The Wheel of Sustainability

How to Engage Teams and Sustain Continuous Improvement

Many organizations successfully launch Kaizen events, Lean initiatives, and process improvement projects—only to watch the results fade weeks or months later.

The problem usually isn’t effort or intent.
It’s sustainability.

In this on-demand KaiNexus webinar, Adam Lawrence introduces The Wheel of Sustainability—a practical, field-tested framework designed to help organizations sustain improvement results long after the initial work is complete.

Built from decades of hands-on experience facilitating hundreds of Kaizen events, this session explains why improvement breaks down after implementation and what leaders and teams can do differently to ensure lasting impact.

Rather than relying on reminders, policing, or extra bureaucracy, the Wheel of Sustainability focuses on behaviors, systems, and leadership practices that make the right way of working the easiest way to work.

View all previous KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinars

What You’ll Learn

• Why most continuous improvement efforts regress after early success

• The eight elements required to sustain Kaizen and problem-solving results

• How leadership commitment acts as the “hub” that holds improvement together

• Practical ways to make new standards visible, understandable, and durable

• How training, audits, and accountability reinforce—not replace—engagement

• How to move from firefighting back to stable, repeatable performance

Who This Webinar Is For

This webinar is especially valuable for:

• Lean, Kaizen, and continuous improvement practitioners

• Operational excellence and performance improvement leaders

• Managers responsible for sustaining change after implementation

• Healthcare, manufacturing, and service organizations

• Teams frustrated by improvement “backsliding” or initiative fatigue

Key Insights: Sustainability Is Designed, Not Enforced

Sustained improvement doesn’t happen by accident—and it doesn’t happen through reminders alone.

When improvement efforts fail to stick, organizations often experience:

• Gradual return to old habits

• Increased firefighting and variability

• Confusion about expectations

• Loss of confidence in Lean and CI initiatives

The Wheel of Sustainability provides a clear system for embedding improvement into daily work—so teams know what success looks like, leaders know how to reinforce it, and results endure over time.

The Presenter: