Years ago, when I was Director of TQM for a commercial distribution company, the president called me into his office and said that he thought I should stop getting all the employees to do my job and make the improvements happen myself. That’s when I knew for certain that he didn’t get it about continuous improvement and that employee progress and empowerment were doomed.

Unfortunately, company leadership’s understanding of how to make continuous improvement successful is still lacking in many firms, who fail to reap the huge financial benefits and competitive advantage that are possible. These are the companies that helped create the expression “flavor of the month” to describe improvement initiatives that come and go but never reach their potential. There are many reasons for continuous improvement’s failure to live up to its potential in some companies. Most of them begin and end with leadership and the culture the leadership engenders. Companies must become good at continuous improvement, just like any other important competency.

Here are 7 ways to help make continuous improvement successful:

1. Alignment – an overall strategy and direction which all continuous improvement activities support and which help a firm focus on the vital few rather than what’s most easily fixed
2. Culture – a culture that focuses on people, enables questioning the status quo, supports improvement work as much as daily work, and that understands that those who do the work, not just those who manage workers, see opportunities and can most readily find good solutions to problems
3. Leadership – leaders who ask questions rather than prescribe answers and who lead by example, not edict
4. Value – a focus on improvements that go further than just finding cost savings but on adding value both internally and externally to customers.
5. Competence – being good at continuous improvement, which involves understanding not just continuous improvement tools, but how to deal with all the soft (people) issues that can make or break improvement efforts
6. Measurement – developing meaningful metrics to track, communicate and celebrate progress (both savings and value added) along the continuous improvement journey.
7. Staying power – success requires continual focus by weaving continuous improvement into the fabric of a firm, achieving successes and powering through the inevitable failures without abandoning the mission.