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Contents
Contents ........................................................................................................................................................... 2 The opportunity................................................................................................................................................ 3 Be prepared ...................................................................................................................................................... 3 Dramatic improvement is always possible....................................................................................................... 4 The secret to dramatic improvement .............................................................................................................. 4 The 3 primary opportunities for dramatic improvement ................................................................................ 5 1. Demand Generation .................................................................................................................................... 6 2. Sales Acceleration........................................................................................................................................ 7 3. Operations Streamlining.............................................................................................................................. 8 How to implement dramatic improvement solutions ..................................................................................... 9 Concluding advice........................................................................................................................................... 10 About Prodsol ................................................................................................................................................. 10

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The opportunity
This drim (dramatic improvement) guide presents you with the opportunity to trigger off a selfperpetuating cycle of dramatic improvement in your organisation's performance. It offers three simple, counter-intuitive seemingly innocuous things you can do that have a disproportionate impact on bottom-line performance as well as the experience your staff and customers have of your organisation. Here are some of the results we've helped our clients get using the solutions and principles presented in this guide: 1. 137% increase in market demand: months 2. 112% increase in product sales: months 3. 81% increase in operations throughput: days 4. 104% increase in production throughput: weeks Global distributor Bank Insurance company service centre Manufacturing company

This guide distils the essence of what we've learned, developed and found to work, in as simple, brief and accessible a form as we can - to help you see and capitalise on the opportunity trapped within your organisations situation. Were keen to help you work out how these three things can be applied in your situation. Just ask.

Be prepared
This guide isn't a conventional article or a book summary. The insights it presents are simple, but theyre also extremely elusive. So much so that we often say they have a half-life of one sleep. So don't skim it like a book or article. Read it once, quickly - to get the big picture then at least twice more more carefully over the next 48 hours, applying it to your situation each time. Then follow the [ read > apply > articulate > implement ] cycle, until youre done:

Repetitive reading is a great reinforcer of new ideas. Applying it to your situation accelerates the process by integrating it with your existing thinking. Articulating your growing understanding verbally and in writing magnifies the impact, makes the concepts more tangible and locks them into your thinking. Implementing in small, fast-cycle batches will have the biggest impact on your thinking and is of course, the point of the whole exercise. You'll find new insights and applications that you hadn't noticed or seen the implications of pop out at you every time you go through this cycle. Youll always be vulnerable to the half-life of one sleep problem, though, so be prepared for it! The excitement you feel when each penny first drops will wane quickly and youll be tempted to assume that you were mistaken to have been so excited about it in the first place. The reality is that youve merely lost the insight that excited you before. This is normal it takes time for new neural network to become established. But you can overcome it in the short-term and accelerate longer-term insight development easily, simply by repeating the [ read > apply > articulate > implement ] cycle frequently.
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Dramatic improvement is always possible

Dramatic improvement is eminently possible in any challenging situation. It only seems impossible because it's not obvious beforehand how to bring it about. The problem is lack of insight, not lack of opportunity. Gaining insights that are dramatically better than we currently have is biologically challenging, because our brains cant recognise something they havent recognised before. The primary objective of this drim guide is to help you overcome this problem, by providing you with readymade solutions that can be adapted and applied to your situation quickly and easily.

The secret to dramatic improvement

The secret to dramatic improvement is to find and solve the single, fundamental performancelimiting problem that everyone faces everywhere within the situation the systemic problem.

The systemic problem

There always is one. People can seldom see it beforehand. They always recognise it afterwards. It invariably seems unsolvable. It always is solvable.

The systemic solution

The systemic solution is always very simple - in hindsight. It can always be applied, in different forms, throughout the situation. It can always be implemented in small batches, very quickly.

The impact of systemic intervention

The impact of systemic solutions is invariably so disproportionate to the changes made that it belies belief even after the fact. Here's why: 1. Saving 25% of your time increases your throughput by 33%. Saving 33% of your time, increases your throughput by 50%. Saving 50% of your time doubles your throughput. 2. If you do that on the same costs, the additional throughput is added straight to the bottom line. 3. And you get the benefits earlier - some of next month's profit this month. Most of the following month's profit (and some of the months after that) next month... etc. etc. And that's just the start. The real benefits start emerging as the result of the cultural change that these solutions bring about.

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The 3 primary opportunities for dramatic improvement

There are 3 primary, interlocking opportunities for improvement within any organisations situation:

1. Generate demand 2. Accelerate sales and 3. Streamline operations. Theres a lot one can do to capitalise on these opportunities and a lot of it isnt obvious, except in hindsight. This guide presents one key thing in each arena that not only improves end-to-end flow-rate, lead-time, quality and the human experience but also sows the seed for ongoing improvement into the fabric of organisational culture. Because the solutions presented are common systemic solution patterns, they can be adapted and applied to your situation very quickly although it wont be obvious exactly how, at the start. You can expect them to improve the following measures by at least 25% within 3 months, if you implement them rigorously: 1. Monthly sales 2. Capacity and throughput on lower costs 3. Cycle-/lead-times and 4. Customer and staff satisfaction. These claims will probably seem unrealistic to you at first. They arent. You may be tempted to think your situation is different. It isnt. Reality isnt the constraint here insight is.

