Editorial
W. Edwards Deming, a pioneer in continuous improvement (often abbreviated as CI), described it as a systematic, ongoing approach to enhance products, services, processes or systems.
CI is, to a large extent, the embracing of incrementalism – the idea that small, consistent improvements drive greater, more sustainable value than the pursuit of rapid, giant leaps forward. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, describes it:“If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the time you’re done.” The math checks out: 1.01365 = 37.78.
Some leaders default to “big bang” programs in the name of CI, but the more successful approach is to instill desired habits and behaviors in the daily operations of an organization. Simply put, CI is not a one-off project; it’s an enduring system — and one that cannot succeed without the right organizational culture and mindset. Nurturing this culture, then, becomes a critical imperative when attempting to embed CI into an organization.
Embedding CI Into Culture
Leaders often focus on the forms, templates, dashboards, meetings and other tactics, but the primary focus should be fostering the right culture for CI to thrive. Tactics are one part of the puzzle; creating a CI mindset requires deliberate cultivation of the following cultural enablers.
Empower the Front Lines
Perhaps the most iconic example of CI is Toyota, which is widely recognized as the birthplace of lean manufacturing. Toyota revolutionized global manufacturing processes by embracing CI through its Toyota Production System (TPS). Masaaki Imai’s 1986 book, “Kaizen: A Key to Japan’s Success,” spotlighted Toyota’s CI success story, propelling kaizen (Japanese term for CI) onto the global business stage. TPS was built on empowering the front lines — Toyota introduced the concept of pulling the “andon cord”, or permitting any employee to stop the production line if they detect a quality threat.
Amazon implemented its own version of the andon cord by empowering service agents to pull products off the website if they received repetitive customer complaints about the quality of that product. This practice helped Amazon eliminate tens of thousands of defects per year.
Engage Your Leaders to Champion CI
Front line empowerment will not drive results unless senior leaders practice CI by going to where the work happens to understand the problems themselves, role modeling the behaviors of CI and help design and implement solutions. Marc Onetto, former SVP of Worldwide Operations and Customer Service at Amazon, recounts his time on the front lines of a fulfillment center where productivity targets were missed due to abnormalities like a scanner not functioning properly due to low battery. This was a sign of a deeper problem — workers did not have a way to surface challenges that were hindering performance.
When Onetto standardized feedback gathering from the front lines, they were able to drive changes whereby workers would never miss productivity targets due to anomalies. Onetto represented the voice of the employees, leading to the discovery of challenges that management didn’t know existed. CI is not a management imperative but rather a core value that reverberates throughout every corner of the business.
CI doesn’t just require engagement from senior leaders; middle managers play a pivotal role in execution and relay information between the front lines and executives. At Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, CEO Susan Elrich wanted to sustain the implementation of TPS. To that end, she created a development plan for her 55 physician and staff leaders that tracks five observable behavioral dimensions. Among these, the hospital tracks whether leaders are present and accessible to frontline workers and collaborating with them to solve problems, ensuring their engagement in CI and their support for employees.
Build a Learning Culture and Cultivate a Growth Mindset
One way to build a learning culture is to embrace failures and their teachings by conducting regular “postmortem” meetings. A word of caution: too many leaders treat post mortem meetings as exercises in placing blame. Team trust and psychological safety are prerequisites for a learning culture.
In her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” Carol Dweck describes the growth mindset as a belief that our skills and abilities are not fixed and can be improved through dedication, hard work and continuous learning. In a world where many organizations believe that you must have the exact domain experience to successfully do a job, others have recognized that investing in talent and creating a culture of skill-based development is key. In an interview with Fortune, Enterprise CHRO Shelly Roither describes how investing in talent allowed them to promote 20,000 of their 90,000 employees last year.
Related Article: The Connection Between Learning and Employee Experience
Focus Relentlessly on What Matters
In his book, “The Power of Habit,” Charles Duhigg discusses the case of Alcoa. When introduced to investors following his appointment in 1987, Alcoa CEO, Paul O’Neil, spoke to investors about safety, not revenue and expenses. O’Neil recognized the importance of safety in his organization as a “keystone habit” — one that, if cultivated, would drive a culture of excellence elsewhere in the business.
By focusing on systematic, gradual improvements in accident rates, O’Neil provided the necessary catalyst to the business which in turn drove a myriad of great operating habits, ultimately propelling enterprise performance. “When O’Neil retired in 2000, Alcoa’s net annual income was five times larger than before he arrived, and its market cap had risen by $27 billion,” Duhigg wrote. An important lesson here is relentlessly pursue and focus on one or few metrics that matter. All too often, leaders fall into the “shiny object” trap and kickstart multiple CI initiatives in parallel, thereby paralyzing the organization with change fatigue.
Celebrate Wins
Throughout its core philosophies, Google discusses the role CI has played in providing a world-class experience to its users. One of Google’s beliefs is, “Great just isn’t good enough.” When an engineer noticed that the search engine only works well for words spelled correctly, he wondered how it would work for typos, which led him to develop a more helpful spell checker. Google celebrated this engineer not only by recognizing him internally but made his effort a part of their philosophy and story that would be shared repeatedly with future Googlers. A powerful way to celebrate wins and highlight the behaviors that are expected and recognized.
Incorporate CI Into Succession Plans
Thanks to the implementation of TPS, St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener, Ontario has been ranked one of the three safest hospitals in Canada. When CEO, Don Shilton, started thinking ahead to his retirement, he worked with the Board to appoint a successor who was trained in lean management and led CI initiatives in his previous role at Queensway Carleton Hospital to improve patient wait time and overall experience. Consequently, Shelton was able to ensure that the new CEO would continue to nurture the hospital’s winning culture.
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To Continuously Improve Is to Be Human
CI assumes imperfection, thereby taking the pressure off to get things perfectly right the first time around. The idea is to continually iterate. CI encourages us to think of each task or initiative as a training ground for the next and to not let perfect get in the way of progress. When implemented correctly, CI can be empowering both at the individual and enterprise level. It pushes us to be lifelong learners and students of our work. To believe in CI is to believe in the power of human potential.
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