Common Pitfalls

• Lack of ongoing senior leadership involvement - starting with enthusiasm, then flagging and failing to demonstrate a day to day interest and commmitment to improved results

• Senior leaders opt out, delegating the initiative to a Quality or HR Executive rather than working together as a leadership team to lead the transformation

• Underestimating the difficulty of ensuring commitment to the transformation at all levels in the organisation

• Unclear, vague or too complicated future vision that the organisation can not identify with or understand; people need to understand where they are coming from and going to

• Focus on training but not on education and people development through 'learn by doing' on real business issues

• Mistaking success with early easy wins as having achieved transformation - missing further opportunities and claiming to have realised a culture of continuous improvement too early

• Selection of Continuous Improvement Champions without the right attitude or experience

• Inadequate planning, budgeting or the transformation programme importance is not cascaded & recognised at all levels with implementation left to the Continuous Improvement Office

• Transformation process left to the Improvement Champions and is not seen as the key responsibility of every person in the organisation