KaiNexus CEO and co-founder Greg Jacobson joins host Mark Graban for the third installment of the Ask Us Anything series, a set of short, candid sessions that work through questions submitted by webinar attendees. This 30-minute conversation covers seven questions, and one thread runs through most of them. It is a question of continuous improvement leadership: programs succeed or stall based on what leaders actually do, not on the tools they buy or the methodology they name.
Here is what the episode covers and the thinking behind each answer.
The first question asked for an informal problem-solving tool that is quick and easy to use anywhere, not just on a shop floor. Greg pointed to the 5 Whys as a way to structure a short series of questions that moves a team past a convenient workaround and down to an actual root cause. Five is a guideline, not a rule. Sometimes three questions get you there, sometimes seven.
Mark offered an even simpler option for everyday problems: spot an opportunity, talk it over with the team, test a change to see if it helps, then document and share what you learned. Whether the situation calls for the 5 Whys, fuller root cause analysis, or a quick kaizen, the PDSA cycle (Plan-Do-Study-Act) is the shared backbone. Easy to describe, harder to practice well.
A questioner whose organization was new to Lean worried that introducing an electronic idea system too soon might do damage, and that the team would be buried under more ideas than it could handle.
Greg challenged the premise. He compared it to training for a marathon. Nobody decides to skip the running shoes on the grounds that they have not run the race yet. Reaching instead for email, spreadsheets, and shared drives, because those tools are already on the computer, builds friction that many programs never overcome.
He added one important caveat. Software is not a silver bullet. It does not create energy or enthusiasm on its own. It pays off when an organization also has a methodology and real leadership commitment behind it. Without those, the technology is a waste of money.
On the fear of too many ideas, both hosts called that a good problem to have. A quick acknowledgment tells people they were heard. Visibility keeps them from feeling ignored while the backlog is worked down. And spreading implementation across many people, rather than dropping it all on a few managers, keeps the team from drowning.
Asked for the steps to instill culture change, Mark started with a problem-solving move: understand the current state first. Organizations tend to describe the culture they want without examining what their current culture already does well and where the real gaps are. Culture is incremental. It rarely needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
Both hosts framed culture as habit. You act your way into a new way of thinking, and the habit loop of cue, routine, and reward is what makes a new behavior stick. That is why daily huddles and similar routines matter, and why small changes are worth focusing on. They produce a quick, visible payoff that reinforces the behavior.
Mark closed with a caution. Culture change cannot be declared. A leader cannot simply announce that the organization no longer blames people for systemic problems. They have to demonstrate it, day after day, until it becomes how the place actually operates.
This question had two parts. On bringing Lean into high-level strategy, Mark argued that senior executives have to see Lean as something for them, not a fix aimed only at the frontline. When leaders apply improvement thinking to their own work, it cascades through the organization.
Greg added that executives run processes too, from how they produce and interpret reports to how they set strategy. All of that work contains waste. Used well, continuous improvement becomes a way to aim a thousand minds at the goals the organization most needs to hit, rather than just one.
On the second part, dedicated continuous improvement leadership roles, both confirmed the trend. Titles like director of Lean transformation, director of process improvement, and director of operational excellence are common, sometimes at the VP level reporting to a CEO or COO. Greg drew a comparison from emergency medicine, where you could once gauge how seriously a hospital took the specialty by where the ER reported in the org chart. Reporting structure sends a signal. A continuous improvement function buried several layers down tells everyone it does not matter much.
For organizations that already run a balanced scorecard, Greg's advice was to keep the list of key performance indicators short. A handful, no more than ten, at the level the whole organization is asked to focus on, with supporting indicators cascading down to the department and workgroup level.
Improvement work has two parts: doing the work, and watching whether the data moves in response. Greg noted that KaiNexus has been building toward showing KPIs side by side with improvement activity, so teams can see whether their effort is producing real results.
Mark added a story from John Toussaint, who described an organization tracking 55 "true north" metrics. Measuring 50 or 100 things is fine when you need that data to study a problem. Asking executives to focus on all of them daily is not. The job is to find the few indicators that tell you whether the organization is moving in the right direction.
The gap between supporting improvement and committing to it comes down to stakes. If Lean is a nice-to-have, executives sit back and watch, content if it works and unbothered if it does not. If it is tied to something they have to deliver, such as improving quality and patient care while controlling cost without layoffs, it becomes a must-have, and they work to make it succeed.
The strongest programs connect improvement to outcomes executives already own: safety, satisfaction, turnover, and financial results. Greg's point was blunt. Numbers everyone understands, plus clear visibility into the impact of improvement work, are what move leaders from polite approval to genuine ownership.
The final question asked how to coach leaders toward an environment of respect and trust, where people feel safe bringing ideas forward.
Mark's answer came from Norman Bodek: treat every idea like a gift. We are taught not to tell someone we dislike a present we have been given. The same courtesy belongs at work. When someone brings an idea that does not look workable, the respectful response is not a polite brush-off, and it is not silent rejection. It is genuine thanks, followed by coaching to find something that does solve the underlying problem.
Greg made it tactical. Put ideas and improvement at the top of the meeting agenda, where their placement alone signals that they matter. Then work each idea toward the real need behind it. A request for a new parking garage might, after a few honest "why" questions, turn into a small and fast change that solves the actual problem.
Ask Us Anything is a series of short sessions answering questions from KaiNexus webinar attendees. It is hosted by Mark Graban, VP of Improvement and Innovation Services at KaiNexus, with Greg Jacobson, the company's CEO and co-founder. Earlier parts of the series are available on the KaiNexus YouTube channel and in the KaiNexus podcast archive.
See how KaiNexus helps organizations capture ideas, coach improvement, and connect daily work to strategy. See KaiNexus in action ->
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