As a start, here are eight things you as a leader can do to promote a culture of continuous improvement in your organization:

1. Lead by example; participate in continuous improvement openly and with gusto.
2. Talk about the importance of continuous improvement with everybody, at every opportunity.
3. Consistently ask for ideas for improvement and respond quickly to those ideas.
4. Empower employees to make daily continuous improvement a part of their own work.
5. Don’t only ask for ideas that directly affect the bottom line or meet a certain ROI threshold.
6. Emphasize the importance of small, incremental improvements ‒ don’t make every improvement an event or a project.
7. Help share and spread ideas.
8. Document and celebrate the results achieved through continuous improvement.

Organizations that succeed in spreading a culture of continuous improvement do so because their methodology is simple. Make your improvement methodology simple enough so that everyone can participate and be engaged. Employees should know enough about the chosen method to find opportunities for improvement, but they won’t become experts until they’re allowed to participate.

Continuous improvement doesn’t play second fiddle in organizations that have mastered the cultural transformation. Why? Because every employee and leader knows that improvement is a key aspect of their job, and they approach it with the same weight and discipline as they would any other key performance indicator.

DOWNLOAD How to Guide: Keeping your teams engaged on the CI journey for tips and techniques to keep your people engaged when CI maturity levels out.