I found that training to run a marathon is a lot like completing a quality improvement project. I ran my first full marathon in November 2011, and as I was completing my training, I came across this quote about quality improvement from V. Daniel Hunt, quality management improvement author and CEO of Technology Research: “Quality is not a sprint; it is a long-distance event.”

I never thought to make the comparison between training for and running a marathon, and establishing a company’s quality improvement program, but after my experience preparing to run 26.2 miles, I found that there’s actually a lot in common between the two.

You probably can’t run a marathon if you train for just a couple of days, and implementing a continuous improvement program in a company is very similar because it takes time to establish. I compared the stages of training and running a marathon to the stages of planning and completing a quality improvement project:

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