Change: Sometime a battle between short term rewards and long term goals

Self improving team plays a significant role in small business setup where a team has to continuously invest in thinking how the current processes and system can be made efficient and faster. This type of team become a catalyst for "change" in an organization.

The concept of "Self improving Team" sounds very elegant but there some hidden challenges involved in it. One of the major challenge is battle in brain between short term rewards and long term goals.

Short term reward says use tactical solution and achieve the milestone with in targeted time and long term goal says invest some more (often one time effort) to achieve efficiency in performing a task (by automation, documentation, finding better algorithm etc) so that next time same task can be performed in more faster and efficient way. It is tragic story that most teams choose short term reward in time crunching situations.

I suggest, two strategies to tackle this:

1. Create a dedicated role of self improvement and assign to appropriate team with right set of skills.
2. Have a self improving culture in place. The team should have brilliant guys. The leader has to play a role of catalyst.