What are your improvement 'guiding principles'?

If you have read my other blog posts, or books, you will know that I continuously refer to a specific challenge within continuous improvement.

The challenge is what happens after you have improved all of the really obvious improvements.

I refer to this as being the difference between moving from 'bad to OK' compared to moving from 'OK to amazing'.

The first part of the journey is relatively straightforward. You see something that isn't right and you fix it. Simple.

So, what happens when you move past this point and you can't see as many things to improve? You need a different focus, you have to start looking somewhere else for your improvement inspiration.

Create a powerful vision for your business.
Available from Amazon and iTunes

The other day I was talking to one my my client's member of staff about this very issue. The person in question was relatively new to the business and had made a big impact to the running and organisation of their manufacturing activities.

After a walk around the production floor we were discussing one of the live projects. Behind me was a list of 'guiding principles' and our conversation naturally drifted to this list.

Years ago I had a discussion with the owner of the business about the same challenge I mentioned earlier on. We decided to tackle both elements of the continuous improvement journey at the same time. We identified the key issues that needed addressing and created a vision of the future.

The vision of the future was distilled down into a set of guiding principles that we used at our meetings to shape and guide our continuous improvement journey. A few of them have evolved over the years, but fundamentally we are still on the same journey.

My conversation with the new member of staff was timely. They could see how the current programme of improvement projects aligned and how the queued improvements continued the journey.

If you find yourself struggling with where to take your continuous improvement programme, or want to create a vision for your business then I recommend pulling together your own guiding principles.

And, if you aren't sure where to start, then check out The Improvement Accelerator Framework, or my book What Does Good Look Like? to give you some practical ideas.

Having a set of guiding principles makes decision making and project selection easier in the long term. Keep the list manageable, for most people that means having between 7 and 10 principles.

You'll know what works best for you.

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 Effective Root Cause Analysis and 'What Does Good Look Like?'.

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

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

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

Search This Blog