The Improvement Initiative Paradigm

Organizations are entities with an endeavor to grow and grow consistently. In order to achieve the goals; organizations need to undertake improvement initiatives. The million dollar question is - which improvement initiative suits the best? Typically the 'flavour of the industry' gets rolled into being the philosophy for organizations improvement initiative. So if it is Lean as the flavour of the industry, then organizations also choose to go the Lean way, if it is Six Sigma then one chooses Six sigma & if it is BPR then one chooses BPR. 

The KEY to the choice of an improvement initiatives not being part of the decision of the choice of the initiative leads to a suboptimal outcome of the improvement initiative.

In my opinion one has broadly three approaches;

a. The Control approach - The management wishes to bring the processes under acceptable limits of variation. So 'controlling' the variables impacting the outcome is the over-riding philosophy. This approach suits when the number of variables are less & the relative rate of change in those is also less. Improvement initiatives based on this approach is suited for 'Command & Control' organization.

b. Incremental but Consistent - Imagine you walking up a stair case. Improvement initiatives of this kind bring about less with every step but cumulatively a large change can happen over a long period. (You finally walk up the stair case, don't you?). Naturally the speed of improvement is a function of the organizations own competencies & skills. These kind of initiatives also need a higher level of maturity of organizational constituents. (half way through the stair case your child may have the alternative to be lifted up in your laps, but you still have to climb by yourself!)

c. Breakthrough - This is radical. This is the kind of initiative which is alluring as it involves outcomes which are large enough for your management to undertake those. A dramatic performance improvement makes organizations undertake those but if enough of assessment has not gone into appreciating organizational preparedness to accept & digest the change, then you are in a Catch 22. you have spend enough of your resources so less than dramatic outcomes can't be tolerated, but you have no chance of reaching there unless you invest more! (e.g. You go from Push based system to Pull based without Process Maturity of operationalising a Pull system)

Choice of the Improvement Initiative Paradigm is a function of your organizations context. And that is largely a function of assessing your PROCESS MATURITY. It is always to be kept under serious consideration before walking the journey as many a times rolling back the initiative is not a choice.