Why Control and Continuous Improvement Are Critical to Your Business

Control and Continuous Improvement are Critical!

As we continue our series on the IMPACT Methodology™ for small business development, the fifth step focuses on control and continuous improvement. During the action phase, you implemented a new product or service offering, a new system, a new process, or maybe a new person. It’s important to establish controls for that new development to make sure it is stable before engaging in the continuous improvement effort. You must inspect what you expect. It’s just like raising a small child. You don’t take your eyes off them until you know that they are safe and / or stable otherwise there could be a problem that will hijack your focus.

Once the new implementation is stable it’s time to start thinking about continuous improvement. Let’s start by looking at each component. First, “Continuous”, not a one-time effort. It is critical to establish and maintain a culture that values ongoing innovation, refinement and collaboration. Second, “Improvement”. Improvements should always add value either in profitability, efficiency, or effectiveness.

Continuous improvement can be incredibly beneficial for small businesses. Here are some key advantages:

• Improve Efficiency and Productivity - Through continuous refining processes, your businesses can optimize resources and reduce waste and errors leading to lower operating costs.

• Improve Quality and Competitive Advantages – By evaluating market changes, feedback from customers, and fostering innovation, your businesses can stay ahead of your competition by making responsive iterative enhancement releases and regularly assessing opportunities to make quality driven improvements to products and services.

• Boost team morale through engagement in process and product improvements. It helps them feel connected, valued, and invested in the success of the product or service your company delivers.

• Better Decision Making – Establishing a structured approach to problem solving through performance and feedback data collection enables your business to make more informed, data driven decisions.

There are two quotes that come to mind that generate approaches to continuous improvement. The first is, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Stability is paramount to long-term success, however if you have a savings account during a period of inflation and you don’t touch it, the money is actually losing value. You may have business processes and tools that served you in the past but are they still serving you well? Will they be able to serve you and meet your needs in the future?

Technology is always quickly evolving. For example, many businesses used to have paper documents used to collect information. Once the information was gathered, it would be taken back to the home office to be manually entered into a system. With the development of the mobile phone, tablets and cellular data service that can be used as a hotspot, businesses can now collect data on a digital device at the point of action in the process eliminating the redundant data entry and time delay which makes a business much more efficient. However, to be effective, it requires the business to look at how they can execute a process in a different way and to evolve with that change. 

The second quote is “Iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”. This quote highlights that challenges help to sharpen us if we are willing to learn from them. Not every process, tool, or person that we put in place in our business is perfect and they will face challenges. They will learn lessons from those challenges which will sharpen and refine them into a better version of themselves. Maybe the person was a good fit for the role, or the implementation went well, but there’s still a mindset of continual improvement that says how could I do that better next time? How could I do that at a lower cost? How could I do that more efficiently? These questions are the foundation of continuous improvement programs. They foster creative thought, reflection, and research.

Refinement can help increase value in your product or service. For example, if I take a 1-pound bar of iron that costs $100 and I transform that bar of iron into a horseshoe valued at $250, I have increased the value through the transformation 250%. If I take the same bar of iron and I refine it down to a small piece used in a microchip, the microchip is now worth $500 per piece. I can produce 10,000 pieces from the single bar of iron, which will generate over $5 million in value, an increase of 50,000% for the original $100 bar of iron. Be creative, inspect your products and services, and ask yourself, “How can I continue to refine and transform my business by incorporating innovation to add exponential value to my product, service, or business process?

Fostering a culture of continuous improvement enables you to create a dynamic and responsive environment that drives success and growth, but it does come with some challenges that you need to anticipate and address. These could include:

• Resistance to change
• Lack of alignment between teams or departments
• Organizational silos generated by poor communication and collaboration
• Limited Resources including time, money, tools, and talent
• Insufficient training
• Short-term focus verses seeing the big picture
• Overcoming complacency
• Measuring progress and impact of adjustments
• Sustaining momentum

You will need to have strong leadership, clear communication, and commitment to maintaining the culture, remembering the benefits, and nurturing the mindset required to sustain a successful continuous improvement culture within your business.

Implementing continuous improvement doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Have you considered any specific areas in your business where you might apply continuous improvement? Start with small, manageable changes that can lead to significant long-term benefits. Stay committed and consistent!

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