Establishing a long-term improvement effort is one of the best investments an organization can make. This is because almost all industries and businesses today are in, or facing, a major digital transformation where business models, services, and working methods are rapidly changing. To succeed in the transition, and to keep up with the development, it’s important to have an organizational culture that accepts continuous improvements.

However, a culture of improvement takes time, patience, and hard work to take hold. Improvement initiatives often benefit from being implemented in smaller steps so the results will ultimately improve the quality of an organization. In fact, almost all improvement efforts encounter obstacles and challenges along the way. For those responsible for an improvement initiative, it’s particularly important to be aware of common obstacles and how to avoid them so the work doesn’t come to a standstill.

Common obstacles to improvement, and how to avoid them

It’s difficult, perhaps even impossible, to succeed in improvement work without strategic improvement concepts and well-considered methods and tools that are adapted to the individual organization. However, even when these criteria are met, it’s often difficult to predict what obstacles an organization might encounter. However, some are more common than others.

All or nothing syndrome

Let’s say you decide to tackle improvement and set your ambitions high. You start many simultaneous improvement initiatives and think you’re going “all in.” In the beginning, this generates quick results. But the pace quickly slows down as major effects of improvements often come with a delay. The result can be that employees lose faith in the initiatives and turn their attention to something else.

To create a sustainable improvement effort, invest in continuity and start a reasonable number of simultaneous activities. Focus on completing each activity and set reasonable and beneficial milestones that you recognize and celebrate when they’re achieved. This joint effort will provide a better basis for tackling multiple improvements.

(CANEA has 30 years of experience in improvement work, and we offer a number of comprehensive trainings in several areas for more than 4,000 people every year.)

It’s much more common than you might think for teams or departments in an organization to have an inside-out perspective. This means that teams essentially only look at their own work, rather than considering the organization as a whole. The risk with silo-based work is that the different parts of the organization believe it’s their own work that adds value. The same applies to improvement initiatives where each team focuses only on optimizing their part without considering the whole.

Silo-based teams

Significant resources may be spent on the wrong things. To prevent silos, strategic actions and clear guidelines are important. They include mapping and analyzing flows and processes to understand how the business can work better and more coherently.

Here, training and cross-functional improvement teams are two important parts of the work. But to achieve full capacity, IT support is often required. CANEA ONE is a comprehensive business support that helps you gather, drive, and find the right focus in the improvement work.

Change requires leaders, not managers. An improvement solely delegated from the top probably won’t result in a good end result. A leader, on the other hand, can act as a guide for everyone involved. If the person responsible for the improvement believes in it and leads by example, it will rub off on the rest of the employees. A leader must be present, supportive, and provide the right conditions in terms of time and resources.

When an organization implements a change, there’s often resistance. It’s possible to quickly identify who in an organization doesn’t want to jump on the bandwagon and embrace the improvement. This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in improvement work, but it’s also a factor that can be avoided with relatively little effort.

Tips for successful improvement

With these insights into the most common obstacles on an improvement journey and how to deal with them, here’s some parting advice on what you should consider to succeed:
• Prioritize improvement efforts in the organization with clear directions and objectives.
• Use a visual process and flow focus throughout the entire business value chain.
• Gain an understanding of the concepts and methods that create momentum and development.
• Engage employees—make them feel involved and drive development.
• Put together cross-functional teams with a balance between strategic and operational activities.
• Use digital support to clarify objectives, initiatives, processes, and improvements, and create better structure, compliance, and overview.

Published by CANEA.