Have you ever led an improvement that made perfect sense on paper…

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The process was better.
The problem was real.
The solution was solid.
Everyone agreed it was a good idea.

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And then…

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People struggled to actually make it work. And suddenly, what looked like resistance starts showing up.

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But what if we looked at this differently?

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What if our job as Continuous Improvement practitioners isn't just to implement improvements?

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What if our job is to make success easier?

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In this episode of Thoughts on Change, we're taking that idea apart and looking at four things we can do to create the conditions for people to succeed in a new process, new way of working, or new culture.

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What You'll Learn

In this episode, I explore:

• Why our job as CI practitioners goes beyond implementing Lean tools and improving processes

• How clarity about what "good" looks like makes change easier to adopt

• Why we need to define both outcome expectations and behavior expectations

• How openly discussing barriers can help us improve the improvement

• Why experimentation should be the norm—not a sign that our original solution was wrong

• How making success easier can create more buy-in and reduce unnecessary friction

 

Start With Clarity

One of the simplest ways to make success easier is to make sure people can actually see what success looks like.

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We often assume people understand because we understand. We've lived with the project for weeks. We've studied the data. We've built the process. We've talked through the methodology.

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But the people expected to work in the new system may be seeing it for the first time. If you can't picture what "good" looks like, how do you know whether you're doing it right?

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Two of my favorite questions for creating clarity are:

"Play me the movie."  And:  "If I peeled back the roof and watched people working in this new way, what would I see?"

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Those questions force us to move beyond vague statements about improvement and actually describe what success looks like in practice.

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Outcomes Aren't Enough

It's easy to define the outcome we're trying to achieve.

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Reduce defects, increase throughput, improve safety, meet the production target.

But outcomes are only half the equation. People also need to understand the behaviors that will help create those outcomes.

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In this episode, I share a story from a recent Kaizen event where an unexpected behavior expectation could have completely undermined the results we were trying to achieve. The team could technically hit their numbers while still behaving in a way that would prevent the improvement from working.

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That experience was a great reminder: If we don't define the behaviors that create the outcome, people will create their own definition of success. And sometimes that definition is very different from ours.

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Barriers Are Information

Here's another uncomfortable one for us CI folks:

When someone tells us why our improvement won't work, our first reaction can be to defend the idea.

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Yes, we worked hard on this. Yes, we've analyzed the data. Yes, we've thought this through. Maybe, we know this is better.

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But what if the person pointing out the obstacle isn't attacking the improvement? What if they're giving us information we need?

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"I don't understand."

"This won't work on night shift."

"We don't have enough time."

"This creates another problem."

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These aren't necessarily complaints. They're clues. They tell us where success is currently difficult.

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When we create an environment where people can openly talk about those barriers, we get the opportunity to remove them before they turn into frustration, friction, or resistance.

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Experiment Instead of Enforce

There is another way we can make success easier:

Stop expecting the first version to be perfect.

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Every team is different. Every shift is different. Every culture is different. Every situation is different.

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So instead of saying: "This is the new process."

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What if we said: "This is our current best idea. Let's start here and learn."

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That changes the relationship people have with the improvement. They're no longer being asked to simply comply with a solution someone else created. They're being invited to help make the solution work. And when people help build something, they're much more likely to own it.

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The Four Things That Make Success Easier

When you put all of this together, success gets easier when people have:

• Clarity about what good looks like.

• Expectations about both the outcomes we want and the behaviors that will get us there.

• Open communication about barriers and obstacles.

• Experimentation that allows us to adapt the solution to the people and situation.

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These aren't complicated concepts, but they can completely change how we approach Continuous Improvement and change management.

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Reflection Questions

Think about a change or improvement you're currently leading and ask yourself:

• Can the people doing the work clearly describe what "good" looks like?

• Have we defined both the outcomes we want and the behaviors we expect?

• Can people safely tell us what isn't working?

• What barriers are people experiencing that we may be overlooking?

• Are we treating those barriers as information—or as resistance?

• Are we allowing people to experiment and adapt the solution?

• What is one thing I could remove that would make success easier?

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The Big Takeaway

Our job as CI practitioners isn't simply to create better processes, it's to help people succeed in those processes. That means creating clarity, setting expectations, listening for barriers, and making experimentation part of the work.

 

The goal isn't to make people change. The goal is to make success easier.

 

And sometimes, when we do that really well, people don't need nearly as much convincing as we thought they did.

 

But What If They Still Resist?

Now, you might be thinking:

"Kelly, I've done all of that."

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"I've created clarity. I've set expectations. I've asked for feedback. I've experimented."

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"And people still resist."

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Exactly

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Because making success easier is incredibly important…but it's only half the story.

Sometimes people resist even when the process is better, the expectations are clear, and success is easier.

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Why?

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That's where we're going next. Resistance isn't always about the process. It's often about something much deeper. And once we understand what's really happening underneath resistance, the entire conversation around buy-in starts to change.

