For an organization to develop a sustainable, continuous improvement culture, it must, as we say at Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership, involve everybody, every day—i.e., process improvement must become an everyday part of everyone’s job. That’s the ideal.

The reality, however, according to Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations, is that buy-in to this ideal follows a normal distribution, as in Figure 1.

On Day One, there are typically just a few brave souls who will venture beyond their comfort zones. First, we all learn at different rates. The innovators grasp the innovation sooner. Second, for innovators and early adopters, the environment is often unfavorable to challenge the status quo. This is a small group with the chutzpah to forge ahead with an idea even in the face of possible reprisal from fellow workers or managers.

Several years ago, I wrote “The Natural,” a post about one such person in my former company, an unassuming production employee who produced leadwire assemblies for our company’s three dozen product families. It’s a 3-minute read, worth a look if you’d like an image of a continuous improvement rainmaker.

At a time when we were the self-proclaimed kings and queens of overproduction, Bob C. single-handedly declared war on waste. More than a master of improvement, however, Bob was a respected peer in our assembly departments and an internal supplier to virtually every product line. He had creds: He knew the work, he knew the people, and now he knew the waste as well.

But Bob’s unique ability to share his vision made him more than an innovator. He was an influencer whose beliefs traversed an organization bound up in pecking orders and silos. Within a year, leadwire production became a part-time job for Bob. He now spent more of his time helping his internal customers unleash their continuous improvement potential and build momentum toward the everybody, every day ideal.

My role was simply to let Bob and his growing squad of change agents do their thing, then acknowledge their accomplishments. According to Shigeo Shingo’s seven stages of improvement, acknowledging improvement—satisfaction—is a critical role for management.

In 1990, Bob led a team of early adopters to share their improvement story at the annual Association for Manufacturing Excellence conference—a proud moment for all of us.

As you read this post, does anyone from your frontline team come to mind? Might it be:
• Someone at your company, an influencer like Bob, who isn’t a manager but has demonstrated the ability to inspire and lead their co-workers on the continuous improvement journey?
• Not a manager, but someone from any department—production to sales to quality to finance—who has declared a war on waste in their processes or department?
• Someone who lives the GBMP motto “Everybody, Every Day”—by making continuous improvement a part of his or her job every single day while influencing others to do the same?

Published Sept. 9, 2024, in the Old Lean Dude blog.