The Leader’s Guide to Continuous Improvement

The Leader’s Guide to Continuous Improvement

The Leader’s Guide to Continuous Improvement A 25+ page guide to unlocking the true value of process improvement for your business


The continuous improvement discipline has existed for over 80 years and takes many guises, covering an array of tools and techniques all designed to improve customer experience (delivering the greatest value).

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” H. James Harrington

It is an organized approach to finding improvement opportunities that can help a business meet its goals for increasing profits, reducing costs and driving innovation.

At the heart of continuous improvement (or business excellence / process excellence / operational excellence) are people.

That is why the improvement world revolves around:

1) Capturing improvement ideas

2) Implementing ideas

3) Measuring ideas

4) Improving ideas

The foundation of continuous improvement is a cycle of action, measurement and learning, inspiring engagement and an on-going culture where projects thrive, and your business succeeds.

While these foundations remain, the impact of COVID-19 provides an added imperative for businesses to adopt a refreshed approach to delivering customer value, and it is against this backdrop that the contents of this guide have never been both more appropriate and valuable.

What is continuous improvement all about?

Spanning well known tools, techniques and theories including Lean, Six Sigma, PDCA, Kaizen and beyond, improvement is the language of professionals concerned with increasing efficiency and eliminating wastage in their processes.

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“Improvement usually means doing something that we have never done before.” Shigeo Shingo

What’s coming up?

Seeking competitive advantage in changing conditions ...........................................................................4

The pillars of continuous improvement ......................................................................................................5

A timeline of continuous improvement’s history .......................................................................................6

Improvement frameworks explained ..........................................................................................................7

Why you must build a continuous improvement culture .......................................................................12

Creating an improvement team .................................................................................................................13

Navigating your stakeholders ....................................................................................................................14

Lean v Six Sigma ...........................................................................................................................................15

The 8 principles of continuous improvement ..........................................................................................16

The true value of continuous improvement .............................................................................................18

The 4 benefits of continuous improvement .............................................................................................19

Common continuous improvement challenges.......................................................................................21

How can continuous improvement software help?.................................................................................22

Continuing your improvement journey ....................................................................................................25



The 2020s have been unprecedented. The reach of COVID-19 global. The long-term impact unclear.

What hasn’t changed is your business remains in a hyper-competitive space, and that’s only going to intensify. So, what can you do?

Is the answer innovation? Adjusted positioning? Increased sales volume? Or is it about delivering a better customer experience?

Seeking competitive advantage in changing conditions

The unobvious answer is to seek operational excellence through a continuous improvement mentality. The business management approach where you improve your customers’ experience by analyzing the processes which are used to deliver your product / service.

Economies have been shocked to the core, with social distancing and lockdown measures crippling consumer confidence. That has had an immediate knock on effect on the revenue of businesses, indiscriminate of industry.

With revenue projections needing reassessment, other streams of value must be found by businesses, all the while not compromising on customer experience. After all, customers are central to every business, and with reduced confidence our buyers become more frugal.

The environment we find ourselves in is one where a continuous improvement, process optimization mentality can thrive and should become de-facto in how we approach developing our business.

Working traditions are being shattered, and it places a heightened focus on remote / virtual working.

For more experienced practitioners, that shift doesn’t spell the end of continuous improvement - often associated with observing production lines, looking at A3 sheets of paper to map out and investigate processes, or conducting morning huddles.

Video conferencing tools, Microsoft Office and continuous improvement software are pathing the route to the next evolution in business process improvement, and the information that follows has never been more appropriate.

More importantly, changing market conditions, with COVID-19 as a prime example, present an opportunity for you to reconsider how you manage through crises and this eBook will help you to think about finding a stronger, more robust position.

It presents a sizeable opportunity for your organization to refresh its approach, its culture, and utilize the opportunity that digitalization brings to improve processes, understand results and ensure that you focus on what is important to the business.

It is your chance to deliver a better customer experience.

It’s time to seize competitive advantage.



