Week 6. Your new CI Manager is juggling dashboards, firefighting quality issues, and fielding “can you look at this?” pings. Projects exist, but traction doesn’t. Leaders get restless. The CI Manager works harder. Results don’t move.

These aren’t random symptoms. They point to specific root causes that almost never get owned.

Common Symptoms (first 30–90 days)

• CI work looks like tasks not targets

• Meetings multiply, learning doesn’t

• Frontline nods in meetings, behavior stays the same

• “Quick wins” don’t scale, and “strategic projects” don’t ship

Let’s go beneath the surface.

Root Cause #1: Role Ambiguity Masquerading as Empowerment

“You own CI. Go make it happen.”

There’s no signed contract on scope, targets, and support. The CI Manager is expected to drive change without a shared definition of success or a sponsor cadence.
Tell-tale signals: polite alignment meetings, no clear target condition, updates that feel like status not decisions.

Root Cause #2: Project Soup (Strategy Linkage is Missing)

Backlogs grow because every pain point is a project. Without a visible line from plant priority → value stream → problem statement, CI becomes a help desk.
Tell-tale signals: 12 projects, zero finished; no baseline/outcome pair; leaders ask “what are we working on?” and get a list, not a story.

Root Cause #3: Tool-First Training, Behavior-Last Practice

Belts and toolkits matter. But without reps on influence, resistance, and team launch, tools don’t move people.
Tell-tale signals: perfect A3s, unchanged routines; great slides, quiet Gemba; “we tried Lean before.”

Root Cause #4: Authority Without Trust

The org grants a title, not credibility. Frontline read the room fast: Do you understand our day? Will you be here after this month?
Tell-tale signals: side conversations after meetings, “we’ll see if this sticks,” supervisors delegating attendance, not ownership.

Root Cause #5: Cadence Vacuum

No weekly sponsor checkpoint. No team rhythm. No visible board where learning lives. Without cadence, improvement loses oxygen.
Tell-tale signals: updates by email, decisions punted, blockers linger for weeks.

Root Cause #6: The Lone-Wolf CI Manager

One person tries to carry change across functions. Without an intentional cross-functional team launch, CI becomes a service role, not a system.
Tell-tale signals: CI attends everyone else’s meetings; nobody attends CI’s.

A quick “5 Whys” you’ll recognize

• Why are results lagging? → No one’s removing blockers.

• Why no blocker removal? → No weekly decision forum.

• Why no forum? → No sponsor cadence defined.

• Why no cadence? → Role wasn’t contracted.

• Why no contract? → We “empowered” without designing support.

This isn’t a talent problem. It’s a system design problem.

The Cost of Doing Nothing (quiet but compounding)

• Months of ramp without a measurable win

• CI becomes a reporting function, not a capability

• Morale dips—internals stop raising their hand for CI

• Leaders conclude “Lean doesn’t work here,” and the cycle restarts

3-Minute Self-Diagnosis (circle yes/no)

1. We have a written 90-day CI scope with 1–2 plant-level targets. Yes/No

2. There’s a weekly 15-minute sponsor checkpoint that makes decisions. Yes/No

3. One cross-functional team is formally launched around a scoped problem. Yes/No

4. A baseline/outcome pair is visible on a board the team actually uses. Yes/No

5. The CI leader has practiced (not just learned) resistance handling and team launch. Yes/No

If you circled “No” on 3 or more: you don’t have a people problem—you have a design problem. And it’s fixable.

Want to go deeper on the lived experience?

We captured the most common frustrations from CI Engineers/Specialists/Analysts/Coordinators here:
👉 The Key Frustrations of Continuous Improvement Professionals

If these root causes hit home…

The CI Leader Launch & Accelerator Program was built to attack these exact failure modes—not with more lectures, but with simulation-based practice (leadership, strategy linkage, team launch, problem solving) and bi-weekly 1:1 coaching so your CI leader isn’t alone in the hard parts.

We won’t hand your team another checklist. We’ll help you design the system that makes their first 90 days count.

👉 Learn more or save a seat for the next cohort:
www.beltcourse.com/ci-leader-launch-and-accelerator-program