25 Leadership Behaviors That Create A Culture of Continuous Improvement.pdf

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25 Leadership Behaviors
That Create
A Culture of Continuous
Improvement
A Culture of Continuous Improvement
Is Dependent On Leadership
3 Key Pillars of a Culture of Continuous
Improvement:
Leadership
Technology
Methodology
If any of these three pillars are missing, continuous
improvement efforts will flounder and ultimately have
limited or non-sustainable success. Leaders play a
critically important role in creating the environment in
which continuous improvement happens. By making slight
adjustments to the way they lead in a disciplined and
routine manner, leaders have the ability to affect a major
cultural shift to a culture of continuous improvement.
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25 Leadership Characteristics that
Create a Culture of Continuous
Improvement
1
State your belief in
continuous improvement
A leader needs to be very public in his or her belief that:
- Continuous Improvement is an important part of our strategy as an
organization.
- Everybody can participate in continuous improvement
- Everybody has an important role to play
It must be emphasized that while continuous improvement might not be able to
fix everything – sometimes a practice has to be redesigned from scratch –
everybody has a role to play in the process of ongoing continuous improvement.
2
Explain why continuous improvement
is important
Leaders must convey to all employees the importance of continuous
improvement as it relates to goals and strategy, at the department level and to
the organization as a whole. Progress will naturally arise from frontline staff who
are actively identifying problems or opportunities for improvement. The mark of a
successful culture of continuous improvement is that everybody has a grasp of
the direction and goals of the organization that guides their improvement efforts.
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3
Empower, but be a servant leader
The purpose of continuous improvement is to challenge people to not just come up
with ideas, but to also participate in the testing and evaluation of those ideas. That
said, there is a time and a place for a leader to be a servant leader; there are some
things that frontline staff cannot do on their own, and a leader needs to step in to
help. As such, a leader must master the art of knowing when to delegate versus
when to step in.
Far too often, leaders have erred too much on the side of jumping in to help - to
give people answers and to do it for them. The frontline staff must be allowed to try
things on their own, partly for the goal of developing people. If they are
unsuccessful, a leader may step in to help, but we certainly want to give individuals
the opportunity to participate in change.
4
Participate in continuous improvement
yourself
A leader must go beyond lauding the principles of continuous improvement to
others, and apply them to improve something in his or her own work. Leading by
example is the most effective way to demonstrate that this approach is applicable
and beneficial to everybody at all levels, and to demystify continuous improvement.
This helps leaders understand the details of this process and helps them better
appreciate the improvement work of their employees, allowing them to be better
coaches.
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5
Ask for continuous improvement ideas
and opportunities
It might seem obvious, but to get people to participate in continuous
improvement, leaders must ask for input and ideas. Leaders need to keep
asking, and continuously remind people that their input is valued
And they need to get people think about workplace frustrations they encounter,
how their work could be made more efficient, and near-misses or errors that
occur in their areas
People should be regularly encouraged to improve their work, rather than accept
the status quo. As a leader, you must make a point of continually bringing this up
in conversations and meetings so that people are reminded of it.
6
Don’t require every improvement to be
an event or a project
Many organizations attempting to implement cultures of continuous improvement
are very focused on projects or “Kaizen Events.” Sometimes, these events are
called “Rapid Improvement Events” or “Rapid Process Improvement Workshops.”
While projects and events are critical components of a comprehensive
improvement program at an organization, they are inherently intermittent or episodic
actions, not continuous. As such, it is important to not demand that every idea for
improvement be turned into a formal event or project. Leaders should also
encourage improvements that are smaller and more continuous in nature. This
empowers people to contribute ideas as they see them, improving all scopes of
their work.
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