Skip to main content

Choose one improvement project to complete


When we are generating ideas for improving our businesses one of the traps we need to avoid is getting caught up with the chasing of ideas at the expense of implementation. Are you one of those businesses who are great at identifying improvement opportunities but not so great at closing down an improvement and making part of your normal business life? If so, the rest of this article will hopefully give you some ideas on how to change this situation around.

Firstly, well done for generating so many ideas for your business! Many businesses find themselves in a position where they can see the immediate problems that their business is facing, but lack the vision on where their business could go to. What I am getting to here is that going from bad to OK is a different premise from going to OK to amazing (or excellent, or any other word you choose to use).

Generating ideas is vital to business improvement, but so is implementation. One of the simplest ways I have found to make getting the balance right is to clearly separate the two activities. It’s almost like putting a gate in between the two different processes.

Ideas are generated and then queued up. The selected improvements are then focussed upon until they are properly implemented. The way to manage this will vary from business to business, depending on the motivations, attitudes and abilities within each different business. The key point to note here is we choose on a method to queue improvement ideas and then use our collective resources to manage a project through to its completion.

OK, here is the easy bit. When you have a list of improvement ideas use some form of pre-agreed criteria to evaluate your list. Choose some qualities or characteristics that you want to see in an improvement project. Do you want low cost? Do you want easy? Do you want high impact? If you are familiar with the FMEA approach then you could rank and multiply each factor to give you a total for each project, or you could use a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for each factor present. Design an approach that makes sense to you and be consistent with its application.

Once you have prioritised your improvement opportunities then it is time to do the work. As I said before, you may want to use a multi-disciplinary team to get the job done, or you may want to manage this approach for each team / department within your business. Focus on one improvement until you complete the corresponding project, before you go back to pick another project from the list. In the meantime don’t stop generating ideas, just make sure that the ideas queue up nicely, not interfering with current implementations, until you are ready for the next round of prioritisation and selection.



Giles Johnston
Author, Consultant and Chartered Engineer


Popular posts from this blog

Take the pressure off! Using the Y-curve with your Kaizen improvements

Do you feel under pressure when you have to make changes happen in your business? It can be scary when we try something that we have never done before. I remember thinking to myself 'how on Earth am I going to figure this out?' on many occasions. I think the last time was a few weeks ago! Years on from becoming reasonable at the art of change I am still faced with the same dilemma. It is scary and it is clear to me why so many people shy away from making change happen. It is natural to get stuck in this oscillation. On one hand you need to make change happen; the business needs the improvement benefits. On the other hand you don't want to screw up... Last week I was talking to a young engineer that I am mentoring. He was paralysed. Changes were not happening at all. There was always some early promise with his projects and then, as completion (and judgement day) loomed, progress would evaporate. The engineer asked me for my views on this  during a recent conversati

The Kaizen Checklist is here!

Do you want to get better results from your Kaizen programme? Improve your business results quickly with my downloadable kit (including guidebook, workbook and templates) for only $39. Are you looking for a sustainable way to identify and implement improvements across your business? Practical improvement strategies The Kaizen Checklist is a downloadable kit that you can use with your management team to develop a system that suits your business and allow you to quickly implement Kaizen effectively at your place of work. This works great if you use it as the centre piece of your own internal workshop. The kit includes a 40 page guidebook, a workbook, four appendices and three templates. All parts of this kit are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible. If you are unfamiliar with Kaizen, let me stress that this is a simple improvement philosophy that is so much more than just  ‘a Japanese word for continuous improvement’. I’ll cover what it rea

Do you need a burst of improvement ideas for your business?

If you haven’t created your improvement action plan for 2020 yet then I have something for you. I have just completed my latest project – The CI Focus Tool . This Android App is now available on Google Play and provides a simple method for generating as many effective improvement ideas as you need. This is the same basic method that I describe in my book Effective Continuous Improvement  and is now available as a simple to use app. In essence it is a brainstorming focus tool. Press the focus button and you will be presented with a random continuous improvement focus. Brainstorm ideas around this focus with your team (whilst the timer is running) and there you go – a number of great ideas for you to prioritise and implement. The reason that this works so well is because of the focus. When your business runs out of its immediate problems to fix you need a different strategy. Very focused brainstorming helps you break past this problem and configuring the app to meet t