Almost every conversation I’ve had with colleagues lately on the topic of process improvement or business performance improvement has centered on organizing working meetings or events to address and solve problems. “Events” seem to be growing in popularity. The problem is, they don’t work.

People become alarmed, hurt, or angry when I say this, which makes me wonder how many of us stop and ponder our decisions long enough to realize that the terms “continuous improvement event” and “kaizen event” are oxymorons.

Of course, the conflict in the name doesn’t dictate the lack of success of events. They fail for several reasons and in several ways. A methodology that relies on events to drive improvements inhibits true continual improvement. In fact, because events fail to make meaningful improvement, they promote disdain for continual improvement methodologies and culture.

Let’s explore why organized events generally fail. Each event might not suffer from every failure mode, but most events exhibit at least some of them.

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