Why Improvement Initiatives May Not Succeed?

Many organizations start improvement initiatives with a lot of fanfare. The top people speak the right words at the start. Someone is brought into as the leader of the improvement initiative. Resources are promised to be provided. Budgets are assured. Awareness sessions and campaigns are organized. External consultant may also be hired. Lot many emails are floated left, right and center. Lot of documents are generated as well.

However, after some months or in certain instances some years, the improvement initiative may come to a slow and grinding halt as it is not successful. The people concerned go through some motions at the end of it all to fake a semblance of success. The initiative is toned down, rephrased and some inconsequential actions are taken to give it a logical resting ground.

So why improvement initiatives may not succeed?

• The primary reason is lack of true support from the management. At times management has to show to the board that they are busy doing something to improve. Such initiatives serve the management's ulterior motives pretty well.
• One reason is to have someone lead the initiative without a formal structure supporting such an unfortunate leader. Management talks about arcane stuff like influencing skills, cross-functional teams, synergies etc. which sound terrific on a presentation but are terrible on the ground.
• One more reason is to do with the pressure that the operations people are under on a day to day basis. Their main concern is to somehow build the product or service to deliver to the customer. For them improvement initiative is an intervention unless it is made their performance objective.
• Another reason is that the relevant stakeholders are not involved in the appropriate manner. This may be due to cultural and political reasons where those who lead and drive the improvement initiative want to make sure they get the credit at the end. They fail to realize that ignoring relevant stakeholders may actually result in the initiative failing.
• Lastly, another reason is that the people chartered to drive the improvement initiative may not be the right people in terms of competence and acceptability. At times, such initiatives are started to provide some work to an otherwise redundant senior person in the organization. When such a thing happens failure is not a probability it's a certainty.

Organizations need to address the issues around sponsorship, leadership, resources, budget, road-map. reporting structures, performance objectives, competency building in case they would like to improve the likelihood of success of any improvement initiative.