CI Culture: The Traits of the Continuous Improvement Leader

Bottom Line Up Front

Building an organization that has a strong Continuous Improvement (CI) gene in its DNA requires leaders who exhibit the qualities that make this possible. These “Traits” are the first of three parts of how I define the CI Culture (followed by “Mindset” and “Derailing Behaviors”). I share with you my list of qualities in the hopes of stimulating thought, reflection, and healthy debate! In the article I make suggestions on how this list can be useful to you.

My List

1. Change agent – you love to make improvements

2. Truth seeker – no sacred cows, no hiding what’s really happening

3. Patient – change is hard and it takes time to win hearts and minds

4. Business savvy – got to understand cost, revenue, and risk

5. Data savvy – you can’t improve what you don’t measure

6. Influence – winning hearts and minds with love and kindness

7. Prioritizer – we can’t work on everything and our time is irreplaceable

8. Organizer – respect each other’s time with competent planning

9. Culture builder – live the values and actively build them in others

10. Grit – this is tough business – you will need to dig deep

11. Happy warrior – but what we do is really fun, especially when we win

12. Willing to get dirty/go to Gemba* – don’t stay in desk defilade – get out there!

13. Good listener – remember you were given 2 ears and only 1 mouth for a reason

14. Can talk from top to bottom – everyone is important and needs to be won over

Background

As a Continuous Improvement (CI) leader, I’ve experienced being in an organization trying to drive change, and the people around you simply don’t get what you’re doing at the core level of their being. Sometimes, organizations try to deploy CI in pockets, which spells failure if the culture isn’t right or if there isn’t critical mass of CI-capable professionals present to get traction. Organizations that want to build their CI capabilities may hire consultants to conduct Lean Six Sigma or other training without addressing the culture first – truly putting the cart before the horse, and making success unlikely.

The Content

If you seek to build Continuous Improvement (CI) as a skill set in your organization, then you need leaders who espouse the values of CI, which means you need to know what they are so you can select for them!

Firstly, the executives at the top of the house need to embrace these values. That may be problematic if they got to their positions following different values. In some cases, they may not have reached a maturity level in their career to understand these values – think family-owned company that is grown up to that first big inflection point and gotten acquired by a PE firm. They may have ridden a wave of market expansion that was driven by technology rather than managerial prowess, and now that sales have plateaued, the business is suddenly challenging.

Secondly, if your firm is seeking to deploy CI capabilities, it probably isn’t because everything is going swimmingly. Your competition may be out-maneuvering you. You may be losing market share or pricing power. You are realizing you must change or die. To change you need people who think differently than the ones who have put the firm in a position of weakness. Use these traits to select for winners.

Finally, you have great people who need to be won over or evicted. Performance evaluations – both formal and informal – need to be centered around these values. On every leadership call, leaders should be calling out associates who exhibited one or more of these values. Formal reviews should be conducted by assessing everyone’s performance in these terms. The C-Suite needs to talk these values over and over and over and over and over and over. Period. And then the line leaders will do so as well, and so on. These are the behaviors we want in our people, we will reward those who demonstrate them, and those who don’t exhibit them are not going to stay, because we can’t afford to keep them.

Conclusion

Organizations that demonstrate the qualities of Continuous Improvement are rare, but good ones do, and they win in the marketplace because they are adaptable, data-driven, customer-focused, empowered meritocracies. They are great places to work! Building this culture starts with understanding what you want. Once you set that destination, then you can hire consultants and buy training so long as those expenditures are driving the CI culture. If they aren’t, then get rid of them and try again.