Health and fitness coaches often have to overcome their clients’ resistance to improving. Teams can resist improvement as well.
How many people don’t improve because they are afraid of leaving the herd?
What is culture but the shared beliefs and values of a group of people … because we are talking about a culture of quality we should look into what it takes to move your personal culture to a higher standard.
I have a good friend who is a health coach and she told me about a client of hers that hesitated to make the first step on that “road to improvement” … because she didn’t want her SO to feel like he was a slacker for not getting his own act together.
Health and fitness coaches often have to overcome their clients’ resistance to improving .. not because their clients don’t want to improve … they do. But their clients are afraid that they will embarrass or antagonize their families and/or friends – those who are not improving … or even those who are actively, intentionally spiraling into the turf on their race to the bottom physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Note that this is often what they think might happen when they embark on a program of improvement. Note: if you think that your family or friends are going to resent you for improving then you want to consider whether your opinion of them is lower than deserved … or if you have actually received negative feedback from them because you are trying to improve (so your opinion is justified) then you need to consider what to do about the toxicity of your relationships.
Take one of your favorite recreational activities … do you want to improve at it? I like to play hockey … and chess … both involve checking and boards … but anyway, I want to improve at both of those. I will never be a professional at either of them – so I have no illusion that I could ever be “the best” … but I do want to become better at those activities. So I do the things needed to become better…
On a more personal level, improving physical fitness, losing weight, for example, can sometimes be perceived as a threat to those who may aspire to improve themselves, but lack the strength of will to do so. Those who perceive your desire for improvement as a threat may try to manipulate you into failure … so that they don’t feel badly about themselves.
OK, so how does this apply to quality – especially software quality?
Because software is a team sport, (Yes, all of you techy introverts out there … you have to interact with actual people to get the job done 
) … the team’s culture is a mix of the individual cultures people bring with them. A sports team is (well, it used to be) a strict meritocracy – the better you are, the better you make the team, the more likely that you will stay. Individuals on the team have to individually improve and help the team improve as well.
A team that is focused on continual improvement will have members who do not get into a defensive crouch whenever their work product or process is critiqued. Of course such critiques should be directed at the work product and not the producer … but unless your team has mastered the art of “egoless programming,” it is not unusual for code reviews to be perceived as an attack. And if that happens, you can watch your team not just fail to improve, but actively, intentionally spiral into the turf on their race to the bottom technically, productively, and culturally.