Toyota set up a long-term strategy in 2007: Toyota Global Vision 2020. The very generic “Toyota Way” outlines the two most important values: “Respect for People” and “Continuous Improvement”. The current rough economic situation shows that this is not only a “happy day paper” but it has really been embraced in the regions. One example outlined in this post from the Evolving Excellence blog is the reaction of the North American plant managers to the industry’s downturn in Q3 2008: they trained the people instead of sending them home. However, the unprecedented crisis seems to make job cuts unavoidable – the first time since the 50ies. Therefore, titles like “Will This Economy Finally Push the Toyota Way Into Software Development” become ambiguous. Anyway, it’s far too shortsighted to put agile software development on a level with “the Toyota Way”. So, let’s have a look at KM at Toyota in one of the next posts.
Exploring the Toyota Way
Written by Felix on January 27th, 2009Sustainability Why Not?
Written by Felix on January 22nd, 2009Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker for the first time in 2008, offers a new collaborative website on “sustainability” innovation. The site combines appealing visualization, marketing for its own innovations, and last but not least a contest to elicit even more ideas for safety, water, land, air, community, and energy topics. Well done, however, the site is just collecting the ideas with only limited interaction opportunities. It goes along with the current US marketing campaign. A background on the campaign is given e.g. in this blog post.
Thanks to Jens Hoffmann for pointing me to the “Lean Thinking” group at Xing where I came across the link in a recent post.
What can knowledge managers learn from lean management?
Written by Felix on January 18th, 2009SAP is going to introduce lean management methods and tools this year (see news in the German business magazine Manager Magazin).
So, what may I as a knowledge manager learn from companies that have applied lean management for years, e.g. Toyota? The good thing is that I came across one brief and very good introduction on strategy deployment on the SAP website. Pascal Dennis from the Lean Enterprise Institute introduces this lean management tool in a webcast with examples from Toyota.
Based on this introduction I see the following learnings from a knowledge management point of view:
1. Plan
Tell a short concise story on what you plan to do and visualize the strategy
Avoid “power point chunks” to convey your message
Go see for yourself, i.e. talk to the people in the processes
2. Do
We can’t tell people how to do. Involve them in each improvement step.
Better arrange “catch ball meetings” than “happy talk meetings”
Create simple standards and visualize them. Less is more.
Don’t ship “junks”, i.e. don’t accept poor quality contributions
3. Check
Make problems visible. “Problems are gold”.
4. Adjust
Everybody solves problem. Enable a simple, shared problem solving approach.
Create opportunities for reflection and learning points
Develop the “Book of knowledge” (i.e. best practices and lessons learned)
In one of the next posts I’ll take a closer look at KM at Toyota.
Expectations for 2009
Written by Felix on January 11th, 2009
Black Swan at a pond near Wädenswil (Switzerland)
What may you expect from this blog positioned somewhere in the “long tail”? I appreciate blogging as a channel to accompany my continuous learning. Therefore, I would like to find some answers to questions like:
- Which are good ways to combine collaborative innovation and knowledge management?
- What may knowledge management contribute to lean management execution?
- Which change management methods are most useful for knowledge management?
- How to position knowledge management in a rough economic environment?
- Where has knowledge management been applied for sustainable development?
- Who has developed which new methods to improve the handling of complex systems?
- How far is the unknown manageable?
Happy New Year
Written by Felix on January 7th, 2009
View from La Sombaille in direction of Le Chasseral (January 1st 2009)
I wish you – the casual reader of this blog – a joyful and shiny new year full of verve. I spent quiet days with my wife, children, family, and friends in Germany and Switzerland. I particularly appreciated the 3-day-trip to La Chaux-de-Fonds: the town of my childhood.
“Nobody Knows Anything”
Written by Felix on December 16th, 2008says the controversial author Nassim Nicholas Taleb in “The Black Swan”. This is also the chapter in his excellent book (even though the tone is sometimes exasperatingly arrogant) where Taleb offers some hints on how to leverage the unknown unknown.
