Processes rarely improve just by knowing what won't work!

How many times have you put an idea forward to improve a part of your business just to have it shot down by lots of reasons as to why it won't work?

Although these reasons might be useful considerations it is often the way that they are provided to a discussion that makes them unhelpful.

Do you know what I mean?

The working day can be hard enough without more obstacles being put in the way...

...but if the 'reasons' have validity what do we do?

Thinking about how you want to deal with the reasons in advance is the best strategy (see 'innoculations' in Making It Happen for more on this).

Or, for a quick approach to put this in practice:

Make it clear to your team that a reason why something won't work has to be followed up with how it could be made to work.

Continuous improvement is about improving things continuously. Chucking in comments that stop this flow is therefore opposite to continuous improvement and strategies need to be considered in advance to combat the nature of some people.

It's worth thinking about,

Giles

Giles Johnston
Author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the 'Making It Happen' continuous improvement strategies online course.

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