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: 
* Reading good programming books
* Learning from other's code - Open source projects are the best place to start
* Read good blogs and forums regularly - Sutter mill, Coding Horror, Martin fowler etc
* Code reviews
* Unit tests
* Using good libraries like Boost, STL. Also understanding their implementation
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