Many business people know the term "PDCA cycle" but cannot feel its effectiveness. There is a constant refrain of voices saying, "It’s meaningless to cycle PDCA" and "It just ends up being formal work." The root cause of this failure of the PDCA cycle lies in a common "trap" that many people overlook. Why isn’t your PDCA cycle functioning?

This article will clarify the five fatal traps that cause the PDCA cycle to become dysfunctional, based on the principles of process management.

By understanding these traps, you will learn practical techniques to break free from mere formal repetition and transform PDCA into a powerful engine for effective business improvement.

1. Ambiguity in Planning is Causing Failures in Execution

The biggest reason why PDCA fails lies in the initial "Planning" stage. Failures in the Execution stage are merely symptoms that arise from inadequacies in planning.

The two main failures that often occur in the planning stage are:

• Ambiguous goal setting: Goals must be defined by specific numbers (KPIs) and clear deadlines. These two are minimum essential requirements in any PDCA cycle.

• Insufficient resource planning: Failing to forecast necessary resources (personnel, budget, skills) in the planning stage directly causes resource shortages and skill gaps in the execution stage.

A powerful tool to prevent these failures is the "6W2H" framework. By using this framework, you can eliminate the ambiguity in planning and develop an actionable plan.

The rigor of planning is inversely proportional to the level of execution risk. The more ambiguous the plan, the more inevitable the failures in execution.

Pro Tip

“Securing resources” is not a task of the execution phase. It is the most crucial “deliverable” that must be completed in the planning phase by obtaining firm commitment from all stakeholders.

Improving the precision of planning is the first step in setting a reliable benchmark for the next cycle.

2. The Cycle Has Become a "Stagnant Loop" Instead of an "Ascending Spiral"

The essence of the PDCA cycle is to rise in an ascending spiral through cumulative improvements, not just mere repetition. Each cycle must start from a higher standard than the previous one.

However, many organizations fall into this spiral becoming a "stagnant loop." The reason lies in the "improvement (Act)" stage, which is the most strategically important yet is often the most overlooked.

The improvement (Act) stage has two crucial functions:

1. Correcting identified issues: Execute corrective actions for challenges identified in the verification (Check) stage.

2. Standardizing success: This is the most important point. Successful measures must be formalized as the new standards or manuals for the organization, making them reproducible by anyone to instill the effects across the organization.

Neglecting this "standardization of success" leads to "personalization,” where work depends on the experience or intuition of specific individuals. This is not just inefficiency; it is an "organizational debt" that forces the organization to "repay" every time an experienced employee transfers or retires. The organization must repeatedly solve the same problem.

Common Pitfall

“Permanent Loop Syndrome”: This occurs when only individual symptoms are corrected in the improvement (Act) stage without updating the standards of the work itself. This preserves the root causes, resulting in the same problems recurring in the next cycle.

By solidifying improvement as a system, PDCA can evolve from a mere problem-solving tool to an engine that steadily elevates the business standards across the organization.

3. Disrupted Rhythm Such As “Weekly PDCA” Across the Company

It is essential to adopt the perspective that "there is not just one PDCA." In reality, there are multiple PDCA cycles, each with a rhythm (cycle period) best suited to their level of position and role.

For example, in marketing initiatives, there are primarily three levels of different PDCA patterns:

• Company-wide PDCA

  • Level: CMO / Marketing Executive

  • Cycle: Quarterly

  • Goal: Formulation of overall marketing strategy, budget allocation, maximization of ROI

• Departmental PDCA

  • Level: Marketing Manager / Brand Manager

  • Cycle: Monthly

  • Goal: Promote the growth of assigned products/services, improve departmental KGIs

• Individual PDCA

  • Level: Campaign / Channel Manager

  • Cycle: Weekly

  • Goal: Steady execution of individual initiatives, maximize tactical KPIs

Why is it important to understand these differences in rhythm? If a cycle with an inappropriate speed is applied to the target, such as trying to evaluate long-term brand strategies on a weekly basis, you end up with invisible results and arrive at the erroneous conclusion that "PDCA does not function." Finding the correct rhythm that suits your work becomes the key to making proper evaluations against benchmarks and avoiding failures.

4. “Check” is Merely Glancing at Results

The Check stage is often misunderstood as merely a task of comparing the results against the plan, such as "100 in the plan versus 80 in actual results".

However, the true purpose of this stage is analysis of root causes. Just looking at superficial results does not yield specific insights that lead to the next improvement (Act).

The correct procedure for the Check process is as follows:

1. Objective comparison: Measure actual results objectively against the numerical targets (KPIs) and deadlines set in the plan.

2. From observation to analysis: Not only confirm the differences in results but also logically analyze why the progress did not go as planned or why it exceeded the plan by breaking it down into factors.

3. Deriving actionable conclusions: The analysis results must be concrete, based on data, rather than abstract notions such as "insufficient effort." These conclusions must lead directly to specific actions to be executed in the next improvement (Act) stage.

If you cannot logically identify the causes in the Check stage, the Act stage can only provide symptomatic treatments, thus resulting in getting stuck in the "stagnant loop" described in trap 2. As a result, "improvement (Act)" becomes not just symptomatic treatment but leads to a process update backed by evidence to raise the benchmarks for the next cycle.

5. Losing Sight of the Final Objective of PDCA

Is the act of running the PDCA cycle itself becoming an end goal? The true strategic purpose of continuously running PDCA lies in achieving business standardization.

Standardization is the mechanism that converts temporary improvements into permanent organizational assets and ROI. By continuously improving through PDCA and standardizing successful processes, organizations can enjoy significant strategic benefits such as:

• Stabilization and enhancement of business quality: Regardless of who is in charge, consistent high-quality results can always be achieved.

• Increased productivity and reduced costs: Standardized processes are the most efficient methods at that time, and by eliminating unnecessary work, productivity improves and costs get reduced.

• Elimination of personalization: The know-how held by specific individuals is formalized as an organizational asset, thus reducing risks from personnel turnover.

• Laying the groundwork for promoting DX: It is impossible to digitize disorganized and non-standardized business processes. Business standardization is an absolute prerequisite for successful DX.

By viewing PDCA not merely as a task management tool but as a strategic framework to achieve these significant goals, its efforts are elevated to a higher level.

Conclusion: To Finally Make PDCA Successful

This article has explained the five traps that lead to the failure of the PDCA cycle.

1. Ambiguous planning leads to execution failures

2. Failing to standardize improvements leads to a stagnant loop

3. Using an inappropriate rhythm that does not match roles

4. Ending with superficial result checks

5. Losing sight of the final goal of business standardization

The core of genuinely making PDCA function is shifting from the awareness of "merely completing four steps" to the awareness of "embedding improvements as an organizational mechanism and elevating the benchmarks for the next cycle."

Especially in the phases of execution (Do) and verification (Check) in marketing activities, complex data analysis and management of advertising media can become significant bottlenecks. Utilizing technology can be an effective solution to such challenges.

The AI advertising and marketing optimization platform Cascade automates complex data analysis and identifies the root causes of why campaigns did not proceed as planned in seconds. This allows marketers and managers to significantly reduce time spent on analysis tasks and focus on the phases of "planning (Plan)" and "improvement (Act)" where human strategic judgment is most critical.

If you're interested, please take a look at Cascade's materials.