‘One Small Step Can Change Your life: The Kaizen Way.’

‘One Small Step Can Change Your life: The Kaizen Way.’

The concept of Kaizen was born in Japan following World War II. The word Kaizen means “continuous improvement. It comes from the Japanese words 改 ("kai"), which means “change” or “to correct” and 善 (“zen”) which means “good. “Continuous improvement is doing what you do better and better! Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everyone- top management, managers, and workers. Kaizen means small, simple and incremental improvements on a continuous basis and is everybody’s business. Kaizen focuses on small, gradual, and frequent improvements over the long term with minimum financial investment, and participation by everyone in the organization. Kaizen methods can be used to improve the results of any firm and can also be used in your personal life.

Kaizen was originally introduced to the west by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The key to Japan’s Competitive Success in 1986. Today Kaizen is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organisation’s long-term competitive strategy. Kaizen is a company-wide philosophy oriented toward continuous improvement. The literal definition extends to one’s personal and social lives. In business, it applies to continuing improvement applicable to everyone, both managers and employees. The main idea is to maintain and improve work standards, with responsibility delegated to the worker. Kaizen strategy is one of the most important concepts in Japanese management and is credited with being the key to Japanese competitive success. One important aspect of Kaizen is its emphasis on process, complemented with management acknowledgement. This contrasts with results-oriented management, which is ingrained in western thinking. Mostly, Kaizen focuses on identifying problem, finding a solution (idea), implementing and reporting the benefits.

Kaizen is a slow but ongoing process of improvement, not a 'blitz' or quickly implemented set of changes. The improvements are suggested by the person doing the work, not an outside evaluation team. If a worker has a problem to address or is considering whether a change will make sense, he should pull in several team members for a quick discussion and brainstorming session, and then decide what to do from there. While I visited Japan, I notices that most of the companies proudly displayed Kaizen from their employees and celebrated employee’s Kaizen improvements by creating company’s own Kaizen wall of Fame. By posting the idea on the wall, you give instant recognition to your employees for making the improvement. An example of Kaizen would be where an employee added a recycle bin to the photo copy machine. If you want to learn a new language, learn one new word every day or find and write down one sentence in a language that you want to learn every day. I recommend that you read “The Idea Generator, Quick and Easy Kaizen” by Bunji Tozawa and Norman Bodek. This book provides the quick and easy kaizen approach.