KaiNexus CEO and co-founder Greg Jacobson joins host Mark Graban for the sixteenth episode of the Ask Us Anything series, the recurring session built around questions from webinar attendees. The questions in this batch share a theme: most of what gets in the way of a continuous improvement culture is not the methodology. It is the human stuff around it. Resistance from staff. Leaders who cannot admit a mistake. Employees who do not believe their ideas will be heard. The conversation works through how to engage resistance rather than label it, why apologizing is a leadership strength rather than a weakness, and what it actually takes for an organization to start generating hundreds or thousands of improvement ideas a year.
Here is what the episode covers and the thinking behind each answer.
Two attendees asked about culture change in a resistant environment, and a third made the case that culture change has to be addressed before Lean tools can be effective. Greg challenged that last assumption directly. Culture is not a building you construct before you start working. Culture is the manifestation of how people behave inside the organization. Saying you cannot improve until the culture is better is illogical, because the culture changes through the act of improving.
Mark went after the word "resistance" itself. He has been writing about how uncomfortable he is with the reflex of labeling people as resistant. The better question is why. People rarely resist improvement. They resist a specific change because they doubt it will actually improve anything, or because they have not been engaged in shaping it. When a leader senses resistance, that is exactly the moment to engage more deeply, not less. He pointed back to motivational interviewing, the method behind much of the social science here: even when a change is positive, going through a phase of resistance is a normal step in the change process, not a defect. Mark also recommended drawing motivation out of the person rather than explaining the why at them. If their motivations are genuinely unaligned with the organization's, that is a leadership challenge worth surfacing, not a problem to paper over.
Greg's word for the work was listening. The more you understand the experience of the frontline worker, the more grounded you are when you start moving. Pulling people along or whipping them from behind is one posture. Walking next to them, ready to move when they are ready, is another. Most resistance shows up when people feel they are being changed, not when they are changing.
He added a Shigeo Shingo line worth holding onto. The order of importance for improvement is better, easier, faster, cheaper, in that order. That order tells you who to put first: the worker. KaiNexus data backs it up. When organizations run truly bottom-up improvement, where nobody is telling people what to improve on, staff satisfaction is consistently one of the highest categories of improvement in the early period. Quality, safety, and cost come up later. That natural sequence only happens when leaders come from a place that workers can trust, and workers can tell the difference between a leader trying to create a culture and a leader trying to change them.
Mark closed the segment with another Shingo line: ninety percent of resistance is cautionary. When employees are being cautious, that is the strongest argument for leaders to keep engaging, not to write them off.
A short question came in from Andrew: is it okay for a leader to apologize, or is it taken as a sign of weakness? Mark answered both halves: yes, and no. He has blogged about the idea that admitting a mistake takes real strength and confidence. The older corporate posture of never admitting error, the same posture you see in politics, causes far more problems than it prevents. Employees see through false bravado quickly.
Greg agreed and added one honest qualifier. A leader who keeps doing the same offensive thing and apologizing each time is signaling weakness, not strength. A genuine, infrequent apology after a real mistake comes from security and reflects well. Repeating the apology without reflection or improvement does the opposite.
Mark connected it to a pattern from healthcare. Studies have shown that doctors and hospitals who apologize sincerely after a medical error are sued less often than those who do not. People accept that humans make mistakes. What they cannot tolerate is the cover-up. The same dynamic applies in any workplace. A non-apology in the style of "I'm sorry if you were offended by that" is less of an apology than what came before. A real apology, followed by changed behavior, builds trust. Greg added a related observation from his medical training. There is a well-established relationship between a physician's bedside manner and how often they get sued, mostly independent of whether their clinical actions actually caused harm. Demeanor, communication, and willingness to engage as a human matter more than people expect.
A reader named Mark asked how some companies generate hundreds or thousands of improvement ideas from their employees every year. Mark's answer named what does not produce that volume: quotas, individual targets, and external incentives. What does produce it is leaders actively engaging their people, asking what is in the way, asking what frustrates them, asking what they would test. Then helping people actually test and implement what they came up with. Then giving recognition, not rewards. The pattern is the loop, and the longer the loop runs, the more the culture builds.
Greg recommended Daniel Pink's "Drive" for the social science underneath this, especially the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. He also made an important leveling point. Companies that produce thousands of ideas a year are not made of unusually talented people. They are made of regular humans. KaiNexus's customer base spans industries, geographies, and sizes, and the high performers do not share a physical profile or an industry. They share a discipline. Leaders ask for ideas not on January 1 each year, but on January 1, 2, 3, and every day after that. It becomes part of the fabric of how the place runs. Nothing magical about it. Hard, because it requires sustained discipline, but not magical.
An attendee named Diane asked the most practical question of the session: what is the best way to get a job in process improvement and Kaizen? Mark gave the version he gives most often. People in healthcare with no Lean experience sometimes need to switch organizations to find a workplace where Lean is already established, take a clinical role there, get into improvement projects, get formal training or certification, and use that as a springboard. He also flagged a frustration he sees from the other direction: organizations posting healthcare process improvement jobs with "healthcare experience required" as a hard filter. Improvement is improvement, and a fresh outside perspective can be a feature rather than a problem. The shortcut version of his advice: reading, education, and certification matter, but at some point you have to position yourself to get the experience, learn by doing, and turn that into a role.
Ask Us Anything is a recurring 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.
See every episode in the series on the Ask Us Anything main page. Earlier episodes are also available on the KaiNexus YouTube channel and in the KaiNexus podcast archive.
See KaiNexus in action and see how KaiNexus helps organizations capture ideas, coach improvement, and connect daily work to strategy.
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