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Data Collection Questions

So here are the questions and these are the things well you know we wantto make sure we pay attention to and again in whatever business we're in so let's start with the market bucket so what's our position in the market what kind of trends do we see how are we gonna position ourselves in that market if we're start up for somebody new or for existing just where are we do we know or do we just think we know or do we not have a clue smart businesses no let's find out where we are a stew are homeworks to our research but our current sales or what what do we expect them to be you know what how do we expect it to trend trends tell us a lot who are our customers we've talked a lot about that already and what are their expectations and then what are they experiencing good, bad and ugly? What of the brutal facts? All right? What about the competition the competition promising or offering and delivering what does that look like? You'll see some pretty astonishing numbers later on with this game ...

that the competition is not just promising but capable of delivering that will put our numbers to shame wow as a wake up call but benchmark dated we do have available how do we compare what is considered world class these air questions to really think about because if we're starting up a new business, so we're running a small business and we're completely unaware of of other value propositions around us that could crush us I could be a brutal waste of money and a brutal waste of time so then we might do something called a swat analysis we were measuring are evaluating our strengths our weaknesses opportunities and threats all right so a swat analysis is just a way of really looking at how do we how can we differentiate ourselves from from everyone else all right? Those are the market questions then we go into the process 00:02:03.37 --> 00:02:05. again if we have a current process a current value 00:02:05.73 --> 00:02:07. stream what does that look like let's map that we'll 00:02:07.85 --> 00:02:11. come back to that a little bit if we don't let's do 00:02:11.14 --> 00:02:14. it future state map let's draw what our process is 00:02:14.57 --> 00:02:18. going to look like how we plan to do it this is powerful 00:02:18.42 --> 00:02:21. it's actually easier to do future state value street 00:02:21.07 --> 00:02:24. mapping in many cases with without having a present 00:02:24.93 --> 00:02:25. state 00:02:26.78 --> 00:02:29. then going from a present state that's really messed 00:02:29.17 --> 00:02:31. up to a future state and the reason for that is we 00:02:31.86 --> 00:02:35. get so attached to the current state that to tryto 00:02:35.81 --> 00:02:38. unlearn it to draw future state we were stuck here 00:02:38.91 --> 00:02:40. in a lot of baggage around with us that we don't even 00:02:40.72 --> 00:02:44. realize so the idea here is if we've got one let's 00:02:44.74 --> 00:02:47. map it well let's examine it will do that in a little 00:02:47.46 --> 00:02:50. bit if we don't have one we're starting up a new business 00:02:52.12 --> 00:02:54. drop picture what that value streams going to look 00:02:54.0 --> 00:02:56. like how is the value going to flow through to the 00:02:56.98 --> 00:02:59. customer and what do you going to measure and what 00:02:59.22 --> 00:03:01. you're going to time and what you're going to evaluate 00:03:01.4 --> 00:03:04. to make sure it's done in the best way possible okay, 00:03:04.73 --> 00:03:06. so what are the process steps the value add the non 00:03:06.85 --> 00:03:09. value at what's the sequencing or does that look like 00:03:10.42 --> 00:03:12. the devil is in the details? So we've got to make 00:03:12.63 --> 00:03:14. sure we pay attention to the details vague is the 00:03:14.78 --> 00:03:18. enemy here but the physical flow look like much distance 00:03:18.66 --> 00:03:21. isn't going to cover what's the layout going to look 00:03:21.04 --> 00:03:23. like we're going to organize it in this kind of way 00:03:24.2 --> 00:03:27. or is there a better way to organize it with information 00:03:27.35 --> 00:03:28. flow look like 00:03:29.52 --> 00:03:31. where's our air traffic control so to speak how are 00:03:31.73 --> 00:03:34. we going to know who's doing what and where everything 00:03:34.15 --> 00:03:37. is? What about the overall throughput time what's 00:03:37.11 --> 00:03:39. that look like the value add time the ratio will come 00:03:39.8 --> 00:03:42. back to a time value map to display that how much 00:03:42.75 --> 00:03:45. inventory a we're going to carry and raw material 00:03:45.67 --> 00:03:49. work in process and finished goods where is it going 00:03:49.35 --> 00:03:53. to be? These are the details how often does the inventory 00:03:53.31 --> 00:03:53. turn 00:03:54.78 --> 00:03:56. whether it's tile film, 00:03:58.22 --> 00:03:59. flowers, 00:04:00.12 --> 00:04:02. whatever it is we're doing what's that what's that 00:04:02.41 --> 00:04:03. going to look like correction. How much correction is involved? This would be those reviews. Those approvals, the back and