Continuous Improvement

1 % worse everyday 0.99^365= 00.03

1 % better everyday 1.01^365=37.78

As I was working on a CI project of my own , I was going through all the kaizens and other process improvement activities done in the division. Suddenly the concept of "Think Big", which I struggled with in my MBA days, seemed distant and the only correct way was to " Think Small". I knew, i needed to focus on the processes, the smaller improvements, and adopt a philosophy of continuous improvement through the aggregation of marginal gains.

I recently came across an article , about Coach Dave Brailsford and his novel management approach to transform a team of previously ordinary athletes into world champions. Before his appointment in 2002, the British cycling team had a record of no gold for 76 years. In 2008 olympics, his team went on to win 7 out of 10 gold for track cycling ,and went on to match the performance in 2012 as well.

What did he do ?

Sir Dave, a former professional biker applied a theory of marginal gains to this game . The team broke down everything they could think of that goes into competing on a bike, and then improved each element by 1%, they would achieve a significant aggregated increase in performance.

They redesigned the bike seats to be more comfortable. They rubbed alcohol on tires for better grip. They tested each individual athletes reaction to particular workouts and started customizing them. They tested fabrics to find which one was most suitable for this kind of event. But, it didnt stop here. They went above and beyond. They hired surgeons to teach riders the best way to wash hands so that they fell ill less. They customized pillows and mattresses for each rider for the best support for rest. They tested massage gels to find which one gave fastest recovery for a specific kind of injury. They painted the team truck white so that no dust goes unobserved , which undermines bike maintenance. They searched for small improvements everywhere and found countless opportunities.

What really happened ?

In the entire process, the focus was not cycling , rather the process. It was more about creating an environment for optimal performance, rather than just optimizing the performance itself. Perhaps the biggest benefit was the contagious enthusiasm. Everyone was looking for opportunities to improve and share them with the group. For a team that had not been credit with any awards, it suddenly became hopeful. The team was in a positive space psychologically.

One caveat is that the whole marginal gains approach doesn’t work if only half the team buy in. In that case, the search for small improvements will cause resentment. If everyone is committed, there’s mutual accountability, which is the basis of great teamwork.

Creating a culture of Continual Improvement

1. Create your own success stories - Sustaining and spreading a continuous-improvement culture means fighting inertia and reluctance to change work routines, even bad ones. To get the team to fight out of the plateau of latent potential, it is important to share their own success stories.
2. Instill the behavior at all levels - It has been observed that teams who have been successful in driving this culture across has seen involvement from all levels. In a particular case the CEO made development plans for all his reportees and tracked them under measurable metrics to drive it. Another organization, which had a huddle culture, ensured different team leaders to drive and speak about work issues in the huddles.
3. Have a long term vision - Continual improvements are small gains,and only compounded benefits overtime are really visible. When leaderships change or company's goal changes frequently, employees tend to get confused and become unsure of the contributions and their rewards. It's important to build CI into succession planning, with clear defined success factors and focused improvements around them.

Continual Improvement vs Innovation

However lately we have seen Japanese companies, iconic six sigma companies in the United States, such as Motorola and GE, have struggled in recent years to be innovation leaders. 3M, which invested heavily in continuous improvement, struggled to increase the flow of innovation. As innovation thinker Vijay Govindarajan says, “The more you hardwire a company on total quality management, [the more] it is going to hurt breakthrough innovation. The mindset that is needed, the capabilities that are needed, the metrics that are needed, the whole culture that is needed for discontinuous innovation, are fundamentally different.”

Maybe a more nuanced approach to CI is required. One needs to customize how and where continuous improvement is applied. The bigger question which we often forget to ask is whether the processes should be improved, eliminated, or disrupted. One needs to be extremely mindful about the impact it is making on the company culture. How do they affect daily behaviors? A data-driven mindset may encourage managers to ignore intuition or anomalous data that doesn’t fit preconceived notions. In other cases it causes managers to ask execution-oriented, cost-focused questions way too early, instead of percolating and exploring ideas through messy experimentation that can’t be justified through traditional metrics.

A balanced approach is a must.

References: https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-1-performance-improvements-led-to-olympic-gold; https://hbr.org/2012/05/its-time-to-rethink-continuous?autocomplete=true