Raghunandan Reddy

The Cynefin framework is a problem-solving tool which helps us to list down the situations into four "domains" defined by cause-and-effect relationships. This helps us assess our situation more accurately and respond appropriately. We can use the Cynefin framework in a various different situation to categorize the problem or decision and respond accordingly. Example: It can be used in any product development, marketing and organizational strategy The Four Domains. 1. Obvious contexts 2. Complicated contexts 3. Complex contexts 4. Chaotic contexts Lets understand each of the domain in detail. · Obvious contexts is known as the Domain of Best practise In "obvious" contexts, our options are very clear and cause-and-effect relationships are apparent to everyone involved. For example: Problems encountered at call centres are often predictable, and there are processes in place to handle most of them. One challenge is that leaders may not be receptive to new ideas because of their past experiences and success. For example, some people might automatically assume that existing solutions will work again. To overcome this, stay open to new ideas and be willing to pursue innovative suggestions from the team · Complicated contexts is known as the Domain of Experts Complicated problems might have many "correct" solutions. Here, there is a clear relationship between cause and effect, but it might not be visible, because the problem is complicated For example, you might see several symptoms of a problem but do not know how to fix it. The decision-making here is to "Sense – Analyze – Respond." In other words, you need to assess the situation, analyze what is known and decide on the best response, using good practice. · Complex contexts is known as the Domain of Emergence This might be impossible to identify one "correct" solution, or identify cause-and-effect relationships, in "complex" situations. Complex contexts are most of the times unpredictable, and the best approach here is to "Probe – Sense – Respond." Rather than trying to control the situation or insisting on a plan of action, it's better to be patient, look for patterns, and encourage a solution to emerge. · Chaotic Contexts is known as the Domain of Rapid Response In "chaotic" situations, no relationship between cause and effect exists, so our primary goal is to establish order and stability. The decision-making here is to "Act – Sense – Respond." We need to act very carefully to address the most pressing issues, sense where there is stability and where there isn't, and then respond to the situation from chaos to complexity.

Obeya Room: Which was created by Toyata, which means “Large Room” in Japanese. Objective is to bring together cross functional leaders to focus on big picture issues on any of the initiative or project. Obeya room is called “War Room”, Since there would be many different voices from the functional leaders on the issues for given project or initiative We know in the real world, organizations have different departments like Information technology, Marketing, Human resources, sales and operations who works separately. And have their department goals to achieve by their expertise. But how they interlock to common organizational goals is very important and much needed for the business to be successful. Development of that vision must start at the top, which is why an obeya room brings together leaders from all the departments involved in a project An obeya room helps organizations to create value by bringing together managers across functions. An obeya is clearly a tool of teamwork: helping managers in various functions solve problems across their borders.”

Before we answer, lets clearly understand the role of Sponsor and Champion in six sigma programs Sponsor: Is the leader or the senior executive who sponsor the overall initiative and understands the advantages of the six sigma program He is the one who has the authority to allocate resources for training and completing projects with budget approvals and always the one to help removing roadblocks that may arise during the project execution Champion: Is the leader who play important role in the sponsoring specific projects He is the technical expert who mentors the project teams and act as a bridge in between Black Belts and business. They typically ensure everyone is on board and on track for successful project completion within time. Do we need both? Yes, Since project sponsor who is the key person to support the initiative by organizational/function wise and Champion brings in the expertise to mentor the specific projects teams

Customer Lifetime Value: Customer Lifetime value (CLV) is used in different terms like Lifetime Customer Value (LCV), Lifetime Value (LV) which is net profit contributed to the future relationship with a customer. CLV can also be defined as the monetary value of a customer relationship based on the present value and the projected future cash flows from the customer relationship. CLV is an important metric for the business that encourages to shift their focus from current profits to the long-term customer relationship It is always compared on the spending to acquire the new customers. One of the elements to understand is calculating payback of advertising spent in marketing Purpose of CLV is to assess the financial value for lifetime of each customer. CLV uses the concept of present value of the customer to cashflows attributed to the customer relationship. Its important because CLV helps to under customer segmentation Below formula to help calculating the Customer Lifetime Value Customer Lifetime Value = Margin(Retention Rate/1+Discount Rate-Retention Rate) CLV has three main parameters 1. Cost Margin per period 2. Constant retention probability per period 3. Discount Rate Businesses are focused more in retaining the existing customers which is less expensive than getting a new customer when we compare cost of customer acquisition (COCA) Lets say for example: Acquiring new customer costs you $100 and lifetime value is $150, then it is said profitable concept and acquiring similar customers will be a focus and acceptable

