Continual Improvement

What is continual improvement?

Continual improvement is a mindset that has accepted that the world is constantly changing. This includes changes in the world around us, within the organisation and even us as individuals. Doing the same thing for all foreseeable future is a good recipe to become irrelevant.

Needs change, cultures change, resource availability change, laws change, peoples priorities change. The ability on an organisation to adapt to these changes determines the long-term survivability of the organisation.

Therefore, the organisation must constantly improve along with the context in which it acts. Continual improvement is not about developing the next big innovation (however innovation can come out of continual improvement). It is about committing to a systematic and structured effort to always become a little bit better.

Continual improvement is not achieved on strategy or business planning events. It is built into the daily operation and is as given as answering the phone when a customer calls or sending an invoice when the service is delivered.

Information of what is working well, and not working well is the key source of information to assess what needs to be improved (see Quality Management). If this is not used as input for continual improvement, how do you know you are working on an improvement? If it doesn’t resolve an issue or fulfil a stakeholder need, you just made a change that at best was a waste of time and resources. But even worse, you might have wasted time and resources that made the product or service worse.

When an improvement opportunity is identified, an effective process with little delay needs to be in place to transform the improvement opportunity into reality. The ability to turn around an opportunity into a tangible change for the stakeholder is the key of continual improvement. Just think about the experience that if you are missing a feature in a software and you contact the supplier and they within two weeks are able to improve the solution. Wouldn’t that be an excellent experience? Unfortunate it is not uncommon that a request for improvement is responded to (if at all) with a thank you, and then silence.

Continual improvement is a key discipline within all layers of the organisation to enable the long-term survival of the organisation. It also often inspires individuals to use their creativity and contribute which builds a stronger engagement both with internal and external stakeholders.