Develop a culture that accepts change as business as usual

No organisation is constant and nothing is ever “perfect” or finished. This means that failure to adapt or being slow to adapt costs money and reduces your competitive advantage. You want an organisation that accepts it needs to change and adapt - you can't just turn this on and off. You need to have developed this attitude so it is there when you need it. 

What you can do
Discourage acceptance of the status quo

• Involve personnel in identifying improvements
  
• Encourage them to look at what they do differently
• Ask them "if they had to start designing the process from scratch what would they change"

Demonstrate that change is required and will happen

• If necessary make small changes to demonstrate change will happen. You can then progress to bigger changes
• Empower process owners to instigate change (within guidelines). If a process owner can not make minor changes then how can you call them an "owner" 

Developing a successful culture and achieving change will be the hardest, but probably the longest lasting, improvement you can do for your organisation. It is hard, takes time and is easier said than done. Important points to achieving a successful culture are:

• It starts at the top and is the responsibility of anyone who has “manager” in their job title. Tackling this area is one of the reasons they get paid more.
  
• It requires consistency of message. All managers need to be on the same page and be giving the same message through actions and attitude. If one breaks ranks that person either has to come back into line with the others or should move to another organisation.