1. Avoid negative-Black Swan business where the unexpected can have a huge impact (e.g. Madoff) and expose yourself to positive-Black Swans (e.g. research or venture capital).
2. Invest in preparedness rather than in prediction (Black Swans are unpredictable anyway). Instead e.g. of trying to predict the next earthquake in San Francisco, prepare the citizens and the infrastructure necessary to mitigate the impact of the earthquake.
3. Therefore, seize any opportunity to be exposed to a positive-Black Swan. Taleb advocates for living in cities and going to parties to gain exposure to the odds of serendipity. Please have a look at the long list of examples of serendipity in science and technology.
Interested? The following video gives a short introduction to the current financial crisis viewed through the eyes of Taleb and his mentor Benoit Mandelbrot.
SAP’s approach to sustainability
Written by Felix on December 8th, 2008Disclaimer: I’m an SAP employee.
Eventually, the two main topics of my professional career get together with SAP’s approach to sustainability. On the one hand the environmental management topics familiar since the study of environmental sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, on the other hand SAP as an employer of choice who encourages personal development, gives a tremendous amount of degrees of freedom to his employees, and offers a flexible workplace. This was about the “What”-dimension of sustainability which seems to be shared by most of the voters on the current SAP Vote on Sustainability (see also the vote results).
Moreover from a knowledge manager’s point of view, I’m glad that SAP encourages the 2.0-kind of interactions with its stakeholders (see the new Sustainability Report collaborative workspace).
Anyway, what do the figures in the report mean? Let’s take one example: the close to 400,000 metric tons of overall global carbon dioxide emissions by SAP employees (incl. business travel and car fleet) in 2007. The absolute number corresponds to the carbon dioxide emissions of the country of Bhutan. If you divide these emissions by the 44,000 employees you get about 9.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per SAP employee. This corresponds to the average emission by a citizen of South Africa. The ratio of GDP (aka revenue) per metric ton of carbon dioxide emission is about 33 for SAP (excellent in comparison with countries).
Thank you, James Farrar (see also SUN’s blog on Corporate Social Responsibility).
Add Visual Thinking to Your Toolbox
Written by Felix on December 1st, 2008I remember the days when I first used mindmapping to sketch ideas, gather requirements just-in-time or plan projects. First, people are surprised and relunctant: they have learnt e.g. that you take note in a digital order, bullet by bullet. So, the adoption rate of mindmapping was not that high in those days. Meanwhile companies like MindJet have sold more than one million licenses of mindmapping software packages.
I must admit that I’ve been a bit powerpoint-overeaten for the first two years with my present company. So, the “Back of the Napkin” hit my attention:
Visual Thinking is an extraordinary powerful way to solve problems, and though it may appear to be something new, the fact is that we already know how to do it.
Dan Roam has published this very useful book on how to make use of the visual thinking skills each of us has. His website outlines the basic toolset, the Google Talk session gives a vivid introduction (see below), and his book shows a lot of real-life examples for your “visual thinking MBA”.
Merlin Mann’s 4+ Years of Dedication to Inbox Zero
Written by Felix on November 23rd, 2008
Very nice presentation by Merlin Mann on action-based email processing delivered at Google Tech Talk. I’ve rediscovered him thanks to the PresentationZen book of Garr Reynolds. Garr highlighted Merlin’s “Inbox Zero” presentation as exemplary: simple, highly visual, augmenting the presenter’s narrative. You may also have a look at Merlin’s “How To… What sucks…” page for more productivity tips.
Visual Thinking for Business Model Design
Written by Felix on November 13th, 2008Alex Osterwalder’s blog on Business Model Design and Innovation shows what a huge lever a blog and the growing community around it is. Alex is creating a visual thinking version of a business strategy book and he offers a pre-release “book chunk project“. He has started a new series on business modell examples (first issue: Google Search). Last but not least, I’ve found the review on Visual Thinking books useful.
