Using Change Concepts for Improvement

Using Change Concepts for Improvement

While all changes do not lead to improvement, all improvement requires change. The ability to develop, test, and implement changes is essential for any individual, group, or organization that wants to continuously improve. There are many kinds of changes that will lead to improvement, but these specific changes are developed from a limited number of change concepts.

A change concept is a general notion or approach to change that has been found to be useful in developing specific ideas for changes that lead to improvement. Creatively combining these change concepts with knowledge about specific subjects can help generate ideas for tests of change. After generating ideas, run Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to test a change or group of changes on a small scale to see if they result in improvement. If they do, expand the tests and gradually incorporate larger and larger samples until you are confident that the changes should be adopted more widely.

The change concepts included here were developed by Associates in Process Improvement. See The Improvement Guide (Langley GJ, Nolan KM, Nolan TW, Norman CL, Provost LP. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Publishers, Inc.; 2009) for a list of hundreds of change concepts, as well as examples of how they were applied in process improvement, both inside and outside of health care.

Eliminate Waste

In a broad sense, waste can be considered as any activity or resour

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