5 steps to make continuous process improvement happen

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Imagine if your company was running like clockwork. That would be something. Now imagine that it also learned and changed based on these learnings. That sounds unrealistic. However, this is what ‘continuous process improvement’ is about. It’s the ability to not only be process-driven but to improve everyday. With this article I would like to offer ten steps to get closer to this nirvana.

The process driven company

Let’s stop for a moment to think about what a company that practices continuous process improvement looks like. In short, it focuses on the flow (of the product, the order, the complaint etc.) rather than the organizational hierarchy and functions. To understand this let’s briefly compare the average company with the process-driven one:

To make continuous process improvement happen (even if just for some core processes) you need to start from a solid foundation of business processes that reflect how your company really operate. This is hard enough as most business process experts recognize that “soft and hard” perspectives must meet before BPM creates value:

“The skills and knowledge set that we need in process excellence has really moved on. It is moving more to the “soft” skills where anticipating and making judgements are underpinned by first class business acumen and proximity to your customer, this especially so in regards to an awareness of the markets movements and the continually emerging technology upheavals, part of the reason is that you can’t separate process from the people that carry out the process. So while it might be relatively easy to make changes to a process, it is much more difficult to ensure that people actually abide by the new process once the changes have been made.”

John Macdonald from the large freight forwarding company TNT.

While you may not want to become fully ‘process-driven’ here are the steps to get to a better balance between what matters to managers (the hierarchy) and what matters to customers (the flow). So, without further ado:

The five steps to continuous process improvement

These steps are not fully sequential and some can happen in parallel:

#1 – Change your view of who business processese are made for

“Processes are made as specification for IT”. This is not entirely right. While ERP implementations start many process initiatives, the business process is the foundation. A good business process clearly shows ‘who does what’ and in what sequence. Now this matters to everybody. The real audience is therefore the people doing the work. Processes are guides for work that are USED AT WORK. Only then will regular employees care.

#2 – Establish strong process governance

To get to processes that reflect work as it is done today you need to decentralize ownership. This means moving ownership and mandate to the people that have the knowledge. This means introducing the process owner role. 

However, you can only decentralize and delegate to process owners with a clear understanding of your process hierarchy, which is the architecture of your processes and how they connect to your business model.

#3 – Standardize how you present your processes across the company

With the right mindset and a clear process governance model that shows who owns which processes and how they relate, them you’re ready to define your ‘process blue print’. This is the standard way of presenting your processes to everybody in your colleague. While advanced notation languages such as BPMN 2.0 are useful for ERP projects, they risk alienating regular users. For this you need simpler forms.

#4 – Connect your business processes with your work instructions or SOPs

#5 – Make business processes easy to find and share – in the work situation