Building a Culture People Stay For: Lessons from John Garrett on Continuous Improvement, Trust, and Leadership

What makes employees stay?

It’s a question that leaders across every industry continue to ask. While compensation, benefits, and flexibility matter, they are rarely the reason people remain committed to an organization for the long term.

In Episode 65 of KPI Fireside, Keith Norris sits down with John Garrett, a Product Owner and Client Success Executive with more than two decades of experience at 3M Health Information Systems. Throughout the conversation, Garrett shares practical lessons on continuous improvement, customer engagement, leadership, and creating a culture where people feel empowered to contribute.

One theme emerges repeatedly throughout the discussion: people are more likely to stay when they feel they can make a difference.

Make Continuous Improvement Everyone’s Responsibility

Many organizations treat continuous improvement as a specialized function owned by Lean teams, Six Sigma practitioners, or operational excellence leaders. 3M took a different approach. According to Garrett every employee was expected to contribute improvement ideas within their first six months on the job. Improvement wasn’t reserved for experts—it was embedded into the culture from day one.

This simple expectation sends a powerful message: everyone has valuable insights. Employees closest to the work often see inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and opportunities long before leadership does. When organizations encourage employees to identify and solve problems early, continuous improvement becomes part of the company’s DNA rather than another corporate initiative. The lesson for leaders is clear: if improvement is everyone’s responsibility, everyone must be invited to participate.

Ownership Creates Accountability

One of the most interesting insights from the conversation was Garrett’s perspective on forecasting. Many organizations focus heavily on whether employees hit their forecasted numbers. Garrett suggests a different perspective. What’s most important is ownership. Rather than treating forecasts as targets that employees hope to achieve, they should be viewed as commitments that require accountability, learning, and adjustment. When individuals own their forecasts, they become more invested in understanding the factors that influence outcomes. Success becomes less about luck and more about disciplined execution, reflection, and continuous learning. The same principle applies to improvement initiatives. Teams that take ownership of results are far more likely to solve problems, adapt to obstacles, and sustain gains over time.

Influence Doesn’t Require Authority

One of the biggest challenges improvement leaders face is driving change without formal authority. Many continuous improvement professionals don’t directly manage the people whose processes they’re trying to improve. They must influence, persuade, and build consensus across departments and teams.

Garrett emphasizes that trust is the foundation of influence. People are far more willing to embrace change when they believe the person proposing it understands their challenges and genuinely wants to help them succeed. Trust isn’t built through presentations or mandates.

It’s built through listening, consistency, empathy, and follow-through. The best improvement leaders don’t push solutions onto people. They work alongside them to uncover opportunities and create solutions together.

Get Out of the Office

In an age of dashboards, analytics, surveys, and remote communication, it’s easy to believe that data tells the whole story. Garrett offers a simple but powerful reminder: go see for yourself. Visiting customers, observing processes firsthand, and having direct conversations often reveal insights that no survey can capture. This philosophy aligns closely with one of Lean’s most important principles: Go to Gemba. Real understanding happens where the work occurs.

When leaders spend time observing, asking questions, and listening without assumptions, they uncover problems, frustrations, and opportunities that would otherwise remain hidden. The lesson is timeless. If you want better answers, spend more time where the work is being done.

Ask Better Questions

Throughout the episode, Garrett highlights the importance of curiosity. Many leaders believe their role is to provide answers. The most effective leaders often do the opposite. They ask questions. Not leading questions. Not questions designed to confirm their assumptions. Questions that encourage people to share what they’re really experiencing.

Questions such as:

• What’s getting in your way?
• What would make this process easier?
• If you could change one thing, what would it be?
• What problem are we not talking about?

The quality of our questions often determines the quality of our insights. When people feel safe enough to answer honestly, organizations gain access to information that can drive meaningful improvement.

Culture Is Built Through Participation

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this episode is that great cultures aren’t created through mission statements or employee engagement campaigns. They’re built through participation. When employees are encouraged to contribute ideas, take ownership, solve problems, and influence outcomes, they become invested in the organization’s success. Continuous improvement isn’t just about improving processes.

It’s about creating an environment where people feel heard, valued, and empowered to make things better. And when people feel they matter, they’re far more likely to stay. Watch the full episode on Youtube: