Five questions to ask about your own operation
- 01Which measures from your last improvement programme are still reported today?
- 02Does each control plan have a named owner, and do they still work for you?
- 03Can the programme’s savings be seen in your management accounts, or only in its closing report?
- 04Could your own team run the next improvement project without outside help?
- 05When a measure slips, is there a routine that catches it within weeks rather than at year end?
If the measures are no longer reported, the improvement has probably stopped as well.
Why results slip back
Improvements fade for ordinary reasons. The project team disbands and attention moves elsewhere. The new method was understood by the people who designed it, but not by the people who now run it. The savings were calculated once, for the closing report, and never tracked in the accounts. Nothing was put in place to notice when the process began to drift.
That is why improvement that depends on the people who delivered it rarely lasts. The result belongs to the programme, not to the operation.
What the recovery looked like
In industry roles before TransFormX, Shane O’Regan’s work delivered or led more than £6.1m of cost savings across defence, distribution and manufacturing. £2m of that came through a Belt programme, where people inside the business carried out the projects with coaching, rather than having the work done for them.
The same principle shapes the final stage of every TransFormX engagement, Sustain. A control plan, a dashboard, a meeting cadence and trained people stay behind. Success is your team not needing us.
How an engagement is structured, from Diagnose to Sustain →
What to check this week
- List the measures your last programme promised to improve, and check which are still reported.
- For each one, find the named owner and ask when they last reviewed it.
- Ask finance whether the programme’s savings can be traced in this year’s accounts.
Where the measures have lapsed, restoring them is the first job, because a gain that is not measured cannot be held.