Continuous improvement is often used as a corporate catchphrase. An executive might tell a manager, “We need to implement a continuous improvement program to stay competitive. Take a course, get certified, and make it happen.”
But it’s rarely that simple. The manager completes the training but returns overwhelmed, asking, “Where do I begin? We don’t do it like they explained in class.”
Theory alone rarely builds the mindset needed for continuous improvement. Even the best tools or techniques may not be suitable for your environment, or perhaps not at this time. This often leads to the belief that “continuous improvement doesn’t work here”. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It merely means you are looking for a square peg to fit into your round hole.
When you hear those words, it’s time to pause, revisit the essence of continuous improvement, and take a broader, strategic view of the challenge. Why doesn’t continuous improvement work in your environment?
Continuous Improvement is a Habit, Not a Goal
I believe that the missing key to continuous improvement revolves around habit building. Rather than seeing it as a job to be done or a goal to achieve, the essence of continuous improvement is about building new, healthier habits consistently.
Continuous improvement is about learning how to change with ease.
It takes practice. It’s about taking the time to think about the purpose of what you hope to achieve each time you embark on a new project, task, or activity. It’s about reflecting on past experiences and finding what you might re-use or adapt, and what no longer serves you and is time to let go of. Finally, it’s about looking back – daily, weekly, monthly, or any cadence of your choice – to evaluate how aligned you are to your goal based on measurable outputs.
That, essentially, is the process of continuous improvement. Implementing feedback loops to help you align with your goal, and then taking smart, intentional actions. It’s not about trying to do more, faster, but trying to do less, but more effectively. Building the habit of reflecting, learning, and adapting, rather than just focusing on efficiency and getting things done, is the missing key that blocks so many teams from improving continuously. Rather than getting leaner, faster, and smarter with each iteration, they have to carry more organisational debt, slowing them down rather than speeding them up.
Speed is the enemy of continuous improvement. And ironically, speed is also the outcome as a result of slowing down to focus on mastering the continuous improvement cycle.
The Continuous Improvement Mindset: Purpose, Practice, and Perseverance
Continuous improvement is a mindset much more than a skill, tool, or activity.
Continuous improvement is much like conquering a mountain for the first time. There is no map of the ideal route to the summit, and you don’t know what you’ll encounter on the way to the top. You have no control over the weather and the external environment either. All you have is a clear goal – to reach the mountain peak – and willpower and determination to get there. Your job is merely to clarify your goal and make sure you’re always moving towards your destination.
You can do as much preparation as possible, but when you stick to the plan over responding to change, you might just get killed, as so many teams of explorers before Sir Edmund Hillary. It takes more than planning, tools, and expertise. It requires a continuous improvement mindset.
A continuous improvement mindset consists of three main categories: purpose, practice, and perseverance.
How do you get started with continuous improvement?
Purpose First: The North Star of Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement efforts often fail when they lack a clear purpose. It becomes a checklist item without meaning or purpose that dissolves the intent and thus the destination. You will find your team drifting without any direction. They become used to a status quo which keeps you and your team stuck in creating the same results.
Improvement for its own sake usually feels like busywork, leading to disengagement and short-lived results. It often creates more problems than progress, adding organisational waste with extra administration and rules to follow. The red tape introduced in the name of quality and continuous improvement slows down and kills improvement rather than enabling it.
Purpose acts as the North Star. When everyone understands the deeper reason behind change and knows where they’re going, the journey becomes meaningful and motivating.
The first step on any continuous improvement journey is thus to clarify your purpose and assess your current state. Where are you now? Where would you like to be?
Get clear on your purpose to move towards your goal.
When you can clearly describe a desired outcome, people will naturally start moving towards it. The resistance often comes from a lack of clarity, ultimately indicating a lack of purpose. Different people have different ideas of what the outcome must look like, and start working against each other, creating conflict and no movement.
Practice Discipline to Turn Purpose into Progress
But purpose without goals is merely a fantasy. You have to take action to move towards your desired outcome, which requires the practice of discipline and habit-building.
When you’re doing something for the first time – whether it’s building a new gym routine or taking a social media detox – it takes practice and perseverance. The first time will be hard. The second time will be slightly easier. Then it might get harder again, and you’ll most likely want to give up at some stage. But then, one day, suddenly you start seeing the results. From there on, it becomes easier to show up.
Your job is merely to make sure you’re moving towards your desired destination and that you keep going, even when it’s hard.
Building habits is essentially the process of rewiring your brain, which is made for automation. You’re thus going against your biology, and there is nothing easy about that. It takes perseverance, courage, and kindness. You must be willing to forgive yourself when you notice you forgot about your new habit. And then try again.
Just keep going. One small step in the right direction is worth much more than a hundred steps in the wrong direction.
Perseverance Through Challenges: Embracing the Growth Mindset
One thing is certain on your journey of continuous improvement: you will face challenges. Life will throw curveballs, users will change their minds, systems will experience outages, bugs will take longer to fix than expected, and you’ll discover unforeseen obstacles along the way.
Simply put, the plan will rarely go according to plan.
The key is to keep moving forward. As Diana Krall sings in “Pick Yourself Up”:
“Nothing’s impossible I have found
For when my chin is on the ground
I pick myself up, dust myself off, start all over again.”
No successful business—no matter how big or small—has ever been built without encountering serious challenges.
It’s only impossible when you give up.
While you might not be building the next empire, you can be sure that moving towards a new state, even if it is a more desired state, comes with a fair number of roadblocks and challenges.
The solution? Embrace a growth mindset. It is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication, effort, and learning from setbacks. It means seeing challenges as opportunities to learn and improve. It’s the understanding that no matter how much you know, there’s always room to grow and get better.
Embracing growth means becoming comfortable with change. Instead of viewing obstacles as insurmountable, those with a growth mindset use them to refine their skills and build resilience. This perspective empowers you to keep going, even when progress feels slow or difficult. By welcoming challenges and committing to continuous learning, a growth mindset becomes the foundation for lasting personal and organisational improvement.
From Theory to Practice: Building Continuous Improvement Habits That Last
Success doesn’t come from theory alone or rigid plans, but from building habits that support ongoing learning and adaptation. Continuous improvement is far more than a buzzword or a checklist item — it is a mindset rooted in purpose, disciplined practice, and perseverance.
By clarifying your purpose, committing to consistent practice, and persevering through difficulties, you create the foundation for meaningful, lasting improvement. This journey requires patience and resilience, but the payoff is a culture and process that continuously evolves and delivers real value with minimal effort.
If you need support on your journey, the Navigator Sessions are a continuous improvement program that aims to practically teach the process of continuous improvement, serving as a catalyst for change.
