Efrain entered his office on a bright, sunny morning, a smile on his face. He poured a cup of coffee and took his seat behind his desk. From his vantage point, he could see his staff walking in and settling down to the day’s work.

His executive placement firm had risen from a downswing and was quickly regaining its lost glory and more.

As he sipped his coffee, he reflected on the events of the recent past.

What had started as a simple staffing firm and grown to a high-level executive placement and search firm that commanded respect in the field of professionals had begun a slow drop in its service level and, as a consequence, a slow decline in client confidence. Although he tried to maintain a calm demeanor externally to avoid negatively affecting the morale of his staff, internally his frustration was building. Their placement lead times were getting longer and longer. The company’s overall performance was dropping, and the projections for the future did not seem encouraging. The number of returning clients and new prospects was on the decline. These thoughts kept Efrain awake many a night.

He decided to have an informal meeting with his staff to try to understand the root cause of the company’s decline.

Convenience stores are located on most street corners the world over. These small enterprises offer customers a wide variety of items and often have gas pumps outside as well. Considering how long convenience stores have been around and the quantity of items they carry, you’d expect them to use some type of software to keep track of all of their inventory. However, that's not always the case.

Many of these stores use point-of-sales systems to ensure correct pricing for products sold and to track sales taxes, and provide end-of-day and monthly accounting reports. Often these systems are integrated with various payment modes. Larger stores also use their systems to track inventory and manage their respective supply chains. Why smaller convenience stores don’t do the same, given the declining cost of technology and the the availability of inexpensive data capture tools, is surprising. 

Regression equations, fitted lines, and sampling are familiar terms to people in the quality field. There are tools that we use (i.e., planning matrixes, tree diagrams, and flowcharts) to help our organizations optimize processes. These tools aren’t new, and their use isn’t limited to the quality profession. They’re being employed more frequently as the popularity of Six Sigma increases.

However, organizations are not exploiting their talent pool by utilizing the increased knowledge and skills of their trained Six Sigma professionals in other areas, e.g., profit optimization planning. As organizations are improving their operational processes, assessing their key performance indicators (KPI) and other factors, they should also consider using these same tools for profit optimization planning.

In today’s world, it’s almost expected that product or service innovation will yield competitive advantage. So how does one innovate? One approach is to hire genius employees and to combine the attributes of a number of tools (e.g., theory of constraints or experimentation), or use specific methodologies such as TRIZ (innovative problem solving).

Surprisingly, your weakness itself may be a source of competitive advantage. To cite an example from many years ago, Thomas Edison was deaf, and he used his limitation to solve problems as well as develop new inventions. On one occasion, he was called to New York to help solve noise problems associated with the newly elevated trains in the city. Many had tried to reduce noise levels, but they could never identify the exact source. Due to his deafness, Edison could hear only the worst of the noise. This allowed him to more quickly pinpoint the problem area, rather than be distracted and sidetracked by other noises made by the elevated trains. Ultimately, the noise was due to structural problems with the elevated tracks, and not the steam engines that ran the trains. Although most observers couldn’t hear past the engine, Edison could hear the heart of the problem due to his so-called disadvantage.