1. Today on the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON)
Thursday, January 12, 2012
http://www.ssonetwork.com/building-and-sustaining-continuous-improvement-program/14272-6-A
Building and Sustaining a Continuous Improvement
Program.
What are the secrets to an effective continual
improvement program? One that not only gets results
quickly, but also stands the test of time? The key lies in
how you develop and position the program, as well as in
employing easy‐to‐use and repeatable techniques that
get results quickly. Here is an implementer’s and a
consultant’s perspective on what actually works – in
principle and in practice.
By Andrew Muras, Sr. Manager, BAE Systems and
Deborah Meyers, CA, CFO, Calgary Board of Education
Introduction
How’s it working for you?
Here’s a challenge – find a strategic plan or business model that doesn’t mention process
improvement or transforming the organization. Lots of luck. Successful businesses and organizations
pride themselves on finding ways to do things better.
For all the emphasis on process improvement, how have we done in practice? Consider these
excerpts from a McKinsey study:
[Improvement] savings are often fleeting…by year four fully 90 percent of costs are right
back where they started. … Sweeping, top‐down cuts…can unintentionally lower the
effectiveness of back‐office services. ... To capitalize on the potential for improvement and
make changes stick, executives must also consider effectiveness…[and] probe the root
causes of performance deficits to learn where lean and other process‐improvement
techniques might be advantageous.
“Why Don’t Back‐Office Efficiency Drives Stick?” Jan 2010, McKinsey Quarterly
But surely this isn’t the case with
tried and true initiatives such as Lean or
Six Sigma? Well, read these recent
comments from the president of the
Center for Excellence in Operations:
Benchmarks indicate that over 80% of Lean & Six Sigma deployments are unsuccessful,
following the same trend of improvement programs over the past three decades. … The
present approaches to Lean Six Sigma and strategic improvement in general are too
slow, too overhead intensive and ineffective at achieving quicker results. … Training the
masses and Belts is the wrong approach in the new economy. …Over ¾’s of individuals
certified as Black Belts are no longer involved in formal improvement initiatives.
Terence Burton “Put the ‘continuous’ back in improvement,” Six Sigma and Process
Excellence, Jan 2011
A recent webinar polled a group of shared services leaders and
>80% stated they do continuous process improvement; only
10% were very satisfied with results, 50% were somewhat
satisfied and the rest were dissatisfied.

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3. organization ‐ vision and goals, and products and services, respectively. Doing the right thing well
concerns the “How” of an organization ‐ continuous improvement. An organization must have
coordinated strategies to address both perspectives. There isn’t much value in effectively delivering the
wrong product/service.
2. Is Continuous Improvement an Initiative or a Culture?
Viewing CI efforts as a strategy to change organizational culture will go much farther than
mandating change as a project. A project has a beginning and an end and is contrary to the concept of
“continuous.” Instead, focus on injecting CI into the organization’s work culture as a pro‐active tactic,
rather than viewing improvement as a reactionary tactic. This can be accomplished directly by:
 using “Train the Trainer” approaches that transfer CI knowledge and tools in‐ house
 developing simple and repeatable CI processes that can be injected into the organization’s
annual management process
3. Do you subscribe to the “Big Bang Theory”?
Big Bang (i.e. transformational or “breakthrough,”) change can produce dramatic results,
especially if the change is made by a single or a few individuals. However, if it requires the sustained
involvement of a large number of people, then Big Bang change may be difficult to sustain.
Consider what happens when improvement is mandated and enforced by a single individual and
that individual leaves. Does the change carry‐on, or does it die, with things reverting back to the old
ways? Typically the latter.
While incremental change may be less dramatic, if it is carried out by many people over time, it
has a far greater chance of lasting success. An incremental approach, leveraged by a culture of CI, will
typically outperform discreet, major change because:
 There is no incentive for implementation delays while folks figure out the “very best way.” Big
Bang change means long periods between change windows. With continuous attention to
change, improvement windows are frequent, so there is room to proceed with interim steps
 Continuous change provides agility and the opportunity to try creative solutions at reasonable
risk levels. Failure doesn’t result in massive expenses if you choose a solution that ultimately
doesn’t work
 The quick feedback loops required in continuous improvement processes inform the next
improvement, ultimately improving overall results far more efficiently than feedback loops on
breakthrough projects with long periods between change windows
 Discrete responses for improvement foster a false sense of stability – implying that you can hold
things constant until it is time to change again. Such an attitude is unrealistic in today’s fast‐
paced environment.
