The 10 Steps to Continual Improvement

Last week a colleague said to me “but Continuous Improvement is something that just happens, it can’t be a process - can it?”

A few years ago, I heard a senior manager introduce himself as “a person who has been continually improving all his life”

Are both these statements correct and what do they say about the connection between how people and companies improve?

As human beings, we are always learning. Through our early years, as we pass through various education systems, that learning has a structure but our ability to learn and improve doesn’t finish when we leave school. We continually add to our knowledge and abilities through various means (new experiences, work courses, travel, reading, television, social media etc). Unlike shool however, where knowledge was measured through course and exam results, your post education improvements are those that you absorb through time. Essentially this is your life experience.

Without doubt we are always improving, often in small incremental steps, and to a degree this is also how many organisations improve. Processes and systems are improved through the knowledge and experience of the people who run them.

These improvements however are painfully slow and hard to measure. Whilst companies continue to improve in this manner they face the issue of falling behind the times and being overtaken by more progressive start-up organisations. 

Why is this?

Just like our early years, when our schooling focusses our minds to improve our education and knowledge, new companies focus their energies on being the best to give them an edge against established business in their market.

So, do companies need to go back to school?

The answer is that to accelerate improvements you do need to have a structured approach. You can’t just rely on improvements by osmosis.

My previous blogs have talked about how to measure success, the principles and skills needed to achieve continuous improvement and even a simple project based approach to achieve CI. In what may be the last post in this blog I give you a simple 10 step process that can be implemented anywhere to give you or your business the structure and impetus to continually improve.

The following link will take you to the Continual Improvement Process: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7SbEtX1W8rGS0tVMElGblllbGs

Note you may need to open in google Chrome to access downloadable material

The Continual Improvement Project Cycle

All organisations should, to some degree, have a goal of achieving Continuous Improvement and/or having a Continuous Improvement culture. Without this goal long term or continued success is unlikely to occur.

There are a multitude of methodologies and tools that can be deployed to achieve this: Continual Improvement, Business Improvement, Lean Implementation, Kaizen, PDCA, DMAIC, 6 Sigma etc. But where is the starting point and what method do you use?

This blog has been looking at the principles, behaviours, measurements and methodology around implementing and achieving a Continuous Improvement culture across your organisation but everything I’ve written can be scalable down to use at any level. Whether you work within a team, lead a team or run a whole division taking on some of the CI principles and following a simple Continuous Improvement Project Cycle is easy.

The tools you wish to employ to help you achieve this are really down to you. Sometimes the nature of your organisation or the work that you do will dictate the methods you should employ. For instance if you work in an area that is rich with reliable data then 6 Sigma would be good but if you’re in a manufacturing or factory environment then Lean would be best.

The following link will take you to further information on the Continual Improvement Project Cycle.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7SbEtX1W8rGRkkyd3dMLUYtMW8

Note you may need to open in google Chrome to access downloadable material

In my next post you’ll be able to download a Continuous Improvement process.

How to Use Performance Data to Achieve ‘Quick Wins’

A lot of time and energy is often expended by companies in measuring their performance but now you have all this data how can you use it to improve performance?

Too often Business Units or Areas that are ‘perceived’ as performing badly are kicked and told to improve, or the Executive Management Team will look at results and raise the bar for everyone to reach next year. Does setting a high target mean you will achieve improvement?

Performance improvement is not a financial goal; you can’t set improvement forecasts and stretch targets like you can with revenue targets. Performance Improvement can take time; it could mean major process or culture change. Setting high performance targets may have a demoralising effect on morale, especially to those units who are already ‘below the bar’ and will be daunted by the effort required to reach the new goal.

The key to achieving quick performance wins is to interpret your data in a way which allows ‘knowledge sharing’ activities across your company. Using the ‘know-how’ that already exists within your business to bolster improvement is easier and cheaper than setting high targets. This should only come once the whole of your business is consistently achieving the same results.

This link will take you to “How to Use Company ‘Know-How’ to Achieve Quick Wins” a simple example on how to use your data to achieve quick performance wins: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SbEtX1W8rGT2RrNUp5MlJLSG8/view?usp=sharing

Does Measuring Performance Drive Poor Behaviours?

