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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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.