An honest conversation with Fraser Cowe, Global Process Experience Business Partner at Tesco, about readiness for change, bottom-up improvement, and why success in one part of the business doesn’t guarantee success everywhere else. This is how Tesco built a sustainable CI culture.
00:00 Introducing Continuous Improvement at scale
03:21 From hearts and minds to boot camps: building frontline capability
08:47 Why facilitation skills matter as much as CI tools
10:27 Making performance visible through PQCD dashboards
11:54 What success actually looked like
14:49 Getting it wrong first time and why
18:55 Leadership alignment as the missing piece
20:30 Readiness for change and avoiding fatigue
24:07 Outro
Fraser Cowe is a Global Process Experience Business Partner, working within organisations to improve how processes run and how change is experienced by the people doing the work. He specialises in operational excellence, continuous improvement, and large‑scale transformation, with over 15 years’ experience across multiple industries and global markets.
His work spans contact centres, shared services including finance, HR, and IT transformation, as well as warehousing, distribution, and supply chain operations. Fraser has been involved in complex improvement programmes focused on strengthening performance and efficiency, while keeping customer experience and day‑to‑day operational reality front of mind.
With a background in Lean Six Sigma and change management, Fraser is particularly interested in how organisations can build a sustainable CI culture over time. He brings a pragmatic, people-centred approach to transformation, helping teams balance ambition with change readiness so improvement feels doable, not theoretical.
Every episode centres on a candid conversation with someone who’s led change from the inside. We deliberately explore both sides of the story, from the moments where improvement delivered meaningful results, to times when things didn’t go to plan. Our guests are generous with their honesty, talking openly about decisions made under pressure, warning signs they noticed too late, and what they’d do differently next time.
In our world, every experience is valuable, and hearing how others have navigated the realities of performance improvement makes the work feel less isolating, and far more achievable. So if you’re looking for thoughtful reflection, practical insight, and reassurance that progress rarely follows a straight line, GEMBAfication is for you.
In our world, every experience is valuable. Subscribe to PMI’s GEMBAfication, and explore change as it really happens. Here are some quick links:
Rolling out CI tools is one thing. Embedding the capability, building trust, and sustaining change at scale is another. Our performance improvement consultancy supports organisations to assess readiness for change, build real problem‑solving capability, and create improvement systems that last.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you make improvement stick.
Explore ConsultancyGEMBAfication is PMI’s new podcast for improvement professionals looking for an honest view of what improvement really looks like in practice. Because in our world, every experience is valuable.
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