Whilst there are many interesting continuous improvement (CI) approaches, it is true that you can go a long way with the basics. Being fantastic at the basic processes in your business is a great place to focus, whether you are at the start of your CI journey or well into it.
As a word of caution, if you haven’t got the basics of your business at least under control, avoid fancy improvement techniques. I see businesses that are trying to implement advanced Lean pull production systems when they haven’t mastered their order intake process!
So, what are basics that I am referring to? I’m talking about the basic processes that you need to operate your business. The day in, day out, activities that we undertake all of the time. Let me look at these through the lens of the SQCDP acronym. For example:
- Safety – keeping your team safe, knowing legislation that affects you, deploying controls and reporting mechanisms.
- Quality – knowing what good looks like, preventing quality issues from the first step in your process, organising business processes to provide repeatable results.
- Cost – having a grip on budgets, overtime spends, knowing the utilisation of your resources and removing waste from your processes.
- Delivery – being clear on specifications, delivery lead times, capacity and managing your supply chain.
- People – appraising your staff, reprimanding in a timely manner, setting objectives and providing clear direction.
The typical journey
Most people’s CI journey will go from bad to ok through to amazing. Trying to be amazing when you don’t have the basics nailed is often a recipe for disaster. By disaster I mean frustration, wasted resources, crises and problems with staff retention.
The simplest way to approach a ‘back to basics’ strategy is through a brainstorm with your team. Bitch, moan, and complain about what isn’t working properly in the business. Don’t worry about having the answers during the brainstorm, just get it all out there. If something could be better, add it to your list.
To help guide your brainstorm, you can use the SQCDP approach. Use each heading to generate improvement opportunities. As you can see from the previous comments about SQCDP, it should cover the bulk of your business’ operations. Flipping the issues you are raising is a fast way to create goals and actions. If you’re feeling adventurous, a little bit of root cause discussion could help add impact to your goals.
Prioritise your improvement actions
Once you have list of potential improvements, prioritise them using whatever method works for you. If you don’t have a good prioritisation method, check out The CI Primer course for a quick and effective method. Rank the improvements so that you know what to work on first and what to leave until later.
Pick one improvement, nail it and then come back to the list. It is key that you properly close down an improvement and then move on to the next one.
Monitor the irritations. Have the issues that were raised in the brainstorm started to recede? If you have prioritised properly, and specified a project that is meaningful, it should be able to knock a number of symptoms on the head in one go. If you can relate your improvement projects to existing business metrics (e.g. on time delivery, profit etc…), this is a great way to check in on the effectiveness of your actions.
Keep this approach in your toolkit
Use this brainstorm from time to time when you need to rejuvenate the team and check that you have the basics under control. You will most likely find that a handful of improvement projects will come your way each time you speak to your team about the little gripes they have about the business.
Once you have the basics under control, you can move on to more interesting things. Whether your future CI projects are big, sexy, projects, or smaller incremental improvements, they should all move you ahead tangibly. Use financial measures to back this up, as well as the morale of your team.
Become brilliant at the basics.
