Please describe a continuous improvement or innovation that either a) you have been a part of, and/or b) you took advantage of in your job. Then, answer these questions:

What was the driver for the change?

Was it well executed? Explain.

Did the improvement and/or innovation improve business operations somehow?

Lecture on continuous improvement, let's first talk about innovation versus improvement.

Innovation vs. Improvement...do you know the difference?

Improvement is evolutionary and innovation is revolutionary. Improvements are "small, incremental changes that make a business's goods or services better in some way, whether by reducing cost, increasing value, improving safety, or enhancing quality or satisfaction. They're typically low-cost, low-risk ideas that can be implemented by the people doing the work all day, every day" (KaiNexus, para.2).

Innovation is "ground-breaking, far-reaching, significant changes to business processes that serve the purpose of improving the organization in wide swaths. Because they are generally more impactful, innovations are typically more difficult to implement; they require more analysis before they can get approval from leadership, which creates a greater barrier to implementation" (para.4).

Here are some examples:

Improvement:

Innovation:

Developing an efficient user interface for a mobile banking app.

Developing the capability to deposit paper checks using a mobile banking app.Improvement:

Innovation: Creating more fuel efficient internal combustion engines

Creating the hybrid electric engineImprovement:

Innovation: Creating a computer network to manage a global supply chain

Utilizing the Internet of Things to manage a global supply chain

Okay, now that you understand the difference, let's talk more about improvement and more specifically, continuous improvement and why it's critical to business innovation.

According to Millard, "there are a host of methodologies that businesses use to bring structure to the process of identifying and acting upon opportunities for improvement. You may be familiar with Six Sigma , Kaizen , Lean, the Toyota Production System , and others. The Lean Enterprise Institute is dedicated to teaching lean principles.

Although these methodologies differ, the heart of each of them is the continuous improvement model. The continuous improvement model reflects the idea that organizations should undertake incremental improvements to services, products, and processes" (2014, para.1-2).

Millard (2014, para.3-16) stated that Continuous Improvement Models are each guided by six core principles:

Principle 1: Improvements are based on small changes, not major paradigm shifts or new inventions

This concept is important because large changes often feel frightening and destabilizing to organizations. By approaching change in small, incremental steps, the continuous improvement model reduces the fear factor and increases speed to improvement. When following this principle, the organization does not need to wait for a strategic shift or a new product release to begin to advance.

Principle 2: Ideas come from employees

The continuous improvement model relies on employees, not top management, to identify opportunities for improvement. This bottom-up improvement is effective because employees are closest to the problems, and thus better equipped to solve them.

When thinking of these two principles, consider the value of engaging your staff. If you were to ask everyone in the organization for ideas to create a new product line or revolutionize the way they care for their patients, you're not going to get anything; staff are focused on their own day-to-day work. They (understandably) can't come up with monumental ideas at the drop of a hat!

Instead, ask people what improvement they could make that would save them 5 minutes a day. Then empower them to implement that improvement, and spread it to everyone else in the organization doing the same process. In this way, you can take a small idea that anyone could come up with and drive a big impact. For example, say get one idea from ten employees, each of which saves them five minutes per day.

That's ten ideas. Share all ten of those improvements with one hundred other employees, so that every one of them is now saving fifty minutes per day (10 ideas x 5 minutes each).

Principle 3 - Incremental improvements are typically inexpensive to implement

Employees tend to focus on small changes that can be accomplished without a lot of expense. In fact, many ideas from employees involve eliminating processes, rather than adding them, which is an excellent way to be sure that every activity adds some value to the customer and reduces wasted effort.

Principle 4 - Employees take ownership and are accountable for improvement

Getting people to change the way they've always done things is hard. Do you know what makes it easier? Rolling out changes that originated from the front lines. When people come up with the ideas to improve their own work, they intrinsically see the value of the changes.

Knowing that improvements come from their peers inspires faith in the necessity of the changes much more so than does a decree from senior leadership who has never actually done the process in question.

Because the continuous improvement model relies on employees for ideas for improvement, they become more invested in the outcome of the change, and employee engagement increases. This increases the chance of successful, sustainable improvement.

Principle 5 - Improvement is reflective

Constant feedback is an important aspect of the continuous improvement model. Open communication during every phase of executing an improvement is critical to both the final results of the improvement and to the maintenance of employee engagement.

Principle 6 - Improvement is measurable and potentially repeatable

It is not enough to simply make a change and call it an improvement. To achieve real improvement, the impact of change must be measured.

This makes it possible to determine if the change can be applied successfully to other problems. Proving positive ROI also helps keep the organization aligned around improvement.

Reference: Millard, M. (28 July 2014). 6 Principles of the Continuous Improvement Model. KaiNexus [blog post].