Why Improvement Programmes Lose Momentum: Sustaining Continuous Improvement After a Strong Start

Improvement programmes rarely fail because people stop believing improvement matters. We can imagine you’ve been there many times when the launch goes well, the first projects deliver, and the energy is real. Then, somewhere along the way, it quietly fades. Sustaining continuous improvement after that strong start is where most programmes come unstuck.

There are numbers behind the pattern. McKinsey's research on large-scale transformations found that they start strong but lose an average of 42% of their expected value in the later phases. Improvement programmes tend to follow the same curve, and usually for the same reasons.

On the latest episode of the Scaling CI podcast, OpX founder Chris Dando spoke to Gemma Archibald, who has spent 12 years as a COO and Divisional CEO in private equity-backed businesses. In those businesses every day of the investment window counts, so a programme that loses momentum is a commercial problem, not just a cultural one. Her experience points to five reasons momentum fades.

The big projects survive. The everyday improvement doesn’t.

Gemma's first observation is that large strategic initiatives usually hold up well. They have executive sponsors, programme governance and regular boardroom attention and that visibility keeps them alive.

The harder part however, is the improvement happening in teams every day. It rarely gets a sponsor or a slot on the board agenda, and it's the first thing to slip.

"Every process either gets better or worse. It never stays the same." - Gemma Archibald

Without a way to monitor a process once it has been improved, it drifts back. Gemma describes teams solving the same problems again and again, because nothing holds the gain in place. As a senior leader, her question was how to build something systemic, so she didn't have to keep dropping down to check improvement was still happening.

1. Success isn’t visible

Sooner or later, the CFO asks what the improvement programme is actually delivering, yet, when the answer has to be pieced together from linked spreadsheets, it can't be given quickly, and confidence starts to drain. Gemma calls that loss of faith "the death knell for improvement activity."

Chris points out that the big projects are usually measured well. It's the hundreds of small improvements that come from a changing culture that are much harder to count, and they add up.

2. People stop hearing back

Visibility matters on the front line too. Once people believe leaders genuinely want their ideas, the ideas start coming. Gemma has tried idea boxes and Teams channels, and found the same thing each time: people lose track of what happened to their suggestion and decide nobody is listening.

An idea that can't go ahead isn't the problem. Silence is and as Chris puts it, if people stop raising issues and opportunities, the improvement culture is effectively dead.

3. Capability stays with a few people

Most programmes start by building a small team of experts. That's necessary, but if capability stops there, momentum depends on a handful of people. Gemma has seen practitioners given 30% of their time for projects end up on three at once, because everyone wants the good ones and nobody can see the load.

Her answer was to have the experts spend time with managers, teaching them visual management, metrics and how to use data to find problems. Over time, managers improve their own processes instead of waiting for the experts. It's slower, but it doesn't collapse when one person moves on.

4. Leaders stop asking

"You will care about what your boss cares about." - Gemma Archibald

If senior leaders stop asking about improvement, stop showing up and stop recognising good work, everyone else reads the signal. Priorities shift, leaders move on, and improvement drops down the list.

Gemma also describes how strategy loses meaning on its way through the organisation. Each management layer adds its own interpretation, and sometimes its own limits. By the time a goal reaches the front line, people may not know what they're improving or why. Lean practitioners know handoffs create waste in a process, and the same is true of strategy.

5. The work is disconnected

As a programme grows, it ends up spread across a Miro board here, a spreadsheet there and a set of training decks somewhere else. Whilst each of those works on its own, together, they start to creak. Gemma is clear that improvement can't live "hidden in spreadsheets and in laptops." It needs to be visual, and it needs a system that keeps it on the agenda.

Sustaining continuous improvement takes habits and a system

Enthusiasm starts a programme, but it rarely sustains one. Chris argues that sustainment lives in the everyday ways of working of operational teams, because those create habits, and habits are what last. That puts middle leadership, often called the "treacle layer" in transformation, at the centre of it.

Gemma compares the operating system behind improvement to a skeleton: the structure that keeps everything upright so the parts can work together. In practice, that means:

• Every improvement, whether big or small, should be recorded in one place, so success stays visible.

• Every idea is given a status, so people hear back.

• Capability needs to be tracked across teams, not concentrated in a few names.

• Outcomes should be connected to the work that produced them, so the CFO's question has a quick answer.

• Improved processes are monitored, so gains don't slip back.

That's the job connected improvement infrastructure does. It doesn't replace leadership attention or the habits of good teams, but makes it easier to keep up when priorities change and people move on.

Listen to the full conversation

Gemma and Chris also talk about winning trust in a business that had been through years of cost-cutting, and Gemma shares her three tips for anyone starting out in CI.

Listen to the full episode.

If your programme started strong and is now harder to keep moving, OpX's CI maturity assessment shows where it's most likely to be slipping.

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