Culture is practiced at the gemba

When visiting a company for the first time, I always inquire about the following: When was the last time the CEO visited the shop floor? The responses vary, with options including “days,” “months,” “regularly,” and “when necessary.” However, more than just revealing a management practice, the response says something about the organization’s culture.

The shop floor always shows the truth

Gemba is a Japanese term that refers to the actual place where work is conducted. It is the physical space where value is created, where problems arise, and where people spend their days. It is not the meeting room where that work is analyzed, nor the dashboard where results are measured.

It is the most honest place in an organization. At the gemba, this culture is not merely declared; it is visibly evident and unfiltered. You can see it in the way problems are communicated or concealed, in who solves them and who works around them, and in what happens when something goes wrong and no one is watching.

Practices and behaviors precede culture

There is a general belief in management that culture is the starting point for any change: that, in order to change results, one must first change values, philosophy, and mindset. This logic seems reasonable. In practice, however, it is reversed.

Culture does not precede behavior. Instead, it is repeated behavior that, over time, becomes culture. The values posted on the walls say little about what an organization truly is; what defines it are the decisions leaders make under pressure, the routines teams follow every day, and the habits that take root shift after shift.

The industry has learned this the hard way: through investment. In recent decades, it has invested significantly in modernization, including equipment, automation, management systems, and certifications. In many cases, the results fell short. Not because the tools were wrong, but because a tool without a consistent habit of use does not change behavior, and without a change in behavior, there are no results. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly in companies across very different industries and of very different sizes. The methodology was in place, the system was active, training had been conducted, but the simplest step was missing: going to the site regularly to check what was happening. And without that practice, everything else became merely superficial.

Culture is built at the gemba

The gemba is precisely where this is resolved. Because that is where real behavior takes place, far from reports and presentations, and that is where culture reveals itself for what it is, not for what it is expected to appear to be. But the gemba is not just a mirror of the existing culture: it is also the place where it begins to change.

When leaders go out to the shop floor regularly and with purpose, not to inspect, but to observe and listen, something changes. Operators begin to report problems before they escalate, teams eliminate defects instead of working around them, and people come to believe that improvement is possible because they’ve seen the results. And when someone realizes that their observation had an impact, that something changed because they identified a problem, their mindset shifts: they go from being an executor to becoming an agent.

This marks the conclusion of the cycle. Practice produces results, which in turn fosters belief, which establishes habit. When habit is repeated with discipline, it becomes culture. The culture is established on the gemba and is consistently upheld through daily, consistent effort.

We call this a culture of continuous improvement. It doesn’t start with written values or change programs. It manifests itself — or not — every day and in every area, and those who lead an industrial organization have a responsibility to experience it firsthand.

Conclusion: going to the gemba is a leadership decision

Now, returning to the question I opened this article with: When was the last time you were on the shop floor?

Over the years of visiting industrial organizations, I’ve learned to read the gemba before reading any reports. That’s where I find opportunities that no one has yet identified, ideas that operators have but haven’t had a chance to share, obvious improvements that routine has made invisible, and, inevitably, the most honest signs of people’s motivation or lack thereof. The gemba hides nothing: it reveals everything that the numbers filter out and meetings defer.

That’s why the question isn’t rhetorical. If a leader is unable to answer it accurately, it indicates that their organization’s culture of continuous improvement has not yet been established, regardless of what may be stated in the strategy.

At Kaizen Institute, we work with leaders who recognize that culture is not changed by decree, but through daily practice on the shop floor. We help organizations rebuild leadership routines and transform behaviors into sustainable results, because it is on the gemba that the KAIZEN™culture takes root and is sustained.