 00:09:00. get people do you even know who you are where you 00:09:00.89 --> 00:09:04. are things like that all right and I learned this 00:09:04.08 --> 00:09:05. tell you what I learned this because when I got first 00:09:05.96 --> 00:09:07. started and I lost my two partners and I didn't have 00:09:07.9 --> 00:09:11. any money and I was at that time trying to go out 00:09:11.36 --> 00:09:15. and sell consulting and what was that consulting leadership 00:09:15.74 --> 00:09:18. and change management team building type stuff and 00:09:18.99 --> 00:09:22. in the end in the day it was it wasn't something people 00:09:22.81 --> 00:09:24. were asking for so I started to ask myself what I call reverse questions rather than me going after them how do we get them to come after me rather than me not knocking on their door how do we get them to knock on my door that's, a it's it's, a creative problem solving technique where you learned to ask reverse questions. You take the very same thing that you think you want, you flip it around and you play with it, so this would be like at disney. Disney is a wonderful example of this disney's mission. Statements forwards, it's to make people happy, that's, the disney mission statement, to make people happy. So who do you think the competition, or what do you think the competition? Is it disney? How did they view it? And the answer is it's anything and everything that makes people unhappy. Oh, you mean like litter. Oh, that explains why the park's air always so clean. Incidentally, on average at disney, if you littered, somebody who works for that, park will pick it up in eleven seconds, actually measure it. Don't go to disney and litter on purpose just to see okay you know what it's it's it's it's that important that's it's one of their six principles which is fanatic about details they're very fanatical about detail because it matters so you know what disney recognizes I may not have control over what you know some other studio amusement park is doing I do have control over later I do have control over entertaining people are they stand in line or put him in the shade if it's a hot sunny day things like that let's focus on what's in our control and uh and create a delightful experience over seventy percent of the people at disney on any given day r repeat customers they're coming back because they had a good experience so you get a smile on the customer's face and you got business growth you get a frown over here you've got business risk or business gone so this is that principle number one value in the eyes of the customer and be specific specify and it goes from there so then we take the reality too we could take it to another level why do we have poor visibility ok what's that all about why don't we understand voice of customer why do we have low productivity okay why do we have long cycle times and this is an interesting vicious circle we sometimes call this a vicious circle one of the reasons we have long cycle times, it's. Because we have high inventory, it's clogging up the system. Okay, but one of the reasons we have high inventory is because we have long cycle times. Oh, and any time we see a vicious circle, this is kind of like, well, I'm overweight and I'm overweight because I eat too much. And I eat too much because they get depressed and I'm depressed because I'm overweight. That's a vicious circle and we need to break it. So anytime we get into a vicious circle all right, it's not going to just go away on its own. It feeds on itself, and we see vicious circles in business all the time. All right, we might have high inventory because we got a purchasing department out there buying things by the ship glowed and ah, get a good deal on it. And we just don't need it. We might have it because we've got overproduction. Why do we have over production? Because we have incentives toe overproduce we get. We're paying people to overproduce or over by you get down into policy, you get down into metrics, you get down into systems design, you get down into tooling. Sometimes the ruler things like that and all of that just reveals itself in a in this diagnostic and this and this reality tree. And at the end of the day, okay. Losing money. Why did why did we lose money? Okay, because we have high costs. All right? Why do we have high costs? And I think one of our beauty's, not just beauty, was, uh we have high over time, right, so why do we have high over time? Well, that could be because, uh we have long cycle times. So they all connect. The point is, you cannot do a reality tree with fight without connecting all the beauties, no matter what there, because we're part of a system. And, well, the more we can learn about the system we're a part of we could say, you know what, for that solo preneurs out there, the one or two person operation. It could be ah dependency I have on a supplier it could be a dependency I have on a customer who's taken too long to get back to me on on things I've asked them there's a there's a disconnect with customers you have some feedback from our global audience a lot of our chatters have small businesses and they're calling it micro small very small businesses ready aim fire says can you step through this with a really small business I get how this works for larger companies thank you to some of the examples that john is giving but I'm having a really hard time wrapping my brain around scaling this down for a smaller business and we have people that are asking for maybe some more concrete examples of business stories or case studies okay just say also people very confused about the color coding explained what the green the yellow the pink called means oh actually they don't uh the yellow were the original you tease that we have undesirable effects I just used pink to say that's a high risk business is gone no I probably could have used a different color down here green green is something that's a cause that's not listed as an effect. So just just to clarify their yes some some actual specifics I was working with a startup company. This was a company that was basically taking back used books started with college text