Make it easy to improve or fix the system! Ask question like "what makes it hard to do your work better?" or "How can we do this differently?"
But why ask these questions? Why "make it easy?" This is inspired by a recent Leanblog podcast with Rick Morrow where Morrow talks about his book and his concept of 3 M's of Process Improvement. Make it easy is only the third of these - it doesn't make sense without the others.
Measure what you care about. How much are you selling? What is happening at the constraint? (You know where that is, right?) What is the cycle time of your product groups? What is the lead time from when a customer orders to when they get the full order?
And if you measure it, you had better do something with those measures. Manage to those measures. What are they telling you? If you aren't doing something with the measures, what is the point of them? If the measures don't provide fodder to ask questions such as those above, change them.
Interesting pairing: Measure, Manage to Measure, and Make it Easy (to improve).
[Photo: "Easy Row Subway - sign" by Elliott Brown]