People, process, tools and technology are the pillars of improvement.

The pillars of continuous improvement

To be truly continuous means:

1. A commitment to process

2. Enabling cross-organization collaboration

3. Embedding a culture of measurement, learning and communication

4. Adopting technology to find efficiencies within the improvement process

Everyone in the business must be tuned-in to the purpose of continuous improvement.

Improvements may be incremental in nature, or they can take a more radical form through innovation or technology. More often, considerable improvements will occur because of incremental efficiencies.

For those seeking change without considerable investment, continuous improvement does not require substantial investment to achieve improved results.

For more breakthrough level change it is worthwhile considering Hoshin Kanri.

PeopleThe culture of learning and measuring is a must for your team to be engaged in understanding how they can contribute to the bigger picture of your improvement initiatives.

ProcessSetting in place means to capture ideas, measure, review and implement is core to driving change. Rinse and repeat until improvement becomes second nature.

ToolsSix Sigma, Lean and Daily Management are core improvement frameworks, & PDCA, data capture plans, root cause analysis tools and other analytical approaches should be used.

TechnologyResults come from consistency and organization. As your initiatives grow, so too should your approach and considering the role of software to drive greater improvements.


https://i-nexus.com/hoshin-kanri/



Carl Gauss’ Normal Distribution Curve births

Six Sigma

World War Two sees Ford x Toyota’s manufacturing focus on time to

deliver

Taichii Ohno establishes the Toyota Production

System

Motorola’s concerted efforts leads to creation of Six Sigma by Bill Smith

Gusset’s Guinness statistical test seeks to improve beer quality

1700-1900 1900-1950

1980-today1950 - 1980

Bodek documents and translates Toyota’s teachings on Lean

Post-war, Toyota x Ford work to stimulate global

economy

Womack releases ‘The Machine that

Changed the World’

Welch’s GE and similar leaders adopt Six Sigma, leading to a boom in Western

continuous improvement

‘The Toyota Way’ profiles how Toyota embedded continuous

improvement and inspired generations

Growing adoption of improvement techniques leads to the growth of Western

continuous software such as Wrike and Monday

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic sees a global shift to remote

working and the emergence of virtual continuous improvement,

supported by more modern software applications such as i-nexus which focus on

organization-wide collaboration and demonstrable ROI of

initiatives.

NBC documents the work of Deming

Ford’s Model T sparks mass-manufacturing, &

continuous flow

Motorola’s Galvin argues for defect per million opportunities as the standard to

be reached

A time-line of continuous improvement’s history

Shewhares Statistical Process Control (SPC)


Once you start to scope, define and deliver improvement you turn to address how the improvement is managed through an appropriate level of structure to ensure you are delivering the right improvement in the right way to deliver sustainable results.

The common frameworks for improvement are detailed here.

Improvement frameworks explained

Just do it

Make it happen and capture that it is done.

A simple log of what was done, why, and the expected benefit to the business performance is all you need.

Once collated, they can be incredibly powerful.

Action lists, concern and countermeasure sheets, any form of log is a powerful reminder of the steps being taken over time no matter how small.

If you invest in the basics from the section above to ensure business performance is the data driven focus you will reap the rewards.

Countermeasures

These are a base level structure that can be applied to any gap in operational performance or issue resolution.

They are often a blend of items A and C in this list in the following logic:

a. Whatisthequickfixorcontainmentactionweimplementquickly?

The goal here is to stop the problem getting worse and take the pain away from the customer. Here, ‘sticking plaster’ solutions are completely valid.

b. Root cause analysis

With the above in place you now can investigate through your appropriate root cause approach to define and implement your corrective actions.


https://i-nexus.com/software-track/

https://i-nexus.com/software-track/


c. Preventative action

Once the problem is fixed there is a further round of review for preventative actions to prevent this happening again either in the same part of the business or other related parts of the business where this situation could occur.

d. The impact

It is often that the continuous improvement community within a business truly earn their credibility when they step up to lead this type of exercise.

