Toyota product development

Found interesting article from part two of Andy Wagners two part Boyd introduction at Lean Blog. Matthew May at Elegant Solutions provides two examples of Toyota creating creative tension to encourage innovation and to cut product development lead times.

He also asks important question about the burden faster cycles unleash to organization. Are they paying for faster product launches with decrease in quality and how they can overcome these problems?

Is decreased quality inevitable result of ever faster cycles? Are faster cycles worth the quality hit?

Wagners blog posts are both worth a read as he makes some comparisons with OODA and Demings PDCA and PDCA's applicability to decision making. He also makes comparison between development of F-16 and Toyotas product development. Part I, Part II.

Belisarius merging with Certain to Win blog

Chet Richards is merging content from his blog Certain to Win with Belisarius.com. New site can be found from address www.chetrichards.com.

Podcast about Sun Tzu and IT

Found interesting podcast today. Allthough it has been published couple of weeks ago, so some of you might have listened it already. Anyway, it is titled Intel's Former Innovation Manager Applies Sun Tzu's Art of War to Business and can be found here.

Executive summary is pretty generic and doesn't really describe contents of podcast so listening to it is needed and I do recommend listening it. Platt has in my opinion really intelligent approach to IT, he doesn't see it as be all end all solution but rather as an enabler. Also included are examples of mission type orders and cheng/chi transients.

Cheng/Chi is in my opinion one of the most difficult concepts to translate into business. In this podcast there is an example of turning certain department from cost center (cheng) which it has traditionally been to revenue center (chi). I think that is one way of applying maneuver conflict to business.

There is also companion slideshow, but page returned error when trying to download it, hopefully it will be fixed soon.


Edit: Actually, you don't have to listen to it, full transcript can be found from here.

More about 'being inside'

ReportonBusiness.com has nice article titled Got a competitor on your radar? where Senior partner from Boston Consulting Group of Canada describes how Canadian manufacturer of men's suits, Peerless, uses faster OODA loops as competitive advantage.

It would be interesting to hear comments from company representatives because in my opinion this article pretty much describes lean company, but company website doesn't mention neither, lean or OODA. What the company itself calls what it is doing? Is lean driving force behind their ability to cycle OODA loops faster?

Real advantage requires something uniquely active and not easily achieved. The speed of the OODA loop is rooted in systems thinking. Typically, less than 10 per cent of the total time devoted to any work in an organization is truly value-added. The rest is wasted.

This is measure that is often mentioned in lean articles as well, it is said that typical company has about 3-5% of value added work compared to Toyota who have around 14% of value added work.

This paragraph is sums 'being inside' to extent:

In business today, the difference in OODA loops among competitors is separating winners from losers. Organizations that consistently operate within the OODA loop of their competitors win. These organizations are faster than their competitors in developing and introducing new products or services, delivering their products and services, and resolving customer dissatisfactions. Organizations that pre-empt the moves of adversaries throw the loser into confusion and into a reactive cycle.

But still, I have yet to come clear definition of what being inside opponents OODA loop in business means and how one can spot it. Is being fast enough? I don't think so.

Did some searching at BCG website and found previous article, published in 1987 in New York Times, in which this one is based at. Almost word to word.

Schwerpunkt and how to have clear focus

Fast Company has article titled The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot which covers background of Boyd and his thoughts and also provides some nice examples of OODA in action. Even if Boyd is relatively know article is well worth a read.

I especially liked notion of schwerpunkt.

Systems like Toyota's worked so well, Boyd argued, because of schwerpunkt, a German term meaning organizational focus. Schwerpunkt, Boyd wrote, "represents a unifying medium that provides a directed way to tie initiative of many subordinate actions with superior intent as a basis to diminish friction and compress time." That is, employees decide and act locally, but they are guided by a keen understanding of the bigger picture.

I relate Boyds schwerpunkt to lean concept of 'High Agreement' and the need for organization to have High Agreement both on what they want to achieve and how they will achieve it. This allows whole organization to operate as cohesive unit towards common goal. Jamie Flinchbaugh and Andy Carlino describe High Agreement in page 16 of their book Hitchhikers Guide To Lean as follows:

"Valuing a common way or process with low ambiguity more than you value your own way." To be clear, this definition does not mean individuals need to like the common way, but they value having the agreement and accept decisions that they may not like.

I don't mean that schwerpunkt equals High Agreement, rather that in lean environment High Agreement is a way to maintain that organizational focus.

Comments? Thoughts?

Boyd in Business, elsewhere in the internet #1

I'll try to make this recurring post every once in a while when I find direct discussion about Boyd in Business around the net.

First up is Mike Smock in vSentes blog and a four part series where he interprets Boyds four questions from The Strategic Game of ? and ? (pdf at d-n-i.net) into marketing.

What is Strategy?
What is the Aim or Purpose of Strategy?
What is the Central Theme and What Are the Key Ideas that Underlie Strategy?
How Do We Play to This Theme and Activate These Ideas?

Robert Greene, author of books Power, Seduction and War has article titled OODA and You. Discussion about article and Boyd in Business continues in this forum thread called The OODA Loop & You; The strategy of allowed chaos. Allthough most of the examples covered still revolve around armed conflict.

John Martellaro writes in the Mac Observer article titled Hidden Dimensions - Apple, the OODA Loop and Staying The Course about how fast apple is running it's OODA loop and who if any is inside Apples loop.

Other than those linked now and obvious ones at Belisarius.com there isn't that much written about Boyd in Business. Technorati searchs pretty much end up with general descriptions of OODA but nothing specific.