Where Lisa Makes a Change

“I’m going to quit my job.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.  Lisa was walking at a brisk pace, as she normally did during her lunch hour.  It was a great way to enjoy the bay side and escape the office, not to mention giving her a break from the unrelenting phone calls in the call centre that had made her life so difficult over the last few years.

When Lisa joined the Shoe Emporium five years ago it had seemed like a dream.  After all, she was working in a job that paid her to talk about one of her favourite topics – shoes, and it was a small business with an owner who was passionate about the things he created.  When they came to work every day, she truly felt like they were changing the world.

Now, as the company grew larger, it was less like a family and more like a business.  She shared the floor with more than 300 employees, while shareholders and board directors controlled most, if not all of the decisions.  More often than not they were decisions that cut costs and reduced the quality of service to the customers that Lisa had once loved so dearly.   It had made service queues horrendously long and these days it took forever to get anything done, let alone delivered.

So now, there really seemed to be no other choice.

“Hello?  Steve, did you hear me?  I said I’m going to quit.”

Lisa was answered by the sound of loud clanging, grinding and shouting – certainly not what she was expecting.  It sounded as though Steve was driving, but if that was the sound of his engine it was clear he wasn’t going to get very far.

“Lisa, I heard you,” Steve shouted. “But I thought you loved that job?  Can you meet for coffee?  I’m three blocks away.”

“No, I – “

“I’ll see you there.”  Lisa looked at the ended conversation on her phone and rolled her eyes.  Steve was not going to talk her out of this one.  But one coffee couldn’t hurt.  Could it?

*

By the time Steve’s beautiful, shiny car limped into the parking lot of their local café, Lisa had already ordered them both cappuccinos and was seated at a table overlooking the bay.

Steve leapt out of the car, brushed himself off as though he was ridding himself of the experience he just had, and sat down.  He was a fair looking man with a mop of light brown hair, perhaps in his late forties but wearing an outfit of someone in their late twenties, and with an impossible smile permanently plastered on his face.

Steve had owned a car detailing and tinting service for many years, but it was only recently that things seemed to be going extremely well for him.  Which was obviously the reason for the new ride.

“Wow, what a car!” he said. “I’ll have to remember that it doesn’t seem to like driving over 120 miles per hour on a dirt road, though.”

Lisa smiled and shook her head.

Before she had time to respond, a shiny new van pulled up next to Steve’s car, and out popped a man in overalls.  He looked around, spotted Steve, gave a quick wave as though they’d done this all before and then headed under the hood of Steve’s clanging monstrosity that had only just made it into the car park.

Ignoring Lisa’s slightly perplexed look, Steve put down his coffee and said: “But more importantly, did I hear you correctly?  You said you are quitting your job?”

Lisa’s face sunk a little.  “I just can’t do it anymore, Steve.  I know I used to love this job, but with all the cost cutting they’ve done it’s nearly impossible to give my customers a good experience.  Some people I’ve known for years have told me they love talking to me on the phone, but they just can’t put up with the poor product and terrible delivery times any longer.”

Steve nodded as she spoke.

“Believe it or not, I know exactly what you mean,” he said. “In fact that’s the reason I wanted to meet – I may have a way to help you.”

“Steve,” said Lisa, with a serious tone, “I hardly think you detailing cars is the same as me selling shoes.”

“They might seem different,” considered Steve.  “But it wasn’t too long ago that I hated the work I did as well.  I was doing 12-hour days, constantly having to stay back to fix the work my employees did during the day, cleaning cars and tinting their windows.  Customer complaints were also through the roof.  It was really terrible!

“Thankfully, that’s not where my story ended.  The owner of the car sales desk we work with approached me one day and asked if I wanted to ‘improve my business so much that I enjoyed it again’.  Of course, my answer was yes.  I was on my twenty-first straight day and was more than a little delirious.”

Steve laughed at himself, and it made Lisa feel better too.  He did look a lot happier, she thought, and that made her curious.

“The sales owner showed me a way – a way of streamlining things, making them easier, and standardising them so anyone can do it.  I cannot begin to tell you what a huge difference it made.  Most of my employees started working with the new streamlined standard, and the ones that didn’t, left.  It even cost me less per car, so I could reduce my prices a little and beat my competition.  Now I even get home on time, every day.  It’s wonderful!”

