Continuous Improvement

I sometimes get asked what I studied in further education (less rarely as I approach my 40th year I might add). My answer of BS gives you a cynical view of value for money (debt) of University education in the 21st century or a glimpse at my flavour of humour. I did take a few nuggets from a Business Studies degree namely the core reason why Japanese cars seem to stay on the road longer. Known for value and reliability the list of car’s that will not die brings back fond memories of that Toyota Hilux episode on Top Gear. Think back to the 80’s and 90’s and British roads were full of Micra’s, Corolla’s and Bluebirds that seem to run for ever.  Credit for this success is due to following the principles of Kaizen in business.

Back on track Kaizen is a concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. Kaizen is the Sino-Japanese word for "improvement" (credit to Wikipedia). So why this is top of my mind today is I really feel that the 5 principles are valid in all organisations looking to improve and can be accelerated with modern UCaaS technology.

Japanese companies distinguish between innovation (radical) and Kaizen (continuous).

1   Teamwork, Team messaging and web collaboration enables and encourages teams to work together regardless of location in a decentralised work force.

2  Personal discipline, Being empowered to work anywhere is great but creates challenges when 9-5 in a office environment is not real in 2019. With mobile technology we are always on and infinitely more connected with simple self admin I can set up bespoke routing so calls are only delivered between 9-6. Or select messaging alerts which fit with my priorities and select a presence status to stop me being disturbed when I am working on a project.

3 Improved morale, Having the tools to do my job faster and to a higher quality makes me happy (next article may be Maslow hierarchy of needs themed). I sometimes use Team Messaging as a corporate WhatsApp as part of a EMEA team working remote the conversations around office banter are key to the soul and should not be overlooked.

4 Quality circles, and

5 Suggestions for improvement. Some of the best internal team messaging groups I am apart of relate to being part of product groups, development feedback and go to market teams we really are the living proof of Kaizen in action. I made a comment in such a post last week and our CEO and founder read and responded shortly after. It is not unusual for Vlad Shmunis to do this. Yet ask yourself how many multi billion organisations with 1000’s of employees have direct dialog from bottom to top? Email and a medium would not have supported such a dialog a reply to all would cause outrage as inboxes and traffic clog up the email inbox of corporate slavery. Feed back to the developers straight from front-line feed back from customers is so refreshing.  An explanation why a feature not been developed a certain way or a ground swell of support to add gravitas to a suggestion is so powerful. The culture of rapid continuous improvement is in our DNA. Customers on UCaaS get 4 seamless upgrades a year on RingCentral the service constantly improves.

As a result we continue to win awards for our product. Out grow a growing UCaaS market 25% with our growth 34% YoY.  Size matters in this market as achieving revenue over double our next closest competitor means our RnD budget is investing more than twice as much on continuous improvement. Driven as it should be under the principle of Kaizen from the shop floor all the way to the CEO.