How do you promote continuous improvement in your organization?

Remind your people of your why. Why do we exist as a company? Why do we do what we do? People need a vision to move towards, but it's the values that keep them going. Your values will inform behaviours and attitudes, and ultimately your team will look back at you. Clearly define your vision and values for your team, then go to town at reinforcing them with your behaviours.

For an Enterprise Architect, defining vision and values is like being the author of your organization's epic saga. We craft a compelling narrative that outlines the heroic journey of our company, complete with a noble quest (vision) and a code of honor (values) that guides our intrepid employees through the treacherous landscape of business challenges.

O BPM permite a análise e a reengenharia dos processos existentes, identificando ineficiências e permitindo o direcionamento de esforços e implementação de melhorias contínuas assertivas que impactam positivamente o negócio.

We promote continuous improvement in @tegemea by making it everyone's responsibility to share with management if there's an issue with processes, and come up with solutions. Changes to processes can be relatively easy as we are a small company. Keeping a log of change requests for the more expensive changes that can't be done immediately or is not a priority, and regularly reviewing the log will continue to keep continuous improvement at the forefront of everyone's minds. In larger companies, having change boards, and methods for requesting change would engage staff in continuous improvement

Empowerment is easier said than done. Make a conscious effort on what decisions to delegate to individuals. Once delegated, mangers/leaders should not cease control the moment they dont see it going their way, rather, turn it into a coaching session. Also "your way" may not have been the best way. This is an organic way of introducing improvements.

People will surprise you! One of the best ways to give our teams and employees and opportunity to succeed and thrive, is to empower them. Ask yourself this - what do I need right now to reach the next level in my current position? Then go to town at providing that the people around you. Often times, clear communication. properly mapped out expectations and supporting resources will help set up our teams to take ownership, and increased responsibility.

Implementing a continuous improvement framework for an Enterprise Architect is like being the master builder of a LEGO universe. We provide the colorful bricks of methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen) and the instruction manual (processes) for our team to construct ever-improving models of our organization, snapping together innovation one brick at a time.

The implementation of this step is a way to show employees you value them. Make time to listen to what they say and make time in their schedules and workloads to accommodate this process. Prioritize this as a job responsibility. It is very easy to get lost in producing results and for those under pressure for prolonged periods of time the easy wins become a necessary coping mechanism. This process is not an easy win it is a marathon. Do whatever you have to do to give your employees the space to contribute and highlight the positive changes along the way to the visible ROI. Deep down most employees want to do a good job they just don’t know how sometimes. We need to make the time to show them.

gamify learning. It encourages people to at least start and for some, points and and badges keeps them going. Secondly, encourage learning things way outside their domain, like get coders to learn speech and drama maybe.

Ultimately a job is an agreement so as great as continued and shared learning is, is it a job requirement? Do people need to push forward and share to be considered a valuable employee? Processes need to allow for appreciating human diversity regarding choices and abilities. A steady eddie holding down the fort to allow others to figure out the improvements can be worth their weight in gold.

Modeling healthy failure acceptance is so powerful yet so underutilized. Emotional Intelligence is one of the best skills a person can develop.

The reality is - we often practice and produce what was previously praised. Sometimes the most effective ways to see effective and efficient behaviours spread like wildfire through an organization, is to actually promote and bring attention to those behaviours that are currently flourishing! In the same way - turning failures into learning opportunities isn't just a matter of semantics, but a change of perspective. Every stone can either trip you up, or be a step towards the next level.

Stability and structure are so tempting. I work to keep my values stable while coping with challenges and learning to be more flexible and open-minded. Sometimes I learn a value doesn’t look like what I thought it did in action (“Desired result: not achieved”). Sometimes I learn things that once worked don’t anymore (“Wait… I thought we fixed that!”). Valuable information can be found no matter the path and many times in the unlikeliest of places. Improvement requires a lot of courage, especially since it requires a good, hard look at what is sometimes pretty ugly. Encourage bravery.

Enterprise Architects must also consider the technological underpinnings of continuous improvement. It's like being a mad scientist of productivity - we need to concoct the perfect blend of tools, platforms, and systems that will support our culture of improvement. Without the right technological potions, even the most enthusiastic continuous improvement wizards might find their spells falling flat.

One important aspect to consider is tracking and control your progress. Once you have defined your vision, goals, and plan, your organization must have a mechanism in place to measure progress against what was originally planned so corrective actions can be timely made. Many organizations fail during the implementation of new policies because they don't have a tool to track progress. It is crucial to control your progress along the way.