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Customize It
Hardcover
115 pages
ISBN 9780385514781 Published Oct. 2005
Broadway Business
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Posted Nov. 10, 2011 3:59 p.m. by 800-ceo-read
Subir Chowdhury has written 13 books over the years, most recently a wonderful little parable entitled The Ice Cream Maker in which he introduced the LEO approach to sustaining quality in everything a company does. Since then, he has received repeated requests to write a more in-depth treatment of that process as it would work, or has worked, in the real world. And so Chowdhury took the LEO approach into the real world, tested it in numerous companies large and small, and has now delivered the book that so many were asking for—The Power of LEO.
LEO stands for Listen, Enrich, and Optimize, and it was developed by Chowdhury and his team after he realized that the Six Sigma and other management tools they were teaching to companies weren’t being fully implemented because they weren’t being tailored to those companies’ specific needs. LEO is designed to remedy that, tailoring those tools to each company’s unique circumstances, goals, and culture.
The Listen process requires putting aside past assumptions to comprehend the challenges the organization may be facing—involving customers, suppliers and employees in the process. The Enrich process involves reaching out to all relevant parties for ideas and solutions. And the Optimize process is when the solutions are examined and evaluated, subjecting them to every kind of challenge along the way and correcting possible shortcomings. As you move through these processes, the goal is to go from simply solving the problems your organization faces to avoiding them in the first place.
There are four cornerstones or mindsets to the LEO approach: “Quality Is My Responsibility” in which quality is shifted from a department responsibility to a personal responsibility; “All the People, All the Time” stresses the need for employees on every level of the organization to be a part of the quality campaign; “An I-Can-Do-It Mindset” encourages building employee confidence to ready them for the quality transformation, and; “No One Size Fits All” stresses again the need for solutions that are tailored to the company and situation at hand.
The LEO approach is then applied to three phases, the Fire, Flow and Future. The Fire is the specific problem at hand, Flow is the entire operations side of the company, and Future involves new products and services. Chowdhury dedicates a chapter to each of these areas with a case study for each: “Putting Out Fires” at a jelly-bean factory, “Fixing the Flow” at a toy company, and “Commanding the Future” at a major car manufacturer. He then rounds out the book with more stories on “Listenening Hard,” “Enriching the Product” and “Don’t Compromise, Optimize.”
Throughout The Power of LEO runs the undercurrent of “The Quality Mindset,” which focuses on people quality, and the author stresses from the beginning that the American leadership in innovation can better benefit our organizations and economy if we focus on quality in everything we do.
Jack Covert Selects: The Ice Cream Maker
Posted Sept. 6, 2005 7:56 a.m. by jack
The Ice Cream Maker: An Inspiring Tale About Making Quality the Key Ingredient in Everything You Do by Subir Chowdhury, Currency Books, 100 Pages, $17.95 Hardcover, September 2005, ISBN 0385514786
Quality: something of which I have always been a huge fan. Now, I'm not talking about the number crunchers' version of quality. I'm talking about the human kind of quality--that of customer service and care. Service America and Moments of Truth are books I read years ago. They helped me understand how to build a customer-centric company, long before that word (customer-centric) even existed.
Subir Chowdhury, author of a few Six Sigma books, has written the perfect primer for people that need a refresher course or are merely wondering why their business seems to be stagnating. We all have customers whether we are retail merchants, manufacturers, teachers or bureaucrats.
At 100 pages long, this book is the story of a guy who runs an ice cream company, hence the title (clever folks, these authors). The guru--all fables seem to have gurus--is a friend of the ice cream guy and he leads our character through the stages of implementing quality processes that will improve his product and, therefore, save the plant from closure. The author uses LEO as the acronym for the keys to understanding and implementing quality. "L" is Listen to both your internal and external customers. "E" is Enrich your business with innovative ideas and "O" is Optimize what you are doing as in striving for perfection. Some of the other treasures from the book are:
"The bottom line is that quality is defined by the customer." The only way that will happen is when we listen to our customers. When a customer requested a certain product or service, it must do what it is expect to do. It must 'Perform as Promised.' The third customer need is what we think of as 'excitement,' giving the customer that extra something that gets their attention, that delights them, and makes your product or service stand out.
This is a book I have given to people on my staff and we will be using to implement some changes in the future. This will be an important part in 8cr's future plans. Pick it up and learn.
For more information, check out The Ice Cream Maker website.
