This guide draws on more than a decade of experience running customer journey, lean, kaizen and value stream workshops across many companies and industries, helping you to avoid common pitfalls and leverage key lessons learned.
Pair Up - Partner with someone from another function for diverse perspective to test the Startup Cycle.
Test AI Mapping - Create a new Group to test prompts and AI generated maps for your context before a formal workshop.
Collaborator experience - Join from a phone or incognito browser to experience collaborator activities.
Team Demo Session - Run a demo with a couple of teams or functional groups.
Choose Logical Partitions - Avoid mapping customer segments and operations too broadly, as this requires more people to attend sessions, overly complex maps, too many steps, and unclear value stream boundaries.
Customer Journey: e.g. by demographic, solution segment, initial sign-up, recurring purchases, add-ons, end of service experience.
Operational Segments: e.g. R&D, supply chain, production/fulfillment, warranty/after-sales, lines of business.
You can organize related levels in a Group and link segments later.
Budget Sensitivity - If new groups are hesitant to provide the financial basis for opportunity value and ROI insights, use the default to get started and adjust the opportunity value calculations accordingly. Review the financial performance and ROI trending with your group for examples of how these values are used.
Prepare for Reactions - AI-generated maps and improvement ideas in seconds, may be unsettling to people invested in their work. Emphasize AI reduces manual effort, provides faster insights and more time for deeper discussions.
Empathy is Key - Encourage functions to practice active listening and support groups with current bottlenecks or quality issues. Emphasize Systems Thinking - future Adapt Cycles will present other groups with the opportunity to improve their steps.
Use Powerful Questions - From your perspective what would improvement look like? What would help other groups understand this better? What can we do to be more helpful?
Present to Key Stakeholders - Share initial results with stakeholders to gain support for Startup Cycle workshops.
Set Baseline and Adapt Cycles to support trending
Set baselines or save the Adapt Cycle at the end of each workshop.
Start Adapt Cycles before recording improvements, updating maps and scores.
Be Bold and Stay Committed - With decades of lean systems thinking to stand on - you can help any organization achieve significant improvement in any industry including government and nonprofits.
Enhancements are added frequently and may not be reflected in this guide. Menus are dynamic based on account type and activity. Check alerts and the nVeris Knowledge Hub for updates.