Embedding Continuous Improvement in your organisation’s culture

Of all the various factors that influence a successful improvement programme, fully engaging the people within the organisation is imperative in order to achieve a sustained business improvement culture. Yet gaining leadership buy-in and employee support is time and again recognised as being a major problem for improvement leaders and professionals.

Last month in Edinburgh, i&i Members hosted a user group meeting devoted to this subject, under the title of “Embedding Continuous Improvement in your organisation’s culture”. Set up as a dedicated, specialist knowledge sharing opportunity, the meeting sought to provide guidance, support and even answers through expert testimonies, workshops and the confidential exchange of tacit knowledge. With the number of attendees restricted to forty ensure the quality of the discussions, every person present was a practitioner. Representatives from companies as diverse as Astra Zeneca, Vodafone, DuPont, Shell, Rolls Royce and many others were there, and all had knowledge to share and problems to solve. The whole focus of this meeting was on matching the knowledge to the problems.

The day began with two experts in the fields of Employee and Leadership engagement sharing their experience with the group. First, Thomas Pfeiffer of DuPont described how, through the implementation of the DuPont Production System, employee mindsets have been changed in order to take the organisation from the reactive ‘fire-fighting’ environments to achieve operational excellence and value creation for customers driven by an empowered workforce, from the ground up.

Second, Ian McMorrough, formally global champion, process improvement and business excellence Rockwell Automation and Dell computers, led an interactive session reviewing the role of leaders in a change programme, detailing the three key elements leaders need to address in order to ensure successful transformation.

It was then that the tacit knowledge exchange began in earnest, initially with a workshop in which several key issues – such as the critical success factors for embedding CI, and what CI means to organisations – were debated within small groups, who then reported on their results which were further debated by the meeting as a whole.

It was then on to the Knowledge Market, an entirely new concept for most people who were present. The idea was, just like introducing an improvement programme, simple in theory but quite difficult to execute in practice. It involved marrying up particular issues with the knowledge of others within the room who had already experienced them, and ensuring that a broad cross-section of issues were attended to. This meant that everyone felt they benefited from the exchange, and despite some minor teething problems, the feedback following the session was positive, despite this being the first time the market had been attempted at an i&i members meeting.

Some of the issues that were discussed included:

• How do I motivate project leaders to complete projects?
• How do you know if you have embedded Continuous Improvement in an organisation? What would you expect to see day-to-day and how do you support it?
• Our DfSS programme is stalling. How can we re-invigorate it and get the buy-in from staff and leadership?
• How do we get to people doing their everyday own improvements without it being project-based?

Feedback from the meeting showed that the attendees deemed the day to be very successful and extremely useful, with virtually everyone there commenting on how they had a lot to take back to their organisation.

The next i&I Members User Group Meeting is November 27th in London. If you would like to know more about attending, please get in touch using the form above.

i&i is the Community of Practice for business improvement and innovation. Business transformation programmes are supported by a combination of online and offline services that enable professional collaboration, peer-to-peer evaluation and knowledge exchange. i&i connects leading organisations through structured formal networks using a proven method for identifying good practice and gaps, measuring performance and opportunities for learning and sharing.

These collaborative networks are effective methods for developing capability and spreading practical know-how in leading organisations. i&i is an enabler of change strategy execution and individual talent development Peer group support networks help users resolve daily business challenges. Access to experts and shared resources help members decrease spending on external support and accelerate learning and problem solving, which in turn helps to increase productivity and reduce time-scales for project completion. Access to other organisations helps i&i members gain competitive headway and avoid introspection.