Transforming Organisational Excellence with CI

A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process, is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can simultaneously seek “incremental” improvement over time or “breakthrough” improvement. — Wikipedia

Continuous Improvement (CI) is an ongoing process to improve our area of concern. The area could be our home environment, a process in our working environment, or how we deliver value to our customers. CI seek progression over perfection and encourages small progressive actions over one giant leap.

While my awareness of CI started in mid-2022, I have been performing CI for years without realising it.

• When I ran my business, we streamlined our customers’ processes before working on their digitisation or digitalisation needs.
• We were progressively improving the capabilities of performing biometric surveillance when working with a homeland agency.
• When I was executing a project back in the SAF, I improved how we capture information in our flying logbook to reduce the effort and minimise computational error.

I developed a keen interest in furthering what I know about CI in my previous role. Due to my last experience, I saw the potential in developing CI as a culture in the organisation. I noticed how the work of CI brings value to my customers and helps them operate more efficiently and effectively.

I had the opportunity to work with CI Practitioners in my organisation, which allowed me to discover my skills in this area and ultimately led to my current role. This experience inspired me to write a series of articles to share about CI and exchange ideas on collectively building a culture of CI within our respective organisations.

These articles are part of my CI journey, challenging myself to write consistently and progressively as I learn more about the subject. Apart from referencing the information I find online, I am articulating my thoughts and real experiences into my writings so that someone new to CI can pick up something.

You are not alone if you are new and clueless about this field. I was ignorant when I took up the job. Until I “shamelessly” ask around how I can do better and try different approaches to set the course so that I get the bearings. There are many knowledge areas that we need to know to do our job better. Engaging in continuous learning and aiming to be better than yesterday is essential.

While I am writing these articles, it does not make me an expert or guru. The purpose of these articles is to share, and articulating them helps clear my thoughts and adjust my navigation to get closer to the port of call I am targeting. It is not the destination I am seeking, so I am calling it a “Port of Call”. That temporary stop or rest point helps me conclude a chapter and continue my journey.

The chapters that I am planning are as follows:

1. Introduction to Continuous Improvement
2. The Foundations of CI
3. Tools & Techniques of CI
4. CI in Actions
5. CI Across Industries
6. Driving Transformation through CI
7. Leadership & Culture in CI
8. Measuring CI Success
9. Challenges & Pitfalls of CI
10. The Future of CI

Since we are talking about CI, the title of the chapters might change over time depending on the deliberation of the content and context that I am planning.

If you are keen on continuous improvement, subscribe to my medium and get a notification when Chapter 1 — Introduction to Continuous Improvement is released.

Nevertheless, I invite you to hop onto CI and make it part of yourself, seeking continuous improvement, continuous learning and being a better version of yourself than yesterday.