books things like that taking back used books with students and then reselling them so the idea was hey there's you know at the end of the school year kids get rid of these tax books that are expensive books some of them just throw in a dumpster some of them throw him and you know they're going into landfills could we create a model where we actually retrieve these books warehousing and then come up with a way to sell them cheap and uh and if if we can't sell them can we keep him out of the landfills and partner with organizations like books for africa so very entrepreneurial couple of guys started this in their dorm rooms are in their apartment actually and they uh they built this rapidly growing company that got their funding and that funding they needed and they even won an award I got recognition is a social enterprise very conscious for the environment and green things like that but I wanted to help him because they asked for some help and it was interesting because they had uh this point they over million books in a warehouse and one of things they said was the book sir well they're basically they're free I said well so how'd they get here well there's logistics okay and the warehouse there's your stillman is that free that wasn't free and so the company was essentially initially it was potentially going broke because it was it was an interesting model but they were essentially taken any book even though it was completely worthless toe ware house it to potentially give it away or recycle it keep it out of a landfill but they're the original model was was going broke so until they learn to differentiate value add from non value add which we've covered till they learned to differentiate that nothing's really free okay and the businesses have to make money or they die this was again a small company but they they were creative and clever in there there there there an awesome business today the idea being let's tow let's take a couple of couple of people start in this business and make sure that you understand some of the fundamentals that we've talked about today and so the more specific if there's a specific example from anybody in the audience if you have something specific it's it's vegas the enemy here so when you say well I'm just a one or two person person business I don't see how the supplies what business are you talking about? What exactly is it you do because I need facts and data to be of any help at all so so share that with me and we're gonna have a hot seat section in a later session where I really wantto I really want to work with you on that so I've worked with companies with the little startups one in two people I've run on one person business for twenty six years and I've worked with companies with fifty thousand hundred thousand plus employees so I'll try teo shape it teo your specific needs I just need to speak I know specifically what you're your needs are and and work with you on that this tool right here applies to any size business you can take this tool home with you and working and using on your personal life what are the top five or ten beauties and your personal life and do the root cause analysis it's that simple but it's that profound simple sometimes is profound it's elegant profound so if I I lay out my beauties all right and I, uh I start tio look for the instructions are right here so start with just you don't even have to have ten you could start with five or six significant you tease one proposed it put him up on a wall all right our white board something like that and start asking why so why do I have this sooty? Why is the customer madam e we covered three different contributors but we say let's go deeper than that why do we have late delivery long cycle times? Is that the only reason why now we've got low productivity as well okay and low productivity could actually contribute to long cycle times there could be a relationship here well, why do we have low productivity 00:19:52.18 --> 00:19:54. and we could add a posted. We have a lot of non value 00:19:54.37 --> 00:19:54. added work, 00:19:56.63 --> 00:19:58. whatever color we want to use this, and we have 00:20:00.38 --> 00:20:07. hi non value added work going on. If we've got a lot 00:20:07.82 --> 00:20:09. of people doing a bunch of non value added, guess 00:20:09.67 --> 00:20:10. what? Our productivity is gonna look like. 00:20:12.0 --> 00:20:13. All right, it's not gonna look good. 00:20:14.28 --> 00:20:18. So we got high pine evaluated work that the only reason 00:20:18.28 --> 00:20:19. we have low productivity. 00:20:21.18 --> 00:20:23. We have a lousy design. We have a poor 00:20:25.88 --> 00:20:28. system or process design. 00:20:30.28 --> 00:20:32. This gets to what dumbing was talking about. Put good 00:20:32.66 --> 00:20:36. people in a bad system. Bad system wins, no contest. 00:20:36.64 --> 00:20:38. So we have a poor system design. 00:20:43.08 --> 00:20:45. By the way, that poor system design allows for a lot 00:20:45.73 --> 00:20:47. of uncontrolled inventory 00:20:48.72 --> 00:20:52. that poor system design allows for long cycle times 00:20:52.01 --> 00:20:53. by the way I take responsibility for that cause I 00:20:53.89 --> 00:20:57. designed it but I designed it purposefully to reflect 00:20:57.6 --> 00:21:00. the pain and suffering and a lot of people in business 00:21:00.66 --> 00:21:03. have today as they got this division of labour they've 00:21:03.56 --> 00:21:06. got these batch in q systems they've got complexities 00:21:06.82 --> 00:21:08. they've got a lot of non value added we're going on 00:21:09.68 --> 00:21:12. they're doing the best they can but this one right 00:21:12.32 --> 00:21:15. here a poor system design that could be your business 00:21:15.81 --> 00:21:17. model I get a lousy business model 00:21:18.78 --> 00:21:20. any soul oprah nouri the entrepreneur out there's 00:21:20.88 --> 00:21:23. got a lousy business models is doomed until they come 00:21:23.58 --> 00:21:26. up with something more clever so what's going to differentiate 00:21:26.91 --> 00:21:28. you on the market it gets right back to what we said 00:21:28.97 --> 00:21:30. how are you