A well-run investigation of an impactful quality or customer issue can often create the focus of your continuous improvement deployment for the next couple of years.

Root cause problem solving

Where the operational conversations do not yield a quick fix, a level of structure is needed to investigate the problem, define the root causes, and define and deliver the required improvements in a sustainable way.

To ensure this level of improvement works there needs to be investment in the structure behind:

a)Definingthebusinessproblem

What is the problem? Why is it bad? When and where does it occur? How do you detect it? Who is involved?

b) A structured root cause analysis

A team of people with the relevant breadth and depth of knowledge of the business have a joint conversation or workshop to map out the relationships between the observed effects and contributing causes.

Your root causes will be based on a mixture of:

• Prioritization: Which causes are creating the most, often multiple, impacts, and

• Pragmatism: Which causes can we influence in the time we have with the support we have?

Root cause analysis can tend to create a perception that a problem is insurmountable, a huge organizational effort even.

We recommend designing improvements around what you can influence.

If others see you are doing what you can then you are more likely to get additional support or budget to push harder.



c)The5whys

The 5 whys analysis examines your problem in enough depth until you have revealed the real cause.

It starts with defining a problem statement - a clarification of the issue at hand. This could be ‘the wrong documents were issued to our customer’.

The rest of the process is simple. Firstly, ensure you have the right people tackling the problem and then proceed to ask questions about why the issue exists.

5 whys gives the freedom to ensure resulting activity is not just of satisfactory depth (i.e. somewhere close to the 5th why level), but it also covers an appropriate breadth.

No cause effect relationship is a straight line. A single cause can influence many effects and the more you see this as an overall landscape the more powerful it is.

Other effective tools to visualize cause and effect include fishbone analysis or the affinity diagram.


https://info.i-nexus.com/continuous-improvement-fishbone-ishikawa-cause-and-effect-template

https://info.i-nexus.com/continuous-improvement-fishbone-ishikawa-cause-and-effect-template


Improvement projects

DMAIC(Define,Measure,Analyze,Improve,Control)

DMAIC is a data-driven quality approach used in continuous improvement. While a core part of Six Sigma, it can be implemented alone.

DMAIC is an acronym for five stages:

1. Define 2. Measure 3. Analyze 4. Improve 5. Control

Define

Here you focus on addressing and defining the problem, improvement action(s), opportunity for improvements, project goals, and customers’ requirements (internal and external).

• You’ll need a project charter to define the focus, scope, direction, and motivation for your team

• Be prepared to focus on how to give voice to your customers (Voice of Customer) to collate and use feedback to understand what they like, love and dislike about your product / service

• Don’t forget to conduct current and future state Value Stream Maps to understand the entire process, starting and finishing at the customer, analyzing what is needed to meet your customers’ needs

Measure

At this stage you need to measure how your process is performing. Metrics will be identified in the definition stage.

• You must have a Process Map for recording each process step

• Conduct a Capability Analysis to understand your ability to deliver each step

• Complete a Pareto Chart to analyze how often problems occur

Analyze

Here you analyze your process to identify root causes of variations and performance.

• Conduct a Root Cause Analysis • Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) to identify potential failures

Improve

Take your data from observations and root causes analysis and apply it to your process to improve performance.

• Run a Kaizen event to implement quick changes, giving platform to try new ideas from those impacted by the process


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Control

At the final stage you are looking to control the performance of the process, having gone through the previous stages to identify and implement change. Here you want to maintain and sustain into the future.

• Create a Quality Control Plan to record what must be done to keep the process at its current level

• Conduct Statistical Process Controls to monitor process behavior

• Perform a 5S to promote visual control

• Mistake proof your process (poka-yoke) ensuring errors are difficult to make or you can immediately recognize and correct them

It is vital that you have some form of framework for your improvement delivery to ensure that outcomes are delivered having invested so heavily in the up-front activity and engagement of teams.

The tools and techniques that exist are successful due to one single point of reality that successful practitioners come to realize:

On paper the tools appear simple and were you to fill them out on your own at your desk you would likely wonder what all the fuss was about.

But they mostly serve as an effective facilitation tool by visualizing the thought process you are going through, and establishing a logical story, allowing you to:

1. Facilitate a group with differing perspectives to a common understanding

2. Be able to share and communicate your team’s output at various stages in an engaging way that ‘shows your working’

Regardless of the improvement method definition, the tools and techniques can be grouped around three categories:

1. Project management

Take your activity to a logical conclusion from the initial discussion to closing the improvement as sustainably implemented as part of business as usual.

A level of project management keeps you and your stakeholders honest and focused.

This ensures that the people you rely on for improvement deliver an improvement rather than act as a facilitation support function.

2. Diagnostic

Helping you define the problem and the current state reality in your business. The output will be highly specialized to your industry and your reality.

The standard and structure comes from how to collect, manipulate, analyze and visualize information that you learn either from a data collection or process observation perspective. Most Six Sigma tools and techniques are of this nature.

3. Improvement intervention

These are a proven predefined set of principles and ways of working that you can apply to improve your business.

Most of the Lean toolbox is comprised of these predefined improvement tools or playbooks for you to follow to add value in your business.

When you consider the plethora or opportunities in these categories it becomes a lot clearer as to how companies successfully combine Lean and Six Sigma in a single integrated end to end improvement method.

Individuals have common sense, groups do not…




4. Create virtual suggestion boxes and leverage internal messaging tools such as Microsoft Teams or Slack, or within your continuous improvement platform to encourage participation in improvement

5. Empower your team to make daily continuous improvement a part of their work

6. Stress the importance of small improvements, such as automating order confirmation emails to customers - not all improvement is an event or project

7. Help share and spread ideas

8. Document and celebrate the results of your improvement initiatives.

And, importantly, remember that people are at the heart of continuous improvement.

That means creating the right team to spearhead your efforts, as well as effectively engaging with those people in the business who are impacted by this ethos.

When seeking operational excellence through continuous improvement, you cannot escape the importance of building an improvement culture.

Why you must build a continuous improvement culture

Excellence and improvement are a philosophy. It is a journey of learning for your business where you analyze, critique, act and measure all which impacts your customers.

As discussed at the beginning of this guide, it is important to remember the four pillars of improvement: people, process, tools and technology. With the right culture in place, your improvements will thrive. You can put into motion these eight suggestions for ensuring your culture is one of collaboration, openness, and learning:

1. Lead by example; participate in continuous improvement openly and with true enthusiasm

2. Communicate and demonstrate how important continuous improvement is at every appropriate chance

3. Make it a point to regularly ask for improvement ideas and quickly respond to them, illustrating how they’ve been evaluated and implemented


Your improvement team exists to manage your journey to operational excellence and is a group whose focus is on implementing improvements in your business. Improvement is wide reaching, meaning many people form your landscape.

Creating an improvement team

Role Responsibilities

Improvement Champion / Leader

· Offer improvement coaching· Focus and support the cultural change and ways of sharing information· Involve stakeholders in supporting the improvements· Create and support the improvement leadership team and assist annual planning· Steward the implementation of CI + build and lead the improvement team· Measure results, facilitate problem solving and use this to drive learning

Improvement / Process Owner

· Individual(s) who own the process post-project· Communicate process activities, issues and successes· Track process / team measures· Assist in process training & encourage monitoring and problem solving

Individual

· Receive education· Openly identify and discuss problems & work with smaller teams· Measure, sustain, and improve processes· Participate on improvement projects and events· Increase rate of daily improvements and effectiveness

Improvement Leadership Team

· Establish the culture of improvement and lead by example· Use data and information to guide decision making· Assure the achievement of the improvement Action Plan· Provide resources to remove barriers· Track program progress and communicate performance and success· Coach and provide feedback to the organization· Identify where improvements can be replicated across the business· Implement new leaders who follow their improvement values

Company Leader· Accountable for achieving the improvement goals· Communicate improvement plans & progress· Recognize & reward

