Continuous Improvement

If you keep changing how you do business — or, even more drastically, keep redefining your business — your employees are likely to just give up after a while. If there is no consistency in your company they will find it hard to know what to do. Take a week’s vacation, then come back and find everything is different…that is frustrating, and if it keeps happening, you may lose people. They need to understand the rules of the game, and if you keep changing the rules, they are liable to go somewhere else where they can start a project and expect that by the end of it they will still be operating under the same guidelines.

If you make them change all the time, they will get behind on their work as processes and expectations change, and you will lose money in the end. Consider too that they will start ignoring changes, or at least, not implement them fully, because they expect another change is just around the corner and they do not want to waste the effort. So be careful how much you change things.

But…

(and you knew that was coming…two paragraphs like that were screaming out for a “but”)

But that isn’t to say you should not be open to change, pretty much continuously.

Look, you have got talented people working for you (hopefully), and that talent probably extends beyond their particular role in your organisation. They are going to have ideas about a lot of things, including how you conduct business. Rather than shutting them down, you need to be open to their suggestions. These can come in handy, since in many cases your business needs might change pretty quickly.

At the same time, as we noted above, you cannot be changing things all the time, and you definitely cannot implement every suggestion you get (even every good one). So how do you manage this?

First, encourage people to contribute ideas. Maybe they come directly to you, maybe you have an anonymous system set up, maybe there is some sort of group that meets regularly to talk about ideas for the firm. Whatever the method, have a way of encouraging and soliciting good ideas.

Second, encourage those who come up with good ideas to figure out how to implement them (with help from others, of course, if they need it). This takes some of the burden off of you, and also discourages people from making suggestions simply for the sake of making them.

Next, understand that you cannot do everything people suggest, nor should you. Limit yourself to those ideas that fix problems or take advantage of an opportunity. Change for the sake of change is a bad idea. Make sure your employees understand this. You do not want people getting discouraged when you don’t accept every one of their suggestions. Keep their expectations realistic.

Finally, as you do make improvements, try not to disrupt ongoing projects. Move quickly enough to create effective change but not so quickly that important work is disrupted. This may be the toughest part of continuous improvement: finding the right pace.

As with so many leadership concepts, the important thing about continuous improvement is striking a balance. Take advantage of the opportunity to get better at what you do, but don’t go so far as to screw up what you are already doing right.