force, the lab's inspection, the testing, interesting stuff, all right, where's, that taking place, and then where the value stream ah, or system constraints, where the bottlenecks we'll take a closer look at that. So, with these questions, we can start to really characterize our operation, lay it out, map it out and figure out ways to lean it out and make it very smart. Organization. Do we have an organization chart? What does it look like if we don't have one? What's it going to look like for a one person show or two person show who are the other key stakeholders that we rely on up on downstream that we need to to build into our organization design? So these days we have to stop thinking in terms of literal, who reports to who and in terms of more virtual who partners with who? All right. How does the organization design impact the value stream? Does it look like those silos cutting across that arrow that's, not uncommon, what's, our head count full time in temporary, all right, how many people do we need to deliver? Whatever it is we deliver? Where are they, what's, our turnover rate? We talked it break a little bit about what? About comeback organizations that have a high degree of employee turnover. What can we do about that? That could be court. Other significant. How do we distribute our labor, the value of the non value, add the location shifts. All of these things have to be carefully thought through in our businesses. What is our productivity expectation? Our output per per labor hours. And how do we measure up how much we're going to spend on overtime? Bethany, how does that work? Where we going to spend it? Any job classifications do we have? All right how many job classifications do we have uh that that can surprise you a lot of times we complicate the simple it's like einstein said anybody could make it more complex working recently with a company that over thirty four thousand job classifications it's a big company but really you know that's just extraordinary number what what is our safety record look like on how many lost time accidents are we experiencing? Where are those all of these questions lead us teo deeper knowledge and greater intelligence that we can run our businesses smarter if we decide that I don't really need to ask all these questions I'm just gonna wing it be careful incidentally these aren't all encompassing you start drilling into some of these questions you start getting answers from customers from associates for employees from vendors and they trigger more questions all right it's like einstein once said never stop questioning never stop questioning so as we question we open our minds and we explore and then that's the that's the nature of of innovation and growth is to explored and stay keep keep an open mind and an open heart not let it shut down on us and think we have got it all figured out okay, so then we go into support systems. This is where a lot of the root causes are two businesses who are struggling and this is where the failure modes are the potential fairy modes to businesses getting off the ground. It's and it's. Right here. In other words, if we have undesirable effects in the market the customer, the finances that process itself and we say, why do we have a lot of those beauties? Undesirable effects? The cause is khun b found oftentimes in here. So we need to drill in tow the support systems and ask the thoughtful questions. So I want how do we prioritize and schedule value stream activity? How do we make sure we're working on priorities? Tell you what. You got a lot of companies these days and find people busy, but they're not working on priorities. We have no way of knowing. And many organizations. How do we purchase and supply our material? What policies do we used to do that? What? Delivery sequences. We kind of we warehouse in storage. I was working with a company in mexico a few years ago, and they were in the process of building another massive warehouse. Well, let's, take a look that when you have so we walked out there and we went through it. It was jammed full. I said, well, what do your turns? Your inventory turns in this warehouse? Your annual turns on the times you turn your inventory each year, on average, it was less than two okay, I mean, world class is fifty. You're turning it a week, you know, if not faster to a year. So here's the question did you know that if you doubled your turns, you double your warehousing space without building another warehouse, you'd get twice as much through the same warehouse as you would by adding another warehouse with two turns. Did you know that if you thought about that as an option, which they hadn't, which they then did but that's managing with knowledge and intelligence, not just falling into that paradigm of more, more, more, they didn't even know the warehouse they needed are not to turn their inventory is faster. Working with another company just a few years ago, up in canada, during the baseline analysis where we 00:10:05.956 --> 00:10:08. were going through all these questions, we uncovered 00:10:08.97 --> 00:10:13. one hundred million dollars and material that had 