Project Leader

· Achieve the goals within project timeline· Lead the project team through project planning, execution and tracking· Develop project plans. Collaborate and leverage relationship with Improvement Leaders· Document project and share learnings for easy replication

Project Team · Participate in project planning, working and measuring sessions · Collect data, analyze and problem solve to install new processes

Project Sponsor(s) · Individuals, Supervisors, and Process Leaders who support project

Stakeholders· Agencies, Organizations, Teams, Individuals, and Customers impacted by project· Feedback and test solutions· Replicate project / processes

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) · Consulted for knowledge on a topic



Navigating your stakeholders

This can be a large disruption to your business, so a logical place to begin is to establish an understanding of the stakeholders who will influence your success.

Completing a stakeholder analysis

Conducting a stakeholder analysis helps you understand the different characters essential to your success. It encompasses techniques and tools to identify and understand the needs and expectations of those impacted by your project.

The analysis helps you group different types of stakeholders based on their interest in and influence on the project. You must ask yourself what that group stands to gain from the project and what you can do for them to secure their support.

As a leader of continuous improvement, you are overseeing a complex portfolio of change. Just consider the change is going as far as:

• An overall transformation in thinking as to what a good operational foundation is

• Building confidence that individuals and teams can define and deliver improvements to their day job

• A change in mindset for the leaders of the organization about what constitutes performance and how this should be understood and discussed

• The complex suite of improvement projects at any one time being designed and delivered in pursuit of improved customer, employee or company value

• A mindset of commitment to a goal or target when, in many cases, the answer to how that will be delivered is unclear


Understand and navigate project stakeholdersA free stakeholder analysis template for understanding the influences on your project’s success and the steps to navigating your landscape.

Get your template

https://info.i-nexus.com/continuous-improvement-stakeholder-analysis-excel-template


Lean v Six SigmaAs continuous improvement has grown in popularity, so too debate over the effectiveness of Lean and Six Sigma approaches. Lean’s focus is eliminating waste and creating flow in process, whereas Six Sigma techniques focus on defects. The reality is that both come down to delivering what is the best value for customers.

However, the differences between the two may not be so clear. In which case, this comparison table spells this out.

Lean SixSigma

Theory Reducing waste Reducing variation

Guidelines - Identify value - Identify value streams - Flow - Pull - Perfection

- Define - Measure - Analyze - Improve - Control

Focus Flow Problem

Assumptions - Removing waste = improved performance

- Many small improvements are better than a system analysis

- A problem exists

- Figures and numbers are valued

- System output will improve if variation in all processes is reduced

Primary impact Reduced flow time Uniform process output

Secondary impactt 1) Less variation 2) Uniform output 3) Less inventory 4) New accounting system 5) Flow metrics 6) Improved quality

1) Less waste 2) Fast throughput 3) Less inventory 4) Variation metrics 5) Improved quality

Critiques A statistical or system analysis isn’t valued

- Systems interaction isn’t considered - Processes can / will improve independently


Employees must appreciate that they have the opportunity and accountability to think of ways to make their work better and where it is in their gift, own the delivery.

Principle 4: Facts not opinions (or opinions informed by fact)

A considerable proportion of CI relies on understanding the current performance using facts not opinions.

A level of rigor in your data collection to understand the problem you are trying to solve, the level of impact it has on your performance and the occurrence of internal and external contributing causes is essential.

After all, there are considerable benefits to moving your business towards data driven performance management.

Principle 5: Everything is a process

A simple equation you will often hear quoted is Y=fx.

Any output is a result of a function being applied to an input.

Any form of product or customer experience is a result of a multitude of processes.

The challenge is how understood or mature those processes are and then deciding what level of design and standardization is appropriate.

The 8 principles of continuous improvementThese principles will ensure that your improvement efforts are truly continuous and optimized for a higher quality of products of services, limited variation in processes, and that the journey to delivering value to your customers is smooth.