I equate continuous change with taking baby steps and learning to walk before you run.
4. Is CI a body of work or is it embodied within the work?
CI as a body of work is often seen as a separate function with its own objectives and business
plan. If it is embodied within the work of the organization, then every area has a CI aspect to it.
Two dimensions you need to consider:
 Do you hire consultants to do all the work, or do you involve your own people? While external
reviews have their place, they will not contribute to establishing CI within your organization,
unless the consultants are required to pass on their techniques. Staff empowerment and
engagement are key to CI’s success.
 Do you set up a CI Department within your organization structure? On the positive side,
identifying CI within the organizational structure signals its importance and demonstrates
commitment. As a separate department, it will have business plans that demonstrate

4. measurable strategies to meet its goals. On the downside, it may imply that CI is a specialty,
requiring distinct skills, and even more problematic, that CI is the responsibility of that
department only.
Successful CI rests in a culture where every employee is accountable for constantly seeking to
improve how their work is performed, adding value, and contributing to the successful
achievement of the organization’s goals. All you need do is give them the time, techniques and
tools to make it happen.
If you plan to establish a CI Department, focus its objectives on training staff in CI skills and
techniques and developing repeatable processes for use throughout the organization, rather
than solely performing CI reviews themselves.
5. Specialist “hard” skills versus “soft” skills?
While CI is often perceived as requiring special “hard” skills, I suggest that it requires a balance
of both ”hard” and “soft” skills. “Soft skills” are traditionally those people skills or behavioral
competencies having to do with how people relate to each other and manage relationships.
CI involves managing how our work relates to the work of others, the quality and value of our
work, and the contribution we make to meeting our customers’ needs. Even though CI focuses on
“process to process” relationships, soft skills still play a key role. Examples of the soft skills that support
successful CI are: openness to change, questioning the status quo and creative thinking. While CI
techniques and tools (i.e., “hard” skills) are important, I believe it is behavioral competencies that make
a difference. If staff do not have a “CI state of mind” and the related soft skills, having the CI tool kit will
be pointless. A tool kit is an important component of proficiency, but only to the extent that it supports
staff in looking at their work from a CI perspective.
6. Are cost and performance separable?
Private sector organizations have a strong focus on the relationship between cost and
performance, typically with lots of data and metrics. The cost‐performance relationship is instrumental
to operational success, thereby increasing the importance of budgets and costs to all managers.
In the public sector, the relationship of cost and performance is usually weaker. Work is often
not considered a business, but rather a public service and therefore you can expect some resistance as
you introduce the business concepts inherent in CI. I am certainly not saying that public servants aren’t
concerned with costs and performance, but it is important to ensure that understanding cost is seen as
every manager’s responsibility. The communication strategies will be different for each environment.
Regardless of public or private sector focus, cost and performance should be linked for effective
CI implementation in improving value. Getting the organization to look at value in such terms might
seem straight forward, but very often people have never included the impact of processes and
productivity in their value equation. The notion that value can be impacted by either cost or
performance (including both quality and productivity) and the importance of understanding costs may
be a significant shift for those traditionally concentrating solely on service. This may require focused
communication and even careful use of terminology.
The above six points summarize key strategic decisions that you need to consider when
implementing CI within your organization. Once you have dealt with these, here are some of the major
tactics I have found that work best:
 Ensure that you have CEO sponsorship and support and actively leverage this.
 Use a “train the trainer” approach. Engage external consultants to provide training to an
internal team. The internal team is temporary and its objective is to transfer the knowledge and
techniques to the rest of the organization.

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8. Why is it so important to have a clear definition of NVA? Easy. The first time you show results
that quantify x% of a process or budget as NVA, management immediately wants to cut the budget by
that amount. However, this is not what NVA means. Instead NVA points to opportunities for
improvement. Before any budget modifications can be considered, some type of change or
improvement must be implemented.
