Why Now is the Best Time for Continuous Improvement
Why Now is the Best Time for Continuous Improvement
The future is uncertain—tomorrow, next month, or next year could bring changes we can’t fully predict. What we do know is that our team members are struggling to stay focused amidst challenges and anxieties. Change is inevitable, even if we don’t always know the specifics of when, how, or whom it will impact. Rather than wait, let’s act now. Let’s refocus the team on meaningful and value-driven opportunities to help them emerge stronger from these turbulent times.
It may seem counterintuitive, but this unsettled environment is a golden opportunity to lead the innovation and improvement of processes and systems, and strengthen teams impact. By seizing this moment, we can position teams to thrive and sustain.
Re-Focus Today
If you know us @ Continual Impact, we champion focus—whether it’s aligning resources to close priority gaps, setting strategic and annual goals, or clarifying objectives with specific goals. Without focus, there is often confusion, missed opportunities, and wasted effort on the way to the team's vision. Today, our call for focus has a different emphasis. In the midst of significant change, it’s about focusing on what truly matters now, not in 1, 3, or 5 years. This is your moment to get re-focused and emerge stronger.
Aligning Teams Around Value
Every team, individuals, and organizations exists to provide value through services or products, whether paid or free. Value is defined by the customer. When teams concentrate on delivering and increasing that value, they feel a deeper sense of purpose and struggle less with uncertainty because they know their work matters. By following the path of value, teams delight customers and create a more sustainable team and organization.
Focusing on Providing More Value
Share the Value: Identify the value teams are providing and communicate this with all stakeholders—team members, leaders, customers, and funders. Take it further by sharing measures of success, such as quality, volume, and customer experience metrics.
Identify Pain Points: Use these values and performance measures to uncover activities that consume resources but don’t contribute to creating value, aka Pain Points. Engage the team in identifying these pain points like frustrations, recurring errors, wastes and process performance problems. As the ones closest to the work, team members are uniquely positioned to help identify and provide ideas to resolve these barriers.
Seek Help: Continuous improvement and process improvement methods exist for this purpose. Empirical evidence shows these methods help teams address pain points faster, easier, and with better results.
Strengthening Through Courage and Action
With courage, determination, and a collaborative focus on increasing value while removing barriers, teams can navigate these challenges and emerge stronger than before.
