Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement

In this Harvard Business Review article, Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson says the cultural value that unifies the 180,000 staff members in this huge health-care organization is continuous improvement. He lists three key conditions:

• People must understand and embrace the concept that small improvements compound to make big differences.

• People must love improving “both because they are passionate about the importance of their work,” says Halvorson, “and because it feels so good to move to a new level of performance.”

• People must have enough confidence in their colleagues to believe that the organization is capable of making progress. 

“You have to keep reminding the organization how capable it is,” he says. Every Friday afternoon, he sends a message to all employees celebrating a performance improvement, a piece of successful research, or a new award. For example, he touted the fact that fewer than 1 percent of hospitalized patients at Kaiser Permanente had pressure ulcers, compared with 7 percent nationwide, and commended a nurse in the northwest region who invented an automated insulin drip calculator that replaced the cumbersome, error-prone method they had used before.

“In some cultures,” Halvorson concludes, “transparent measures like these are a burden. The culture you want is one that welcomes them. Build a culture of continuous improvement, and it will serve your organizational goals. It will also be a force for good in the world.” 

“The Culture to Cultivate” by George Halvorson in Harvard Business Review, July/August 2013 (Vol. 91, #7/8, p. 34), no e-link available 

From the Marshall Memo #496