FastTracking for Continuous Improvement
The triangle (or tetrahedron) of practices identified previously (ABM, Lean, Six Sigma, KM) are all
useful for evaluating and improving organizational processes.
However, I often find myself leading with ABM, particularly for
shared services. Why? Simple. Most shared services issues
and initiatives seem to involve cost (cost reduction, pricing and
chargebacks, service catalogues, etc), and ABM excels at
quantifying costs and linking budgets with processes and
organizational initiatives.
The FastTrack approach we use incorporates elements
of ABM, Lean and Six Sigma (and lays the groundwork for KM)
and has a twenty year history of success. FastTrack itself won’t
be described here, but rather the principles that have made it successful. For those wanting additional
detail on the actual FastTrack process, plus dozens of published case studies and the free web tool, go to
www.fasttrackabm.com.
FastTrack’s principles of success are centered on speed, simplicity, ease‐of‐use, repeatability and
involving the people who do the work. Specifically, six tenets, all of which support and reinforce adult
learning and engagement, include:
 Get results quickly. The entire FastTrack process and reporting period is complete within one to
two weeks.
 Use workshops for employee engagement and building group consensus. FastTrack uses a series
of 3 hour sessions with those who perform the work (i.e., not necessarily the managers) to
develop the data and recommendations.
 Include train‐the‐trainer techniques to build internal expertise. Encourage knowledge transfer
from the experts to those who will be continuing the work of process improvement.
 Focus on actionable results. Data and recommendations should be easy to understand and
provide a straightforward implementation path.
 Incorporate adult
learning techniques.
Facilitated
discussions, rapid &
continual feedback
and ownership of
data – all help in
building group
consensus and aid in
future change
management.
 Limit upfront
investment in systems
or data. For example,
FastTrack’ web‐based
“The people who have been doing
continuous improvement successfully
for some time are the first to
acknowledge the management team of
a company is not where the
improvement ideas come from; it’s
from the operations side, where the
customer value is being added, that the
most effective ideas originate.”
Industry Week, Apr 2008

9. tool is free, easy to learn and allows the project to get up and running quickly.
Again, you don’t have to use the FastTrack process or tools for process improvement. However,
I would encourage you to incorporate these six principles, along with the ideas in the ‘How to Fail/How
to Succeed’ chart, into any continuous improvement project.
Summary
Master the Fundamentals
Most sports coaches can agree on one thing – master and repeat the basic fundamentals if you
want to succeed. Football has blocking and tackling. Baseball has pitching and defense. Golf pros
maintain a steady head. Each sport has their own, with a common theme that most successful players
and organizations are fundamentally sound.
Vince Lombardi, the Wright Brothers, Jack Nicklaus, and countless others – all knew that
mastering the fundamentals breeds success, and this takes both practice and a game plan.
We’ve hopefully provided you the fundamental principles for practicing successful continuous
improvement. As for the game plan? We’ll end this article with the following four steps to consider
when beginning any project:
1. Define the problem you’re trying to solve. Limit to one or two sentences AND identify how
you’ll know if you’re successful.
2. Know your end point. Can you develop a single chart that shows your end product?
3. Keep it simple. You can always add complexity later as needed.
4. Produce quick wins. Nothing builds momentum like getting that first score.
Good luck!
Andrew Muras is Senior Manager of BAE Systems’ Systems Engineering Solutions and is responsible for
developing and implementing performance management, knowledge management and business
solutions for both industry and government organizations. He teaches various courses and workshops in
performance measurement and process analysis techniques across North America. Mr. Muras has
published a book, Process Improvement and Performance Management Made Simple,
www.simpleprocessmgmt.com, and dozens of articles. He can be reached at:
andrew.muras@baesystems.com
Deborah Meyers is CFO for the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) where she implemented a continuous
improvement program. Her past experience also includes CFO for Shared Services at the Province of
British Columbia where she implemented a continuous improvement program using the above principles
and FastTrack that is still operating over eight years later. Ms. Meyers has also run numerous successful
consulting practices. She can be reached at: dlmeyers@cbe.ab.ca.