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Abstract

out investing in anything new or increasing their current budget. They were told that no change was too small. That any and every improvement could, over time, have an impact on the bottom line.And there’s the magic of Kaizen. It’s easy.Kaizen ignores huge, radical, expensive changes in favor of small, easily implemented, day-to-day changes, and plenty of them.When you move your tools a little closer to your work station to cut a few minutes out of your work day, that’s Kaizen.When you take the stairs instead of the elevator to improve your health, that’s Kaizen too.When you take ten seconds out of your day to type a quick ‘I love you’ text to a loved one, you’re using Kaizen to improve your relationship.When my father was running a successful business with a healthy seven figure turnover, he was known for picking up dropped screws from the factory floor and returning them to the work benches to be reused. He may not have known it, but he was practicing Kaizen.When I was a crazy busy, slightly overwhelmed, stay-at-home-mom with two very small children, I kept up my daily writing practice, sometimes writing just a paragraph a day, knowing that I wanted to keep honing my craft and return to full-time writing in the future. I hadn’t heard of Kaizen back then, but I was practicing it.The Kaizen approach can take many forms. It can be running on the spot for a minute each day. It can be replacing one full-fat, sugared latte with one glass of lemon water. It can be reading one page a day on a topic you want to learn about, or writing one paragraph of an article, essay or book. It can be making one extra client call each day, or taking a few minutes to connect with your boss, a colleague, a mentor, or a spouse.According to Maurer, Kaizen has helped his clients do everything from losing weight and starting exercise regimes, to improving careers and relationships. Small steps, taken consistently, can lead to massive success. Small steps, taken consistently, trump big steps taken rarely or never.The magic of small improvements, of course, is that they’re less difficult and time consuming than bigger improvements. Taking a dozen (or even a hundred) small steps can often take less time and effort than even planning one huge step (and not everything that gets planned gets done).Success is a big concept, so it’s understandable that we tend to believe it takes big strides in the right direction to get there. Big changes. Big sacrifices. Big gestures. That’s what we think leads to big success.Thinking big can be good. It can also be daunting, and slightly illogical. Every epic journey is made up of single steps. Every weight loss story happens pound by pound (or ounce by ounce). Every degree is completed test by test, and assignment by assignment. Every fully functioning young adult has been raised day by day, and minute by

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minute.In his bestselling book, <a href="https://amzn.to/3ccfSKh">Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity</a>, David Allen talks about the value of what he calls a bottom-up approach. In the corporate world, and certainly in the entrepreneurial world, it seems to have become fashionable to work from the top down, starting with the big stuff like purpose and vision. As Allen points out:“…most people are so embroiled in commitments on a day-to-day level that their ability to focus successfully on the larger horizon is seriously impaired.”Starting from the bottom, with the small day-to-day things that you can implement consistently, is often what allows you to get your daily routines and work flow under control. When you’ve mastered the basics, it’s generally easier to work your way up. Sometimes, in business, it helps to start with getting your daily systems in place, if only because that allows you the clear view you need to start thinking about the bigger picture.Sometimes a commitment to walk once around the block every day, or drink two extra glasses of water, is a more logical step than signing up for a complicated gym program or diet plan. An improvement that takes five minutes a day, and gets done, produces better results than an hour-long commitment that gets skipped.As Peter Marshall put it:“Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.”Setting a big goal is admirable, but only if you have a day by day plan of how you’ll get there, because that’s how life happens. Day by day. What you do today, however small, can move you either towards success or away from it, and sometimes small daily improvements add up. Sometimes the sum of those tiny parts is bigger than the whole. Sometimes small daily improvements defy logic.So Kaizen up your life. Ask yourself what tiny tweaks you can make to the areas you’d like to improve. Make it a game. Challenge yourself to identify the smallest change possible to start with.See if you can make every small change you identify fit into a one-minute slot. Or envision what success looks like for you, and then break it down to work out what’s the very least you could do each day to move towards it.It’s counter-intuitive, but often it works. Sometimes it works like a charm. And, based on experience, sometimes you ‘fail’ your Kaizen challenge, because some days one minute of exercise isn’t enough, and you just keep going. Some days you have an overwhelming desire to replace both those full-fat lattes with lemon water, instead of just one.What’s also surprising is that sometimes, when you start making tiny tweaks to one area of your life, you’re compelled to make tiny tweaks to other areas, too. That’s a common side effect of Kaizen. Once you see how easy it is to make small changes, you tend to make more of them, across the board.</article></body>

Taking Teeny Tiny Steps Can Lead To Drastic Improvements

You don’t always have to go big or go home.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have noticed that in the twenty first century, we’re supposed to dream big, play big, and win big. How else will we be able to flaunt our big successes all over social media? We’re supposed to commit to what Jim Collins refers to as big, hairy, audacious goals. We’re supposed to set a goal, then double it, think of an income we’d like to achieve and add a zero, decide where we’d like to be in ten years, then get there in one.

The problem with this is that the massive action we’re supposed to take to reach these dizzy heights is unsustainable for many people.

There’s nothing wrong with teeny tiny steps. In fact, they can lead to drastic improvements, long-term. If you want to see slow but steady and sustainable improvements, you may want to try the Kaizen approach. This approach focuses on making continual, daily, small changes that improve a system or move someone towards a goal. It’s used worldwide, by companies and individuals who want to become successful and stay successful, and it’s as simple as it is effective.

