Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [19]
There is already a fair amount of description in the above statement. If you go back and review the seven steps of re-engineering you will find that all of them were used in the reduction of development cycle time. I did not do this all on my own. Many other people were part of the process. You can't create change in a vacuum, and this project nicely illustrates that organizations are relationships and vice versa.
The particular process involved here was new packaging development. We were in a time of many changes. We were going after the warehouse club market. Instead of traditional case packs the vendor demanded palletized loads that displayed well and could be put directly into the store. That demanded a big rethink on our part, not only from a manufacturing point of view but also from our suppliers of packaging material as well as our whole logistics operation.
I will stick to the warehouse club process as it applies to all the packaging development processes.
First step was to learn about the warehouse club way of doing business. We went on field trips to stores. We talked internally and with our suppliers. We'd kick ideas around. There were formal and informal meetings. When we started we didn't even have approval to create a new brand. It all started when some trial packs were made up at a contract packager, the local sales manager called on Costco, pitched the idea and got an order. Our procedural types at corporate headquarters had a fit, chewed us out for not following the established procedures, but truth is had we waited for them we never would have got the business. You have to be able to take risks in order to grow. As true in business as it is in your personal life.
Second step is called build relationships. In order to get anything done in the world, you have to have people connections. You can't live in a vacuum and you are dependent on other people to live and work. The better you can build your work relationships the easier it is to work with each other and get things done. The relationship building during this process was on-going. By embarking on a learning expedition you automatically start the relationship building. As you seek information you also interact with the other people.
Pay attention to how they think. How they function. If they need a lot of pre-planning and structure of if they fly more by the seat of their pants. This is one area where Myers Briggs type is useful. I wish we'd had it as a tool then. Astrology is another area I find fascinating and useful, more on this ahead.
Third step I call brainstorm. You can do this by yourself or with a group. You've gathered a lot of information and by now you know each other well enough to toss ideas around and be able to discuss them. I find that brainstorming works well as an iterative process. You generate ideas then go off and do something else. Come back and chew on them a bit, hatch some new ideas, discard some and make new combinations.
In brainstorming it is imperative to send the critical mind on vacation. Absolutely no “Yeah, but...” allowed. Getting into a playful or meditative state before you start is good. Bringing in a facilitator for creative processes may be helpful as is going into a different environment. Shifting environment frees up energy as does doing things differently than we are used to.
After brainstorm comes prioritize. This is a first cut, you generally have many more ideas than you could possibly implement. Letting the visionaries have at it is useful at this stage, because they will see possibilities the bean counters never will. Why is this? Because a bean counter is detail oriented, here and now, sees what is and what has been but is not good at dreaming. The visionary however, is pretty useless at day-to-day details like bookkeeping, but