Continuous Improvement

If there is one thing my software and process engineering background has taught me it is that the last step of any process must be continuous improvement. Continuous improvement takes you back to the beginning; back to the design stage. In this case we return to our initial step – Assessment.

Assessing the Results
1) Did we achieve the desired results? Were our expectations reasonable?
2) Can we achieve even better results? If so, how?
3) What are some other areas we could apply this same process to?

Look at question 3 – This is kind of a big deal! By using our success in one area to immediately reveal possibilities in other areas, we allow the process to grow organically, branching into other areas. At the same time, question 2 encourages continuous growth in the original application by recursing back to the beginning; back to the assessment stage.

The Continuous Improvement step leverages the action taken in the preceding steps into further action in two distinct directions – branching and recursion.

Personal development is not a simple linear process; but a beautifully curving, looping and branching, ever-expanding structure with a life of its own.

Yes, you can quote me on that!

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the recursive nature of this process. There is an important difference between an initial Assessment and a recursive revisit to the step. When we come back to the assessment a second, third, or nth time, we bring with us a body of knowledge that we lacked during the initial assessment. We have experienced the process and have learned many things. What worked? What didn’t? We have already assessed the results, but now we can apply these two questions to each of the four steps of the process itself:

Continuously Improve the Assessment Step

Was our initial assessment accurate? If not, why not?

Was there a deficiency in our assessment process? If so, how can we improve it?

What did we miss in our initial assessment? How can we factor this in now?

Continuously Improve the Alignment Step

Did we manage to achieve alignment between our results and our Intent, Values and Purpose?

Is there an aspect which did not align well? How can we fix this?

Did we learn anything during the process that affected our values or intent? If so, we may need to re-align.

Our perception of Purpose may change over a long period of time. As we mature we refine our concept of purpose. As purpose shifts, we must re-align.

We may lose some of our sense of purpose after a while. We can regain Purpose by periodically and intentionally re-aligning with Values.

Continuously Improve the Engagement Step

How did we do in the Engagement stage? Did we stick with our intents?

Perhaps we didn’t do as well as we would have liked. Review the Engagement step and do some assessment on where it broke down. Did we need more discipline? If so, we can use the 4 steps to increase discipline.

Was our problem due to poor Prioritization? Check out the levelgrinding.com Prioritization Model.

Continuously Improve the Continuous Improvement Step

We’ve asked a bunch of questions to reveal areas of improvement in the process and the results, but maybe there are even better questions we could ask. Can you think of any ways to make this Continuous Improvement step even better?

Next Page: Core Process Summary

the Four Steps: Assessment, Alignment, Engagement, Continuous Improvement

Back to the Core Map

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