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Key Takeaways
- Not every scalability improvement is big enough for your 3-5 year plan; a series of small process tweaks made continuously over time often adds up to the biggest benefit and saves the most time and resources.
- CANI stands for Continuous And Never-ending Improvement: a weekly meeting rhythm where a core team works on process improvements, pulling in other team members when their expertise is needed.
- Rhythm's own coaching team used this approach to redesign its client progress reports and can now generate about 50 percent more reports in about half the time.
- Pick a couple of CANI priorities each quarter, record them with success criteria, track progress weekly, and bring stuck items to the full team's Weekly Adjustment Meeting, where a fresh perspective often gets things moving again.
- A CANI rhythm connects everyday process work to your long-term goals, helping you figure out how to reach your BHAG while staying true to your Core Values.
For any growing business, ensuring that you have the processes in place to “scale up” your business is very important. Here at Rhythm Systems, we focus heavily on coaching our clients to develop and implement Winning Moves to double revenue over the next 3-5 years. Those are balanced by Key Thrusts that ensure you have the infrastructure in place to support that growth. But, not all scalability improvements are large enough to warrant a spot on your 3-5 year plan. Sometimes, it is the series of small process tweaks made continuously over time that add up to the biggest benefit and save you the most time and resources.
A few quarters ago, our coaching team realized that some of our current processes would not be feasible to continue every quarter for every client as we grow. For example, our quarterly Client Progress Reports were lengthy and cumbersome for us to generate and difficult to consume for our clients. We assigned a small team to develop improvement ideas for this process. This team started a weekly rhythm of meeting and thinking about the purpose of the reports, getting insights from our clients about the value they perceived in these reports, and brainstorming ways to streamline this process. We started by writing an Objective Statement to clarify why we were creating the reports in the first place, and then we compiled the feedback we got from clients about what they liked and didn’t like. This team then developed a prototype for a new report and a new process that could potentially scale as we grew, shared it with the rest of the team for feedback, and began testing. Today our team is able to generate about 50% more reports in about half the amount of time.
Because the process that generated this new Progress Report created such a successful time saver for our team and added more value for our clients, we decided to continue this weekly rhythm of working on process improvements and select a few processes each quarter to tackle. This team works to document current best practices for our coaching team and brainstorm ways to improve aspects that are slowing us down. We call this new weekly rhythm our CANI meeting, which stands for Continuous And Never-ending Improvement. We have a core group of team members that meet weekly, and we bring in other team members when we need their expertise.
Each quarter, we identify a couple of CANI priorities for our team to focus on, and we record those in Rhythm strategy management software so that we can set success criteria, track our progress weekly, and keep up with any Action Items we might assign. Since we are holding ourselves accountable to specific CANI priorities in Rhythm, we also have the opportunity to discuss any process improvements that we are stuck on with the full coaching team in our Weekly Adjustment Meetings. Sometimes, team members who aren't participating in the detailed weekly conversations have just the insight needed to get us moving in the right direction again.
As we are reaching for our BHAG (BHAG Examples) and planning for our own scalability, implementing this CANI rhythm in our team is helping us determine how we are going to accomplish our long-term goals while remaining true to our Core Values and providing the best possible service to our clients. We discuss what we can and cannot automate. We pass along ideas about how software enhancements could increase our capacity as a coaching team to our research and development team.
Do you think you're being proactive about process improvements to grow your business? As your business grows and changes, are you finding parts of your process that might need to be revised or slowed you down? If you still need to get someone in your organization thinking about the future and how to take steps regularly to get to your BHAG, consider appointing a CANI team in your organization and establishing a steady meeting rhythm to think about and work on process improvements. Let us know how it goes!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CANI?
CANI stands for Continuous And Never-ending Improvement. It is a weekly meeting rhythm where a core group of team members works on improving the processes that are slowing the business down, bringing in other people when their expertise is needed. Each quarter the team selects a few processes to tackle.
How does continuous improvement help you scale a company?
Growing businesses need processes that can keep up with growth, but not every improvement is large enough to warrant a spot on your 3-5 year plan. Small process tweaks made continuously over time add up to major time and resource savings, and a CANI rhythm keeps someone in the organization always thinking about what needs to change to reach your long-term goals.
How do you run a CANI process?
Identify a couple of CANI priorities each quarter and record them with success criteria so you can track progress weekly and assign action items. A core group meets weekly to document current best practices and brainstorm improvements. When the team gets stuck, they raise it in the full team's Weekly Adjustment Meeting, where someone outside the detailed work often has exactly the insight needed.
What results can a process improvement rhythm deliver?
Rhythm's coaching team offers one example. Their quarterly client progress reports were lengthy to generate and difficult for clients to consume, so a small team wrote an objective statement, gathered client feedback, prototyped a new report and process, and tested it. Today the team generates about 50 percent more reports in about half the time.
Where should you start with process improvement?
Pick a problem to tackle this quarter: a process that would not be feasible to continue as you grow, or something that is slowing your team down. Clarify why the process exists in the first place, gather feedback from the people it serves, prototype an improvement, and test it. Then keep the rhythm going with new priorities each quarter.
Jessica Wishart
Jessica is Senior Product Manager at Rhythm Systems. She has experience in Client Services and Rhythm software technical support. Her background is in Organizational Execution.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.