One of the most dangerous things you can say about a process is, “It’s working just fine.”

Maybe it is. But working as designed and working as well as it could are two very different things.

Processes are usually created to meet the circumstances that existed at the time. Then things change. Customers expect more. Technology opens new possibilities. Staffing changes. New products and services are introduced. Production needs to adjust to meet new demands. On and on.

But the processes keep rolling along because nobody sees anything obviously wrong with them. That’s how yesterday’s best practice can become tomorrow’s obstacle without anyone even noticing it.

Like Gretchen Rubin says in her groundbreaking book, Better Than Before – “Habit is a good servant, but a bad master.”

Systematic Continuous Improvement (SCI) provides a safeguard against that pitfall. One example is our team improvement huddle. When teams meet routinely, in weekly or monthly 60-minute sessions, they don’t have to wait before stepping up and saying, “I think there’s a better way.”

An extra approval can disappear. A report nobody uses can be eliminated. Two steps can become one. A task that takes 30 minutes gets reduced to 10. Multiply small improvements like that across dozens of processes and hundreds of workdays, and the cumulative impact can be enormous.

The question isn’t whether your processes are working. It’s whether they’re still the best way to work.

Want to put a process in place that keeps asking that question? Let’s talk.

Begin your improvement journey today!

Getting better at getting better.