Joseph Dager

Many people only view Lean as a methodology to reduce waste, improve flow and drive internal processes. Many have even hijacked the term customer and created “internal customers” and lose sight of the true customer and the marketplace. These companies do not recognize Lean as a business process that strengthens and grows a company through collaborative learning. However, it is this model in conjunction with the concept of “Pull” that are the fundamental concepts of Lean that provides the value to innovation . 

The ever increasing platforms of co-producing, open-innovation, co-creation is moving innovation from an exclusive internal platform to a more external platform. True innovation is not happening inside the 4 walls of an organization but out in the customers’ playground. As Voice of Customer tools get more sophisticated, we are not reacting and thinking of the next step needed to delight our customers, we are allowing them to show us the way. Organizations may lead in “...

Next weeks podcast guest, Adam St. John (aka Adam Lawrence) of Work-Play-Experience discusses the theatrical aspect of service design and how theater can play a vital role in developing your customer experience. Adam is a professional comedian, business consultant and writer with a background in psychology and the automotive industry. For years he has been using expertise gained in the world of theatre and film to help companies influence their customers.

An excerpt from the podcast:

Joe:  Theater seems to be the convenient analogy. Is there a deeper relationship between service design and theater?

In Lean Marketing, Service Design and Design Thinking, we typically use the Customer Journey Map to describe the journey of a user through a series of touchpoints. Mapping this in detail and defining the resources, people, budget and marketing collateral to match each of these steps is imperative. After an organization does this and is ready to take a deeper dive, one of the tools I like to utilize is what I call the Path to Participation.

I have seen others use the term but I use it in the context of the customer (prospect) engagement and re-engagement process. Rather, than selling features and benefits of your product and hoping to attract prospects, we try to find a path to participate with customers in our product/market segment. The simple fact is the further we are from our customers’ knowledge base the more effort has to be made to create a larger and larger supply of prospects....

I think most organizations have the opinion that if we improve they will make more money. They think through operational improvements or becoming better, faster, cheaper in itself is a winning formula. There are a few basic problems with that premise:

1. You have to improve at a faster rate than your competition.
2. You have to improve on things that matter to your customers to retain them.
3. You have to improve on things that matter to the market place to acquire them.
4. You have to be able to support both the new and old items of improvement.

I am sure there are more but my point is better, faster and cheaper is not a game changer anymore. So, what do we do, innovate? Even with innovation we go through the same scenario as above, just with a little more risk involved.

The fact is most companies try to do too much. They want to match the competition with every feature and do it better, faster and of course, cheaper. I see this...