Category Archives: Business

Privacy, Government, and Business

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This week there were two big moments for privacy. First, was a ruling by a court that Apple had to unlock in some manner, call it decrypt or creating a backdoor into this specific phone. Second, was the fact that Apple, and now Google, has given the state a big middle finger saying “No!” These are important because of the gravity of both of these. The FBI is using “The All Writs Act” something from the 18th century and definitely not written to support dealing with difficult technological issues on technology that would appear to be magic to the author’s of the act. This is definitely stretching this law to its limits and likely beyond what is realistic, but it sets a precedence which is dangerous. The second part is important as both of these companies have been working with the government to provide data to them in the past.

While both of these companies are standing up to the government is great, it’s not enough. With a limited number of powerful players, it’s only a matter of time before they lose to the government or be threatened in some way that will require them to play ball with the government. On the other hand, smaller companies won’t have the money to fight the government, so even if you want to support a smaller company with privacy as its core values, there is no guarantee that they will be able to follow through. Furthermore, if the government forces the company to re-write its operating system, like Apple effectively has to do, the company might go bankrupt. With a precedence set by the Apple decision, a small phone company like Silent Circle and their Blackphone, would be forced to capitulate unless they were able to show that this was unduly burdensome.

The other issues with this case is that businesses are only fighting for what is “right” here because it will help them improve their bottom line. Of course, they are also fighting for their own personal privacy as an employee of the company and consumer of its products, but the goal is to improve profitability. Across the world it has been shown that privacy and protection from agencies like the NSA (US) and GCHQ (UK) is something that people are willing to pay for. Apple learned this from Blackberry during the Arab Spring – they emulated the encryption of the Blackberry Messenger with their iMessage application. This help transition some of the last hold-outs to Apple and eventually spurred other similar apps.

I believe it is likely that the Electric Frontier Foundation will be a strong advocate for Apple, so if you want to support Apple in their battle with the government I recommend donating to the EFF, especially if you don’t support Apple for its other business practices. I know I will.

Economics are Tools

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I read an interesting article on The Atlantic the other day, probably read it in the past as it was an OpEd written in 2013, but is still as important as ever. The article’s premise is that there are no Economic Laws.

This of course is obvious, as in hard science we never refer to anything as “Laws” any more, other than antiquated theories that represent paradigmal thinking from great minds of the past. For example, the Law of Gravity has been significantly modified with the Theory of Relativity. Sure, the underlying math of the “Law” works for the most part, but breaks down under certain conditions. Meaning that it’s not actually an unbreakable law.

Even in Mathematics there are no true laws, there are theorems that are true, however not all those theorems can be proven to be true, according to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem.

If we are unwilling to say that there are no laws in Mathematics and Physics, how can we so willingly say there are laws in Economics? This is foolish as it pushes us to think that the Economics is unchangeable and thus works consistently across all conditions and times. Recently the IMF released a report essentially arguing that the trickle down effect doesn’t work as it truly doesn’t “raise all boats”.

We must instead look at Economics as a tool, one that is imperfect and should not be used to moralize. However, it can be used in policy as long as we are willing to abandon the tool once we see that it does not work. Furthermore, tools that worked once don’t always work in every situation. There are tools that are more flexible and likely to work than others, similarly to specific frameworks. This is true in Process Improvement as it is in Development and Economics.

We need to seriously look at our policy tools and think about abandoning some of our economic frameworks as they are hurting the economy.

Starting with Lean

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I had a great conversation with a new friend yesterday. He’s a dentist and is looking to drive continuous improvement within his small organization. He’s feeling overwhelmed, since he’s busy with being a dentist, running an office, and managing a small team adding any extra responsibility seems like it’d put him over the top. He wants to do process improvement because he things that there’s a lot of waste in his small organization but he is terrified of starting because it seems like more work that he doesn’t have time for.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of a Dentist wanting to improve processes or go Lean. While working at Samsung I watched a Webinar about the Lean Dentist, Sami Bahri, who several years ago began to implement Lean at his dental practice. He’s since gone on to write two book, one of specific importance to both Healthcare and Dentistry: Single Patient Flow. This really turns the concept of provider centric care on its head. The goal of Single Patient Flow is to maximize the “utilization” of the patient. No, this doesn’t mean treat patients with unneeded tests to keep them “busy.”

No it means that we need to measure the value added component of their time in the clinic and set a goal of that as close to 100% as possible. This means warm hand-offs between any assistants and the doctor, it means no waiting in the waiting room. No waiting in the office for people to come. None of this is something that we’re willing to pay for, yet we must pay for it. Actually in most cases our employers are paying for it through lost productivity at our jobs.

Moving towards patient centric offices also changes the how the patient expects to interact with you. They will know more because they did some research coming in, this information could be wrong so it will take more time to explain to them the correct diagnosis. People using WebMD is a result of dissatisfaction with existing doctor offices.

Becoming more patient centric is a big deal and takes a lot of work. Where do you start? With anything. Yes that’s a bit of a cop out statement, but it’s also true. Pick anything that is causing pain for either your staff or your patients and map it out. Figure out what the process currently and where the wastes are. Work to eliminate them. Start with something small like how you answer the phone or greet the patient when they walk in the door. Figure out who should be doing this and how to ensure it’s the right person doing this work.

Start somewhere. Start where you can have a quick win. Start where you think it will help the patient quickest first.

Enabling Innovation Through Lean Improvement

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This is part of my ongoing Lean Disruption series where I write about how to combine Innovation Theory, Lean, Lean Startup, Agile, and Lean product development.

