KaiNexus · 2026-07-17 · 9 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
40 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
This preview episode addresses a critical challenge facing CI leaders: the funding gap between well-intentioned continuous improvement programs and executive buy-in. Jeff Roussel, drawing on 12+ years at KaiNexus and countless conversations with organizations, identifies the core problem as a translation issue - CI champions articulate their challenges in operational language (managing hundreds of projects, tracking teams) while executives decide budgets based on business outcomes and strategic priorities. The solution involves reframing continuous improvement as a business outcome engine: demonstrating how CI drives measurable business results rather than simply counting improvement activities. Roussel emphasizes that improvements must directly connect to organizational mission, whether through financial ROI, safety, quality, or customer satisfaction metrics. The full webinar, scheduled for July 22nd at 1:00 PM Eastern, will provide practical frameworks and concrete steps for reposing CI funding requests. This episode is essential for continuous improvement leaders, operations directors, and anyone seeking to secure executive support for lean and improvement initiatives.
CI leaders typically frame their challenges in operational language (managing projects, tracking people) rather than translating them into business outcomes and strategic priorities that executives care about and fund.
A business outcome engine positions continuous improvement as a driver of measurable business results - financial ROI, safety, quality, and customer satisfaction - rather than simply counting improvement activities.
They should demonstrate that improvements directly matter to the organization's mission and business outcomes, using practical frameworks and concrete steps to reframe the CI program as a strategic business investment, not just operational optimization.
A servant leadership approach where leaders support and coach their teams to listen to stakeholder problems and help solve them, rather than imposing top-down direction.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode identifies one genuine insight - CI champions struggle to translate operational problems into executive language - which is substantive. However, the execution is thin: the conversation mostly restates this single point across multiple minutes with minimal elaboration, concrete examples, or supporting evidence. No specific data, case studies, or methodologies are provided beyond the vague concept of a 'business outcome engine.'
one of the reasons is the CI champions sometimes have a little bit of a problem translating their challenge into the language of an organizational challenge, into the language of the problems that executives feel
using continuous improvement to drive the business forward. And there's some practical things, there's some of different ways of thinking and there's some concrete steps
The core observation about misalignment between operational and executive priorities is recognizable but not novel. The framing as a 'business outcome engine' is slightly fresher language, but the underlying idea - that lean programs need to connect to business strategy - is well-trodden territory in continuous improvement literature. No counterintuitive claims or fresh first-principles thinking is present.
using continuous improvement to drive the business forward
Lean is not just the scavenger hunt for waste
Jeff Roussel is CRO at KaiNexus (the hosting company) with 12.5 years tenure, giving him relevant perspective on CI adoption patterns from customer conversations. However, he is primarily a vendor talking about his own domain and lacks demonstrated track record as an operator who built CI programs at scale in a non-software context. His credibility rests on anecdotal pattern-spotting rather than executed examples.
I'm the Chief Revenue Officer here
I've actually been with kynexis now for 12 and a half years
The episode contains virtually no concrete evidence: no named organizations, no metrics, no timelines, no dollar figures, no specific CI initiatives, and no real examples of the problem or solution being described. The discussion is entirely abstract and theoretical, making sweeping claims about 'hundreds if not thousands of projects' without any substantiation or case illustration.
They've got hundreds if not thousands of projects across, tons of people to try to keep track of
there's some practical approaches and frameworks
Mark asks reasonable setup questions but rarely pushes back or probe deeper. When Jeff makes vague claims about 'practical approaches' and 'concrete steps,' Mark doesn't ask for specifics or examples. The conversation reads as a polite preview with softball questions; there's minimal tension, challenge, or effort to extract detail. Mark's Pascal Dennis reference is conversational but doesn't deepen the inquiry.
Give us a little bit of a preview, a uh, teaser about the first part of that title
What's something that CI leaders can do about that challenge?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Why do strong continuous improvement programs sometimes struggle to secure funding? In this preview of an upcoming KaiNexus webinar, Mark Graban talks with presenter Jeff Roussel, Chief Revenue Officer at KaiNexus, about a common problem: CI leaders often describe operational challenges in language that does not
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Foreign.
Speaker B: Welcome to the Kinexus Continuous Improvement Podcast. I'm Mark Graben, a senior advisor at Kinexus, and today we're doing a quick preview of our next webinar. It's titled why Great CI Programs Don't Get Funded and what to Do About It. It's going to be presented live Wednesday, um, July 22, 1:00 Eastern. If you'd like to register to attend and to be able to ask questions, you can register, look for a link in the show notes or go to kinexus.comwebinars. um, I'm happy we're joined by the presenter, Jeff Roussel, Chief revenue Officer at Kinexus. How are you doing, Jeff?
Speaker A: Hey, Mark. Great to, uh, great to do this with you. Thank you for setting this up.
Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm excited in advance for the webinar. I think this is an important topic. I know you're going to have some great insights for everybody. Um, before we talk about the webinar content, for people who don't know you and your role, tell, you know, tell us about yourself and a little bit of your. It's now a long history with Kynaxis.
