How to Succeed when Implementing a Continuous Improvement Process
How will you drive improvement?
We all want to see our teams’ performance improve by driving any number of business-impacting metrics including safety, quality, service, working capital efficiency, revenue generation, and cost reduction. We may choose a known and proven continuous improvement process (CIP) – such as Lean, or Six Sigma – or we may even be inclined to introduce cutting-edge technologies.
As you build your strategy for improvement, remember that YOUR EMPLOYEES will determine how well any continuous improvement process or methodology is implemented and the results delivered. Before you set your sights on new techno-wizardry, digitalization wonders, and amazing new AI tools, remember that the basic leadership skills of your management team will likely have a bigger impact on results than any other tool you select and at a far lower cost! We must first get the basics right for any investment in continuous improvement or cutting-edge tech to succeed in delivering optimal results.
What Fuels CIP?
Let us start with Continuous Improvement Processes, methodologies, or programs. Programs such as lean and tools such as rapid-improvement events (kaizen) or value stream mapping rely heavily on the enthusiastic involvement, and idea-generation willingness, of the team members. These programs rely therefore on the concept of employee engagement! We can teach teams the steps and philosophy of well-established and proven process improvement tools, but if the team is poorly led or otherwise disengaged, the program will sputter and fail.
Engaged employees are what fuels CIP! Therefore, we must be constantly tackling the topics that have the potential to disengage our workforces.
Continuous Improvement as a Work Culture
Ultimately, we are trying to fire up a culture of Continuous Improvement by introducing CIP tools such as those used in Lean methodologies. We are not just interested in one-time gains. We are trying to drive a culture where everyone is driving improvements sustainably. Everyone works towards Process Excellence.
If we look at CIP tools as requiring an engaged workforce to deliver the best results and to be sustainable, then it follows that we must invest effort in driving employee engagement.
According to Gallop, a leader in conducting employee engagement surveys and research, employee engagement has steadily fallen in the US over the past several years. Gallup attributes the dropping levels of engagement in U.S. employees to a fall in the number of opportunities for development, limited clarity of expectations, and not feeling valued at work. These causal factors have one common root cause – poor management and leadership practices!
Invest in Leadership Skills as Part of any CIP
This finding is not particularly earth-shattering. We all have heard that employees do not leave companies or jobs – they leave poor bosses! While we might all accept these data, we must do better than acknowledge it. We need to act!
One simple solution is to invest in up-skilling the leadership team in parallel to implementing any CIP such as Lean. Indeed, the Lean tools, when implemented correctly, will help to demonstrate the desire of leadership for employee involvement and show respect for employee opinions and ideas. These are important engagement-improving factors!
Conclusion
Before we run forward and excitedly launch a new Continuous Improvement Program, or implement some new eye-popping technology into our workplaces, we must ensure that employees are engaged. Poor management practices and skills are the number one reason for disengagement among workers. Therefore, we must invest in our management teams and leaders. Deploying good leadership skills needs to be part of the workplace culture to sustain any program of continuous improvement in the workplace!
