Ohno, the guru behind Toyota Production System, has stated that in order to improve performance of any system, first there has to be a standard in place.

This holds true especially in sports. Every competitive athlete has their current performance. Both in terms of results as well as in terms of techniques of execution. Athletes train  constantly to improve their performance. They work with coaches to get guidance on blindspots and the most effective training methods. Getting to the national level might happen relatively quickly, but peaking on International level requires years of work and improvement.

The world of business and sales is much harder. You either win or loose. There is no glory in second place. Finishing on the 2nd place in the Olympics is very good and something people will remember years later. Finishing second in sales process is soon forgotten. High performance and continuous improvement is critical in business. But how many sales organisations are approaching improvement with systematic and methodological approach?

One very powerful tool for continuous improvement is called PDCA. Plan – Do – Check – Act. This tool helps one first create the standard. The standard is not written in stone nor is it something that one should always follow. But it is something that should be follow 80 or 90 % of the time.

Plan starts from the standard workflow. We either identify an issue with the standard work or we ask ourselves is there a better way to accomplish this specific outcome. In the planning phase one should spend time to separate symptoms from root causes. Typically we the symptoms surface at one point in the process but the root cause is hiding somewhere else. Once the root cause of the problem has been identified, it is time to look at the potential solutions.

Do starts with the implementation of selected improvement (or solution). This also includes estimating the impact of the change and putting in place a metric that can be used to track performance.

Check is where we look at the impact of the change. It helps if we have been disciplined in the Plan phase and very clear on what we want to improve. Having a metric and data helps a lot.

Act is the last phase and completes the circle. We can close the circle if the implemented change yielded the improvement we were looking for. If not, we need to start again with Plan.

The most important point I am trying to make here is the standard and role of standard work in the continuous improvement process. Without a standard there is nothing to be improved.