How do I build a culture where operations get 1% better every day?
Greetings!
It’s never easy in operations; that’s just a fact of life. If you believe leading teams is as simple as baking an apple pie, you are in the wrong line of work. You not only have to manage the human aspect, but you also have to manage the processes.
Much like the human side, processes also require support. Support, in this case, comes from what we see all around us as improvement.
But what is improvement, anyway?
In essence, improvement is all about making things better. Let’s take a very basic and easy-to-relate example: you’re just a little kid with a lemonade stand, trying to make some money. You start with a basic process: a customer passes by, they are thirsty, want a lemonade, and you make one. They like it, spread the word, and now you have two customers. They also like it, so now you have four, and so on. Now you’re in trouble because you have a line of ten people, and they all seem very thirsty. I know, I know… too much pressure in this example for a kid, but you get the picture. So now you need to do something to make your process better and speed it up. How do you do it? What steps should you take? When can you implement them? What are the basics? This is what process improvement is about. It’s about how to make your little lemonade stand better.
The road to continuous improvement is a long one, so we need to get you familiar with it in small pieces. Let’s start with the easiest one: the Kaizen mindset. In this article, we will cover the following:
- Kaizen – what is it and why do I need it?
- Why small and consistent improvements are needed
- The Improvement Ambassador
- Promote your Kaizen
- Final Thoughts
Part I. Kaizen – what is it and why do we need it?
The word comes from Japan, and it’s made from two words: Kai – change, and Zen – good. In essence, it’s a way of saying “a good change” or “a change for the better.” The principle is simple: in anything you do, things can be done better. Now, this “better” can mean many things: faster execution, higher quality, lower costs, etc. Let’s take a step back and look at the world we have created so far: the technology we use daily, medicine, food, travel, space exploration, entertainment. Now try to picture how these things looked 500 years ago. This is the improvement we are talking about: the way you used to do things vs. how you are doing things right now. Without improvement, nothing really happens. You just continue to move through time without making any progress.
Processes are very much like that: you can either continue doing whatever was done before, or you can make your life easier by improving them. Funny enough, a lot of people actually do tons of Kaizen without even knowing it: that annoying report you had to make all the time where you made a quick fix (maybe using pivot tables or Power Query), that way of working that is out of date where you made your own version (much faster and easier), and many other similar examples. You do them not because you are crazy about your company, but because you want your life to be as uncomplicated and efficient as possible.
Part II. Why small and consistent improvements are needed
When trying to improve something, especially in cases of team impact, bigger improvements have a tendency to not be very well-received, at first anyway. Sometimes it’s better to have smaller ones done more regularly. It’s also preferred to make smaller improvements when you are a new manager, as they are much easier to execute when you are not fully in control of or knowledgeable about the entire process.
Embracing Kaizen will bring about a lot of benefits you never really thought about. So, let’s look at some of them:
- Lower risks – Better trust: Decreasing risks in your process will increase your team’s trust level (less pressure from potential errors, less rework with corrections, and less time spent in endless meetings to fix things).
- Improvement implementation leads to more team bonding: Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s the reality. You can’t just improve things on your own. You need the support of your team: ask them what can be improved, what the main pain points are, what is creating a lot of stress, how they think the improvements can be made, and so on. This leads to better bonding, more trust in your capabilities as a leader, and, of course, a better employee experience.
- Small improvement here, small improvement there, and in 3 months things look completely different: These micro-improvements you make have a two-sided effect. On one hand, they don’t seem very impactful in the overall picture (since they are small and don’t make any drastic changes), but on the other hand, they tend to compound very fast over time. This means they are easier to implement, yield faster results, and when enough of them are done, you start to reap significant benefits.
- Prevents burnout: When you spend your time constantly fixing, you do two things that have a severe impact: you create too much pressure for the team, and you add pressure on yourself. This leads to burnout, and quite fast, I’m afraid.
Part III. The Improvement Ambassador!
It’s a very new-age corporate phrase, isn’t it? In reality, you need to be this person. Driving improvements is now your number-one priority. When you foster a culture of continuous improvement, you show your team that things can be done easier, faster, and at a higher quality, and that they can use the extra time to focus on other things. Or simply avoid having so much pressure, overtime, or sky-high anxiety caused by heavy workloads and constant issues.
It’s also worth noting that better performance is achieved when effort is put into it. High-performing teams don’t just benefit from pure luck; they work hard at it, and they have one thing in common: they don’t just accept the status quo. They seek out faster, better ways to manage whatever activity they need to do. It’s those teams that always change strategies, try new things out, and use whatever they can to make their life better at work.
