When I was a wee girl, I always thought New Year’s resolutions were very important!  My problem, however, was that I could never think of any to make.  Eat fewer sweeties?  Nope!  Don’t spend as much time watching Saturday morning cartoons? Yeah right!

As I got older, I started making ‘big’ resolutions.  Spend less money, therefore save more money, learn how to play an instrument, travel to exotic places, learn a new language.  I would start out in earnest and typically give up by mid-February.  Eventually I stopped making them altogether.  I’ve never liked quitting, but you can’t quit what you don’t start, so that worked out well for me. 

It can be really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that making a big change has to happen fast with a noticeable impact, preferably with the result of everyone saying ‘Wow! Well done!’

With time I realised that I was always biting off more than I could chew, and that small, incremental changes might make it easier to stick to something new.

The same can be said of making changes at work.  If you have a process that needs changed or reviewed, it can seem like a mammoth task and can feel overwhelming. Two great reasons for procrastination, right?  Maybe so but using Continuous Improvement (CI) tools can help you to apply those small changes I mentioned earlier, that can lead to that big impact, without overwhelming you.

Benefits

All too often we start changing things without considering if we really should. The best place to start with any change is look at what the potential benefits are.  If there aren’t any, then is it really worth while making changes?  You can learn more about benefits by reading our blog posts about them.

Process Mapping

This is great way to get a complete overview of every step of a current process and then pick out improvements and wastes. This great blog post, A simple Way to Map a Process, outlines a simple way to do this.

The Pareto Principle

Also known as the 80/20 Rule, this principle says that 80% of outputs are the result of 20% of inputs.  You can learn more about this, and other CI tools here.

If you’re wondering, I still don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, because I’m already perfect!  Just kidding, I still like to take on new challenges, I just don’t like the pressure that I put on myself by calling them resolutions.  I like to do it the CI way, small steps leading to big results!

If you’d like to know more about Continuous Improvement, please get in touch at continuous-improvement@strath.ac.uk.