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Keep Your Team Actions Visible – If You Want Results!

Let’s be realistic, days very rarely run smoothly. Most teams have bumps in their day to day working, which need to be resolved. This is normal, but the effectiveness of a team’s ability to deal with this massively impacts the overall performance of the function they are responsible for. Making the issues (and corresponding actions) visible and ‘in your face’ is a big part of this effectiveness.

Continual Improvement Action Log Management Example
An example of a simple approach to managing an action log

When the actions are visible they don’t get lost. They are constantly in your line of sight and the actions required to close out the issues have a higher chance of being completed if they are in the front of your mind. Out of sight, out of mind is certainly true in this case (and strategy doesn’t often get results).

If the actions are visible there is a great chance that they will get worked on during the course of the day and not five minutes before the next meeting (in a state of panic). Many people are bad at taking notes and capturing actions, so this strategy helps them out. Actually, it doesn’t just help them out it helps out everyone downstream of them that is their customer; better results for all.

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Visibility leads to accountability and if everyone knows what everybody else is charged with delivering it can help foster a better teamworking environment. Identify the issues, agree the action, agree the responsibility and then help each other out to get the job done. You even get the chance to identify new improvements and improve your own delivery style – if you pay attention to the process of managing your actions.

Over time better days lead to better weeks and better months / quarters / years. Being effective at capturing issues and resolving them is a hallmark of a well organised and proficient team. For those of you that run a daily Sunrise Meeting this is a great addition to your agenda (if you don’t know what a Sunrise Meeting is you can find out more here).

Is it time today to review how your team captures their issues / actions and how the team resolves them? We can always improve, so I hope that your answer is yes!


Giles



About the author Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes. Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the 'Making It Happen' continuous improvement toolkit.

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