TABLE OF CONTENTS As one of the leaders in your company, you are charged with the responsibility and accountability for establishing how the company will be better this time next year. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "He's wrong there. That's not my responsibility; that's the quality director's role, along with the quality assurance managers." Or maybe your company has a designated focal point for improvement initiatives in the form of a vice president of Lean or a change management director. Maybe you are thinking that person is obviously responsible and accountable for establishing how the company will be better next year.
If that is what you are thinking, then you need to change your thinking fast. Anyone in a leadership role in any company should be constantly looking for ways to do things faster, cheaper, better, and smarter. You do not have the luxury of delegating the responsibility for improvement to someone else who may have a title that seems to be associated with improvement.
So how much better will your company be next year? If your company has a mature continuous improvement program in place, you are going to evaluate where you are and what improvement projects are planned and come up with a pretty good forecast of how much better you will be next year. You are in the driver's seat, and you have...
