Continuous Improvement: Getting into the swing of things

I was listening to a gentleman talking yesterday about writing and 'getting into the swing of things' for gaining both competency and efficiency. Although technique can impact performance enormously, putting in some time and repetition can also be invaluable, and then my thoughts wandered to business improvement activities.

If you take Continuous Improvement for example, if you don't put in the time and effort to get the right kind of conversations going, or exercise your problem solving muscle, then the quality of the ongoing efforts will be poorer than they could possibly be.

Developing relationships with people to facilitate Continuous Improvement discussions also takes time and effort. One of my best experiences, in one of my latter jobs in industry, took about three months of daily conversations to get one chap to come on-board When he did come on board through it was worth all of the effort. And I say effort, it wasn't really a difficult process to speak to another human being politely, just persistence. It turned out that he just wasn't sure why a manager would bother speaking to him! He was sceptical, but my repeated small talk and interest won him over.

So, if your Continuous Improvement approach isn't working the way that you would have hoped then consider this; are you really getting into the swing of things, or do you need to spend some more time on it?

Giles Johnston

Smartspeed Consulting Limited
Taking the frustration out of on time delivery.

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