The "Toy" Story
We were in trouble! Several years ago, I was developing a complex, innovative new product with a cross-functional team of 15 people (with zero new product launch experience among them). Our customer was demanding additional product improvements be implemented prior to launch. The team was cracking under the stress. There was infighting and chaos, exacerbated by product and process deficiencies. The different functional groups were blaming each other for the problems. A seasoned Project Manager was assigned, and, as if by magic, everything changed.
At her very first team meeting, she placed a small toy car in front of each person, saying nothing. After about 5 minutes (which seemed like an eternity), she asked “What do you all have in front of you?”. Everyone said, “a car” or “a toy”. She said, “Right! It’s a toy. From now on you are all going to remember one thing – T. O. Y.: Team, Others, Yourself. When you prioritize actions, you will set Team first, followed by Others, and then Yourself. You are no longer going to worry about your individual metrics; this is a team and we will fight through this difficult launch together. You are going to behave with ‘TOY’ in mind in all of your actions and talk from here on out.”
Immediately, the team started to gel. We made tremendous progress with the product development and launched on schedule. Individual concerns dropped by the wayside as the team fought hard to be successful. The small action of placing a TOY in front of us made such a huge impact! That simple gesture dramatically re-set everyone’s thinking. It was suddenly so obvious that if the team failed in its mission, it would not reflect well on anyone – the team’s internal finger-pointing was profoundly counterproductive. The presence of a physical toy on each colleague’s desk was a constant reminder to keep egos in check and work the issues. Twenty-five years later, I still have the toy. What symbolic action could you take with your team to drive team unity and accelerate progress?
Networking and communication build and sustain the relationships that make business work. Avoid these bad habits immediately or people will dislike you immediately.
Mastering these 5 missing skills quickly maximizes your productivity and influence, which in turn enhances both job security and advancement potential.
I explained the goal in designing any component. Overly tight specifications would make it harder to find suppliers and would drive up costs. The engineer's entire approach changed.
Preparing for a presentation is vital in enabling team members to convey critical points, and influence outcomes with customers. Here are the steps involved.
When customer tensions rise, the right approach can turn friction into collaboration. At CAEDENCE, we call it the 3C’s: Calm, Clarify, Control. Here's more detail.
Will AI Replace Direct Customer Communication? Absolutely Not! In an age of chatbots and algorithms, the highest-impact discussions still happen person-to-person.
B2B customer relationships are not a breeze. We’ve navigated hundreds of challenging accounts and distilled five secrets that consistently turn friction into forward progress.
Ever notice how a quick fix from the top can feel like a shortcut, but it ends up stunting your team’s growth? When managers rush to answers, they inadvertently affect team development.
Over the years we’ve been exposed to Six Sigma, Juran, Deming PDCA, 8D, Dale Carnegie, A3, Shainin, and more. Each technique works pretty well, and has been demonstrated many times in a wide variety of industries and circumstances. At the core they are all essentially the same!
Each approach relies on an underlying logical flow that goes like this: [a] make sure the problem is clearly defined; [b] be open to all sources of information; [c] vet the information for relevance and accuracy; [d] use the process of elimination to narrow down all possible causes to the most likely few; [e] prove which of the suspects is really the cause of the issue; [f] generate a number of potential solutions; [g] evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility and risk of the potential solutions; [h] implement the winning solution(s); and [i] take steps to make sure your solution(s) don’t unravel in the future.
The differences between the paradigms resides in supplementary steps and toolkits. For example, 8D contains the important “In
Your team is marching through the tools of your company's chosen problem-solving approach. This is time not spent on growing your business or delivering cost reductions. Yet your customers are suffering, and they're not shy about letting you know it! Why isn't it working?
