Five Things You Need to Do to Drive Continuous Improvement – Part I – Alignment to Strategy

In the introduction, I identified 5 things you need to do to drive continuous improvement. They are:

1. Align continuous improvement with strategic objectives
2. Don’t overdo process excellence at outset; this is an evolutionary process
3. Integrate continuous improvement into a culture of strategic execution
4. Blend the best practices from the different methodologies
5. Focus on data, not emotions

In this article, we show how business strategy should drive continuous improvement programs and not the other way around. Continuous improvement has matured into adulthood and as it has matured, it has lost the beauty of its simplicity and become incredibly complex. Noted practitioners have suggested that we rethink continuous improvement because it is stifling innovation and performance in some companies (GE, 3M, Motorola) that are the hallmarks of the continuous improvement process. My view is that continuous improvement is not to blame. How is it possible that organizations focused on continuously improving what they do could stifle anything? What has happened in these companies is that the management teams have not focused their continuous improvement activities on the right strategies and objectives. Continuous improvement can happen without an overarching strategy and objectives, but the result is what we call Anti-Strategy. (You can read our multi-part series on Anti-Strategy here.)

There isn’t a company we have worked with that hasn’t realized significant top and bottom-line performance gains when management has aligned the organization to its strategic objectives. They accomplished this through our systematic approach to strategic planning, change management and implementation as outlined in our Business Hierarchy of Needs?. They utilized a well planned and executed Continuous Improvement program for implementation.

The first step in clarifying the objectives for continuous improvement is to identify the strategic and operating gaps between the current state and the future state. Functional and cross functional teams will then need to pick the best continuous improvement tools for the job of closing those gaps across a companywide improvement roadmap. DMAIC, Kaizen, Value Stream Mapping, Business Process Re-engineering, KPI, Agile Frameworks, Root Cause Analysis, etc. are some of the core tools used in a Continuous Improvement program. Each one of these tools has a roll and we will discuss that in part 5 of this series, but you can get some insight in a recent article we wrote: Utilizing Continuous Improvement Tools at the Business Level.

Continuous improvement programs that are in place for the sake of checking the box will do more harm than good. We have also seen many established programs lose their way. The good news is that it is very easy to get a program pointed in the right direction. Starting a new program will take some work and planning, but the reward will be years of double-digit improvements to the top and bottom line and if done properly, will not hinder company performance -it will only accelerate it.

Group50? specializes in designing continuous improvement programs for our clients. We start with an assessment of the company’s current state and develop a continuous improvement roadmap. We then take leadership teams through a series of workshops to justify and implement their unique Continuous Improvement program. The assessments and workshops shown below are part of Group50’s Company Physical? which consists of over 50 assessments and workshops

For more information, contact us at +1 (626) 644-9746, or at [email protected]