Continual Process Improvement
Continual Process Improvement
The approach provided here is inclusive, in that it encourages all stakeholders in every position within the organization to take a critical look at, and identify anything that needs elimination or improvement. This will require responsive leadership, and the creative and innovative participation of each organizational member.
For greatest impact, quick on the spot meetings/brainstorming sessions, action plans, and swift execution/implementation, will be required to constantly eliminate inefficiencies and implement new and more efficient methods of conducting business. This highly focused improvement initiative requires frequent recommendations to responsive leaders, who in-turn must quickly make “business justifiable pass or reject decisions” to proposed changes. Items that require further collaborative study due to their complex nature, will need to be reviewed by add-hoc, cross-functional teams who can make responsible “up or down” decisions usually within days, but not more than a few weeks.
The “opportunity assumption” is that 80% of the work organizations collectively do is value-added. Due to old or no-longer relevant processes, procedures, rules and habits, or because of inattention to detail, lack of training, clarity or direction, 20% of what organizations do is open to elimination or improvement. Each organizational member knows best which improvements, specific to what they do on a daily basis, will yield the fastest and most significant productivity gains. This process challenges each individual to analyze, prioritize and optimize their time, experience, talents, skills and effort, so the organization can realize its full potential.
The “output” of this effort is to create a collective strong desire and mind-set by all stakeholders for challenging the status quo, through the implementation of continuous change and improvement in every activity of the organization. Also, the goal of a 20% reduction in “non-impact work” and “less than optimum performance” – within six months – places a measurable objective in the process. This 20% goal is definitely a “stretch goal” but one that is both attainable and required if an organization is to continue to profitably grow and become a leader in its sector. Change, true change, takes hard work by “all stakeholders.” Change also demands that every organizational member, no matter what his or her position, take ownership of the change process. Organizations become most successful when change is considered normal, and when not challenging the status quo is considered not normal.
The following four rules must be applied in a change initiative.
1. Safety must not be compromised.
2. Changes must make business sense.
3. Regulations cannot be circumvented.
4. Quality to the customer cannot suffer.
A high impact continuous change program presents an excellent opportunity for executives to appoint a high potential leader or leaders to orchestrate the innovation effort in their business segment. The action based learning, combined with the accomplishment of a stretch goal in which all individuals (a team effort) discover, develop and execute in an innovative environment, presents a specific and measurable leadership and team growth experience. In addition to this initiative being a learning and continuous improvement process, which encourages innovative thinking and action, it also provides each employee the opportunity to LEAD (Listen, Engage, Act, and Deliver) in the spirit and intent of a high performance organization. When looked at this way “continual process improvement” does not become a program, but rather it simply becomes “how the organization routinely does things.”
A streamlined four-step approach to use in meeting the objectives of a continual process improvement initiative is as follows:
1. Discover – The goal here is to brainstorm and identify areas for change and improvement. What provides the best business opportunity for improvement, savings and customer satisfaction?
2. Develop – This is the planning stage. It consists of the analysis of what needs to be stopped, started, continued, or improved, who needs to be consulted, what is the plan of attack?
3. Execute – This is the “action” step. Make the change and evaluate the impact! Could this innovative idea be used in other areas of the organization?
4. Measure – How did the change contribute to the 20% effort?
To keep a change initiative “action oriented” and a “non paperwork exercise,” the individual having business unit/product group/functional area leadership responsibility, should determine what metric they will use to demonstrate their area is working towards and reaching the 20% objective. As examples, the scoring of progress and results could be a paragraph or two explaining; actual budgetary cuts, reasons for not having to hire new headcount, the demonstration of beating scheduled release/completion/ship dates, a report showing a reduction of customer complaints or increase in customer satisfaction, which have a cost benefit, a re-alignment of talent to better optimize bottom-line results, etc. The objective is to keep the process simple, but demonstrate that solid innovative change initiatives are taking place through the involvement of all organizational members.
To help get your collective organizational as well as your individual creative juices flowing, consider the following list as simply a starting point, in your quest to quickly eliminate unneeded processes, procedures and work activities.
