Karen Martin > Quotes

“The results of taking on too much is that nothing gets done. Or it doesn’t get done well.”
― Karen Martin

“You need to talk about it. Explain it. Let people ask questions.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“To aid in targeting the right level of information, we aim for 5 to 15 serial process blocks”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“we use the term countermeasure instead of solution, to aid in creating a continuous improvement culture, which begins with how people think and speak. The word solution smacks of an over-the-wall, permanent-fix mindset, which discounts the ever-changing world we work and live in.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Freed capacity is the result of process time reduction through the elimination of wasteful activities and/or optimizing work.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“We cannot empathize this enough: sustaining improvements begins with proper planning, followed by proper execution and management.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Remember that the lead time for a process block begins when the work is available to be worked on, not when an employee begins working on it, so identifying the trigger will help the team obtain a more accurate lead time.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Value stream improvement requires strong team-player mindsets and mapping team members who are comfortable designing for the greater good.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Embracing value stream thinking is a mark of an organization that has successfully shifted from siloed thinking (what's best for me and my team?) to holistic thinking (what's best for the customer and the company?)”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“experiencing fewer problems and frustrations in their day-to-day work, the work force will become even more engaged in the improvement process”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Rather than viewing value stream mapping as just a toll to reduce operational waste, the broader use of value stream mapping as a methodology to transform leadership thinking, define strategy and priorities, and assure that customers are receiving high levels of value is where value stream mapping earns its brightest stripes.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Removing work effort may require the team to eliminate not merely the work activities, but also the need for that effort.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“During the three-day mapping activity, the team had numerous discussions about the role of software testing, customer involvement and responsibility, striking the right balance of iterations, and how "minimal" a minimally viable product should be.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“a value stream is a series of processes that connect together and transform a customer request into a good or service that's delivered to the customer, which completes the request-to-delivery cycle”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“We're often asked how frequently a value stream should be improved. The answer is continuously. We understand that's a tall order for many organizations, but continuous improvement is your only way out of a culture of reactive firefighting, which prevents your organization from excelling on all levels.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“There's a big difference between needing to change a plan because new data or new conditions warrant it and deviating from a plan because an avoidable distraction has taken away the focus of an improvement team”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Suboptimization occurs when you make an improvement to one component of a system while ignoring the effects of that change on the other components. A seemingly important improvement could cause the overall work system to perform more poorly.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Whereas clarity and ingenuity are required for creating current and future state maps, focus and discipline are essential for successfully executing and sustaining improvement.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Transformation requires fundamental changes in an organization's DNA; done well, value stream mapping can be instrumental in facilitating the necessary shifts in mindsets and behaviors.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“In practice, all ideas need to be viewed as merely hypotheses; testing and evaluation of the test results must precede across-the-board adoption.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“The purpose of the second value stream walk is for the team to gain a deeper understanding about how the value stream currently performs and identify significant barriers to flow.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Learning to see and manage work from a value stream perspective is a powerful way to instill new ways of thinking into the DNA of your organization and achieve higher levels of performance.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“We find a direct link between results and the degree to which the executive sponsor remains visibly engaged.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Beware leaders that want to negotiate for shorter time frames than the team feels is prudent. Most leaders have been away from the front lines for a long time and have grown out of touch with how long it takes to plan and execute well-thought-out improvements.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“In mature continuous improvement organizations, value stream managers are sometimes given responsibility for profit and loss across the value stream”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“designing the ability to operate with fewer customer complaints, less firefighting, and reduced interdepartmental tension brings tremendous hope to leaders and their staffs who may be feeling the pressure from an underperforming value stream.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“the value stream map looks at the high level activities that transform a request into some sort of deliverable . . . the purpose of value stream mapping is to design a strategic improvement plan that will be executed over a period of time; it's not designed to address problems at a detailed level”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“Following this scientific process assures that everyone involved in making improvements is thinking critically and breaking old habits of prematurely leaping to solutions or rushing through execution for the sake of meeting a deadline.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“In terms of overall transformation plan ownership, we recommend a sole accountable party.”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation

“the most powerful metric we've seen for analyzing processes in office, service, and knowledge work environments: percent complete and accurate (%C&A)”
― Karen Martin, Value Stream Mapping: How to Visualize Work and Align Leadership for Organizational Transformation