Human Continuous Improvement—it’s within our grasp. We just have to start.

Do you believe that the human condition should improve over time?

If you believe it should, then consider how confident you are that future generations will be able to look back and see that their day to day lives are better than those of the generations who came before.

Perhaps you sense that humans are not doing the best job of ensuring this outcome. You likely have a sense of frustration that humans are wasting energy and effort on things that are doing little for, or are counter to, Human Continuous Improvement. If you feel unease about how effectively our global society is working toward Human Continuous Improvement, you are not alone.

We too are troubled by what we perceive as indicators and signs of decline in the state of humanity. We see our friends and families consumed by division and anger. We see mass layoffs becoming a common business practice. We see most people head-down in the world of meaningless scrolling, while humans and our planet are faced with countless crises. Our leaders at all levels seem unwilling or unable to change, following the same playbooks that created these crises in the first place.

It is this concern about humanity’s direction, and how we can influence that direction on the smallest and largest of scales, that inspired us to found Human CI.

As we sought to understand how to improve our condition, we developed theories about the forces impeding humanity’s advancement. Our theory is that one driving factor comes from deriving our sense of purpose from profit or money. When organizations define success based on a resource that is limited (money), it leads to “us versus them” thinking. This mentality causes the belief that for an organization to gain, others must lose. This concept, also called “zero-sum thinking,” can become ingrained in how we think. Even though this may not be true, this thinking leads us to strive for our piece of the limited pie at the expense of others, and creates division from fellow humans that we now perceive as threats. Distracted by this goal, we tend to forget that some of our most critical outputs: safety, health, happiness, knowledge, and advancement—are not limited. It is these pursuits that deserve our focus, attention, and effort.

This is the purpose of Human CI - to shift our organizations’ goals towards health, advancement, happiness, and other limitless goals.

We are Continuous Improvement practitioners with over 30 years of collective Continuous Improvement (CI) experience. As CI practitioners and problem solvers, we feel frustrated and disheartened by the waste we see daily in human potential, intelligence, time, and even lives. Our mission is to apply continuous improvement to what matters most: our global human society. 

As practitioners of CI, we believe it is critical to bring humanity into the workplace. We do this by making people’s jobs better - teaching them to apply their expertise and creativity to solve frustrating problems, improving workplace safety, and creating sustainable organizational systems that reduce job complexity. If we truly want CI to be for the people, then we must ask ourselves: Are the processes we are optimizing part of a bigger system that negatively impacts employees? Are they detrimental to our communities, or harmful to our environment?

We are calling for alignment on a new philosophy that looks at waste through the lens of the human condition and human experience, challenging all of our organizations, big and small, to judge their value in the world by how they affect their communities, their employees, and the environment. 

Our Philosophy

We believe that most individuals inherently want things to get better for humankind over time. We additionally theorize that the desire for the advancement and prosperity of humankind is a collective purpose that unites us. 

If most individuals have their personal compass oriented in this way, it is logical that the organizations we are part of should align with this direction. To do that, organizations should have a net positive impact on humanity.

Currently, most organizations are not oriented towards this purpose, nor is there a way to know whether they are achieving or missing this goal.

Our Vision

While the need for a change in philosophy has never been more urgent, we remain rooted in hope thanks to our backgrounds. Early in our careers, we were taught the tools and concepts of continuous improvement. This learning captured our hearts and minds, as we gained the ability to address issues in our processes that frustrated us and made our lives harder. We learned how to create change, and we teach others to create change also.

With the universal definitions taught in CI that describe what is “good” (value add) and “bad” (non-value add), we learned to measure and improve our processes. We now call for action to embrace a new definition of value in all that we do. For us, value does not come simply from profit or wealth; value is the net benefit that our efforts create for the advancement of humankind. With this definition in mind, the top priority of organizations is no longer profit, it is value. 

As we seek to replace profit with value as the most important outcome of our organizations, it is not because we believe that profit is evil or wrong! Profit is neither good nor bad. Profit is a resource, and its value is determined by two things: 1) what we do with it and 2) the expense we pay to get it. For example, if an individual earns a lot of money but spends it on things that don’t help their lives, it’s a wasted resource. Additionally, if the process of earning the money causes extremely high stress, wasted time, or poor health, the money is not worth the cost. Organizations should view profit the same way: the expense of the profit should be justified by what it adds to the advancement of humankind.

In an ideal future state, alignment towards our human purpose will redirect our energy, intellect, and resources toward improving the lives of this generation and the next, infinitely. We currently waste so much of these resources not only on meaningless efforts, but also on detrimental outputs, as we are chasing the wrong goals.

In our next posts, we will present three guiding mindsets that, if embraced, will align our efforts towards the collective benefit of humankind: 1) Understanding the true goal of an organization, 2) Taking a holistic and non-compartmentalized view of an organization’s inputs and outputs, and 3) Becoming people focused and embracing our humanity.

Thank you for engaging with our inaugural post! We’ve been working together for several years discussing and refining our ideas so they can be shared. If you found yourself nodding along as you read this, join us! If you want to engage with a community of people working to help change our society’s perspectives on business and the true meaning of value, follow us here and connect with us via the link below.

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