Achieving continuous improvement in organizations is a tough slog.
The efforts of each individual or division in the organization certainly helps. The stacking up of those efforts can be thought of as the addends in a mathematical sum.
Looks something like this:
a + b + c + d + e + ….. = Improvement
A more robust approach, however, is to leverage the mathematical concept of products in our efforts to get better. The resulting product is sort of like a sum on steroids.
Looks something like this:
A x B x C x ….. = IMPROVEMENT
If the addends in the sum represent the individual efforts of the organization’s members toward improvement, what do those factors in the product represent? Those are the systems we put in place.
While both sums and products move us in the right direction, it’s our systems that propel us toward improvement in accelerated fashion.
**Next week’s lesson will focus on the debilitating effects of subtraction and division on an organizations efficacy. (Yep, not pretty.)
*If you’d like to read more of nc’s blatherings go to nc’s Recursive Learning.
Nelson Coulter
Nelson Coulter has held a lot of titles: rancher, educator, author, musician, entrepreneur, coach, mentor, consultant, and professor. He has coached, taught, and been published in many settings. He has served in public schools of all shapes, sizes, and contexts. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Louisiana State University - Shreveport. His most cherished titles, however, are the ones not attached to career identity: son, husband, dad, and granddad.
