Volume 1, Issue 8

July 20, 2010

The Nature of Continuous Improvement

When improvement means something is going up - profit, free time, ease of effort - does that mean that maintaining the gains means defying the law of gravity?  It may help shed some light on why resolutions are so difficult.

Besides the law of gravity, we learn, experience and are told so many rules, that by the time we are faced with "thinking out of the box", we can’t see beyond it.  Knowing which rules to break, and how, is the nature of continuous improvement, which can take the guise of innovation, excellence, as well as the traditionally accepted notion of incremental advances.

Rules to Break for Breakthroughs

Baby steps:  While small changes are easier to manage, thinking big taps into a wave of motivation and inspiration, as well as liberation from preconceived notions, similar to the driving force that makes hot water freeze faster than cold.

Grass is never greener: When this might have not been noticeable when travel was much slower, thanks to the human nature of not noticing small changes, flight allows anyone to see that indeed the landscape does have different shades.  Choice has never been so broad and accessible, or improvement so open to interpretation.

Customer Satisfaction: Quality gurus talk of getting the voice of the customer, and P&G is an excellent example, involving customers early and deeply in new product innovation.  What about Apple, who is widely known to seek only Steve Job’s voice in development, and hears nothing but accolades after product launch?

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it: Last newsletter addressed the fact that measurements easily mislead and provide false comfort, not guaranteeing a path to improvement.  Maybe it’s more like if you can’t accept it, you can’t improve it.

Testing for Truth

Determining the validity in rules is a little easier by testing for constancy against changing variation.  If you change an aspect of variation, does the rule hold?  If not, it may not be a rule.  It is often said that exceptions make the rule, but exceptions also break the rule.

Rules are hypotheses.  Scientifically, proof is much more difficult than disproof, although it is human nature to believe otherwise.  To that point, awareness is required in any test for the truth, which is also exactly the point - to achieve a greater awareness.

Like tumblers of a lock, the six categories of variation provide a starting place to look at rules in a different light, showing where a closer look is warranted.

Man: If someone else has a different rule or provides a different answer to the question of concern, it is quite possible that the rule in question is not a rule.

Machine:  Similar to the grass is greener argument, in changing vantage points, would the use of a different machine change the answer?  For some things that are just “not possible” could it be that the machine to do it just doesn’t exist yet?

Method: Changing how things are done can be the easiest way to accomplish breakthroughs beyond the rules of experience.

Measurement:  When trying to lose weight, numbers make a difference, be they the ones on the scale, the tape, or the label – and how they each tell a different story.  When more data and ways to measure are more possible than ever, where is the truth?

Material:  Everyone can walk on water in February in Canada.  Not only do materials change, but properties change as well.  Be good or you will get coal in your stocking for Christmas.  Not a bad deal when it is pressurized and given a new name - diamond.

Mother Nature:  When time changes, it almost seems as if it takes everything with it.  What was true in the past such as the sun revolving around the earth and no one would want a personal computer are laughable today.  What will the next generation laugh about?

The Bottom Line

Continuous improvement is in finding and breaking rules that have outgrown their value.