Performance Evaluation: Proven Approaches for Improving Program and Organizational Performance

WHAT IS CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT?

Continual improvement depends on knowing where the organization is headed and continually monitoring that course to get it from where it is to where it should be. This is accomplished by asking the right questions, collecting useful data on an ongoing basis, and then applying those data to make sound decisions about required changes or which current initiatives to sustain. The goal of a continual improvement culture is thus to support the ongoing journey toward reaching the organizational vision through the use of performance feedback.

Continual improvement is much talked about but is done only rarely in practice. One likely reason is that there is much confusion about exactly what continual improvement is. In fact, ...