The Smartspeed Performance Improvement Blog

When you start generating improvement opportunities, it can be tempting to flit between activities. For many people, the starting of continuous improvement activities is exciting. Planning out improvements, thinking about what could be. This can be motivating and, for some people, more interesting than doing the work to deliver the improvement. During the delivery of the improvement there will undoubtedly be: Frustration Learning Friction Experimentation Bouts of looking foolish Backtracking Winning I see too many organisations that dabble with improvements. Great ideas, poor execution. Persisting with an improvement, until it is done, is a strategy that most of us can benefit from. After all, if you don't deliver the improvement, you won't get the results. If you find that you have lots of loose ends in your business, then I recommend you reflect on this post and decide how you want to do things differently going forward. If you want some additional strategies to help you del...

You know that phrase about there being no such thing as a stupid question... Well, do you have a collection of these 'stupid questions' in your business that you use? What do I mean when I say 'use'? Some of the stupid questions we have heard in our business can also be perfect to launch continuous improvement thinking from. What are the questions you have in your business that your team have learned not to ask anymore? Here are some I have heard recently, in hushed conversations... How can we achieve double our current profit margins? Why do we have to do all of these steps in our process? What happens if we embrace our mistakes? Why don't we get rid of our bad customers? How do we deliver our products in half the time? I think all of those questions could be used to stimulate some interesting conversations... if you can get past the look of incredulity on your colleagues faces. What stupid questions could you ask in your business, to provoke some alternative ideas...

When you are leading continuous improvement projects , it can sometimes feel lonely if you seem to be the only one outputting ideas and options. Talking to yourself... that's how it can feel. A really good strategy, to get your team involved, is to share some building blocks with them. Instead of feeling like you need to provide a working solution, teach your team to 'fish'. Can you remember that phrase? “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” We can change it to something like this: "Give a team a solution and they'll continue to expect you to produce all the solutions; teach a team building blocks of continuous improvement and you can unleash them on all your future challenges." I might be taking some liberties here, but I think you get the gist of what I am trying to say. There is a trade off with doing continuous improvement and teaching ideas, but getting this balance (between learning and impl...

One of the curious things I see in business is the planning for improvement objectives (or any other kind of objective, for that matter). Well, I say curious. That's probably the wrong word... Often I see no planning for an objective. This is how it looks to me: In the above image, something magical is expected to happen. No input from anyone (let alone management!). The result just appears. You'll know that this rarely works, so excuse me for stretching this scenario to its irrational extent. Reality says that the image below is what should happen: So, you might be thinking that this is stupidly obvious, so let me pose a question for you: "How effective is your planning to achieve your objectives?" Do you include all of the steps? Do you assign responsibilities? Do you determine deadlines for the tasks? Do you review progress regularly? If your planning looks a little more like the top image, please take stock of what you do and what improvements you can make. And, ...

There are a number of ways to look at change. 1. Wait until what you are going to do is perfect, then launch the change. 2. Accept 'winning ugly' and incrementally improve what you are doing until you are satisfied with the results. Option 1 is sometimes required, but only when it is a specific requirement of the change project. The rest of the time, option 2 is available to us. But, when you over think the process of change, or you have bosses that want to see results immediately you can end up with option 3; no results. Let's think through option 2. Today you don't have the improvement. Tomorrow you could have a slightly better version. This could be repeated day after today, until one day, you have the result you need. Very few of us have time to stop our day jobs and dedicate ourselves to improvement projects. So, this strategy can work for the majority of us. If you find yourself being stuck with your changes, try embracing incremental change a little more. Giles ...

This is a great continuous improvement question . When you are looking at spending money, this question can often be the one you need to make the right decision. Is there a better way to spend the cash you have available to you? Are there other options that you have yet to explore? Are you committed to the solution you have put forward? If this was your money, and this was the option to go for, you know the answer would be "yes" to the original question. You would know that spending the money would be the right thing to do. If you feel hesitation when you think about this question, you know that you have more work to do. An old boss of mine asked me the question once. That's all it took for it to sink into my brain. At some point, as your career progresses, every decision becomes easier to see as a financial one. When you are looking at the pros and cons of an investment / purchase / decision, there will be a financial impact. So, if you are committed to the decision, as ...

Of course, I hope you say 'yes!' to this question. But, too many people in our businesses don't know all of the steps. Why might this be: Are the steps too confusing? Are the steps not visible to staff? Are the steps not taught to your team when they join? Are there too many options, to be able to define the steps? Are the steps kept inside the heads of a few team members? If your results are suffering as a result of a lack of knowledge inside your business, use these five questions as a way to reflect. Thankfully, once you  have worked out which one is most likely to be your problem, you just need to flip the situation around to define your strategy: Simplify. Promote and use visual aids. Revamp your induction. Standardise. Write it down. The benefits from having clearer processes revolve around improved customer satisfaction, better profits and less dependency on individuals. If this kind of situation sounds good to you, check out my book Losing the Cape . It looks at opt...