The Top 5 Reasons Why Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Initiatives Fail

[Manjeet Singh]

First, let’s look at what I mean by Continual Service Improvement (CSI).

What Is Continual Improvement?
Continual improvement (aka Continuous Improvement) is an ongoing improvement that happens in stages. It is a long-term approach to improve Services, Processes, Products, and Functions. This tried and tested method occurs gradually and aims to make small incremental changes over time. Generally speaking, continual improvement looks to change and improve business services/processes to increase efficiency, and reduce costs.

Many organizations rely on CSI to drive change in their business. If implemented correctly, it can be hugely successful in driving business innovation and creating a sustainable competitive advantage. But, as with any change initiative, it comes with its own set of challenges and setbacks. This article focusses on some of the main reasons why Continual improvement initiative fails and how they can be avoided so that your organization can get the most value out of the improvement program(s).

Here are the Top 5 Reasons why continual Improvement Initiatives fails:

1. Improvement Initiatives are not Aligned with Strategic Objective/Goals

In many organization, improvements are often measured in silos. One individual, one team, or one department may have beautiful charts and reports to show how well they are improving. However, they fail to answer- how does that align with the ITSM business objectives/goals?

We must go beyond sharing local KPIs and move towards tying results that fit into the overall Company/ITSM Strategy Dashboards. There are many benefits of doing the early alignments before you start on an improvement initiative. For example, it is important to make improvement initiative visible to other departments, teams so that they can see how the improvement does or could potentially impact their area.

 
2. Do not have a Central Improvement Register

Having a dedicated Improvement register is key to centralize all improvements into one place. Tracking Improvements as Incidents, Change or in Powerpoint/spreadsheet does not work well. CSI Manager should use Improvement register to capture, analyze, and manage the areas in need of improvement. When your CSI Manager meets with other stakeholders, either individually or as a group, they will use the improvement register to capture the biggest areas of pain or opportunities for improvement.

It’s a fantastic way to stay organized and ensure nothing slips through the cracks. When new ideas are added, the CSI Manager should work with others who pitched the ideas to fill in the value and benefits and to align with strategy.

3. Improvement Goals are Just Not SMART

Goal management is key to success, and success drives CSI and maturity of the organization. Most people in the professional world have heard of SMART Goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound) but it is not very well applied when it comes to CSI. This is really good criteria to use in order to create a goal that others can see and visualize for themselves.

Make a practice to record your goals with a clear target and expected outcome that can be achieved in a defined timeframe. Monitor the progress towards your goals as the implementation of tasks is happening and share the trending progress report with teams.

4. Employee Engagement is LOW

Having management buy-in is one of the keys if you are implementing CSI first time. But for a long-term success, it is about having a mindset that makes improvement a requirement within the ‘hearts’ of everyone in the organization. If you can accomplish this, then your battle is mostly won. Motivated employees will learn along the way and do what it takes to gain the knowledge needed to make things happen. They will make sure their Process Improvement and Operational Initiatives are a SUCCESS!

I think everyone (senior management right down to the service desk itself) should have visibility of what you are doing as part of CSI so they can see the improvements and realize you have listened and taken their feedback into the account.

 

5. Unstructured Improvement process

No matter what improvement model/framework do you follow, it has to be structured and easy to use. Any time you implement something which is a process heavy and complex, the adoption and engagement are going to suffer. A simple PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) type frameworks work great for most requirements.

Make it simpler by providing g single place for people to submit their improvement opportunity ideas, see the progress along the way and able to course correct if things are not moving in an expected direction. Create integration with other application areas like Change management, Incident/Post review, Performance Analytics Dashboards, Surveys and Assessment where people have insights into what is not working well and submit the improvement ideas into the CSI register with one click.

In the end, when it comes to building a culture of Continual improvement, it is critical for your organization to define what "Continual improvement" actually means for your culture. Once that is done, start shouting about benefits of CSI and show the value achieved through Improvement initiatives.

  

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