SPYROS FIDAS

Most organizations implementing today kaizen strategies. One of the major aspect of such events is "continuous improvement", which in fact do not practice. What they practice would be better termed "continual improvement". The distinction between continual improvement and continuous improvement is a fine but important one. Continuous means "without interruption" while continual means "frequent or repeated". Continuous is "go go go..." while continual is "start stop start stop start..."
For some reason many organizations implement it from the middle of the organization outwards. One possible reason is that the sponsorship is at middle or senior management rather than the very top of the organization. This creates the need to implement improvement as a series of projects led by experts rather than a transformation led by a fully engaged leadership and management team. These projects may be very successful. Often they are designed to demonstrate how systems will deliver specific desired business results. But projects have scopes and boundaries and by definition are discrete or at best continual and not continuous activities.