Lean Consulting Services

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For many organizations, the day-to-day strategic approach is to continue to do what's working and stop doing, or do less of what is not. As competitive landscapes tighten, this business-as-usual approach is often no longer enough. Having a robustly solid and sound Strategy isn't complex, but it does require attention. Identifying your organization's direction and vision of the future IS NOT the work of an outside consulting firm, but helping you vet it, pressure test it and turn it into a well thought out, manageable and ultimately successful strategy is something we are very good at. 

We will help you determine: Are you offering the right products and/or services to the market? Is your differentiation valued by your customers? How are your customer's needs shifting? What is happening on your competitive landscape? What needs to be done to win in the marketplace? In 3-5 years your product and customer mix will be different than it is today, are you ready?

Your competitors are not resting on their laurels and neither should you. As relentless as rust, competitors don't sleep and they are looking for any opportunity to knock you out of the box. Understanding their potential next moves may be critical for your sustained success. 

We have helped both major brands and niche manufacturers deeply evaluate their shifting marketplaces and make the needed adjustments to win in their marketplace. 

Sports metaphors are fine. Often they are "just what's needed" for everyone to align and see things the same way. Sometimes a meeting turns into a tug-of-war, other times getting a shipment out before end of quarter close was like, "4th and goal on the 3 yard line" as the clock was running out. But in business, teamwork isn't as much about a metaphor, it's about trust. Building an environment of teamwork and trust is often a delicate balance. Great teams accelerate progress, broken teams often do more than just hinder progress, they can sabotage it.  

With our time-tested and proven approaches, DeltaTRUE knows what it takes and is ready to help get your team working better together quickly. Misalignment, distrust and resentment are often easy to identify, a culture of disagreement and subtle sabotage often is not. 

We propose that with a fresh perspective, we are able to come in, listen, watch and learn and help your team perform at their highest level.

Competition starts well before there are any products or services to offer, competition starts in hiring and retaining the best available talent. Attracting that talent is all about your culture. Like the weather, every company has a culture that surrounds them, whether you've consciously developed it or not. 

Culture "happens" over morning coffee, on breaks and in the moment-to-moment interactions in emails, phone calls and meetings. But unlike the weather, you can influence and to a large extent cultivate the culture needed to be successful. 

While we understand and believe in a people centric approach to leadership, culture, we believe is more directly a by-product of the organization's core values- not only what they are but how they're communicated and lived in the daily work (for more about this, see here).

When the most senior leaders on your staff and the most junior contributors in your organization all understand current strategy, challenges, overarching goals and priorities and the reasons behind them, you have strategic alignment. Without strategic alignment, efforts often conflict, priorities remain unbalanced and though individuals or departments may achieve their goals, operational excellence suffers and the company can and often does still suffer in the long term. With our proven methods of Policy Deployment through the implementation of Hoshin Kanri, our clients quickly gain and maintain alignment throughout their organization.  

With plans in place to cultivate and maintain the culture that is valued, and a strategy that is aligned to business goals, the incorporation of an integrated scorecard is a natural next step. Often maligned as overreaching or inefficient, Integrated Scorecards are a great method of cutting through all the excuses and staying on task while focusing on what you've determined to be your most critical success factors.

No really, it's a thing. Lean Innovation aren't just words that get added to the company letterhead or inserted into the core values and then suddenly becomes part of the DNA. Truly Lean Innovative organizations attack innovation and make it a core competency. They embrace the challenge of becoming innovators which means in part having the strength and courage to take chances and sometimes even being wrong. It means embracing an entrepreneurial spirit and it means carving out within your culture a "fail fast" ethos that both attracts and fuels the best in your industry.

At DetaTRUE we are Innovators. We hold over a dozen US Patents and we have led as well as collaborated with many innovative companies and while there is far from one best way, we have navigated these waters before and we are qualified to help you chart your course.

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Being a senior leader can be exhilarating, it can also be tough. We've been there. In our Executive Leader coaching, we work closely with leaders, emerging leaders and identified "high potentials" to craft their unique tool box. 

Leader standard work, critical decision making, active listening and leadership networking are just a few of the tools we build from. 

"We think we're pretty good, but I would love the chance to have an extra set of eyes take a look." We do that. If you would like an honest, straight-forward assessment, we can help. We value going to the work. We value understanding not only the what but the why and we have a long and successful track record of engaging with clients around the real challenges of their business and helping them improve, quickly and sustainability.

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We have been part of the the Lean Transformation community since the earliest days. We've been part of wildly successful Lean journeys and we've seen some that petered out. What we have learned is there is no one right way to succeed. If we have a formula, it's founded in the belief that every company is unique and what's needed can't be found neatly laid out, cookbook style. We work with our clients to help them put together their own roadmap and then we help drive and build the needed tools for success. 

Speed to market is critical. If you are in an industry where innovation is valued and expected, or if you are in a mature sector looking for a competitive edge, getting to market with new products or service quickly, efficiently and cost effectively can make all the difference. We have successfully lead over a dozen companies in their quest to improve time to market efforts.

Good facilitation is when a team accomplishes what they set out to and with the desired results being achieved, and "who" or "how" it was facilitated is all but forgotten. We have extensive experience leading change efforts in a variety of industries and circumstances. From thorough contracting, conflict management, all the way to successful action plan development and completion, we can guide and teach facilitation processes or serve as your external facilitator.  

On their first day at work, if you are not currently able to walk an intern around and physically show them the metrics that matter and how everyone in a department organizes around the critical work, your visual management system could probably be improved. Remote employees? They too should have access to the daily/weekly/monthly temperature of the business and know, in a data based way the strategy and condition of your critical metrics.  

Problem solving should not only be the job of leaders. Nor should it be sourced only in a single continuous improvement department. Waste recognition, opportunities for improvement and problem solving, whether it be ad-hoc or systematic, needs to be in everyone's job description. Creating a common tool box and helping to develop a common language around problem solving are two important steps in developing a true learning organization. 

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The challenge: Getting to market first, or getting to market with the latest innovation faster than your competition. These abilities have been known to completely transform companies and to rewrite entire competitive landscapes. And we have both led successful transformations and advised others to success. Getting to market faster while being on-time and at budget - game changing. 

All businesses have risk, that's nothing new. At DeltaTRUE, what we do differently is that we help our clients identify risks proactively and routinely put in place mitigation strategies that take the emotion out of setbacks. With DeltaTRUE Mitigation Strategies, or clients are ready and not held hostage to make difficult decisions when set backs occur.

External behaviors of a good leader includes listening and being respectful, holding oneself accountable and having a bias toward action. Internally, great leaders have passion, vision and humility. 

With all the component parts in place and working, leaders are able to build and cultivate trust. Introvert or extrovert, "wallflower" or "town cryer", leaders show up in countless ways and in countless situation. 

Finding, cultivating and helping leaders grow drives success and builds businesses. We can help accelerate that growth (to learn more about our approach, see here).

Most companies have contributors that are without a peer. Whether it's the owner that needs a sounding board, or the Senior Vice President in need of someone with whom to run scenarios, or a newly minted Lean Director that is afraid they will be "discovered as a fraud". Whatever the situation, it's likely we've heard it (or something close) and we can help. 

At any given time we are collaborating with, engaged and coaching over a dozen leaders performing at their highest level. We provide perspective, challenge when needed, and often a new and different way to consider daily challenges.

Often times the Continuous Improvement Departmet (CI or CIP) or the Kaizen Promotion Office (KPO) are departments in a company or division chartered to lead change management efforts. Members of these departments often either move on to work in other departments or move over to offer more focused change management skills. 

Another model is a decentralized CI community. In organizations with a Skills Resource Network, change agents reside throughout the organization staying in their traditional roles, but they are also able to step in to perform needed facilitation and ad-hoc problem solving as needed. 

We have helped build, establish and roll out these networks and we continue to be kept part of their long-term success. 

Mergers and acquisitions are an everyday reality in business today. And while the "finance people" are the ones that broker the deals, what is often left is for everyone else to "figure out". This is sure to be a losing recipe. 

At DeltaTRUE we have worked with several companies in M&A situations and we can help. We fervently believe in the notion that in most companies you have good people WANTING to do a good job. M&A's can be very trying and we can help you navigation the alignment, daily operation and goal setting paths.