The Status Quo is your enemy. Getting comfortable and relaxed are obstacles to achieving your goals. Improvement has to be a way of life; it has to be how you think and how you approach your work every day. Without improvement and without adapting to change you will be left behind. Everything your organization does has to be on the table to be improved, adapted, updated and made better.
Improvement begins with you the leader. Your attitude to grow people will affect your team into the far future. Try new ways to build your business and ensure you are experimenting and testing new ways; however, ensure you balance improvement with some level of stability so you don’t create uncertainty with too much change too quickly.
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” –Ben Franklin
- Challenge every practice, technique, and procedure. Ensure your organization has adapted the most current and tested methods. Check the math and check the models. Then, bring the most accurate, but simple methods. Also, shake up everyday briefings so that leaders at all levels have the correct information to do their jobs. Do you have a standard brief that is used every business cycle? Change it. Make it better. Remove topics that add no value. Add new topics that may be affecting your business cycle.
- Leverage technology. Take advantage of the technology you already have and look for new technology to improve your business.
- Be open and available to subordinates. Your team members must be able to approach you and each other without being chastised for bringing new ideas and suggestions, especially to fix something. Your team members and many other people in your organization know a lot about what needs to be changed. Every day they live in frustration with poor and outdated procedures, but they get their work done anyway.
- Take risks. Be bold and daring to make your organization better. Underwrite your subordinates’ ability to take risks. Once they know you will support their ability to bring a great idea forward and stand by them while it develops and planning is completed, your organization will grow with unlimited potential. This is highly dependent on your attitude as leader. Be watchful for the one or two people in your organization who have a gift for challenging thought, and I am not referring to the person who complains about everything and causes rifts in the work flow. Those with the gift for pushing improvement must be listened to because they usually have the passion for the organization and the customer not necessarily for themselves. That passion can deliver incredible results.
- Personal development. Every key results area plan for your team members must include personal development. Make time for your team members to improve and build in time for team development.
“I can get better. I haven’t reached my ceiling yet on how well I can shoot the basketball.” –Steph Curry
Improvement is a lifestyle choice. Improving your processes and business practices will help you to accomplish your strategy much more easily and you can increase the probability that you can keep more of the money you earn. With everything, be decisive and confident. Reward those who want to do better.
How do you create an atmosphere of improvement in your organization? How do you motivate team members to embrace the chance to make improvements? Please leave a comment or email me at comment@stephenmclain.com.
Copyright 2016-Stephen McLain.