I continue to shake my head at how shortsighted some managers can be when it comes to recognizing the value of getting employees engaged in continuous improvement processes. They usually cite two main reasons: 1) Their ideas aren’t worth that much, and 2) Their time is better spent doing their jobs and getting their regular work done. Oh, yeah?

Let’s look at an example from a small construction company I worked with. The process for setting forms on one of their standard storage buildings – something they did about once a week – was taking an average of 4 hours involving 5 workers. 

During one of their routine improvement huddles, a worker suggested a slight adjustment in the way the forms were installed at one point of the construction that reduced the process to 3 ½ hours. It also saved about $125 per project on material costs. No big deal, right?

Let’s look at the numbers:

And that’s just from one idea! With the routine huddle process, their teams came up with a “small” improvement idea like that almost every week. Multiply that single idea by dozens of similar improvements a year, and you start to get the picture of what’s possible.

Former German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, once said, “The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement." If you’d like to learn more about getting your teams involved in systematic continuous improvement processes that produce stunning cumulative results, click on the link below.

6-Week Program for Systematic Continuous Improvement

“Great is the enemy of better”

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