In business, we all seek to succeed; we look to do this by being “the best”, but it is rarely that simple. There are multiple versions of the same thing: a cycle-based mindset to achieve your goals. We have seen multiple versions that, when distilled, come back to “Continual Improvement”. The internal expectations are always the same. The name of the process is “Continual Improvement”. So how could it not be constantly improving… that stands to reason. The crux of the process is the process; the objective is to understand more about the process being performed. The more you know what your organisation is doing, the better you can manage your overall strategy and assess and “Continuously improve” your corporate goals.
Remember: When your goals do not align with your process, they will degrade your success. Do not be afraid to use your Continuous Improvement results to reshape your strategy.
Excellence in Continual Improvement comes from defining expectations and changing as few things as possible each time. If, for example, an Improvement is suggested to remove a separate postage charge from a mail order business by increasing prices by 1%, on the basis that this will lead to a decrease in sales volume of 3% and a gross profit increase of 1.5%. If we define all of this in advance, we can be transparent about the expected results and what we can expect. When the change is made, the profit remains unchanged, but the sales volume decreases by 2%. Was the change a success? It could be said that the sales volume decrease was less than expected, but profit remained unchanged. The discussion could be had that the change was a success or a failure. For the sake of the article, we will consider it to be a failure. Knowing what was done means that the cost of postage is less of an issue for our customers than we believed. Would your organisation see this revelation as a failure and seek to blame the person who formulated the plan?
When an organisation looks to quantify changes made and actively seeks to build more profound success and failure criteria for their changes when combined with an open discussion mentality where changes can be assessed and approved all before their results can be validated and decisions taken to continue or rollback.
Remember: Success and Failure are “Continue” or rather make the new normal or “Rollback” meaning to go back to the previous state.
A successful Continual Improvement Strategy leads to a more knowledgeable workforce and embedding a culture where there is shared support and acknowledgement of both successes and failures if a core step in achieving excellence within your Data Culture.
