How to Foster a Culture of Continuous improvement in a large organisation
In response to global economic setbacks created by the pandemic, organisations must adapt and take decisive actions to survive and rebound to previous performance levels.
Most organisations have experienced more adversity in the last few years than in the last global financial crisis, if they survived at all. While some global challenges have been solved, others persist, and new ones have emerged.
These challenges include:
• Inflation and stagnation impacts – compelling businesses to implement extreme measures for survival
• Customer behaviour shifts and hybrid work models – forcing businesses to increasingly accelerate the adoption of digital tools
• Ground-breaking AI-based technologies – transforming how work gets done, what is accessible and possible
Continuous Improvement stands out as one of the most effective tools for leaders to consider adopting and implementing. It allows for businesses to reduce costs and elevate the quality of their offerings, enabling them to excel amidst competition, respond promptly to customer needs, promote innovation, and empower their employees.
What Is Continuous Improvement
The definition of Continuous Improvement comprises two key elements:
• Continuous – Ongoing focus, often through small incremental steps.
• Improvement – Optimising and enhancing the process and quality of products and services.
What we consider as Continuous Improvement emerged from the manufacturing industry’s efforts to make do with less during World War II and out of post-war Japan. Since then, Continuous Improvement elements (such as Lean methodology principles) have been expanded and adapted from manufacturing settings into other industries and contexts. In doing so, the Continuous Improvement framework has evolved to address various non-manufacturing activities, operations and offerings, such as decision-making, customer service, marketing strategies, administrative processes and sales techniques. Frameworks taken from manufacturing settings such as Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control (DMAIC) and Value Stream Mapping still apply in business to improve processes and control quality. However as more complex and dynamic improvements are needed, organisations have added additional frameworks to their Continuous Improvement approach; Customer Journey Mapping helps to improve the customer experience throughout the lifecycle, while Agile frameworks such as Scrum facilitate focus on iterative execution that builds a test and learn culture.
Why Leaders Should Consider Continuous Improvement
Large scale transformations can deliver significant results, but they require intensive resourcing and can be highly disruptive. Delivery of a series of improvements can incrementally achieve transformative change and help organisations not only survive but thrive in the face of current challenges. Continuous Improvement requires developing the right culture to meet two key types of challenges.
1. Specific challenges occur at a point in time and may be related to individual environmental factors, products or processes. To respond promptly and effectively to these, organisations may need to draw on internal knowledge and improvement capability skills. Having the culture and skills to focus on specific challenges enables rapid responses.
2. Persistent challenges include the ever-present need to contain costs, promote innovation, maintain a long-term competitive edge and deliver quality outcomes to stakeholders and customers.
As the name implies, Continuous Improvement is not a one-time action or solution but an ongoing effort and process. Areas for improvement may be fully internal to the organisation, or they may require interaction with external stakeholders to identify opportunities for improvement and develop actions in response. Taking an organisation-wide view of Continuous Improvement will maximise its value and is key to achieving desired outcomes, which is why leaders should consider embracing and cultivating such a culture. We will now explore the benefits of Continuous Improvement in detail.
Save Money While You Meet And Exceed Customer Needs
The good news is that sometimes changes that simplify also provide better customer outcomes. Continuous Improvement can be applied to core functions to improve results.
Minimise Cost
Empowering those who do the work to identify and eliminate unnecessary process steps and address bottlenecks will streamline the flow of work by reducing time spent on low-value work and increasing resource utilisation (both people and equipment).
Structured activities such as mapping customer journeys provide essential insights into which steps add value, which ones don’t, and where opportunities exist to improve internal and external stakeholder experience. By using these processes organisations can increase efficiency and minimise cost as they improve their customer offerings.
Improve Quality
Reducing such things as product returns, complaint handling and rework significantly improves the financial bottom line and employee morale. One effective approach is implementing more frequent and comprehensive testing to enable early issue detection. Automated testing in industries like software development has proven highly successful in detecting issues. It has led to significant increases in speed to market for valuable product features, boosting customer satisfaction and saving time and resources. Similar principles can be applied to manufacturing and building, where frequent sampling can draw attention to areas of need before consequences escalate.
When Continuous Improvement methodologies are applied with Agile practices and mindsets, the ability to adapt to changing market conditions can be increased. By encouraging employees and teams to test and learn through iterating output, businesses can respond effectively to evolving customer needs and industry trends. As businesses consistently strive to improve quality and adapt to customer needs, they are more likely to drive better solutions, deliver superior products or services, and exceed customer expectations. These outcomes can result in differentiation from competitors and increased market share.
Promote Innovation For A Long-Term Competitive Edge
• Cultivate a mindset of continuous learning and improvement within the organisation: Encouraging employees to constantly seek better ways of doing things and challenging the status quo creates an environment where innovative ideas are welcomed and embraced.
• Promote collaboration and knowledge sharing: Involving employees at different levels of the organisation in the improvement process creates opportunities for diverse perspectives and ideas to come together. Such collaborative approaches to problem-solving can lead to innovative solutions which may not emerge in a siloed environment. Using regular feedback loops, organisations can review insights and learnings, which can further spark new ideas and innovative approaches.