00:10:13.17 --> 00:10:14. to be disposed of 00:10:15.42 --> 00:10:18. that's. A lot of money, one hundred million dollars 00:10:18.64 --> 00:10:21. had to be disposed of here's the catch. Actually, 00:10:23.07 --> 00:10:25. a couple of people told me this at the company. Yeah, 00:10:25.88 --> 00:10:27. but we got a good deal on it. 00:10:30.57 --> 00:10:35. Because the incentive system was you can get more 00:10:35.8 --> 00:10:41. for less so if you buy a ship load I'm very careful 00:10:41.38 --> 00:10:46. how I say that you buy a shipload of this material 00:10:46.11 --> 00:10:49. you can save a few bucks a kilo or a few bucks a pound 00:10:49.28 --> 00:10:51. or whatever and ah 00:10:53.17 --> 00:10:56. not thinking about where it's going to get warehoused 00:10:56.14 --> 00:10:59. it's got to be kept in humidity controlled this was 00:10:59.85 --> 00:11:03. in pharmaceutical controlled environments refrigerated 00:11:03.85 --> 00:11:06. environments things like that and there's a test and 00:11:06.65 --> 00:11:11. retest procedures it's federally you know regulated 00:11:11.01 --> 00:11:14. industry all this kind of stuff here is an opportunity 00:11:15.37 --> 00:11:19. toe run a business a lot smarter but to do that we 00:11:19.09 --> 00:11:22. have to break the paradigm of the procurement department 00:11:22.27 --> 00:11:24. thinking we've got a good deal on it so we covered 00:11:24.5 --> 00:11:27. our hind ends and the rest of you guys can figure 00:11:27.74 --> 00:11:30. out what to do with it so the game we played in the 00:11:30.98 --> 00:11:31. earlier 00:11:33.27 --> 00:11:39. segment it was exactly replicating what a major organization 00:11:39.41 --> 00:11:43. was doing for real and I see it we kept a week time 00:11:43.22 --> 00:11:45. after time again because we're not thinking through 00:11:45.78 --> 00:11:47. a lot of these these questions and looking at the 00:11:47.8 --> 00:11:48. whole picture 00:11:49.57 --> 00:11:52. so purchasing supply material no matter what business 00:11:52.48 --> 00:11:54. you're in you gotta have supplies they've got to come 00:11:54.74 --> 00:11:58. from somewhere how do you manage that how do you control 00:11:58.37 --> 00:12:00. your inventory of quality? Your safety performance 00:12:01.57 --> 00:12:03. about support departments that interface with the 00:12:03.68 --> 00:12:07. value stream the information technology human resource 00:12:07.12 --> 00:12:09. is how do they if you have them maybe you're going 00:12:09.71 --> 00:12:12. to use temporary sort out your inner facing with the 00:12:12.67 --> 00:12:15. uh a staffing company attempt firm so you're going toe you're going to lease employees things like that all right? We're gonna bring in part timers where you're going to get him are you going to get him trained your financial department your laboratories if you have laboratories you're you're testing environments whatever it is you're you're doing facilities maintenance things like that and most certainly procurement so how do we measure and reward performance we get what we inspect not what we expect so what do we get inspect what we're gonna measure like drucker said you know what gets measured gets managed and what gets managed gets it done so what are we going to measure? What what about our measurement system if we got that right a lot of times we measured and sent the wrong behaviors we measure it and sent the wrong behaviors we could get the very thing we don't want if we measure an incent efficiency and requisition department and we get that stuff flying through requisition and then sitting in a big pile in front of the diamond department because we haven't got good capacity planning and management all right? We're paying bonuses for for meaningless work, okay? And if it piles up long enough and it happens to be a pharmaceutical material that can't be uh bit can't be used now it's got to be disposed of the's air disconnects in business going on all the time and not just within companies but between companies so let's remember that as well all right uh why don't we hold people accountable including ourselves entrepreneurs get this because if if they screwed up if we screwed up we're out of business we're running a business where accountability gets foggy or clouded uh then uh we better better be careful with that okay um how do we train people what's that look like some cases it's just here's your job go for it similar what I set up this morning right here you go just put the yellow dots on there you'll be okay how do we keep people informed? How do people know what the score is in a lot of business this is, um it's invisible to people it's kind of like a sports team where the athletes got to run over to the sidelines and and asked the coach you know we went in how much time is left because it's not visible it's not available to people and then even the coach has to say from time to time you know what? Let me get back to you I've got to talk to the press box they're gonna probably have to do some analysis because we've made it that complicated to know whether or not we're winning or losing or we're headed