Improvement Planning

 

Beacon Business Consultants can provide an improvement planning service. Thus helping you to improve your processes, be that operationally or otherwise. To succeed in business you need to plan and you need to push forwards. If you plan well you will be likely to execute your improvements more effectively.

 

We use the continuous improvement cycle, shown below:

The Continuous Improvement Cycle

Firstly, we need to analyse the current processes so that we can identify opportunities for improvement within them. Perhaps your team are not acknowledging customer requests in a timely manner.

Secondly, we need to plan, how can we improve this? Here it is best to brainstorm a few options to ensure we have thought of as many eventualities as possible.

Thirdly it is time to execute the plan. We put the improvement into place and monitor its success.

Finally, we need to review the change and make sure that it has been successful and that it has met its objective(s). We may need to tweak elements to ensure maximum improvement has been achieved.

 

That’s done so why it is called continuous?

 

It is called the continuous improvement cycle because it is precisely that…continuous. If you stand still in business, you are going backwards. Therefore, you need to be regularly reviewing your processes to identify opportunities for improvement. It is sometimes quite difficult to review your processes whilst you are using them day-to-day.

They work, they always have…haven’t they?! Well…they perhaps could be better I suppose, but I don’t have the time to think about it now.

That is where Beacon Business Consultants come in.

 

We can offer an independent evaluation of your processes after a short investigation, to help with your improvement planning. We will highlight areas for improvement and discuss with you the most effective one for immediate attention. It is unwise to overhaul too many processes at once. Ultimately improving customer experience is the goal of making changes. If you change too many processes at once it is likely that customer experience will suffer, certainly in the short-term.

This is because it will lead to confusion for your staff, which will affect morale and their acceptance of future changes. You also won’t know how successful any particular change was making it harder to evaluate. Improvement planning doesn’t have to be complicated but having a system (or process) to improve your processes is imperative.

 

Once a change is successfully embedded, we can go back to the initial list. Thus to contemplate if they are all still relevant. Subsequently, we identify which process to prioritise in the next instance. You can see how this becomes a continuous cycle of improvements.

 

If more changes have been identified, we can also add those at this time. We can help you to prioritise the changes for maximum impact. This is important for your customers/clients and your staff.

As so many people are reluctant to change it is important not to make changes that could be seen as, for change’s sake.

Especially in the early days, of improvement planning.

 

Remember that your staff won’t know as much as you do. Therefore they won’t know all the business reasons behind your thinking. Undoubtedly, getting staff buy-in is one of the most important elements of making successful changes.

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make with staff buy-in, is that they assume. They assume that everyone just ‘gets it’. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, EVER! Your staff are not you, they won’t think wholely like you and they aren’t psychic.

To get the best out of your team you need to make sure they understand your thinking.

They need to know why the new process is important to the business.

They need to have faith in you as a leader, not a dictator.

 

Improvement planning needs to be talked about. It needs to be a visual thing. You get a much better response from your staff if they feel that you have taken their views into consideration rather than rail-roading your ideas through.

 

We offer leadership coaching if you really want your business to fly. We can help you to be the leader you didn’t know you could be. Maybe even invest in one of your senior managers. What better way to show you value them as an employee.

 

Contact us for help with your improvement planning. Alternatively, view our other services.

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If you fancy some further reading on the topic of improvement planning – this article may be useful to you.