Principle1:Thepowersitsinthewhy

What is the business problem you are trying to fix?

Do others understand that problem or take it seriously? Is that problem being communicated as a priority for the business in a consistent way? If the why is not understood or respected, you will spend a considerable amount of time justifying why continuous improvement is important.

Principle 2: The customer is key

Whether it is voice of the customer or defining the critical to quality / customer needs; understanding what your customers value in what you do and how you do it is one of the fundamental principles of any improvement methodology. The customers’ needs give you what you need to understand the non-value add from a Lean perspective, and enables you to set goals and targets for what level of variation is to be allowed in a process.

Principle3:Thepeoplethatperformtheworkknowtheanswer

Involving, aligning and empowering employees is critical to a successful and sustained continuous improvement initiative.



https://blog.i-nexus.com/data-driven-decision-making-choosing-gut-instinct-vs-data

https://blog.i-nexus.com/data-driven-decision-making-choosing-gut-instinct-vs-data

Principle8:It’smorethanatool,it’sawayofworking

Any business that takes the continuous improvement toolbox and seeks to apply it will fail where other factors such as mindset, behaviors and organizational culture are not considered.

Principle 6: A level of standard and repeatable method for improvement is key

You must ask others to trust the process.

Improvement can be ambiguous; you may start a piece of work to address a business problem with absolutely no idea how it will be solved.

In these instances, relying on a sequence of appropriate tools and techniques will get you where you need to be.

Equally there are many times where once the appropriate methods are applied the best solutions identified go against the popular opinion of what the fix should be prior to the exercise starting.

Ensuring that those who undertake the improvement respect and follow this appropriate level of rigor is essential.

Principle 7: Incremental improvement can yield big results

What would happen if a part of your business committed to one improvement every day? What would those 365 (or 220 or so) improvement efforts add up to?

Do not underestimate the power of a team focused on learning from today to make tomorrow better.

Acting in small discrete steps towards a goal and embracing the ‘improvement as part of the day job’ approach will give you great results.

Principle 8: It’s more than a tool, it’s a way of working

Any business that takes the continuous improvement toolbox and seeks to apply it will fail where other factors such as mindset, behaviors and organizational culture are not considered.



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There are two sources of value for an organization when it comes to continuous improvement and answering that question:

1. The what – the outcomes or benefits that can be delivered

2. The how – how it feels for the organization to deliver the above outcomes in an improvement driven way

When it comes to the how it is important to be able to show how your workers directly influence how that work should be done in the future.

This type of positive experience can be associated with improvements in absenteeism, staff turnover and employee morale.

It would be useful to consult any information on this that the company can provide.

Also consider any history that the workforce has been through in terms of prior change, consultancy interventions etc.

Ensure you understood the perception of that history as that will be the badge you are initially wearing regardless of your own approach.

The true value of continuous improvement

4continuousimprovementstatsyouneedtoknow

Wellingtone PWC PMI PEX

“So why should I invest in continuous improvement, what will it give us?”

31% of organizations fail to realize the benefits of

their projects

35% of CEOs are confident

of revenue growing within 12 months

37% of projects fail due to a lack of defined

objectives

40% of professionals struggle to link

improvement to strategy



4 benefits of continuous improvement

The number of employees who are disengaged at work has averaged 70% for nearly two decadesEmplify, 2020

Companies with a high level of employee engagement are more profitable by a factor of 21%Smarp, 2020

On average, the cost of staff turnover is $30,000Sodexo Engage, 2020


1. Increased employee engagement

To set the scene, consider this statistic:

2.Lowerstaffturnoverandtheassociatedcosts

Turnover in your business is expensive. When you consider the financial impact of having to recruit, train and then rehire staff who are disengaged or unhappy, the cost of instilling improvement in an organization is relatively inexpensive.

But increased engagement does have its benefits...

As covered at the beginning of this guide, continuous improvement has people at its core. It is designed to empower employees to identify and solve problems that hinder their daily work. In fact, it serves to demonstrate that their voice and input is invaluable, and indeed it is.