Quality circles was introduced by Kaoru Ishikawa also known as “Father of Quality Circle” Quality circle is where small group of employees that meet regularly to plan and carry out process changes to improve quality. In other words, these Quality circles were empowering employees for open communication to identify, analyze and solve problems. Recently, organizations have adopted various techniques to solve the business problems and we always hear that Lean Six Sigma has become outdated. However, we will have to be aware that Lean Six Sigma is still a successful approach and only thing we may experience the difference in the approach. May be not an end to end approach like DMAIC, DFSS rather we keep using the different tools wherever applicable in our projects Similarly, Quality circles. In most of the organization Quality circles have fine tuned the approach to suit their needs. Concept is practiced across industry, but we hear out with different program names. Before we talk about relevance of the concept, Lets understand the characteristics of Quality circle: The problem-solving groups who connect in the Quality circles often have authority to make and implement decisions that affect their area of work. In general, Quality circles follow PDCA cycle for continuous improvement projects PDCA: The Plan, Do, Check, Act process These are good examples of large organizations using quality circles. Below are some examples on how a typical quality circles can provide benefits to the workplace. Pointing Out Issues - Employees often know of lots of minor and major issues, but they assume that someone else is working on getting them fixed. When a quality circle meets, they can discuss these types of issues, and take ownership of them to move forward with a positive result. Collaborating on Solutions - One of the biggest examples of how a quality circle can help is that it is the actual employees who are working to come up with solutions to problems. Those who deal with the problems are typically the best people to fix it. Brainstorming Ideas – In a Quality circle meets, everyone will be familiar with the position so they can more easily propose their ideas to each other. Brainstorming ideas is a great technique to arrive at the best possible solution to a problem Quality circle tools: Quality circle can us any type of the tools to improve their roles. Some of the tools are used to discover the root cause of the issues and how to fix them Flowcharts Scatter Plots Run Charts Graphical Tools Process Mapping Tools Pareto Charts Fishbone Diagrams Example of alternative Quality circle approach: We know that industry has adopted various quality methodologies and one among them is ACE (Achieving competitive Excellence) from UTC organizations. Where these Quality circles are named as Quality Clinics. · Quality clinics is to encourage groups for open communication around quality issues · Quality clinics analyze product and process nonconformance, determine root causes and ensure changes to the standard work is in place · Real time triage investigations performed Overall Quality circle is used in every organizations but in a different means.

Moscow method is a technique used for prioritization and agreement on the project deliverables with the stakeholders on each of the requirements The MoSCoW Letter stands for: · Must Have · Should Have · Could Have · Won’t have this time The use of MoSCoW works particularly well on projects to overcome the problems associated in the prioritization MoSCoW Rules: · Must Have Must Have requirements are defined as 1. No point in delivering project on time without this, there would be no point in deploying the solution on the intended date 2. Cannot deliver a viable solution without it 3. Unsafe without it 4. Not legal without it · Should Have Should Have requirements are defined as 1. Important but not vital 2. Painful to leave out, but the solution is still viable 3. Find some kind of a temporary workaround · Could Have Could Have requirements are defined as 1. Desirable but less important 2. Less impact if left out One way of comparing or differentiating Should Have and Could Have is by reviewing the degree of pain caused by the requirement if not met the deliverable. Which can be measured in terms of value to the business or number of users impacted In contingency, these are the main pool and first choice to drop when a problem occurs the deadline and is at risk · Wont Have These are the requirements which project team will not be delivering on agreement with the stakeholders, In other words out of scope and may reintroduce it later.

Q x A = E is an equation which belongs to another GE Program called CAP (Change Acceleration Process). It was intended to bring cultural change in the organization to face fast changing world. It was launched around in 1992. For any strategy to implement in the organization, It is important that organization is ready to deploy the effect of change. To elaborate Q x A = E, is a secret formula that helps one to understand and importance of change management. Q x A = E, is Quality x Acceptance = Effectiveness Where Quality is of improving your product or process with the results you are expecting Acceptance is also called cultural strategy which includes people skills, facilitation skills and etc. Effectiveness is of deployment of anything for a change initiative Few key components for effective change management: · Strong Leaders to provide direction and drive the change and ensure it is successful · Clear vision for the future and motivating the entire group involved for the commitment to achieve the goal · Constant communication on need for the change by the leadership and progress towards the goal · There is always a Resistance for any change, Resistance should be managed well without ignoring · Change in culture is important and encourage change to make it easy to achieve By keeping in mind, the above components while deploying any change. Results are promising for the project leader to be successful Note: Unsuccessful in deploying will have the opposite impact to win the change.

Cost Benefit Analysis: Cost Benefit Analysis also known as (CBA) is the technique used to measure the benefits of the given project and associated cost involved for the project to complete It is good to measure and articulate these benefits and costs in financial metrics (Example: Revenue Earned & Cost saved due the project implementation) Cost Benefit Analysis as a Tool and some standard approach: 1. List down all the cost associated with the project and estimated benefits, think of a situation where in you have to pull in budget for unexpected costs and plan accordingly 2. Cost can be anything; human efforts, technology & physical resources. For example: Imagine a situation where you planned for some new technology implementation and there is a change management process for the team which will have direct impact on their productivity. Try to gauge how much it is impacting and translate it to cost. So in simple terms assign a monetary value to the costs involved 3. Benefits are sometimes difficult to predict. Since not all benefits are translated into numbers. We have something called soft savings which is also very important to measure 4. Finally compare cost and benefits. Use this phase of the CBA to determine if the benefits are positive or negative Organization sometimes initiate the projects which are not favorable when compared to Cost and Benefit analysis. However will have to move the project since it may be an ask from key stakeholders Example: Dashboard which is simple and was automated in Excel, Ask to enhance the same dashboard with some BI tool for colorful graphs which might not add value to the business.

EMO Index: EMO index is a tool to measure customer satisfaction like our traditional Net promoter scores (NPS). EMO uses neuroscience technique by analyzing customer experience on the products and services offered. It is a tool which helps to gauge not only the customer satisfaction but also the intensity to which customer is satisfied or dissatisfied. In tradition tools like we NPS, Customer satisfaction score and surveys is used majorly to understand the likelihood that customer can promote the business or how happy the customer is with the product or services. EMO index helps to understand the positive and negative emotions of the customers and the intensity of those emotions. Methodology: As the name states EMO Index, where “Index” refers to numerical scale to some reference number. In this case EMO uses scale of -100 to +100 to measure customer positive and negative emotions and their intensity which will impact the behavior of the customer to the business. Example: Lets assume that business is offering Holiday packages to the customers and want to research on the customer experience. Since Holiday is so closely attached to the emotions of the customers and their memories. With the traditional approach we may just understand the customer if they would recommend or not In EMO index, we can classify the customers into different categories which will gauge the intensity of their feelings towards the services offered It can be categorized like; Positive Emotions: Valued, Respected, Happy, Grateful & Appreciated Negative Emotions: Frustrated, Disappointed & Annoyed This would help to realize the real pulse of the customer with intensity of the feelings to the business

North star metric is a single metric that is a core value that your product or services delivered to the customers. North Start Metric (NSM) helps businesses to head in the right direction for both short and long term. NSM is a metric which entire organization focuses for years to gain success in the business. Since NSM is a single metric, it becomes very important to select the right metric which enables value to the business and users. If you have not identified the proper NSM, you will end up misleading your focus with actual and may put an end to your business. So, creating right NSM and aligning it to your business processes metrics for each vertical in the organization helps to move in the direction. This metric should be aligned with the value delivered to the customers. In this dynamic world of business and its competition in the market, customer always has an option for his need and with his experience and value for the money he always turns to be loyal with the business. This gives an edge to the businesses to deliver more value to retain the customers for long term and it benefits customer with attractive offers from the businesses. Customer will be leading to enjoy most of the benefits since companies are trying to retain the customers delivering value continuously and making his experience better and better. To put into a nutshell, customer gets maximum benefits when business focus to deliver more value.