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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

A cycle for improv­ing quality

This method was famil­iar to me from read­ing about the clas­sic qual­i­ty mod­el, the ​“Dem­ing Cycle”, or PDCA cycle, as it is also referred to. The cycle con­sists of the steps Plan-Do-Check-Act which are intend­ed to achieve nev­er-end­ing improve­ment, but too many do not fol­low through and stop the cycle after Plan and Do. Some might even con­tent them­selves with just Do-Do-Do-Do and hope for improve­ment to hap­pen on its own accord some­time in the future.

Around we go, over and over again

I am cur­rent­ly in a sit­u­a­tion where the pow­er of eval­u­at­ing and refin­ing becomes very clear and tan­gi­ble to me. With­out real­ly know­ing how it hap­pened, I recent­ly became inter­est­ed in learn­ing to play the ban­jo and am in the process of learn­ing to play this pecu­liar instru­ment. The plucked arpeg­gios (also called ​“rolls”) made with plec­trums on my right hand’s thumb, index‑, and mid­dle fin­ger are essen­tial to the style of play­ing I want to learn.

The best way to prac­tice rolls is to just play them over and over again, around and around, for hours on end. I did this and progress was, to say the least, slow. But, once I lis­tened care­ful­ly to how it sound­ed (“Check”) and adjust­ed the posi­tion of a fin­ger or tilt­ed my hand slight­ly between every roll (“Act”) it made a dis­tinct dif­fer­ence, and progress was sud­den­ly made. After a while, it was as if the hand was play­ing arpeg­gios on its own accord that ini­tial­ly felt impos­si­ble to mas­ter. The small, con­scious refine­ments made a dif­fer­ence. I have a long way to go, but I have already got­ten fur­ther than I thought I would.

Instead of music: Refining

In all its sim­plic­i­ty, it reminds me that there are many recur­ring activ­i­ties in the com­pa­nies I work with that would become both eas­i­er and bet­ter if they were eval­u­at­ed and refined more con­scious­ly and continuously.

Do this

Does my exam­ple ring a bell (pun intend­ed) and you feel guilty of skip­ping the eval­u­at­ing and refin­ing (either per­son­al­ly or in terms of your whole orga­ni­za­tion) a bit too often, then get a struc­ture-improv­ing grip today by:

1. Think­ing about what recur­ring task or activ­i­ty you do that could improve or get done bet­ter than you are cur­rent­ly doing it. It can be some­thing you do once in a while or some­thing you do togeth­er at your office. Per­haps you are even think­ing of a recur­ring meeting?
2. Think of a way to add a quick eval­u­a­tion right after you have done the activ­i­ty. It does not need to be a ques­tion­naire or sur­vey, but can be that you add a ​“How did it go and what could we do better?”-question at the end of the check­list you usu­al­ly fol­low, that you add an ​“Evaluation”-item to the stan­dard agen­da, or that you pin a sign to the wall that reminds you to reflect briefly on how it went after com­plet­ing a spe­cif­ic task.
3. See if you can fig­ure out when it is time to do the task next time right now so that you can pre­pare for also remem­ber­ing to eval­u­ate after it is done this time.
4. When it is time to do it, try focus­ing a lit­tle extra on how you actu­al­ly do the task or how the meet­ing is con­duct­ed so that it becomes eas­i­er to eval­u­ate towards the end since you will have gath­ered thoughts and reflec­tions while doing what­ev­er it is you are intend­ing to improve.
5. Think of at least one way to refine your method or actions until the next time the task needs to be done. It does not mat­ter if it is only some­thing small — as long as you think of some­thing. In the end, it is the small steps that even­tu­al­ly become big changes. In my book on sim­pli­fy­ing your work, I write about how James Dyson made 5 127 pro­to­types with one small improve­ment made between each one before the first bag­less vac­u­um clean­er Dyson DC01 was ready for the mar­ket. The per­sis­tent wins.

Bet­ter and better

If you eval­u­ate and refine the things you do once in a while or often, you will con­tin­u­ous­ly improve your work meth­ods and your results too. If you and I are any­thing alike, you will also love the ela­tion that springs from feel­ing and see­ing how some­thing becomes bet­ter and bet­ter, one day at a time.

What’s your way?

How have you made sure you also do the Check- and Act-steps of the Dem­ing Cycle every time you do some­thing (where you do the Plan- and Do-steps)? Feel free to write and tell me about it!

(Speak­ing of ban­jo, did you know we work bet­ter togeth­er with the right music?)