The approach to improvement involves the use of pragmatic improvements, realistic changes and processes that are selected because they support the people doing the work in producing higher quality.
- Challenge the self-evident. If you have always done it that way, if this is the way the boss wants it done, if this is what was recommended in the latest book or by your favourite consultant, question it. Why should this be the right way to do things for you?
- Take time away from work. Change your mind, go for a run or a walk, read a novel, do something other than sitting at your desk from time to time to refresh your mind. Don’t take your phone, don’t browse the internet if you work on a computer all day, but move away, change the focus of your eyes so that you can see and think something different.
- Question why you are being asked to do something and what is the point. So many of us do not know the value of our work. I have missed my children’s birthday parties in order to make rich people richer, to fix a minor defect in a product that has no real impact on anything that matters. Is that really how you would like to sum up your life?
