Fostering a Culture of Continuous Improvement… and why you don’t have one

Most leaders say they want a culture of continuous improvement.

It’s everywhere: on company websites, in quarterly town halls, and written into leadership role descriptions. Many organisations even set Improvement objectives for employees.

Makes sense, I mean, why wouldn’t you want it? It certainly sounds good: Continuous Improvement, or:

Always Getting Better… Better quality, better customer feedback, better margins…

But the reality is, not only do most organisations not have one, they misunderstand what it really means to have a Continuous Improvement Culture.

What is Culture, anyway?

Jason Lauritsen said it best: 

“Culture is the sum of the habits and behaviours of the people inside the organisation.”

Culture isn’t what’s declared in the boardroom or on your website - it’s what’s lived on the floor. It’s what people do when no one’s watching; how they solve problems; act under pressure; how they treat customers and each other.

Culture is not what you say, it’s what you and your people do habitually.

So, if you want to change the culture, you need to change the Habits.

Ok, so what Are Habits?

Habits are the behaviours and actions that we do automatically, without really thinking, and they are the invisible engines of culture!

As BJ Fogg explains (read his book: Tiny Habits. It’s awesome), habits are formed when three things come together:

Motivation 

–

...a reason to act

Ability 

–

...the ease with which someone can act

Prompt

–

...a trigger that reminds them to act

When a behaviour or action is easy, rewarding, and prompted consistently over time, it becomes automatic. That’s a habit.

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Thinking & Acting

If culture is the sum of everyone’s habits, and you want a culture of continuous improvement, then improvement itself must be a habit. For everyone.

That means:

• Everyone is expected and empowered to spot and solve problems

• People don’t wait for permission - they act

• Improvement is part of ‘what we do’, not an additional task

It’s not an initiative. It’s not a department. It’s not a workshop. It’s a way of thinking and acting that’s embedded in every role, at every level, every day.

What many organisations do instead

Instead of building habits, most organisations take a project-based approach: they create a separate CI team to fix processes and run improvement events.

Improvement is essentially outsourced to a small group of specialists.

Improvement ends up feeling like someone else’s job, rather than part of everyone’s daily work.

The improvement initiatives often stifle or even fail outright; your people are being asked to support these initiatives, but they already have a job to do.

And when forced to choose between doing the job they’re employed to do and supporting ‘somebody else’s’ improvement initiative, there can be only one winner.

Additionally, because the Leaders only talk to the masses about the importance of Continuous Improvement at the quarterly town hall meeting, meanwhile they talk about the various arbitrary performance metrics several times a day, the message that they subconsciously communicate is that Improvement is not as important as those metrics. In fact, the message they send is that it’s WAY LESS important.

That’s not all.

Unintentionally, they end up encouraging firefighting, which is the antithesis of Continuous Improvement.

The ‘heroes’ who fix urgent crises get the praise and promotions, while those who quietly prevent problems stay invisible. That’s a double hit: they reward crisis response (of which they get more) while discouraging prevention (of which they get less).

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How do you change course?

If you want to build a real culture of continuous improvement, it starts with leadership. Not a big rollout. Not a 3-year plan. Just consistently modelled behaviours.

Think about BJ Foggs 3 things to get you started:

1. Motivation - Give people a reason to act

As a leader, create motivation by making it clear that improvement isn’t optional—it’s expected, valued, and rewarded.

Praise small wins publicly. Share experiments, including those that didn’t work. When people see that improvement efforts are noticed and rewarded, not ignored, they’re far more likely to build them into their daily routine.

Your words and actions signal what truly matters. If you consistently show that finding and testing better ways of working is part of the job, you’ll spark the motivation people need to turn improvement into a habit.

2. Ability - Make it easier to act

People won’t try new things if it feels risky, difficult, or bureaucratic. Make experimentation safe, quick, and easy.

Remove friction: fewer approvals, clearer guidelines. And show it’s okay to test ideas, even if they don’t work; we’re learning!

Most importantly, role model curiosity and experimentation yourself.

3. Prompt – remind people to act (regularly)

Habits need prompts. If you rarely mention Improvement, people won’t think about it.

So mention it.

Often.

Bring it into daily conversations; team huddles; meetings; 1:1s. Ask simple questions like, ‘What did we improve this week?’ or ‘What could we try differently?’

Frequency signals importance — so keep it consistent

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The Bottom Line

You don’t get a continuous improvement culture by declaring it. You get it by designing for it. By shaping the habits and behaviours that make improvement the norm, not the exception.

It won’t happen overnight. But if you commit to motivating, enabling, and prompting improvement daily, you’ll see the shift.

And before long, you won’t be the one pushing improvement. You’ll lead an organisation where everyone pulls it forward, and is committed to getting a little bit better, every day.