 

Links

​https://youtu.be/QGG_F83nk8c

https://www.kellymallery.com/changeshaper

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Transcript

Welcome back to Thoughts on Change, the podcast where we make change make sense. Over the last several episodes, we've been talking about credibility and the characteristics that kick-ass CI practitioners embody being a change shaper. At the end of the last episode, I said something that I think deserves an entire conversation. I said, our job isn't to force success, our job is to make success easier. Now that sounds simple, but I think it completely changes how we think about continuous improvement. Because if we're honest, a lot of us were taught that our job is to solve problems or implement lean or reduce waste or deploy a new process or just make things more efficient. But that's not really what we're hired to do. Our job is to help people succeed in a new process or a new culture or in that more efficient environment. And if they aren't succeeding, our job is to remove the things making success harder. That's a very different mindset than just implementing. Think about the best teachers, coaches, mentors, or managers you've ever had. What made them great? Usually it wasn't because they had all the answers. It was because somehow they made it easier for you to succeed. They gave you enough direction without micromanaging. They helped when you got stuck. They adjusted when something wasn't working. They believed you could do it. That's exactly what we should be doing as improvement leaders. Not creating more work, creating fewer obstacles. Welcome to Thoughts on Change, the podcast about the messy, political, emotional, deeply human side of leading change. I'm Kelly, and I believe anyone can implement lead tools until they actually have to get people to use them. Around here, we talk about how to move culture, how to build credibility, and how to influence without bulldozing. Basically, how to herd humans without losing your mind. So, what actually makes success easier? I found it comes down to four things. First, people need clarity about what good looks like. This sounds obvious, but it's amazing how often we skip it. We assume everyone knows what success looks like because we know. We built the project plan, we created the process, we've looked at the data for weeks, we studied the tools and methodologies. But everyone else hasn't. Imagine asking someone to hit a target they can't actually see. Sure, maybe they'll keep shooting, but they'll probably miss, and then they'll get frustrated and doing something they can't see the result of or know if they're doing it right. And then we wonder why adoption is inconsistent. One of the simplest questions you can ask is what does good actually look like? Not for you, for them. Can they picture it? Can they recognize it when they get there? Can they explain it to someone else? If not, we probably haven't created enough clarity. And here are a couple of my favorite phrases to help get clarity on what good looks like. Play me the movie. And if I peeled back the roof and watched people in this new way, what would I see? Okay, second. People need to understand expectations. And there are actually two kinds of expectations here: the outcome and the behavior. Outcome expectations answer questions like, what are we trying to accomplish? And what results are we after? Behavior expectations answer questions like, how do we work together? What does good participation look like? What should happen when something goes wrong? And those are completely different conversations. I've seen improvement projects where everyone agreed on the goal, right? Reduce defects, increased throughput, improve safety. Everyone nodded, everyone smiled, and then six weeks later, everyone was frustrated. Not because they disagreed about the goal or the outcome, but because nobody had talked about expectations. Who owns what? When do we escalate? How do we make decisions? Is it okay to experiment? Can we disagree? The outcomes were clear, but the behaviors weren't. And both matter. I was actually in a Kaizen event this past week where I learned right before the event started that a key behavior could potentially derail everything. The goal of the event was to smooth out the area's output so they would meet it consistently every day instead of these spikes and hockey sticks. In addition, we were aiming to free up about half of the labor in this area to go to another area that desperately needed help. For these outcomes to work, we needed to make sure that the labor was appropriately balanced and that if there were problems with supply or issues on the line, that people were able to flex to other parts of the area to help clear the issue and get back to smooth and consistent output. Now, three days before the event would start, I heard the site leader say that the team would look at their output for the day and say, oh yeah, we missed, but we did this other activity, look at this other thing we did. And in essence, they were celebrating that they kept themselves busy. This was a huge red flag to me about the success of this event. If we didn't set that behavior expectation of flexing people to help where it was needed and not just stay busy, we could make all of the improvements we want, but in the end, we would not meet our outcome goal. That behavior expectation there was key. All right. Third, success gets easier when people can openly talk about barriers. One of the fastest ways to kill improvement is making people feel like they have to pretend everything is fine. Because if people can't safely say, this won't work, or I don't understand, or we don't have enough time, or this creates another problem, those problems don't disappear. They just go underground. And eventually they become real resistance and friction. Sometimes we treat barriers like they're complaints, but barriers are just information. They're clues, they're the system telling us where success is difficult. And this one can be really hard for us CI folks because it can feel like we're being attacked when people share obstacles to an improvement. But we aren't. When someone points out an obstacle, they are really helping us. And instead of defending the idea, we should try to get curious, ask questions, and thank them. Because they're actually helping us improve the improvement. All right, finally, we need to make experimentation the norm. One of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming there is one perfect solution. And there almost never is. Every team is different, every culture is different, every shift is different, every problem is different. What works beautifully in one area might completely fall apart somewhere else. So instead of saying this is the new process, what if we said this is our current best idea and this is where we'd like to start from? That's a very different conversation. Now we're learning together instead of enforcing together. Experimentation gives people ownership. It gives them permission to improve the improvement. And here's the really funny thing: people are usually far more committed to something they helped build than something they were handed, even if they built it through trial and error. So let's put these four pieces together. Success gets easier when people have clarity about what good looks like, clear expectations for both outcomes and behaviors, open conversations about barriers, and permission to experiment until the process fits the people doing the work. Now, notice that nowhere on this list did I say push harder, convince better, get executive sponsorship, build a prettier PowerPoint. Those things might help, but they aren't what actually makes success easier. Now, you may be listening to this thinking, Kelly, I've done all of those things, I've explained the vision, I've set expectations, I've asked for feedback, I've experimented, and people still resist. Exactly. Because making success easier is incredibly important, but it's only half of the story. Sometimes, even when success is easy, people still don't move. Why? That's where we're headed next. Because resistance isn't always about the process, it's often about something much deeper. And once we understand that, the entire conversation around buy-in starts to change. We'll dive into that in the next episode. And until then, go make success easier for someone this week. Not by doing the work for them, but by removing one obstacle standing in their way. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. That's a wrap for this episode of Thoughts on Change. If you're also out there trying to move culture instead of just installing tools, hit subscribe and share this with a fellow CI warrior. And remember, progress beats perfection, curiosity beats control, and culture beats everything. See you next time.