New years resolutions and Kaizen.
Taken from my blog
Let me be the first to say:
Akemashite, Omedeto Gozaimasu!
It’s time for the ubiquitous New Years resolution post! This time it’s a post with a mini twist. My top tip for resolution success is this: resolve to do just one thing. Learn about Kaizen and see how you can apply it to achieving goals for 2011. You will be familiar with Gemba Kaizen if you work in a factory producing Japanese cars or if you are involved in software development or project management. If none of the above applies to you, don’t worry. Kaizen is for you if you’re looking to improve what you do over the course of the next year and if you’d really like to make sure those improvements happen.
Kaizen at work : Photo from Classic Japanese Cars in New Zealand via Flickr
Gemba Kaizen is a Japanese approach to production line efficiency and excellence. If you want to read about Gemba Kaizen and production lines, google the Toyota Way and read this book. For westerners the thought of production line efficiency doesn’t always sit well. The fear is that production line efficiency will mean that we are treated as robots, stripped of individuality and turned into non-creative, non-thinking automatons. We also have a slight sense of panic whenever we hear of efficiency as we think that it means job losses and passing over needs, talents and contribution to into numbers on a graph. This is however not what Kaizen is about.
What is Gemba Kaizen?
Gemba means the scene or place or in production line and factory terms, the place where value is added. Kaizen translated is “improvements”. So improving things at the site. Importantly, Kaizen is not about the introduction of a radical new system of change or a new bit of software or machinery that’s difficult to learn. It’s about looking closely at what you do and then changing in small ways to improve a process. In the production line it’s about getting people to engage in thinking about what could be changed to improve. It’s about involving people in the process and in doing so getting them engaged in their jobs. That’s just a very very small overview of the approach. If you’re interested to learn more, read Gemba Kaizen by Masaki Imai.
Simple Low-cost Changes and Improvements, not Big Expensive Changes
One reasons I started thinking about Kaizen and Resolutions was after I received a kind offer via email from a known self-help “guru” of the “Do my system and I can guarantee that impossible dream of yours will become true for only £1500” mode. His claim is that by watching about 8 hours of videos over a period of 3 months, he could make you more productive. It involves a lot of huge and unmaintainable changes to your life such as eating raw food and require that you get up at least one hour earlier to fit all of the radical changes in. Massive changes such as this and the resolutions we set ourselves around this time of year just set us up to fail. The asks are just too big, too much, to difficult to achieve immediately. The majority of people will partake for a week or so and then just return to the old ways, feeling more defeated and less of a person for not being able to keep up with these “simple” instructions. This is where Kaizen comes in. Kaizen asks for gradual improvements. The aim is to try to focus on small changes to improve in a bigger way. There’s usually a larger goal in mind such as to become fitter. In the production line model, the aim is to produce more cars with fewer faults and with a faster turnaround. The goal is to make a profit by smaller and gradual improvements. In One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Maurer gives the example of the tragedy of diarrhea causing the deaths of millions of children in developing countries. Agencies have poured money into expensive research into areas such as rehydration or setting up clean water supplies. The problem has been much improved by the simple act of promoting the washing of hands before dealing with food or kids. Clearly there’s more to this since you need clean water to wash hands, but that’s a small and manageable step and one which can be achieved via promotion and education.
Kaizen to Achieve Personal Goals
In terms of fitness, people get into running and lose weight with Kaizen without even thinking about it. They begin by running to the end of the street and then build on that. Within a year they are running 10k and they have lost 30lbs. In terms of weight loss, small amounts of loss each week is the way forward. Don’t aim to lose 14lbs in a month. Think of the small improvements you can make to lose 1 pound a week. All you need to do in order to lose one to two pounds in a week is reduce your calorific intake by 15%. Too difficult? In One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Maurer suggests that rather than throwing a chocolate bar away, throw away the first bite. The next time see if you can improve on that. Don’t start off with the unrealistic goal of eating no chocolate at all and eating raw food instead. If your life-long habit is to eat chocolate, that’s a big ask and it likely it’s not going to last a lifetime or help you reach a long term goal. An example of a non Kaizen approach would be to take diet pills or go on a powder only based diet. You may lose a lot of weight, but it’s highly unlikely it will last long term. It’s expensive, it’s not improving your health and this short fix doesn’t help you solve any of the problems that caused the weight gain in the first place. Instead, look at what you’re doing and ask how you could improve in a small, low cost ways. Look at what you do and ask questions. Make those changes and then stop and review on a frequent basis. If something isn’t working, ask why. Change and try something else. One small and inexpensive change is the old positive attitude axiom. If you struggle with that, try doing it in small stages. Try to consider two positive things you did in one day and then build on that.
Other small ways of helping you reach your goal are :
- Reward yourself along the way with treats (such as a full carbon framed road bike for me)
- If you really want to reach a goal, make sure you tell someone about it, let friends and family know Write it down. Start a blog. Follow blogs on of a similar theme.
- Build up your own support network Follow people on Twitter. You’ll find lots of people trying to reach similar goals
- Find an exciting or interesting event to prepare for, such as a local bike ride. Keep it manageable. Don’t sign up for a 149 mile bike ride with 15,000 feet of climbing, only to return to the UK to ride to Brussels in 24 hours like some fule might.
Recommended Books: Gemba Kaizen by Masaki Imai One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer The Toyota Way 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker
Related useful reading: 59 Seconds, Think a little, change a lot by Richard Wiseman, The No Diet Diet Book and Do Something Different
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