Having a continuous approach in your organization can be both positive and negative, depending on what it is in regard to.

When it comes to improvement, being continuous is ideal. Striving for continuous improvement in your organization furthers the success of your company. Striving for continuity in other aspects, however, can be detrimental.

Continuous can be defined as a state that is uninterrupted. This can be in reference to its extent, sequence, substance, or time.

There are a couple of clear benefits to being continuous, as well as a drawback that should be noted:

Being continuous in the improvement of your organization is a benefit, as it consistently improves quality and efficiency. Further, it increases customer and employee satisfaction while decreasing waste and costs.

Being continuous as an approach can be beneficial for increasing predictability and consistency.

A drawback of being continuous is if it is an approach to labor or processes. Having a process that is continuously worked without break can cause fatigue to your workers or wear to your machines.

Having an understanding of being continuous is important for the following reasons:

Avoids disruption – Having an understanding of something that is continuous and how to provide it if it is a service or function that people rely on helps avoid disruption.

In learning – Understanding how to keep learning continuously maintains growth and keeps away stagnation in yourself, your workers, and your organization.

The ebbs and flows – Understanding how to keep your vision continuous in your organization helps a business get through the natural ebbs and flows that will occur.

One of the cornerstone concepts of Six Sigma thinking is the concept of continuous improvement. An example of this would be a company that is seen as a leader in its field, has had enormous success, and is reporting record profits. It would be easy in a situation like this to rest on one’s laurels and decide to coast through the next few years on the reputation gained from all the accolades. Unfortunately, it has been shown time and again that this sort of attitude is only detrimental to an organization. Companies that have continued success look at the needs of their customers and find ways to further improve quality by improving their processes, eliminating waste, and focusing on what their customers value. A policy of continuous improvement has done wonders for many already successful companies like Starbucks and Coca-Cola.

Here are some key practices to consider when it comes to thinking about continuous:

While there is a lot to be said about staying the course and being continuous no matter what, it is important to be able to see when a process is not working. In the goal of being continuous, it can be just as important to be continuously reasonable.

You can make it part of the culture of your organization to be continuous in trying to maintain a positive outlook or continuous in finding opportunities in every situation.

While a lot of good things can come from being continuous, it is vital to your organization’s future to not be continuous in embracing policies that hurt or undermine others. No matter how long a written or unwritten policy like this has been in practice at an organization, it is time to stop the process and find something better.

Continual means to occur at regular intervals while continuous means to continue without any interruption.

It means that a function’s graph is an unbroken single curve.

As you have likely surmised from the above, being continuous isn’t inherently good or bad. It all really depends on what it is exactly that is being done without pause. Continuous improvement is great for an organization, while continuous labor can ultimately be bad for the growth of a company by exhausting your workforce.