The Power of Alignment and Intrinsic Motivation in Continuous Improvement

Why Engagement — Not Incentives — Is the Real Driver of Sustainable Improvement

Many organizations struggle to build momentum around continuous improvement. Participation stalls. Alignment feels forced. Leaders turn to incentives, quotas, or rewards — only to see engagement plateau or even decline.

In this on-demand webinar, Mark Graban challenges conventional thinking about motivation and alignment in Lean and Kaizen cultures. Drawing on decades of experience, research, and real-world examples from healthcare and industry, Mark explains why intrinsic motivation matters — and how leadership behaviors either strengthen or suppress it.

Rather than asking, “How do we motivate people?” this session reframes the question to something far more powerful: “What are we doing that might be demotivating them?”

View all previous KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinars

Key Insights

Sustainable continuous improvement doesn’t come from dangling rewards or enforcing targets. It comes from creating the right environment.

In this session, Mark explores how traditional management systems — including incentive programs, quotas, and numerical targets without methods — often unintentionally undermine trust, creativity, and ownership. Through stories from Toyota, healthcare systems, and other organizations, he shows how participation grows when leaders remove friction, simplify improvement processes, and demonstrate respect for people’s ideas.

You’ll also learn why alignment should follow participation — not precede it — and how organizations can balance strategic priorities with daily Kaizen without discouraging frontline engagement.

What You’ll Learn

• The difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in continuous improvement

• Why incentives and rewards can unintentionally reduce engagement over time

• How leadership behaviors influence participation more than tools or targets

• When alignment helps improvement — and when it gets in the way

• Practical ways to encourage Kaizen without quotas or forced participation

Who This Webinar Is For

This webinar is ideal for:

• Continuous improvement, Lean, and operational excellence leaders

• Healthcare, manufacturing, and service industry leaders

• Executives and managers responsible for culture and engagement

• CI facilitators struggling with low participation or stalled momentum

• Organizations rethinking incentives, metrics, and motivation

Whether you’re launching a Kaizen program or trying to reinvigorate an existing one, this session offers practical, experience-based guidance.

About the Presenter:

Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized expert in the field of “Lean Healthcare,” as a consultant, author, professional speaker, and blogger. Mark does independent consulting and also serves part time as a Senior Advisor for healthcare clients with the firm Value Capture. He is also a Senior Advisor to the technology and software company KaiNexus.

He is the author of the book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement (Productivity Press), which was selected for a 2009 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award, the first healthcare book to win this award, and is being translated into eight languages. A 3rd edition was released in June 2016.

Mark has also co-authored a second book, titled Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements, which was released in June 2012 and also a Shingo Research Award recipient in 2013. A newly revised and condensed edition, The Executive Guide to Healthcare Kaizen: Leadership for a Continuously Learning and Improving Organization was released in August 2013.

His latest book is Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, a management book about using simple, yet practical statistical methods that help leaders at all levels overreact less to their metrics, which frees up time for real, focused, sustainable improvement.

He is the founder and lead blogger and podcaster at LeanBlog.org, started in January 2005.

Mark earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University as well as an MS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from the MIT Sloan Leaders for Global Operations Program (previously known as Leaders for Manufacturing). Mark started his career and learned Lean and other operational excellence methods at General Motors and Dell. While later working at Honeywell, Mark was certified as a “Lean Expert” (Lean Black Belt).