A culture of continuous improvement is a crucial aspect of Business Excellence: it’s central to achieving enduring success and is what enables an organisation to consistently create better outcomes for everyone associated with it.
Defining continuous improvement
Continuous improvement is the ongoing, rigorous, systematic, consistent and disciplined enhancement of technical and cultural capability to build a high-performing business system that is flexible, agile, responsive and resilient, and that stays aligned with the changing needs of its customers. (That is, continuous improvement is not just coming up with good ideas or reacting to problems.)
The ultimate aim is a system that:
- Meets customers’ needs right-first-time, every time
- Is stable and in control, delivering predictably, reliably and repeatably
- Is cost-efficient and resource-efficient, with work flowing smoothly through the processes with no wasted time, effort or resource
- Has the resilience and flexibility to handle challenges
- Has the agility to adjust to longer-term strategic change and to remain competitive
A culture of continuous improvement enables an organisation to consistently create better outcomes for everyone associated with it
How can we achieve this?
Every aspect of the business system must be actively managed and improved consistently in a disciplined fashion, including:
- The ‘technical system’, comprising operational processes, the operational management system and the strategic management system
- The ‘social system’, comprising leadership and management development, people management, team building and culture development (we’ll cover each of these later in the series)
These should of course be evolved together, with one reinforcing the other to develop a business system that works and improves as a coherent whole.
Continuous improvement should also be both:
- Top-down: strategically driven, planned, transformational change
- Bottom-up: operationally driven local kaizen improvements and projects
In summary
Continuous improvement should encompass everything the business does, at all levels, in service of its highest aim: to create optimal value for all stakeholders with minimal waste.
Next time, we’ll share 10 core principles you can use to shape your continuous improvement culture.
To go straight to them or explore more, head to our guide to developing a culture of continuous improvement, an excerpt from our book Toward Excellence.
Let’s get to work
Over 27 years of practice, we have developed a comprehensive, time-tested and field-proven business-improvement model and toolkit. We partner with ambitious businesses to identify strategic breakthrough opportunities in capability, performance and results, and we provide the tools, support, training and coaching to complement their existing expertise and help them achieve these.
If you’re aiming to build or optimise a business system using sound principles, values and standards to deliver consistently excellent and continuously improving results, we can help you develop and implement a strategy to accelerate progress and amplify the impact of your journey.
To get in touch, contact us here to book a free consultation.
Discover more of our tools and methodology in our book Toward Excellence.