going to get value to flow through that 00:21:30.65 --> 00:21:33. value stream it's those five principles we covered 00:21:33.02 --> 00:21:35. earlier you can't know clearly what you're going to 00:21:35.7 --> 00:21:38. get paid for in the voice of the customer this right 00:21:38.5 --> 00:21:39. here is huge 00:21:40.88 --> 00:21:42. all right so we don't understand the voice of the 00:21:42.4 --> 00:21:44. customer we've got a poorly designed system that allows 00:21:44.88 --> 00:21:47. by the way for a lot of non value added work it feeds 00:21:47.71 --> 00:21:51. their low predict productivity okay it allows for 00:21:51.2 --> 00:21:54. a lot of overtime and increased costs by the way inventory 00:21:54.3 --> 00:21:55. costs a lot of money so this is you know this is something that any business could look at how do you spend your money how do you spend your time okay how much of that is value added and that one or two person company can do this just as well as they can actually do it easier than a big company clarify you asked for specifics ready aim fire says the small business I'm developing as an online course course marketing lead generation and conversion are key as well as ensuring customers air using the course and getting results and their own personal lives and I tried to ask what the course content was about I haven't gotten any yet so what problem does this course off and how do you know show me the data show me your market research that says this course I'm offering is going to solve major problems in the world hears the data to support that where is just just the pine this guy dream show me the data so the idea is think very carefully but I've got a solution call the course in this case it's an online course so that's it's very competitive as you know all right so what solution are you solving it's a great question and these gets back to some of those questions in the markets who is your competition how do you are how are you different than the competition how you price differently? How do you deliver it differently. Okay, because there's, just all kinds of noise online, everybody knows it. All kinds of noise online. So it's, it's, confusing, it's, it's something you've got to be very careful to differentiate yourself from, and I'd say, back, start building your course with specific customers and students who have a problem that this course is going to help them resolve or in need that it's going to help them resolve and then get them to give you testimonials get them toe to say look I took this course and wow I mean it's changed my life use those because that builds credibility all right people know that you're promoting your course because your course but when people hear other people promoting your course because they gain from it they benefitted from it it made them wealthy it made them successful made them for have made their customers successful now you're starting to think about that the whole system writing by the way okay so that's a specific niche that's a problem that's being solved people need a resume for all sorts of reasons right yes and no okay because in today's world resumes air not even used in a lot of cases so is this the next floppy disk be careful and I'm only saying this to be brutally honest okay I mean the way people search for jobs find jobs get searched for jobs is different today than it was before so yeah you might have to have a rest resumes of paradigm that's a very old one you know the cvi whatever you want to call it the curriculum vitae but it's be be be sure your current be sure you understand the nuances of today and the whole social media approach to teo job. Search and finding jobs and and get people teo to benefit from your knowledge and your teachings and your in your course and then rave about it so strategically that would make a lot of sense getting an awesome thanks awesome awesome so thank you thank you okay but there's applications all around for this stuff so I encourage the audience teo to speak up throughout the segments and let me know what you're thinking because that's the only way I can help in in in specific okay so you know the reality tree challenges us to realize that we get into this again this either or thing is that a cause or is that effect is that a lean tool or is that a six sigma tool is stop it all right what it's showing there's something we need to analyze you can call it cause or effect cause and effect here's what I mean by that okay late for work there's the undesirable effect that actually could cause me to get fired to get yelled at or you know so that could actually be a cause as well as an effect well why didn't the car start our why was I laid the car wouldn't start was that a cause and effect we've listed it as a uti because it's undesirable but the battery's dead so the car won't start I wanted it to start but we could also argue it to cause so I'm late I could go all the way up here to left the lights on is that a cause and effect both it's causing the battery to die but something's causing it and this is the depth of systems thinking it's not as simple as cause or effect dualistic itt's comprehensive so we have to just be careful that we don't get fall into this trap that ok well um I found that the root cause I don't even like that terminology a lot of times because roots can have roots you know? So I'm looking for leverage points I'm looking for these points where I know that if I had a a top design okay and I was clear on what the customer was paying me for all right that just those two things right there could make a world of difference because if I knew that that and I provided better visibility, better quality and more timely delivery maybe it's not perfect but boys it better than what I have today. Okay and incidentally, why else do I have poor quality there's going to be other reasons why uh we could do a little fish bone kind of thing and say it's the tooling it's the training but the idea this is to get down to let's really find out what's going on beneath the covers so to speak so we can get it we get it fixed and we'll get it fixed in a sustainable way. So the