Continuous improvement consists of identifying and resolving the irritants encountered in your organisation on a daily basis. The aim of this approach is of course to make your organisation more efficient. But to successfully implement this type of approach, you will need the right techniques and tools. Here are the best tools for continuous improvement.
Why use tools for continuous improvement?
You will need to structure continuous improvement to make it effective. The right tools will allow you to organise your process and involve the right people at the right time.
These methods and tools for continuous improvement will enable you toinvolve the field teams, organise their participation, develop and manage the projects being rolled out.
The collective intelligence platform: a top tool for continuous improvement
We see this with many of our clients: the use of a collective intelligence platform andcollaborative innovation is ideal for developing and steering continuous improvement.
This type of tool has several advantages.
Firstly, it is all-in-one
In fact, you will be able to create a space entirely dedicated to continuous improvement. On this space, you will be able to manage your entire process.
- Gathering of irritants in the field, using feedback features or exchange forums.
- Proposal of ideas and good practices to be deployed throughout the teams. In a logic ofcollaborative innovationIn a logic of 'learning by doing', you will allow everyone to propose a new idea or a solution that they may have already tested, either alone or in a team.
- Facilitation of ideas and solutions. You will be able to lead ideation and experimentation workshops, in person or remotely. These will be followed on your platform until prototyping and industrialisation, to keep all your employees involved in the process.
Secondly, it provides a strong incentive for continuous improvement
It is not enough to ask your employees to report irritants and to find instant solutions. If you are content with this, you risk turning into a complaints bureau. On the contrary, it is essential todirect your approach towards something constructive.
To do this, a collective intelligence platform will have functionalities that will allow you to help your employees understand the irritants and the context you are going through. For example :
- MOOCs through which you can raise awareness of pre-identified issues among your employees
- A space for sharing intelligence
- Forums for exchange and debate
- Different workshop facilitation spaces to take the time to guide your employees in the emergence of irritants and solutions
- Feedback spaces, with polls, surveys or interactivity that will stimulate employee involvement in the process
Trello, the simple and efficient Kanban tool
Among the tools for continuous improvement, a Kanban tool such as Trello can be very useful. It will allow you to visualise your continuous improvement processes. Indeed, if you lack visibility on these processes, you will have more difficulties to set up an efficient system.
Visualising your continuous improvement system is very simple. You can define a monitoring table. Each column corresponds to a step in your continuous improvement monitoring process. And each card will then correspond to a project, an idea or a good practice to be generalised. You can then drag the cards from one column to another.
A basic table consists of 3 columns:
- Projects submitted
- Under experimentation or study
- Done / deployed
But it is up to you to define the steps specific to your organisation.
Each project can contain a list of tasks, which you can assign to certain people. So a Kanban tool like Trello really allows you to deal with continuous improvement from a project management perspective.
The 5 Whys method
After two tools for continuous improvement, we wanted to give you what is more of a method, to be used in addition to the software solutions.
The 5 Whys are therefore a method of reflection to find solutions to irritants, in the service of continuous improvement. It allows teams to dig into the heart of the irritant to understand the context, the ins and outs of it. It then becomes easier to find solutions.
To use this method, start by stating the irritant you have identified. Then, 5 times in a row, ask yourself "why", until the deep roots of the problem emerge. For example:
The problem could be: a process is slow.
Why? Because several teams are involved in the validation, so the subjects are moved from one team to another
Why is this? Because no one is in charge of this process, i.e. it is everyone's responsibility and no one's
Why? Because we never named that person
Why? Because... we may never have taken the time to do it!
Thus, in order to find a solution to the irritant, the 5 Whys method easily and quickly brought to light a problem of governance in the process. It is therefore a first track of solution that emerges naturally, and which could advance continuous improvement!
