I’ve been immersed in the improvement journey for decades. I’ve had the great fortune to be part of hundreds, if not thousands, of efforts as team member, leader, facilitator, manager, and director. Fortunately, most efforts were successful, but some fell short of the finish line mostly because of one issue.  

Well-intentioned efforts to improve processes and products often go down the road of waste and counter productivity. By avoiding some common mistakes, ineffective improvement efforts can be stopped before they go too far. Because quality professionals are “continual improvers” by trade, they need to be particularly attentive to these issues. 

The most common large-scale mistake is framing the problem in a manner that assumes that the status quo cannot be improved. For example, if marketing wants a new product sooner than originally planned, one might ask, “How many engineers need to be added to the project to accelerate the development schedule?”  

This question assumes that the engineers and engineering process are working at an optimal level. This is probably not a good assumption. To make the point, I recall reading some time ago that a software analysis group, after an intensive study, stated that on a scale of 1 - 5, 40% of U.S. based software-development teams work at Level 1 (the “chaos” process level). 

Instead, maybe the engineering manager should ask, “What can be done to our development process to get this product to market faster?” Quality-based process improvement is probably a much cheaper and more effective solution. 

I’ve seen this mistake made countless times when faced with decisions to outsource products. While some decisions to outsource are good overall business decisions, many other sourcing decisions assume that the existing process and costs are optimal, and cheaper options should be pursued.  

Companies would be better served by reframing the question as “What fundamental process changes could we make to produce high-quality products cheaper than the outsourcing bid?” Some companies have gone down the wrong sourcing path to “continually improve costs” by assuming they cannot improve enough to compete.  

Any company that feels they don't have potential to improve should do a quick self-assessment using the (Malcolm) Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. As someone who has worked on a couple applications and participated as an examiner, I know it can be an eye-opening experience. 

Another major reason is not understanding the root cause contributing to problems, especially deep-seated issues which Dr. Joseph M. Juran referred to as chronic problems. Not so surprising, it is the better (more successful) managers who readily admit their operation is full of problems. It's the less successful managers that practice the “ignorance is bliss” approach. 

These managers are the first to go down the wrong path to needlessly add people and outsource when good process improvement would have yielded better results. Spending money and handing over chunks of the business to outsourcers is just a whole lot easier for some managers than digging for the root cause. 

Failure to not fully understand problems often leads to another trap of selecting a more complex solution than needed. A good example is buying software packages and thinking this will solve process problems.  

Common statements might be, “With new enterprise resource planning software, we would not have part shortages anymore,” or “I saw a great presentation on how this new software will solve our revision control issues.”  

In so many cases, after hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on software implementations the company found the situation just as bad as before, because, surprisingly, the software did not solve the underlying process control issues. Spending more time ‘upfront’ getting to the root cause would have been extremely fruitful. 

In addition to being expensive, when the process improvement effort falls into the trap of not fully defining the problem then working to identify the root cause, we will start down the wrong path. The result can be disastrous. 

A negative experience makes it harder for quality professionals to get support for future improvement projects. Understanding the warning signs of a quick decision will help you steer clear of the improvement trap.  

Remember continual improvement is not a sprint but a marathon and only the fittest survive to race again.