Continuous Improvement is about learning your way through uncertainty. A skill set we need to acquire through practice and experience. The moment we step beyond what we already know, our plans start falling apart and obstacles emerge that we couldn’t foresee. This is what we call the the Grey Zone1.
If we want to build lasting capability, we need to get comfortable navigating this zone. Not with better plans, but with better learning habits. In this blog post I want to explore some of the reasons for why Continuous Improvement is “a capability to build capabilities”.
Stuck in the plan? You might be in the grey zone.
Most leaders in operations are trained to plan by managers always requesting to “see the plan”. It’s logical since we want to anticipate risk, make sure we have a clear direction, and keep things under control.
The problem is that you are creating your plan in the “current state” when you are at the furthest point away from your challenge or “desired state”. In short, you create the plan at the maximum point of uncertainty. There’s little logic in doing so.
Of course, there’s a time and place for straightforward action. If the problem is well-known and predictable, you can often “just do it”. Don’t overthink. It’s enough just to make an action plan for what we want to do or improve, follow the plan and reach the desired outcome.
However, I would argue that most of the time when we need to make improvements, an action plan will not be effective. The more complex the challenge, the more likely you’ll hit what is called “the knowledge threshold”, the point where data, experience, and certainty ends.
You’ll recognize this stage when people start saying things like:
- “I think this might work..."
- “I assume the reason is..."
- Or simply “I don’t know."
That’s the signal you're no longer in predictable territory. You've stepped into The Grey Zone, the uncertain landscape between where you are now and where you want to be.
In conventional improvement work, I often see the grey zone as the reason initiatives halt or end up in “planning paralysis”. You get stuck in the plan, wasting time trying to guess and resolve things you can’t possibly foresee because of uncertainty. The only way to overcome this to take one step into the grey zone, see what happens and learn from it to understand what the next step should be.
What is the Grey Zone?
Simply put, the grey zone is the space between your current state and your future desired state. The characteristic of the grey zone is uncertainty; you don’t know what you will run into when you are in the grey zone. You don’t know what obstacles you'll face or which steps will actually get you closer to your goal.
You can’t see all obstacles from the current situation and as you move through the zone more obstacles are revealed. Because you can’t see the full path, traditional action plans start to fail.
Scientific thinking: a better way to navigate
So what do we do when action plans no longer work?
The only way forward is to start moving toward your desired result. It is this movement that is true Continuous Improvement, where each small step takes you closer to your desired result by removing obstacles and changing the way you work. You don’t need to remove every obstacle, just the one blocking your next step.
This is the essence of scientific thinking:
- Set a direction or challenge.
- Identify your current state.
- Take a small step based on a hypothesis.
- Observe what actually happens.
- Compare it to what you expected.
- Learn from the gap.
- Decide the next step.
Each PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle moves you through the grey zone, removing one obstacle at a time. At first, it feels slow, but over time, your team builds confidence and gets faster.
This experimental approach gives you a safe way to test ideas, learn what works, and build a path forward one step at a time. The more cycles you run, the more capable your team becomes. And before long, you’re solving problems you wouldn’t have dared touch a year ago.
How Toyota navigates the Grey Zone
I want to share a real world example. At Toyota, so called stretch targets are a common way for management and leaders to challenge the organization to accomplish more than they thought possible. In short, it can be described as; ”If you think you can achieve 10, set the target to 11”. A more traditional way of setting targets is ”if you think you can achieve 10, set the target to 9 to make sure you fulfill it”.
Stretch targets pushes people to reach the target and perhaps even go beyond. But there is a deeper philosophy behind a stretch target. It’s the understanding and acceptance of not knowing how to reach such target when deciding the level, but still commit to doing the outmost to reach it.
Toyota leaders accept any outcome as long as the team is doing their best to remove all obstacles in the path to the target, and that they learn moving forward. If these two conditions are met, it’s less important if they reach target on deadline. Because if they don’t reach it by then, they will just continue to strive towards it in the same manner until it’s reached at some point. This is how Toyota is building capabilities to move through the grey zone.
Learning is the real capability
Focusing on learning over results is why Toyota is so successful in their work with Continuous Improvement, and probably the main reason for why so many companies around the world try to emulate what Toyota is doing. Learning from taking a step is part of the capability we need to build, since structured learning is a skill set as well.
Being in the grey zone is challenging and uncomfortable. That’s why many teams retreat to the predictable zone before the knowledge threshold, because it feels safer. But the grey zone is the only place we as human beings can learn and develop. Based on experience, I believe the best and most sustainable learnings comes when YOU experience something, and then reflect on what happened and adjust going forward.
This is why Continuous Improvement is more than just a process or a tool. It is a capability, the ability to learn as you go, adapt based on what actually happens, and adjust your next step accordingly. This is also why defining Continuous Improvement as the "capability to build capabilities," makes sense. Teams that learn faster solve bigger problems. And they do it with less waste, more engagement, and stronger results over time.
1 From Mike Rothers book “Toyota Kata”
Curious what this way of thinking about continuous improvement could mean in your organisation?
If this article touched on challenges you recognize, just reach out and I'll be glad to share more from my work with continuous improvement.
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