The Smartspeed Performance Improvement Blog

Every business wants to perform at its best, but too often, day-to-day challenges get in the way—missed deadlines, unclear processes, and improvement ideas that never see the light of day. That’s why we created Continuously : a platform designed to help you drive business performance with practical, proven tools for continuous improvement. Why Business Performance Stalls It’s rarely a lack of ambition or effort. More often, performance issues come from inconsistent systems, lack of visibility, and reactive problem-solving. When teams are stuck in a cycle of firefighting, it’s hard to focus on growth, profitability, or customer satisfaction. Continuously helps you break that cycle and build a business that delivers consistent results. How Continuously Drives Performance Clear Process Mapping: Visualise your workflows, find bottlenecks, and optimise operations for smoother, faster results. Structured Problem Solving: Capture issues as they arise, dig into the root causes, and implement...

Great news! My new book, Effective RAG Trackers , is now available on Amazon. If you're struggling to keep your business processes on track, or tired of meetings that don't lead to meaningful action, this practical guide will help you turn things around—fast. Available from Amazon and all major online stores The Challenge Every Manager Faces Let me ask you something: Have you ever felt like you're working harder than ever, yet important processes still slip through the cracks? You're not alone. Most managers experience the same frustration. Despite spreadsheets, status meetings, and constant follow-ups, team accountability fades. Deadlines get missed. And you're left wondering why nothing seems to stick. A Proven Solution That Works Effective RAG Trackers introduces you to a simple visual management system that delivers immediate clarity on process performance. Using the proven Red-Amber-Green approach, you'll gain the visibility and accountability you need to ...

I have just launched my continuous improvement course,  Making It Happen . This short online course covers over 30 ideas and methods to help you generate, manage and benefit from continuous improvement projects. Originally I wrote the course to provide content that didn't really work well in book format. But, as I started writing the lessons I started thinking about the people I have worked with over the years. Most of the people I had worked with directly had managed to get noticed because of the results they were generating and got promoted. So, the focus changed. Making It Happen is aimed at people that want to get promoted because of their skills and results. A side benefit is having a slightly easier and more controlled day. But, if either of these two things resonate with you then I urge you to check it out. You can find more details about the course at https://continuousimprovementmadeeasy.com/ In short: 30+ lessons. Walkthrough videos for all lessons and downloadable t...

I was standing in a workshop a few weeks ago, discussing how we could improve the flow of materials and increase the productivity of the workshop. It was a tough crowd. They seemed to think how they were working was fine, just the way it is. It isn't fine. Over half of their time was spent material handling, in a manner that was unsafe. We knew what we were going to do to resolve the material handing issue. The conversation in question was around the workstation design and setup. They didn't seem keen to engage. Then I ask them a question, after I had set the scene: Imagine that we are standing with a customer, we've just entered the workshop, and they say 'wow!'. They don't see the mess and dis-organisation that we have today. They say 'wow!'. What would they see in order to say 'wow!'? That's the question. What would make your customer say 'wow!'? It gets the mind whirring, coming up with ideas. Put a few of those ideas into action ...

Did you know that I have a free continuous improvement course ? If you are looking for some quick and easy ideas to get more out of your time and effort, when it comes to improvement projects, then check out The CI Primer . It comes in nine short lessons and covers: A fast way to generate improvement opportunities. A ranking method to ensure you work on the best improvement at any point in time. Methods to control the rate of change. A team working method that gets results, even when work is crazy busy. Ideas to improve your personal productivity. As I said, the course is free to join and there are no hidden fees. To get started, visit: https://continuousimprovementmadeeasy.com/funnel/the-ci-primer/signup/ Enjoy, 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? ...

What do you do, once you have defined what results you want in your business? After you have told your team, how do you keep track of what you want? Something I write about from time to time is 'abdication versus delegation'. So, once you have told your team what your expectations are, how do you check that you are getting what you want? Leaving them to it and never checking in falls under abdication, not delegation. There are a few good ways to do this that jump to mind. Here are some of them. KPIs Developing simple, but meaningful, KPIs ( Key Performance Indicators ) is a brilliant way to do this. Just like the dashboard in your car, you should be able to tell whether you are getting the results you want or not at a glance. If the KPIs truly are useful, you'll be able to make decisions on the back of the information. RAG tracking The traffic light system of Red, Amber and Green (RAG) is another really useful way to track results produced. Determine what each status means ...

This is a challenge for most businesses. Can you 'get away' with only having one KPI? The short answer is 'yes', if you respect the letter K. As I am sure you know, KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator .  Key, as in critical or super important. This means that the one 'killer metric' has to be meaningful. Really meaningful. A good KPI will cascade into other areas. Supporting data / metrics can be dug into when required. If the primary KPI is off track, you'll need the other data for context and to help with decision making. But, if the KPIs is not off track, what else do you need to know. Thinking like this is an antidote to too much data. I see businesses with reams of information. Each measure is defined as a KPI, but how can it truly be? The reality of this situation is that this approach could lead to one KPI per business team / function. Most metrics can be translated back to into a financial measure, ultimately profit. This is a hard nosed meta me...