Kaizen begins by looking inwardly...
Philip Holt
Business Transformation Leader and COO | MBA | Leadership | Business Transformation | Operational Excellence | C-suite Level Engagement | Lean Thinking | Organisational & Value Stream Design
Kaizen, a term that is simultaneously ubiquitous and misunderstood, which has a different meaning in nearly every company and country that I visit, yet is assumed to be commonly understood at every conference that I attend.
Does it mean 'a change for the better', is it a synonym for 'Continuous Improvement', is it Quick and Easy Kaizen (QEK), or is it even an Event?
Wikipedia provides a relatively concise definition to begin with:
Kaizen (Japanese : 改善, "improvement") 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 also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life coaching, government, manufacturing, and banking. By improving standardized programs and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies (lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first practiced in Japanese businesses after World War II, influenced in part by American business and quality-management teachers, and most notably as part of The Toyota Way. It has since spread throughout the world and has been applied to environments outside of business and productivity.
Yet it then goes on to list a number of different types of Kaizen:
I do fear that the term Kaizen has become pervasive to the point that we're not really discussing what its true meaning is and, worse still, many people are being taught the practice by those for whom its tenets are ambiguous, and whom are sitting on what Joseph Paris likes to call "Mount Stupid".
There is a fidelity issue, whereby the philosophy of Kaizen has been lost, or at least degraded, and a mechanistic approach is taught, such as this one that I chanced upon:
How Kaizen works: The 5 phases of Kaizen
I would argue that this 'to do' list for Kaizen is about as far away as one could get from its 'zeitgeist', and that this type of teaching is one of the key reasons why many organisations fail to develop a Kaizen Culture.
What is Kaizen?
Now that I've told you what I believe Kaizen isn't, what do I claim that it is?
My learning has been long and painful. I am a logical person, I was apprenticed as an Engineer, and educated in a Technological undergraduate degree. My MBA was informative and educational, and certainly opened doors into Leadership roles.
However, none of that prepared me for the awakening of learning that Kaizen was really only about one thing: The ability to look inwardly; to honestly accept the change that I had to make to improve.
Only once I was able to accept that was I able to engage with colleagues, to understand that I could never be the victim of others if I looked inwardly, that I could only empower others when I first empowered myself.
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By looking inwardly, and reflecting upon one's own accountability for the current state, it is possible to become an activist, someone who makes the change necessary. You can focus on solving problems, and a problem sustainably solved results in Kaizen - Yes, that's correct, the route to implementing Kaizen is not by focussing on implementing Kaizen, but by solving problems.
This is a common mistake that many organisations make in trying to create a Kaizen Culture; they try to encourage and teach their people to implement Kaizen, when in fact they ought to be teaching them to sustainably solve problems, with the outcome of a sustainably solved problem being an updated standard, a Kaizen.
Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, this can only be effective when, as I stated in the Leading with Lean Academy course, Creating a Kaizen Culture :
"Importantly, we need to constantly remind ourselves that Kaizen is about looking inwardly, not pointing blame outwardly." ~ Philip Holt
Ultimately, Kaizen is a team sport and requires that everyone in the organisation are working together to continuously improve what they do through the resolution of problems on a daily basis. Nevertheless, to attain that one must being by looking inwardly, reflecting on your responsibility to improve, and leading the way to a Kaizen Culture...
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Facilitated 10,000+ Gemba Kaizens in 50+ Organizations | Director - Center for Lean Excellence | Certified TPS Practitioner
5 个月An excellent article Philip Holt. Thanks for sharing
Founder of Changing Paradigms | Keynote Speaker and Panellist | Demystifying the real purpose of strategy to enable operational excellence through leadership alignment and people ??
5 个月Very good article Philip Holt ?? I will not even explore the concepts of "hansei" here but bring the concepts from the Greek and considered the father of philosophy Socrates " Know thyself is the beginning of wisdom" (Apollo temple for reference).