Great organizations don’t pretend to be innovative, or delegate it to specialists.
Great organizations don’t put their Communications teams in charge of “Continuous Improvement” or create separate departments.
In Great Organizations, every team drives improvement, and every team member in those teams has a part to play in improvement.
Some organizations struggle to make big, fast improvement simply because they try to control it.
With all the best intentions, they create Innovation or Operational Excellence strategies that are top down but not team engaged. After a while they give up and move onto the next trend.
True Continuous Improvement is “continuous”. It doesn’t have a shelf life or a season. You do it or you don’t. It happens whether the boss is there or not..
Others try a different tack, and seek to standardize, hoping that will fix their issues. Centers of Excellence, Standard Operating Procedures, Best Practice sharing all have their place but fail on their own.
They fail when they focus on structure and process rather than outcomes.
They also fail because they’re trying to avoid failure. How do you improve if you’re so afraid of mistakes you won’t allow people to make their own choices?
Imagine a sporting team that waited for instructions or simply copied others. Those are the teams that never get to the top.
It’s easy to create a department or a seminar or engage a consultant. The hard thing is to create actual changes by engaging your own people.
The leadership lesson here is that the best change comes from within the team, led by leaders but engaged within the team.
The true test of Innovation isn’t your mission statement or your organization structure but the changes being made in your team.
Small changes or large, any change. Especially change created within the team and not copied or imposed.
Some will work, some won’t. Try again.
“..true Continuous Improvement is “continuous”..whether the boss is there or not..”
Does your team have Innovation or Improvement targets?
Do you have a way to encourage and measure improvement activities?
How many small improvements did your team make last month?
Did they make any?
Does your team make regular small improvements, or do they wait for your instructions?
Do you wait for directions?
If you want to improve, your team has to be in the habit of improving.
Not just talking about it or waiting for someone else.
There are many ways to achieve improvement, but it starts in your team.
How do you improve?
.
.
“I might be wrong, but at least I’ve thought about it…”