Building a culture of occasional improvement, maintenance and loss
The phrase ‘we’re building a culture of continuous improvement’ remains relentlessly popular. Is it helpful?
The phrase ‘we’re building a culture of continuous improvement’ remains relentlessly popular. Is it helpful?
We (organisations and people) are told (sold?) that we need grit, a growth mindset, to find our why, make marginal gains, develop atomic habits, eat the frog, be highly effective, not give a f*ck, to be more vulnerable.
If we’re standing still we are falling behind. We hear about Blackberry and Blockbuster and are warned of the perils of stagnation. We must innovate if we want to be an Apple or a Netflix.
Before the big tech companies, Toyota was the gold standard of continuous improvement. We learnt the Japanese word ‘kaisan’ and worked hard “to change and make good”. We trained people in Lean and Six Sigma. Whatever work we did — even in the public sector — we could all be like a successful car manufacturer.
Plan, Do, Check, Act.
Indentify problem. Analyse problem. Develop solution. Implement solution. Analyse results. Standardise solution.
I can’t get better every day. The organisations I’ve worked for couldn’t either.
Stuff happens. You become a parent; the new auditors find an error; a pandemic sends us all home (to learn a language or the guitar!)
Just thinking about the need to continuously improve makes me tired. The books I’ve read, the podcasts I’ve listened to. The information I tried to consume so I could improve. So I could do better.
I don’t need to get better every day.
Some days I move forward. Other days I don’t. I am better at certain things now. Other stuff I am worse at.
I will not be better in 20 years than I am today. I’ll be different.
Organisations will be different. Sometimes better, sometimes not.
We will always need to adapt, adjust and change. The books and podcasts show us the way. They only exist because finding the right path is hard.
Maybe the strategies we write can be kinder to ourselves and our organisations.
We could:
- Focus on occasional improvement in key areas, over continuous improvement in all areas.
- Maintain what is working well. Valuing the relationships, services and even processes that serve us.
- Understand what can be lost and kindly let those things go. It might be a skill that we lose or a service that is no longer helpful.
