What is CI ? What’s in it for you
Put simply, Continous Improvement is that discipline to be always on the lookout for ways to deliver better, where you can do your work with no waste and no incidental activities.
A Continous Improvement is achievable and putting it right there at the center of everything that we do is something that we have to achieve in order to make our business a more successful one.
Continous Improvement to me is about an attitude shift.
It is changing our attitude towards waste, towards incidental activities.
We can run our business more successfuly without any waste and without any incidental activities.
We have that continous improvement right at the core of everything that we do.
You can also ask “What is in it for you personally ? ”
Well perhaps at the simplest level you can say that you can reduce workload, drive down costs , improve flexibility and speed, thus delivering growth more quickly. I think it goes deeper than that.
In the workplace, I think we have a responsibility to continue raise our game. We have to work and comply with all our rules and regulations but we also have to intervene when we see opportunities for improvement.
With Continous Improvement , if we can bring that into the way we go about our work, I think we can lead by example to all of our colleagues and make a real big difference in the performance of our team and in the way we manage the balance between work and life.
Why do we need CI ?
When I joined Shell about eighteen years ago I was introduced to the three core values : Honesty, Integrity and Respect for Others. These values have held through all through those times and I have seen many many instances where those values have been brought and tested. We all get deeply offended when one of those core values get broken for example in the case of bribery and corruption.
That is exactly where I want to be with Continous Improvement. That is exactly the sort of attitude I want to have with Continous Improvement. That this Continous Improvement becomes a core value within our team . That we feel offended when we see waste and incidental activities within our work and we want to do something about it.
Is CI culture achievable?
My answer is simple: absolutely yes.
There are many examples across our company where we have seen CI being implemented.
For me it is about us all working together and asking the question “what are we going to do differently to make sure we lead that we embodied those values of continous improvement, that we do not accept any waste, any incidental activities”.
We need to go out there and be those leaders who will lead us forward in the path of Continous Improvement. Getting to that place is where we all want to be, where there is no waste and no incidental activities.
That is what CI is about and I am convinced we can deliver it
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