One strategy that is worth considering, if your improvement projects aren’t going as well as you would hope, is to go visible. ‘Going visible’ is slightly different to ‘going public’ for one simple reason.

When you are getting stuck trying to generate alternative options to solve your business improvement challenges don’t forget to ask for help. A simple ‘could you give me your thoughts on X?’ can generate a whole raft of alternative improvement ideas (where X is your issue to be resolved, of course!).

Do you feel that your continuous improvement plans are going off course? Do you sometimes wonder if you are on the right track when it comes to making change? If you feel that your improvement plans are going off course then don’t worry, join the rest of us who have to embrace this on a regular basis!

Have you ever found yourself scratching your head trying to come up with ideas to improve how different parts of your business could work? If you do find yourself in this position you could do what one of my clients did the other week. We created a cause and effect diagram (aka fishbone diagram) for the opposite of what they wanted. In this case it was how not to deliver on time. A version of this diagram is shown below: They created a diagram that gave them the keys to poor performance, so we simply flipped it round to give them a road map to achieve what they did want to achieve. e.g. Meaningless KPIs became meaningful KPIs. Each new factor was then rated out of ten to give them a score and then this next question was asked: What do you have to do to achieve a ten for each factor? Et voila! An action plan was born. It is sometimes easier to declare what bad looks like rather than struggling to think about what 'good' looks like. Could you use this simple

Most people I speak to would say “no”. Another question for you - have you mapped your processes recently? I’m not talking about do you have mapped processes for your ISO 9001 Quality Management System from five years ago, I’m talking about a process being mapped in the last six months.

This post is simply a question for you to ponder: "Do you prepare thoroughly before you start work?" By work I am including projects that you might be working on, your day to day normal work tasks or anything else you do during your working day.

A client of mine, many years ago, was very frustrated that their project plans were never stuck to. They were baffled as to why their perfectly good (and well thought out) plans always failed. Due to this frustration I was asked to have a look at their plans. Although I wasn’t an expert in their line of work I was able to ask a few questions that were relevant. We worked through the sequence and the work contents which all seemed fine. I then asked about the resourcing and finally struck something that was awry with the plan.