Since values and metrics drive processes how can you enable innovation in an organization that isn’t completely willing to support innovation? As I mentioned before Skunkworks are a key component in this process. Using emergent strategies with Lean Startup tools such as the Lean Canvas are another key method to enable innovation with the skunkworks approach. However, not every organization can or will truly allow this approach.

In organization that cannot or will not support a skunk works approach to innovation what options are available? In the case where you are a manager of more than yourself you have the ability to implement Lean within your small organization. Owning the processes within your organization and becoming a coach to your employees, can begin enabling metrics that drive customer centric focus.

This is possible by taking a single step and picking a metric that will move the metrics that your bosses care about. Focus on improving one process at a time. Start with something that is completely in your control, such as how you hand off material within your group that goes to other groups. Measure the number of errors your group introduces, however do not blame people. If things are wrong investigate the root cause of the problem rather than accusing your people of causing the problems. Problems can come from the group that handed off the work. In those cases, create a process to review the work looking for errors and then work with the team supplying that work to eliminate those errors where you can.

In the case where there are errors within your team, you work together to uncover each source of the problem. As a manager you own the processes as much as the result of the work your team does. The final output of your work is 100% dependant on the processes that lead to those output. Another important step is to work on converting your daily meeting, assuming you have one, into a daily standup rather than a typical beat and greet. These meetings instead must cover the goals for the day, issues from the day before, and follow up to address those issues. In the case where the team has projects they are working on, this can become an opportunity to being pulling in some agile stand up practices, such as “What did you work on yesterday, what do you plan on working today, and do you have any impediments?” These questions can help change the way projects are run within your group.

To improve processes within your group, the best way to do this is to go to where work is being done. You must actually watch as work is being done, while keeping in mind that the way work is being done will change as you watch people work. Make sure they are aware that you are not going to be critical or even record who is doing the work at the time. Record the information and move on. You should not use this information in their next 1 on 1 or review. The goal is to learn how people are doing work especially across work types and workers. After you map the process review the results in your daily stand up to discuss potential issues. Partner with your team to find the root cause of the problem and empower them to make changes to their processes.

Before you change the process it is important to measure current state and measure the impact of those changes on the metrics that matter to you. Keeping in mind that you must make all changes from a customer’s perspective. These are the easier things to implement. However, making changes and getting support in this change from your leadership isn’t going to be easy, so you must show that you’re making wins and improving the result of your work. That’s all leaders care about.

Successful process improvement opens the way to broader innovations. Start small and then move into larger projects as you have a better understanding of what you are trying to do.

Values and Metrics Drive Emergent Strategies

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This is part of my ongoing series on Lean Disruption. Where I write about combining Innovation, Lean, Lean Startup, Agile, and Lean product development methodologies.

Clay Christensen argues that there are two types of strategies corporate leaders engage with, deliberate and emergent. Porter’s 5 Forces analysis is an attempt to use tools to pull emergent strategies based on changing environmental landscape into the corporation’s deliberate strategy. A deliberate strategy is the strategy that leaders have vocalized and intentionally invested money and resources into. Emergent strategies on the other hand are strategies that develop through metrics and actual organizational behavior. While a leader may intentionally push resources one direction another metrics that has much more value to lower level managers may require those resources to be redeployed in another context. Resulting in a different strategy to develop than what executives had originally planned.

Hoshin Kanri (Policy Deployment) plays a similar role to the 5 Forces in the Toyota Production System where leaders start with their stated 3-5 year goals and turn those into annual goals, projects, and finally the metrics by which those projects will be measured. However, the process isn’t done after a single meeting, this policy is reviewed monthly and if conditions change enough can be completely reworked or modified based on what conditions are emerging. This is important because it can, in fact, feed changes the whole way back at the the 3-5 year goal levels where if serious issues are occurring in multiple projects associated with a goal, such as lack of resource commitment, that goal must be re-evaluated or there needs to be other changes to incentivize resource commitment to those projects.

The Lean Startup and Agile approaches are likely the most closely tied to emergent strategy development. The Lean Startup approach values experimentation and customer engagement above all else which can result in initially a great deal of change in project/corporate strategy. In the Running Lean the author uses the Lean Canvas as a tool to maximize the power of emergent strategy develop and smooth the transition from emergent to deliberate strategy development. In many cases that transition is relatively easy anyway, however it is possible to see that transition occur as a corporate leader iterates through versions of the Lean Canvas resulting in less and less changes to the Canvas.

Agile similarly promotes engagement with customers and using iteration to eliminate uncertainty. In this way Agile is closer to Lean Startup than traditional Project Management and leads to emergent based products. Where the customer need is truly met. Which, over time, results in a deliberate strategy to maximize the resulting product. This product is still, likely, within the initial deliberate strategy of the leaders of the company, but may be very different than what the leadership had initially wanted or planned. This is the best of both worlds as the leaders get a product that fits their strategy, but is more effective in serving market needs than what they ever could have planned.

The values and metrics the organization uses to manage the work that it does heavily influences the direction any project or product develops. The tighter the control over metrics with less flexibility for innovation leads to more tightly aligned products to deliberate strategies. However, this can come at a cost of less innovative ideas and poor-market fit. In the case where something might significantly change the direction of the company, for that product to survive it is best to move that into a skunkworks or protected space where funding is secure with appropriately aligned staffing levels. This will allow the metrics and values to coalesce around the product, the customer, and the market needs.