Last week, what caught my attention repeatedly (besides the usual project stress) was the endless focus on continuous improvement and the constant push for change in the business, turning it into a sort of corporate Groundhog Day. We have Deming, Rummler Brache, Six Sigma’s DMAIC, and LEAN; all provide methods to enhance the efficiency and quality of processes, but they often just lead back to the same generic cycle of “more of the same.” My issue with this is that the feedback process is flawed, and what really happens is another set of incremental improvements is pursued as part of the next project, and the one after that, and so on. Once we establish a strict cycle as a methodology, we lose the ability to adapt and change continuously. While the data from measurement and management helps us track and respond to changes, we interpret that information based on the limitations set by the methodology.
At no stage in these cycles is there a step that says, “stop overcomplicating things and just restart from the beginning.” BPM becomes tougher to sell and demonstrate the ROI when you cut cost savings with each project to the point they become trivial and the project ends up being more expensive than the benefits. However, businesses often tend to give up and accept that the process can’t be improved any further, so it must be the best it can be.
We need to teach organisations that it’s not bad practice to throw something away entirely in order to achieve the greatest gains. We need to educate the leadership that the retention of a process out of some nostalgic desire and misty eyed belief it works in today’s context is wrong and that it’s ok to say goodbye to a beloved one and make way for a newborn.
What’s more, we as a discipline need to adopt the same approach, that it’s ok to start over and create methods and tools that are context rich for today’s adaptive and social enterprise, not keep hold of the old ways because they remind us of fuzzy and warm times of old.
The process of process improvement is defunct. Roll a 6 and start again.