The Continuous Improvement Machine: How Quantity Becomes Quality

Read Time: 3.5 minutes.

I published a post on Tuesday on the 7 skills that everyone should start building today to become “The CEO of You."

90% of the comments seemed to focus on skill #3: 

Continuous Improvement

There seemed to be agreement that this was critical to master. And just as much agreement that few leaders had done so.

Let's build our custom continuous improvement machines together. 

1. Clear Destination Loosely Held

We design machines to produce a specific output optimally. If you don't know what your factory is supposed to deliver, you're relinquishing control to randomness. 

Take the time to paint "What Excellent Looks Like" as vividly as possible. 

Here are some questions to help you: 

• What role are you playing in the ideal scenario? 

• What types of people have joined you on the journey? 

• What are the indicators that you've achieved your goal? 

• What impact are you and/or your team having on the world? 

• What is your life like when you play the movie forward to the end? 

There is no correct answer, only yours. The more vividly you can describe it, the more likely you are to get there.  

Note: I include "loosely held" because this picture will likely change as you learn and evolve. This isn't a failure. This is your machine working as designed. 

2. Take Inventory

Math never lies. The shortest path between two points is still a straight line. If we want to draw that line to our ideal destination, we must be honest about where we currently stand.

The most vital thing to know is our capabilities. But not a random set of capabilities, the ones necessary to get where you're going.

3. Build or Buy?

Most leaders, especially early on in their careers, don't consider this a choice. If they have any weakness or missing capability, they feel their only option is to close the gap personally. 

While noble, this is rarely the optimal path. 

The alternative is to surround yourself with people who naturally complement you. Your grind is their gift. 

The Visionary-Integrator pair from Entrepreneurs Operating System (EOS) is a clear example. 

Many companies will reach a choke point when the visionary founder gets to a stage of growth that requires upgrading their operational capabilities. These founders move away from their superpowers and contort themselves into something they're entirely mediocre at. 

The wise founders (often the ones who learned their lessons the hard way) hire a Head of Operations or COO to drive the company while they stay focused on customers, strategy, etc. 

4. More Shots on Goal

The late Kobe Bryant coached his daughter's basketball team and promised they'd be better than the others. 

Why was he so confident? 

It was not genes or secret drills. It was simple: "It's just math." 

The other teams practice for an hour a couple of days a week. They practiced every day for twice as long. 

Over time, the power of math overpowers talent. 

He applied this same logic to himself in High School.

Start simple and figure out how to take one more shot each day. 

5. Error Handling

More shots only help if you convert them into more learning. 

And the path that all high-performing teams take for this is reflection. 

• The Navy Seals do After-Action Reviews

• Pixar has the "Brain Trust" critique movies regularly

• NFL teams devote the day after the games to watching film

The entire point is to understand the root cause of the problem and agree about who should do what differently. 

To learn how to lead these diagnostic problem-solving sessions with your team, check out our MGMT Accelerator. I share the process I taught hundreds of leaders in my decade at Bridgewater. 

This approach will cover your Errors of Commission, the mistakes born of action gone wrong. 

But what about Errors of Omission? 

• The missed opportunities.

• The "No" that should have been a "Yes." 

• The action you should have taken but stopped at indecision

These are harder because they're mostly "What-Ifs" in a game with infinite possibilities. 

But you can follow our practice of keeping a Decision Journal and record the opportunities you turned down and why. Over time, you'll see macro patterns you missed in the micro decisions. 

Storing Your 1% Better

If you haven't seen this graph from Atomic Habits, it shows the power of small compounding improvements. 

If you want to reap the benefits of continuous improvement, you must do two things: 

1. Commit your team to modest gains at high frequency.

2. Capture those gains in a way that each individual can build upon collective knowledge. 

Both of these things require commitment and discipline. They ask your team to exert more effort in the short term to harvest the long-term gains. 

But combining these two commitments also becomes your biggest asset. Together, they build visible momentum. 

And once a team is moving, it becomes hard to stop. 

What You Missed

Here are a few posts that got outsized attention this week.

• 12 Must Read Books For New Managers

• Maximizing The Leadership Impact Equation

• How You Can Train Your Team To Act Like Owners

• 7 Biggest Leadership Mistakes (And Tips to Avoid Them)

• Develop These Foundational Skills To Become “The CEO Of You”

If you could add one business book to my list, what would it be?

Podcast Alert

This week, Marsden and I brought our modern mom-and-pop shop to Fort Worth, TX. We led a workshop for the True Network of Advisors, my second time working with this incredible community.

Last time, not only did I get to give a keynote on my 7 Biggest Leadership Mistakes (thinly veiled as lessons), but we also recorded a live version of their Super True-per podcast.

I’m not going to lie. This one gets very real and personal very quickly.

But don’t worry; we went deep into leadership, too.

Find it on Spotify, Apple, or your favorite platform.

Thank you for reading. Appreciate you!

Dave