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The Process Improvement Challenge

Every organisation faces the same fundamental challenge: how do you unlock productivity by removing the hidden inefficiencies that hold teams back? As Chris Cooper, one of the world’s leading experts in enterprise upgrades and a founding partner at STRAKT, has demonstrated through his multiple Shingo Prize awards, the answer lies not just in understanding improvement methodologies, the answer lies in experiencing them firsthand.

Traditional process improvement methodologies - Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen - provide powerful frameworks. Yet organisations consistently struggle to translate theoretical knowledge into practical process and business improvement results. The gap between knowing what to do and actually making improvement work remains stubbornly wide.

Why Traditional Training Falls Short

Most process improvement training follows a predictable pattern: classroom instruction, case studies, perhaps a few exercises. Participants nod along, take notes, and return to their desks with good intentions. Yet weeks later, little has changed.

The problem isn’t the methodologies themselves. For example, Six Sigma’s DMAIC process (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) is brilliant. The issue is that understanding a process intellectually differs vastly from experiencing the messy reality of implementing it under pressure, with competing priorities, unclear communication, and the friction of cross-functional collaboration.

Jon Hill, another STRAKT partner with extensive experience delivering transformational change across organisations like Ford, Shell, and Vodafone, emphasises that organisations must “see and think differently” to achieve lasting change. This requires more than PowerPoint presentations - it demands immersive learning experiences.

Enter Slingshot: A Business in a Box

This is precisely why Richard Perry and I developed Slingshot - a business simulation that functions as a “factory in a box.” Rather than lecturing about process improvement, we drop participants into a fully functioning production environment where they must manufacture cardboard dragsters under real commercial pressures.

The simulation is deceptively simple: teams must produce model racers for a demanding customer (played by the facilitator) across three production runs. Each of up to 26 roles - from Supervisor to Body Graphics Operative, from Scorer to Test Engineer - has specific responsibilities, productivity incentives, quality standards and costs. The catch? No one has the complete picture initially, communication is fragmented, and inefficiencies are deliberately baked into the process.

The Power of Experiential Learning

What makes Slingshot transformative is that participants don’t just learn about process improvement - they live it. In the first production run, chaos typically reigns. Teams struggle with unclear goals, bottlenecks emerge, quality suffers, waste goes up and frustration mounts. Sound familiar? It mirrors precisely what happens in real organisations.

Paul Taylor from DHL captured this perfectly in his testimonial: “I first approached Bob to help with developing the team of 900 staff I was leading. Our client had challenged us to improve productivity in the final nine months of the year whilst also reducing costs.”

Following a series of workshops with the Senior Team of twelve, to map the process, identify and resolve the problems and bottlenecks the Slingshot simulation was run with two teams of Managers and Team Leaders, a total of 46 people across two sessions. The results? Paul says “The outputs of this during the nine months were, a productivity improvement of just over 8%, a reduction in costs for that period of just over £450,000 and a more engaged management team. That led us into one of our busiest Christmas periods ever and the whole team stepped up and delivered almost twice our usual output. Most of these improvements stuck and we realised significantly more productivity improvements in the following two years whilst enjoying the on-going cost reduction benefits.”

The Three-Run Transformation

Slingshot’s genius lies in its structure. After each production run, teams debrief, measure performance (quality index, break-even price, time to market, efficiency), and redesign the Slingshot process AND apply the lessons learned to their own.

The learning then continues to compound:

Run One exposes the problems. Teams discover how personal goals conflict with team objectives, how poor communication creates waste, and how assumptions about “someone else’s job” lead to systemic failures.

Run Two tests improvements. Having redesigned their process, teams experience the exhilaration of breakthrough performance. Productivity soars, quality improves, and suddenly the impossible seems achievable. Critically, they’ve learned that process improvement isn’t theoretical - it’s practical and immediate.

Run Three embeds continuous improvement. Just as teams hit their stride, the customer (facilitator) introduces specification changes mid-production. This mirrors real-world disruption and teaches teams to improve performance whilst adapting to change - the hallmark of truly resilient organisations. Many teams double their output from Run Two in Production Run Three, proving just what is possible.

Why Simulations Work

Research by J. Newstrom on training effectiveness (Newstrom, J.W. (1980). "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Training Methods." Personnel Administrator, 25(1), 55-60.) shows simulations score highest for creating participant acceptance, building interpersonal skills, and improving problem-solving abilities. Slingshot leverages this by incorporating all elements of the Kolb Learning Cycle: active experimentation, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and concrete experience.

Participants don’t just understand process improvement intellectually - they feel the frustration of inefficiency, experience the breakthrough of redesign, and witness tangible results. This emotional and practical engagement creates lasting attitude and behavioural change that classroom training simply cannot match. And by immediately transferring the insights from Slingshot into the delegate’s own real situation the team capture improvement ideas they own and willingly commit to deliberately deploy the very next day.

Beyond the Simulation

That real-life value emerges in the debrief sessions following each Production Run. Facilitated discussions draw parallels between simulation experiences and participants’ actual organisations. Questions like “How did personal goals impact team goals?” and “What barriers did we overcome?” spark insights that are immediately applicable.

Teams leave with concrete action plans they own, having experienced firsthand how cross-functional collaboration, clear communication with customers, and systematic process analysis drive measurable improvements. They’ve not just learned about continuous improvement - they’ve lived a compressed version of a complete transformation journey.

Conclusion

Process improvement isn’t a mystery. The methodologies are well-established and proven. The challenge has always been helping people truly understand how to apply them in the messy reality of organisational life.

Slingshot bridges this gap by creating a safe environment where teams can fail fast, learn deeply, and experience the complete improvement cycle - from chaos to optimisation - in a single day.

The result? Not just educated participants, but empowered change agents ready to transform their organisations.

As Paul Taylor concluded: “I am certain that the inclusion of the Slingshot! Simulation and the making of those cardboard dragsters, enabled the Senior Managers and Team Leaders to experience a doubling of output twice over. With that experience they “knew” they could cope with that busy Christmas. They believed it as possible because they had already done it and the knew how to achieve the same improvement again.”

Sometimes, the best way to improve complex business processes is to start with something beautifully simple - like a cardboard dragster.