Even successful companies constantly focus on improving operations and expanding their business. Company improvement should always be a priority, and if you and your team use a continuous improvement board, you’re already on the right track!

The sections below offer some tips and tricks for maximizing the value of your improvement board so you can utilize it to its full potential.

Encourage Communication and Questions

Improvements boards need to be safe spaces for free-flowing thoughts and transparent communication. If employees are hesitant to communicate ideas or feedback, the improvement board will be less effective.

The best way to foster transparency and communication in your improvement board is to ensure the board is accessible 24/7 from anywhere. Employees will then feel comfortable sending messages outside of office hours. That does not mean you or anyone else has to respond outside of office hours. It simply creates a more comfortable space to discuss ideas and improvement opportunities.

Also, encourage employees to ask questions, rhetorical or not. The improvement board should be all about posing questions concerning company improvement!

Set Quantifiable Goals

If your team feels lost about how the company can improve, setting goals is the best way to encourage new ideas. Even if your company is successful, there is always room for improvement.

Consider setting quantifiable goals that stay pinned to the improvement board. These goals could include:

• Reaching a 90% customer satisfaction score
• Gaining a 25% increase in website traffic
• Getting a 15% bump in annual sales

Setting these goals gives your team something to work toward and a problem to solve, which can spur creativity and new ideas.

You can set one goal or five, but try to keep your goals focused so the board remains productive and doesn’t get too chaotic.

Assess Customer Pain Points and Friction

An excellent way to determine your improvement goals is to assess customer pain points and feedback. Researching customer pain points can help your team build a better service or product that meets your client’s needs more closely.

Customer pain points drive company success. No matter how amazing or successful your product or service is, you can always find a way to make it more accessible and effective for customers. Or, you can create new products and services to solve pain points that your current product or service does not.

Pain points are problems consumers face that your company can solve. In addition to considering pain points, assess customer friction. Friction is parts of your process, product, or service that frustrate or inconvenience customers, such as a laggy website or annoying packaging.

Your team can identify points of friction by issuing surveys, reading customer feedback, and focusing on the company from a consumer perspective. Identifying pain points and friction is one of the easiest ways to find areas for improvement.

Map Out Company Processes

As mentioned, stepping into the consumer’s shoes and assessing the company from this perspective is highly beneficial. On your improvement board, create a detailed and comprehensive layout of each company process, such as the hiring, client conversion, or purchase fulfillment operations.

Every minuscule aspect of each process should be listed and explained if necessary. Having this detailed visual layout makes it easier for your team to identify friction and pain points, or even find opportunities to simplify the processes to improve the customer experience and save the company money.

Identify Opportunities for Technology

Dedicate a section of your continuous improvement board to new technologies and tools that could improve your company. Artificial intelligence is working its way into a range of industries in ways many people never thought possible.

When new and advanced technology trends emerge, add them to your improvement board. Even if you can’t identify a way to implement these technologies right now, having them on the board makes it easier to see their potential within your company.

It also allows all members of your team to consider these technologies and tools, as they may see an opportunity for implementation that you didn’t!

Create a Space for Brainstorming

Encouraging communication is vital, as mentioned above. But not every idea has to be sent as a message to the whole team. On your improvement board, create a designated space where random ideas can be noted and people can freely brainstorm. Brainstorming is a key process in improving a company. It’s also a free space to share ideas that can spark creativity and foster collaboration.

One team member may have a very loose idea for improving a company or creating a new service. If they keep it to themself, it may never blossom into a complete idea. But if another team member sees this loose idea, they may be able to build on it and create an improvement plan.

Monitor Results and Compile Feedback

Your continuous improvement board is not only for brainstorming. The board should also be used to monitor the results of an improvement plan. Not every idea is gold, but there is no shame in trying new strategies and experimenting with different techniques.

However, it’s crucial to assess how these new ideas work when applied to your company and scrap them if necessary. Create a section for each implemented idea where your team can note and discuss employee feedback, consumer feedback, and their thoughts. Use these sections to routinely revisit the improvements and optimize them.

After a certain amount of time, you can remove the ideas from your board if they become permanent or you decide not to use them. However, you can leave these sections eternally to use them as inspiration or continue to revisit and optimize processes.

Final Thoughts

The most important thing to remember about your improvement board is that it should be an open place where your team can freely share thoughts. Don’t stifle creativity or deter people from communicating, but create sections and spaces that keep things organized.

There is always room for improvement. A continuous improvement board is a stellar tool for consistently evaluating your company’s efficiency.