QOS: Activity 5 – Managing Improvement Efforts

This is part of a series on Quality as an Organizational Strategy (QOS). Read the introduction or explore other activities: Activity 1 – Purpose, Activity 2 – System, Activity 3 – Information, Activity 4 – Planning.

“By What Method?”

Dr. W. Edwards Deming often asked leaders this simple question when they talked about wanting to improve: “By what method?”

The question cuts to the heart of a common problem. Many organizations aspire to improve, but they lack a systematic approach for actually doing it. Good intentions don’t produce results—methods do.

Managing improvement efforts means building the capability, providing the support, and creating the structure needed to execute improvement projects successfully and learn from them.

Foundation: Improvement Science

Any system for managing improvement must rest on a solid foundation of improvement science. This science integrates several key theories:

Systems thinking helps teams understand how changes in one part of a system affect other parts. Improvement happens within an interconnected web of processes, people, and relationships.

Understanding variation enables teams to distinguish between random variation (common cause) and special causes requiring investigation. Without this knowledge, teams chase false signals and miss real opportunities.

Theory of knowledge guides how teams learn from changes. It emphasizes prediction, testing, and building knowledge through iterative cycles rather than implementing changes based on untested assumptions.

Psychology of change recognizes that improvement isn’t just technical—it’s human. Understanding motivation, resistance, and how people adopt new ways of working becomes essential.

These theories, combined with practical tools and methods, create the science that underlies effective improvement.

A Shared Method for Improvement

Organizations need a common framework that everyone uses to approach improvement work. Without this, different teams use different approaches, making it difficult to share learning or build capability systematically.

Several frameworks exist—A3 thinking, DMAIC, FOCUS-PDSA, and others. What matters most is choosing one and using it consistently across the organization.

The Model for Improvement (Figure 1) provides a particularly effective framework built on three questions and the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle:

Three questions structure the work:

• What are we trying to accomplish? (defining aims)
• How will we know a change is an improvement? (establishing measures)
• What changes might result in improvement? (developing change ideas)

The PDSA cycle guides learning:

• Plan: Design a test of change (what, who, when, where, predictions)
• Do: Execute the test and collect data
• Study: Analyze results and compare to predictions
• Act: Decide what to do next based on what you learned

This deceptively simple approach creates discipline while maintaining flexibility. Teams define clear aims, measure rigorously, test changes systematically, and build knowledge through rapid cycles of learning.

Figure 1. Model for Improvement
(Source: Quality as an Organizational Strategy, 2024, p. 290)

Supporting Project Execution

Improvement projects don’t succeed through good intentions alone. They require active support from leaders and organizational systems:

Chartering and resourcing: Each project needs a clear charter defining its aim, scope, timeline, and resources. Projects also need dedicated time from team members and access to necessary tools, data, and expertise.

Sponsorship: Every improvement project benefits from a senior leader serving as sponsor. Sponsors help remove barriers, connect projects to strategic priorities, provide resources, and learn about the organization through the team’s discoveries. Effective sponsorship isn’t passive oversight—it’s active engagement.

Progress tracking: Leaders need ways to monitor progress across a portfolio of projects without micromanaging. Tools like project progress scores help sponsors quickly identify which projects are moving forward and which need attention (Figure 2).

Capability building: Organizations must develop people’s improvement skills through training, coaching, and apprenticeship. Improvement capability doesn’t appear spontaneously—it requires intentional development.

Figure 2. Portfolio of improvement projects tracked with progress rating scale on run charts.
(Source: Quality as an Organizational Strategy, 2024, p. 305)

Creating a Learning System

Perhaps the most important aspect of managing improvement efforts is learning from them. Each project provides insights not just about the specific problem being addressed, but about how the organization functions as a system.

Leaders should regularly review completed projects to extract lessons:

• What did this project reveal about our system?
• What barriers to improvement did the team encounter?
• What capabilities or resources are we missing?
• How does this learning inform our next round of planning?

This learning accumulates over time. Organizations that systematically capture and apply lessons from improvement work build increasingly sophisticated understanding of their system. They get better at improvement itself—choosing the right projects, executing them efficiently, and spreading successful changes.

Building a Culture of Improvement

When done well, managing improvement efforts transforms organizational culture. Improvement becomes normal work rather than special projects. People develop habits of testing changes, learning from data, and continuously seeking better ways to serve customers.

This doesn’t happen overnight. It requires years of sustained effort, with leaders demonstrating commitment through their own behavior. They must participate in improvement work, make time for teams, celebrate learning (not just success), and persist when progress feels slow.

But organizations that stay the course discover something remarkable: improvement capability compounds. Each successful project builds confidence and skills. Each cycle of learning reveals new opportunities. The organization becomes not just better at what it does, but better at getting better.

Sources:

Clifford M. Norman, Lloyd P. Provost, and David M. Williams. Quality as an Organizational Strategy: Building a System of Improvement. (Provident-Heierman Press, Austin, TX). 2024

Clifford M. Norman, Lloyd P. Provost, and David M. Williams. The QOS Field Guide: Guidance, examples, tools, methods, and exercises for using Quality as an Organizational Strategy to build a system of improvement. (Provident-Heierman Press, Austin, TX). 2025

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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.