Why process improvement is important
Process improvement is important for change and survival, but change rarely starts because somebody says the process should improve. Corporate culture represents your readiness and willingness to change before processes can improve. How well does your organization accept new ideas for development and process improvement? How much risk can your organization handle?
Why is process improvement important? The simple answer is that your survival may depend on it, but the useful answer starts with change management, leadership behavior, and whether people are confident enough to try a better way before desperation forces them to move.
What Is Business Process Improvement?
Business process improvement is the deliberate work of changing how an organization gets results. It can mean shortening delays, reducing variation, removing rework, improving training, clarifying objectives, or making a process easier for employees and customers to follow. The work is practical, but the first barrier is often mental: people must believe that a better process is possible.
That is why process improvement can feel like doing the impossible. It was not long ago that people considered flying impossible. Yet today we regularly fly 100-ton aircraft full of 200 people or more. What changed? What is impossible in one paradigm may be routine in another paradigm. To change performance, you must first change your thinking.
Quality tools like lean thinking, Six Sigma, or theory of constraints are useful only when the organization is willing to change the belief system that surrounds the process. You can implement the tools, hold the meetings, and draw the control charts, but if the organization does not believe in quality then you will not sustain the changes needed for success.
If you believe it, then you will see it. Once you see it, you will see it everywhere around you too. Using lean thinking, you can go into an organization and make inventory or time delays disappear. Using Six Sigma, you can astonish customers with reductions in process variation that were never thought possible. Using theory of constraints, you can find profits in processes that you did not know were there.
How Do You Sell Process Improvement?
New ideas follow an adoption curve. A new idea is introduced, grows rapidly toward maturity, and eventually enters decline. Organizations dedicated to process improvement, including Toyota and GE, have historically worked to shorten their Idea Adoption Cycles so they can improve quickly instead of waiting for a crisis.
What drives the Idea Adoption Cycle? There are two primary motivators: process improvement aspiration and desperation. Every organization uses one or the other to sell new process improvement ideas. Which one does your organization choose? Unfortunately, many organizations rely on desperation first and aspiration second.
Fear is a powerful motivator. Threats like “The company is going out of business unless we change” or “You will lose your job unless you change” may get change started. However, unless the organization becomes self-motivated to change, the result is temporary at best.
Are you solving problems or improving the process? How long will it be before things improve and the organization goes back to old habits? You know the story: profits improve, fear subsides, and complacency sets in. That is not a process improvement culture. It is a reaction cycle.
Process improvement aspiration is the key. To create self-motivation, leadership needs to paint a strategic picture of a more positive future. You need everyone’s buy-in. You need the organization to want to improve, to aspire to greater things, and to see improvement as part of the work instead of an interruption to the work.
Without the organization’s buy-in, you will have an empty process improvement program with limited effectiveness and very long Idea Adoption Cycles. The question then becomes practical: how do you shorten the Idea Adoption Cycle? You grease the wheels of change by reducing new idea risk.
How Much Risk Can Your Organization Handle?
Risk is the possibility of loss. It is a function of the likelihood of loss and the impact of that loss, should it occur. Everybody is risk averse to some extent. We all know situations where we prefer to keep what we have now rather than take a chance on gaining something we do not yet understand.
Desperation reduces short-term risk by making the current state feel worse than the change. Change or else, what do you have to lose? That can move people quickly, but it also trains the organization to wait until the pain is obvious. Aspiration works differently. It reduces the perceived risk of new ideas before the crisis arrives.
Fear comes from what people do not know. Confidence comes from what people do know. Desperation is the result of a fearful organization decaying from the status quo, whereas aspiration results from a confident organization built through education and effective training. Harvard Business Review’s discussion of psychological safety and team performance reinforces the same operating reality: people are more willing to speak up, take moderate risks, and learn when they are not punished for honest mistakes.
W. Edwards Deming believed that knowledge is essential for creating value in a system, while fear is destructive to both the system and to individuals. The Deming Institute’s 14 Points for Management includes the direct instruction to drive out fear so people can work effectively for the company. That point matters because fear hides information. Hidden information delays process improvement.
If you let fear govern your organization, change will not take place because the associated risk of failure feels too high. The result is often a desperate act to regain motion. If you let process improvement aspiration guide your organization, change can take place before desperation arrives. You create a self-motivated, self-learning organization that desires to continuously improve, which is what you really want.
How Does Your Leadership Promote Change?
Leadership must clearly understand and communicate the motivation for change. Leaders must get buy-in. Are your visions and goals clearly communicated and understood by everyone in the organization? Ask yourself, “What are we in business to do? How do we get it done?”
The answers from everyone should be clear, consistent, and concise. Without such clarity of purpose, your organization will not be able to transform objectives into results, which means it is not ready for change. Confusion increases risk. Clarity reduces it.
Leaders must determine whether the organization is ready for the disruption and uncertainty that will follow. No change management program occurs without bumps along the way. In fact, you will often see things get worse before they get better. That does not mean the management system is not working. It often means there is garbage in the system that must be worked out first. It is all part of becoming a better manager.
Leaders also need to provide the right incentives to empower employees: rewarding new ideas, providing resources for training, and allowing time for the organization to learn together and make mistakes. Learning occurs through trial and error until you get it right. Even when one group gets it right, everyone else has to get it right at the same time. The whole organization has to come together at the right time and place.
Deming was especially concerned with effective uses of motivation. He emphasized the motivating power of joy, satisfaction, and pride that occurs when everyone contributes to an effective system. He also warned that many typical employee reward programs work against appreciation for a system and hurt, rather than help, morale. Leadership therefore has to promote change through purpose, education, resources, and respect for the system, not only through targets and slogans.
How Do Quality Tools Support Process Improvement Aspirations?
There are many process improvement programs on the market, and everyone has a favorite. Lean thinking, Six Sigma, theory of constraints, quality circles, process mapping, and statistical process control can all be useful. The important question is not whether one tool is universally best. The question is whether the tool fits the problem, the culture, and the organization’s readiness to learn.
Many consultants advocate one improvement method to solve all organizational problems. But will all of these work in any situation? Or are there specific situations better suited for a particular approach? If the organization is not ready to learn, even the best tool becomes a ritual. If the organization is ready, the same tool becomes a way to see the process clearly.
Once you know how the quality trick is done, you realize that the impossible is often an illusion. The real issue is getting others to see past the illusion too. Nothing is impossible once people understand the method, trust the system enough to try, and believe that improvement is part of their work. That is why process improvement aspiration matters. It turns quality from a program into a habit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Is Process Improvement Important?
Process improvement is important because it helps an organization adapt, reduce waste, improve quality, and survive change. Without improvement, old habits return as soon as immediate pressure fades.
What Is Process Improvement Aspiration?
Process improvement aspiration is the organization’s positive desire to improve before desperation forces action. It comes from confidence, education, leadership clarity, and belief in a better future.
How Does Fear Affect Process Improvement?
Fear can start short-term change, but it usually increases silence, risk avoidance, and hidden information. Sustainable process improvement requires confidence and learning, not only threats.
How Can Leaders Promote Process Improvement?
Leaders promote process improvement by communicating goals clearly, reducing risk, supporting training, rewarding useful ideas, and giving employees time to learn from mistakes.
Which Quality Tools Support Process Improvement?
Lean thinking, Six Sigma, theory of constraints, process mapping, and statistical process control can all support process improvement. The right tool depends on the problem, culture, and readiness to learn.
