Exploiting Continuous Improvement to Achieve Transformation and Efficiency Goals: Part 3

In the prior installment of this blog series, I discussed the role that continuous improvement practitioners can play to help utilities design, adopt, and integrate innovation into standard business practices. The core skills of continuous improvement (including process engineering, performance measurement, and change management) can be applied to the challenge of improving innovation practices to meet the challenge of utility transformation.

For most utilities, the need to evolve toward an organizational system that generates more rapid and successful innovation represents a significant break from the past and a fundamental change to legacy ways of working. Rather than operating within an organizational system that fosters innovation in a rapidly changing environment, utilities have been solving a different equation. Key characteristics of the utility sector have resulted in less need for—or comfort with—either innovation or change.

• Stable work processes
• A specialized and seasoned workforce
• The regulatory compact—a rate of return business
• A known and consistent risk inventory
• Risk aversion
• Not “paid” for innovation

These characteristics have also fostered an environment where a culture of innovation is not proactively established or reinforced.

This blog provides a brief introduction to techniques that are at the center of this focus on changing the organization to deliver innovation in a rapidly changing environment. Several tools and techniques are increasingly being adopted by utilities to rewire long-standing ways of working. One of the most common approaches is known as agile:

(Source: Guidehouse, Inc.)

“Lean” and “scrum” are common methodologies used as part of an agile approach to the iterative delivery of a product or service. Other methodologies and techniques that may be valuable in today’s environment include:

(Source: Guidehouse, Inc.)

Using one of these techniques may yield short-term benefits to project delivery, but inevitably, the challenge for utilities is to reorient the entire system to think and work differently. Utilities must continue to seek new ways of addressing core aspects of how work is done to build an environment in which innovation can flourish.

Please join Guidehouse at the Change Management for Utilities (West) and Process Excellence for Utilities (West) Conferences where we will discuss the successes and challenges of helping utilities achieve their transformation objectives.