behind schedule and the really smart companies make that very simple, very visible whiteboards, magnet boards. Things like that doesn't have to be very fancy fact. Sometimes the software's get in our way. We can. We can. We can measure and track our performance, our customers, everything very, very simply on a whiteboard, posters and then a tte, the root of all of this policies. Policy is one of the most frequent root causes, two problems in business today and government. So when we start looking at, why do we have a lot of the undesirable effects? We have it's, because of policy deployment, cup policies based on flawed assumptions that just drive or allow all kinds of waste in the system. So what about some of those policies? We had the batch ing policy. If the batch in five, six, seven rays where that come from, maybe it's the assumption. Well, everybody knows batch is more efficient. That's, an assumption not effect. What about that shipping policy of shipping and aids, where that come from? Sometimes we just don't know well somebody prior to my arriving at the company made this policy or I borrowed this policy from another company you know I think they get it they're doing it you 00:16:13.842 --> 00:16:17. know and there so and so why don't we just steal that 00:16:17.27 --> 00:16:19. policy and news of ourselves that kind of stuff goes 00:16:19.66 --> 00:16:22. on all right and then finance question so what's the 00:16:22.66 --> 00:16:24. financial health of the value stream how do we know 00:16:24.73 --> 00:16:27. show me the data what the true cost associated with 00:16:27.19 --> 00:16:31. it with the cash flow look like the value stream contribution 00:16:31.04 --> 00:16:35. to the profit loss statement the piano okay so if 00:16:35.5 --> 00:16:38. we've got multiple value streams in our business what's 00:16:38.44 --> 00:16:40. this value streams contribution to the overall p n 00:16:40.95 --> 00:16:45. l relative to the other value streams we have multiple 00:16:45.16 --> 00:16:48. values streams running in a lot of different businesses 00:16:49.54 --> 00:16:51. okay what's the dice from contribution to the vallance 00:16:51.74 --> 00:16:52. sheet 00:16:53.36 --> 00:16:56. all right if we're a solo preneurs entrepreneur young 00:16:56.62 --> 00:16:58. start up to even know what a pml is do you know what 00:16:58.82 --> 00:17:01. a balance sheet is do you understand basic finance 00:17:01.8 --> 00:17:05. and accounting if not guess what you better find someone 00:17:05.28 --> 00:17:05. who does 00:17:07.26 --> 00:17:08. so maybe you're not a one person shop 00:17:10.16 --> 00:17:12. maybe there's a sepa out there somebody that's going 00:17:12.88 --> 00:17:16. to have to help you out we are dependent on other 00:17:16.06 --> 00:17:17. people to be successful like it or not 00:17:19.96 --> 00:17:23. all right so who can help me understand the financial 00:17:23.11 --> 00:17:25. elements of this and the financial language I happen 00:17:25.79 --> 00:17:28. to have a degree in finance so this was always something 00:17:28.04 --> 00:17:32. I I picked up pretty quick early age but if I wasn't 00:17:33.1 --> 00:17:35. knowledgeable in it most certainly I'd have to find 00:17:35.65 --> 00:17:38. somebody who could teach me or guide me or help me 00:17:38.96 --> 00:17:41. all right now what's the cost breakdown for the ice 00:17:41.88 --> 00:17:44. cream what is the cost structure look like how much 00:17:44.0 --> 00:17:46. money do I um I'm going to need to have to sustain 00:17:46.11 --> 00:17:49. this business that includes value of raw materials 00:17:49.36 --> 00:17:50. tile film 00:17:52.26 --> 00:17:52. trees 00:17:54.16 --> 00:18:00. flowers whatever it is we're in okay uh and then what 00:18:00.04 --> 00:18:02. are cotto our accounting rules and conventions actually 00:18:02.74 --> 00:18:05. impact our value streams decisions things like that 00:18:05.09 --> 00:18:07. what are some of the accounting rules and conventions 00:18:07.62 --> 00:18:09. that we're operating under what does that look like 00:18:09.46 --> 00:18:12. how does that work think about tax and such a cz well 00:18:12.9 --> 00:18:16. all right so these are all fundamental business questions they scare a lot of people by the way I mean it's like oh my gosh I've gotta how am I supposed to know all of this stuff about marketing and social media and all the different information softwares and attacks and uh especially if I'm a one person show and the answer is you don't have to know it off all right you gotta let go let flow so you know the thing that gets in a lot of entrepreneurs away is arrogance, stubbornness and I got to control everything and I got to know it all, and I got to do everything myself, and some people grow up that way. They grew up with this idea that if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself, and then they learn to distrust other people and think that they've got to do it all themselves that's called a bottleneck that's called the constraint, and the entrepreneur is most frequently a constraint. Once the businesses launched, if they're not careful, meaning they