Speaker A: Yeah, sure, of course. So, uh, yeah, my title is the Chief Revenue Officer here. And so what that means is I pay attention to our marketing program, which we use to try to help educate people on really anything around lean and continuous improvement and the role that software might play in supporting it. I, um, support our sales organization. And so that's when we're actually talking to people that are interested in learning more. And then anytime, uh, we bring in a customer, well, we have to have a team that supports them. We call that our customer success team. And so that all kind of rolls up through my strategy. I've actually been with kynexis now for 12 and a half years. Time flies. And, uh, yeah, I feel like, um, I jokingly say that I talk to more organizations about their continuous improvement journey than anyone. Because in my role in the sales, you're constantly there asking questions and hopefully some of the patterns that I see can help, uh, somebody else out there when we share them in the webinar.
Speaker B: Well, you say you're joking about it. I think it's probably true. You're talking to more people than I am. You are and have been talking to a lot of, um, organizations. One other thing just to dig into real quick, I think it stands out to me the word you use there. You said you support the sales team as opposed to saying you run the sales Team. Uh, tell us a little bit. I'm going to probe about your style as a leader. I know you use that word support intentionally.
Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you, one of the things I kind of learned in my career is most people mistakenly think of sales as just kind of somebody who is a slick talker or is extroverted or gregarious. And I don't think anything could be further from the truth. Sales is very much a process that starts with kind of learning what someone else is dealing with, helping them to articulate that as a problem, identifying the root cause of that problem, and then exploring solutions. And I'm sure if kind of you're a lean practitioner, you know, that sounds somewhat normal. Uh, that's not something that happens because the leadership of an organization sets a direction or comes down with an edict. Our people are the ones that engage with our customers and so they're the ones that have to listen for the problems and help coach our customers and help help solve issues for them. And my job's to support them. Um, I wish it were easier than that, but if it were easy, I guess everybody would do it.
Speaker B: Yeah. It reminds me of the servant leader type language that it's not only, uh, a part of lean, but I think it's really common in organizations with quote unquote, lean leadership to feel that way and to act that way. So. So let's talk about the webinar again. It's going to be Wednesday, July 22nd. Uh, if you've missed the session, um, the recording will be available. If you're watching this or listening to it after July 22, the two parts of the title of the webinar, why Great CI Programs Don't get funded and what to do about it. Give us a little bit of a preview, a uh, teaser about the first part of that title. What's one reason why and other a, uh, great CI program doesn't get funded.
Speaker A: Sure. So in having so many conversations, I think you just start to see some, um, some patterns that emerge. And one of the things that we recognized is our continuous improvement champions have very specific problems that they're trying to solve. Usually those problems are operational challenges. They've got hundreds if not thousands of projects across, tons of people to try to keep track of. Uh, and they deal with this kind of day to day operational challenge that is a real problem. However, that doesn't always lend itself to getting a yes from the executives in your organization that decide which problems to prioritize solving and then fund those solutions. And so I think that one of the reasons is the CI champions sometimes have a little bit of a problem translating their challenge into the language of an organizational challenge, into the language of the problems that executives feel and that keep them up at night. And I just, I think it, it's an underappreciated issue that they deal with that, uh, that comes up to. It bites them when they go to try to get funded. And I think we see that quite often.
Speaker B: And so the what to do about it? What's something that CI leaders can do about that challenge?
Speaker A: Yeah. Great. So first I would say they can recognize that it's a challenge, you know, uh, articulating your problem or writing. What do they say the problem, well written is a problem half solved. Just kind of knowing that that's a problem and understanding that is a big first step into solving it. But I do think there are some practical approaches and frameworks of how you can position the continuous improvement program as an actual business outcome engine. So it's not just based on solving continuous improvement. It's using continuous improvement to drive the business forward. And there's some practical things, there's some of different ways of thinking and there's some concrete steps that people can do to reframe their program when they go to ask for funding for, uh, making an investment in continuous improvement.
Speaker B: I love that phrase. Um, I wrote this down. Business outcome engine. Yeah, it's not, I mean, I even think back to um, my friend Pascal Dennis, who, uh, was formerly, uh, of Toyota and he's written some great books about Lean. You know, he says, you know, Lean is not just the scavenger hunt for waste. We, it's about driving improvement to the business and sustainable long term improvement. And you know, to me that's what a business outcome engine does. It's not just how many improvements did we do? That's, I think that's one important thing. But you know, ultimately there's the collective cumulative benefit to the organization. And that doesn't mean every improvement needs a huge roi, but it's all contributing to the cause. Even if that cause is helping people stay engaged and continuously improving. That's kind of a dumb way of saying it.
Speaker A: Maybe the way I like to say it is, did the improvements matter to our mission?
Speaker B: Yeah, and part of that mission is the bottom line. But, you know, the improvement could also matter, um, you know, for safety and quality and customer satisfaction and things that are less easily put into dollars and cents terms. Right?
Speaker A: Absolutely.
Speaker B: Yep.
Speaker A: Absolutely.
Speaker B: All right. Well, again, thank you, uh, to Jeff Roussel, he's going to be presenting the webinar why Great CI Programs Don't Get Funded and what to Do about it again, Wednesday, July 22. Look for a link in the show notes or go to kinexus.comwebinars Jeff, thanks for doing the preview. Thanks for your leadership, um, and everything you do here at Kinexus.
Speaker A: Great. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate you very much. Looking forward to this next week.
Speaker B: Thanks.
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