The world today presents extreme challenges of an existential nature.
To adapt and prosper, organizations need to orient to a new, Higher Purpose (HP) and perpetually seek Continuous Evolution (CE).
Think of CE as the new Continuous Improvement (CI).
CE doesn’t replace CI; rather, it expands on it.
CE > CI because CE = CI + HP.
Here’s how it works in brief:
| CI (5 main elements) | + HP | = CE (5 main elements) |
|---|---|---|
| Align goals – Set specific operational improvement goals for teams, encouraging employees to find efficiencies to achieve both incremental and break-through gains and support business objectives | Also align operational goals to a powerful HP in order to support both organizational and societal objectives | Imagine – Crystallized vision of organization’s HP with specific goals by division in order to drive operational efficiency and foster organizational and societal well-being |
| Engage employees – Encourage employee responsibility for identifying operational efficiencies | Also empower employees at all levels to safely identify HP misalignments | Convey – HP and goals communicated with conviction and authenticity to employees, stakeholders and publics |
| Control process – Collect and analyze data on progress toward operational improvements | Also collect and analyze data via independent 3rd party on progress toward HP | Act – Divisional plans activated with 3rd party data collection to measure and verify progress toward goals |
| Be transparent – Conduct cross-functional communication about what is and isn’t working operationally | Also conduct cross-functional communication about what is and isn’t supporting HP | Report – Results shared transparently, with opportunities and challenges identified |
| Recognize achievement – Embed checkpoints to recognize and reward employees for finding and making operational improvements | Also recognize and reward employees for finding and making HP alignments | Evolve – Celebrate teams’ successes, own and redress missteps, realign to HP, and resume course toward HP |
Leaders, this isn’t undo-able work; on the contrary, it’s must-do work.
So, let’s do this!