With improvement as a company-wide lens, employees are no longer simply doers, instead they become central to business processes, not just the outcome.

A better working environment and engaged workforce means that these costs will inevitably fall.

By empowering your company to work better within their teams and across functions and divisions through improvement frameworks and software, you provide new challenges and opportunities for growth and personal fulfilment of your staff.

If your team members know they’re making a difference, that’ll make all the difference to their longevity in your business.



3.Innovationandexcellenceasastandardtobereached

While continuous improvement is well known for finding changes to be made within a process, it can easily be forgotten that it also supports innovation in products.

By listening to the voices of your team you begin to encourage more ideas for streamlining and enhancing your products.

Be it the product design, packaging, purpose or manufacturing, your team will have greater pride in the end product, and that only means positive things for your customers.

4.Unified,passionateandknowledge-seekingemployees

Continuous improvement acts as the glue which binds together your business as it seeks to deliver a better customer experience. Every part of your organization contributes to the success, and as such means a unified, passionate workforce.

By training and empowering your team to contribute it provides opportunities for knowledge-seekers to truly excel.

More broadly, with well-defined goals, communicated plans and easy systems to measure and course correct performance, your business will be in a place where they can move beyond its comfort zone.

Optimizing processes and innovating across the business is a large change, but by using the right frameworks, tools and people you can maintain and sustain a continuous improvement culture.

Adopting this approach improves your teams’ skills and knowledge, and ensure your business stays ahead of its competition.



Common continuous improvement challengesWhether you are a continuous improvement manager, leader of the PMO, consultant, or a beginner in the world of improvement, there are core challenges you must be aware of:

1. Reason and purpose

The reason you are there and the shadow it can cast - you may be seen as being in the business to cut heads.

Ensure that you map out your stakeholder landscape and approach different members appropriately.

2. Leadership mentality

Are your leaders there to embrace change and support you, or will they act as resistors?

Change can be daunting. However, leaders must support their entire business by driving improvement, participating in the change and demonstrating the impact of different initiatives.

3.Existingknowledgeandcapabilityofpeople

Product / business knowledge can be empowering, but also overpowering should it mean that your internal customers are embedded in their current ways of working.

Not every member of your improvement team will have the same capabilities. Perhaps you will have a number of black belts but the rest of your organization is made of people just at the beginning of their career.

You must be able to replicate previous projects and share best practice from more capable, experienced team members in an effective way to coach newcomers.

This ensures that you grow your improvement in a sustainable, profitable means.

4. The base operational standards as a stable foundation (including data availability and quality)

How available is data in your business, is it treated as gold dust, or is there a reluctance to listen to data and instead focus on narrative?

Data is the currency of improvement. It must be the foundation for your projects. That means building out quality KPIs which will give you a clear indication of performance towards your project and strategic targets.

5. Fit for purpose method

Do not over engineer, nor cut corners, and certainly do not apply an improvement framework which is ill suited to the business.

6. Business as usual

Competing with the day to day is a harsh reality. Be it securing the right people for your improvement team, or simply winning the hearts and minds of staff who are in constant firefighting mode, the day to day can take the spotlight over your improvement initiatives if not addressed effectively.

7. The risk and opportunity of technology solutions

We’re living in a COVID-19 world and that means there is plenty opportunity to adopt technology and embrace virtual continuous improvement, but be wary of the software you choose. If you cannot link your improvement to your business’ strategy and demonstrate ROI, steer clear.



How can continuous improvement software help?The journey to coordinated, organization-wide continuous improvement projects is dependent on many success factors.

As projects progress and multiply, overseeing their performance and aligning these to mission critical corporate improvement goals becomes complex.

At present, it remains ever difficult for executives and project and program management offices to identify an optimal portfolio of projects and ensure organizational focus on process improvement and eliminating waste.

High-performing organizations are continuously evolving and improving, taking every available opportunity to better themselves. The result is scores - sometimes hundreds – of simultaneous improvement and Kaizen activities.

