Author: Steven Aitchison
The owner of this blog. Proud father, doting husband, blogger, hire me as freelance writer, and addiction worker
In the pursuit of self improvement we can look every area of life. An area I have been interested in for a few months has been business, particularly
the practice of Kaizen.
Kaizen literally means “To become good through change”. It
comes from the Japanese words “Kai” meaning school and “Zen” meaning
wisdom. It has been adapted throughout the world across many businesses and
has been used for years. I remember when I worked as a production operator
at Hughes Micro-electronics they used the Kanban Kaizen system.
What is Kaizen?
Kaizen was created after World War 2 as a way of continuously improving the
work place. Masaaki Imai is considered the father of Kaizen after releasing
the book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success. Kaizen is
not a case of the management getting together once a month; it involves every
employee in a company putting forwards suggestions for improvement. At
Japanese companies, such as Toyota and Canon, 60 to 70 suggestions per employee,
per year are written down, shared and implemented.
I didn’t really get it when I was working at Hughes as I was there for
the money and for partying at the weekend. However having looked at it
again it is an interesting concept.
Wikipedia has this to say about Kaizen:
“The goals of Kaizen include the elimination of waste (defined as “activities
that add cost but do not add value”), just-in-time delivery,
production load levelling of amount and types, standardized work, paced moving
lines, right-sized equipment, etc. In this aspect it describes something very
similar to the assembly
line used in mass
production. A closer definition of the Japanese usage of Kaizen is “to
take it apart and put back together in a better way.” What is taken apart
is usually a process, system, product, or service.
Kaizen is a daily activity whose purpose goes beyond improvement. It is also
a process that, when done correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates hard
work (both mental and physical), and teaches people how to do rapid experiments
using the scientific
method and how to learn to see and eliminate waste in business processes.”
Kaizen for personal development
I am working with the idea of Kaizen for personal development. I believe
it would be good for all areas of life. One of the principle ideas
of Kaizen is to change the easiest things first.
Now that I have read about and absorbed the ideas of Kaizen I have started
to introduce one area and implement an action plan every 2 weeks. The
first one I have implemented is the wasted amount of time spent on the computer.
At the moment I spend 5 -7 hours on the computer per day. I spend around
3 hours working on my own blog and working on the one I manage. So it
leaves me about 4 hours spent “surf without thinking” (SWT). It’s
a case of surfing and reading blogs on areas that interest me but for no other
reason than for personal pleasure. I also work and
SWT together, so I might work for half and hour, SWT for half an hour, work
another half hour, SWT for 1 hour etc.
So what I have done now is work first, get all the work thing out the way. That
would include writing articles, submitting them to article sites, submitting
to social bookmarking sites, promoting the blogs etc. I have found doing it
this way I work for longer, so instead of working 3 hours I work for 4 hours.
Then I spend two glorious hours SWT. What I have noticed so far is the
SWT time has become more focused on work. The SWT time has been cut to
two hours as well which saves me 1 hour per day to work on other areas of my
life.
When I started wiring this article I began looking for other articles on other
blogs mentioning Kaizen and I found a few great ones.
Jason Thomas over at Lifehacker.com has
a great one and discusses how he has implemented into his life.
Themanufacturer.com has
an interesting article written by Jon Minerich
Kaizen in your life
To implement the practice of Kaizen in your life, pick an area which you think
might benefit from change. Look at the process closely and ask what
changes could you make to make it better or quicker or have less wastage.
I have found you can implement it in every area of life, from doing the housework
to spending more time with the children.
It is a slow process so I wouldn’t go head long into this. I would
look at one area at a time and build it up from there. The frequency
at which you implement changes is obviously up to you however I would space
it every few weeks or every month.
Let me know if you have started this already and how you are
getting on.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Since you are drawn to Kaisen or “becoming good through change,” this suggests your understanding of happiness is also changing. I’m interested in your contemplation about the value of Western practices (you mention work for Hughes, a tech company & your wild weekend parties) and compare that to the appeal of personal development grounded in Japanese Zen traditions. What triggered your discontent in your Western lifestyle? What caused you to turn to Far Eastern ideas as a way to create a new level of inner peace? I have had life experience in the aerospace industry and am personally drawn to Eastern practices. I am especially fond of bonsai art.
Hi Liara
I believe we are all sucked into a world where drink, drugs, and being promiscuous are classed as the norm. We are essentially conforming to the lower societal mind. This is fine until the day one wakes up and starts asking questions of the societal mind.
When you start asking questions of yourself and of others you start to wake up. I started asking a lot of questions, simply because I could and was curious about life.
The more I delved into life the more I realised that happiness wasn’t found at the bottom of my ego. Happiness, to me, was found when I let go of the ego. Letting go of the ego is a hard process and I am still doing it.
The eastern ways appeal to me because they are group-centric and not ego-centric. Practices like Kaizen are for the good of a company, or a group of people. Kaizen, in this case, is for personal development. When we have developed personally we can then help to develop others.
I am also drawn to Buddhism because it is not dogmatic and does not seek to control others like other religions.
Bonsai art is also steeped in Buddhist tradition, particularly Zen Buddhism.
I hope this answers your question.
I have worked in the Kaizen format and found it to be both productive and efficient. The most important aspect of the process is complete and utter isolation from the day to day distractions during the process. By creating an atomosphere free of distractions, you are better able to give full attention to the problem that is to be addressed.
Hi Steven,
Nice to know that you are interested in Kaizen for personal development. In fact, I too am looking for a standard methodology for personal development which people all over the world can adopt with some customization.
Currently I am lacking resources for various cases (you call it experience). So I would appreciate any support from your blog. I would be certainly much much happier if I can get along with your idea and contribute to it. We want to see the next generation in a better life style with less stress and enjoying their life to the fullest with a higher productivity.
Regards,
Jaison John
Intersting blog, but with one thing I have to correct you:
Kaizen does not mean what you wrote: school and wisdom. The meaning of the kanji 改, (reading: kai) meaning “change” and 善 (reading: zen) meaning “good”.
So what you called literal translation is the actual translation. And as far as I know there is no kai meaning school and no zen meaning wisdom in Japanese…