CHAPTER 33
Continual Improvement—Relevance to Individuals
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bounds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world
– The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Few of us can do great things, but all of us can do small things with great love
– Mother Teresa
Self-knowledge is best learned not by contemplation, but by action. Strive to do your duty and you will discover of what stuff you are made
– Johann Goethe
The history of free man is never written by chance but by choice; their choice!
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Thee lift me and I will lift thee and we will ascend together
– Quaker Proverb
The focus on outward contribution is the hallmark of the effective human being
– Peter Drucker
Background
The previous 32 chapters have dealt with the different aspects of continual improvement covering the concepts, approach, techniques—qualitative and quantitative—methodology, environment and organisation for continual improvement.
Organisations have recognised that involvement of people is a key element to achieve and sustain the results through continual improvement tasks. Hence, many adopt diverse types of incentives as motivation to sustain the interest and involvement of people. In such measures, all cannot win as the incentives go to those who have been judged to have done well. Besides this point, it has to be recognised that (a) incentives are external to an individual, similar to cosmetics one uses; (b) incentive measures are also prone to disputes, which can altogether disrupt the continual improvement process itself and this has happened to several organisations in spite of well thought of and administered incentive measures; (c) when disputes arise, there are instances wherein the very process of continual improvement is halted to avoid disputes.
Against this background, it becomes necessary for everyone to know and understand the effect of one’s involvement in the continual improvement exercise in one’s own life. This understanding can generate a ‘mass movement’ in an organisation to develop, sustain, expand and intensify the efforts to achieve results through continual improvement process. Hence, this chapter deals with the relevance of continual improvement to individuals.
Individual and work
All human being are animals, but all animals are not human beings. What is the difference? The difference is in Man’s sense of discretion to judge right and wrong; man’s innate desire to forge harmonious relationship in ones environment; man’s desire to create and innovate new and different things using his inborn intellect. All these features which differentiate man from animal would be in a potential state waiting to be transformed into a concrete form through ones work. It is through one’s work that one makes a mark in the environment where he/she lives, works and grows. Thus, ‘work’ is the key resource available to everyone to build one’s sense of pride and self-esteem. If these aspects of work are recognised by an individual, then one looks upon work as a building block of one’s personality and not just a means to earn livelihood. With such a focus, the type of work, the place of work and the kind of people to work with would all be looked upon as a valuable support for strengthening one’s own standing in the environment in which one lives and grows.
Work and improvement
At home or at work place, one does encounter problems, difficulties and bottlenecks. When work is perceived as a building block of one’s self-esteem and pride, the problems, difficulties and bottlenecks do not appear as obstacles and irritants but opportunities to use the hidden abilities and talents. One has to use these opportunities to solve problems and make a mark at home or at work place. This outlook enhances one’s emotional involvement in one’s work and it inspires one to walk that extra mile necessary to solve problems and seek opportunities to achieve improvement. Following examples drawn from our long work situation illustrate the nature of emotional involvement:
- In a factory manufacturing titanium dioxide from ilmenite sand, the yield falls below the mark in the process of reacting the sand with concentrated sulphuric acid. No clue could be found even after a week—long investigation by the task force set for the purpose. During this period, the chemist, involved in the investigation, met one of the authors at the famous shrine of Padmanabha Swamy (Thiruvananthapuram) and the chemist has this to tell him (the author), “Sir, I have come to the shrine to seek enlightenment from the Lord to solve the problem”.
- The head of the housekeeping group on a certain rainy day knocks the door of the Chief Executive’s residence at the dead of night to seek his assistance to get materials from stores to repair the fence damaged by miscreants, allowing the goats to graze the saplings planted as a part of social forestry project.
- Management representative (MR) of a cement factory is at his work desk on the day of ISO certification audit, leaving behind in his house his dying mother to the care of his wife. He is pursuaded to go back to the house to be at the side of his mother before she breathed her last. Next day, the second day of audit, he is again at his desk after performing the last rites the previous night.
Therefore, when an organisation creates a process for achieving continual improvement, emotional involvement has the power to inspire one to voluntarily get into the stream and effectively contribute to achieve success. When one witnesses the results achieved and the difference it has made to the environment, one’s involvement gets intensified and it focuses on the two distinctively different streams of improvement, viz. restoration of status quo and breakthrough already explained earlier in Chapter 2.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be seen that when individual, work and improvement get intertwined in the fabric of one’s living as a mechanism to enhance one’s self-esteem and pride in the environment where one lives, there is full integration of individual with his work. In such an integration, work is not a mere source of income but a living force of dignity, pride and satisfaction of having been a useful-being to the environment. In such an integration lies one’s complete identity with the improvement process.
It is for the organisation to plan and implement measures to educate, guide and inspire its employees to forge such an integration with one’s work. It is to be noted that the reach and sweep of integration measures need to go beyond the conventional motivational schemes. Hence, measures to ensure emotional compatibility between individual and organisation need to be well thought of.
The impact of continual improvement is to be seen in the difference it makes to the environment. This key criteria is exemplified through an excellent live model on which we stumbled upon recently and made it possible to present it in the concluding chapter of this book.