The origin of Kaizen as a concept is unclear, and it’s highly possible that the smarter members of society have been using it since time began. The ideas behind Kaizen may well be at the root of all human success. It is, however, a concept widely embraced in Japanese industry and society, and the word Kaizen itself comes from the Japanese language.

In his book One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, author Robert Maurer explains that Kaizen was an idea that probably helped at least some US companies survive the Great Depression. The US government implemented training courses designed to help industries survive what had become a very challenging economy.

Buried in one of the course manuals of that era, Maurer found the seeds of everything the concept of Kaizen embraces. Bosses were encouraged to:

“Look for hundreds of small things you can improve,”

and:

“Look for improvements on existing jobs with your present equipment.”

Bosses were encouraged to make changes that improved efficiency without investing in anything new or increasing their current budget. They were told that no change was too small. That any and every improvement could, over time, have an impact on the bottom line.

And there’s the magic of Kaizen. It’s easy.

Kaizen ignores huge, radical, expensive changes in favor of small, easily implemented, day-to-day changes, and plenty of them.

When you move your tools a little closer to your work station to cut a few minutes out of your work day, that’s Kaizen.

When you take the stairs instead of the elevator to improve your health, that’s Kaizen too.

When you take ten seconds out of your day to type a quick ‘I love you’ text to a loved one, you’re using Kaizen to improve your relationship.

When my father was running a successful business with a healthy seven figure turnover, he was known for picking up dropped screws from the factory floor and returning them to the work benches to be reused. He may not have known it, but he was practicing Kaizen.

When I was a crazy busy, slightly overwhelmed, stay-at-home-mom with two very small children, I kept up my daily writing practice, sometimes writing just a paragraph a day, knowing that I wanted to keep honing my craft and return to full-time writing in the future. I hadn’t heard of Kaizen back then, but I was practicing it.

The Kaizen approach can take many forms. It can be running on the spot for a minute each day. It can be replacing one full-fat, sugared latte with one glass of lemon water. It can be reading one page a day on a topic you want to learn about, or writing one paragraph of an article, essay or book. It can be making one extra client call each day, or taking a few minutes to connect with your boss, a colleague, a mentor, or a spouse.

According to Maurer, Kaizen has helped his clients do everything from losing weight and starting exercise regimes, to improving careers and relationships. Small steps, taken consistently, can lead to massive success. Small steps, taken consistently, trump big steps taken rarely or never.

The magic of small improvements, of course, is that they’re less difficult and time consuming than bigger improvements. Taking a dozen (or even a hundred) small steps can often take less time and effort than even planning one huge step (and not everything that gets planned gets done).

Success is a big concept, so it’s understandable that we tend to believe it takes big strides in the right direction to get there. Big changes. Big sacrifices. Big gestures. That’s what we think leads to big success.

Thinking big can be good. It can also be daunting, and slightly illogical. Every epic journey is made up of single steps. Every weight loss story happens pound by pound (or ounce by ounce). Every degree is completed test by test, and assignment by assignment. Every fully functioning young adult has been raised day by day, and minute by minute.

In his bestselling book, Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity, David Allen talks about the value of what he calls a bottom-up approach. In the corporate world, and certainly in the entrepreneurial world, it seems to have become fashionable to work from the top down, starting with the big stuff like purpose and vision. As Allen points out:

“…most people are so embroiled in commitments on a day-to-day level that their ability to focus successfully on the larger horizon is seriously impaired.”

Starting from the bottom, with the small day-to-day things that you can implement consistently, is often what allows you to get your daily routines and work flow under control. When you’ve mastered the basics, it’s generally easier to work your way up. Sometimes, in business, it helps to start with getting your daily systems in place, if only because that allows you the clear view you need to start thinking about the bigger picture.

Sometimes a commitment to walk once around the block every day, or drink two extra glasses of water, is a more logical step than signing up for a complicated gym program or diet plan. An improvement that takes five minutes a day, and gets done, produces better results than an hour-long commitment that gets skipped.

As Peter Marshall put it:

“Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.”

Setting a big goal is admirable, but only if you have a day by day plan of how you’ll get there, because that’s how life happens. Day by day. What you do today, however small, can move you either towards success or away from it, and sometimes small daily improvements add up. Sometimes the sum of those tiny parts is bigger than the whole. Sometimes small daily improvements defy logic.

So Kaizen up your life. Ask yourself what tiny tweaks you can make to the areas you’d like to improve. Make it a game. Challenge yourself to identify the smallest change possible to start with.

See if you can make every small change you identify fit into a one-minute slot. Or envision what success looks like for you, and then break it down to work out what’s the very least you could do each day to move towards it.

It’s counter-intuitive, but often it works. Sometimes it works like a charm. And, based on experience, sometimes you ‘fail’ your Kaizen challenge, because some days one minute of exercise isn’t enough, and you just keep going. Some days you have an overwhelming desire to replace both those full-fat lattes with lemon water, instead of just one.

What’s also surprising is that sometimes, when you start making tiny tweaks to one area of your life, you’re compelled to make tiny tweaks to other areas, too. That’s a common side effect of Kaizen. Once you see how easy it is to make small changes, you tend to make more of them, across the board.