How do you open and close your improvement tasks?

Loose ends... they're a pain aren't they?

Everytime you open up something to improve it you risk having a loose end.

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change in your business

The more improvements you get involved with the more loose ends you could have.

Too many loose ends can result in confusion, de-motivation and no tangible results.

One option is to limit the amount of improvements you work on at any one time.

Another option is to work in small packets of time where you open and close improvements rapidly, so that you never finish a period of time (say a day, or a week) with the loose ends left, well... loose!

A further option is to design your improvement activities so that they can be fully completed within a certain time period (again, a day or a week are two good options).

The situation that we want to avoid is constantly starting improvement projects and then moving to another improvement without (in some shape or form) landing the project. Completing a chunk of work on an improvement project is usually better than starting lots of projects with good intentions and yielding no tangible results.

How you open and close your projects is partly a preference to how you work and partly a conscious decision to having your eyes wide open about how you manage change within your business.

If you haven't got a preference yet, perhaps today is the day to get one.

Giles

0,Effective Continuous Improvement

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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