Continuous Improvement

Could use opinions on another example of the topic keeping SCRAP focused and thin as possible without losing something essential. Improvement. Currently, the book provides a VERY minimal improvement loop in case the reader doesn’t have/do such a thing.

For those that already have such a thing, or even a strong opinion, I want them to think about it as an interface they can use their existing improvement approach to fill. This way we don’t get distracted by model debates- if you have an opinion about how to do iterative continuous improvement, and it does some minimal things, use yours! SCRAP slides right in… Here is some language.

SCRAP provides a minimal improvement loop. You don’t need to use it. If you already have an improvement approach that works for you, use yours—but it must provide the essential functions of identifying what to improve, designing how you’ll intervene and evaluate the result, acting, and learning from what happens.

Those four functions become something close to an interface contract:

Determine what needs to change or improve and why.

Decide what you will do and how you will learn from it: the intervention or experiment, expected outcome or hypothesis, and means of evaluating what happens.

Carry out the change sufficiently to generate meaningful evidence.

Evaluate what happened and what it means, including whether the results challenge not only the intervention but the assumptions, goals, or reasoning behind it; then use that learning to inform what happens next.

Use ours or use yours. What matters isn’t the name of the improvement approach, but whether it does the necessary work.

PDCA, DMAIC, OODA, Build-Measure-Learn, Lean Kata—or something of your own design—are all approaches that SCRAP can fit in to. But adopting the name of an improvement approach doesn’t guarantee that you’ve implemented the capabilities SCRAP requires.

Thoughts/comments/concerns? Again, this is about the book, not necessarily other works that may be produced.

@TLooy @Richard @SeanWBuck this is an area of special experience for y’all so any comments would be awesome.

In my experience I have found the thinnest AND most effective approach to continuous improvement comes from Nancy Kline’s book Time to Think.

Time to Think is not about you finding time to think but about you as a leader creating time and space for others to think deeply.

There is no agenda or specific predesired outcome in time to think. It is about giving others the opportunity to think deeply, to Observe and Orient/Reorient. (Sorry about throwing in the OODA loop reference, I couldn’t resist.)

Let me share an example of Time to Think from the greatest sales pitch I ever heard:

2 CEOs are talking at a bar - the first CEO is the CEO of a product company, the other is the CEO of a consultancy I used to work for. The first CEO went on and on about his company and the improvements he was implementing. (My guess is that he was trying to convince my CEO that he didn’t need his company’s services.) After several minutes of truly listening for understanding, my CEO asked:

“So, how’s that working out for you?”

Let me break this down:

“So…”: my CEO indicated that he was listening and waiting to respond.

“…how’s that working out..”: this was a genuine question, not a leading question. He genuinely wanted to know. That intent came across clearly in the tone of how he asked.

“…for you?”: my CEO made it personal. This had the first CEO reflect more deeply than just on status reports. It got him to reflect on his frustrations regarding the lack of progress. The conversation became real.

I don’t know what the sales ‘close’ was in this conversation but it probably related to helping the first CEO with agility on the product delivery process. But if we were to ‘close’ what SCRAP, what would that look like? (I have some thoughts but this reply is getting a little long…)

That is thinner so an option to do this makes sense. Maybe too thin for some companies that wouldn’t know how to do this well?

I spoke with George @GeorgeSchlitz over the phone yesterday about this so not all my thoughts got included in this thread. Sorry about that.

Here are some additional thoughts:

Time to Think is a coaching skill that should be a foundational piece of SCRAP awareness training.

It can easily be incorporated into any of the systems thinking processes George listed:

  • The orientation/reorientation of OODA
  • The Orientation and Decision loop analysis of OODA
  • The Learning phase of Build Measure Learn
  • The Check phase of PDCA
  • Kaizen within Lean