Improvement Projects Create Frontline Experts
Leaders build people to be experts in their roles—people who produce results for the clients and patients they serve. This starts with recruiting and hiring staff aligned with your organization who work well in teams and are curious to understand the work, figure out ways to make it better, and do what’s needed to get results.
Improvement efforts are the greatest professional development opportunity in an organization’s toolbox.
Selecting Projects That Develop People
When selecting projects, leadership chooses priorities that align with organizational objectives, better meet the organization’s purpose, and move key system measures. But project selection does more than set direction—it makes responsibility visible.
Where a project sits in the organization designates the responsible leader as sponsor. As sponsor, they commission a team to participate in the improvement effort—a mix of people who work in the process to be changed and others who provide expertise in the area of interest, data, or key supports. When setting an aim, consider an improvement that would produce meaningful change within a focused timeframe of four to six months. One day per week is a good benchmark for team member time investment.
The Learning Journey
The work of an improvement team is fundamentally a learning journey. Each phase reveals a different layer of the system.
Scanning known research and best practices guides the development of a change theory and helps teams build on what’s already understood. Displaying data in Shewhart charts reveals whether the process is affected by unintended variation. Following patients through the process and mapping what they experience shows you the system you actually have.
Testing changes on a small scale reveals issues not obvious at the surface: outdated procedures, unclear definitions and expectations, siloed work steps and staff, misaligned incentives. Cultural issues emerge. The work of improvement creates deep process knowledge.
When staff study their own work, they uncover insights that no external consultant could find. They see where handoffs break down, where information gets lost, where workarounds have become the norm. They understand not just what happens, but why it happens—and what needs to change.
Building Ownership and Capability
People are motivated when they’re empowered to change their work and see those changes result in learning and improvement. They take ownership of their work processes when they appreciate the purpose, deeply understand how the process works to achieve good outcomes, and can remove the waste that gets in the way.
Staff want to serve patients well the first time. They want to feel they can do their jobs to the fullest. When improvement work gives them the tools and authority to do both, they become committed problem solvers.
This is where professional development happens: not in a classroom, but in the work itself. Team members learn to analyze systems, interpret data, test changes, and spread what works. They develop leadership skills—influencing peers, managing up to sponsors, communicating across silos. They become the experts your organization needs.
From Burden to Practice
Improvement work is a catalyst for learning and modeling scientific problem solving. It aligns leaders and teams to the part of the system they’re responsible for while connecting that work to the organization’s purpose and the linked processes around it.
Everyone involved becomes more knowledgeable and motivated to build and execute work to their fullest. They gain a deeper understanding of their part of the system—and how it connects to the whole.
When done well, improvement moves from a burdensome extra to a rewarding part of daily work. Your frontline staff become the experts who understand the work better than anyone else—and who have the capability to make it better.
David M. Williams, Ph.D. works with leaders and improvement teams to learn and apply Improvement Science to achieve results and adopt quality as a strategy. He is coauthor of Quality as an Organizational Strategy and The QOS Field Guide.