'Flipping' for continuous improvement ideas

Have you ever found yourself scratching your head trying to come up with ideas to improve how different parts of your business could work?

If you do find yourself in this position you could do what one of my clients did the other week.

We created a cause and effect diagram (aka fishbone diagram) for the opposite of what they wanted.

In this case it was how not to deliver on time. A version of this diagram is shown below:

They created a diagram that gave them the keys to poor performance, so we simply flipped it round to give them a road map to achieve what they did want to achieve.

e.g. Meaningless KPIs became meaningful KPIs.

Each new factor was then rated out of ten to give them a score and then this next question was asked:

What do you have to do to achieve a ten for each factor?

Et voila! An action plan was born.

It is sometimes easier to declare what bad looks like rather than struggling to think about what 'good' looks like.

Could you use this simple strategy in your business?

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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