Skip to main content

How long will that change take?

When discussing change projects with clients, time is a key factor.

Like anything, if you have already walked the (continuous improvement) path you have a better idea of how hard and how long things will take. These conversations are no different.

What I have found is that when you break down the project into the individual tasks, most people that are relatively new to change will expect the tasks to take longer. They often build in lots of procrastination time in too.


A quick remedy

If you are experiencing this issue in your organisation, here's a quick way to fix this.

When your team member is defining the actions required to make a change happen, partner them with a more experienced person until they have at least three improvements under their belt. Use this as a way to estimate a realistic duration for the tasks.


Don't confuse deadlines with duration

The work content for a task and the duration to complete it are often two separate things.

A task might have a total of fifteen minutes of effort for you but take a week to complete if you are waiting for a response from a colleague in the middle of it. Or, if you need to wait for a moment in time to perform the task, this could define the completion date.

We often blur the two things and this only works to make the plan for implementation get longer and seem more overwhelming. Overwhelming is not the friend of fast and effective improvements!


continuous improvement book
Available from Amazon


Re-jig your plans

If you are facing a situation where your team are not making progress with their improvements, try the above approach. Go back through their action list and help them to estimate how much effort (time) their tasks will take.

It is usual for a more senior person that hasn't done this kind of improvement to miss out a bunch of steps. If this is the case, let the junior person add them to the list. Your job here is to push them to be realistic about how much effort is actually required to complete a task.

Give it a go and see what happen!


Giles

About the author:

Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes and embracing Kaizen.

Giles is also the author of Effective Root Cause Analysis and 'What Does Good Look Like?'.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

What do you think?

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Read more

How to get started with continuous improvement

We all know that continuous improvement is a strategy that is essential for business. It involves constantly seeking ways to improve processes, products, or services in order to achieve better results and outcomes. However, for many people, the thought of starting on the path of continuous improvement can be daunting. The fear of doing it incorrectly or not knowing where to start can be overwhelming.    The key to successful continuous improvement is to start small and gradually build upon your successes. Here are some tips to help you get started if you are unsure of how to begin:   1. Identify areas for improvement: The first step in continuous improvement is to identify the areas that need improvement. This can be done by looking at the processes, products, or services that are not performing as well as they could be. It is important to involve all stakeholders in this process to gain a comprehensive understanding of the areas that need attention.   2. Set specifi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nail the number one improvement project

Over the past few weeks I have intervened in my client's continuous improvement programmes . I did this for one good reason: They weren't getting results. They caught the improvement bug, like so many organisations do. They got caught in the trap of wanting to change everything now! As I said, this happens to most of us from time to time. You start with some small improvements and you then identify more improvements you could get your teeth into. The next thing you know, you are trying to run ten improvement projects as well as deliver your day job. I know from bitter experience that this usually leads to having lots of loose ends rather than tangible increases in performance. So, what can you do about this? I know that with careful experimenting and resource management, you could find your sweet spot and figure out how many projects you can handle at once. Or, you can take the quick route and pare back your list until you have one priority. The one project that will give you t...
Post a Comment
Read more