Flavor-of-the-month programs cripple the effort to make sustainable improvement. No program begins that way, but many end up that way, because traditional control cultures prevent long-term gains from occurring. When a program does not achieve the desired results, it is typically thought the program was defective and a new one is launched. The overall impact is a disjointed system that consumes a lot of organizational energy to sustain.
Sustainable improvement is possible when work process designs are integrated within an enabling culture and enabling technology tools are carefully chosen. This creates a solid foundation to build on and develop new capability when required, rather than resort to wholesale changes.
Based on our experience, we have seen social change efforts alone yield approximately 20-30% of potential improvement with questionable sustainability. Process design efforts will generate slightly better results with questionable sustainability as well. An integrated approach is compounding because both enabling systems are aligned by design. This has proven to be sutainable, yielding a large portion of what's possible, or in some cases far exceeding expectations.
FOCUS begins by working with you to develop a winning organizational culture to support work process designs that improve productivity, quality and customer relations. We also assist to align support processes and systems. This winning culture reinforces the change effort and promotes sustainability and continued improvement.
