How to Build Continuous Improvement into your Small Business

April 6, 2023

Improving all aspects of a small business to achieve competitiveness and success is not a matter of chance. It requires constant effort and the adoption of industry best practices to improve processes, products, services, and tools, leading to reduced overheads, streamlined operations, and increased productivity.

The most popular approach to continuous improvement goes by the acronym PDCA:

Plan. Revise your business elements to create a strategy for improvement
Do. Trial the plan in a test project to check its performance
Check. Monitor your metrics against the goals and objectives of the plan
Act. Roll out the changes more widely and plan for future improvements.

Situational assessment

Conducting a situational assessment is the first step towards continuous improvement. This involves reviewing all aspects of your business to identify areas for improvement. A useful tool for situational assessment is the SWOT analysis, which identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

You may build on this analysis by:

Benchmarking the performance of your business against competitors
Doing market research to pinpoint trends, and shifts in customer/client demands
Analysing current and historical data for
Attending business webinars to upskill (

This handy resource from Business Queensland guides you through the process of conducting a situational assessment.

The steps of continuous improvement

Once you have identified areas for improvement, you can follow these steps to harness continuous improvement:

Identify bottlenecks that could be hindering improvement opportunities
Detail an action plan to roll out the ‘fix’
Ongoing performance review, and be sure to manage any staff resistance to change
Keep your eye on opportunities for optimisation, and
Rinse and repeat!

You can refine your approach by standardising your business processes. Develop well-defined workflows for each of your business operations and map them to your business aims and objectives. Then, set targets to track your improvement initiatives in real-time.

Make sure change is meaningful

Draw on author Simon Sinek’s catchcry to define your “why” to help staff understand the purpose of the change being rolled out. Engaging them will help manage resistance to change. Be clear about your expectations and think through how it could impact other parts of the business operations.

Managing change without chaos is possible, but avoid introducing too many changes simultaneously. Make sure each system supports other systems in your business to grow its capacity.

Continuous improvement tools

A key tool to help forewarn you about possible disruption to continuous improvement is your risk management strategy. Reviewing it regularly, as well as carrying out risk assessments and maintaining a risk register, can help transform threats into opportunities.

Project management tools, such as a Gantt chart (Asana, Monday.com, Excel, TeamGantt, etc.), can save you time.

One approach to continuous improvement is Kaizen. It highlights making small, systematic and ongoing changes to help generate improvements. Kaizen builds from a team atmosphere and employee engagement so that change can happen at any time from any staff member. Ready-made tools for the Kaizen approach include Process.st, KPI FIRE, Impruver, Reverscore, and Braineet.

Also check Business.gov.au’s recommended range of digital tools and software to boost improvement.

Continuous improvement examples

There are various ways to implement improvement strategies within your business, including:

Brainstorming sessions: Engage all staff in your audit for insights, and allow them to be candid about delays, wasted resources, human errors and delays
Training: Identify ways of upskilling, reskilling and cross-skilling your staff to build capacity in your workforce. External programs, ‘lunch and learn sessions’, or mentoring, etc. can help
Time estimates: Track those against the actual time taken to complete a task. Involve staff in efficiency tweaks
Surveys: Whether it be a part of your staff meetings, an online Mailchimp quiz, or a poll, regularly tap into staff insights.

To implement your improvement strategy, you may need access to finance. Your business may be eligible for a government grant or program. Otherwise, as your broker, we can guide you on finance options to make a move.

This information is for general information purposes only. The information contained herein does not constitute financial or professional advice or a recommendation. It has not been prepared with reference to your financial circumstances or business and should not be relied on as such. You should seek your own independent financial, legal and taxation advice as to whether or not this information is appropriate for you.