According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a rapid improvement cycle is a, "Quality improvement method that identifies, implements and measures changes made to improve a process or a system.” In other words, it is an organized approach to making processes better in short order. You don’t use a rapid improvement cycle to shoot for the moon, but rather to make incremental changes that add up to major success. Each cycle builds on the work done during the last and suddenly that mountain doesn’t seem so hard to climb.