Author Archives: Walter McIntyre

About Walter McIntyre

I live in Buford, GA, with my wife. Please check out my website, leanmeanprocessimprovemnt.com. I am the author of "Lean and Mean Process Improvement".

Lean Six Sigma and People/Leadership Skills

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The problem with Six Sigma these days is that it is becoming a math exercise. Six Sigma, especially Lean Six Sigma, is a people thing. That is where the excitement is and where success can be found. I have never seen a project fail due to bad math, but I have seen many fail due to poor people skills and poor leadership.

If you want Six Sigma to work in your business, get people involved with people and the math will take care of itself. I can teach statistics all day (and I have), and not enhance project effectiveness. I can elevate the people skills of participants (and I have) and good things happen immediately.

Another Sales Strategy

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To close a sale, the prospect must see themselves buying from you. In order for this to happen, you must do two things.

First, enter the conversation that is already happening in the shopper’s mind. For a shopper buying out of necessity it is probably a conversation about cost, wanting the problem to go away, and avoiding a mistake.  For a non-necessity shopper the conversation is probably more about being is a hurry to possess the product or service. It is really like a fix to a junky.

Second, create a mental picture, in the shopper’s mind, that defines success as a result of buying from you. To do this you must first understand what success looks like from the shopper’s perspective. For the necessity buyer the picture may not involve what they are shopping for, but include instead the result of the purchase. If the shopper’s car is broke down and they are having problems getting to and from work, the picture might be how, after buying the repair part from you, the shopper is driving their own automobile to work without worrying about a breakdown. The product or service is probably not an important part of the picture.

For the non-necessity shopper, the picture may be that of the shopper using the product or service in the way they have presented the need. For example, if the shopper discloses that they want to be able to get their email anywhere, anytime; you will want to present scenarios where the shopper can visualize themselves using this new smart phone in various locations, while at the same time receiving an important email. The product or service is an important part of the picture.

In any case, the shopper and their motivation is the driving force behind any purchase they might make. You and the product you sell is not the driving force, but instead the road or map the shopper must follow to successfully meet their need or desire.

Necessity and Non-Necessity Shoppers

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From a very simplistic perspective, shoppers buy in one of two modes. I am calling these “Non-Necessity Purchases” and “Necessity Purchases”.

Non-necessity purchases are made to fulfill a need that is emotion based and acts like a “fix”, creating a high with the shopper. This buying mode is addictive because the high is focused on the front end of the “want-decide to buy-purchase-live with” (WBPL) cycle. After the purchase, the high wears off quickly leaving the buyer hungry for more. This shopper has a lower instance of customer service issues because their focus is on the beginning of the cycle where the high is instant and short lived.  They really want a new one because the fix is based on the “thrill of the kill” associated with the purchase, not with long term ownership.

The non-necessity shopper has convinced themselves that they need or want something to enhance their lives. These shoppers probably know something about what they want and have already scoped out where they can find it. This is a highly qualified prospect only if your product or service is capable for giving them their fix or emotional high.

There are three points to the sales process for the non-necessity shopper.  These are:

  • Sales person must understand the desire(s) of the shopper.  What need is the shopper trying to fill?
  • Frame the presentation of the product or service within the definition of the shopper’s desires.
  • Make it easy and quick to buy from you. Close the deal while the shopper is on their emotional high.

In an earlier article of mine, I defined the Shopper’s Journey.  This journey has 6 steps. Awareness, learning, liking, preferring, conviction, buying. Tying this together with pull selling you have:

  • Awareness: The shopper knows you are able to fulfill their desire.
  • Learning: The shopper learns about you and how you can supply the object of their desire. This includes the speed at which you can fulfill them.
  • Liking: The shopper likes what they learn about you and your products or services.
  • Preferring: The shopper’s experience causes them to prefer the product or service you offer.
  • Conviction: The shopper convinces themselves that your product or service is their best option.
  • Buying: The shopper purchases your product or service.

Necessity purchases are made to solve a problem. This buying mode is not addictive because the high is focused on the aftermath of the purchase. The shopper is happy to not have the problem anymore.  This shopper is more likely to have a customer service issue because their focus is on the end of the WBPL cycle, which is long term living with the purchase.  The shopper is concerned about the ability of the purchase to solve their problem over time.

The necessity shopper is trying to solve a problem.  Since they believe they are in a necessity buying mode, you can be certain they will be making  a purchase from someone.  Why not you?  This is a highly qualified prospect.

There are four points to the sales process for the necessity shopper.  These are:

  • Helping them understand their options and risks.
  • Help them to find the best solution for their needs.
  • Taking joint action with the shopper to actually solve their problem.
  • Make it easy to buy from you.

