Olaf Boettger recently shared something that caught my attention: "You might have been in Continuous Improvement for too long if... you read the list and nod. More than once." Then he lands the punchline with painfully familiar examples: "Coffee queues become takt time," "Family dinners turn into root cause analysis," and "That's how we've always done it" triggers a minor eye twitch.

I laughed because I recognized the pattern. Not just the jokes, but what sits underneath them: continuous improvement is not a toolkit you apply at work. Over time, it can become a default way of seeing the world.

In this post, I want to expand on Olaf's playful "diagnosis" and explore what these signs really mean, when they are helpful, and when they start to get in the way.

The real point behind the joke

Olaf's list is funny because it compresses a lot of lived experience into a few lines. Anyone who has spent years in Lean, CI, or operational excellence knows the sensation of your brain constantly scanning for waste, variation, and root causes.

That is not a character flaw. It is a trained capability.

But capabilities have side effects when they run on autopilot.

Key insight: Continuous improvement is powerful when it is intentional. It is exhausting when it is involuntary.

When you "nod more than once" at Olaf's list, you are seeing the moment where a professional operating system starts to spill into personal life.

When "coffee queues become takt time"

Takt time is a production concept. It is the pace of customer demand. In the workplace, translating waiting lines into flow problems is often exactly the right instinct.

So why do we laugh when someone applies it to a coffee queue?

Because it reveals two truths at once:

CI people naturally model systems in their head.
Not every system needs to be optimized.

At work, noticing queues can be a gift:

You see bottlenecks others accept as normal.
You spot overburden and unevenness before it burns people out.
You ask, "What is the constraint?" instead of blaming individuals.

In daily life, the same habit can create friction:

You become impatient with normal variability.
You treat every delay as a defect.
You start optimizing moments that are meant to be enjoyed.

A practical boundary I have seen work well is to separate "observing" from "improving." You can notice the coffee queue without feeling responsible to redesign it.

When "family dinners turn into root cause analysis"

Root cause analysis is designed for repeatable problems in controllable systems. Family life is neither fully repeatable nor fully controllable.

And yet, the impulse makes sense. CI teaches us that:

Problems are signals.
Patterns have causes.
Blame is lazy.

Those are healthy principles. The risk is the tone and the timing.

At the dinner table, root cause analysis can accidentally sound like interrogation:

"Why did you do that?"
"What led to this outcome?"
"What will you do differently next time?"

Even if you mean well, people may hear evaluation instead of care.

Try switching from problem-solving language to connection language:

Replace "root cause" with "help me understand."
Replace "countermeasure" with "what would help right now?"
Replace "action items" with "what do you need from me?"

You still keep the strengths of CI (curiosity, learning, humility) without importing the machinery.

Key insight: The best improvement cultures are built on psychological safety. Your closest relationships deserve the same.

When "That's how we've always done it" triggers an eye twitch

This one hits because it is a real workplace toxin. "That's how we've always done it" often means:

We stopped learning.
We are protecting status.
We are avoiding uncomfortable change.

So the eye twitch is justified.

But there is a subtle leadership lesson here. If that phrase keeps appearing in your organization, it is rarely just an individual attitude problem. It is frequently a system response to past change experiences.

People repeat "we've always done it" when:

Changes are announced without involvement.
Improvement is used to cut heads, not reduce frustration.
Experiments are punished when they do not work.
Leaders ask for ideas, then ignore them.

If you want to reduce the eye-twitch moments, focus on the conditions that make learning feel safe:

Make small experiments normal.
Celebrate good thinking, not just good outcomes.
Standardize what works, and revisit it on purpose.
Show that improvement is about making work easier and better.

The hidden cost of always being "on"

Olaf ends with, "Don't overthink it. Just enjoy the diagnosis." I agree with the spirit, and I also think the diagnosis is worth using.

Because there is a real cost when continuous improvement becomes constant improvement.

Common signs include:

Difficulty relaxing because your mind keeps scanning for waste.
Feeling responsible for fixing everything.
Becoming intolerant of inefficiency in others.
Turning every conversation into a corrective loop.

None of this means CI is bad. It means your strength is running without a switch.

A helpful reframe is to treat CI like a professional tool you can pick up and put down. You are allowed to be excellent at improvement without being imprisoned by it.

Two simple practices to stay grounded

Name your mode. Say to yourself, "I am in improvement mode" or "I am in living mode." It sounds silly, but it creates choice.
Choose your battlegrounds. Save your best problem-solving energy for the problems that matter: safety, quality, customers, and the daily pain points your teams feel.

Why Olaf's post went viral (and what to learn from it)

Beyond the humor, there is a content lesson here for anyone interested in LinkedIn content and content strategy.

Olaf's post works because it nails several elements that make viral posts travel:

Immediate recognition: a simple "if you know, you know" setup.
Specific details: takt time and root cause analysis are insider terms that signal credibility.
Low-stakes engagement: "Which number got you first?" invites comments without controversy.
Warm tone: it is self-aware, not preachy.

If you lead improvement work, this style is more than marketing. It is culture-building. Humor can normalize learning, lower defensiveness, and remind people that continuous improvement is human work.

Key insight: The best CI communicators blend expertise with humility. People follow people, not frameworks.

Bringing it back to work: three leadership takeaways

If Olaf's list made you nod, here are three ways to use that energy well:

Use systems thinking to reduce burden, not to judge. The goal is less frustration for the people doing the work.
Teach concepts in plain language. Not everyone needs the jargon to benefit from the thinking.
Make improvement sustainable. If your culture depends on heroes who are always "on," it will eventually burn out.

Olaf joked, "If this made you laugh, you're clearly beyond help." I would say the opposite: if it made you laugh, you are probably good at your craft. The next step is learning when to apply it, and when to let yourself simply enjoy the coffee.

This blog post expands on a viral LinkedIn post by Olaf Boettger, Continuous Improvement & Executive Coaching. I partner with executives to build improvement cultures that grow people and deliver results.. View the original LinkedIn post →