Develop a "kaizen culture" so you can always improve
When the entire company starts doing kaizen, in various ways and every day, it sets off a chain reaction
Continuous improvement has been talked about in the corporate world for some time. Many say they do it. Few really know what it is about. And even fewer structure it in a planned, everyday and sustainable way.
Of course, there is no single way to start and sustain continuous improvement in a company. It is one of the foundations, for example, of quality management approaches, and it lies at the essence of the lean system.
In this model, everything or almost everything aims to bring about improvements in all processes every day. And in the lean context, a very common practice is what we call kaizen. The Japanese expression can be translated as “change for the better.”
Some confuse the term kaizen with certain specific ways of making improvements when, in fact, it should be understood as a philosophy that changes the attitudes of everyone in the company, a true “kaizen culture.”
A first misconception is to think that kaizen can only be done in the format of a “kaizen week,” also known as a “kaizen blitz.”
This format concentrates improvement activity, with several people fully involved for a few days, and has the great advantage of being action-focused, delivering practical, tangible changes by the end.
However, this very powerful means is often misused, leading companies to focus on many “one-week kaizens” but not on connecting those periods to the company's strategy and results - even creating the impression among people that improvement is something done separately, on a scheduled date, rather than something done every day.
A kaizen culture goes far beyond that. It means spreading throughout the company the mindset that everything can and should be improved day by day, by everyone, and that we should always be dissatisfied with current performance. And adopting various ways of making improvements, or kaizens.
When everyone in their work groups is clear about the standards and targets to be achieved, and every day they check for deviations, analyze the causes and take immediate action, they are doing small kaizens.
They can also launch deeper or more systemic specific improvements, using structured problem analysis, which become projects lasting a few months, kaizen weeks, or are tackled in various other ways. For example, when an employee brings an improvement suggestion, tests it and implements it with their supervisor, and it becomes part of the processes, that is also kaizen.
In any of these forms, it is essential always to maintain the kaizen spirit, which is to seek, as a priority and creatively, simple, fast, cheap, low-investment solutions that generate the greatest relevant impact for customers and, consequently, for the company's objectives.
This is the engine of a continuous improvement culture. Always being dissatisfied with deviations, waste or missed targets, constantly seeking to raise the standard. And with a sense of urgency – changing quickly and experimenting in successive cycles, looking for something better.
If a startup launches a minimum viable product and tests its hypotheses quickly with customers, instead of developing a product for months without knowing whether it will really succeed, that is also kaizen culture. It is believing that the product evolves through successive cycles of improvement and cannot be born complete without that experimentation.
When the entire company starts doing kaizen, in various ways and every day, it sets off a chain reaction. Before you know it, continuous improvement is no longer a novelty, a talking point, or even a plan that needs to be drawn up and carried out – or even “pushed” – periodically. Kaizen becomes a way of thinking.
