Project Management 411

Continual Improvement Projects Require Excellent Governance

by Bob Turek on July 6th, 2008

An older post on what governance boards want is garnering some attention this month. In it is a great example of a CEO dealing with HIS upper management: the board. It turns out that they didn’t want his detail financial analysis until they saw how a proposed acquisition linked with corporate strategy. Projects must be linked to strategy or they shouldn’t be projects!

I’ve been doing a research project on how continual improvement programs are embraced and drive companies from the executive and cultural perspectives. Interestingly, the best practice that seems to be emerging is excellent project prioritization based on alignment with strategies first, followed by value measures. One company tried several times to start continual improvement programs; it didn’t happen until the CEO and others embraced the program as strategic and then followed through with organizational changes such as placing a high level executive in charge of continual improvement programs.

What is your experience with continual improvement? Do you see how high level governance processes can be continually improved and be important to a continual improvement program? Can a continual improvement program exist without the excellent governance processes? I think not- but WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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POSTED IN: Best of the Best Practices, Continual Improvement and Lean