Talking Heads is the podcast from Buckinghamshire Business First that explores the business world in the ‘Entrepreneurial Heart of Britain’ through conversations with local and national business leaders and personalities.

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Episode 12: Talking about continuous improvement in business

Business leaders Victoria Brocklesby (Origin Global) and Kris Theophanous (Bradbury Tracks) have an insightful conversation about a subject both know well: the benefit of pursuing continuous improvement and innovation in business.

Origin Global won the Buckinghamshire Company of the Year and Growth Business of the Year at the 2022 Buckinghamshire Business Awards.

Bradbury Tracks are a former finalist in the Digital Innovation category at the Buckinghamshire Business Awards.

Key talking points

The '2-second Lean' philosophy

Kris talks about the the '2-second Lean' philosophy, a method of continuous improvement which his team has embraced since its implementation in Bradbury Tracks' working day:

"What it encourages is that everyone in the business makes one improvement every day that improves their process by two seconds, so it's marginal gains every single day.

"Which sounds difficult, but it's the fact that it's very small, and we give people time to do it as well. The first hour of our day is the 3 s's - 'sweep, sort and standardising' your work area, and then 40 minutes of coming up with an improvement. So we're allowing people time."

The system is to blame, not the person

"A system makes a problem, not the person. A person doesn't come in deliberately to mess something up. They come in to do the best they possibly can within the systems that we provide them. So if there is a system that allows them to make a problem, then we've got to change the system." - Kris Theophanous

Preventing micromanagement

“Trust in autonomy, to leave them (staff) to it, so they are not micromanaged." - Kris Theophanous

Learning from your mistakes

"Its not about blaming, it's about everyone recognising the opportunity to improve, and grabbing onto that and being really enthusiastic about saying, 'okay, I've got that wrong, or that person got that wrong, but that's fine, we all make mistakes, it's totally human, lets grab it and try and think of a way to make sure we don't make that mistake again.

"As people join Origin, they get swept up in it and actually it becomes a really positive place to be and to work, to own your mistakes and to have the autonomy, but also to take the fear away from making mistakes, because there's no point saying 'we're not going to make mistakes', they do happen, so I think that blame culture is really important to get out of the business." - Victoria Brocklesby

The benefits of running a family business

"I've met so many people that are part of family businesses and they are so different, but I think there's definitely a shared goal. We work very hard to get a whole team involved in the shared goal of the
business, but when you're going in (with family), straight away you're on the same page, literally from day one." - Kris Theophanous

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