Within a team setting or as an individual brainstorm and ask yourself…can I reduce:
New hires
Bureaucracy
Material cost
Installation errors
Paperwork errors
Paperwork activity
Non-accountability
Telephone callbacks
Poor communications
Computer input errors
Scrap
Rework
Inventory
Downtime
Cycle time
Set-up time
Response time
Inspection time
Late shipments
Work in progress
Actual quality problem
Perceived quality problem
Travel
Meetings
Late reports
Late releases
Design issues
Supplier problems
Customer problem
Non-standard practices
Non-value added training
Non-aligned processes/procedures
Non-value added actions/procedures
In the pursuit of new ideas, consider the following when focusing on improving and implementing new processes and actions that will create greater efficiencies and foster excellence everywhere. Quoting Hammer & Champy from their book Reengineering The Corporation, “Process reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in the critical, contemporary measurements of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.”
Most organizational operations are made up of a series of processes. Important processes include marketing, sales, order fulfillment, new product design and introduction, financial, information technology, customer support, human services, operations planning and production. The overall organizational business processes provide an excellent opportunity for creating greater efficiencies. In fact, the integration of agile workflow systems throughout the organization is important so that the organization’s business processes are clearly documented understood and optimize.
A good process requires more than simply documenting how something is accomplished. A good process takes into account how it impacts the overall operation of an end-to-end system and the organization at large and its customers (both internal and external). When improving or implementing new processes, consider the following questions.
1. How will this new approach add value and benefit the customer (internal/external) and the people using the process?
2. Does this new approach work “backward from the customer” so it does the best job of meeting the customer’s need?
3. Does this new approach simply automate or document a process that is ineffective in the first place or “does this approach truly do the right things better?”
4. What implementation issues will we want to avoid as we make the change?
5. Does the new approach “clearly align” with the business strategy and goals of the organization?
6. Does this new approach have the work or decision performed where and by whom it makes the most sense?
7. How will we measure the success of the new approach?
8. Is the new approach a “seamless” and “foolproof” solution?
9. Does the new approach fill a gap in the overall business/organizational strategy?
10. Does the new approach fit well with other areas or departments?
11. Does this new approach have accountability built into it?
An overriding thought, which can be useful when analyzing your business processes, is to keep in mind the statement “are we easy to do business with?” These words go a long way in supporting an organizational value of “customer-value focus” or “customer satisfaction.” Often, procedures and processes are installed for good reasons and with good intentions; however, sometimes although convenient for your department or area of responsibility, they cause problems for others. Always ensure the fix is well integrated, agile, and in concert with your organizations value statements and overall business strategy.
As you remove inefficiencies and improve and add new processes, you must also make a concerted effort to place the right people with the right skills in a position where they can exert the greatest impact. If a skill gap exists, training, retraining or hiring the skill to achieve continuous improvement must be accomplished. This approach will provide the organization the best opportunity to attain excellence everywhere. An organization is only as good as its talent.
Note: – Innovation through continual process improvement is not simply a science or an art. It is the passionate and continual entrepreneurial practice of seeking new answers to both old and new problems. It is also the creating of an organizational culture that seeks opportunities to maximize the use of human imagination, knowledge and potential. It is truly using the organizations collective knowledge to shape its future.
Copyright Information:
You MAY reprint the information contained in this article as long as no portion of the contents are modified and it used “exclusively” within your organization. You must also give credit to information by including the tag line...
Roger M. Ingbretsen, Author, Speaker, Leadership Coach, Organizational and Career Developer. For more information, visit www.ingbretsen.com or call 509 999 7008.
Continual Process Improvement - To learn more about this author, visit Roger Ingbretsen's Website.