So now you have to be the ambassador, but how do you do it? Well, you start off by setting an example yourself and gradually move from there. Go easy and try out small things: “Let me show you guys what shortcuts I used,” “I made these small improvements in Excel,” “I am doing my reports faster because I did this,” etc. Show them firsthand how all these things provided a better quality of life in your work.
The next step is to scale: take it to the next level. If you have some budget (in whatever form it comes), offer small incentives (vouchers, some free time, anything really at your disposal) and launch a proper “Ideation Drive”, a way of rewarding the people in your team who come up with the best improvements.
Finally, high-performing teams that want to keep this momentum going, embed continuous improvement directly into performance evaluations. This is a tool you can use to both cultivate the mindset and reward people who do a good job from this perspective.
Part IV. Promote your Kaizen!
Let’s say you managed to implement a few of these smaller improvements. Everything is going well; the team is happy, and you are happy. So… what’s next?
Well, we can start looking at (and promoting) the benefits of all these actions that you and the team implemented. Keep in mind that upper management is not always watching you, especially when things are going well. It’s an unfortunate effect of the modern corporate workplace: people don’t care when things go as planned; they only care when they don’t. It’s your job to make them see it. Promoting your efforts is a great way to showcase your capabilities, highlight the success of your team, and establish what a great leader you are becoming.
First things first: quantify the benefits. You need to start looking at all the things you did and ask the question: What is the impact of this change? Let’s look at some examples to get a clearer picture.
Standardized File & Folder Naming Protocols
- The Micro-Fix: Enforce a universal team document naming standard (e.g., YYYYMMDD_ProjectName_V01) and restrict shared drive hierarchies to a maximum depth of 3 folders.
- Impact & Benefits: Eliminates version control errors, stops accidental overwrites, and saves an estimated 10–15 minutes per employee daily spent searching for lost assets.
25-Minute & 50-Minute Default Meetings
- The Micro-Fix: Update calendar system default settings to trim 30-minute bookings down to 25 minutes, and 60-minute bookings down to 50 minutes.
- Impact & Benefits: Drives sharper agenda adherence, guarantees built-in buffer time between calls, and significantly reduces back-to-back meeting cognitive fatigue.
Automated Report Distribution via Pre-Set Templates
- The Micro-Fix: Replace manual Excel copy-pasting for weekly reporting with pre-formatted sheets using standard formulas or automated data pulls.
- Impact & Benefits: Cuts report compilation time from 2 hours down to 10 minutes, eliminates manual data entry errors, and ensures leadership gets consistent metrics at the exact same time every week.
Pre-Read Sign-Offs for Approval Processes
- The Micro-Fix: Change procedure guidelines so that sign-offs under a set threshold require silent review via a shared document 24 hours prior, rather than holding a live review meeting.
- Impact & Benefits: Removes bottlenecks on middle-management schedules, accelerates process throughput by days, and keeps live meetings strictly reserved for high-level decision-making.
Standardized Visual Checklist for Hand-offs Between Teams
- The Micro-Fix: Implement a strict 5-item “Definition of Ready” checklist before a task or file can be passed from Team A to Team B (e.g., from Sales Support to Operations).
- Impact & Benefits: Prevents incomplete work from bouncing back and forth across department silos, reducing cycle times and eliminating cross-team friction.
Single-Source Procedure Quick-Reference Guides (One-Pagers)
- The Micro-Fix: Condense complex 20-page Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) manuals into interactive, 1-page visual flowcharts or quick-reference cheat sheets stored directly at the user’s workspace.
- Impact & Benefits: Dramatically reduces onboarding ramp-up time for new hires, reduces operational variance, and stops employees from asking peers for routine procedural guidance.
Final Thoughts
While it might feel strange at first, micro-fixes are a great way to get closer to your team, build more trust, eliminate some of the stress associated with the process, and get one step closer to success.
You must, however, keep in mind a very important fact about improvement: we can’t improve a process that is not stable. If you plan improvements, make sure whatever you are trying to improve is a stable process. If you want to do a quick fix on a procedure, make sure that procedure will still be there 6 months from now; don’t change a procedure that keeps changing completely from one month to the next.
Always start with very small, relatable things. It’s much easier for your team to follow your example. Don’t be stressed out if you keep making these small improvements and things don’t immediately improve on a grand scale. Rome wasn’t built overnight, after all!
Until the next article, stay healthy, safe, and happy!