Beware of dismissing the following solutions merely because they are simple and obvious or because theyre only slightly different from what youre doing already or have done in the past. The tiniest of improvements in solving the systemic problem can have a massive impact on performance.

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1. Demand Generation
Our demand generation solution is for situations in which the market opportunity (customers who need a companys products or services) significantly exceeds market demand (customers who are actually buying our products or services). We have yet to come across a situation in which opportunity doesnt exceed demand even in recession times and declining markets.

The problem: Lack of ability to recognise and diagnose needs

The reason for the disparity is the combination of (a) potential customers being unaware of their need or unable to diagnose it correctly and (b) being unaware of you and/or of how your products and services satisfy their need. The tendency, in situations like this, is to think that the bottleneck is in Sales, when its really more of a Marketing issue:

The Solution: Simple need-diagnostic and mapping framework

The solution is to identify ideal customers and equip them to self-diagnose their needs and map them to our products and services. This solution creates a customer-need driven pullsystem but it packs even more punch than one would expect, because it delivers a far fuller stream of far better qualified buyers to Sales than conventional approaches deliver unqualified prospects. Even a small increase in better-qualified buyers will have a disproportionate impact on sales throughput. And the marginal gains from sales throughput improvement, on the same or lower operating costs, is huge. To apply it to your situation, start by mapping your most lucrative products and services (where you make the most total contribution margin on the smallest variable cost footprint) to ideal customers (prospects for whom our product is ideal) that you can target and market to easily. Then develop a simple framework that enables them to diagnose their needs and map them to your products and services. Run a campaign to disseminate the framework and be prepared to deal with the avalanche of demand that ensues. Were keen to help you apply this solution to your situation over the phone or via email free of charge and obligation. Just ask.

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2. Sales Acceleration
Huge amounts of sales effort is wasted and sometimes even counter-productive because its not directed at removing friction-points in the buying process, but at increasing sales pressure.

The problem: Difficult to know what the real friction-points are

The problem is that its difficult to know what the real friction points are in any given situation the customer seldom knows what they are him/herself. The result is slow, time-consuming and unpredictable sales cycle and customer buying experience.

The solution: Simple friction-point diagnostic framework

The solution is to equip sales people with a simple diagnostic framework that maps common buying (not selling!) friction points to the appropriate friction-removing solutions. This equips them to focus on the lagging prerequisites for a successful purchase in a highly surgical way. The trick is to provide them with a starting framework and engage them in the process of capturing and institutionalising their own expertise. Heres a starting framework to get you going: a. Customer doesnt recognise the need (Provide basic options of what they really need in order to evoke the insight within them). b. Customer doesnt recognise the superior value of our offer (Help them see how our offer maps to their needs, while competing offers map to different needs). c. Customer doesnt have the budget (Work with them to deliberately increase the budget by establishing the immediate and ongoing value of our offer. Stage or recalibrate our offer to meet the budget if were unsuccessful or return them to the follow-up list). d. Customer has a formal process that needs to be adhered to (Work with them to follow their formal process). e. Customer doesnt have the authority to purchase (Work with them to present to someone who does). f. Customer is too busy or disorganised (Schedule meetings to advance the opportunity always providing a value and urgency reminder).

The following Excel table lists a sales persons opportunities with each friction-point rated (0 is no friction; 3 is show-stopping friction; 1 is low; 2 is high).

Sales Acceleration and Opportunity Management Framework

Prospect A Prospect B Prospect C Need 0 2 3 Value 0 2 1 Budget 0 1 2 Process 3 2 2 Authority 2 1 0 Busy 0 1 2

In addition to the direct benefits of ranking, reporting and friction-point diagnosis and intervention, sales people can use this framework to batch-process opportunities. Were keen to help you work out how this solution can be applied within your organisations situation. Phone or email us for help. Its free and obligation-free.
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3. Operations Streamlining
The problem: Competing priorities, resulting in fragmented time
The biggest challenge in Operations is competing priorities. The natural consequence is multitasking which is really fast task-switching with a growing overhead on each switch (starting at 14 minutes to get to deep concentration when youre fresh and growing as the day progresses). A third of peoples time is wasted irretrievably and unnecessarily through unnecessary taskswitching: multi-tasking, interruptions, competing deadlines and conflicting priorities.