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The following guidance can be effectively used to provide a focused, continuous improvement and innovative process that can impact the future of an organization. The goal is to quickly identify and eliminate unneeded processes, procedures and work activities. Additionally, the approach provides a process to focus on implementing new processes and actions that will create greater efficiencies and foster excellence everywhere. Organizations need to look at challenging the status quo as a way forward, the pursuit of fresh, innovative ideas, and a process to develop both the individual and collective organization agility. Challenging the status quo is a way to embrace change, and facilitate the endless search for new possibilities. Quoting Max DePree, author of the book The Art of Leadership “We cannot become what we want to be, by remaining what we are.” If organizations are to change, they must challenge the status quo.
The approach provided here is inclusive, in that it encourages all stakeholders in every position within the organization to take a critical look at, and identify anything that needs elimination or improvement. This will require responsive leadership, and the creative and innovative participation of each organizational member.
For greatest impact, quick on the spot meetings/brainstorming sessions, action plans, and swift execution/implementation, will be required to constantly eliminate inefficiencies and implement new and more efficient methods of conducting business. This highly focused improvement initiative requires frequent recommendations to responsive leaders, who in-turn must quickly make “business justifiable pass or reject decisions” to proposed changes. Items that require further collaborative study due to their complex nature, will need to be reviewed by add-hoc, cross-functional teams who can make responsible “up or down” decisions usually within days, but not more than a few weeks.
The “opportunity assumption” is that 80% of the work organizations collectively do is value-added. Due to old or no-longer relevant processes, procedures, rules and habits, or because of inattention to detail, lack of training, clarity or direction, 20% of what organizations do is open to elimination or improvement. Each organizational member knows best which improvements, specific to what they do on a daily basis, will yield the fastest and most significant productivity gains. This process challenges each individual to analyze, prioritize and optimize their time, experience, talents, skills and effort, so the organization can realize its full potential.
The “output” of this effort is to create a collective strong desire and mind-set by all stakeholders for challenging the status quo, through the implementation of continuous change and improvement in every activity of the organization. Also, the goal of a 20% reduction in “non-impact work” and “less than optimum performance” – within six months – places a measurable objective in the process. This 20% goal is definitely a “stretch goal” but one that is both attainable and required if an organization is to continue to profitably grow and become a leader in its sector. Change, true change, takes hard work by “all stakeholders.” Change also demands that every organizational member, no matter what his or her position, take ownership of the change process. Organizations become most successful when change is considered normal, and when not challenging the status quo is considered not normal.
The following four rules must be applied in a change initiative.
1. Safety must not be compromised.
2. Changes must make business sense.
3. Regulations cannot be circumvented.
4. Quality to the customer cannot suffer.
A high impact continuous change program presents an excellent opportunity for executives to appoint a high potential leader or leaders to orchestrate the innovation effort in their business segment. The action based learning, combined with the accomplishment of a stretch goal in which all individuals (a team effort) discover, develop and execute in an innovative environment, presents a specific and measurable leadership and team growth experience. In addition to this initiative being a learning and continuous improvement process, which encourages innovative thinking and action, it also provides each employee the opportunity to LEAD (Listen, Engage, Act, and Deliver) in the spirit and intent of a high performance organization. When looked at this way “continual process improvement” does not become a program, but rather it simply becomes “how the organization routinely does things.”
A streamlined four-step approach to use in meeting the objectives of a continual process improvement initiative is as follows:
1. Discover – The goal here is to brainstorm and identify areas for change and improvement. What provides the best business opportunity for improvement, savings and customer satisfaction?
2. Develop – This is the planning stage. It consists of the analysis of what needs to be stopped, started, continued, or improved, who needs to be consulted, what is the plan of attack?
3. Execute – This is the “action” step. Make the change and evaluate the impact! Could this innovative idea be used in other areas of the organization?
4. Measure – How did the change contribute to the 20% effort?
To keep a change initiative “action oriented” and a “non paperwork exercise,” the individual having business unit/product group/functional area leadership responsibility, should determine what metric they will use to demonstrate their area is working towards and reaching the 20% objective. As examples, the scoring of progress and results could be a paragraph or two explaining; actual budgetary cuts, reasons for not having to hire new headcount, the demonstration of beating scheduled release/completion/ship dates, a report showing a reduction of customer complaints or increase in customer satisfaction, which have a cost benefit, a re-alignment of talent to better optimize bottom-line results, etc. The objective is to keep the process simple, but demonstrate that solid innovative change initiatives are taking place through the involvement of all organizational members.
