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Course Overview
Innovation is a highly valued asset, a necessity, and a skill organizations aspire to possess. However, in practice, achieving continuous innovation is often challenging. In today’s competitive business environment, leaders and executives must constantly seek new approaches to business operations, process improvement, product and service development, and organizational problem-solving.
The Continuous Innovation & Process Improvement training course is designed to cultivate leadership capabilities that foster proactive and deliberate innovation across all areas of the organization. While product and client-service innovation are critical, the course also emphasizes internal process enhancements and operational improvements.
Course Objectives
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Understand the principles of continuous improvement and innovation.
- Acquire skills to plan, organize, conduct, control, and evaluate deliberate changes based on continuous process and product improvements.
- Identify opportunities for performance improvement or innovation by analyzing both internal and external business environments.
- Apply the full cycle of continuous improvement and innovation within their teams and organizations.
- Appreciate the importance of leadership, focus, experimentation, learning from trial and error, and adaptation in driving innovation.
Course Audience
This course is suitable for:
- Line and functional managers, and professionals responsible for strategy, marketing, business development, operations, HR, and product development.
- Intermediate and advanced managers, team leaders, and supervisors across all sectors, including private, public, profit, and not-for-profit organizations.
- Professionals seeking to enhance organizational performance through continuous improvement and innovative practices.
Course Methodology
The course uses a blend of interactive and practical learning methods to ensure participants can apply concepts effectively:
Interactive Lectures: Provide theoretical concepts supported by real-world examples.
Case Studies: Explore organizational challenges and apply innovation and improvement strategies.
Group Discussions: Encourage sharing experiences and insights for practical learning.
Hands-On Exercises: Simulate problem-solving, process mapping, and improvement initiatives.
Personal Action Planning: Develop plans to implement continuous improvement and innovation strategies in participants’ own work environments.
Course Outline
Day 1: Continuous Improvement
- Background to the Quality movement
- Continuous (process evolution) vs. step-change (revolution) improvement
- Strategic choices: Meeting customers’ needs
- Sources of change in external and internal environments
- Innovation through creative destruction
- Understanding why organizations fail
Day 2: Identify and Solve Problems
- Managing different types of change
- Distinguishing problem-solving, performance improvement, and innovation
- The problem-solving cycle
- Problem identification techniques: 5 Why’s, Root Cause Analysis
- Questioning techniques to address the right problems
- Problem-solving methods: SSM, CATWOE, Mind Maps, Brainstorming
Day 3: Delivering Change and Improvement
- Maintaining focus on objectives and outcomes
- Aligning business processes with deliverables
- Process mapping and business process management
- Cost of poor quality: Value chain analysis
- Roles in change and improvement initiatives
- Conducting pilot projects: “Fail fast” approach
Day 4: Creating a Culture Supporting Innovation
- Governance structures to deliver improvement
- Performance metrics and measurement
- Evaluating and comparing results
- Creative methods: Lateral Thinking, Delphi technique
- Coaching techniques: Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, TQM
- Juran’s spiral of progress: monitor, review, report, adapt
Day 5: Leadership Attributes for Innovation & Improvement
- Making go/no-go and resource decisions
- Dealing with unexpected obstacles
- Leading by example and championing change
- Understanding how change and learning occur
- Maintaining motivation and morale in a constantly changing environment
- Overcoming resistance to change and addressing challenges in innovation