• Encourage experimentation: Applying Agile practices with Continuous Improvement can reinforce methodologies such as Scrum in testing and implementing new ideas, allowing innovation to flourish. Emphasising hypothesis-driven experimentation helps organisations uncover novel solutions and future approaches that can lead to significant breakthroughs and get ahead of the competition.
Establish a System That Empowers Individuals To Sustain Success
• Leverage individual input: Creating channels and processes for employees to contribute their ideas, suggestions and feedback as part of a Continuous Improvement culture actively engages individuals. Including them in a process that recognises and values their expertise creates empowerment and encourages engaged individuals to make a meaningful impact on the organisation’s success.
• Provide growth and ownership opportunities: Promoting and supporting individuals in acquiring new knowledge and developing their capabilities through active participation in improvement activities, drives a sense of ownership. Examples of this include being part of a team working on a specific problem, and secondments to another part of the organisation to instil a more holistic understanding of end-to-end processes. This sense of ownership can translate to increased personal accountability and embedding a culture of responsibility. In this environment, individuals proactively seek solutions and consistently strive for better results.
• Retain and attract talent: Empowering employees to deliver meaningful improvements and outcomes increases job satisfaction, motivation, and engagement. Empowered employees are more likely to remain loyal to the organisation as they feel valued. An empowering culture attracts top talent by drawing individuals to organisations that prioritise their growth. Retaining existing talent and attracting new talent is a key factor for organisations to build and sustain success.
Strategies for Continuous Improvement
Although the benefits of Continuous Improvement over expensive and risky transformation projects are enticing, considering how to foster a culture of continuous improvement can be daunting, especially for large organisations that are more complex and less nimble. There are strategies that can help leaders adopt to build an improvement culture.
Commit and Communicate
Continuous Improvement culture requires leaders to clearly understand how improvement fits into their broader business objectives and priorities. Clear communication is required to create a shared understanding and a sense of ownership. To effectively build culture, this communication must show employees how improvement aligns with the organisation’s goals and demonstrate the leadership team’s commitment, emphasising that improvement is everyone’s responsibility. Leaders should lead by example, by actively participating in the efforts. Employees who see leaders embracing and promoting Continuous Improvement are more likely to follow suit.
Empower Employees and Establish Feeback Channels
Leaders may need to change how they manage, to create a workplace where employees can learn through hypothesis testing (test and learn) and provide the feedback that informs change priorities. To make these changes successfully, leaders must:
• Allow employees to identify and implement improvements in their work areas and make decisions within agreed guidelines.
• Create a work environment where employees feel safe to take calculated risks, and have adequate resources to explore opportunities for improvement.
• Establish channels to capture suggestions and feedback with a system for evaluating and implementing employee ideas.
Encourage Learning and Recognise Efforts
Innovation and problem-solving at speed and scale requires employees to build knowledge and develop skills to help them diagnose and deliver. To do that, leaders must:
• Provide training opportunities and resources to ensure employees are equipped for problem-solving, process improvement, and innovation.
• Encourage employees to share their learnings and best practices with peers through both formal and informal channels. Encourage sharing success stories, lessons learned, and best practices so that the organisation can leverage expertise and learnings. This sharing solves problems for customers, while it also cross-pollinates best practices across the organisation to embed Continuous Improvement as part of the ways of working.
• Celebrate and recognise employees and teams that contribute to improvement by establishing systems to acknowledge their efforts and highlight their achievements through public recognition, awards, incentives, or other forms of appreciation.
Make Continuous Improvement Part of Standard Work Practice
Perceptions that Continuous Improvement is another thing to do in an already busy schedule creates a concern that it will involve additional workload. To address this, leaders must incorporate Continuous Improvement into routine working practices. An example is the Scrum methodology which includes Retrospectives for teams to identify improvement opportunities for inclusion and prioritisation within their work plans.
Where specific improvement initiatives are identified, that require work, these should be prioritised, planned and delivered in line with other change and operational work items. Lean portfolio management practices enable organisations to view improvement work within the context of all work to be done and driving value discussions around prioritising improvement, new offerings and supporting operations.
Evaluate and Improve
Continuous Improvement is an ongoing process, so leaders need to be open to evolving their approach based on their organisation’s changing needs and dynamics. A key element to maintaining this dynamic approach is to ensure that improvement initiatives are yielding the expected results. To monitor progress:
• Define metrics that reflect Continuous Improvement focus areas. Types of metrics include process efficiency, customer satisfaction and quality improvement. Make these metrics visible to keep the focus on improvement and assign owners to drive accountability.
• Track and regularly review metric results to evaluate the effectiveness of Continuous Improvement initiatives. Adjust the approach and tools employed based on insights from the evaluation.
• Build capability at an individual and team level by:
o Offering constructive feedback to individuals and teams involved in improvement initiatives.
o Providing coaching and support to help overcome challenges and develop improvement skills.
o Encouraging a growth mindset that frames failures as learning opportunities.
In Conclusion…
This article provides you with quick insights into how to foster a Continuous Improvement culture. Our expert team is here to help you unlock your organisation’s true potential through Continuous Improvement, with a holistic approach tailored to your specific needs.
Find out how ADAPTOVATE can support your organisation implement a continuous improvement culture
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