To help get your collective organizational as well as your individual creative juices flowing, consider the following list as simply a starting point, in your quest to quickly eliminate unneeded processes, procedures and work activities.
Within a team setting or as an individual brainstorm and ask yourself…can I reduce:
New hires
Bureaucracy
Material cost
Installation errors
Paperwork errors
Paperwork activity
Non-accountability
Telephone callbacks
Poor communications
Computer input errors
Scrap
Rework
Inventory
Downtime
Cycle time
Set-up time
Response time
Inspection time
Late shipments
Work in progress
Actual quality problem
Perceived quality problem
Travel
Meetings
Late reports
Late releases
Design issues
Supplier problems
Customer problem
Non-standard practices
Non-value added training
Non-aligned processes/procedures
Non-value added actions/procedures
In the pursuit of new ideas, consider the following when focusing on improving and implementing new processes and actions that will create greater efficiencies and foster excellence everywhere. Quoting Hammer & Champy from their book Reengineering The Corporation, “Process reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement in the critical, contemporary measurements of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.”
Most organizational operations are made up of a series of processes. Important processes include marketing, sales, order fulfillment, new product design and introduction, financial, information technology, customer support, human services, operations planning and production. The overall organizational business processes provide an excellent opportunity for creating greater efficiencies. In fact, the integration of agile workflow systems throughout the organization is important so that the organization’s business processes are clearly documented understood and optimize.
A good process requires more than simply documenting how something is accomplished. A good process takes into account how it impacts the overall operation of an end-to-end system and the organization at large and its customers (both internal and external). When improving or implementing new processes, consider the following questions.
1. How will this new approach add value and benefit the customer (internal/external) and the people using the process?
2. Does this new approach work “backward from the customer” so it does the best job of meeting the customer’s need?
3. Does this new approach simply automate or document a process that is ineffective in the first place or “does this approach truly do the right things better?”
4. What implementation issues will we want to avoid as we make the change?
5. Does the new approach “clearly align” with the business strategy and goals of the organization?
6. Does this new approach have the work or decision performed where and by whom it makes the most sense?
7. How will we measure the success of the new approach?
8. Is the new approach a “seamless” and “foolproof” solution?
9. Does the new approach fill a gap in the overall business/organizational strategy?
10. Does the new approach fit well with other areas or departments?
11. Does this new approach have accountability built into it?
An overriding thought, which can be useful when analyzing your business processes, is to keep in mind the statement “are we easy to do business with?” These words go a long way in supporting an organizational value of “customer-value focus” or “customer satisfaction.” Often, procedures and processes are installed for good reasons and with good intentions; however, sometimes although convenient for your department or area of responsibility, they cause problems for others. Always ensure the fix is well integrated, agile, and in concert with your organizations value statements and overall business strategy.
As you remove inefficiencies and improve and add new processes, you must also make a concerted effort to place the right people with the right skills in a position where they can exert the greatest impact. If a skill gap exists, training, retraining or hiring the skill to achieve continuous improvement must be accomplished. This approach will provide the organization the best opportunity to attain excellence everywhere. An organization is only as good as its talent.
Note: – Innovation through continual process improvement is not simply a science or an art. It is the passionate and continual entrepreneurial practice of seeking new answers to both old and new problems. It is also the creating of an organizational culture that seeks opportunities to maximize the use of human imagination, knowledge and potential. It is truly using the organizations collective knowledge to shape its future.
Copyright Information:
You MAY reprint the information contained in this article as long as no portion of the contents are modified and it used “exclusively” within your organization. You must also give credit to information by including the tag line...
Roger M. Ingbretsen, Author, Speaker, Leadership Coach, Organizational and Career Developer. For more information, visit www.ingbretsen.com or call 509 999 7008.
Continual Process Improvement - To learn more about this author, visit Roger Ingbretsen's Website.
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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