In recent years I’ve witnessed the following behaviours from those being measured and even from performance measurement teams themselves:

• Scoring high on self-assessments due to lack of understanding of what good performance actually is
• Withholding information deliberately to engineer a low score so that little effort will be needed to demonstrate improvement at the next assessment
• Exaggerating current performance levels to ensure a high score because they believe a low score will reflect badly on themselves or their department
• Expending energy and time on questioning the performance model or working out ways to manipulate the scoring rather than concentrating on improving areas of poor performance

It’s important to know that measuring performance can unfortunately encourage these behaviours and to look out for them. The reasons behind these behaviours will be a mix of the current working culture and personal traits. You can address some of this by clearly setting out what you’re measuring, communicating why you’re doing it and what you expect the measures to achieve, but also consider how you measure.

If you fall into the trap of using subjective measures you'll be encouraging many of the behaviours above. This link will take you to Measurement Tools - Do's and Don'ts, an example of how to best use objective measures:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SbEtX1W8rGSXFFaE1uNmRuT0k/view?usp=sharing

Note you may need to open in Google Chrome to access

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15 Tips for Measuring Performance

Whether setting out to measure your company’s performance or to measure your potential to improve¹ remember that performance measurement is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. These tips are relevant to whatever approach you adopt:

1. Develop a measure that suits your industry
2. Keep measures simple - do not make an industry out of it!
3. Agree measures with business leads and stick to them
4. Prioritise and weight the keystones² according to their relevance to your business
5. Do not use subjective measures i.e. do not ask managers to rate an area between 1 & 5 where 1 is no evidence, 2-3 is some evidence, 4 is compliant and 5 is best practice
6. Do use objective measures - this will ensure unprejudiced answers
7. Set a benchmark for Good Practice or Business as Usual
8. Don't overreact if parts (or all) of your business are below the benchmark - Continuous Improvement cannot start until you have a measure to improve upon
9. A low score is not an indication of an underachieving department - it is an indicator of where your resources will best e deployed
10. Accept that some areas for improvement are a low priority for you - focus your efforts where they are most needed
11. Don't set unrealistic improvement (stretch) targets
12. To achieve improvement targets you'll need to develop at least a 5 year plan
13. Use the knowledge that already exists in your business to drive 'quick wins' (further posts will show how this can easily be achieved)
14. Consider letting Business Unit/Operational Leads set their own improvement targets
15. When you have results ask the Business Unit/Operational Leads where they want to improve: the quickest wins will be found by matching existing knowledge with the demand for knowledge

This link will take you to a downloadable version of these tips (you may need to open in google Chrome to access)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SbEtX1W8rGRVRub29lVUI0N2s/view?usp=sharing

Please feel free to comment and contact me if you would like further information.

^¹ Carl Hayward, The Value of Measuring Continual Improvement across your Whole Organisation, (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7SbEtX1W8rGZEllbnNZQUJ6czQ), 22 Jul 2015
^² Carl Hayward, The 11 Keystone to Improvement, (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SbEtX1W8rGdVVheDluUGREdzg/view?usp=sharing), 13 Jul 2015

Does your business measure up? How to measure your potential to succeed.

What are you currently measuring in your business and what do your measures tell you?

·         Are you measuring compliance or success?

·         What is Business as Usual?

·         Do you know what ‘good’ looks like?

·         Where do I need to improve?

Part 4 of my Guide to Continual Improvement tackles the area of how to measure your potential to improve.

The link will take you to The Value to Measuring Continual Improvement across your Whole Organisation a brief look at how you can measure your potential for improvement (you may need to open in google Chrome to access):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SbEtX1W8rGZEllbnNZQUJ6czQ/view?usp=sharing

As always these blogs are here to pass on my experience and to stimulate debate. Please feel free to comment and contact me if you would like further information.

The 11 Keystones to Improvement

Does your business have the skills, leadership & vision to drive Continuous Improvement?

In my first two blogs we looked at what Continuous Improvement actually means and the guiding principles behind it. Part 3 introduces the areas of any business that are key to improving quality, output and performance. I call these The 11 Keystones to Improvement:

1.    Leadership

2.    Strategy

3.    Empowered Teams

4.    Skills

5.    Standardisation

6.    Workplace Organisation & Visual Management

7.    Planning & Resources

8.    Inventory & On Time Delivery

9.    Built in Quality

10.  Innovation

11.  Delivery of Value

The link will take you to an explanation of the Keystones and the importance you should place upon them if starting a CI drive in your business. (you may need to open in google Chrome to access):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7SbEtX1W8rGdVVheDluUGREdzg/view?usp=sharing