getting away, okay, I get it launched, the the highly energetic, they get all kinds of things done and then and then they can't let go. And so they start getting in the way. This comes from ready aim fire great name for a voice reorganize because this morning they were ready fire aim think about this but if you're a one or a two person shop how many of these metrics can you realistically track I mean that's a really good point you're just making there you can't know everything we'll follow everything yeah and I typically say that a uh larger small any size business including my own which is a one person literally on the payroll and I've got a virtual organization around me a typical debt we come dashboards or balance scorecards typical dashboard will have anywhere in the neighborhood of eight to twelve metrics that the idea of a dashboard is to say that you know if I'm looking at the dashboard on my car at the dash put in the cockpit of an airplane yeah there's a lot of gauges and a lot of measurements but there are you know eight maybe ten maybe twelve critical measures that I look at to know whether or not my my business is healthy my my car my driving is is spot on my mind there's there's fuel in my guest tank if I'm flying a plane no all right so uh those those those two eight, ten twelve critical metrics what those what you want to make sure is that at least two maybe three of those are customer focused so think about what your customers measuring me give me a real example I was in a kai's an event just about two about not probably three months ago and ah we brought a customer into this event and the customer revealed to us that she used three measures to evaluate this cos service and support it's a service company three measures the company my client had thirty three measures here's the question how many of the thirty three do you think included the three how many of the three were in the thirty three and you said it none zero what think about this this is a this is a major corporation to we've got thirty three measures were man or measuring all kinds of stuff but but the three things that customers measuring we're not that was eye opening and changed everything incidentally at the time that customer had red yellow green vendor scorecard and had this company rated red at the time in a subsequent kai's an event she's a participated now in three and like the last three three to six months uh the company's gone toe aah green solid green and she has just become a real promoter because she's partnering to make things better so uh at least three of your metric should be customer oriented so on and think back to that value proposition equation value as a function of quality service, price, innovation and time that that bucket so what may three metrics do we want to use in our business? Whatever it is that's going to tell us we're healthy we're safe for now in our customer's eyes so think of a quality metric right first time yield so we ninety seven percent right first time eighty percent sixty percent ninety nine percent what how often do we get it right the first time r f t is a critical one um time as it relates to the client on time some refer to it as oh t I f on time in full how often are we on time in full the full order on time well they wanted it on ah june third and we got it to him on june third and full there you go but what percent of the time are we on time in full so think of delivery quality service levels things like that so what is the is to ask yourself what three or four things might my customers be measuring about me that I most certainly better be measuring or I'm I'm really at risk what what are they measuring about our company about our service about our product whatever it is we offer I certain I most certainly pay attention that so on that dashboard of eight nine ten twelve some might do it with five or six but they're your that's like going in front of the doctor and there's your there's your body mass index your blood pressure your cholesterol levels what you know okay this is telling me that you're in pretty good shape. Those measures. Okay, so there's the there's, the customer measures you might have a measure around. Process time, cycle time value, add non value. Add that type of thing. Make sure you pay attention to time management. How you using your time? You're certainly going to have a couple of financial measures, you know, profit loss, cash flow. If you're in a business that manages inventory of any kind. Tile trees, gardens, film r paint whatever. No, how you managing your inventory? What's your inventory look like but you cost of inventory. How often do you turn it? It's just gives you an intent and intelligent business system against the end of the day. Great businesses work smart. They don't work all that hard. They appear to work hard, someone somewhere card because they want to there's that's a difference even work hard because you want to. But it's, uh, this is part of this enterpreneurs. Also talk about earlier it's, it's, it's, just a presence. It's a gracefulness, its's an ease. 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