How continuous improvement can build a competitive edge

I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to share an article I read about How continuous improvement can build a competitive edge. Here are a few highlights:

Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve all elements of an organisation. It rests on the belief that a steady stream of improvements, diligently executed, will have transformational results.

What is continuous improvement?Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve all elements of an organisation—processes, tools, products, services, etc. Sometimes those improvements are big, often they are small. But what’s most important is they’re frequent. Companies that excel at continuous improvement start with the belief that success comes from:?

Innovating “how” they do what they do (big and small).

Engaging all employees in sharing knowledge and generating improvement ideas.

Exploring better ways to deliver to customers and respond to changes in the external environment.

What does continuous improvement look like in action?

Fostering a continuous improvement culture is rooted in three practices:

Performance transparency?starts with making goals public and cascading those goals (typically a balanced mix of financial and operational metrics) in a way that is tailored to individuals at all levels of the organisation. Progress toward goals must be transparently tracked to give the frontline and management clear visibility into what is working and what needs work.

Knowledge sharing?is critical to scale best practices across (and up and down) organisations. One of our clients became adept at deploying small cross-functional teams against any problem to break down the organisational silos that had previously prevented knowledge sharing.

Employee involvement?is a necessity in continuous improvement organisations. Frontline employees are closest to the work, and thus typically have the richest insights on how their work can be done better. Capturing their perspectives is critical.

Transformational results

Continuous improvement has helped clients across industries provide greater value to their customers. Are you looking to gain an execution edge for your company? Get in touch with?us ?and check out our upcoming blog posts that will dispel several myths on creating continuous improvement cultures.

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article here for more ideas and perspective. Afterwards, why not drop me an email to share your thoughts at [email protected]; or call me on 0467 749 378.

Thanks,

Robert