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Maximise your improvement hit rate – master the follow up!

Loose ends…. Don’t you hate them?

I see loose ends all over the place, from reporting structures, to management meeting actions to promises made to colleagues.

They’re everywhere and they really limit the rate of improvement a business can make.

If you are new to my blog and are wondering what is one of the best ways to make a business improvement happen try this simple two step action plan:

  1. Identify the improvement.
  2. Keep hammering away at the improvement until it is fully embedded.
A simple improvement strategy is all that many businesses need!

If you’re thinking that this is the most obvious thing you have ever heard let me ask you this question:

“Does your business have strategies in place to make sure that this approach is a reality?”

Relying on your memory is not a great strategy.

Hoping that someone else will undertake the action is not a great strategy.

Praying that the day-to-day busyness of working life won’t overtake the improvement is not a great strategy.

So, what is a great strategy?

Ideally you would find a strategy that would suit your personal style, but to get you started you  could consider:
  • Making the improvements visible.
  • Organising regular review meetings.
  • Creating a daily routine that involves talking about the improvements.
  • Committing yourself publicly (within your business) to the improvement.
  • Linking your improvements to key business meetings that happen on a regular basis.
  • Keeping an actively updated list.

Pick one and see what difference it can make to the rate of change that you make.

The follow up is key to making change happen quickly in your business, but it is something that is often forgotten about. Identifying the improvement is all the rage, but the follow up – to make it count – seems to be lacking in many organisations.

Remember, the improvement isn’t real until you can cash in on it in some way. If your productivity isn’t going up, along with your profits, then you might argue that the improvement isn’t real.
How is your follow up?

If you think that it might be a little weak, try one of the above ideas to build the right kinds of habits and see what happens.

If you want some more ideas to accelerate your improvement progress download my free on time delivery guide, or start your free month of Making It Happen today.

Have fun being different (and experiencing unusually high levels of improvement 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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