Question: So, in reading this site, it seems that the shop in which I work does a lot of things wrong and some things right. How can I improve the code that I work with from my colleagues? The only thing I can think of is to lead by example - start using Boost, etc. Any other thoughts?

Answer: 
Code reviews are the best way I found to improve code quality overall. Reviewing code from different individuals helping each other increases general awareness of different techniques and help propagate best practices. Hire a person more experienced than you are is also a good tool but it is a bit more tedious to implement.
Architect and design the project well so that none of the developers will be able to take a different route to violate the quality. If you set a great design, people will just follow the route and they will automatically learn