A culture of continuous improvement will benefit your business

Remember, Lean is about the elimination of waste. Kaizen- or continuous improvement- is about improving every day using the practical wisdom of people who do the work.

However! Continuous improvement is not a to-do list

It’s not a to-do list for managers, or team leaders or supervisors or owners of businesses, right? A continuous improvement approach to operating is one that you want to encourage your teams to take all the time because they’re the people who do the work. And you’re just asking them to eliminate the wastes out of the business and make their life easier while still being efficient and effective at what they do.

So, to do that, of course, I can give you a lot of advice on the tools and things you need

But honestly, 80% of the effort is in driving a culture change in your business to think like that. And leadership is very important in driving culture change. If you’re not walking the talk, as a leader, it’s very hard for other people to trust you and come on the journey with you. And remember Trust =Predictability (Have a look here). And Predictability is made by your Values and your Competence. If any of those items in the equation are not aligned, you will have challenges.

So always approach improvement as an opportunity to chase waste out of the business

The eight wastes are super important as a focus. If you can get your teams to start pointing out waste and making lists of ideas to eliminate waste in their day, then you can help them by facilitating the continuous improvement discussion and problem-solving sessions to actually eliminate those wastes.

All too often the people who do the work are in the best position to identify waste

They deal with it, because these are the things that frustrate them, or tire them out, or make their job a little unsafe. When you listen, as a leader, and help them to remove roadblocks by facilitating their problem solving, and by assisting them in delegating the actions that need to be taken in eliminating the waste, you are supporting the continuous improvement process.

So this is one of the best things you can do as a leader

You need to be very careful as a leader that you’re not the person fixing the problem all the time. If it is always coming down to you, then there’s a level of dependency that your team will have on you. A dependency that is not going to benefit anybody.

Reach out if you want to know more about how to create a culture of the continuous environment in your workplace.

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Respect,

Daniel.