Sustainable success requires the capability for fast and effective problem-solving to respond successfully to daily challenges, to make ongoing improvements to process performance and to adapt to wider changes as markets, technology etc. evolve.
Culturally embedding a mindset of continuous improvement is vital because:
- A static system is a vulnerable system:
- Entropy is always invisibly degrading processes. So the speed at which we counteract this must be faster than the rate of decay
- The business has to respond to changing external conditions, so its rate of internal adaptation must be faster than the rate of external change
- Robust cost and quality competitiveness tends to result from the compounded accumulation of small improvements over time
- Without it, problems accumulate and are only addressed when crisis point is reached, and in a very reactive way. Improvement stops when the immediate crisis has passed and so the cycle repeats. In line with the principle of ‘Pursue perfection’ (see below), process improvement should be ongoing and not just stop when a set performance goal is reached.
