To successfully nurture a culture of Lean Continuous Improvement (CI), it’s important to think about mindset. How do you create a working culture that is intrinsically motivated to solve problems one small step at a time?
The importance of mutual respect
Fundamental to Lean Continuous Improvement (CI) is mutual respect. Respecting the people who get the work done, those who deliver the end value to the customer. Analysing the way someone does their job and asking them to change the way work is hard. Your team may at times be exposed to a range of emotions – maybe fear and vulnerability. Creating an environment of trust and empathy, where concerns can be voiced and opinions can be heard is key to success. People will need to know that they are not alone in feeling uncomfortable and that changes will make their jobs easier and help the company as a whole move forwards.
A workplace constitution for Lean Continuous Improvement
One way that we have approached this within our team at Nuffield Technologies is to create a constitution to promote a mindset for continuous improvement. In any workplace things can get tough and occasionally heated. It’s useful to have this to help get quickly back on track when values are starting to get misaligned. Occasionally there can be a risk that important working relationships or creative potential could become damaged.
When everyone does the right things for the right reasons, it helps our team as a whole to move forwards to achieve our core mission. We talk about it, whiteboard it, sometimes tweak it and print it up on our wall as shared culture. We’ve customised it on our slack channels to continually reinforce it.
Do you agree? What would you add to your mindset?
