Businesses are advised to adopt a methodological approach when embarking in the process of continuous improvement and that means they must analyze the current problem they want to improve to avoid focusing on symptoms. Once they find the root causes of the problem, they must develop relevant solutions to the problem and implement them. Thereafter, they must continuously monitor, evaluate, and communicate the change progress. The current top ten effective  continuous  improvement  models and tools used in the world are PDCA Cycle Model, agile, lean management, A3, McKinsey 7s Model, Kano Analysis Model, Shingo Model, Gemba Walk and Five Whys. Businesses that have made continual improvement part of their culture improve their customer service by thirty percent annually,  improves their sales by ten percent every year and reduce their operating cost by ten percent annually.

This article discusses 10 principles that will improve the business capability and capacity to adapt and thrive in the current complex and uncertain world. The first principle is to abolish old practices and traditions. This is not easy because it depends on how sophisticated those who lead change are and if their mental models are still traditional then chances are the business will continue remain conventional and suffer from the brutal environmental forces. Eliminating traditional ways of doing things requires the organization to subscribe to international professional bodies. This is where gurus and experts discuss best practices and new ideas during conferences and professional webinars. This has the power to change the mindset of management and employees because people tend to embrace knowledge that comes from experts. The second principle is to make small improvements every day. Business that are doing well have made it a habit to focus on few things and make 1% of improvement every day. 

By the end of the year these businesses have improved by more than 300%. Some of those businesses are Choppies Supermarket, Amazon, BK Proctor Fashion Company, Google, Toyota, Tesla, Disney and Debswana amongst many others.  The third principle is the mindset of seeing problems as opportunity. Some business problems such as declining sales and revenue may bring new opportunity for the business to innovate its services or products. Similarly, staff turnover may create an opportunity of reviving its workforce by hiring right attitude employees who will improve the business culture. In nutshell, resilient and agile organizations get worried if they do not face problems because they become complacent. The fourth principle is the ability to embrace collective intelligence. Organizations have different talented employees who are knowledgeable in different areas and to harness their intelligence it is advisable to get ideas from them by creatively coming up with innovative initiatives where they can present their ideas. The fifth principle is to empower every employee to become a problem solver. Businesses with powerful culture have employees who are very responsible and enjoy taking the lead in becoming problem solvers. Organizational problems are not the responsibility of management only as it is currently the norm, it is the responsibility of everyone in the organization and to cascade this mentality organizations should empower employees to be problem solvers. 

The sixth principle is to base your decisions on facts all the time, sometimes organizations use management perceptions as facts and end up misaligning themselves with the business reality when they make continual improvement decisions. This means business should invest in research and development to gather data that will inform their decision making. The seventh principle is to know the business core stakeholders. Main improvements in the business should focus on improvement business elements that will create an ecosystem of maximizing stakeholder satisfaction. This is why it is important to conduct market survey with an intention of knowing what your customers want from you and how to satisfying them. The eighth principle is to have open communication coming from all the business directions (bottom and top-down approach) so that all employees and management are fully informed on everything that matters about the organization.