Improvement Blindness - A Challenging Condition for Organisations
Steve explores the organisation improvement challenge of not seeing problems and improvement opportunities, the causes and remedies.
1. Not finding / recognising / identifying enough CI project needs
2. Identifying so many CI project needs that it’s too difficult to deliver them all
The first of these high-level challenges I’ve termed ‘Improvement blindness’ – seeing 'few improvement opportunities'. I lay claim to this term, as I haven’t seen it used before – it’s partly inspired by Dr. David Hillson’s (The Risk Doctor) explanation of ‘risk blindness’. Improvement blindness is a particularly challenging condition for organizations and relates to a quote attributed to both Taiichi Ohno and Mazaki Imai; “The biggest problem for organizations is having no problems at all”.
The second challenge of having 'many improvement opportunities' is a healthy one, and there are lots of tools and techniques which we can use to prioritise and accelerate improvement projects. Improvement Blindness is a chronic condition that more frequently affects organization leaders and execs, than those employees adding value directly to a product or service. Those close to the work will have frequent reminders of problems, waste, and opportunities for improvement, but sometimes will need some help to open their eyes further to see these more clearly. This is where effective Lean deployment can have an impact – 5S, Standards, 7 Wastes, daily management etc.
What are the causes of Improvement Blindness? I can offer a some potential causes here…
Perception vs reality gap – not being connected to where the work happens... and the problems, and the waste, therefore not grasping the real situation.
Lack of measurement – or measurement and reporting on the wrong things.
Lack of clear strategic priorities – not informing people, employees, where improvement is needed most.
Lack of aspiration – to continuously improve and strive for excellence, either of leadership, their people or both.
Lack of awareness - of what good really looks like and an acceptance of the status-quo.
Willful blindness - the act of individuals deliberately turning a 'blind eye' often due to the personal interest which leads to deception of others – “Everything’s just fine here, go and look somewhere else. Isn’t it great what I’m doing…"
Perhaps you can offer other suggestions about what causes this challenging condition – please get in touch with any ideas. What are the reasons why leaders' perception of problems and waste is often so different from value-adding employees?
The use of the term 'Improvement blindness' is not intended to belittle the impact that sensory deprivation can have on people, but rather to draw parallels with the significant impact it can have on organizations.
How can we uncover these improvement blind spots? Questions are a powerful treatment. One of the core skills for business improvement is asking and answering the right questions. Honest questions may help to alleviate both the symptoms and causes of Improvement blindness - these could be asked of oneself or challenged by a coach. My focus would be with the leadership team first, asking questions such as:
What customer issues do you have? Where are the priority areas for improving customer satisfaction? i.e. Are there any customer-focussed blind spots? Note: In excellent organizations, this includes internal customers in a value-stream, where additional effort may be necessary to gather this VOC insight.
Which current strategic priorities or policy goals are challenging to achieve? Why?
How are your primary processes performing? What are the KPI’s / metrics, and what are the targets? How consistently is the process meeting the targets? Are the targets ambitious enough?
Where are the key process knowledge, capability, or capacity constraints?
Where is the waste in the process? Do you even have standardised processes?
Looking ahead, what are the key risks to sustaining the organization and achieving strategic priorities? Which of these could be understood more clearly leading to action which may reduce or avoid the risk? What about the opportunities on the Risk Register?
Which future strategic priorities may be challenging to achieve? What should be done now to enable achievement of these priorities?
What issues, risks or opportunities have been highlighted from previous CI activity?
What improvement suggestions have been identified from within the process or wider organization which would improve quality and / or efficiency?
Questions of this kind can start to reveal the blind spots where problems, waste and opportunities exist in organizations, and help to alleviate Improvement Blindness in leadership teams.
The organization's improvement capabilities can then be directed towards these priorities… you do have improvement capability in the organization don’t you? Is your improvement capability strong enough to meet the improvement challenges? This too can be improved with expert help.
The ultimate responsibility for proactively challenging and answering these questions on an ongoing basis should lie with organization leaders. This should not need to be prompted by a central quality function or consultant. Many organization leaders will need coaching and support to guide them through this way of thinking initially, and support them on an ongoing basis – enter the experienced expert Improvement Leader, ‘Belt’ or ‘Sensei’ from within or outside the organization.
I’d like to contribute another new term in the field of organization improvement that might help to explain some of the improvement challenges in your organization. If you’ve read my blog describing the ‘Continuous Improvement (CI) Environment’, you’ll already know of my claim to that term too… I’m on a roll!
This new term came about as I was explaining the challenges that organizations face in identifying improvement projects as they strive to improve - these blind spots prevent business improvement progress. I identified two key challenges:
