Accelerating continuous improvement is desired by most organisations. One of the challenges of improvement is that rather than a steady beat of improvement (practical) most leaders want (or need!) a rapid improvement.
But, accelerating continuous improvement is not a bad thing as long as it isn’t done without blood, sweat and tears. This article will share five simple things you can do to help accelerate positive change in your organisation.
1 – Eliminate the obstacles
One of the best ways to accelerate continuous improvement is to take your foot off the brake!
What things are in the way of your team from being able to make change happen?
- Do they have time?
- Do they have focus?
- Do they know what they can and can’t alter?
- Are they scared of doing something that could go wrong?
- Do they know how to control change?
- Do they know how to generate ideas?
- Is there a lack of encouragement?
If you quickly look at your own organisation, and its structure, you should spot obstacles that would stop any normal person from making change happen. List these out, remove the ones you can and watch as making change starts to happen more easily.
2 – Narrow your focus
Asking your teams to improve is too vague for most people’s brains to accept. Being clear on what needs improving is better.
And, for most of us, the narrower the better. It is usually better to have five focused improvements than one big one. Results tell us everything and this approach (in my experience) gets better results faster.
Take your existing improvements and see if you can focus them. Tight, clear targets for your team to tackle.
3 – Blast through the quick wins
Building confidence is also key to accelerating continuous improvement results.
Getting a few quick wins under your belt is a great way to do this. Look at the narrowed improvements you have listed and figure out which ones can generate good results with the least amount of time and effort.
Doing this yields three great things:
- You get some results fast.
- The team usually feel more confident about making further changes.
- Having a change take place starts to make change normal.
And, normal leads to culture. If you want to accelerate continuous improvement it needs to become part of your culture. And, if culture can be summarised as ‘the way we do things around here’, these first three strategies can help do this!
4 – Harness the power of small steps (every day)
You may have heard of this approach as Kaizen. It is the psychological tool of getting change to happen without the feeling of being overwhelmed.
If you are struggling to get projects moving, breaking down the first few steps so that they just take minutes to complete is the essence of this approach. When the tasks don’t look huge, they are easier to absorb into the working day.
Building on the last three strategies, consider reviewing the next steps on your narrowed quick wins. See if you can break them down into bite sized chunks and re-issue to your teams.
Kaizen in its own right is a superb acceleration method. Using this approach every day is the petrol to the continuous improvement fire, and one that can boost your results significantly.
5 – Visibility of the change is everything
We all have busy days. To keep remembering the change projects when you are being bounced back and forward by the events of the day isn’t easy.
We want easy, if we want to accelerate our continuous improvement results. So, why not plonk the plan, the goal, or anything related to the changes we want to see in front of our eyes?
This could be having the plan on the wall. The latest KPI (Key Performance Indicator) scores on the meeting room whiteboard. An email sent out every morning with the next steps… or something else.
Anything to keep it in the front of your mind.
Bonus – a compelling reason to win
To keep the progress moving, and to make it easier to remember the improvement tasks, a compelling reason really helps.
If you and the team can list out the benefits that every stakeholder (including them) can realise from making the change happen, it becomes easier again.
If the future state is more attractive than the present, making progress becomes the default.
So, if you haven’t got a compelling reason to make the change happen you need to get one!
Accelerating continuous improvement
Ramping up your progress shouldn’t be difficult if you follow these strategies. A little bit of re-focusing can produce massive results when you have a team that can embrace change. And, if it is just you, you’ll still get better results.
Have a look at what you are doing and see if you can get out of your own way and then make the environment and plans for making change happen work in your favour.
Enjoy!
