Overview

Chapter Objectives

• How can I contribute to continuous improvement?

The importance of organizations adapting successfully to change is a theme throughout this book. In this final chapter we examine the key role a manager has in continually looking for new ways of working. Management literature contains reference to a need for 'creative dissatisfaction' involving:

• A continual search for better ways of doing things

• Recognition by managers that effective responses to change are the key to survival.

Improvement in context

However, making improvements is not necessarily a straightforward process. As we have shown earlier in this book:

• Ease of making improvements depends on the culture of your organization

• People who are not used to change find it difficult and threatening to cope with

• For change to succeed, managers and particularly senior managers need to give a positive lead

• Even if your organization is geared to adapt to change and improvement, it is often not easy to identify the form that change should take.

At this point, we need to distinguish between change and continuous improvement. Managing change is a radical process. It is likely to cause short-term disruption and upheaval and may require significant inputs of time, money and other resources. It will by definition have a major impact on those involved:

• Their jobs may change or even disappear

• They may need to learn new skills, systems and routines

• The work involved in implementing change will be significant.

Continuous improvement, on the other hand, is an incremental process...