We often fall into the trap of trying to make significant improvements in a short period of time, working hard, putting pressure on ourselves or others. We burn out, run out of steam, and don’t achieve what we want. It’s easy to overestimate the importance of a big push and underestimate the value of small daily efforts and improvements.

The desire to make small, day-to-day improvements, with the knowledge that they will lead to a result far greater than the amount of improvements made, is the basis of the kaizen approach, known to the ancient Japanese and adopted by business in the 20th century.

KAIZEN is a business management concept of continuous excellence to achieve competitive advantage. KAIZEN is team thinking: improvements can come from any member of the team. Everyone is interested in making the company succeed, everyone strives to make the business better.

KAIZEN principles are simple and straightforward:

• Question established approaches. Doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of different results is futile. To change the output, you must change the input actions.
• View challenges as opportunities. All business challenges are a challenge and an opportunity to find solutions; a point of growth and development.
• Gain wisdom in challenging situations. Thinking and acting with knowledge, experience, intelligence, common sense, and insight; understanding and embracing whatever happens.
• Maintain a positive attitude. With a positive attitude, you can see new opportunities for the company.
• Motivate creativity in the team. You can pay for new ideas, knowledge and technology, but you have to start by developing and harnessing internal creativity. With enough motivation, creative approaches to positive change will emerge.
• Eliminate “can’ts” Focus on finding ways to improve rather than looking for excuses for what can’t be done.
• Understand the data and how it works. Implementing a new change should always be about the one metric that matters most at a given time in a given state.
• Learn by doing. Theoretical knowledge alone is not enough to implement change.
• Choose a simple solution. Give preference to a simple solution that can be implemented right out of the box. A well-implemented small change motivates the implementation of new and larger changes.
• Acknowledge and correct your mistakes. Failures and mistakes are an integral part of the achievement process. But you have to admit and correct your mistakes immediately so they don’t multiply into something unmanageable.

If changes lead to unfavorable results, you can always go back to the original approach or find a new one. Every experiment yields a valuable lesson. Many good solutions make things worse before they improve.

Are any of the kaizen principles close to your heart and mind? Which ones would you like to use or have you already used them?