Kaizen: The Japanese Method for Transforming Habits, One Small Step at a Time

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Sarah Harvey moved to Japan from London. She has learned about Japanese culture through experience and summarized the Japanese method of kaizen. Have you heard of the Toyota Way, Marie Kondo´s art of organizing and Shinto cleaning? Labai lengvai skaitėsi, su daug pavyzdžių (kas man patinka!) ir praktinių patarimų...Man patiko, kad joje gali rasti konkrečių idėjų, kaip keisti įpročius įvairiose gyvenimo srityse - sveikatoje, darbe, piniguose, namuose ar santykiuose. Taip pat įdomu šiek tiek susidurti su japoniškos kultūros įpročiais ir požiūriu, iš kurio tikrai yra ko pasimokyti. The pillars of the Toyota Production System don’t just inform the processes within our own factories and offices. Toyota’s expertise at applying ‘the lean approach’ is highly valued by other industries.

The solution lies in understanding the innate psychological forces that conspire against us. We must become aware of these “mental traps,” which prevent us from getting things done. Within the Toyota Production System, Kaizen humanises the workplace, empowering individual members to identify areas for improvement and suggest practical solutions. The focused activity surrounding this solution is often referred to as a kaizen blitz, while it is the responsibility of each member to adopt the improved standardised procedure and eliminate waste from within the local environment. At its core, kaizen is concerned with continuous improvement by reducing waste in processes, guided by the key belief that good processes lead to good results. In manufacturing, this means that reducing waste in a process adds value to the customer. In lean manufacturing, the 8 wastes (also known as muda, or any activity that consumes resources without creating value for the customer) are defined as: I just want to quote, 'Kaizen is a noun in Japanese and is used to mean improvement, whether that is big or small, one-time or continuous.'Choose Yourself takes you through some practical examples and anecdotes of kaizen in action; people who choose to get something more from life and going after it methodically, step by step, day after day, and eventually getting what they want. Improve your life fearlessly with this essential guide to kaizen—the art of making significant and lasting change through small, steady steps. I was delighted to see one of my all-time favourite writers and inspirations, Seth Godin, release a book that looks at the creative side of kaizen in practice, or rather, the practice of creativity. The Japanese and Chinese alphabets don’t have a single symbol for the word ‘crisis’. Instead, it is an amalgamation of the two symbols for ‘danger’ and ‘good opportunity’. It is hard to see the wood through the trees when you are having a hard time, but remembering that good things can come out of adversity can be helpful.

I did benefit from this book and it was mainly at the beginning of it where I underlined (which was the kaizen part). Rooted in the two-thousand-year-old wisdom of the Tao Te Ching—“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”—here is the way to change your life without fear, without failure, and start on a new path of comfortable, continuous improvement. This book isn’t strictly about kaizen, but it is about self-improvement and taking little steps towards achieving your goals — or choosing yourself, As James calls it.

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From Marie Kondo to Hygge to Ikigai, in recent years, philosophies to help people live better lives have taken the world by storm. Kaizen will change your habits for good.

Clear is known for distilling complex topics into simple behaviours that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and top their field. The kaizen philosophy is not a one-time fix but a long-term approach. By making small, incremental changes, organizations can gradually improve their processes and systems, leading to significant long-term benefits. These benefits include increased efficiency, higher quality, and a more engaged and motivated workforce. Kaizen begins in the early designs of a production line and continues through its lifetime of use by a process of consensus known as Nemawashi – read our explanation here. A big thank-you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for giving me a copy of this book for an unbiased review. Overproduction: Producing too much before it is required obstructs a smooth flow of work, raises the costs of production and storage, hides defects inside work-in-progress, and increases lead time.

Investing time into planning your Kaizen event is critical to the event’s success; in fact, properly planning the event is just as important as the event itself. Set your team up for success by clearly defining the goals and scope of the event and strategically assembling a team that will bring insights and motivations to the table. Holding a Kaizen Event: The 448% ROI of Tulip's Frontline Operations Platform Learn how Tulip’s platform has helped companies increase operational efficiency by 15-50% and decrease defects by 70%. Excess inventory: Excess inventory can cause inefficiencies and cause delays in the detection of problems. Problems can accumulate, and with more inventory, problems take longer to solve.