headaches not just continuing to come back all right so we continue to build and drill down and and sometimes where there's a gn and relationship will put a little circle around it here so this is you know example of its its it's late delivery and poor quality that's really upsetting the customer it's not just one or the other so if there's an hand in there okay let's call that out that just teaches us about dependencies I talked a little bit about vicious circles you know where there's these continuous loops that feed on each other the idea here this isn't pretty by the end of the day you could have a wall with one hundred post its on it and people walk in and go what in the world is that because when you walk in and see the finished product it's it's almost mind blowing but the team that built it gets it because they've been sitting here for an hour to drilling down and debating and trying to trying to figure it out and when they get aligned their like you know what if I had to pick two or three things off for this crazy design that would be game changing the magnification br design it could be our we really don't understand our customer and it could be our our diamond department constraint something like that but let's let's fix those will it be perfect? No, we'll be better better be show me the day to prove it, but let's, get past this. It's got to be perfect, as it certainly isn't. Now, all right, the systems we work in the workplace is we work in now, aren't, quote, perfect, so let's, just make him better and do it fast. Make a difference. The causal circle, another one of my favorite tools. This one essentially allows us to take a circle list. Our list are you tease like they are on a clock. Okay, so here's, the customers unhappy. Here's. A late delivery. There's. Poor quality. One more on here. Weaken fires. High inventory. Okay with this tool we could say all right we started out with ten you tease could we narrow it down to two or three that are really causing the other eight? And the answer is yes so let's you know, let's play with that the idea here is to arrange a beauty's in a large circular pattern around the circle you can number each one or actually label it like I've done here start with that first uti and sorry does this ut the customers unhappy does that cause us to deliver late and the answer's no, it doesn't it's the other way around perhaps but the unhappy customer doesn't cause us to deliver late does the unhappy customer cause us to have poor quality? We could blame it on the customer for rejecting our quality but that probably isn't gonna fly. Does the customer cause us to have I invent high inventory? All right? And if the answer is not no okay then let's move on to the next one. Does the late delivery cause an unhappy customer and go yeah, that happens does late delivery cause poor quality? Maybe not there's late delivery cause high inventory it certainly can. We can have things piling up all right and we continue around the circle just like you see over here does poor quality cause unhappy customer and did does poor quality cause late delivery this poor quality cause high inventory you bet and so what we might find a cz we go around the the circle is that this right here look at all the outgoing arrows no I just gave you a little slice of it but look at all the outgoing arrows when we found a uti that's got a lot of hell going arrows what's that tell us that's it that's a that's a big hitter that's not just a a uti of an effect that's a driver that could even be a root cause or major leverage point so when we look at we look over here and we say well they got a whole lot of beauties come in and you know arrows coming into ut number five which might be something like unhappy customers a lot of things causing a customer to be unhappy but that doesn't look like it's causing anything else so that's truly kind of at the end of the line so to speak that's an effect but where do we see a lot of outgoing arrows wow one two three four coming out of beauty number six whatever that is okay that's interesting we got three coming out of u t number one three coming out of u t number nine so we start to look at incoming and outgoing arrows we can even color code these and and count him up but the idea is let's find where we see a lot of outgoing arrows and I'll tell you this is this is true, a lot of times with a a circle with ten or twelve beauties we might find to you, tease that cover every cover, every uni. In other words, two of the two of the twelve or two of the ten actually touch all the other ones. Wouldn't you like to know those? Wouldn't you like to know in your own personal life as well as your professional life? What are those two or three leverage points that if I worked on my whole world, could open up that's, smart business, that's, very smart business. And this tool right here, the cause and effect matrix, allows us to simply take those beauty's we've got again. We were just playing with these beauties. We'll have a little fun with it. Let's list the udi's across the top of this matrix there's our undesirable effects. Okay, we got eight. In this case now, let's start to brainstorm, causes let's. Start with you. T number one, customers. Unhappy why's customer unhappy. Well, we might say, late delivery that the only reason why now there's. Another cause cosby. Poor quality. Anything else? Yeah, poor visibility. We've got enough covered, let's. Move on to the next one. Beauty number two, whatever that is. All right, that's it. Hi inventory pick pick your choice so why is it why is that happening and what we start a cz we brainstorm and these these khun go all the way right down to the floor we've got not justcause abc but x y z because right down on the floor but now what we start looking at is which of the causes actually impact the most you tease because we said well cause et for for the for the customer I was late delivery does late delivery cause anything else so it's similar to the logic to over here yeah late delivery cause is not just the customer to be unhappy but it also causes us to have high inventory so we'd put a number you know we'd put