HOW TO IMPROVE STANDARDS IN A TEAM
Any systematic approach to improving performance needs to challenge existing ways of working. Teams looking to improve must learn to generate their own tasks, tackle problems, agree on solutions, and implement their decisions with confidence.
People in true teams “own” their jobs – they are each responsible for finding the best methods of performing excellent work to the highest possible standard. A manufacturing cell goes one step beyond this: team members are multi-skilled and know each team role well enough to take it over. Such flexibility can strengthen any team. Teams gain greatly by studying the progress of other people’s jobs. Track your team’s project “end-to-end” to gain a better understanding of the task, your role, how to improve performance, and how such improvement will pay off.
Improving Systems
The Japanese management technique of kaizen holds that everybody and every team can improve the quality of their work continually by valuable and quantifiable amounts. Even a small fall in the percentage of rejected products, for example, can mean big savings in production costs. Give teams complete responsibility for their task, so that they can set the improvement process underway by defining problems, analyzing the root cause, improving the situation – perhaps by bringing in external specialist help, if necessary – and, above all, preventing the problem from recurring.
Maintaining A Fresh Approach
As teams develop and settle into a routine, they often fall into set patterns of behavior and group thinking. Avoid the temptation to leave a situation well alone on the grounds that change serves little purpose: strive for continual improvement to challenge the viability of a team’s assumptions and working practices. How can you improve team performance? Have you overlooked anything that can be improved? Do you need new blood in the team? Is the product still right for the market?
Challenging Common Assumptions
Challenge any perceived assumptions in order to improve team practice.
- “Tackling the system cures the disease”. Remember that problems will recur if not tackled at root level;
- “Problems and their solutions are always isolated”. Bear in mind that secondary, knock-on effects can be worse than the primary consequences.
- “Quality comes expensive”. Remember that improving quality makes economic sense when measured against the direct and indirect costs of failure”.
- “Quality applies only to products”. Apply quality to every service and process in which your team is involved.
TIPS
- Go for some large, quick, quality wins to encourage further effort.
- Build significant improvement targets into every budget and every team action plan.
- Ensure that team members know about other roles within the group.
- Work out the cost of failure before the cost of quality.
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