Why improvement initiatives fail

The approach taken was to complete a systematic review of literature, grouping the failure factors through the use of idea maps and affinity diagrams into the core themes reported.

From the review it is evident that continuous improvement initiatives can fail due to a multitude of factors; but that these can be grouped under eight core themes. These themes have been further categorized into a three-stage model. The review was carried out using a selection of high-quality journals, although this may have restricted the findings. The research is also limited to manufacturing, so it is unknown if the same factors impact initiatives in the service or public sectors.

From a practical perspective, the research findings create awareness for organizations of the complexity of organizational change in the form of continuous improvement implementation. The great companies can be described as hedgehogs; the good, but not great, companies can be described as foxes. The fox companies often changed plans and many tried to outsmart the market with short-term initiatives. Their leaders were glamorous and well-known.

The leaders of the great companies had much lower visibility. The great companies typically worked with disciplined implementation for 15 years before they made a significant positive breakthrough in financial performance. They sustained this performance for 15 years and beyond that.

So, how does this relate to reliability and maintenance improvements? In the graph below, I make an attempt to describe the difference between the hedgehog and the fox approaches. The majority of organizations I know can be classified as foxes; the most successful companies are hedgehogs. The fox organizations will try all new tricks. Almost all initiatives were initiated by changes in management. Keeping your employees engaged with your continuous improvement initiative is a common challenge for many organisations and their attitude and level of commitment to the project will ultimately determine how successful it will be over time.

At Triaster, we believe the best way to implement a culture of continuous improvement in your organisation is to ensure that your employees are actively involved in capturing what your business does and encourage them to regularly make suggestions on how things can be improved.

Giving your employees the responsibility to capture and improve what they do will really help to increase their engagement with the project and will continue to drive continuous improvement in your company. If you would like find out how to improve employee engagement and implement a culture of continuous improvement, the following articles may be useful:. Getting the right business management system to support your business needs and strategic objectives is key to the success of any improvement project.

If your main goal is to implement a continuous improvement initiative, then you must make sure that the system will be able to support the project. There are a great many software tools on the market that are dedicated to business improvement but we believe that a dedicated business process management system is the best fit for ensuring a successful continuous improvement project.

A good Business Process Management system will primarily allow you to document and share your business processes with the rest of your organisation but will also have some business analysis capabilities. This functionality will help you to model any changes that have been made to your business processes so that you can make improvements based on data-driven evidence. A process improvement initiative seems straightforward enough.

So, you embark on a plan. Motivated, you and your co-workers get approval to invest time and money in an improvement initiative. A promising methodology is put into motion to improve a process.

Soon, project teams are assembled. Employees are trained to implement the agreed-upon work improvement ideas. At the onset of a process improvement initiative, the solution is often dictated by someone in authority. Sometimes, process owners are assigned to specific steps to improve a process. Other times, key aspects of the process improvement ideas are left with implied ownership. In their game-changing book, Extreme Ownership: How U. It starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard.

Before committing to an improvement plan, first ensure your team is committed to improvement. Then, provide them with the context to see how each individual process relates to one another. Not every process improvement initiative is foolproof. In fact, the undertaking of change itself comes with the expectation to measure progress.