The solution: Defragment your and your peoples time

The solution is to do things in series rather than in parallel, wherever possible. This gets more done faster and better but flies in the face of ordinary intuition which reasons that the best way to get things done early is to start early. Here are three basic techniques to get you started: a. Task-Batching: Batch similar tasks where possible, to reduce the task-switching overhead (the time it takes to set one task down and setup for the next one). Task-batching might enable you to do 5 similar tasks with 1 setup, saving 4 setups or more throughout the day. b. DND-Slots (Do Not Disturb): Set aside regular one or two hour slots where people can work interruption-free. This can be across the entire team as well as staggered to ensure that service levels are met. DND-Slots routinely enable people and teams to improve their throughput by 33% or more (a 25% saving of time translates to a 33% increase in throughput and many other benefits.) c. Interruption Windows: Set aside regular interruption windows for staff members and colleagues to use for queries and questions. Interruption windows have the added benefit of allowing people to batch their queries. Expect even bigger gains from this one. There are many other ways of reducing unnecessary task-switching. The impact of these three will astound you as will your peoples ingenuity in finding other ways once they get the idea. Were keen to help. Email or phone us.
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How to implement dramatic improvement solutions

Leading and managing the implementation of systemic solutions is a crucial part of securing dramatic improvement. It doesnt matter how good a solution is if it doesnt get implemented!

The problem: Changing peoples thinking is extremely challenging, biologically

Dramatic improvement is particularly challenging because it requires people and teams to go about things in a significantly better way which as weve already said is extremely challenging, biologically. People just don't have the required expertise, incentive or time to apply and implement new ways of thinking, on-the-fly. Conventional project and change management methods are woefully inadequate for dramatic improvement because theyre task-focused, not people-focused and so dont take this individual and collective biological reality into consideration. Thats why so few organisational change projects are successful and why nearly all that do succeed, blow out on both time and budget.

The solution: Create a pull-system

The trick is to deliberately create an internal pull-system, rather than an external push-system. Evoking the desire within people to participate is far more effective than coercing them to comply. Its only natural to resist an external force, but nearly impossible to resist an internal craving. Here are some things you can do to start the ball rolling: a. Focus interventions at current backlog and workload and immediate challenges and objectives People particularly when theyre under pressure are far more open to expedient solutions that make things easier immediately and relieve immediate pain than they are to long-term strategic solutions that make things harder and more painful in the short term. Because the solutions are systemic, they advance the long term in the process of relieving short-term pain and sow the seed of ever-increasing improvement in the process. b. Use small, short, fast-cycle iterations Small footprint solutions are easier to implement and far more effective, because they dont require a large change overhead and establish momentum very quickly. The key is to use multiple cycles, downplaying quality and focusing on speed. Quality will emerge iteratively as a prosequence. It may be counter-intuitive, but its highly effective. c. Restrict access Restricting access to the solution roll-out is the surest way to create demand for it: i. ii. iii. iv. Start where appetite and aptitude is highest and migrate outwards in layers but only in response to demand. Publish and promote results and progress across the organisation to crank up demand. Make it clear that people need to contend for the next roll-out slot. Crank up the pressure to get better results, so that even the laziest see the solution as the easy way out.

Please sing out for help in creating a pull-system for your intervention - we're keen to help. Just ask.
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Concluding advice
Its very difficult biologically to grasp the power of these solutions. Or how they can have such a disproportionate impact on performance so quickly. And when one does, the insight has a half-life of one sleep. Heres our concluding advice for overcoming this problem: 1. Make sure you use the [ read > apply > articulate > implement ] cycle. 2. Go for it! There is more than enough in this guide to get things going. Its like learning to ride a bicycle: you think you need more than the basic instructions, but you dont. What you need is practice. Its scary at first, but before long it becomes second nature. Start small in a contained area and expand further afield as you gain competence and confidence. 3. Join the discussion on Linked Discussing it with others and being able to give advice as well as receive it will give you a totally different perspective. 4. Contact us. Were keen to help call or email us. Well give you advice over the phone or email and are happy to run application and/or implementation workshops with you and your team on site. If you want to accelerate the intervention or take it to the next level, were more than happy to discuss the role we could play. Don't forget that the problem isn't lack of opportunity, but lack of insight!

Coming soon
Click here to register for pre-launch access and discounts for our next drim guide: The Executive Guide To Dramatic Improvement. It covers a growing number of functional, cross-functional and organisation-wide systemic solutions.

About Prodsol
We help executives and organisations improve their performance in a deliberate and systematic way by adapting, enhancing and implementing common and custom systemic solutions. Were very excited at the opportunity our discoveries provide executives, managers and other leaders: to deliberately and systematically improve their and their organisations performance and change the destiny of both forever. Please forward this article to everyone who you think could benefit from it. Thanks very much and all the best for securing dramatic improvement in your situation. Gary Bartlett Managing Director - Prodsol gary.bartlett@prodsol.com Phone 0800 776-276 (NZ) +64 9 475-9530 (International) Mobile +64 21 776-390 Fax +64 9 475-9531 www.prodsol.com dramatic improvement in organisational performance: less pain | more gain | step-by-step
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