Has Your Competence Turned into Complacency?

At a recent networking event, I was explaining what I do to a factory owner I’d just met: “I help small and midsized manufacturers continuously improve their processes and leadership habits.”

Their response was: “We’ve been in operation for 15 years. We’ve already improved our processes. We’re good.”

It was said with pride. And stability is certainly something to be proud of.

But the statement struck me as a red flag. Because the minute we start saying “improved” in the past tense, as if we’ve completed the task and can move on, we’ve stopped adapting. And in a volatile, competitive environment, developing good processes and then leaving them alone will not suffice.

Let’s explore why — and whether your organization may be drifting toward complacency.

The Hidden Downside of “Good Enough”

In Atomic Habits, James Clear makes a compelling case for building strong habits. This reminds me, of course, of developing reliable, repeatable processes. But in the final chapter, he offers a warning:

“The benefits of habit come at a cost… as a habit becomes automatic, you become less sensitive to feedback. You fall into mindless repetition.”[1]

At first, repetition builds skill. Great.
Then it builds comfort. OK, also great.
But eventually, it can build blindness. Hmm…not so great.

This is a little like how I play piano these days - sit down for 15 minutes, play 3 songs I already know decently well, with a few wrong notes but nothing to stop the show, then move on to something more pressing like doing the dishes. Not only am I not getting any better at playing piano, but I’m teaching myself to overlook the mistakes that start to creep in.

When you can run your production line or service workflow “well enough” on autopilot, you stop noticing small inefficiencies, evolving customer expectations, quality drift, new technologies that have become available, and competitors who are quietly raising the bar.

Competence, ironically, can dull curiosity.

What Complacency Really Looks Like

Complacency rarely looks like laziness. It looks like:

• Sticking with what works, rather than trying experiments to discover what might work better.

• Defending the current state, rather than questioning it.

• Staying busy in the process, instead of working on the process.

In manufacturing, there is an allure to this mode of working. Production systems are designed to reduce variability. We want reliability and predictability. The line must keep running so we can keep producing the stuff our customers want.

But improvement systems must do the opposite. They must surface variability — reveal where outcomes are no longer good enough, where customer expectations are shifting, and where value is being left on the table. We’d rather sense those signs early, when the first warning signs start cropping up, not when we’ve already been eclipsed by a more nimble competitor or the weight of new expectations.

If your operation feels smooth but stagnant, you may have optimized for yesterday’s assumptions.

Why Can’t We Just Do Our “Real Work”?

Continuous improvement does not mean constant disruption. It means staying open to feedback and new opportunities.

When I hear things like, “can we just be left alone to do our real work?”, I know it’s time for a mindset shift: Improving the work is the work.

Here’s why: Customer needs evolve. Regulatory and supplier constraints shift. Technologies emerge that can lower costs, save time, and improve quality. Workforce expectations change. A process that was excellent five years ago may now be merely adequate — and “adequate” erodes margins subtly, rarely triggering alarm.

The real danger isn’t sudden failure. It’s gradual irrelevance. And then there won’t be any “work” at all.

How Leaders Accidentally Train Complacency

Most organizations reward:

• Hitting output targets

• Avoiding mistakes

• Keeping production steady

They rarely reward:

• Surfacing friction

• Challenging long-standing practices

• Running experiments that might temporarily impact performance

Over time, teams learn that stability is safer than curiosity. That’s not malicious. It’s structural. And structure is exactly where the solution can be found.

How to Shift into “Strive” Mode

In Lean, we teach the principle “Always strive to improve.” Like any principle, it must be backed by a cohesive set of behaviors and systems. Here are some ways to adapt your management system to incorporate “change for the better”, or kaizen, on a regular basis - even when things seem to be going well.

1. Build Improvement Into the Calendar
If improvement only happens “when there’s time,” it won’t happen at all. Schedule recurring time to review process metrics, identify gaps, and plan the next experiment.

No time to improve = no improvement
No reflection = bad experiments

So run that whole PDCA cycle. It gets faster the more you do it. If it seems daunting, break the changes down into smaller steps.

2. Separate Production From Improvement
Production reduces variability. Improvement invites it. So create explicit containers where questioning the status quo is expected — not in the same breath as reminding your team of an important deadline. One client I’m working with carves out daily “5S time” at the end of the shift, asking the whole team to stop their manufacturing tasks briefly to organize and improve their workspace together so tomorrow runs more smoothly than today. Given explicit permission and seeing others participate, team members are eager to step back, set things in order, and come up with new ways to make their work easier or less error-prone.

3. Track Experiments, Not Just Outcomes
In performance reviews, ask questions like:

• How many experiments did we run this quarter?

• What did we learn?

• What assumptions were disproven?

These kinds of metrics are a better indicator of future resilience than financial statements from the prior quarter.

4. Invite New Perspectives
Like that whole “a fish doesn’t know it’s in water” metaphor, we have a hard time interrogating our own beloved processes. So cross-train team members. Ask newer employees what seems off. Visit customers. Benchmark competitors.

Complacency thrives in closed systems; fresh perspective provides healthy disruption, bringing new ideas and energy into the picture.

The Real Skill Isn’t “Good”, but “Becoming Better”

Good is a snapshot at a point in time.
Continuous improvement is an ongoing mindset and practice that will never be done.

The market doesn’t care how long you’ve been operating. It cares whether you’re adapting to this moment.

Fifteen years in business is an achievement. But the real question for your ongoing viability isn’t how long you’ve survived so far; it’s whether your systems are evolving to position you to thrive in the murky future. Adaptability is the most enduring skill of all.

A Diagnostic Check

If your organization:

• Has decent metrics but little discussion about leveling up

• Struggles to identify what it’s trying to improve next

• Feels busy but not curious

…then you might be letting your competence mask complacency. The question isn’t whether you’ve improved before. It’s whether you’re still improving now.

What could your organization do to stay curious, slightly uncomfortable, and always striving to improve?

 [1] Clear, James. Atomic Habits, Penguin Random House, 2018.