Helping the prospect understand their options and risks is an educational process. The prospect is explaining their situation to the sales person and the sales person is defining options that the shopper can be offered.  This dialog between the shopper and the salesperson is not a lecture, but rather a discussion between the individuals or groups.  The idea is to understand what solution characteristics are important to the shopper and how you can meet those demands. This is at its heart a consultative sales approach.

Part of the explanation of options is the discussion of benefits and risks associated with each option.  In the end, you want the shopper to make their own decision about what is right for their situation. Of course, you also want the shopper to purchase the product or service from you and your company.  When the shopper makes their own choice to do business with you, it is called “pull” selling.  The shopper is solving their problem, with your help (pull), as opposed to you solving their problem with their help (push).  The shopper, as a result, has some responsibility in the success, or lack thereof, of the solution.

Tying this together with the Shopper’s Journey, you have:

Awareness: The shopper knows you are able to help them.

Learning: The shopper learns about you and your specific options for helping them.

Liking: The shopper likes what they learn about you and your products or services.

Preferring: The shopper’s experience causes them to prefer the product or service you offer.

Conviction: The shopper convinces themselves that your product or service is their best option.

Buying: The shopper purchases your product or service.

In conclusion, it is important to know whether the shopper’s motivation to buy is necessity, or non-necessity, based.  From there the salesperson and enter into the conversation already taking place in the shopper’s mind. Then the salesperson can move the shopper through their journey to buying a product or service.

Organizations and the Laws of Physics

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I am writing this article to create an imbalance in the world of those who read my posts. I am not in any way attempting to consider all of the options, or to be fair.  I just want to Step on your t pets a little. If it makes you uncomfortable, that is a good thing.  It is what this article is meant to do.

Newton’s Second Law of motion, in paraphrase, states that to change the state of motion of an object, a force must act on it to create an imbalance in forces. The object will then move to establish a new state of equilibrium.

The second law of thermodynamics, in paraphrase, states that systems always move toward a state of equilibrium. This movement will persist until the system reaches absolute zero (system death) or equilibrium is reached.

These concepts taken from physics also apply to human endeavors at the individual and organizational levels. In the human experience we call equilibrium the “status quo”.  I personally find that the status quo is a place for those who need rest or are not motivated to move forward. I am not against rest, but if you are resting and your competition isn’t, you’re losing ground. In other words, the status quo for me is good only when the status quo is to avoid the status quo.  Chew on that one for a while.

The status quo mentality usually forms in organizations and individuals who are internally focused. Being internally focused will isolate you from your external operating environment. You do not feel, or you fail to recognize, external forces that create imbalances in your external operating environment. The result is that you become out of alignment with the world around you. You fail to benefit from changes in the environment or maybe you even fall victim to them. The ostrich may have protected his head, but his rear end is more than a little exposed.

I know that some will say that organizations and individuals must isolate themselves from destructive forces in their operating environment in order to protect their assets.  I will answer that I disagree. Individuals or organizations that do not try to manage within the environment they operate in are simply exchanging one master (the larger outside world) for another (isolation). We do not have to be mastered by either. We control our choices and we become stronger and more robust as we exercise our ability to choose.

Let me give you examples. Governments and businesses isolate themselves from the governed and customers with bureaucratic layers of management. Religions do this by operating on a paradigm of exclusion (us, them) instead of a paradigm of inclusion. The result is that some governments, businesses and religions become more and more isolated, lose connection with their sense of purpose and eventually fail.

So what do you do? First understand that nothing stays the same in our world.  We age, tastes change and the people around us change. There is an interesting story line in the movie “The Time Machine”. The time traveler sits in his time machine and watches the world change around him.  He is isolated from the effects of the change and when he arrives in the future he is out of place and out of sync with the world around him.  The world experienced the changes first hand and has adapted, he did not experience the changes and finds himself in danger without a full understanding of how to cope. In the movie the good guys win, but in real life it probably would not have turned out that way.

We don’t have to agree with, or placidly accept, the changes around us. We can push back, adjust our strategy, etc. What we cannot do is ignore what is happening. The wise person evaluates these changes against reality and avoids letting others interpret their meanings for them. In sports we call this “keeping on your toes” or “keeping you eye on the ball.” In life it is simply a matter of paying attention to what is happening around us and keeping the main thing, the main thing.

In short we must embrace change. The world is moving onward with a great deal of inertia and it doesn’t care if you get left behind. The days of large stable bureaucratically ran organizations are coming to an end.  These are the days of smaller, fast and flexible, organizations that can move quickly to take care of customers, no matter how the environment changes. What customers, and people in general, want are solution providers, not protestors or clingers on to the old paradigm.

One way to manage this is to balance long term projects, goals and rewards with short term projects, goals and rewards. The long term perspective tends to add stability to an organization’s progress over time.  The short term perspective creates more employee engagement and a degree of instability, which is also good. Short term projects, goals and rewards operate in the current reality and force us to see what is actually happening right now. Long term projects, goals and rewards keep us focused on our mission and vision, which may be based in another reality. Short and long term efforts tend to modify each other in a healthy way when managed properly.

The balance point is always shifting.  Don’t let it become a tripping point.

Organizational Re-design

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In organizational re-design, there are changes to process, infrastructure and procedure. These are impersonal and structural in nature. They are also, by the way, the easiest things to modify when re-engineering an organization.

Just as important, but much more difficult to deal with, are behavioral changes. The best business process that has ever been designed will not work if the underlying user behaviors are not also changed.

The same is true in transactional processes such as sales. For example, you can design and build a totally green house, but can you change consumer behavior enough to get people to choose to live in it?

What this means is that we must value human behavior expertise as highly as we do technical expertise. The philosophy of “If we build it, they will come” only applies if you build something that the consumer or employee see as valuable.

The point is that you must listen to the “voice of the customer”. The customer can be an employee or someone who pays you for a product or service. It also represents a strategy of change management and innovation. That is, address human behavior issues before technology issues. The truth is that if you build it, they may not come.

Sometimes when we change human behavior first, the users themselves change the process in the direction you were trying to achieve. You may even find that change was not necessary or that your ideas for change were faulty.  This applies to all aspects of a capitalistic culture. Consumer demand drives technological innovation and cultural values drive cultural change.

Personal Motivation

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Personal motivation has 4 components:

  • Belief in purpose
  • Belief in process
  • Belief in self
  • Definition of success

Belief in purpose is about having a reason to want to achieve a goal or objective. What is the burning “Yes” in your life that makes you want to be successful?  For some it is our families, for others it may be a desired life style or a cause we are passionate about. In any case, you have to know what it is.  I am not talking about head knowledge in this case.  It is heart knowledge you need.

Belief in process moves you from the purpose of your efforts to an understanding, and adherence to, a methodology for achieving your goals. This means knowing what sacrifices it will take to achieve your goals and what map you will follow.

A good friend of mine gave me this advice a long time age. He said “find the person who is the most successful at doing the things you want to do and learn from them”. Let go of your preconceived notions, open your mind and learn.  At the same time don’t lose sight of what you value. In other words, don’t use a map to success that compromises your values. For example, you can get rich taking advantage of others, but you will lose the richness of self.

Belief in self is about seeing yourself being successful. Visualization is a key ingredient. Successful people see themselves in a positive light and visualize what success looks like. A successful hitter in baseball goes to the plate expecting to get a hit and seeing the event in their mind’s eye. Visualizing failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People who do not believe that they deserve to be successful, or doubt their abilities, are doomed to a lower level of success. “I can’t do it, so why try.” The first person to convince is you. If you don’t believe, neither will anyone else. Conversely, if you do believe, others will follow.

A definition of success allows you to measure your performance. It involves answering two questions.

  • What does success for me look like?
  • How do I measure my performance?

This success component is important because we sometimes set our definition of success too high or too low. It is best to set up a series of smaller step goals that take you toward a larger goal. This way you can celebrate your success along the way.  It is the difference between running 5 miles every day for a week or just showing up on Saturday and trying to run 35 miles all at one time.

Your definition of success will tie directly into your belief in purpose. If not, you will be lost in the jungle of life, making the wrong choices and expending precious time and energy being successful at things that do not take you where you want to go. For example, if your 5 year plan is to become financial independent, going into debt for the “status” car may not be your best decision.

This is a personal journey.  You must make your own choices as you move through life. Getting your life into focus using the ideas above will allow you to move with purpose. Not getting things into focus will cause you to be like drift wood, tossed about by the forces of life, going nowhere on purpose and everywhere by accident.

Fractured Thinking

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Have you ever been behind someone in traffic who was driving exceptionally slow or erratically? Then when you passed them you see them speaking or texting on a cell phone? You have just witnessed fractured thinking. It doesn’t take much imagination to see what kind of safety problems this creates.

Fractured thinking occurs when you are forced to jump around from one cognitive activity to another, or splitting your thinking between multiple subjects. It is usually the result of interruptions, or outright hijacking, of your intellectual activity.

The interruptions and split focus effects us in places outside of our cars also. Imagine that you are working on a project and you get interrupted by a phone call, text message, or a personal visit. You don’t just restart right where you left off when the interruption occurred. Some back tracking is usually necessary.  Sometime you even forget to get back to the original task. The next thing you know, you make a mistake and get to deal with all of the negative results.

It used to be good advice to not answer the phone every time it rings. Don’t let the phone dictate your work flow. Let the voice mail pick up or simply work in a different area.  One without your phone. Working in a different area will not work anymore because we carry our phones with us. “Hands Free” functionality will free up your hands, but you are still subject to the interruption and fractured thinking.

Here is the trick. Realize that you are addicted to your cell phone. You do not have to answer the phone every time it rings or alerts you about an incoming text message. You still have the power to control incoming information and to channel it into a less destructive time.  Really…You do.

Here is how.  Select ring tones that can be assigned to specific callers or groups of callers. That way when the phone rings, you can make a decision about answering now or waiting on a message based on what ring tone you hear. Text messaging is even easier. Simply turn off the notification and check your phone for text messages at a better time. How many people text you in an emergency? Not many, especially if you tell them that text messaging is a low priority communication medium for you.

Don’t use emergencies as an excuse to continue your addiction. I have arranged with my family to make an immediate second call to me in an emergency.  That second call within a few seconds tells me that I need to answer. A little planning on the front end saves me a lot of aggravation during my daily routine.

The take away is that you do have control over your cell phone. It is only a myth that you have to answer it’s every beck and call. The less fractured thinking you have, the better your performance will be and the more successful you will be.  Not to mention having less stress.

How is Your Vision?

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How detailed is your vision? I’m not talking about whether or not you need glasses, but whether or not you have enough detailed information to make good decisions.

This is an issue with both business and personal decisions.  It is, in fact, why so many business process improvement initiatives fail. Six Sigma process improvement projects are meant to address this issue for businesses, but you also need a personal strategy to avoid falling prey to poor resolution (lack of detail) How many times have you decided on an action only to find that a critical, missing, detail undermined your success?  .

The problem is our reliance on two dimensional, discrete, thinking. Pass/Fail, Yes/No, Democrat/Republican, etc. Two dimensional thinking allows you to be 100% right or 100% wrong, but never partially right

A more continuous way of thinking will lead to better detail and better decisions. As detail increases, so does our ability to see problems in their true colors (resolution). What you will find is that you will move from the “what”(pass/fail), to the “why” (causal relationships).

Consider this analogy of moving from low resolution to high resolution.

At 50 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 38 miles.

At 10 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 1.74 miles.

At 5 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 2300 feet (a little less than ½ mile).

At 1000 feet of altitude, if you fired at a target and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 3 feet.

More Detail = More Resolution = Higher Accuracy = Improved Performance

Lean Six Sigma Customer Focus

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We hear all the time that we must be customer focused, but what does that mean? Let me give you the short answer.  First, you have to know who your customers are.  Second, you need to know the needs and desires of your customers. And third, you need to have a plan to meet those needs and desires.

The first mistake we typically make is to worry about who is supposed to be providing a product or service to us.  It is totally counter productive to look at your job from the prospective of who you are a customer to.  To see yourself as the customer. This is a selfish perspective that will sub-optimize your performance. Believe it or not, it will make your job harder.

You can only improve business processes by reversing the direction of your vision. You must look instead at who your customers are.  Being customer focused is at the core of every successful business and relationship. Being inwardly focused is at the core of every business failure and personal failure.

A customer is anyone to whom you provide a product or service. Basically, customers come in two flavors. Internal and external.  We typically know who our external customers are, because that is the orientation of our thinking. At the same time, though, we typically lose site of who our internal customers are.  Internal customers are those we work with.  The person in the next cubicle or another department.

To start the process of becoming customer focused, create a list of who you think your customers are (include your family and significant others). Don’t worry about being wrong, just base it upon your opinion.  Next to each customer, list what product or service you provide them.

When ready, show your listing to your customers and ask them to rate your performance.  If they are honest, you probably won’t have too many surprises. At the same time, you will probably not like what you hear. We generally know how good or bad of job we are doing.  Don’t be defensive. Just like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, quality is in the eyes of the customer.

Once this is done, answer the following questions.

If taking care of my customer’s needs (instead of my own), in a timely and appropriate manner, became the focus of my work, what would change about my work (what would I do differently)?

If this happened, how would you measure how successful your day was?

How would your perception of “what is a good day” and “what is a bad day” change?

The profound fact here is that if everyone were to take care of their customer’s needs (internal and external), than everyone’s needs would be met. No one would feel as if they were not given appropriate support. It becomes a seamless circle where no one gets left out.

To ensure that you get what you need, you have to first ensure that your customer’s get what they need.