a number wherever that one wass now the one three nine that you see listed here is just a simple way to await this matrix it's often called the weighted matrix so what we're saying is we're way in the relationship a nine is I sunk the battleship it's a direct hit that's a major cause a three is a moderate sort of in between cause of one is a minimal cause and if it's blank there's no cause and effect relationship at all so by weighing it we can gain more understanding into where that potentially the rial leverage points so if you looked at this example against very simple on generic what if you could only pick one cause to start working on as a project or as a you know, a business strategy of some sort which of the three causes would you pick and why the answer should be obvious? I'm gonna pick c because if I pick c it outweighs the other two combine so I'm going to pick this cause whatever this might be maybe it's that blasted ruler maybe it's my process design maybe it's the fact that I really don't know what the customer wants so I'm gonna have to figure that out okay? And it's not to say I can't work on more than one thing at a time but it's a way to prioritize our efforts so I got to figure out if I'm teaching people how to write resumes and I'm teaching him howto you know, doing online and a fast, efficient, cost effective way, okay, what are my top two or three priorities to get my business? Tio really sustain itself and grow all right? And maybe I better really know my audience and maybe I better have a process that's lean and robust and efficient because I haven't got time or money to waste, okay? And I better make darn sure that what I'm teaching is current and that that it's it's truly needed in the world today or better yet in the world tomorrow because it's going to be tomorrow in twenty four hours or less all right, so those heirs to some of the basic cause and effect tools we drill down to the major causes way so you know, poor system design we don't understand our customer we've got a constraint the diamond department and here just some common causes of waste in the world today take note of these these air in your books and your materials but location layouts the way we lay out locate our people can be a serious problem process design huge process capability we have a good design but our capabilities lousy we're making a lot of mistakes it's not the process itself it's our it's our ability to execute we don't have good standard practices we don't adhere to standard practices, we have them but we don't follow him we don't have effective training we've got supplier issues we've got material problems you know we get the thailand but it's cracked or it's it's not the right color whatever it could be. We've got this big batch thinking so we batch in q everything and we got big clogs in our system we don't have good data or visual control so we're operating in the dark our customers are operating in the dark these air very common causes a waste. We want to look at these as it was more or less a checklist if we're building our businesses we've got misunderstanding around voice a customer or out of the things between departments we don't know what what's really going on so we jumped to conclusions we've make assumptions we've got ineffective maintenance or equipment problems blasted ruler we've got long set up times or lots of adjustments things like that going on we've got a measures that aren't aligned we got the wrong incentives potentially workplace disorganization is a big problem so we're not organized well well you don't have good accurate forecasting so we've got this real problem understanding what we need to make and when and prioritising we get scheduling issues control problems control systems problems inventory control would be an example of that um governments things like that we've got over complexity built into our system and we've got policy challenges so we always look to policy was there very common causes of waste major leverage points of all of those these are the top five I see over and over and over again so it's a worry caution process design we saw it earlier process capability tails on the diamonds that's a process capability problem control systems inventory coming out of the out of the roof okay overproduction and requisition things like that policy batch ing and shipping and eights and things that could we saw that earlier and beneath all of that is ignorance in other words we don't know what we don't know and if you get down to that fifth level of why you're often in ignorance and that's not an insult it's just a reality we don't know and when? We don't know, we assume. And that takes us into a world of risk. Unnecessary, in many cases, risk. Thirty constraints we're going to cover maurine the next segment but that's simply a bottleneck and the bottleneck is uh governs the speed of the whole system so we have to find the bottlenecks and then we have to resolve for the bottlenecks so you might think about that over break and then our next segment we're going to take a look very closely at bottlenecks but where where do we see inventory piling up for example where we see traffic jams where do we see constraints in the system what's that those air heart attacks waiting to happen or strokes waiting to happen we've got clots we've got to get trouble on the horizon so we got to know our constraints and and managed to our constraints all right and balance our system to those constraints so you know tio there's wrap up this session a little bit I love this line from walt kelly pogo you know we have met the enemy and he is us. What was that the time stein said earlier we cannot solve the problems we face today at the same level of thinking we were at so this is about using our analysis to really take a good look in the mirror find out what we can change what's within our control whether we're teaching people how to write resumes put in thailand you know building if a photo lab photo business for what you know, whatever it might be building a consulting practice. And, uh, and so often, we're that we're the ones where they were the leverage points.