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By Dr. Harry Tennant

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Monday, April 2, 2012

8 ways to incorporate continuous improvement in knowledge work

What constitutes continuous improvement in knowledge work?

  1. Continually root out all waste
    • Knowledge work that doesn't involve judgement or expertise
    • Use the five whys to uncover waste
    • Rotation among jobs to spread knowledge
    • Look for small forms of waste, not just big ones
    • Periodically review the structure and content of each job
    • Avoiding errors, especially big ones! When errors occur, find out why and take steps to avoid their recurrence.
    • Reduce uncertainty. Experiment.
  2. Strive to make tacit knowledge explicit
    • Specify the work; simple checklists are often sufficient
    • Codify repeatable parts of the work
    • Use the checklists or specified work. It often helps to involve two people to enforce the use of checklists.
    • Use data about the benefits of improvements to get buy-in
  3. Establish measurable goals
    • Make progress toward goals easily visible as with a dashboard
  4. Specify how team members should communicate
    • What needs to be communicated
    • Resolve disagreements with facts
    • Explicit lists of errors and their descriptions. This helps differentiate errors from style preferences.
  5. Use the scientific method to solve problems quickly
    • Ideally the person who created the problem should fix it
    • Solve problems where they occur to comprehend contextual information
    • Solve problems as soon as possible after they occur
  6. Recognize that your processes are always a work in progress
    • Codify lessons learned
    • Keep looking for new ways to work
    • Lean approach doesn't apply to visionary work
  7. Improve knowledge and skills
    • Continue to gain expertise with your tools rather than plateauing at a basic level
    • Continue to learn in your field
  8. Have leaders blaze the trail
    • Management must maintain interest and involvement over the long term
    • Persistence is the key
    • Because it is difficult, it makes it difficult for competitors to replicate

Posted at 12:00 AM Keywords: Continuous improvement , waste 0 Comments

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