The Foundation of a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Improvement Leadership

Support The Habits That Drive an Improvement Culture

Engaged leadership is arguably the most important determinant of success when it comes to creating a culture of continuous improvement. Organizations with leaders who invest in employee engagement and enabling technology, and also consistently implement a regimented improvement methodology, succeed in continuous improvement.

One of our customers, experienced the difference that engaged leadership makes first hand. When her organization was first attempting to develop a Lean culture, employees “felt like we had the drive, and the passion, but we had it from a grassroots level; we didn’t have the support from above. If we didn’t have that from above - if [the VP] didn’t think it was important - we weren’t going to be able to drive it.” And they weren’t able to drive it, until a new VP came along who devoted his time and energy into promoting a culture of continuous improvement. Under his leadership, the company achieved over $7 million of financial impact through continuous improvement in 2014. You can read more about this organization's Lean journey here.
 

8 things leaders should do to promote a culture of continuous improvement:

1. Lead by example; participate in continuous improvement openly and with gusto

2. Talk about the importance of continuous improvement with everybody, every chance you get

3. Consistently ask for ideas for improvement and respond quickly to those ideas

4. Empower employees to make daily continuous improvement a part of their own work

5. Don’t only ask for ideas that directly affect the bottom line or meet a certain ROI threshold

6. Emphasize the importance of small, incremental improvement - don’t make every improvement be an event or a project

7. Help share and spread ideas

8. Compile and celebrate the impact achieved through continuous improvement
   
   

These are just some of many things leaders should do to promote continuous improvement. Get a lot more ideas in this leadership eBook and this leadership webinar recording (and this one, too!).

Improvement Methodology

Establish a Process That Spreads and Sustains Momentum.

There are a huge number of improvement disciplines that your organization may subscribe to, including Lean, Kaizen, Six Sigma, and Hoshin Kanri, to name a few. If you’ve found a method that works well for your organization, use it (or use more than one)! In terms of developing a culture of continuous improvement, it really doesn’t matter which improvement discipline you’re utilizing. Rather, it matters that your methodology for implementing it is simple, consistent, and disciplined.

Simple

One problem a lot of organizations face when trying to create a culture of continuous improvement is that they over engineer everything. What does that look like? You might be making your improvement methodology too complicated if:

1. You require such precise (or large) impact calculations that no one ever reports an impact on any improvement ideas

2. Every person in your organization needs a lot of formal training before getting engaged in continuous improvement

3. You have 22 spreadsheets that you email back and forth with progress updates

4. You need a meeting to approve ideas before people can start making improvements. Double whammy if  that meeting has to be scheduled far into the future

5. Process changes are only implemented if they shoot for “perfect,” rather than simply “better”

Organizations that succeed in spreading a culture of continuous improvement do so because their methodology is simple. Employees know enough about the chosen continuous improvement discipline to find opportunities for improvement, but they aren’t developed into experts in some methodology before they’re allowed to participate. People have an easy way to submit opportunities for improvement, and they’re empowered to make small improvements on their own. They have a way to calculate their impact accurately enough that the data is useful, but not so precise that it deters such reporting altogether.

Essentially, you want to make your improvement methodology simple enough that everyone can participate with a low barrier to engagement.

Consistent

In order for your improvement methodology to be effective, you must implement it consistently throughout your organization. Managers should all get the same training regarding employee engagement, and the same strategies should be adapted for each area of the organization. This is especially important for aggregating the impact of continuous improvement from across the organization. If one group collects their impact in a complicated Excel file while another keeps a running tally on a bulletin board, leadership has no way to figure out the cumulative or comparable impact of that work.

A successful culture of continuous improvement has a structured, consistent way to:

1. Identify opportunities for improvement

2. Track the progress of each improvement idea

3. Report on the individual and cumulative impact of improvements

4. Store improvement knowledge for future reference

Disciplined

A disciplined methodology is key to spreading a culture of continuous improvement. In a disciplined culture of continuous improvement:

• Everyone is encouraged to participate in continuous improvement

• There is visibility into all levels of the organization, ensuring widespread engagement

• Leaders respond quickly to people's ideas or opportunities

• Employees implement their improvement ideas without delay

• Deadlines are kept and overdue items are promptly addressed

• An impact is calculated for each and every improvement

• The status of improvements is communicated clearly and efficiently
  

Continuous improvement doesn’t play second fiddle in organizations that have mastered the cultural transformation. Every employee and leader knows that improvement is a key aspect of their job, and they approach it with the same weight and discipline as they would any other key performance indicator.