Continuous improvement is an essential part of optimising business performance, but it can be easy to misconstrue ‘looking for ways to improve’ and even successfully implementing a series of helpful initiatives as continuous improvement. This would be to overlook the depth and value of an embedded continuous improvement culture based on business excellence principles.
Here are eight hallmarks of an excellent continuous improvement culture:
- It’s an integral part of everyday work at all levels
- Everything is in scope (all processes, all aspects of people management, all levels, and the system as a whole)
- It’s oriented towards finding more ways to add monetisable value and reducing waste by concentrating on right-first-time quality
- Improvement is pursued in a structured, systematic and disciplined way.
- It involves everyone.
- It considers the complexities of system interactions and dynamics
- Fosters a continuous improvement mentality across the business
- The continuous improvement process and tools are themselves continuously improved
When pursued with rigour and consistency, these principles will lead to an increasing and compounding advantage. How many of these do your business do consistently well? What opportunities for improvement are there?
Let’s get to work
If you’re looking to improve business performance – and build improvement capability that will over time help your business retain loyal customers, ensure effective cost management and enhance profitability, we can help you assess your current capabilities and develop a strategy to enhance them. To get in touch, just reply to this newsletter to book a free consultation.
Toward Excellence – ebook
We’re delighted to announce that our book, Toward Excellence has now launched as an eBook on amazon in addition to the paperback which is available on amazon, and at Barnes & Noble and Waterstones.
