The dictionary defines “principle” as “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or a chain of reasoning. Principles help us see the positive and negative results of our actions. They enable us to make smarter decisions about what we choose to do.

In business, when leaders, managers, and team members understand the principles of operational excellence, they are better able to align systems and reward ideal behavior. This creates a sustainable culture of improvement in which achieving the desired results is standard, rather than exceptional.

Last month, I spent a couple of days in Dallas at the 2019 Continuous Improvement Printing Conference, and it was a great event. They were celebrating their 30th Anniversary as a conference, which was a really cool milestone to be a part of.

I frequently speak with consultants looking to see how they can improve the services that they provide to their clients. They often mention the same problems: too much time building and implementing their systems, difficulty tracking and visualizing excel projects, and reporting the impact of their work. Ditch spreadsheets, SharePoint sites, homegrown systems. We have the perfect solution.

Introducing the KaiNexus Partner Program!

The KaiNexus Partner Program has been designed from the ground up to help make consultants more efficient by using KaiNexus continuous improvement software. You have knowledge about how to build a culture of continuous improvement and KaiNexus has knowledge of how to use technology to support it. Combine forces to make your engagement more effective than ever!

While many people associate the Lean business methodology primarily with manufacturing, it is an ideal approach in the construction industry. Construction projects are complex. They involve many disciplines, require the movement of people and materials, they are expensive, and they involve significant risk. We can’t think of a situation more perfect for Lean. Lean construction software isn’t a requirement for leveraging the approach which seeks to respect workers, eliminate waste, and continuously improve. However, implementing a platform to support Lean puts construction firms in the best position to solve problems, maximize profits, and sustain growth. Here are some of the reasons why.

Companies dedicated to the practice of continuous improvement invest a lot of time and resources into training their employees and creating a culture centered around positive change. One way to make this easier and to smooth the path to improvement is to hire people who already have the right mindset.

Bringing up continuous improvement during the initial interview and throughout the hiring process lets the applicant know how important it is to your organization, and helps you weed out people who will be resistant to feedback and change.

If you ask the right questions, you can get a pretty good idea of whether the candidate is likely to be a good fit in your improvement culture and someone that the rest of the team will gladly welcome.

Standard work is the documented and current best way to do a particular task, procedure or process. Workers develop the standard and follow it until an improvement process results in a new standard. Standard work ensures that results are consistent and forms the foundation upon which improvements are made. Leader standard work applies this same concept to the task of driving Lean thinking and behavior throughout the organization.

Many organizations have little in the way of documented best practices for leaders. Supervisors, managers, and directors are left with only their job description to guide their daily activities. Given this reality, it's not surprising that many fail to start, spread, and sustain the continuous improvement mindset.

The alternative is leader standard work which is a set of actions, tools, and behaviors that are incorporated into the daily activities of leaders at all levels. Like the standard work for any process, leader standard work must be documented, practiced consistently, and changed only with reflection and experimentation.

Although the specifics of leader standard work vary across organizations, some practices are universally useful and commonly included.

Organizations that embrace the continuous improvement approach to business have many great tools and techniques from which to choose. Some organizations use them as part of a structured methodology like Lean, Six Sigma, or Toyota Kata. Others leverage them on their own. Every organization has unique needs and will need to adjust each method for their own environment, but the most popular techniques are flexible enough to be used by organizations of every size and in every industry.

This post is the second in our series about Kaizen Event Templates. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, check out our guide to the ultimate pre-event template. We don’t want to sound like a broken record, but the success of a Kaizen event is highly correlated to the amount of effort put into planning and preparation. Our pre-event template will help.

You’ll also want a template to use when the big day arrives. Our clients who get the most from Kaizen events use a standard template so that all of the right information is captured and can be shared in a familiar format. Kaizen software supports this by allowing users to create and disseminate their event templates.

You will probably have some unique needs or elements to capture, but here are the basics for a useful and simple Kaizen event template.

Most organizations that practice continuous improvement whether within a business methodology like Lean or Six Sigma or independently leverage either the PDSA or DMAIC structured improvement cycle. Some organizations use both. PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) is perfect for relatively simple, iterative improvement work. DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) is ideal for data-driven, more complex initiatives. (This post explains more about when to use each approach.)

Regardless of which continuous improvement cycle is right for your current challenge, software can accelerate the speed to success, ensure that improvement is long lasting , and help you measure the results of the effort. Here’s how it helps at each state of both cycles.