The adage “if you aren’t moving forward, you’re falling behind” is true more often than not. Regardless of the type of business, all organizations need to improve to survive. The last words uttered by managers in failing organizations are, “We’ve always done it this way.”

The key to long-term viability is continuous improvement. Of course, improving means different things for different types of organizations. The organization’s leaders get to define what improvement means for them.

Define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) has been used to reduce defects and sustain improvement since W. Edwards Deming developed the methodology in the 1950s. DMAIC works particularly well for project goals, and it has been embraced by Six Sigma practitioners and performance improvement professionals alike. The following performance improvement cycle is based on DMAIC and is applicable to an organization rather than an individual employee.

Start by asking five questions

This performance improvement cycle consists of five questions, and as these questions are answered, performance improves. Successful football coaches often employ methods similar to this model, so we’ll use football as our example.

 …