Jeff Kaas, Author at Kaas Tailored

How GLDN Uses Strategy in Their DMS

In this post, we’re hearing from special guest Mark Johnson, COO of GLDN, an online direct-to-consumer jewelry company.

How are Employees Involved in Setting Strategy?

At Kaas Tailored, we use several thinking models to communicate our strategy with our employees. Thinking models are tools we’ve adopted to help us make sure we can communicate across a diverse group of people to be able to create meaning. Thinking models help speed up the process of understanding, and they create a shared way of communicating so that everyone understands. At Kaas, we use thinking models like “today, tomorrow, day-after-tomorrow,” KRAF, and the Laws to Outcome model.

How Kaas Tailored Uses Strategy in Their DMS

At Kaas Tailored, when we say strategy, what we mean is starting with who we are trying to become as an organization. It all starts with the question of, “Where are we going? Why are we building this beautiful thing together? Why are we collaborating?”

How Does Strategy Remove Waste?

At Kaas Tailored, when it comes to creating a DMS, the first step in the process is developing your strategy. This means first defining “who we are as a company” and “who we want to become.” Next, it’s important to identify, understand, and choose helpful thinking models so that your team has a shared way of communicating complex ideas that everyone understands. And finally, it’s important to choose the tools you’ll need to get there.

What is Leader Standard Work?

Before diving into Leader Standard Work, let’s quickly define Standard Work. Standard Work is one of the principles of lean manufacturing. Standard Work is the agreed-upon way that a task, process, or system should operate. Within each step, we define the content, sequence, timing, and outcome to be clear on how to achieve repeatable results. So we applied this principle of Standard Work to how we develop leaders and came up with the name Leader Standard Work.

How Many People Should You Have in a Daily Huddle?

The answer is the lowest number of people possible while ensuring work never gets blocked. Another way of saying that is the lowest number of people while ensuring someone can always answer the question, from end-to-end. End-to-end thinking allows you to think of everything from the moment the customer has an idea to the moment the product gets delivered.

How Nordstrom Uses a Daily Management System

In this post, our friend Jamie Bergman, a member of the Continuous Improvement team at Nordstrom, shares how Nordstrom adopted Daily Huddles early on in their journey with Lean and where they are today.

How Kaas Tailored Uses A Daily Management System

Strategy comes from the corner office. At Kaas Tailored, strategy is the most important thing when it comes to creating a Daily Management System because it answers the question, “where are we going?” If you don’t know where you’re going, you could be having a lot of meetings about nothing. At Kaas Tailored, it’s my responsibility to not only declare who we want to be when we grow up as a company, but it’s also my job to give some of the key guardrails for decision making.

What is a Daily Management System?

At Kaas Tailored, when we say Daily Management System, we’re talking about the things we do every day, week, month, every quarter, and annually to make sure that we know the truth. The whole goal of this system is to make sure that we are creating value, and that value creation never stops. We call that flow.

What Was the Tool or System That Allowed You to Pivot So Quickly?

It’s our last installment of this short series, Jeff Kaas answers the question, “What was the tool or system that allowed Kaas Tailored to pivot so quickly from making furniture to making PPE?”