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Can continuous improvement bring joy?

Writer's picture: Kat HounsellKat Hounsell

Joy is a feeling, an emotion of happiness and jubilation. It can be seen and felt but it's not that easy to plot on a chart.


You can usually tell when your team is happier and things are clicking into place; there's a flow to tasks and projects, and an energy in conversations and interactions. However it's also satisfying to see the impact of great teamwork in tangible outcomes that can be measured.


There is something very gratifying and motivating about seeing your metrics all heading in the right direction.


Dan Gibson from Add Agility describes the joy that comes with seeing positive results from continuous improvement demonstrated in cold, hard data.



Video Transcription


Darryl: So Dan from Add Agility.


Dan: Add Agility, Yes.


Darryl:What is the continuous improvement experience you've had in any team or business you worked in that brings you, has brought you, the most joy?


Dan: The most joy? Well, you know there's quite a few but I think the ones where we've really had the most joy is where you can see the results feedback in data. I think when you capture the data about it and you see improvements in that data. Whether it's like lead times or the throughput, I think then you get a real kind of sense of satisfaction and I think the team gets a sense of satisfaction.


So, a recent one for us was that we kind of measured that thing and saw some big improvements and the team were really engaged around it. And it's, and it's a really great thing to be able to bring sort of things like lead time to get to the for with teams because it's never looked at it before.


I think a really great exercise to do if you want to introduce it, is to, in a retrospective, like go and get them to guess how long they think it takes to take a story from, you know, kind of the definition and the analysis piece, through to actual delivery. Get them to guess and I bet you they'll all guess way too short, you know. And they'll realise that actually, there's this massive lead time and I think it gets people really involved in the problem and so I think if you do do that, bring those, introduce those measures to people and you know, it's not all about the data but it's nice, that 

everybody likes to see that.


They kind of can get a bit more throughput and get things done a bit faster and of course, I think lead time is the metric to use and I'll tell you why. It's because throughput sort of you know, you can get throughput artificially increased by reducing the size of everything but lead time, you know, you're not generally, but you know, with that throughput thing, it kind of, it seems like you're asking people to work harder with lead time you're not necessarily doing that just saying look reduce the time it takes to get from A to B. You're not asking you to do more, just to get things done a bit quicker and find ways in which you can do that and I think when you start using that and then, you and then, then it becomes a bit more of a joyful process and a joyful discussion with the team.


Darryl: Well, if you can achieve it, you'll get that joy, won't you?


Dan: So, yeah. Exactly.


Darryl: Fantastic.


Dan: So that's my tuppence worth.


Darryl: Fantastic. 


Dan: Thank you.


Darryl: Thank you so much.


Dan: Cheers

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