Lisa beamed at her old friend.  “Steve, that’s great!” she said. “But how does that apply to me?  I don’t tint or detail cars.  I just sell shoes in an online store call centre.  And I don’t have employees – I’m not even the boss where I work.”

“That’s true Lisa, but there is one thing both our companies share, and that’s a process for doing things.  The sales desk owner told me that everything has a process, and even though the processes are different, the way we fix them is the same.

“Besides, you can’t quit your job.  What about your bills, your mortgage, and your family?  I know you want to leave, but other jobs aren’t always easy to find.”

Lisa’s face sunk as he said the words, and reality slowly crept in.  She was behind on most bills as it was.  As much as she thought she wanted it, being unemployed wasn’t really an option.

Steve gave her a sympathetic smile.  “If this works, it could really change your life for the better.  What do you think?  Do you want to give it a try?”

Lisa nodded.  “Well if I can’t quit my job, Steve, I might as well improve it.”

“Great!” And the look on Steve’s face seemed to make the day brighter already.  He paused for a moment in thought.

“You know, there are a few things we can do to get started straight away,” he said.

“How did I know you were going to say that?” Lisa said, and she smiled slightly and shook her head.

“I wouldn’t usually start so soon, but if we’re going to improve your job, we really need to know what your product is.”

“Well that’s easy,” said Lisa.  “You already know I sell shoes.  Wouldn’t that be my product?”

“Not always,” said Steve.  “You see, your product is what brings value to your customer.  And to find out what truly brings them value, you have to ask.  Most people think they know, but when they ask their customer they often find a different answer altogether.

“Let me show you what I mean,” Steve continued, and he looked over his shoulder and shouted to the van mechanic under his car that he seemed to know so well.

“Hey Nathan!”

“Yeah?” the mechanic yelled back from under the hood of the car.

“What sort of flowers should I get for my daughter’s wedding?”

Nathan stopped what he was doing and looked out from under the hood.  “How should I know?” he said, a little bewildered, and got back to work.

“Exactly,” said Steve pointedly as he turned back to Lisa with a smile.

“You wouldn’t ask a mechanic what to do for your wedding.  And to find out what value means to your customer, you need to ask your customer.”

Lisa nodded her head as she took all this in.  “Ok, Steve.  I get your point.  You know, I talk to enough customers during the day so I’m sure it won’t be too hard to ask them one more question, and find out what value means to them.”

Steve smiled. “And once we know that, we can really get started.”

Lisa looked down at her watch, and wrinkled her nose. “Time to get back,” she said.

“But you’ll give it a shot?” asked Steve.

“I’ll give it a shot,” Lisa nodded.

“Great!” said Steve, and he downed the last of his coffee in one gulp.

Selected chapters from the story within Five minute Lean:

• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Makes a Change
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Discovers a New Way
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Performs a Balancing Act
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Pulls the Trigger
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Sets a New Standard
• Lean Parable – Where Lisa Becomes a Leader

Check out these selected chapters from the teachings within Five Minute Lean:

• Five Minute Lean: Glossary
• Five Minute Lean – Solve the Real Cause of the Problem
• Five Minute Lean – Create a New Standard Procedure and Checklist for Quality Control
• Five Minute Lean – Value is Determined by the Customer
• Five Minute Lean – Use Pareto to Find Where to Start
• Five Minute Lean – Implement With Agile for Fast Iterations and Feedback
• Five Minute Lean – Add Important Data to Your Map
• Five Minute Lean – Use Kaizen and Kaizen Events to Help Stakeholder Buy-In
• Five Minute Lean – Get Your Map Started with a SIPOC
• Five Minute Lean – Create a Future State Value Stream Map
• Five Minute Lean – Introduction
• Five Minute Lean – Map the Value Stream to Reveal Opportunities
• Five Minute Lean – Help Your Process Flow with Line Balancing
• Five Minute Lean – Make Feedback Meaningful with Kano Analysis
• Five Minute Lean – Put it Together With Design for Ease of Use
• Five Minute Lean – Gather Direct Feedback and Indirect Feedback
• Five Minute Lean – Work Towards One-Piece-Flow (and Reducing Silos or Batching)
• Five Minute Lean Summary
• Five Minute Lean – Collect and Measure Feedback With the Net Promoter Score
• Five Minute Lean – Go to the Gemba