Now, imagine if all of these projects are fully aligned around clearly communicated goals, tracked real-time through their execution, and their results measured using published KPIs.

Introducingthei-nexusplatform

Using i-nexus’ continuous improvement software you can establish clear targets to improve, allowing the optimal selection of project mix that will impact results, which are often informed by employee ideas.

As projects progress, through the platform you can oversee their performance and ultimately measure results via visually stunning dashboards; keeping stakeholders informed through automated reporting.

Organizations choose i-nexus to manage continuous improvement from idea through to execution as the platform gives the visibility, governance and sustainability needed for superior results.



Idea management

Capture and prioritize your employee-identified opportunities for improvement.

Portfolio selection

Select opportunities and projects that best align with your corporate improvement goals and targets.

Project management

Create, plan and manage projects using templates for fast replication.

Reporting cycles

Establish monthly reporting cadence with automated reports for stakeholders.



Impactanalysisandbenefitstracking

Drive accountability and monitor performance toward targets through real-time benefit tracking.

Governance and coordination

Enforce best-practice methodologies and techniques using project templates and workflows.

Learning and capability management

Manage training programs and certifications that upskill your continuous improvement teams and drive repeated identification and execution of improvement initiatives.

Bookademoofthei-nexusplatformBook a demo today to learn how i-nexus digitalizes continuous improvement and why it is the trusted choice of organizations across the world for maintaining and building their improvement culture for demonstrable results.

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Continuing your improvement journey

What does adaptive strategy really mean?

The next step in your improvement journey can take many forms, but we recommend expanding your knowledge with our learning resources.

Naturally, that next step is to consider how continuous improvement can support your business in its pursuit of key strategic goals.

Whether your goal revolves around revenue acceleration, cost reductions, transforming departments or supply chains, revolutionizing product lines or embedding a culture of excellence, deploying and delivering results at pace is crucial.

In the 2020s there is no certainty upon which to plan programs to support your goals over the long-term. Change has become the norm, and that’s why an adaptive approach is necessary.

Watch our on-demand webinar addressing the role of adaptive strategic planning in your organization to see how continuous improvement professionals are key to ensuring Lean and Agile becomes part of your strategy execution practices, and deliver continuous value.

In the 2020s uncertainty and volatility reign supreme, jeopardizing our traditional ways of planning. It’s time to transform and adapt to change. This is how.


Watch on demand

https://info.i-nexus.com/what-does-adaptive-strategy-really-mean

About i-nexus

See i-nexus in action at i-nexus.com

i-nexus is the trading name of i-nexus Global plc, registered in England & Wales, registration number 11321642. VAT registration number GB 785 1445 09. All rights reserved. Various trademarks held by their respective owners.To get in touch with any questions, reach out to the team via the below channels:

Email: [email protected]: https://www.i-nexus.com/contact-usPhone: UK: +44 (0)845 607 0061 | USA: +1 855 615 1589



i-nexus provides cloud strategy execution software to leading global brands aspiring to excel at strategy execution. Its scalable, enterprise grade platform is deployed within multiple global blue-chip businesses, predominantly based across the US and Europe.

By digitalising how companies manage the strategic planning process, from developing robust strategic plans to overseeing their delivery and measuring results for data-driven decision making, i-nexus customers achieve breakthrough performance by delivering more strategic goals at pace.

From transformational initiatives across entire organizations to business unit-specific programs, i-nexus strategy execution software is the choice of leaders tasked with aligning people and results to business-critical goals.

i-nexuskeystats

• Over 50,000 global i-nexus users

• Global operations with teams in North America, Europe and the UK

• Over 500,000 programmes and projects managed using i-nexus solutions

• Annual £2m invested in research & development

• £6b cumulative value generated for customers through effective strategy execution

• Raised £10m of investment to fund growth via its IPO in June 2018 on the London Stock Exchange

https://www.i-nexus.com

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https://www.i-nexus.com/contact-us

Documents

The Leader’s Guide to Continuous Improvement