The Grameen Foundation’s goal is to reach more people across the spectrum of poverty, while deepening the focus on the very poor, especially women. Over the past twenty years, one billion people have been able to exit extreme poverty. The Grameen Foundation has the unprecedented opportunity to accelerate such changes, especially for the 800 million people still living in dire poverty and highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their mission is to enable the poor, especially women, to create a world without poverty and hunger. Its programs expand financial inclusion, enhance health, strengthen resilience and improve livelihoods for people in poor, rural communities around the world.

In this video presentation, Dr. Odeh discusses her Lean IT challenges and the power of Gemba in a small Ugandan village with the Grameen foundation. Watch this enlightening video.

The post Lean IT: Can It Make a Difference in Uganda? appeared first on 6sigma.

Lean and Six Sigma together can make businesses and organizations more efficient and productive. In most cases, those focusing on Lean and Six Sigma are looking at the bottom line and trying to find ways to save time and money while still creating the best product or service possible. We now understand that the practice of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) often results in better environmental performance, even when that isn’t the intended outcome of a project.

In this innovative podcast, Lean Six Sigma consultant Brion Hurley is interviewed by Luke Andersen from the radio show, Northwest Business. Brion has established a strong reputation on helping organizations achieve environmental sustainability and achieve success beyond growth or monetary savings.

Download the podcast here.

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Poverty in Africa is about the lack of basic human needs faced by certain people in African society. African nations typically fall toward the bottom of any list measuring small size economic activity, such as income per capita or GDP per capita, despite a wealth of natural resources.

In 2009, 22 of 24 nations identified as having ‘Low Human Development’ on the United Nations’ (UN) Human Development Index were in Sub-Saharan Africa. We know that 34 of the 50 nations on the UN list of least developed countries are in Africa. In many nations, GDP per capita is less than $5200 per year, with the vast majority of the population living on much less. In addition, Africa’s share of income has been consistently dropping over the past century by any measure. In 1820, the average European worker earned about three times what the average African did. Now, the average European earns twenty times what the average African does. Although GDP per capita incomes in Africa have also been steadily growing, measures are still far better in other parts of the world.

This video features Steve Bell at the Lean System Society Reactor Conference. Steve addresses the effectiveness of Lean thinking as supported by Lean4NGO.org.  The goal of Lean4NGO.org is to leverage the principles, systems and tools of Lean thinking to improve efficiency and effectiveness outcomes for those they serve.

View the video here:

The post Lean Thinking: Can We Change the World For Social Good? appeared first on 6sigma.

The exponential speed of technological change has been a boon for nonprofits. Thanks to the digital tools at our fingertips, organizations in the social sector can immediately test the impact of their work, says Michel Gelobter, author of Lean Startups for Social Change. This enables them to get information about and appeal to their target audiences more effectively. The key has been introducing nonprofits to the Lean Startup methodology, which Gelobter says was his impetus for writing his book. No one in the social sector knew anything about how Lean Startup was driving the explosive growth we saw in tech companies, and explosive innovation we saw in bigger companies like GE or Intuit, he says in a in an interview after his talk at Lean Startup Week.

Testing the Products Nonprofits Offer & Measuring Their Impact

Gelobter says it may not seem intuitive to apply Lean Startup to nonprofits since you get no price signal in the social sector, but he points out that the strategies are actually really valuable when you get into the innovation mindset. For example, he suggests thinking about target outcomes (such as limiting the spread of HIV by providing clean needles to an infected population, or reducing a carbon footprint) as products, which you can then create MVPs for and experiment with from there.

As an example, Gelobter was asked to design a mechanism for the community to express concern to police about gun violence in Chicago. You really have to build a tool or product that drives more of that dialogue, he says. Gelobter went in asking, Will they be able to create a product that can test whether the groups will work together? In this case, the product was a meeting between the community and the police; community leaders modeled six different ways of working together, from the practical to the creative, each one a different way to make strides toward the goal. Gelobter says it was incredibly effective at building communication.

Another aspect of Lean Startup that translates from the private to the social sector is the emphasis on listening to the customer”and making that a priority as you build as test your products. Good social change practice involves listening, says Gelobter, adding that mastering empathy for your target demographic is a valuable skill across sectors, whether you’re promoting sponsorships or solving lethal issues. Sales is a lot easier when you’ve spent 20 years listening to communities about some of their most important life and death problems, he says.

Learning from Failures is Crucial”Even in Matters of Life and Death

Nonprofits have a slight advantage over the for-profit sector because they focus on driving a solution that people need, says Gelobter, whereas in the commercial world it’s easy to have a cool idea that nobody really wants. Of course, in the social sector the customer is often not the one paying for the service, but benefiting from it. Yet he makes clear, You still have to deliver value to people, even if they’re not paying for it.

Lean Startup principles can go a long way toward helping nonprofits understand the role of experimentation”and to learn from failures as quickly as possible when the margin for error is small. In many cases, big issues”ranging from human lives to education and climate change”are at stake. This is where Gelobter stresses the importance of innovation accounting. Raising up explicitly the metrics of what community and social change people do, and optimizing those metrics in the way that innovation accounting can, has the most potential for really transformative work, he says.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge for any nonprofit, he suggests, is to be bold in how they validate their hypothesis. [You have to] think innovatively about how to come as close to a real test of behavioral change or an adopted decision as you can, he says. He refers to Lean Startup as the science of demand and adds that since we’re getting very good at understanding what people need due to technology, there is every opportunity for nonprofits to be as successful as organizations in the for-profit sector.

You can watch Michel Gelobter’s full talk at LeanStartup Week 2016 here, or click the video image below.

Learn more about Lean Startup at http://leanstartup.co.

The post Using Lean Startup for Greater Social Impact appeared first on 6sigma.

When you buy and read his journal, you’ll be able to read Russell’s thoughts and how he applied the principles of Lean Manufacturing to specific tasks in the rebuilding of Haiti. All money will be donated to the Friends of the Orphans (friendsoftheorphans.org).

You can buy and read Russell’s Haiti experience here:

Lean Manufacturing: Practical Application of A3 Problem Solving

While in Haiti, Russell volunteered at a Haitian Field Hospital and because of the tremendous need, he ventured to solve the following two problems:

1. How can we increase patient turnover?
2. How can we increase film quality in radiology?

In his words,

Background: The field hospital had an inefficient radiology department that was producing suboptimal films. The mass of patients requiring quality x-rays was more than the current process could accommodate. An increase in both efficiency and quality was an absolute necessity.

With background complete and clarity around his main question(s) to be answered and solved, Russell then went on the map the current process, conduct root cause analysis, arrived at several countermeasures, an implementation plan for what will be completed and by whom.

What is fascinating about Russell’s experience is that this A3 was done in the field, not in an office cubicle – but in the field with a pen and paper and the outcome was to solve a very real and human problem.

Make no mistake: the principles of Lean can be absolutely applied to solve almost any problem.

Russell An example of how he applied Lean Manufacturing in Haiti is shown below – his A3 Report:

Please consider buying Russell’s Kindle Journal – the money will be put to good use to help the orphans of Haiti.

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